SAS and SATA are electrically compatible to a degree that allows connecting a SATA storage device to a SAS controller. The SAS controller understands the SATA protocol so this works. A SAS device c…| etbe - Russell Coker
The Dell T320 Almost 2 years ago I made a Dell PowerEdge T320 my home server [1]. It was a decent upgrade from the PowerEdge T110 II that I had used previously. One benefit of that system was that …| etbe - Russell Coker
I recently bought a couple of PowerEdge T320 servers, so now to learn about setting them up. They are a little newer than the R710 I recently setup (which had iDRAC version 6), they have iDRAC vers…| etbe - Russell Coker
I have just updated the BIOS on a Dell PowerEdge T110 II. The process isn’t too difficult, Google for the machine name and BIOS, download a shell script encoded firmware image and GPG signatu…| etbe - Russell Coker
A non-profit organisation I support has just bought a Dell PowerEdge T410 server to be mainly used as a file server. We need a reasonable amount of space and really good reliability features becaus…| etbe - Russell Coker
Dimitri John Ledkov wrote an informative blog post about self encrypting disks and UEFI with Linux [1]. This Coffeezilla video highlights an interesting scam, run a broker for day traders and don’t execute trades, just be the counterparty for every trade and rely on day traders losing [2]. First Sight is a Dust SciFi short [...]| etbe – Russell Coker
I’ve just started using zram for swap on VMs. The use of compression for swap in Linux apparently isn’t new, it’s been in the Linux kernel since version 3.2 (since 2012). But until recent years I hadn’t used it. When I started using Mobian (the Debian distribution for phones) zram was in the default setup, [...]| etbe – Russell Coker
The Problem Just over 2 years ago my Dell T320 server had a motherboard failure [1]. I recently bought another T320 that had been gutted (no drives, PSUs, or RAM) and put the bits from my one in it…| etbe - Russell Coker
The recent news from the UK gives us an example of invasive security. Preventing passengers carrying on any hand luggage (even wallets) and frisking all of them is the type of treatment you expect …| etbe - Russell Coker
Hardware I received my PinePhone Pro [1] on Thursday, it seems in many ways better than the Purism Librem 5 [2] that I have previously written about. The PinePhone is thinner, lighter, and yet has …| etbe - Russell Coker
In May 2014 I bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition tablet (wikipedia page [1]) with 32G of storage. It’s display is 2560×1600 resolution which still compares well to the latest tabl…| etbe - Russell Coker
Since my last blog post about the PineTime [1] I haven’t done anything exciting with it. I’ve been wearing it every day and it’s working reasonably well for me. It’s been wo…| etbe - Russell Coker
I’ve just discovered a new xterm replacement named Kitty [1]. It boasts about being faster due to threading and using the GPU and it does appear faster on some of my systems but that’s …| etbe - Russell Coker
I just bought a Colmi P80 SmartWatch from Aliexpress for $26.11 based on this blog post reviewing it [1]. The main things I was after in this was a larger higher resolution screen because my vision has apparently deteriorated during the time I’ve been wearing a Pinetime [2] and I now can’t read messages on […]| etbe - Russell Coker
I just bought a Colmi P80 SmartWatch from Aliexpress for $26.11 based on this blog post reviewing it [1]. The main things I was after in this was a larger higher resolution screen because my vision…| etbe - Russell Coker
Some years ago when I first got a LG U990 Viewty (which in some ways is the best phone I ever owned) I went swimming and left my phone in my bag. My phone happened to rest on my car keys and had vi…| etbe - Russell Coker
The German supermarket chain Aldi recently had a special deal of a “wine-fridge” for $99. A wine fridge really isn’t that specialised for wine, it is merely a fridge that has a he…| etbe - Russell Coker
I have just discovered an innovative Melbourne company that has apparently been running for five years. ReWine is a wine seller that sells bottles of wine and then refills the same bottles for a lo…| etbe - Russell Coker
I am always looking for ways of increasing the compute power I have at a reasonable price. I am very happy with my HP z840 dual CPU workstation [1] that I’m using as a server and my HP z640 single CPU workstation [2]. Both of them were available second hand at quite reasonable prices and [...]| etbe – Russell Coker
Louis Rossman made an informative YouTube video about right to repair and the US military [1]. This is really important as it helps promote free software and open standards. The ACM has an insightful article about hidden controls [2]. We need EU regulations about hidden controls in safety critical systems like cars. This Daily WTF [...]| etbe – Russell Coker
One thing that annoys me on TV shows and movies is getting the details wrong. Yes it’s fiction and yes some things can’t be done correctly and in some situations correctly portraying th…| etbe - Russell Coker
An issue that causes ongoing discussion is what is the purpose of a Planet installation such as Planet Debian [1]. The discussion usually seems to take the less effective form of what is “app…| etbe - Russell Coker
Albert writes about software development and how much teamwork is used [1]. He makes an interesting clash of analogies by suggesting that it’s not a “team sport” because “it…| etbe - Russell Coker
A common question is how to compare Fedora [1] and Debian [2] in terms of recent updates and support. I think that Fedora Rawhide and Debian/Unstable are fairly equivalent in this regard, new upstr…| etbe - Russell Coker
USER=username API_KEY=1234ABC OUTPUTDIR=/var/spool/sms LOG_SERVICE=local1 I’ve just written the below script to send SMS via the inteltech.com/clicksend.com service. It takes the above config…| etbe - Russell Coker
Dustin Kirkland wrote an interesting post about fingerprint authentication [1]. He suggests using fingerprints for identifying users (NOT authentication) and gives an example of a married couple sh…| etbe - Russell Coker
After upgrading a mail server to Debian/Unstable (which will soon be released as Wheezy) I started getting SASL errors. 535 5.7.8 Error: authentication failed: no mechanism available The SMTP proto…| etbe - Russell Coker
I have previously blogged about Ethernet bonding on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Now I have a need to do the same thing on Debian Etch – to have multiple Ethernet links for redundancy so that if…| etbe - Russell Coker
I am not an expert at public speaking. Attending Toastmasters to improve my speaking skills is on my todo list. However having given hundreds of talks over the course of about 14 years and being pa…| etbe - Russell Coker
I attend many presentations and have seen many that had a lower quality than they should have. Some things are difficult to change (for example I have difficulty speaking slowly). But there are som…| etbe - Russell Coker
In regard to my post yesterday about Planet Debian I received the following response: James Purser said I’m betting that your feed is an atom feed. We had the same problem on PLOA with Jeff a…| etbe - Russell Coker
In a comment on my blog post titled Childhood, Don Marti refers to an earlier blog post he wrote which refers to a New York Magazine article about the effects of praising children. The article does…| etbe - Russell Coker
On several occasions I have watched part of a TV documentary on gifted children, but I have never been able to watch one completely because every one that I have seen has been offensively wrong. On…| etbe - Russell Coker
Apparently they are planning a reality TV show that might be named “Kids Nation” where 40 children are allowed to develop their own society for 40 days. The claims are that there is …| etbe - Russell Coker
Adam Rosi-Kessel made an interesting post about They Might Be Giants producing children’s music because their original fan base are now old enough to have children. From casual inspection of …| etbe - Russell Coker
To convert video files between formats I use Makefiles, this means I can run “make -j2” on my dual-core server to get both cores going at once. avconv uses 8 threads for it’s comp…| etbe - Russell Coker
I’ve just bught an NVidia video card from Computers and Parts Land (CPL) [1]. I asked for a PCIe*8 card but was assured that a PCIe*16 card would work. However when I got it home I discovered…| etbe - Russell Coker
A couple of years ago a relative who uses a Linux workstation I support bought a 4K (4096*2160 resolution) monitor. That meant that I had to get 4K working, which was 2 years of pain for me and pro…| etbe - Russell Coker
One problem I have had with my new Dell PowerEdge server/workstation [1] is that sound doesn’t work correctly. When I initially installed it things were OK but after installing a new monitor …| etbe - Russell Coker
The Problem I’ve just upgraded my Dell PowerEdge T105 [1] from Debian/Lenny to Debian/Squeeze. Unfortunately the result of the upgrade was that everything in an X display looked very green wh…| etbe - Russell Coker
I suggested in a previous blog entry that conferences should provide computers that speakers can use for their presentations. The reason for this is that getting one computer working with the beame…| etbe - Russell Coker
In the comments on my post about the Dell PowerEdge T105 server [1] there is some discussion of the internal USB port (which allows the use of a USB flash device for booting which is connected insi…| etbe - Russell Coker
In considering storage trends for the consumer side I’m looking at the current prices from MSY (where I usually buy computer parts). I know that other stores will have slightly different pric…| etbe - Russell Coker
Here are some basic things to do when debugging storage performance problems on Linux. It’s deliberately not an advanced guide, I might write about more advanced things in a later post. Disk …| etbe - Russell Coker
The Problem Some of my clients need systems that store reasonable amounts of data. This is enough data that we can expect some data corruption on disk such that traditional RAID doesn’t work,…| etbe - Russell Coker
I recently had to decommission an old Linux server and replace it with a new machine. When I was about to turn it off I noticed a power cable of the type used for IDE hard drives leaving the Linux …| etbe - Russell Coker
Eweek has an article on a new 1TB Seagate drive. Most home users don’t have a need for 1TB of storage (the only way I’ve ever filled a 300G drive is by using it for multiple backups) an…| etbe - Russell Coker
I wrote a blog post The Shape of Computers [1] exploring ideas of how computers might evolve and how we can use them. One of the devices I mentioned was the Humane AI Pin, which has just been the r…| etbe - Russell Coker
Richard Glover has written a polemic about fads on the net [1]. His points are essentially good, but he does over-reach them a bit (which is part of the polemic style) and he also seems a little un…| etbe - Russell Coker
77020 packets transmitted, 18029 received, 76% packet loss, time 77049435ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 20.026/130.848/2245.752/287.550 ms, pipe 3 Above are the ping results from pinging my server (host…| etbe - Russell Coker
In some mailing list discussions recently some people demonstrated a lack of knowledge of the economics of a shop. Having run a shop for a few years (an Internet Cafe) I have some practical knowled…| etbe - Russell Coker
There are many negative articles about “AI” (which is not about actual Artificial Intelligence also known as “AGI”). Which I think are mostly overblown and often ridiculous.…| etbe - Russell Coker
Many PCs with DDR4 RAM have started going cheap on ebay recently. I don’t know how much of that is due to Windows 11 hardware requirements and how much is people replacing DDR4 systems with D…| etbe - Russell Coker
In response to a post about my latest laptop I had someone ask why I chose an Intel CPU. I’ve been a fan of the Thinkpad series of laptops since the 90s. They have always seemed well construc…| etbe - Russell Coker
I’ve just been playing with Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT) [1] which is also known as Management Engine Bios Extension (MEBX). Firstly a disclaimer, using this sort of techn…| etbe - Russell Coker
I just did a Debian install on a Dell PowerEdge T30 for a client. The Dell web site is a bit broken at the moment, it didn’t list the price of that server or give useful specs when I was orde…| etbe - Russell Coker
To run a SMP system with multiple CPUs you need to have CPUs that are “identical”, the question is what does “identical” mean. In this case I’m interested in Intel CPU…| etbe - Russell Coker
I work on SE Linux to improve security for all computer users. I think that my work has gone reasonably well in that regard in terms of directly improving security of computers and helping develope…| etbe - Russell Coker
I was asked for advice on how to start learning Linux. Rather than replying via email I’m writing a blog post for future people who ask such questions and also to get comments from other peop…| etbe - Russell Coker
I have returned from the US and my SE Linux Play Machine [1] is online again. It was unfortunate that I forgot to pack one of my Play machine shirts, I ended up attending a meeting of the SDForum […| etbe - Russell Coker
As Debian/Lenny has been released and the temperatures in my part of the world are no longer insanely hot I have put my SE Linux Play Machine [1] online again. It is running Debian/Lenny and is a X…| etbe - Russell Coker
A recent news item is the “hacking” of the Yahoo mailbox used by Sarah Palin (the Republican VP candidate) [1]. It seems most likely that it was a simple social-engineering attack on th…| etbe - Russell Coker
I just read an interesting blog post about ML security recommended by Bruce Schneier [1]. This approach of having 2 AI systems where one processes user input and the second performs actions on quar…| etbe - Russell Coker
An anti-spam measure that is used by a very small number of people is that of verifying the sender address by connecting to the sending mail server. For example when I send mail from russell@coker.…| etbe - Russell Coker
Currently there is a problem with the MySQL default install in Debian/Etch (and probably other distributions too). It sets up “root” with dba access with no password by default, the fol…| etbe - Russell Coker
Mark Shuttleworth has written an interesting post about Ubuntu release dates [1]. He claims that free software distributions are better able to meet release dates than proprietary OSs because they …| etbe - Russell Coker
I recently had to setup some Linux workstations with 802.1x authentication (described as “Ethernet authentication”) to connect to a smart switch. The most useful web site I found was th…| etbe - Russell Coker
Firstly for smooth running of the presentations it would be ideal if laptops were provided for displaying all presentations (obviously this wouldn’t work for live software demos but it would …| etbe - Russell Coker
In a comment on my previous post about ECC RAM someone commented that Dell sells PowerEdge desktop machines with ECC RAM. I visited the Dell web site and found that a low-end PowerEdge tower server…| etbe - Russell Coker
Following from my 5 minute OSDC talk yesterday on 5 security improvements needed in Linux distributions I gave a 5 minute talk on installing SE Linux on Debian etch. To display the notes I formatte…| etbe - Russell Coker
I have previously written about how I refused an offer of a free iPhone [1] (largely due to it’s closed architecture). The first Google Android phone has just been announced, the TechCrunch r…| etbe - Russell Coker
James Purser writes about the current plans for Internet filtering in Australia and concentrates on the technical issues (whether it will degrade the ISP service) and the issue of who’s moral…| etbe - Russell Coker
I’ve had a saga of getting 4K monitors to work well. My latest issue has been video playing, the dreaded mplayer error about the system being too slow. My previous post about 4K was about usi…| etbe - Russell Coker
The Problem Video playback looks better with a higher scan rate. A lot of content that was designed for TV (EG almost all historical documentaries) is going to be 25Hz interlaced (UK and Australia)…| etbe - Russell Coker
It’s been 2 years since my last blog post about storage trends [1]. Minimum Storage <=2TB In 2021 I stated that as MSY had 2TB disks for $72 and 2TB SSD for $245 it was barely worth consid…| etbe - Russell Coker
The Viability of Small Disks Less than a year ago I wrote a blog post about storage trends [1]. My main point in that post was that disks smaller than 2TB weren’t viable then and 2TB disks wo…| etbe - Russell Coker
Recently someone asked on IRC whether they should use SE Linux on a web server machine (that is being used for no other purpose) and then went on to add “since the webserver is installed as r…| etbe - Russell Coker
I just received a question about SE Linux via email. As I don’t want to post private messages containing material that’s globally useful I’ll answer through my blog: > other th…| etbe - Russell Coker
Bruce Schneier has just written about the Storm Worm [1] which has apparently been quietly 0wning some Windows machines for most of this year (see the Wikipedia page for more information [2]). I ha…| etbe - Russell Coker
I have now got a Debian Xen domU running the strict SE Linux policy that can boot in enforcing mode. I expect that tomorrow I will have it working with full functionality and that I will be able to…| etbe - Russell Coker
The book SE Linux by Example has been reviewed on Slashdot. The issue of Perl scripts was raised for discussion. It is of course true that a domain which is permitted to run the Perl interpreter ca…| etbe - Russell Coker
One issue that has been the topic of some pointless discussion is whether a mail server should have an A record or an MX record. Mail can be delivered to a domain that has no MX record but simply a…| etbe - Russell Coker
My telco Three have just offered me a deal on getting a new phone a couple of months earlier than my contract was supposed to expire, presumably they have some competition and want to get me locked…| etbe - Russell Coker
I previously wrote about how I installed the Jitsi video-conferencing system on Debian [1]. We used that for a few unofficial meetings of LUV to test it out. Then we installed Big Blue Button (BBB)…| etbe - Russell Coker
I’ve just setup an instance of the Jitsi video-conference software for my local LUG. Here is an overview of how to set it up on Debian. Firstly create a new virtual machine to run it. Jitsi i…| etbe - Russell Coker
The systemd projecct is an interesting concept for replacing init and related code [1]. There have been a few attempts to replace the old init system, upstart is getting some market share in Linux …| etbe - Russell Coker
A few weeks ago Dell advertised new laptops for $849AU, this was a significant development but I didn’t get around to blogging about it. Now I have just discovered that they have a special de…| etbe - Russell Coker
Late last year I wrote about the way that modern laptops suck [1]. One of the problems that inspired that post was the excessive heat generated by my Thinkpad T61. There is a partial solution to th…| etbe - Russell Coker
I’ve now had my new Thinkpad T61 [1] for almost a month. The letters on the keyboard are not even starting to wear off which is unusual, either this Thinkpad is built with harder plastic than…| etbe - Russell Coker
I’ve just bought a Thinkpad T61 at auction for $AU796. My Thinkpad T41p has cooling problems which I have previously described[1]. It’s also started to rattle a bit when I hold it upsid…| etbe - Russell Coker