●● IRC: #boycottnovell @ Techrights IRC Network: Wednesday, October 06, 2021 ●●

● Oct 06

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● Oct 06

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[01:29] schestowitz Re: Write cycles and disk capacity

[01:29] schestowitz > A lot of the services on the RPi are disk intensive, even the

[01:29] schestowitz > Gemini-building scripts. MicroSD is rather susceptible to wear and

[01:29] schestowitz > tear, especially from write cycles. Furthermore, the drive is already

[01:29] schestowitz > nearing the capacity at which EXT4 performance degrades, regardless of

[01:29] schestowitz > medium:

[01:29] schestowitz >

[01:29] schestowitz > $ df -h /

[01:29] schestowitz > Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

[01:29] schestowitz > /dev/root 12G 9.2G 2.1G 82% /

[01:29] schestowitz >

[01:29] schestowitz > Since the RPi4 can boot from USB, this combination might be an option:

[01:29] schestowitz >

[01:29] schestowitz > https://thepihut.com/products/ssd-to-usb-3-0-cable-for-raspberry-pi

[01:29] -TechrightsBN/#boycottnovell-thepihut.com | SSD to USB 3.0 Cable for Raspberry Pi | The Pi Hut

[01:29] schestowitz >

[01:29] schestowitz > https://thepihut.com/products/wd-green-240gb-2-5-ssd

[01:29] -TechrightsBN/#boycottnovell-thepihut.com | WD Green 240GB 2.5" SSD | The Pi Hut

[01:29] schestowitz >

[01:29] schestowitz > The smaller, cheaper model is out of stock. The down side is that these

[01:29] schestowitz > won't fit in any known case. But I think the combination would be a way

[01:29] schestowitz > to increase performance and capacity while proactively addressing both

[01:29] schestowitz > wear and space limitations. The the space limmit is visibly impending,

[01:29] schestowitz > the effects of wear always come as a surprise often at inconvenient times.

[01:29] schestowitz >

[01:29] schestowitz > Shall I see if I can have the cable and the SSD sent?

[01:29] schestowitz Sounds like a good precaution.

[01:29] schestowitz What are the prospects of using external magnetic disk? I have 2 that are barely used anymore. Not sure how reliable that would be, but what I have in mind is mounting some of the data of the /homedir on those, then keeping just OS-level things on the MicroSD. Is that too feasible?

[01:37] schestowitz Re: Hackaday censorship

[01:37] schestowitz > https://twitter.com/zoobab/status/1444922946510807044

[01:37] -TechrightsBN/#boycottnovell-@zoobab: Hackaday censored comments about the vaccine in its article about the cancellation of the CCC in Leipzig, 23 commen https://t.co/i7E5c9WIi4

[01:37] -TechrightsBN/#boycottnovell-@zoobab: Hackaday censored comments about the vaccine in its article about the cancellation of the CCC in Leipzig, 23 commen https://t.co/i7E5c9WIi4

[01:39] schestowitz > I pointed to the issues with the J&J vaccine in Slovenia (some 20y guy

[01:39] schestowitz > died), my comment was removed.

[01:39] schestowitz I can understand why they want a post about CCC NOT to turn into a BIG FIGHT over vaccines, as that can attract some people with more radical views. My guess is, they try to keep things on topic.

[01:39] schestowitz I'd not censor like this myself, but I try to reason about how they go about thinking...

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[01:54] schestowitz-TR I have just made a backup of all pu crontabs

[01:54] schestowitz-TR *pi

● Oct 06

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● Oct 06

[07:22] Techrights-sec2 ack

[07:22] Techrights-sec2 crontabs are often overlooked.

[07:22] Techrights-sec2 Are there any in /etc/cron* as well?

[07:22] Techrights-sec2 $ find /etc/cron* -type f -print

[07:22] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.d/.placeholder

[07:22] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.daily/bsdmainutils

[07:22] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.daily/logrotate

[07:22] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.daily/.placeholder

[07:22] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.daily/passwd

[07:23] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.daily/apt-compat

[07:23] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.daily/dpkg

[07:23] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.daily/man-db

[07:23] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.hourly/fake-hwclock

[07:23] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.hourly/.placeholder

[07:23] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.monthly/.placeholder

[07:23] Techrights-sec2 /etc/crontab

[07:23] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.weekly/.placeholder

[07:23] schestowitz no idea who runs it or whose code

[07:23] Techrights-sec2 /etc/cron.weekly/man-db

[07:23] Techrights-sec2 Where is the source for altlink_4f1 in IRC?

[07:26] activelow might contain some more of it: /var/spool/cron/crontabs/*

[07:32] Techrights-sec2 commit 62e72cffe1920aa7ded0e3f97ce0e853ecbc7642

[07:32] Techrights-sec2 commit 365a03cfdf62b4e5ed3cf3c32fcb45aacb6a6e17

[07:32] Techrights-sec2 commit 7fbbf9f28f08e4565ad95bcd5ae70446f9dce8d8

[07:32] Techrights-sec2 commit f47ddbb446906aec1792ede343c12035799762d5

[07:32] Techrights-sec2 commit e8f76442566f7d5b6d079cba77fd1ed3e7c8b733

[07:32] Techrights-sec2 readability changes

[07:33] schestowitz activelow: yes, that is where I took them from

[07:33] schestowitz we might move the capsule to an external disk

● Oct 06

[08:14] schestowitz >> What are the prospects of using external magnetic disk? I have 2 that

[08:14] schestowitz >> are barely used anymore. Not sure how reliable that would be, but what I

[08:14] schestowitz >> have in mind is mounting some of the data of the /homedir on those, then

[08:14] schestowitz >> keeping just OS-level things on the MicroSD. Is that too feasible?

[08:14] schestowitz > They would be best if kept in a proper enclosure, including the Pi,

[08:15] schestowitz > while operating. Magnetic disks are highly susceptible to damage from

[08:15] schestowitz > even mild knocks while in use.

[08:15] schestowitz >

[08:15] schestowitz > The USB cable is sold out at the moment but could be restocked any time.

[08:15] schestowitz > Or not. We'll have to see.

[08:15] schestowitz OK, I think it'll take another year or so before we really run out of space, but as you note the risk is now growing (data corruption).

[08:16] schestowitz >> What are the prospects of using external magnetic disk? I have 2 that

[08:16] schestowitz >> are barely used anymore. Not sure how reliable that would be, but what I

[08:16] schestowitz >> have in mind is mounting some of the data of the /homedir on those, then

[08:16] schestowitz >> keeping just OS-level things on the MicroSD. Is that too feasible?

[08:16] schestowitz > Another option is just to migrate to a newer, larger microSD card every

[08:16] schestowitz > year or so. That'd be rather inexpensive. microSD cards are not a

[08:16] schestowitz > durable good and heavily used ones like that in this Pi ought to be

[08:16] schestowitz > replaced occasionally. Underprovisioning them can make them last longer

[08:16] schestowitz > though. In either case, the question is whether to wait until the

[08:16] schestowitz > errors show up or to migrate first.

[08:16] schestowitz I like this option better. At the moment I back up everything under /home (all accounts) every now and then, with a stack of backups piling up on external disks. I use rsync for that.

[08:18] activelow hint: i am syncing backup disks with linux md-raid

[08:19] activelow 1) this can be done online, 2) md-raid does some increment tracking internally 3) and requires little knowledge of how to handle RAID-1 with spares

[08:20] Techrights-sec2 ack

[08:20] Techrights-sec2 If it facillitates those links getting indexed in the Internet Archive,

[08:20] Techrights-sec2 then it can be an advantage.

[08:22] activelow sorry if i interrupted something, rarely however is the power of linux md-raid mentioned for a backup strategy

[08:24] activelow in combination with nilfs2 (and automatic garbage collection fully disabled) this offers exceptional features

[08:24] activelow depending on what the requirements are

[08:26] activelow keeping nilfs2 on top of linux md-raid level-1 (with two or more mirrors), anytime can one of the online disks be set to faulty, and removed (not that trivial as one might think to correctly identify any disk)

[08:27] activelow then next, nilfs2 garbage collector can be activated to free all segments marked for deletion (log-structured is neat) to provide free space, while the backup spare removed does contain those segments for archival

[08:29] activelow nilfs2 garbage collector "protection period" can be configured, how long segments marked for deletion are kept

[08:29] activelow and then, i had written a fsck utility for nilfs2, which can verify ALL data and metadata segment CRCs

[08:30] activelow which too produces a logfile of segments and CRC each, to archive separately somewhere; it isn't alot of data, can be plotted onto 9pin matrix printer for example, for the paranoid

[08:32] activelow nilfs2 garbage collector is dangerous, because it tends to be activated automatically when a filesystem is mounted, i deactivated this with a patch to prevent accidents

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[08:35] schestowitz-TR raid not much of an option

[08:35] schestowitz-TR it's a single-board computer

[08:36] activelow i attached RAID-1 rotational disks with USB3... ~60MiB/s is good enough

[08:36] schestowitz-TR I'll ask....

[08:36] activelow anyway, rsync is useful too of cause, using this regularly, not for backup though

[08:38] activelow and if the features of nilfs2+raid-1 online backup are not required, rsync or a git push may be sufficient

[08:43] activelow btw. usb flash-memory with terrabytes are available, USB2, these can be used with RAID too, which i would like to try how long-term reliable this would be with nilfs2

[08:45] activelow if those are inserted into a USB3 hub, for example, I/O performance of ~30MiB/s should be possible

[08:49] schestowitz-TR I might just buy a newer sd card

[08:49] schestowitz-TR though I'd hate to put aside a perfectly good one

[08:49] schestowitz-TR one strategy might be:

[08:49] schestowitz-TR replicate existing one

[08:49] schestowitz-TR prepare to use as fallback

[08:49] schestowitz-TR to reduce downtime

[08:49] schestowitz-TR in case the existing one fails

[08:50] schestowitz-TR it runs ipfs, gemini and other service off of it

[08:51] activelow i had very bad luck with microSD in recent month, and i keep all data i wouldn't want to loose on RAID only

[08:51] activelow i suspect microSD are very sensitive to sudden power loss

[08:52] schestowitz-TR good to know

[08:52] schestowitz-TR this is a very io-intensive device

[08:52] schestowitz-TR mostly because ipfs runs endlessly, doing tons of stuff

[08:53] schestowitz-TR the card has been in use for a year so far

[08:53] activelow tortured some intentionally too, with swapfs on top to see how long this will last, didn't last long, total failure

[08:53] activelow depends on the type of microsd too, some implement internal wear leveling, others don't

[08:55] schestowitz-TR it was be a disaster if it suddenly stopped working -- a lot of unforeseen disruption

● Oct 06

[09:00] activelow problem i am having: the distfile mirrors are blown up, it was necessary to delete sources already, because otherwise this wouldn't fit onto 1.5TiB RAID anymore...

[09:01] activelow and this doesn't include the git clones of various *BSD, linux kernel, and things, with another 1.5TiB RAID flooded

[09:07] activelow and more than 90% is bitrot

[09:39] Techrights-sec2 ack

[09:39] Techrights-sec2 with 2xUSB3 RAID1 or RAID0 can be used. Though RAID protects against the

[09:39] Techrights-sec2 failure of the drive as a whole not individual flipped bits.

[09:39] Techrights-sec2 With three USB ports and three drives or equivalent media, you could also

[09:39] Techrights-sec2 run with RAIDZ1 from OpenZFS. That would track and possibly correct for

[09:39] Techrights-sec2 flipped bits.

[09:44] activelow no need for zfs at all, nilfs2 on top of raid1

[09:45] activelow linux md-raid, to be precise

[09:46] activelow zfs had been a second-class citizen on linux a long time, and i am not willing to beta-test btrfs either

[09:46] activelow besides, nilfs2 offers features and some specific qualities which which zfs doesn't: it is a log-structured filesystem, zfs is NOT

[09:46] activelow the tiny fsck i had written for nilfs2 is, somehow, amazing

[09:49] *activelow departs

● Oct 06

[10:00] schestowitz-TR activelow: thanks, passing this along

[10:01] schestowitz-TR nb: thunderbird does a poor job with pgp these days. rianne cannot get it to work at all (for now) and this morning I updated the software, then tried things again, to no avail. No sign of a fix on the way...

[10:02] activelow i ditched gpg+thunderbird years ago, and with mutt i keep gpg-classic integration, and version gpg-1.4; gpg-2 is blacklisted

[10:22] Techrights-sec2 no, I've not even tried for a while but am thinking about switching clients

[10:22] Techrights-sec2 at least adding an alternate one. However, I really don't look forward to

[10:22] Techrights-sec2 that.

[10:22] schestowitz-TR it is a big project. anyway, I reduced my reliance on mozilla.

[10:33] activelow alot of what i do requires compile-time changes, that's why various TODOS aren't that useful, but i keep everything organized in gentoo overlays and git

[10:34] activelow the gpg-2 and gpgme issues besides the integration with enigmail/thunderbird was one of those, well, notworthy incidents

[10:34] activelow even if rianne succeeds with such a setup, how should I say, i wouldn't recommend or advice anything, but i had reasons to blacklist gpg2

[10:34] Techrights-sec2 Mutt is very widely used and very highly though of, but the key bindings

[10:34] Techrights-sec2 and UI are very very weird.

[10:34] Techrights-sec2 Not comforatble but maybe necessary since Mozilla seems to be killing

[10:34] Techrights-sec2 Thunderbird as per their old long term plans.

[10:34] Techrights-sec2 https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/

[10:34] -TechrightsBN/#boycottnovell-www.mozilla.org | Internet for people, not profit Mozilla

[10:34] Techrights-sec2 Thunderbird not even listed among the "products"

[10:35] activelow the typical mutt setup with gpg2 and gpgme integration isn't a desireable setup either, gpg-1.x with mutt classic integration is the one

[10:35] activelow however, this requires some compile time changes iirc

[10:37] activelow and mutt configuration took some time and effort. as said, i couldn't recommend anything.

[10:37] Techrights-sec2 "Pocket" is listed though :(

[10:38] schestowitz-TR Google has Mozilla in its pocket, so you have to wonder where all the data goes, might go, will go

[10:46] Techrights-sec2 I thought I have removed Pocket from the browser several times already but

[10:46] Techrights-sec2 it seems to not have worked or else come back on its own.

[10:48] schestowitz-TR settings change with updates. More 'feeeeechures'

[10:52] activelow may I ask whom the nickname Techrights-sec2 is associated with?

[10:52] schestowitz-TR sys admin

[10:52] schestowitz-TR one of us

[10:54] psydruid I run my Orange Pi with an SD card but only for u-boot, device tree table and the kernel and the rest off a USB SATA SSD

[10:55] psydruid my SD card died after 10 months due to excessive writes, so I decided to try to find a better solution

[10:58] schestowitz-TR so I guess we need to hurry up and prepare for disasters

[10:59] Techrights-sec2 I thought I have removed Pocket from the browser several times already but

[10:59] Techrights-sec2 it seems to not have worked or else come back on its own.

[10:59] Techrights-sec2 So it seems. That is bad behaviorl perhaps even malicious.

● Oct 06

[11:00] Techrights-sec2 https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/thunderbird-next

[11:00] Techrights-sec2 "thunderbird 160 weeks ago; Successfully built"

[11:00] Techrights-sec2 Not kept up to date there either. :(

[11:00] Techrights-sec2 Colluding with Google it seems.

[11:00] Techrights-sec2 Thunderbird 91.x will be in Ubuntu's next version Impish Indri

[11:00] Techrights-sec2 So that will trickle down to the Ubuntu derivatives eventually, maybe by the

[11:00] -TechrightsBN/#boycottnovell-launchpad.net | Official PPA for Thunderbird Beta : Mozilla Team team

[11:00] Techrights-sec2 beginning of next year.

[11:08] activelow www-client/seamonkey-2.49.9.1_p0 here; which is thunderbird-52; any later depends on rust already

[11:10] Techrights-sec2 :(

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● Oct 06

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● Oct 06

[15:14] Techrights-sec2 back in a bit

[15:14] Techrights-sec2 back more or less

[15:14] Techrights-sec2 TB 91 has no way to manage OpenPGP keys, as far as I can tell.

[15:14] Techrights-sec2 Seems to have been mostly removed, though it does have access to something

[15:14] Techrights-sec2 but that is out of date and not in sync with OpenPGP itself. :(

[15:14] Techrights-sec2 Found it. It is quite buried. There are no key management functions available

[15:14] Techrights-sec2 but import might work.

[15:14] Techrights-sec2 See "Account Settings" -> "End-To-End Encryption" -> "Add Key"

[15:14] Techrights-sec2 The default desktop environment for Impish Indri is slick but very

[15:14] Techrights-sec2 clunky and awkward if one has several concurrent activities.

[15:14] schestowitz-TR I don't want to open TB in the daytime or I can end up burning one hour catching up there. I will check later for workarounds, but things worked better for me in the enigmail days.

[15:29] Techrights-sec2 Yes, Enigmail was much better.

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● Oct 06

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● Oct 06

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