March 2015 - Roundtable

IBM "clicky" keyboards
by Adam Thompson 13 Oct '16

13 Oct '16

Enough people have wondered/asked/complained to me about this that I'm posting this now as a public service. IBM Model "M" keyboards are still available, *NEW*, today. They are expensive, but they are the original design that you can use as a melee weapon. The catch is that they don't say "IBM" or even "Lexmark" on them. They are available for purchase from the manufacturer, Unicomp, who can be found online at http://www.pckeyboard.com/. You can also find some vintage NIB units from time to time at http://www.clickykeyboards.com/. There are also a number of other manufacturers now making similar, but not quite as good, keyboards. - CVT Inc., the maker of the Avant Stellar (I own two of them), which is the direct descendant of the Northgate Omnikey, seems to have restructured and no trace of their keyboard manufacturing operation can be found online. However, Northgate keyboards are still available new-in-box from (this is a horrible site, beware) http://www.northgate-keyboard-repair.com/. - The Happy Hacking keyboard (now owned by Fujitsu, apparently) is equally comforting to some people despite having a totally different feel. They, and many others, can be had from http://www.elitekeyboards.com/ - Das Keyboard - Anything using Cherry MX Green, Blue, or White keyswitches. The "green" switches apparently are the closest anyone's come yet to emulating the IBM/Lexmark/Unicomp switches... and they can be had in MUCH cheaper keyboards, like the Rosewill RK-9000 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823201040 and http://techreport.com/review/23405/rosewill-rk-9000-series-mechanical-ke yboards-reviewed). - And there are an increasing number (yes, again, after the big die-off ca. 2009) of speciality manufacturers of "ergonomic" keyboards that are making clicky keyswitches available as an option. One of the better ones is a tiny shop in Ontario, but I can't find the name right now. References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicomp http://deskthority.net/wiki/Cherry_MX -Adam Thompson athompso(a)athompso.net

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SpamAssassin false positives on DATE_IN_FUTURE_96_Q?
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 23 Feb '16

23 Feb '16

I mentioned this problem at the last round-table session, but didn't get a solution, so I thought I'd post it here, just in case anyone has any suggestions to offer. I'm still seeing a whole bunch of false positives in SpamAssassin, since an update was installed in mid-September on a CentOS 5.7 system, for a rule called DATE_IN_FUTURE_96_Q, which is only supposed to be triggered when the "Date:" header has a date that is 4 days to 4 month ahead of the date in the "Received" header that has the _smallest_ difference in date. Here are the headers from the latest e-mail I've received with this false-positive. (I've stripped out irrelevant headers, for the sake of clarity and simplicity.) From topfivestories(a)messagent.itworldcanada.com Mon Nov 14 07:50:13 2011 Received: from mail.messagent.itworldcanada.com (mail.messagent.itworldcanada.com [207.112.10.80]) by palladium.cs.umanitoba.ca (8.13.8/8.13.8) with SMTP id pAEDoAxV028594 for <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca>; Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:50:12 -0600 Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:50:13 -0500 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,DATE_IN_FUTURE_96_Q, HTML_MESSAGE,RP_MATCHES_RCVD autolearn=no version=3.3.1 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on palladium.cs.umanitoba.ca Note that I'm calling spamd via the spamass-milter on a system running sendmail. Note also, that in the above example, the only "Received" header was the one generated by my own server. (I've had other false positives, however, with multiple "Received" headers, all of which were within seconds of the time in the "Date" header.) Any ideas? -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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big scanner
by Trevor Cordes 27 May '15

27 May '15

Does anyone have big (like tabloid or bigger) scanner they want to sell? Even an ancient SCSI or parallel one might be ok. I just want *big*. Do they even make scanners bigger than legal or tabloid?

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Reminder to claim your Canadian DRAM Class Action before 2015-06-23!
by Bradford C. Vokey 29 Mar '15

29 Mar '15

There is a total of $79 million to be divided up amongst Canadians who purchased electronic devices containing DRAM between 1999-04-01 and 2002-06-30. All end users (including businesses) *and* their resellers (TREVOR!) can BOTH claim! Claims must be filed before June 23rd, 2015! Those that *don't* claim will receive $0. There is a simplified claim form (no receipts required) for households and businesses that bought at least 1 electronic device (containing DRAM) between 1999-04-01 and 2002-06-30. They guarantee a minimum $20 claim (not sure how the math works on that - must be an actuarial thing). However, if you have your receipts (or were a reseller during those times) you can submit a "standard" claim and potentially receive much more than the $20 allocated to each household. Full details and the claim forms can be found here: https://www.themoneyismine.ca/ This is like one of those share to win social media posts. The more households that claim - the smaller your payout per household will be. However, if anyone deserves the payout, it is MUUG members, so I feel it is in my duty as MUUG treasurer to remind everyone in MUUG to file a claim. -- Bradford C. Vokey Treasurer Manitoba Unix User Group (MUUG) PO Box 130 Winnipeg MB R2H 0H1 muug.mb.ca

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he'll test your website drunk
by Trevor Cordes 28 Mar '15

28 Mar '15

http://theuserisdrunk.com/?imm_mid=0cf2a0&cmp=em-prog-na-na-newsltr_20150328 Only $250! "Can I pay you more to choose what you drink? Very yes." I can think of a member or two who should get into this line of business!! ;-)

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Google warns of unauthorized TLS certificates trusted by almost all OSes
by Trevor Cordes 28 Mar '15

28 Mar '15

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/google-warns-of-unauthorized-tls-ce… Fun! Not. Though the current model may be less than ideal, we must grant them one thing: in the decades it's been in place, the number of these breaches have been exceedingly small. That's saying something. Perhaps users of browsers should get the option to block certs by country-of-issuance? I bet I could turn off all of .ru, .ro and .cn and never notice. (I'd probably need .tw though.)

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systemd - the saga continues
by Trevor Cordes 24 Mar '15

24 Mar '15

We all know about the systemd controversy. Whether you like it or not, if you use Linux, you're *all* going to be using systemd in the very near future. Only a few fringe protest distros will not be using it. I could write a whole diatribe^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H article about systemd, and I'm one of the few who doesn't actually hate it! I've been using it (successfully) on all my (20+) systems for over 3 years (forced into it because of Fedora)! Anyhow, I thought some would appreciate some insight into the systemd guy, Lennart, so you can make judgements about his character and whether he seems to a) understand UNIX philosophy and b) have the best of intentions (cheat sheet spoiler: no and no): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0 Long video, but worth watching while you work on other things, to capture the spirit of the new malevolent overlord of Linux. FYI, Lennart is one big walking ad hominem and non sequitur. He relies on the fact that no one studies logical thinking anymore. No, I doubt Wolfgang hates handicapped people. In fact, I agree with almost everything Wolfgang says. I think Lennart a) really doesn't get it, or b) works for Microsoft. Did you know systemd has binary logs that are FORCED ON, and CAN'T BE DISABLED? You have to jump through hoops to beg systemd to let you have your logs *duplicated* out to syslog. Oh, want logwatch and logrotate to work on your binary systemd logs, tough luck. Read enough flamewars (both sides, they seem about 50/50) and listen to Lennart and you see that some Linux people *really don't get it*. They really don't understand why UNIX has worked well for 50 years. It's old? Must be bad! Don't like change, well you are an old fuddy duddy resistant to change and don't matter. Change is good. We're Microsoft now. The more you read/see of systemd and Lennart the queasier feeling you get. He's sly, he's done the boil a frog trick and turned up the heat (feature creep) so slowly no one noticed until we were fried (every daemon is in systemd). I think the one thing I love most about UNIX is that scripts I wrote in 1991 still work right now, today, on my brand new modern distro. And I use them. And they are useful, and no I don't want to change them or rewrite them. Try that with Windows. Every other OS not only has you throw away your scripts, but half your hard-earned knowledge and speed because they want you to use a gesture and a charm instead of a start menu. I want to repeat my efforts as little as possible: I want to always add new functionality. I want the new WITHOUT throwing away the old. THAT is the UNIX way. THAT is what Lennart doesn't get. And I'm one of the few who doesn't hate systemd! (Don't worry, though, I'm getting there...) Also, OMG, so true, so funny, so sad: http://adtmag.com/articles/2014/10/21/~/media/ECG/adtmag/Images/2014/01/sys… (Overly long rant... sorry. If you have any choice bits of Lennart antics, post them here in reply.)

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Removing old kernel images
by Kevin McGregor 23 Mar '15

23 Mar '15

I have a Ubuntu 10.04.3 (I know) system with many old kernel images. The problem (maybe) is I've been told the system is out of inodes. I thought I would try to get rid of at least one old kernel image, and this happens: $ sudo apt-get -y purge linux-image-2.6.32-28-server Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: linux-headers-virtual: Depends: linux-headers-2.6.32-66-server but it is not going to be installed or linux-headers-2.6.32-66-generic-pae but it is not installable vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod-2.6.32-28-server: Depends: linux-image-2.6.32-28-server but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). Did I do something wrong, is there a simple fix, and/or is this related to running out of inodes? Kevin

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5TB - makes no sense
by Trevor Cordes 22 Mar '15

22 Mar '15

Once again the drive manufacturers have me scratching my head. My business can sell a new Seagate 5TB USB3.0 external hard drive (5400rpm) for $159! 5TB!! What's baffling is that the cheapest 4TB (not even 5TB!) bare drive is $200! How does one explain the extra $41? Dunno... In fact, it's even crazier because by *not* paying the extra $41 you are given the bonus of a usb3-to-sata adapter and a power supply! Scratching your head? So am I. Just so everyone knows, you can buy this unit, pull the plastic shell apart and take out the normal, everyday 3.5" SATA drive inside and put it directly in your computer!! (This will void all warranties!) I should note, though, that this is almost certainly one of Seagate's infamous "not supposed to be on 24/7" garbage drives, like all of their low-end drives. But, still, 5TB for $159 is awful compelling. In fact, just for sheer size and backup possibilities, I'm going to grab one for an extra, more frequent, onsite backup system. The cheapest 5TB "real" drive you can actually use for something other than occasional use is the WD Red for $270, nearly double the price! The duopoly hard drive manufacturers are "pulling an Intel" now and differentiating by offering 4-6 different drives in each size, causing SKU explosion. And the price difference between the cheapo ones and the (supposed) enterprise-grade can be 300% (and we're not even talking SCSI/SAS here)! It used to be they all just made 1 drive of each size that was good enough for all things (and almost always 7200rpm). Also, note how the price of a quality 7200rpm 2TB drive has not dropped from where it was over 2 years ago! I know, I just checked. Gotta love a duopoly. P.S. If you want one, let me know! But, sorry, I don't price compete on the low-end so if it's cheaper at <insert etailer here> you can get it there. :-) (Prices subject to change. Tax not included, blah blah blah.)

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Re: [RndTbl] Inventory software?
by Bradford C. Vokey 21 Mar '15

21 Mar '15

On 2015-03-20 10:31 PM, athompso(a)athompso.net wrote: > I'm looking for recommendations for good IT inventory tracking software. > It must track not only hardware assets (those are a dime-a-dozen) but also > software, licenses, and support agreements. > It doesn't have to be free or open-source, if it's reasonably-priced and > good value. > It should definitely run on UNIX, at least the back-end stuff. > I do *not* need automatic inventory-gathering capability. > > Anyone know of anything that works for that? I am assuming you need a user-land friendly facing interface? Why not just use mysql and an html-based front end (intra or inter) like what I demonstrated with Xataface at the October 2013 meeting? It beats having to try and shoe-horn the fields/records you *actually* want to track into someone else's idea of what is important in inventory software. -- Brad Vokey

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