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Puzzle about networking, continued...
by peter.northerly＠gmail.com 21 Dec '23

21 Dec '23

OK, it was indeed simple and stupid! It was one of the adaptors, just not the one that I had changed out! Finally at my wits end replaced it with one of the ones I had mistakenly swapped out, and everything is fine. Anyway, an instructive unguided tour of the wilds of modern networking, which is a lot more complicated than in my youth. Or at least different. Now for the next challenge, converting a bios system to efi. I have put together a system using Aorus from Gigabyte. It does not support legacy mode. At least it boots normally from an EFI stick so the build is OK. The next step will be to convert the cloned bios drive to EFI By the way, if anyone ever wants to clone a hard drive I strongly recommend foxclone. Absolutely brilliant, simple and foolproof. If you ever got tired and irritable wandering through the thickets of clonezilla you will love foxclone. Its a lot faster than CZ, and it will also clone a large drive to a smaller one, assuming there is space for all the files. Peter Also systemctl status NetworkManager gives this: NetworkManager.service - Network Manager Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Wed 2023-12-20 16:53:00 GMT; 1h 39min ago Docs: man:NetworkManager(8) Main PID: 769 (NetworkManager) Tasks: 3 (limit: 19064) Memory: 14.1M CPU: 545ms CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service So that's working. I have come on the suggestion to disable it and then configure /etc/network/interfaces manually. What do you think? Peter Puzzle about networking. Any suggestions? All of a sudden and for no apparent reason my ethernet connection isn't working. Its not the router, other machines on the router work fine. Its not the local powerline device, I have changed that out. The machine also works fine with a mobile data dongle plugged in to a usb port. So I think it must be something about the configuration, though why it should suddenly have changed is a mystery to me. I do ip link, and this shows as number two: 2: enp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff So then I do ifup enp3s0, and get this: ~$ sudo ifup enp3s0 ifup: unknown interface enp3s0 When I use the gnome network control tool it fails to bring it up. ip link set appears to work, at least no error message. ifconfig gives this: enp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet6 fe80::d2da:494:eadc:4e0b prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link> ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 982 bytes 158082 (154.3 KiB) TX errors 1 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 So why can't I bring it up with ifup? Rebooting doesn't make any difference. I don't know what else to try. Its probably something very simple that I am just missing.... Peter

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Re: Puzzle about networking
by Phil Ashby 21 Dec '23

21 Dec '23

On 21/12/2023 12:00, <peter.northerly(a)gmail.com> wrote: > ifconfig gives this: > enp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 > inet6 fe80::d2da:494:eadc:4e0b prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link> > ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) > RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) > RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 > TX packets 982 bytes 158082 (154.3 KiB) > TX errors 1 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 I'm suspicious of the complete lack of received packets there. It appears you are sending (probably DHCP requests), but getting nothing back. Things to check: 1/ The cable - swap out for a known working one (from another PC?) 2/ The sockets - dust bunnies cause havoc ;-) 3/ Everything other than the affected machine - pop a different device on the end of the cable if you have one (or borrow one!) 4/ The kernel message log (/var/log/kern.log and/or dmesg) might be shouting about something unwell. 5/ Recent software changes (updates perchance? new kernel?), can you roll back (kernel - most likely you can pick previous at boot) (more advanced detective work) 6/ Fire up a packet sniffer (tshark, wireshark) and watch for packets going in/out of the device on the affected machine. 7/ If you have a network *hub* (NOT a switch), then pop that in line and use another machine to watch for packets to/from the MAC address (I'd use tshark or wireshark, YMMV) on another port of the hub. My money is on a recent kernel change borking receive or dust bunnies. Phil.

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Puzzle about networking
by peter.northerly＠gmail.com 20 Dec '23

20 Dec '23

Puzzle about networking. Any suggestions? All of a sudden and for no apparent reason my ethernet connection isn't working. Its not the router, other machines on the router work fine. Its not the local powerline device, I have changed that out. The machine also works fine with a mobile data dongle plugged in to a usb port. So I think it must be something about the configuration, though why it should suddenly have changed is a mystery to me. I do ip link, and this shows as number two: 2: enp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff So then I do ifup enp3s0, and get this: ~$ sudo ifup enp3s0 ifup: unknown interface enp3s0 When I use the gnome network control tool it fails to bring it up. ip link set appears to work, at least no error message. ifconfig gives this: enp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet6 fe80::d2da:494:eadc:4e0b prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link> ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 982 bytes 158082 (154.3 KiB) TX errors 1 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 So why can't I bring it up with ifup? Rebooting doesn't make any difference. I don't know what else to try. Its probably something very simple that I am just missing.... Peter

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Puzzle about networking, continued...
by peter.northerly＠gmail.com 20 Dec '23

20 Dec '23

Also systemctl status NetworkManager gives this: NetworkManager.service - Network Manager Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Wed 2023-12-20 16:53:00 GMT; 1h 39min ago Docs: man:NetworkManager(8) Main PID: 769 (NetworkManager) Tasks: 3 (limit: 19064) Memory: 14.1M CPU: 545ms CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service So that's working. I have come on the suggestion to disable it and then configure /etc/network/interfaces manually. What do you think? Peter Puzzle about networking. Any suggestions? All of a sudden and for no apparent reason my ethernet connection isn't working. Its not the router, other machines on the router work fine. Its not the local powerline device, I have changed that out. The machine also works fine with a mobile data dongle plugged in to a usb port. So I think it must be something about the configuration, though why it should suddenly have changed is a mystery to me. I do ip link, and this shows as number two: 2: enp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff So then I do ifup enp3s0, and get this: ~$ sudo ifup enp3s0 ifup: unknown interface enp3s0 When I use the gnome network control tool it fails to bring it up. ip link set appears to work, at least no error message. ifconfig gives this: enp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet6 fe80::d2da:494:eadc:4e0b prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link> ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 982 bytes 158082 (154.3 KiB) TX errors 1 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 So why can't I bring it up with ifup? Rebooting doesn't make any difference. I don't know what else to try. Its probably something very simple that I am just missing.... Peter

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touchpad weirdness
by Bev Nicolson 22 Nov '23

22 Nov '23

Every so often the touchpad, and indeed any mouse function as far as I can tell, fails. The cursor just flickers and dances about uncontrollably. I've found out how to close a window and shutdown the laptop using the keyboard but how do I figure out what's going on here? There are no outstanding updates to install if that makes a difference. Bev.

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"New" PC
by Mark Rogers 10 Nov '23

10 Nov '23

I'm in the market for a new desktop PC ("workstation"). No interest in gaming, Will want to run (probably) Ubuntu and a handful of VMs, plus FF or Chrome with a couple of hundred tabs open. I'm more than happy to get one that's a few years out of date and refurbished if it gets me decent value. My existing PC is a i5-6400 CPU @2.7GHz, with 24GB RAM - I've probably had it about 7 years. I don't really have a budget in mind - probably max £1k inc VAT. It's so long since I looked at PCs or CPUs that I have no idea what to look for any more. Going to want at least 1TB SSD (preferably 2TB) but I can add that myself afterwards (although that would affect budget). Min 32GB, maybe 64GB RAM? What should I be looking for (and where should I be looking)? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Transferring files over SSH
by Mark Rogers 09 Nov '23

09 Nov '23

I often seem to find myself in this scenario: - I SSH into Server A using my personal key - I SSH into Server B using my personal key I find files I need on B that I need to transfer from B Usually the files are quite small so I'll just transfer them to my own PC as an intermediary. But I now need to transfer about 30GB from A to B so it seems like the right time to find a better way. I don't really want to have to give A permanent access to B (albeit I can always delete the key later, it seems like the sort of thing that would get forgotten). -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: Transferring files over SSH
by Mark Rogers 09 Nov '23

09 Nov '23

On Thu, 9 Nov 2023 at 12:26, BD <dzidek23(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > How about using scp, it is like cp but over an ssh? scp/rsync is how I'd have done it in the past but that (to my understanding anyway) needs A to have SSH access to B (or vice versa) so I'd either need password based logins (which is how I used to do it but I'm trying to be better!) or creating a key on A and authorising it on B (or, again, vice versa) which I don't really want to be doing for a one-off file transfer. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Transferring settings and data from Firefox and Thunderbird
by Bev Nicolson 02 Nov '23

02 Nov '23

It looks like I will be getting another laptop as my old one is reaching the end of the road. I want to be certain about what I'll be doing, hence asking. What I want to do is transfer all the bookmarks (I have *a lot*), passwords and settings for Firefox over. Is creating a profile the easiest way of doing that? I also want to ensure I have the folders of old emails saved in Thunderbird somewhere safe. Those are emails I have stored on the laptop, not online. Transferring Thunderbird's settings would be a bonus too. If I create a Thunderbird profile, will it do both of those things? Bev.

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Re: Trojans....
by Peter Berrie 27 Oct '23

27 Oct '23

On Fri, 20 Oct 2023 12:00:02 +0100 main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: Adam, Thanks for replying! > Have you ever saved or copied a browser cache onto this stick? No, this is the puzzling thing. I only seem to recall having used it on Debian. I've only used it to put some files on it which I then accessed from my laptop, which is also Debian. So I cannot think where these can have come from. I am wondering if possibly they were on the stick itself when I bought it. They are not going to be able to do anything in Linux, are they? I have also checked online and found a couple of similar trojans which MS AV says it detects, so they sound like Windows trojans. I am thinking now of having clamav run all night on my total Debian hard drive, in recursive mode. That ought to detect them, do you think, if they are on it? Is there anything else you would do? My laptop is dual boot, windows and Debian, so I will boot to windows and then run the MS AV in windows. I suppose run ClamAV in Debian after that. What a pain. But in Windows it would probably be a lot more than just a pain. Peter

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Comparing XML files
by Mark Rogers 26 Oct '23

26 Oct '23

This has been driving me mad all afternoon. How can I compare xml files from the commandline? Specifically: If I have two XML files and one contains: ... <field name="A">ValueA</field> <field name="B">ValueB</field> ... and the other contains: ... <field name="B">ValueB</field> <field name="A">ValueA</field> ... ... then I consider those two files to be the same, but obviously a diff will not. How can I compare just the content and not the ordering/formatting/etc? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: Trojans....
by Peter Berrie 23 Oct '23

23 Oct '23

This gets even more puzzling. Running clamav now for about two days non stop (lots of timeouts) and I am getting many reports like this: LibClamAV info: Suspicious link found! LibClamAV info: Real URL: http://www.globalkap.com LibClamAV info: Display URL: https://secure.skype.com But I can't tell where its finding those links, and don't recall ever visiting them anyway. I am now going through and checking some of them, and often not finding anything odd about them except that the name of the url is different from where the link ends up. And often the Real URL seems to be in the name of a real entity, but one that does not own the domain linked to! For instance another reported suspicious link, new.egg.com, takes me to Yorkshire Building Society, and seems like the real site of YBS. This is apparently due to YBS having taken over Egg. This really was different, though legit. But globalkap, the Real URL doesn't go anywhere, the Display goes to skype login, as you would expect. And globalkap seems to be a variety of real entities, a pool vendor in Aix en Provence, or a salesforce automation outfit somewhere! Another one is equally weird: LibClamAV info: Suspicious link found! LibClamAV info: Real URL: http://smitherfamilykitchen.com LibClamAV info: Display URL: http://www.lloydstsb.com But actually the display URL doesn't go to what clamav thinks is the real one, but goes to LLoyds TSB as it should. Not that I ever recall having visited them! Then when I try to go to smitherfamilykitchen.com (either just http:// or http://www.) its showing Server Not Found. But SmitherFamilyKitchen seems to be a real place selling hot sauces, based in Texas! Though it apparently (oddly) does not have that domain, and I don't recall having ever heard of it before this. But why is it claiming that the display URL is different from the real one? It does not seem to be. The most unhelpful thing about clamav, at least run like this, is that it reports suspicion, but gives you no idea what to do about it, and if I wanted to delete these suspicious URLs I have no idea where to find them! Are they in bookmarks someplace? Or history? Who knows? Anyone have any ideas what to do? Is there any more useful AV to try? Peter On Fri, 20 Oct 2023 14:57:34 +0100 Peter Berrie <peter.northerly(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, 20 Oct 2023 12:00:02 +0100 > main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > > Adam, > > Thanks for replying! > > > Have you ever saved or copied a browser cache onto this stick? > > No, this is the puzzling thing. I only seem to recall having used it on Debian. I've only used it to put some files on it which I then accessed from my laptop, which is also Debian. So I cannot think where these can have come from. I am wondering if possibly they were on the stick itself when I bought it. > > They are not going to be able to do anything in Linux, are they? > > I have also checked online and found a couple of similar trojans which MS AV says it detects, so they sound like Windows trojans. > > I am thinking now of having clamav run all night on my total Debian hard drive, in recursive mode. That ought to detect them, do you think, if they are on it? Is there anything else you would do? > > My laptop is dual boot, windows and Debian, so I will boot to windows and then run the MS AV in windows. I suppose run ClamAV in Debian after that. > > What a pain. But in Windows it would probably be a lot more than just a pain. > > Peter main-owner(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of main digest..."

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Recommended Webcam?
by Steve Mynott 21 Oct '23

21 Oct '23

I've been successfully using a Asus cloudbook running "motion" from the Debian repos https://motion-project.github.io/ to detect motion, record and push video of the cat at her bowl while we've been on holiday but the internal webcam isn't that great. So I've basically solved the software problem but I'm looking at a better external USB (?) webcam Most of the commercial webcams I've seen seem to push people into expensive subscriptions which I don't care about but does anyone have recommendations for cheap, good quality webcams? It would be ideal to be being able to move it remotely and maybe start using it as a more general security cam? -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> rsa3072/629FBB91565E591955B5876A79CEFAA4450EBD50

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installing Linux over Windows
by Bev Nicolson 20 Oct '23

20 Oct '23

I have done this before but I think I may need a little help. Finally got round to wresting the info from my old laptop. (Note that if the keyboard is stuffed, clicking on the human figure on the top right of the screen brings up an on-screen keyboard. You probably know this, but I pass it on anyway.) But to the point of this email. Stuck the usb drive in which has Mint on it and powered the laptop up. Clicked on ESC as it said that would bring the boot menu up. It did not. Not fast enough? What speed should I aim for next time? I found out how to shutdown before it got me all the way through the Windows set up so that's something. Thanks in advance. Bev.

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Trojans....
by Peter 19 Oct '23

19 Oct '23

I took some files today to a local print shop on a usb stick to get them printed. They have the very sensible procedure that, when given files on a stick, they first insert the stick into a laptop which is not on their network, and scan it. The stick is a Maxell FAT32, and my systems are Debian 11. To my horror they came back and said it had trojans! There were two phishbank.ajy JSI:trojan.cryos.3892 This last had three copies installed, the first only one. I'm pretty confident these are not false positives, they get their systems and network from a very competent IT shop. I don't know what AV they use. They are a windows shop of course, so it will be one of the usual windows AV products. So I am pretty sure these trojans were the real thing. They asked what did I want to do. Leave them alone, delete them? I said delete, after making a note of what they were. At the moment I am downloading and installing clamav for my Debian installation. I did a scan of the Windows 10 VM that I have running in Virtual Box, using the MS antivirus that comes with Windows, and it came up clean. I'm also proposing to insert the stick, hopefully now disinfected, into my Debian system, copy a few files to and fro, and go back to the shop to see if it has got itself reninfected from Debian. Unlikely, but it seems like a useful precaution. Should I be worried, and what else should I do? Be grateful for any thoughts. The only other thing about my Debian machine that I've noticed lately is that on one Wordpress site I sometimes get a 429 too many requests error, in Firefox. This happens on first clicking on a link on the site or first visiting it, so there has not in fact been more than one request. Don't see how that could be related but thought it best to mention, just in case. Peter

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Using testdisk to fix a corrupt thumb drive
by Mark Rogers 12 Oct '23

12 Oct '23

I have a thumb drive which is formatted to FAT32 but not recognized in Windows. Using "testdisk" I can find the partition OK, but testdisk reports: Disk /dev/sdc - 30 GB / 28 GiB - CHS 29327 64 32 Current partition structure: Partition Start End Size in sectors Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 255 (FAT) != 64 (HD) Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 63 (FAT) != 32 (HD) 1 * FAT32 LBA 0 1 1 29327 63 32 60063712 [DATADISC] If I select the partition and view files then i see what I expect to see, and I can manually copy off individual files from there. So from a data recovery perspective I have everything I need. However, if I try writing the partition information back using testdisk the thumb drive is still not recognised in Windows and if I reopen it in testdisk it reports the same issues. I tried changing geometry to 255/63 as testdisk suggested, but then analyse says "Bad relative sector". What do I need to do so that the disk is recognised in Windows? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: Weird freezes in Firefox
by Phil Ashby 11 Sep '23

11 Sep '23

On 11/09/2023 12:00, Peter<peter.northerly(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Any ideas what this could be? Its happened a couple of times. > > I will be doing something perfectly ordinary in Firefox, like > shopping on Amazon was the last one. All of a sudden the mouse > cursor, as I move the mouse, turns into a broad black stream, which > makes a trail a half inch or so wide, quite jagged. Stays in place as > the mouse is moved on. In and out of the browser window. Its > impossible to close the window. More clicking brings up partial > truncated small windows. Right clicks have no effect. That sounds like the display output is frozen apart from a hardware mouse cursor. You should (hopefully) have something in an Xorg.log file (after a restart!) to help identify if the X server itself has died, or if Firefox has exclusively grabbed the screen then hung. As this only occurs with Firefox, then my hunch would be the latter. > The only thing I could find to do to get out of it was reboot. You could try Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (the default X server terminate 3-key-salute). If it's Firefox that has a problem you may get your login screen back. I have also used the magic SysReq keys (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key) to sync disk blocks then reboot which might get you more useful log file contents... > This is Debian 11, fluxbox, using the Nvidia drivers for their card. > Never happened with any other app, including not with any other > browser. Doesn't happen often, maybe three or four times over > several months. Another thing to try then: the nouveau drivers, although you will likely lose some performance depending on your particular card. > I shall be upgrading to Debian 12 fairly soon, so maybe that will > make it go away. But what could it be? And what would you do, other > than upgrading? I made the switch to 12 (bookworm) a couple of months back - all ok so far running sway atop Wayland with or without Xwayland support for older X11 apps (apart from Java, but that's another story entirely*) Good luck! Phil. * https://www.ashbysoft.com/articles/swingland/

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Weird freezes in Firefox
by Peter 11 Sep '23

11 Sep '23

Any ideas what this could be? Its happened a couple of times. I will be doing something perfectly ordinary in Firefox, like shopping on Amazon was the last one. All of a sudden the mouse cursor, as I move the mouse, turns into a broad black stream, which makes a trail a half inch or so wide, quite jagged. Stays in place as the mouse is moved on. In and out of the browser window. Its impossible to close the window. More clicking brings up partial truncated small windows. Right clicks have no effect. The only thing I could find to do to get out of it was reboot. This is Debian 11, fluxbox, using the Nvidia drivers for their card. Never happened with any other app, including not with any other browser. Doesn't happen often, maybe three or four times over several months. I shall be upgrading to Debian 12 fairly soon, so maybe that will make it go away. But what could it be? And what would you do, other than upgrading? Peter

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Nextcloud upload and share from commandline
by Mark Rogers 11 Aug '23

11 Aug '23

Any nextcloud users here who are familiar with the API? All i want to do is have a script which uploads a file to my nextcloud server, creates a read-only share link for it, and outputs that link. So when I have a file that's too big or otherwise unsuitable for email, I can simply push it to nextcloud and paste the supplied link into my email instead. This seems like a fairly obvious use case but my attempts at Googling a solution have thus far failed me. Uploading a file from a script is easy and there are plenty of examples out there but creating a share link from that point has me (and ChatGPT, and Google Bard) stumped. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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MPC playback or file converter
by BD 26 Jun '23

26 Jun '23

Hi So I have this headless Debian machine serving miniDLNA on my network. There's good few hundred GB files in its library but I have a problematic bunch too. A very old cache of mpc files that don't want to play. Does anyone have a way to either force miniDLNA to transcode the files on the fly or to convert those file in place (preferably retaining files structure). Cheers, Bart

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Viewing Quick Time videos on Linux?
by Bev Nicolson 24 Jun '23

24 Jun '23

I have two dvd's that use Quick Time. (Yes, they are rather old.) I wondered if there was any way of viewing them? Is there an alternative QT that could help here? Or would it depend solely of finding someone using Windows or Apple? Bev

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Dnsmasq appears to be setting 2 default routes
by Srdjan Todorovic 13 Jun '23

13 Jun '23

Hi all, I'm trying to get some dnsmaq stuff working on my desktop machine (Kubuntu). I've got a wifi interface that is my default (and only) route to the Internet. I've also got a wired ethernet interface that I want to use to: - provide DHCP service to a headless server - provide NAT to that headless server so that it can connect to the internet I've setup a dnsmasq config (using the defaults, but with some tweaks), but whilst it does actually serve DHCP to a laptop (for testing), it appears to set 2 default routes on my desktop, and I can no longer get onto the Internet. Routing table while dnsmasq was running: srdjan@serenity:~$ route Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface default dsldevice.lan 0.0.0.0 UG 100 0 0 enp37s0 default dsldevice.lan 0.0.0.0 UG 600 0 0 wlp38s0 link-local 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 docker0 172.17.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 docker0 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 600 0 0 wlp38s0 dsldevice.lan 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 100 0 0 enp37s0 192.168.2.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 100 0 0 enp37s0 I'm not sure this is correct. Dhcp-option 3 and 6 were left as default, but I would have expected the impact of those to be felt on the client machine trying to get the IP address, and not the "server" (desktop). Perhaps option 3 might make sense to set to the same address as the wifi router? Once I tore down both enp37s0 and wlp38s0, and reconnected on wifi using the KDE network manager, did I manage to get back onto the internet. Of note, the default config uses: interface=enp37s0 port=0 dns-range that is on a different network to the usual wifi one Has anyone got any suggestions please on what plainly stupid thing I'm doing with my setup? Thanks, Srdjan

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Spam
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 27 May '23

27 May '23

Hi y'all My mailserver has started getting a lot of spam in the last few days. Basically, people are sending emails with loads of random email addresses - approx 90+ per email. They're not getting through - they get rejected then blocked. I wondered if anyone else has noticed anything similar? I'm not entirely sure of what this gets them. The occasional spam getting through can't be worth it. Or are they trying a scattergun approach to try and find valid email addresses or accounts? Or are they trying to overwhelm mail servers to exploit bugs in them? Or something else? Anything I should do? I'm getting quite close to saying "ah to ${badplace} with it, lets use a commercial mail-server", but I'm quite attached to the features I have with mine. For my email accounts, I can have unlimited email suffixes on them e.g. example(a)mydomain.invalid example-mailinglist(a)mydomain.invalid example-somecompany(a)mydomain.invalid example-ALUG(a)mydomain.invalid etc - anything after the "-" can be specified. I use this so that I can work who spams email address, or leaks my email address to spammers, and for easy blockage. Does anyone provide a service like this for less than megabucks? Steve

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Isolating a smart TV
by Peter 11 May '23

11 May '23

I just got a smart TV (android based), and going through the install process discovered that if you connect it to Internet it transmits a truly astonishing amount of data to a company based in Ireland, which is in turn a subsidiary of another company in Turkey. Neither of which I have previously heard of. I didn't particularly want the smarts, but there don't seem to be any dumb ones available any more, and our old one had expired in its sleep so we had to get something. There is basically nothing you do on this box that is not logged, if you have connected it. Heaven knows what they do with it when they have it. You watch Eurovision, and turn to another channel after 15 minutes, its logged to your particular box and IP address and hardware. Probably every commercial where you turn the sound down is logged (that's just my guess, I don't know it for sure). So I haven't connected it to our router and am using it like a dumb TV. But my question is, is it possible to put this device and only this device through something like pi-hole and so isolate it from the LAN, and also block it from sending data to these companies? Because I would quite like to be able to watch youtube music on it, but not at the price of sending my musical tastes to Turkey in real time! I see on Amazon that you can get fanless industrial mini-pcs for about 70.00. Or there are NUCs on ebay for around 50.00. The industrial ones have two network ports. Would it be possible to get one of the industrial ones, connect one of the ports to the TV, the other to our router, and install pi-hole so as to put the TV into a LAN zone of its own, and also to use pi-hole to block any transmissions to the company? I'm not clear how this would (or would not) work. Essentially, can you have the pi-hole box sit between the TV and the LAN so that the rest of the LAN is unreachable from it and it blocks unwanted calling hime? How should one handle addressing in this case? If you think it would work, that would be enough to encourage me to have a go and try and stumble through it. Any hints most welcome! Or suggestions for how to get the same result in some other way. Peter

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Re: KVM/QEMU
by Phil Ashby 03 May '23

03 May '23

On 03/05/2023 12:00, Mark Rogers <mark(a)more-solutions.co.uk> said: > > What do I need to do to achieve something simple like creating a new > VM, booting it from a Windows ISO and installing Windows 10 on it? > > I need to do it all from the command line or via a web interface - > preferably having both options open to me. The server is headless so > a traditional GUI is no use to me. Hi Mark, For a number of years now I've used QEMU/KVM, via libvirt and associated clients: virt-manager (Gnome GUI), and the CLI tools in libvirt-clients package (in particular virsh). There's this available from RedHat on using virsh for remote admin that provides a good intro: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/virsh-subcommands ..and this walk through of creating a VM from an ISO.. https://adamtheautomator.com/virsh/ your chosen web search engine and 'virsh tutorials' is your friend as usual ;) HTH, Phlash.

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