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The Doctor

@ drwho @beehaw.org

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0
Comments
391
Joined
3 yr. ago

Living 20 minutes into the future. Eccentric weirdo. Virtual Adept. Time traveler. Thelemite. Technomage. Hacker on main. APT 3319. Not human. 30% software and implants. H+ - 0.4 on the Berram-7 scale. Furry adjacent. Pan/poly. Burnout.

I try to post as sincerely as possible.

  • As a linux user, do you know about/use openwrt?

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  • Just the capacity for network monitoring for troubleshooting makes it worthwhile. Not being able to SSH into Netgear's firmware, let alone having access to tcpdump is an advantage right there.

  • As a linux user, do you know about/use openwrt?

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  • If you mean a DSL modem or cable DOCSIS, I don't think those are easily replaceable. But you can definitely put an OpenWRT device right behind it and use that. It's pretty straightforward (plug in the upstream side, wait for it to get an address, done).

    As for how much you need to know... okay. That's a tricky question because, the most you mess with OpenWRT, the more some stuff becomes automatic, and that makes it easy to forget things. That's not on you, that's on me.

    That said, thinking about it a little, the defaults are pretty workable right after installation. You'll have to set an admin password on the OpenWRT box (it nags you until you do these days), which should be familiar. Turning up wifi is a little tricky at first. I would recommend reading through the quickstart guide once or twice before digging into OpenWRT configuration because it lays out all of the basics that you need to get going. It's about as well written and useful as the manuals for access points were way back when.

    One thing I would recommend is, if you build an OpenWRT box, setting it up before you plug it in and use it as your network gateway. It's much easier to poke at it without having "When is my network going to come back up?" rattling around in the back of your mind.

  • As a linux user, do you know about/use openwrt?

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  • Yes, I run my network infrastructure on it (three access points (one of them the network gateway) and an Ethernet-to-wifi bridge).

  • I'm deGoogling. What's my new Podcast app?

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  • How to make Ly work on gentoo linux

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  • Linux equivalent of Win+Ctrl+Shift+B? (Restart graphics driver)

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  • It's turned off by default in a lot of distros these days but it can be turned back on. It used to be that editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf was recommended but because file inclusions are a thing these days, it makes more sense to create a new file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/enable-killing-xserver.conf:

     
        
Section "ServerFlags"
        Option "DontZap" "false"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier                       "Keyboard Defaults"
        MatchIsKeyboard        "yes"
        Option                           "XkbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
EndSection

    Then restart the X server (which, these days, is pretty much a reboot). Or, going through the x.org documentation archives, it looks like you could dispense with the config files and run setxkbmap -option "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp" in a terminal session and that'll do the same thing.

  • Any news on Cinnamon DE?

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  • Which one do you prefer? htop, btop or top?

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  • htop is my go-to these days. It tells me what I need to know, and it's just nice to look at.

  • paketkoll - Check installed distro files for changes (much faster than paccheck)

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  • Damn, that's impressive.

  • paketkoll - Check installed distro files for changes (much faster than paccheck)

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  • Is it faster than running pacman -Qkk packagename?

  • Alacritty, Konsole, or something else? Which terminal emulator do you recommend?

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  • I use Gnome Terminal and Mate Terminal on my laptop. Nothing fancy, they just work. They do what I need (which is run a shell), they support tabs, and transparency is just nice to have. I also run Tilda because once in a while I need to enter a quick command without changing desktops.

  • Recommendations for simple file hosting and sync

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  • I use Syncthing for this. I have a few Linux boxes at home (a pair of servers and a laptop), a Macbook, and two Android devices (phone and tablet) that are all hooked together with a shared directory. Also, even though you don't have to have them, I set up Syncthing Discovery and Relay servers on one of my public boxen to help the community out.

  • [Q] Terminal navigation and Editors

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  • Ouch ! A lot of people actually tend to suggest that also, while I only tried vim once, I just uninstalled it after I had to google “how to exit vim” :| ! It was way to much of a hassle to just edit text :/. But as I read above, and as you said, just learning the basic stuff is enough to begin to like it and get comfortable.

    vi and vim take a little getting used to. There's no shame in needing a cheatsheet; I used one when I was getting used to it (and the first time I had to use it in an emergency, I was looking up what I needed pretty much every minute). This looks like it might have something useful.

    Ultimately, what got me used to vi was using it every day to write blog entries (because, at the time, it was still hand-crafted HTML). I just had to use it a little every day.

    I think it would be helpful if you used vi a little bit to get used to how it feels. It couldn't hurt to use Micro for a week, also, for the same reason. There's no rush, there's no deadline, give yourself a week of each to play around with them.

    As for updating the keybindings, I don't think it's a good idea, because the minute you find yourself on a system that doesn't have them installed you're back to square one. And, if you're in the middle of fixing something you probably won't have time to import them (and you may not even be able to, depending on what's wrong).

    ..doesn't nano still have the menu bar at the bottom by default? I know pico (its predecessor) used to.

  • [Q] Terminal navigation and Editors

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  • Every text editor has a learning curve. It looks like the terminal shortcuts you've been learning were bleeding over into nano. That's not a nano problem, that's just where you're at on the learning curve right now. You probably would have made the same trip-ups in another text editor for the same reason. Even DOS' EDIT.COM had a learning curve back in the day.

    I don't want to get into a text editor flame war here. Suffice it to say that trying lots of different text editors is a good way to see what works and doesn't work for you. If it helps, I used pico as my primary editor for a good fifteen years, until I forced myself to learn vi just because I wanted to branch out a little.

    I don't think you have to learn every last little thing about a text editor, just what you normally do: Move the cursor around, enter text, delete text, search, replace. Don't worry about learning everything, learn what you need as you need it.

    As for universal, I'm afraid that it's probably going to be vi and its descendants. It's been included in many UNIXes and UNIX-alikes for decades (it's even built into busybox) for a reason: It's small, lean, mean, and if you absolutely, positively have to rescue a broken box, it's always there in /bin.

  • Why is SYSRQ Disabled on most consumer distributions?

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  • Especially if you're prone to accidentally hitting SysReq instead of PrintSc by accident.

  • How can i rsync over my network without using ssh?

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  • There's a somewhat more secure way to go about it.

    A backup script on the host in question runs periodically as root and makes a local copy of the files owned by the backup user. The central host then makes a backup of the not-root-owned files on the host in question. It adds two extra steps but you don't have to set up SSH access for the root account.

  • The Land Before Linux: Let's talk about the Unix desktops – It takes more than open source, it takes open standards and consensus

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  • The folks who are going to use Linux for their desktops already are. The folks who never were, never have.

  • tell me your experience using zfs/btrfs

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  • They do. Otherwise they run like Oracle when auditd is configured and running.

  • tell me your experience using zfs/btrfs

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  • Just out of curiosity, did you RAID-1 the metadata as well?