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Sharing 2FA (TOTP)
by Mark Rogers 31 May '22

31 May '22

Are there any good ways of sharing 2 factor authentication credentials? Scenario: I have probably 20 accounts secured by 2FA using (currently) Authy to manage them. A colleague similarly has their own 2FA setup (not sure what they use). However there are some accounts we both need access to, and therefore at present we haven't enabled 2FA on. I want to set up 2FA in such a way that either of us can generate a code without sharing anything else to do it. I believe this is using TOTP protocol? I don't know enough about how it works but I can't see any technical reason why the shared secret can't be shared between multiple people (Authy already lets me share between multiple devices, but in an "all or nothing" way.) Obviously sharing 2FA credentials weakens security. But at present the alternative is not using it at all, and surely shared 2FA is better than that. -- 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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Comparing large folders of mostly identical file contents with different filenames
by Mark Rogers 23 May '22

23 May '22

I have a backup of a GMail account which creates folders by year, month, date and within them .eml files for each email. I'm migrating to a different GMail account so I'm moving the emails to the new account, and I have a backup also of the second account. So it's something like: Account1/2022/5/1/aaaa.eml and Account2/2022/5/1/bbbb.eml .. with each being identical emails (a diff of the two files will confirm that). Of course I don't just have 1 email. I have about 200,000, and the number of files in the two backups is slightly different so I want to find the discrepancies. So: Any suggestions? I could run a standard dedup program but that'll be very slow given that it'll be comparing 200k files with another 200k files. In most cases I suspect the missing file(s) will stand out just from their file sizes on a per-directory comparison. -- 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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RAM
by Phil Thane 17 May '22

17 May '22

Hi, Over the last few months I've posted a few enquiries about my steadily worsening PC. A few tweaks have sometimes improved things slightly for a while but long term it's getting worse. It's now very unstable given to hanging whenever asked to do anything like move/close a window, so hope I get to the end of this without a problem. I *think* there might be a problem with RAM and/or mainboard RAM slots. There are 2x4GB modules fitted. (Crucial Ballistix not cheapo stuff). UEFI setup and lshw both report 8GB but free only shows 4GB. That was the case under Mint, and still is with a fresh install of Kubuntu. Any suggestions before I lash out on new RAM? Because if I do it's pretty much guaranteed to be something else. Or do any of you have old DDR 3 you've replaced with bigger sticks and not got around to selling on Ebay? Cheap preferred but no reasonable price refused! If all else fails I guess a new MoBo/CPU/RAM bundle might be required... -- Phil

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Re: RAM
by Srdjan Todorovic 13 May '22

13 May '22

On Fri, 13 May 2022 at 19:59, Phil Thane <phil(a)pthane.co.uk> wrote: > > Memtest isn't installed and isn't available from Ubuntu repositories. > probably could get it from elsewhere but chances are I just crash/hang > the thing again! Memtest is supposed to be booted off a usb drive or a cd. You can get it from https://www.memtest.org/archives and get version 5.31, follow the instructions to write that to a bootable media and then test the ram. Secondary computer you could use? > Kubuntu system monitor shows 4GB but no error messages, and trying to > run it just hung the PC again so doing this from a different machine. Nothing in the kernel logs? dmesg? No exotic PCI cards in the system or other experimental drivers loaded? > uname -a shows kernel version 5.15.x.x and AMD X86-64 > > Can't see anything in UEFI to suggest setting problem. It shows 8GB > installed and 8GB available. Suggests your linux install is messed up? Can you reinstall or re-download the ISO again, verify that the ISO is not corrupted and burn another install disk and try re-installing? > On 13/05/2022 19:41, Srdjan Todorovic wrote: > > On Fri, 13 May 2022 at 19:30, Phil Thane <phil(a)pthane.co.uk> wrote: > > > >> It's now very unstable given to hanging whenever asked to do anything > >> like move/close a window, so hope I get to the end of this without a > >> problem. > > What does Memtest86 say about your ram? This should be the very first > > thing you do. > > > >> I *think* there might be a problem with RAM and/or mainboard RAM slots. > >> There are 2x4GB modules fitted. (Crucial Ballistix not cheapo stuff). > >> UEFI setup and lshw both report 8GB but free only shows 4GB. That was > >> the case under Mint, and still is with a fresh install of Kubuntu. > > Which version of Kubuntu? > > What kernel version and architecture? uname -a > > > > Are you sure your kernel is not 32bit without PAE extensions? That > > would limit to 4GB usable RAM even if you had more. > > Any weird BIOS / UEFI settings that might put it into some sort of > > legacy mode to only give you 4GB? > > > >> Any suggestions before I lash out on new RAM? Because if I do it's > >> pretty much guaranteed to be something else. Or do any of you have old > >> DDR 3 you've replaced with bigger sticks and not got around to selling > >> on Ebay? Cheap preferred but no reasonable price refused! > > I have 2 sticks of 4GB each, DDR3 ECC server ram - not sure if it > > would work (you would need to check if your CPU + motherboard could > > support it), but might be open to taking £10 or something + postage? I > > would need to do Memtest86 on that ram to make sure it's ok. > > > > Thanks, > > Srdjan

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"Upgrading" Ubuntu via fresh install
by Mark Rogers 25 Apr '22

25 Apr '22

Over the years I have upgraded my Ubuntu desktop twice a year using do-release-upgrade. My root drive SSD is nearly full so I've just bought a bigger one, and I'm looking at migrating across to it. But... Ubuntu 22.04 is nearly here, so maybe it would make more sense to clean things up with a fresh 22.04 install on the new SSD instead? I know lots of people avoid upgrades and just do a clean install retaining /home (or something along those lines) but I've never done it myself. Is it the right way to go? It's a desktop PC, but 99% of the time I access it via SSH. Over the years it's had all sorts of stuff installed and uninstalled (or installed and no longer used but still there). So a clearout definitely seems like a good idea. So it seems like what I ideally want is a managed migration where I choose which things I have on the old install I migrate and which I leave behind. Is this going to be more hassle than it's worth? -- 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: "Upgrading" Ubuntu via fresh install (Martin Collins)
by Peter 24 Apr '22

24 Apr '22

I've been meaning to ask this question for a while, and this seems like a good occasion. I'm moving someone from a very old i3 machine to a new AMD machine. The key difference apart from performance is that the old machine was bios, and the new one is of course compulsorily EFI. So what I did was, do a new install, then use Clonezilla to make a copy of the /home partition, and moved it to the new machine. Everything seems fine, with one exception. The old machine is on Debian Mate. All the files seem to have moved fine. But desktop layout is a different matter. The user has an enormous desktop file on a quite large screen with every inch covered with folders, in a familiar order and positioning. Unfortunately the layout of the desktop doesn't seem to survive the transition, its alpha order. Where is the layout of the desktop file kept? And is there a way to keep its layout while doing the transfer? Its not the end of the world if it just has to be accepted, but it would make life a lot easier if I could keep it. This was never a problem in previous machine moves, because I made a clone of the hard drive, then booted on the new machine. But with the arrival of compulsory EFI this isn't possible any more. They have removed legacy mode on the new main board. I have looked up converting an installation from bios to EFI. It seems like a very fraught procedure. And after all these years there's a case to be made for a clean install, as people here have said. So if I could overcome the desktop layout problem that would be what I would rather do. Peter

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Firefox
by Phil Thane 24 Apr '22

24 Apr '22

Well, last week Firefox was grinding slow so I resurrected Ghostery Dawn which I'd previously tested but not used in earnest. GD is faster and I got all the same FF plugins installed and copied my saved logins and bookmarks. One snag, whilst it responds correctly to clicking on links in webpages it won't open links in other apps, eg email or Twitter. Even if GD is already open clicking a link (from another app) opens a new instance at the home page. So I did a 'Remove Completely' of FF in Synaptic, ran updates and re-installed. And lo, it works much better. But after a time it goes slow again. Running it from a terminal I get this: *phil@phils*:*~*$ firefox [GFX1-]: glxtest: libEGL missing methods for GL test [GFX1-]: glxtest: libEGL missing eglGetDisplayDriverName Checked libEGL is installed and it is. So moving on, opened a YouTube video and get this in the terminal: 2022-04-24T12:56:32Z*ERROR* mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\u{0}\u{0}" [2022-04-24T12:56:32Z*ERROR* mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\u{0}\u{0}" [2022-04-24T12:56:32Z*ERROR* mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\u{0}\u{0}" [2022-04-24T12:56:33Z*ERROR* mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\u{0}\u{0}" Despite the error the video plays OK. Every time I choose a different video I get the same four lines though with different (time/ID?) numbers before 'ERROR'. Does anyone understand this? And is it likely to have anything to do with the performance issues? -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Disk half full, but full anyway
by Mark Rogers 21 Apr '22

21 Apr '22

Can anyone explain this? $ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 50 GiB, 53687091200 bytes, 104857600 sectors Disk model: VBOX HARDDISK Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: gpt Disk identifier: E225721B-FB64-4D48-B133-6758468EF9F6 Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sda1 2048 4095 2048 1M BIOS boot /dev/sda2 4096 3149823 3145728 1.5G Linux filesystem /dev/sda3 3149824 104855551 101705728 48.5G Linux filesystem $ df -h . Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv 24G 23G 13M 100% / The scenario is that this is a new VirtualBox VM with Ubuntu 20.04.4 installed. It has a single 50GB disk as shown in VirtualBox and fdisk, but having copied 23GB to it from elsewhere (using rsync) the disk is now full. What am I missing and how do I get my disk space back? -- 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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Email hosting
by Mark Rogers 18 Apr '22

18 Apr '22

A bit over a decade ago, I took advantage of Google's free G-Suite, back when it allowed 50 users. I did this both for work (the domain I'm sending this from) and separately for personal use. As a consequence of there being 50 free users I set up several mailboxes for various purposes. Now that the free service is being migrated to a per-user pricing model I need to change to something else. For work I'll just accept that we've had a good run and pay the subscription charges (albeit we'll likely ditch a few of the users). But for my personal domain - where I am the only user - I want to switch. I don't need the other collaborative tools (I have a few Google docs/sheets but can migrate them to my work email). But having had it easy for a decade I've lost track of what my options are. Google has of-course spoiled me with very good anti-spam and I'm reluctant to go down the self-hosted route for that reason although that's not to say it's completely out of the question. (I'm happy running up a hosted VM but wouldn't have a clue what software to use these days, or how to administer it and keep it secure. But I could learn if it was the right approach.) What do people here use? (Client-wise I currently use the GMail site - I found it convenient to do that rather so I had a familiar user interface on any PC I might use to check my email. Before GMail I used TBird but that's a long time ago now.) -- 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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Firefox resources?
by Phil Thane 18 Apr '22

18 Apr '22

Hi, My desktop isn't state of the art but it's a quad core AMD64 so not too bad. It is by current standards short of RAM (2x2GB) but until recently has performed OK. Now it goes very slow after a little while on Firefox, especially if I play YouTube video. Last night I tried Ghostery (fork of Firefox with ghostery plug-in built-in plus some other security stuff) and it seemed better. So today I played the same vid in both at the same time and ran ps ux to see what was happening. Firefox phil 7854 46.2 8.5 3554956 345568 ? Sl 10:30 1:14 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox phil 7905 0.0 0.7 212184 28524 ? Sl 10:30 0:00 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -contentproc -parentBuildI phil 7934 1.4 2.2 2476728 93236 ? Sl 10:30 0:02 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -contentproc -childID 1 -i phil 7982 18.4 7.1 15488220 288656 ? Sl 10:30 0:27 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -contentproc -childID 2 -i phil 8037 30.0 8.9 3006520 364668 ? Sl 10:30 0:43 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -contentproc -childID 3 -i phil 8077 0.0 1.2 2403824 51920 ? Sl 10:30 0:00 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -contentproc -childID 5 -i phil 8218 0.1 1.2 2396472 51924 ? Sl 10:30 0:00 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -contentproc -childID 6 -i phil 8234 12.1 1.4 363900 58176 ? Sl 10:30 0:14 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -contentproc -parentBuildI phil 8265 0.0 1.2 2396476 50232 ? Sl 10:30 0:00 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -contentproc -childID 7 -i Ghostery phil 5849 0.0 7.6 9023124 311408 ? Sl Apr17 0:28 /home/phil/Downloads/Ghostery/Ghostery -contentproc -ch phil 5923 0.6 11.9 3019332 486688 ? Sl Apr17 5:42 /home/phil/Downloads/Ghostery/Ghostery -contentproc -ch phil 6076 0.0 0.6 2383328 24704 ? Sl Apr17 0:00 /home/phil/Downloads/Ghostery/Ghostery -contentproc -ch phil 6121 0.0 0.6 2383332 24596 ? Sl Apr17 0:00 /home/phil/Downloads/Ghostery/Ghostery -contentproc -ch phil 6146 0.3 1.1 264824 47156 ? Sl Apr17 3:27 /home/phil/Downloads/Ghostery/Ghostery -contentproc -pa phil 6184 0.0 0.6 2383328 24496 ? Sl Apr17 0:00 /home/phil/Downloads/Ghostery/Ghostery -contentproc -ch If you're not familiar the 3rd col shows % of CPU being used and the 4th is % of RAM. As you can see FF opens a lot more processes and three of them are serious resource hogs. Anyone else found this? Guess I'll just use ghostery all the time though it doesn't have all the FF plugins I use. But maybe that's the issue? -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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