Welcome to the DebugPoint Weekly roundup #22.01 which gives you a brief about what happened this week across various segments, mostly in GNU/Linux space. We scan through thousands of updates every day, filter out the relevant updates for you and present them in this page.
How to enable TPM 2.0? How to find it in the BIOS menu? Is it safe to enable TPM 2.0? Should I flash a newer BIOS? Will I brick my motherboard in the process of updating the BIOS?
These are some of the questions, every Linux user (and even Windows/macOS users) will have when they want to upgrade their system to Windows 11.
With Linux distributions, we never have to do such a peculiar thing to make it work. Even in 2022. But, Windows 11 wants you to know about the BIOS settings or the TPM chip before you can upgrade to it.
While Scott mentions about an older laptop, it is worth noting that even with the latest motherboards (for instance Z590), you may have to tweak the BIOS or flash a newer BIOS version to support Windows 11.
This is incredibly inconvenient, even for technical users because updating BIOS comes with its own risks.
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With so many options and tools to clean registries and optimize systems for better performance, a new Linux user may end up with an unresponsive Windows.
Microsoft made a TPM version 2.0 module a requirement to run Windows 11. I had to audit my Linux installation to verify this, but it isn’t set up to use the TPM at all. I don’t understand how the fTPM should affect Linux, but its presence might cause some stability issues somewhere in the system. It could also have been introduced by the very mainboard firmware update that was supposed to address the issue.
I removed the hardware TPM, and the stuttering immediately got worse in both Linux and Windows.
Sparky Linux is a Debian-based Linux distro that offers 4 different desktop editions (LXQt, MATE, Xfce, KDE) in 2 different branches (stable and semi-rolling). Sparky includes some custom apps that are quite interesting as well.
Mike McNeil is Cofounder & CEO of Fleet, a device management platform based on the open source endpoint visibility project osquery.
Linux terminal is used for performing administrative tasks without having any issues. However, many people don't know that we can play music through the command line. Linux provides different CLI music players by which users can play the audio files from the terminal.
CLI music players are simple to use and consume lesser memory. This article briefs about the 6 best command line Music players for Linux in 2022.
PeaZip provides fast, high compression ratio multi-format archiving - view file compression and decompression benchmarks for more information.
PeaZip is localized in 29 languages and is capable of handling all most popular archive formats (180+ file types), supporting a wide array of advanced file and archive management features (search, bookmarks, thumbnail viewer, find duplicate files and compute hash/checksum value, convert archive files...), especially focused on security (strong encryption, two factor authentication, encrypted password manager, secure file deletion...).
Many Linux distributions are not optimally configured out of the box. It is done in such a way that if your memory usage reaches a certain threshold or percentage of the total internal memory that is available for your Operating System, it is switching over to use what is called the swap space. The swap is a technique to use a special swap partition or swap file as additional virtual working memory, when the Operating System thinks that is required. But using swap, which is based on your hard drive or SSD, as virtual memory, is of course much slower than your physical internal memory, so it should be used only when this additional memory is really required. But in practice some Linux systems switch over much too soon. So let’s find out how we can optimize our memory settings in Linux, or in other words, how to configure our system swap settings optimally.
Linux programs only run smoothly under the exact distribution for which they were created. Hence, this strictly restricts the developers to create their apps only for popular Linux such as Ubuntu. Making compatible a single app for multiple distros significantly increases the development effort. However, the software can also be packed into an independent container together with all the necessary components. This makes applications work in containers regardless of the operating system in which they are and also cannot interfere with other applications.
Apart from the actual program, software containers also contain all the necessary components of the operating system and libraries. In this way, you can use newer versions, even in parallel with a program traditionally installed as a “deb” package. Such an arrangement offers by Snap Apps.
For personal and family stuff, I use the (definitely not nasty) script below. I run ZFS on full drives which I’ve first configured with gpart(8) with a freebsd-zfs partition and a label (though I don’t think that’s strictly necessary anymore?). Normalisation is a big deal for us.
This is based on a series of tweets which I now want to place into blog post. When I go searching for something I’ve done before, I usually check my blog first.
dma is “is a small Mail Transport Agent (MTA), designed for home and office use. It accepts mails from locally installed Mail User Agents (MUA) and delivers the mails either locally or to a remote destination. Remote delivery includes several features like TLS/SSL support and SMTP authentication.”
See the man page for more information.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Ansible on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Ansible is a free and open-source automation tool sponsored by Red Hat. The tool is designed to automate cloud provisioning, OS deployments, etc. It runs on many Unix-like systems and can configure both Unix-like systems as well as Microsoft Windows. It includes its own declarative language to describe system configuration.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Ansible automation tool on Rocky Linux. 9.
A Git server hosts the repository of a project, which contains the source code and other core files. While, for the most part, you can rely on globally known Git hosting services like GitHub, in some cases, it is better to host your personal Git server for added privacy, customizability, and security.
Timberborn is a city-building game based around beavers and other animals. The game was developed and published by Mechanistry. Here’s how you can play Timberborn on Linux.
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Timberborn is not a native Linux video game. However, it has an excellent ProtonDB rating, and people are having an easy time getting it working. Here’s how to play Timberborn on your Linux PC.
To get Timberborn working, you must install the Linux release of Steam. Then, you’ll need to open up a terminal window to install the app. Unsure about how to open up a terminal window? Press Ctrl + Alt + T on the keyboard, or search for “Terminal” in the app menu and launch it that way.
The most basic secure file transfer services, such as those based on Secure Copy Protocol (SCP), have command-line interfaces only, making them best suited for IT rather than end users. They offer few features but are relatively inexpensive to set up and use, compared to other classes of file transfer systems. Some consider this type of transfer advantageous because the organization maintains full control, with no third-party -- e.g., cloud provider -- involvement.
Secure file transfer services based on SFTP are typically more feature-rich than those based on SCP. SFTP-based file transfers often have GUIs available, which make them easier to use. In general, however, both SCP- and SFTP-based systems lack many of the features of more sophisticated file transfer systems.
Ruby and Rails commonly known as "Rails" is an open-source web application framework. This framework is written in Ruby programming language which helps you to create highly powerful websites and applications. Rails is a server-side web application framework that follows the MVC concept.
In this guide, we learn how to install the Ruby and Rails framework on Ubuntu 22.04.
The average disk queue length is the average number of read and write operations that were queued during a selected interval for the chosen device. It's important to watch them as these values provide one of the representations of the storage performance. Higher values indicate that the quantity cannot continue with the requests from the appliance, leading to higher response times.
In this tutorial, we will learn how to check disk queue length using Linux commands.
While Valve is apparently too busy shipping the Steam Deck to provide accessories around it (still waiting for the official Dock…) users of the device are getting really creative. The latest example to date is Reddit user Ethansol9 who has 3D-printed an attachment to transform the Steam Deck itself into a steering wheel, using the gyros included in the device (he apparently had to tweak their sensitivity for it to work well).
Valve has released the latest version of Proton Experimental, which has multiple newly supported games and a few useful bug fixes included. This is the extra special version of Proton you can try, it pulls in new features and fixes earlier to get more Windows games working on Linux desktop and Steam Deck.
Oracle's Solaris operating system remains widely used, even though Big Red more or less froze development of the product in 2018 save for regular Support Repository Updates (SRUs) that add minor updates and bug fixes.
But on Wednesday the company announced a reasonably significant addition to the OS, called the ACT Service.
As explained by Big Red staffers Chris Beal, Hisao Tsujimura and Lijo George, Solaris boxes can wield up to eight terabytes of memory when powered by SPARC processors – or touch three terabytes when running on x86 silicon.
If a Solaris box experiences a system panic, the OS takes a snapshot of memory, compresses it, and sends it to Oracle. "Then our receiving server makes sure that nothing malicious is included in the snapshot of your memory, aka crash dump, by scanning it. All of this happens behind the scenes before our diagnosis starts," Big Red's trio explained.
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Enter the ACT Service. Instead of waiting for that upload, it will store the dump file locally – if there's enough space to do so – and generate an initial analysis report.
Deepin 23 Preview was released, introducing its new format for distributing software packages in Linux, Linglong.
Deepin is a Chinese-made Linux distribution based on the Debian stable branch aimed at the average desktop computer user. It is one of the Linux distros to which the definition of “gorgeous” most fully applies.
The distro comes with the internally developed DDE (Deepin Desktop Environment), one of the best-looking Linux desktop environments. Everything about it is designed to provide the user with the most aesthetic satisfaction possible.
In other words, the distro has a tradition of beauty. And this tradition appears to be continued in the upcoming Deepin 23, which ‘Preview’ was just released recently. So let’s see what it has in store for us.
NetBSD is a professional operating system, but I also love a bit of whimsy. Same goes for OpenBSD’s songs and art for each release.
NetBSD have also long had an RSS feed available for their release announcements. I tend to read mailing lists for this sort of information, but I welcome anything to make these more accessible.
I’m a bit late because of travel, but you still should see the latest BSD Now; the CHERI system is interesting and underappreciated.
The first is that several .NET packages are now built by Canonical, supported by Canonical, and installable via a simple apt install command. Options include the full .NET SDK, or just the ASP.NET Core runtime, or just the .NET runtime. This is now Microsoft’s recommendation for .NET on Ubuntu, though developers waning the very latest builds should stick with the Microsoft packages.
"After a slight delay due to an installer issue, the first point release for Ubuntu 22.04 has been officially released," swrites Jack Wallen for TechRepublic.
"Although point releases are often overlooked by users, because they aren't major upgrades, this time around you should certainly run the upgrade immediately."
In 2012 there were two main manufacturers and suppliers of Raspberry Pi boards. Element14 (part of the Premier Farnell network) and RS Group (RS Components). It was these two websites which took the full brunt of the eager masses, clamouring to get hold of the $35 single board computer upon its release. But a story on XTech Nikkei states that in an email sent to users on August 10, RS Group's license to manufacture and retail Raspberry Pi ended effective from June 2022. This marks the end of a 10-year license agreement between RS Group and Raspberry Pi.
Premium backup subscription services from big names like Apple and Google can cost upwards to $100 annually. Instead of relying on third-party systems to manage data, ThinkLearnDo decided to create an encrypted backup system from scratch using our favorite board, the Raspberry Pi.
Dumpster Dive is back! A few months ago, we asked how you wanted to hear about Dumpster Dive announcements and we listened. It’s been a while since we had a dive, so mark your calendars for Wednesday, September 14th - and maybe set an alarm or two, just to be safe.
We've gone through our inventory, raided our engineer's offices, and taken unused samples. In doing so, we've found hundreds of pounds of Dumpster Dive material to send you! This year the one-pound boxes will be returning for $30; you’ll find boards, LEDs, kits and more inside!
The Raspberry Pi is a great hobby mini-computer, but what if we can also use it to make money?
The rise of Bitcoin has created an interest in cryptocurrency mining. If you have a spare Raspberry Pi lying around, you can put it to work mining for digital currency.
LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.
While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.
There are lots of other advantages of running a full, static HTML website.
You can read the original post in its original format on Rtask website by ThinkR here: Installation of R 4.2 on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS and tips for spatial packages
It is again this time in your Ubuntu user’s life where you plan to upgrade your server installation from Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Indeed, the first point release 22.04.1 is now there, and you’d like somebody else to try it for you before loosing all your work. Let me do it for you ! We will also use R 4.2 by default. Also, like every two years in this blog post, I’ll give the tips for geographical packages installation on Ubuntu. Just follow the guide…
Last time you read this kind of tutorial on our blog was two years ago to migrate to R 4.0 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Note that I am writing this guide to be able to upgrade my own in-prod laptop. This has to work properly ! Also, everything is proposed through command lines, which means that you can use this tutorial to upgrade a server with no graphical interface, to build your Docker containers or set up the continuous integration of your package builds. Note that we can help through this process of R-server installations, Docker or CI set-up.
This year, I will first realize the upgrade from Ubuntu Focal to Ubuntu Jammy inside a Docker container, so that I can write my blog post along with it. I’ll upgrade my own laptop just after that.
I’d long wanted to find a way to export plots directly from R into pre-tinified image files, and although I’d found a way to do it for ggplot2 plots, doing it with base R plots and devices eluded me.
Finally I found a (slightly hacky) way of doing it by simply recording the last plot created with recordPlot, and then replaying it inside the chosen device! One of those things that seems obvious in hindsight, but it works. So, I’ve put together two new functions, petit_plot() and petit_ggplot() to save and auto-tinify plots!
You can use most of the same tinify() options as usual, including keeping the un-tiny image file too, and pass through all regular plotting options to the underlying device too. You can even use petit_plot with ragg if you have it!
One of the biggest concerns for modern web developers is security. Whether your goal is protecting a user’s personal data, effectively authenticating a user’s identity, or securing company databases, cryptography, and encryption can help.
Cryptography is the study of techniques for secure communication between a sender and an intended recipient. Cryptographic techniques employ mathematical functions to secure data using various algorithms and systems.
The Go programming language provides a crypto package for cryptography-related operations in the standard library. You can use the Crypto package for many functionalities like encryption, hashing, cryptographically generated random numbers, and much more.
This tutorial will help you understand cryptography concepts and how to implement them in the Go programming language.
Runtimes, infrastructure, and APIs tend to get more granular. Maybe we're just in the unbundling phase (implying a future bundling phase), or maybe it's a byproduct of moving functionality to the edge (the network is the bottleneck), or perhaps this is just a general form of progress (breaking things down into abstractions).
At a basic level, granularity lets us bin-pack workloads. Different workloads have varying levels of safety when it comes to resource sharing and allocation. Isolation happens at the operating system level (virtual machines), process level (containers), and thread level (v8 isolates). Hardware security module (HSM) workloads and edge functions need different security guarantees.
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Smaller APIs are often easier to integrate into existing infrastructure. For example, carved-out authentication or authorization APIs are much easier to add to your application than Active Directory (in theory).
I have installed Plan 9 on my Raspberry Pi. I am excited to start using it. I can't use Plan 9 yet because I need a new keyboard and mouse to use with my Pi. So, this evening I decided to peruse the online Plan 9 manual pages. I am excited and have been eagerly trying a few commands on my Mac to see what commands are also on my Mac.
I learned about bc for arithmetic and bc -l that imports the math library for bc. This let me do logarithms in bc (a strange way to test a command I admit).
Xeact is the most popular femtoframework for discerning development teams. It has been used in at least 3 production facing web applications and has become well-loved by users.
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Xeact's JSX support has only been tested with Deno's JSX (and TSX) compilation support. Write your code in what you wish you could write and then use Deno to turn that into what you actually have to write. To get started, first you need to install Deno somehow. If you are using Nix flakes, add pkgs.deno to your devShell or run nix shell nixpkgs#deno. If you are using a lesser operating system, follow Deno's instructions and press enter until the messages go away.
Over the last two weeks I've been working on a conference talk that just so happened to be accepted to two conferences at once. It's about how this website (the one you are reading right now) works and I am so excited to release this out into the wild.
Reading comments on HackerNews isn’t usually my thing, but if it’s yours, now have a potential signal for where to start reading on my blog.
My American friends might say this is a bit Inside Baseball, but it gives me an opportunity to discuss how I write stuff. Maybe there’s something useful for other people here too.
I used to blog upwards of four times a day in the late-2000s, but the feedback I got was that I was spamming people’s RSS aggregators. I took this seriously; I don’t want my writing to detract from other things you all read. I subscribe to a specific aviation blog that post dozens of times a day with giant photographs and walls of text. While I personally find it all interesting and fun, I can absolutely see why it would be annoying having it dominate your other feeds.
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Having said all that, is a phrase with four words. How you write is up to you. My experience is that people are more lenient with the spamming if your posts are short, because they don’t take too much vertical screen real-estate as they scroll by. Social media may have also trained (or is the correct word desensitised?) people to accept endless scrolling in 2022, but I’m wary of contributing to that.
Lightbits builds NVMe-overTCP SAN clusters for Linux servers with Intel cards that accelerate network processing to give millions of IOPS with storage for public and private clouds
This week’s show kicks off with a whispered bang that Kevin will soon hear, thanks to the FDA approving over-the-counter hearing aids. We talk about what happened and what it means for innovation in wearables before then tackling Google killing off its Google Cloud IoT Core service that manages device data and connects that data to Google’s Cloud Platform. Then we turn to security news including a John Deere hack shared at Defcon last week and an “Evil PLC” attack that affects industrial controllers from all major vendors. The smart home also gets a cool project called Fluid One that will create a network of ultra wideband sensors in a home which then lets you control devices by pointing a phone in their direction. With Omdia stating that this year there will be 2 billion smart home devices globally, we should figure out easier ways to control them. Finally, we talk about research that lets you power wearable sensors with sweat. It’s gross, but also really useful. We end the show by answering a listener question about continuous video recording on Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video.
In the United States during 16 months in 2020 and 2021, vehicles rammed into groups of protesters at least 139 times, according to a Boston Globe analysis. Three victims died and at least 100 were injured. Consider that a new level of all-American barbarity, thanks to the growing toxicity of right-wing politics, empowered by its embrace of ever-larger, more menacing vehicles being cranked out by the auto industry.
Axe fossil fuel subsidies, bring in a Carbon Export Levy, fix tax and royalty loopholes. Michael West reports on a compelling plan to dramatically reduce Australia’s debt and soaring energy bills. If only there were a way to smash soaring energy bills, tackle Australia’s mountainous debt – and the monstrous foreign tax dodgers of the multinational fossil fuel sector – and do the climate a big favour to boot. All at once.
There is a way. The question is, is there a will? One of the nation’s top energy finance experts, Tim Buckley, has released this morning a $322bn solution: wind back fossil fuel subsidies, fix the failed royalties scheme, tap foreign coal and gas profiteers for tax, and introduce an Export Gas Levy.
It’s a familiar story at pandemic mendicant Qantas. An arrogant chief executive, a gravy train for his sidekicks, a kick in the teeth for airline workers and a right royal runaround for passengers, writes Michael Sainsbury.
It seems hard to fathom but Qantas is gearing up to inflict even more chaos on its long-suffering customers. Its union-loathing chief executive Alan Joyce is preparing to battle engineers critical to the company’s operations, as well as the company’s outsourced baggage handlers.
Their crime? Seeking wage rises that do not even keep up with cost-of-living increases on multiple fronts while Qantas executives took home $1.5 million in bonuses last year despite a $1.7 billion loss. The company’s board also saw its six-figure payments rise 5.2% to a collective $2.4 million.
I made a couple of minor updates. To improve usability on my phone, I eliminated the first-level header. In Lagrange, the site name (SpellBinding, surprisingly) appears at the top anyway, and now, the game is immediately at the top, so the keyboard does not obscure it. Works well on my android phone anyway.
I got tired of typing /msg blah.. on the phone keybord to report missing words to myself while testing and having a drink at the Regal Beagle. So I addes a simpler way to do that - just precede the entry with a period, and it will log/send me a message.
Having won everything for years, Mercedes are having a poor year (where "poor" means "third team of ten" - it's all relative). But in qualifying Russell was fastest. So, game on? Of course not. Which should have left Leclerc to win, but Ferrari messed it up for him, as they keep doing. Verstappen started tenth, got everything right and won. Even when he spun and lost the lead, you knew he would come back. No one thinks that Verstappen won't be champion this year.
Now we're in the summer break. Everyone has to stop work and go home because the season lasts nearly all year now. Time for some driver changes. Vettel retires. I'm surprised he didn't do this earlier. Alonso gives up on Alpine and moves to Aston Martin, presumably hoping they'll make the huge leap forward that Alpine didn't, but he's joined teams plenty of times before with the same hope, and it hasn't happened.
Purism Librem 5 - to replace other smartphones in the future...
This is not related to borgmatic or snapper per se, but is something that tripped me up and may be good to be aware of. If you for example include a subdirectory but forget to include the parent directory in your patterns file, borg will create the parent directory for you.
While it could be easy to buy a Raspberry Pi and run it. You should know some tips before buy anything. Raspberry Pi as a server is very good. In my opinion, you should buy with it a good SD Card and an active cooling solution.
Geminispace has had a few discussions of using the ubiquitous SSH utility to deploy simple “apps”....
I added a news aggregator to ðŸ§⡠NewsWaffle, powered by Yahoo News.
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The term "news aggregator" is a little overloaded. People use it mean anything from a RSS reader, to Google News, to something like Pocket or Instapaper. What I mean by "news aggregator" is a service that takes news articles from multiple sources, combines them together, and automatically sorts them into sections by category or topic. This sorting is usually done algorithmically, meaning that stories from the BBC may appear under "World" or "Technology", depending on the contents of the story.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.