December 2025 - Roundtable

MUUG Meeting, Tuesday, Jan 6, 7:30pm (NEW LOCATION) -- Linux File System Encryption
by Gilbert Detillieux 30 Dec '25

30 Dec '25

The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly meeting IN PERSON, on Tuesday, January 6th, at 7:30pm. Yes, that's the FIRST Tuesday of the month... Linux File System Encryption With increased threats to information security, and increased demands for compliance with privacy laws, data encryption is becoming an important requirement. But deciding between available solutions can be complicated. Multiple options are of course available for Linux, but which one is best may depend on your use case. In this presentation, Gilbert Detillieux will describe 3 different options: LUKS works at the raw disk/partition level, and may be best for removable media, laptops, and systems where full disk encryption is needed. At the file-system level, eCryptfs and Fscrypt allow for encryption on a file or directory basis, with support for multiple users and keys. Each solution has its limitations and advantages. Where to find the Meeting: **NOTE NEW LOCATION** Winnipeg Senior Citizens Radio Club, 598 St. Mary?s Road, 2nd Floor WSC is located at 598 St. Mary's Road, 2nd Floor, a block South from the St. Mary's / St. Anne's fork, on the West side beside the Miller's Meats. It's in the old fire hall, so you really can't miss it! Look for the red door. There is no elevator, so attendees will have to be able to climb a flight of stairs. Apologies to anyone requiring accessibility. *Please Remove Your Footwear!* To keep the carpets clean and dry, please remove your outdoor footwear at the top of the stairs. There are a limited number of parking spaces for WSC around the building. If you arrive early you'll probably snag one. If not, there is parking available on the nearby streets, such as Mager Dr, or the streets off of St. Mary's such as Blenheim or Clonard Ave. Be careful not to park in nearby private parking lots unless otherwise indicated. For those unable or preferring not to attend in person, the meeting will also be available online, using BBB as usual. Stay tuned to our muug.ca home page for the official URL, which will be made available about a half hour before the meeting starts. (Reload the page if you don't see the link, or if there are issues with connecting.) The group now holds its meetings at 7:30pm on the *first* Tuesday of every month from September to June. (There are no meetings in July and August.) Meetings are open to the general public; you don't have to be a MUUG member to attend. For more information about MUUG, and its monthly meetings, check out their web server: https://muug.ca/ Help us promote this month's meeting, by putting this poster up on your workplace bulletin board or other suitable public message board, or linking to it on social media: https://muug.ca/meetings/MUUGmeeting.pdf -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://muug.ca/

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suppress broken pipe error
by Trevor Cordes 28 Dec '25

28 Dec '25

I have a little bit of bash (see bottom) that basically checks to see if any box is pingable on the LAN. But with a trick: it'll quit/return the instant it gets a single reply. That's so my script doesn't have to wait for nmap to finish (which can take a minute vs maybe 1 sec for the first computer to respond). It works great. One problem though... on one box only, sometimes (not always) I'll get a: grep: write error: Broken pipe in the output. I would like to suppress that error. I ran bash with -x and the grep error appears in the debug output after the grep -q RCVD line... however I'm not sure that's not a red herring as the entire stanza may be counted as one line for the debug? And I fail to see how there can be a write error on that part of the pipe -- there's nothing it's piping to! A read error, sure. But write? Yes, the kill makes huge swathes of the pipe just "go away", and maybe that's part of it. But I'm trying to redirect most 2>&1's as you can see. I don't need to solve the "problem" of pipes disappearing, I just want it to shut up. I also want to solve it without putting the meat of the code into a separate script (that seems like cheating). Any ideas? sint=192.168.100 timeout 20 bash -c \ " \ (nmap -ddd -vvv --send-ip \ --host-timeout 5s --max-rtt-timeout 1s --initial-rtt-timeout 500ms \ --max-retries 1 -S $sint.1 -sn -PE $sint.2 $sint.100-254 2>&1 & \ echo \$! >&3) \ 3>pidnmap \ | grep --line-buffered -P 'RCVD.{0,30}?ICMP.{0,60}?Echo reply' \ | (head -1 && /bin/kill \$(<pidnmap) >/dev/null 2>&1) \ " \ |grep -q RCVD || { # do some network-restart stuff }

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ECC motherboards w/PCIe x16?
by Adam Thompson 13 Dec '25

13 Dec '25

Since we’ve been talking about ECC… I’m looking for a motherboard that does ECC *and* has a real PCIe x16 slot on it. Right now, the best deal I can find is C$360 for a GigaByte MX33-BS0 and … a used Xeon E-2314 off eBay for C$200, so ~C$560. (Not including RAM, yikes.) Supposedly, AMD chips as cheap as the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X (C$250) support ECC, if paired with the right motherboard – which I’m not sure even exists. I want 32GB minimum (preferably supports 64GB+), a “real” x16 slot, and either a real x4 slot or an onboard 10G SFP+ NIC… but even PCPartPicker has no idea which AM5 mobos support ECC! From Reddit, the other usual source, I learn that I can basically “try one and see”, which isn’t what I want at all! Should I just pay mildly silly amounts of money for a previous-generation Intel solution? I can go get a used Dell PowerEdge 720 for not much money, and I have the rack to put it in, but I really really really do not want the PERC RAID controllers they all come with. (I don’t mind Dells of that era, they would otherwise be perfectly fine.) -Adam athompso(a)athompso.net<mailto:athompso@athompso.net> Feel free to email me directly rather than cluttering the list with commercial emails, if you have something you can sell me directly. P.S. yes I’m aware that many, but definitely not all, Dell PERCs can be reflashed to IT mode, but that creates issues with the Lifecycle Controller and some BIOS revisions. And when buying used, it’s hard to be certain which PERC is included – the R720 could come with, IIRC, 9 different RAID cards.

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I created some handy Ubuntu scripts for running updates to share
by andrea kaplen 05 Dec '25

05 Dec '25

Hey Folks, I created two bash scripts 1. checkforupdates.sh 2. showhardware.sh They are on github in my repo. https://github.com/andreak3779/awk_linux_scripts Feel to offer any advice, modify them or tell me if you find them helpful. Have a wonderful weekend.

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Linus Torvalds says ECC is mandatory for his PC's
by Bradford C. Vokey 02 Dec '25

02 Dec '25

Linus Tech Tips recently posted a video about building the PERFECT Linux PC with the actual Linus Torvalds: - full entertaining video: https://youtu.be/mfv0V1SxbNA?si=AkLZOlwuf3nKqZ7F - just the short part talking about ECC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA&t=510s --- So Linus Torvalds (and of course our very own MUUG vice-president Trevor Cordes) need ECC when their computers are responsible for bisecting or merging their own kernels. I get that. But can't the rest of us on non-ECC memory people just simply reset our computers and continue on? Debate started... :) -- Bradford C. Vokey Treasurer Manitoba Unix User Group

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