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10369 discussions

Boot to a web browser (nothing else available)
by Mark Rogers 03 May '23

03 May '23

I need to set up an Ubuntu 22.04 box so that on startup it enters a graphical environment with a web browser showing a specified page. No access to other applications. (I'd call this a "kiosk" configuration but having spent some time with Google that phrase can mean different things so I wanted to be clear). There's going to be quite a lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes in support of the web interface but I have all that working. It's just the boot-to-browser bit that's an issue. It's not public facing and I don't care if the boot sequence is visible, provided that as long as the box is left alone for a couple of minutes it will eventually end up at a web browser directed to localhost. I've done stuff like this before but Ubunti 22.04 uses snaps rather than .deb packages and that changes the way the applications interact with the O/S - previously I've had systemd start lightdm start a bash script which starts Chromium or Firefox in kiosk mode, but it doesn't seem possible that way any more. But the reality is that I don't need a minimal install so I may well have overthought things in the past. -- 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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KVM/QEMU
by Mark Rogers 02 May '23

02 May '23

I've used VirtualBox for years, most recently either as a desktop tool (eg on a laptop) for testing things out (managed by the VBox GUI), or as a server tool hosting multiple VMs (managed via a combination of CLI and the web-based phpVirtualBox tool which mimics the VBox GUI via a web interface). For a long time I've thought I should use KVM instead so today I had a crack as installing it on my home Linux server (Ubuntu) but I've gone around in circles and got nowhere useful. 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. -- 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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No pdf thumbnails
by Bev Nicolson 15 Apr '23

15 Apr '23

I'd not been having any trouble with pdf's for a while but suddenly no recent pdf's show a thumbnail, just an Adobe logo. I've got Master pdf and the simpler Evince (for when I just want to read something.) In the past, if this happened, all I had to do was change the file name and then a thumbnail would appear. That doesn't work here. (I think I've asked a similar question before but on hunting through the archive couldn't see a clear answer.) Bev

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Has anyone here used qawebhosting or know anything about them?
by Chris Green 01 Apr '23

01 Apr '23

I'm looking for a hosting service for a few web sites that I maintain for friends and family. One possibility is QA Webhosting who seem to be quite small but offer just about exactly what I want/need. Does anyone here know anything about them? -- Chris Green

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Linux Tablets
by Peter Berrie 22 Mar '23

22 Mar '23

I recently had occasion to wish, yet again, that I had a proper Linux tablet. So afterwards I dug out an old Linx 8 windows tablet and tried various distros on it. It came with windows 8, which was pretty bad, and I had upgraded to windows 10, which is better but glacially slow. I tried various distros on it including several Puppies, some of which not bad but no touch support, Fedora, which would not finish booting, slitaz (failed to boot), MXlinux (no touch). Several others. Zorin (failed to boot). A desktop derived from Alpine. So far the best I have found is Peppermint 32 bit. XFCE. Touch works, it sees battery status, its reasonably fast considering the hardware. I haven't got on screen keyboard yet, but there seem to be several choices of this. My impression is that it would be a viable solution on a more recent and powerful x86 tablet. But which? I'm thinking now about getting a used Surface. It seems like the Surface 5 is the best choice among them, apparently a significant improvement on the model 4, and that it should work with Linux. It should be able to manage Fedora which is widely recommended for touch devices. There is also a Lenovo with detachable keyboard of lower cpu spec and similar vintage, at about the same price. Lenovo Ideapad Miix 700. Bigger screen. The Surface 5 seems to have been a significant upgrade from the previous Surface 4. Do you all have any thoughts about this? Any other x86 tablets to consider? Any other distros that are more promising than Peppermint? Is Chrome worth considering? Peter

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gmail bouncing emails from my domain.
by Nev Young 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

I suspect this is a naive question but I'm at a loss how to fix this. I send emails using thunderbird and msmtp. I post via my ISP's smtp server (smpt.zen.co.uk) This has allowed me to send emails to any one as any one. e.g. this has come from alug(a)nevilley.org.uk very recently emails sent to gmail users have started to bounce undelivered with the likes of: (email address redacted) This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: ##############(a)gmail.com host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [108.177.15.27] SMTP error from remote mail server after pipelined end of data: 550-5.7.26 This message does not pass authentication checks (SPF and DKIM both 550-5.7.26 do not pass). SPF check for [nevilley.org.uk] does not pass with ip: 550-5.7.26 [212.23.1.22].To best protect our users from spam, the message has 550-5.7.26 been blocked. Please visit 550-5.7.26https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication for more 550 5.7.26 information. p9-20020adfe609000000b002ca647fe919si1349235wrm.527 - gsmtp Do I need to do something with thunderbird on my PC or is this a problem for Zen? Any help gratefully received. Nev

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Re: gmail bouncing emails from my domain.
by Nev Young 07 Mar '23

07 Mar '23

Hi, Some one (not me) has been "messing about" !! During a phone discussion with [1] at fasthosts we retried sending the previously bouncy emails. AND THEY WORKED !! The magic gremlins appear to have fixed it. What can I say? Thanks to all who put in effort. (no doubt it'll break again tomorrow) Nev On 06/03/2023 17:17, steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk wrote: > On 06/03/2023 16:54, Nev Young wrote: >> Hi Steve, >> >> This is too hard for my ikkle brain. > > Hi mate. > > Will have a look and get back to you. > > Just a mo... > > Steve

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gmail bouncing emails from my domain.
by Nev Young 06 Mar '23

06 Mar '23

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HP Microservers or similar
by Mark Rogers 20 Feb '23

20 Feb '23

Over the years I've used a handful of HP Micro servers to run a Linux-based web server application. To be honest I suspect it would comfortably run on a Pi, to give you some idea of power requirements. However it does need to be dependable and one of the criteria is RAID (software RAID 1 is fine). We replace the hardware every few years so the question I have is: what is a good small server for Linux these days? Apart from the requirement to host 2 SATA drives there isn't much in terms of hardware requirements. We don't even use a lot of disk space - maybe a few dozen GB. One HDD gets replaced annually so that no disk is older than 2y, using commodity disks in the 1-2TB range but partitioned to only use 200GB on each disk, just because we don't need more and it makes the swap to a new disk quicker. Hot swap not needed. Would consider SSD for the new server. I was about to get a quote for an HP Gen10 MicroServer when it crossed my mind that maybe just buying the same server out of habit wasn't necessarily the right approach! -- 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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Test post
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 18 Feb '23

18 Feb '23

Not sure if I can post to ALUG at the moment. This is a test. Steve

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SPF Record problem
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 17 Feb '23

17 Feb '23

Hi all I have just seen a message saying that Gmail is going to reject all emails without an SPF set up, so I thought I'd try for my mail server. Of course I have immediately run into trouble. My email gets sent via a virgin media server, currently smtp.ntlworld.com but I may update to smtp.virginmedia.com in future I used an SPF Wizard https://www.spfwizard.net It generated v=spf1 mx a a:smtp.ntlworld.com a:smtp.virginmedia.com ~all which if I read it right, accepts my domain, or smtp.ntlworld.com or smtp.virginmedia.com as valid email handlers for my email, with a "soft fail". [I used a soft fail for debugging - I want to swap to hard fail, but can't until I get this right] I've sent a couple of emails to test, and here's the snag. By the time they get to google, they're coming from 212.54.57.96 212.54.57.97 If I do a whois on that, I get back ziggo.nl (VODAFONEZIGGO) I expect email to smtp.ntlworld.com gets redirected to another server, or group of servers, inside virgin media, no doubt with a name like MAILSERVER.virginmedia.com (for some value of MAILSERVER), and that's handled by a range of IP addresses. How can I craft a valid SPF record, if I don't know which IP addresses or name to put in the spf? Why is virgin media mail ending up on a server in NL, or is that just an out-of-date or wrong whois lookup? Any ideas????? I'm struggling! Steve

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SPF Record problem
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 17 Feb '23

17 Feb '23

Hi all I have just seen a message saying that Gmail is going to reject all emails without an SPF set up, so I thought I'd try for my mail server. Of course I have immediately run into trouble. My email gets sent via a virgin media server, currently smtp.ntlworld.com but I may update to smtp.virginmedia.com in future I used an SPF Wizard https://www.spfwizard.net It generated v=spf1 mx a a:smtp.ntlworld.com a:smtp.virginmedia.com ~all which if I read it right, accepts my domain, or smtp.ntlworld.com or smtp.virginmedia.com as valid email handlers for my email, with a "soft fail". [I used a soft fail for debugging - I want to swap to hard fail, but can't until I get this right] I've sent a couple of emails to test, and here's the snag. By the time they get to google, they're coming from 212.54.57.96 212.54.57.97 If I do a whois on that, I get back ziggo.nl (VODAFONEZIGGO) I expect email to smtp.ntlworld.com gets redirected to another server, or group of servers, inside virgin media, no doubt with a name like */MAILSERVER./*virginmedia.com (for some value of MAILSERVER), and that's handled by a range of IP addresses. How can I craft a valid SPF record, if I don't know which IP addresses or name to put in the spf? Why is virgin media mail ending up on a server in NL, or is that just an out-of-date or wrong whois lookup? Any ideas????? I'm struggling! Steve

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JOB | Engineer (London, UK)
by James Tobin 03 Feb '23

03 Feb '23

Hello, I'm working with an employer that is looking to hire someone to run a team of system engineers responsible for all on prem servers and related tools. Consequently, I hoped that some members of this list may like to discuss with me further. I can be reached using "JamesBTobin (at) Gmail (dot) Com". Kind regards, James

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Mouse trouble
by Bev Nicolson 09 Jan '23

09 Jan '23

So the light comes on under my optical (wired) mouse but the cursor doesn't move. I've just tried the usb slot with a usb stick and it's fine. Ideas? Other than get a new mouse which I am doing? lsusb brings: Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0c45:648b Microdia Integrated Webcam Bus 001 Device 003: ID 413c:8197 Dell Computer Corp. Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bev

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Looking for E-Mail hosting as opposed to web hosting, recommendations wanted
by Chris Green 24 Nov '22

24 Nov '22

I am having trouble with my E-Mail at the moment. Since the move from 'Cloud' hosting to their cPanel services my E-Mail at TsoHost hasn't run very well. So I'm wondering if I might move my two, basically E-Mail only, domains away from TsoHost. There's basically four users with lots of forwarding and other such things. I need to host two domains, have the ability to create IMAP/POP3 mailboxes, multiple forwarding, etc. So it's not *big* but does need to be flexible (and cheap!). Does anyone have any recommendations? -- Chris Green

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A remaining puzzle with AMD
by Peter 18 Nov '22

18 Nov '22

This is about my new AMD installation. After finally figuring out how to upgrade just the kernel so as to be able to make pm-suspend work properly, there is one remaining issue I can't seem to figure out, and that is the temperature sensors. I have lm-sensors installed and this is what it shows: k10temp-pci-00c3 Adapter: PCI adapter Tctl: +31.5°C amdgpu-pci-0b00 Adapter: PCI adapter vddgfx: 856.00 mV vddnb: 737.00 mV edge: +30.0°C PPT: 0.00 W nct6792-isa-0290 Adapter: ISA adapter in0: 864.00 mV (min = +0.00 V, max = +1.74 V) in1: 0.00 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) in2: 3.34 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in3: 3.34 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in4: 0.00 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) in5: 0.00 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) in6: 808.00 mV (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in7: 3.41 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in8: 3.25 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in9: 1.83 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in10: 176.00 mV (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in11: 128.00 mV (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in12: 1.84 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in13: 1.68 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in14: 0.00 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) fan1: 384 RPM (min = 0 RPM) fan2: 1023 RPM (min = 0 RPM) fan3: 0 RPM (min = 0 RPM) fan4: 0 RPM (min = 0 RPM) fan5: 0 RPM (min = 0 RPM) SYSTIN: +119.0°C (high = +0.0°C, hyst = +0.0°C) sensor = thermistor CPUTIN: +30.5°C (high = +80.0°C, hyst = +75.0°C) sensor = thermistor AUXTIN0: +37.0°C (high = +0.0°C, hyst = +0.0°C) ALARM sensor = thermistor AUXTIN1: +108.0°C sensor = thermistor AUXTIN2: +109.0°C sensor = thermistor AUXTIN3: -128.0°C sensor = thermistor SMBUSMASTER 0: +31.5°C PCH_CHIP_CPU_MAX_TEMP: +0.0°C PCH_CHIP_TEMP: +0.0°C PCH_CPU_TEMP: +0.0°C TSI0_TEMP: +31.5°C intrusion0: OK [small snip...] I don't get it. First, its impossible there can be 100C+ temps. The case fan is silent, the psu fan is not moving, the system works fine and feels cool in fact cold to the touch. Second, how can it possibly be -128.0C on one of the readings? The system itself seems to be running quite fast and perfectly silently. I have a Noctua low profile CPU cooler which should be more than equal to the cpu installed, the psu is a Corsair SFF, Gold 450, and it all seems fine. You hear the fans for a few seconds at startup, after that, silence. I am running Debian stable but as in the earlier post when trying to get suspend to work, have the testing kernel installed. Was hoping that would clear up the temp problem but no luck. By the way, acpi -t returns nothing. Any suggestions? Or should I just stop worrying? Peter

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Re: A remaining puzzle with AMD
by Peter 18 Nov '22

18 Nov '22

The only thing I could think of, as an alternate source of temp information, was to restart the system after it had been on for a few hours and go immediately into bios and look at the temps provided in the HW Monitor tab. Well, fans were reported as doing roughly the same speeds as reported by lm-sensors, and the cpu temperature is reported as 43C. So I guess its a matter of not worrying about it, and maybe in some update at some point it will get fixed. Thanks. Its good to know that others get similarly erratic results from lm-sensors, so its not just me doing something stupid! Peter

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Re: A remaining puzzle with AMD
by peter 17 Nov '22

17 Nov '22

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Handling Twitter data file
by Bev Nicolson 16 Nov '22

16 Nov '22

So, I downloaded my Twitter data to be on the safe side and found this which offers a way of making that info readable/useable offline. https://github.com/timhutton/twitter-archive-parser But I'm not at all clear how to do 3 and 4. I didn't think it was possible run a command within a folder? Help, please. Bev

6 15

Two things I have learned...
by Peter 06 Nov '22

06 Nov '22

I suppose to many this may be childishly obvious, but in case it helps anyone, here are two things I have learned. The first is to do with the Kobo e-reader. I find the Plato reader much nicer than the regular one it comes with, and the way to install it is given here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=314220 The simplest is to use the install script provided here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3797096&postcount=2 I first tried installing KOReader, which a lot of people seem to like, and you can install both of them from the install script, but it led to a very messy layout, so I reset it to factory and then installed just Plato. This is on the Kobo Aura One, which I find perfect. Its small enough to handle, but it has a 7.8 inch screen which is big enough to read comfortably on for a long time. You can control the amount of blue light, as well as brightness. The other thing about the Kobo is the registration procedure, and there is a very simple way of avoiding having to do this. During the activation you choose 'no wifi'. You can then access the files on the device from terminal or file manager. So you open a terminal, enter the folder containing KoboReader.sqlite, and run the following: sqlite3 KoboReader.sqlite "INSERT INTO user(UserID,UserKey) VALUES('1','');" Restart and you have activated. Wonderfully simple, private, and it avoids having to mess with the sqlite database. The second thing I learned was about AMD and suspend. Having put together a new machine with an AMD processor I was expecting to be able to use xautolock, with pm-suspend as the lock program. But the result was that it did indeed suspend, and when a key is hit, it seems to wake, but the screen remained black. I did two things after which it works flawlessly, but I am not sure which of them was effective, or whether you need to do both. I installed the AMD and RTL non-free firmware. And I also took the kernel to the testing branch of Debian, and the way you do this, without taking the whole installation to testing, is to modify /etc/apt/preferences as follows (I had to create since not already there): Package: * Pin: release a=bullseye Pin-Priority: 500 Package: linux-image-amd64 Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 1000 Package: * Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 100 So the idea is that it only takes the kernel updates from testing. And amazingly enough this has worked, its now on 5.19 whereas bullseye came with 5.10, and xautolock loads at startup and works perfectly! Two small victories. Peter

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How to get a dumb WiFi only device to use a proxied connection?
by Chris Green 03 Nov '22

03 Nov '22

I need to provide 'proxied' WiFi when I'm on my boat in France so that, among other things, I can log on to my doctor's web site to order repeat prescriptions and to allow my Kobo Forma (reader, like a Kindle) to access my public library. Both of these fail when tried directly from abroad. So I thought a VPN might be the way to do this but every time I look into doing it I seem to hit a problem. The Kobo Forma has little flexibility, all it can do is connect to WiFi, you can't tell it any more than the SSID and password. Thus I need to somehow provide a 'proxied' WiFi connection that makes the Kobo look as if it's connecting from a UK IP address. The router on the boat is a TP-Link Archer MR200 and it does have VPN ability, however on looking into it it seems to be a VPN server which is little use. I want it to be a VPN client and connect to a VPN server in the UK (don't I?). I can easily enough set up a router here at home in the UK that runs a VPN server, but again I fail to see how that helps as I can't get the Kobo to log in to the VPN. Everyone tells me that VPNs are the solution to everything but I still fail to see how they can help me at all! :-) Can anyone here help me to a solution of my problem? I'm fairly techie, I'm familiar with proxying using ssh and reverse tunnels and all sorts of things like that but this still has me stumped. -- Chris Green

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No input levels?
by Bev Nicolson 13 Oct '22

13 Oct '22

I've had this problem for a while and tried a few things, but before I finally give up I thought I'd ask ALUG about it. Without headphones plugged in, there is a clear input level showing on the sound settings. With any headphones plugged in, however, none. So I can watch videos or whatever, but it's impossible to use video conferencing tools as no-one can hear me. Ideas? Mint 19.1. on a Dell Latitude laptop. Bev.

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Re: No input levels? (Bev Nicolson)
by Peter 13 Oct '22

13 Oct '22

I had this problem some time ago. I think I fixed it in pavucontrol, where for some reason it had got set to mute. I find alsa mixer very opaque also and remember struggling with it. Anyway thinking about this, I just reinstalled Debian, so I ran amixer to see what mine says, and its just this: Simple mixer control 'Master',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 65536 Mono: Front Left: Playback 65536 [100%] [on] Front Right: Playback 65536 [100%] [on] Simple mixer control 'Capture',0 Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 65536 Front Left: Capture 65536 [100%] [on] Front Right: Capture 65536 [100%] [on] This does work. Its much simpler than yours. I don't have a mic installed on this machine however, and my headphones are driven off a headphone amp which is fed over spdif. Have you got zoom installed? And is it still a problem with zoom? I remember also getting a systematic walk thru on diagnosing the problem, I think it was here: http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/sound/sound_troubleshooting.htm The other thing that occurs to me is, try booting from a 'live' distro like Puppy, or a live version of Mint, and see if that helps. At least that rules out hardware and it gives you a working configuration as a reference. I know it took me quite a lot of fiddling to make it work, and I am not really sure what did it, apart from this vague recollection on pavucontrol. Which I don't seem to have installed now on the new install. I think I also found some material by Carla Schroder which helped. It was a struggle, and I never did get clear what had caused the problem.

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Re: No input levels?
by Bev Nicolson 12 Oct '22

12 Oct '22

On 11/10/2022 18:26, Bev Nicolson wrote: > On 11/10/2022 16:59, Phil Thane wrote: >> Can you try either another mic/earphone in the laptop, or the existing >> mic/earphone in a different machine? It could just be the mic is >> broken. Also, >> some mics on some earphones have a tiny on/off switch. >> >> -- > <big snip> > > I have tried a number of other headphones and have the same problem. > > But can anyone guide me through Alsa? I'm not too sure what slider does > what. Ta. > > Bev [Bit of Googling later] Also no capture. Well it's listed but it may as well be on mute. These are new headphones that work with my tablet, by the way. I'm assuming capture and input are closely related. Bev.

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HP / MSI mobo issue
by Phil Thane 07 Oct '22

07 Oct '22

Hi Folks, I used to be subscribed as phil(a)pthane.co.uk but couldn't figure out how to change the email address so here I am re-subscribed. Same old codger with weird issues though... I have a 'new' desktop PC made from random parts. The MoBo is made by MSI but was an OEM product for HP. Searching for advice on MSI site says refer to HP. The HP support site appears to be crashed, permanently. I think I need a BIOS update and hundreds of sites offer them but how do I find a reliable one? There are two issues: 1. The BIOS fails to find a bootable disk unless I hit f9 and select one. I can enter the BIOS setup via f10 and set boot order there but it doesn't remain in CMOS memory, on next boot I have to do it again. 2. The PC is set to suspend after 30 mins inactivity. On re-awakening the clock is precisely 86 hours fast! Same happens if I put it to sleep manually. It can't be reset via the OS (Mint, Cinnamon), or via hwclock. It resets correctly when rebooted, without needing to fiddle the Date and Time settings in BIOS. I thought maybe the CMOS battery was failing so scrambling the memory. Volt meter showed 3.1V but having tried everything else I replaced the battery anyway, but to no avail. Neither problem is a show stopper, I can set the sleep timer to 'never' and remember to hit f9 during boot, but it's annoying. Any ideas? Or a reliable source of BIOS upgrades? -- Phil Thane Email: philthane(a)gmx.co.uk Tweet: @pthane Web: https://pthane.weebly.com

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