A random thread for small computing things that don't really warrant a thread of their own

[CAMRAMan]

Oi, Virgin Media: Setting a password limit of 8-10 characters and not allowing special characters does not a very secure system make.

[woollypigs]

Prolly the best place for it since it mixes hacking, GPS and think into the future a bit about how to code for this issue -  https://news.sky.com/story/a-maritime-mystery-what-has-been-causing-ships-to-sail-in-circles-11999049

[T42]

The French StopCovid app drank most of my phone charge in 24 hours, with the phone lying on the desk the whole time.  So of course I can disable it when I'm at home, but I then need to remember to turn it on when I go out. POS.

[SoreTween]

Tell me, is it me being dumb?

I have new Devolo powerline doodads, two wifi for the remote locations and a home unit.  In the configuration interface for the remote units there are separate and distinct sections for LAN and for WiFi.  One of the LAN options I would like to use is to fix the IP address into the range I reserve for infrastructure & networking devices.  So I disable DHCP, set the parameters and apply.  All good except that none of the WiFi clients can now get an IP address.  Re-enable DHCP in LAN and WiFi clients can get an IP.  That to me seems dumb.

[hellymedic]

Birthday boy D has grown out of being a Fruity fanboy, after about 30 years.

[Kim]

Tell me, is it me being dumb?

I have new Devolo powerline doodads, two wifi for the remote locations and a home unit.  In the configuration interface for the remote units there are separate and distinct sections for LAN and for WiFi.  One of the LAN options I would like to use is to fix the IP address into the range I reserve for infrastructure & networking devices.  So I disable DHCP, set the parameters and apply.  All good except that none of the WiFi clients can now get an IP address.  Re-enable DHCP in LAN and WiFi clients can get an IP.  That to me seems dumb.

Is it being a NAT router (and DHCP server), rather than a bridge?

[philip]

$ telnet mapscii.me

Arrow keys to move, a/z to zoom, or use the mouse.

[grams]

$ telnet mapscii.me

Arrow keys to move, a/z to zoom, or use the mouse.

Nice idea, but it says we still have a local Chinese when everyone knows it's a Cat Cafe now. They need to tear it up and start again.

(Though seriously, how long has TTY had mouse and scroll wheel support? And jeff_goldblum_jurassic_park_speech.gif)

[pcolbeck]

Tell me, is it me being dumb?

I have new Devolo powerline doodads, two wifi for the remote locations and a home unit.  In the configuration interface for the remote units there are separate and distinct sections for LAN and for WiFi.  One of the LAN options I would like to use is to fix the IP address into the range I reserve for infrastructure & networking devices.  So I disable DHCP, set the parameters and apply.  All good except that none of the WiFi clients can now get an IP address.  Re-enable DHCP in LAN and WiFi clients can get an IP.  That to me seems dumb.

Your not being dumb. A power-line Ethernet adaptor even with WiFi should be a layer2 device so it shouldn't matter what you set its IP address to anything connected to it should still be able to DHCP.  Of course sometimes logic doesn't come into it with firmware sometimes it just does strange things and you can never find out why unless you have and can read the source code.

Why not leave it all on DHCP and statically reserve IP addresses for the adaptor on your DHCP server ?

[Kim]

$ telnet mapscii.me

Arrow keys to move, a/z to zoom, or use the mouse.

A thing of beauty and a joy forever.  It's like I just upgraded to the latest MovieOS.  Or at least the latest MovieOS from 1992 or so.

Speaking of 1992 hacker films, would this thing work on a (multi-line, in order to be useful) braille terminal?

[philip]

[Speaking of 1992 hacker films, would this thing work on a (multi-line, in order to be useful) braille terminal?

I've never seen such a thing, but the source https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii describes it as "a Braille & ASCII world map renderer".

[Kim]

They're astronomically expensive, being intricate electromechanical devices that sell in small volume.  A single row of a couple of dozen characters is typical, but multi-line ones do exist, and there are clever people in Brizzle working towards bringing the cost down.

[Gattopardo]

Took a toshiba l200 laptop apart to clean the insides and also replace the thermal pastes.  Had to order some pad material from RS and that took ages and I then got side tracked... so come to put it together today and can't find any of the screws.  Can not remember what I did with them.  But have found a HP dv4000 laptop and going to strip that and hopefully transfer the screws across.  That was a waste of a few hours.

[CarlF]

Tell me, is it me being dumb?

[snip]

Your not being dumb.

[snip]

Why not leave it all on DHCP and statically reserve IP addresses for the adaptor on your DHCP server ?

^^^ This ^^^

Friends don’t let friends hard code IP addresses.

[TheLurker]

...can't find any of the screws.

* TheLurker Hands G. an old, virtual, 35mm film canister for future use. 

[ScumOfTheRoad]

Tell me, is it me being dumb?

[snip]

Your not being dumb.

[snip]

Why not leave it all on DHCP and statically reserve IP addresses for the adaptor on your DHCP server ?

^^^ This ^^^

Friends don’t let friends hard code IP addresses.

I build HPC clusters for a living. thats how you do it - a DHCP server hands out addresses for each network. But you associate the MAC address of a server with an IP address - hopefully in some sort of meaningful scheme.
You COULD allocate addresses at random but if you have 80 servers in a rack you want some sort of scheme.

Also you can arrange for each server to be connected to a known port in a switch - so when you power them up you do an snmpwalk of the switch and you know what MAC address is what.  Or you can read barcode labels.

Sorry if I'm sounding ranty. Need more coffee.

[SoreTween]

Is it being a NAT router (and DHCP server), rather than a bridge?

I think, and I'm not exactly red hot on this stuff, it was being a bridge.  I base that upon the observation that the clients mac addresses were listed in my routers DHCP client list and as internet traffic sessions in their own right.

Your not being dumb. A power-line Ethernet adaptor even with WiFi should be a layer2 device so it shouldn't matter what you set its IP address to anything connected to it should still be able to DHCP.  Of course sometimes logic doesn't come into it with firmware sometimes it just does strange things and you can never find out why unless you have and can read the source code.

Why not leave it all on DHCP and statically reserve IP addresses for the adaptor on your DHCP server ?

Tried that too. It worked in that the end points accepted the non-pool assignment and clients got pool addresses but it was very, very flakey.  I tried 4 clients, a pi and an elderly Kobo slab could get IP assignments but actual traffic was rare.  Big river slab and my phone - just an endless cycle of 'connecting...'.

As mentioned in another thread (I'd forgotten about this post) Devolo support confirmed my desired usage was hopeless so they went back.  Ideally (for niceness of solution but not for wallet) I'd just have a trunk bridge over powerline and stick a DrayTek AP out there but that requires VLAN support.  There's one powerline vendor in Trumpistan that supports VLANs but none of the players in the UK do. OK, I didn't check them all but I emailed TP-Link, TrendNET and Netgear plus found the specific question online for D-Link.  They're all 802.3ab.

I have a much cheaper Asus pair waiting to be set up, the 2nd remote end point can wait.  Interesingly, you can read the source code for Asus gear.  And I do mean you.  While I'm sure I could reach each line and understand what that line is doing there's no hope of me being able to grok the bigger picture.

ETA: Found it, Nexuslink is the vendor that supports 802.1q and does so despite being only 802.3ab not ac.

[Gattopardo]

...can't find any of the screws.

* TheLurker Hands G. an old, virtual, 35mm film canister for future use. 

Your name is very apt in this case

We could discuss that digital photography downsides....and the lack of film canisters is one of them.

I thought that I put the screws in a bag or pot with the bag the computer was in.  But can't find where the bag/pot is.

EDIT: Also missing my dumb battery charger and ipod too.

[Salvatore]

We could discuss that digital photography downsides....and the lack of film canisters is one of them.

There's more availability of canisters than of film

[Salvatore]

I think my (fully backed up, before you ask) desktop Linux PC is on its way out. When I boot it, the fan sounds for about 10 seconds then stops before it tries again, and it repeats numerous times before eventually the fan goes VERY LOUD - this can only be stopped by unplugging. Eventually it boots more or less OK (I have to set the date each time I boot), and runs reliably all day. Perhaps I should leave it running permanently for the time being.

I bought it 2nd hand,  and if I google the model number returned by a sudo lshw it gives a date of 2007, which matches the date of the BIOS firmware.

Perhaps it's time for a replacement.

[Gattopardo]

I think my (fully backed up, before you ask) desktop Linux PC is on its way out. When I boot it, the fan sounds for about 10 seconds then stops before it tries again, and it repeats numerous times before eventually the fan goes VERY LOUD - this can only be stopped by unplugging. Eventually it boots more or less OK (I have to set the date each time I boot), and runs reliably all day. Perhaps I should leave it running permanently for the time being.

I bought it 2nd hand,  and if I google the model number returned by a sudo lshw it gives a date of 2007, which matches the date of the BIOS firmware.

Perhaps it's time for a replacement.

What spec is it?

[CarlF]

Tell me, is it me being dumb?

[snip]

Your not being dumb.

[snip]

Why not leave it all on DHCP and statically reserve IP addresses for the adaptor on your DHCP server ?

^^^ This ^^^

Friends don’t let friends hard code IP addresses.

I build HPC clusters for a living. thats how you do it - a DHCP server hands out addresses for each network. But you associate the MAC address of a server with an IP address - hopefully in some sort of meaningful scheme.
You COULD allocate addresses at random but if you have 80 servers in a rack you want some sort of scheme.

Also you can arrange for each server to be connected to a known port in a switch - so when you power them up you do an snmpwalk of the switch and you know what MAC address is what.  Or you can read barcode labels.

Sorry if I'm sounding ranty. Need more coffee.

Yes, exactly, you do it on the dhcp server, not by hard coding it on the device itself

[DaveJ]

I think my (fully backed up, before you ask) desktop Linux PC is on its way out. When I boot it, the fan sounds for about 10 seconds then stops before it tries again, and it repeats numerous times before eventually the fan goes VERY LOUD - this can only be stopped by unplugging. Eventually it boots more or less OK (I have to set the date each time I boot), and runs reliably all day. Perhaps I should leave it running permanently for the time being.

I bought it 2nd hand,  and if I google the model number returned by a sudo lshw it gives a date of 2007, which matches the date of the BIOS firmware.

Perhaps it's time for a replacement.

Resetting the date is normally the coin cell battery, fairly common on machines getting towards 10 years old.  Whether thats what is causing the other issues.... its possible, if the machine needs some specific settings in the BIOS, and they are getting lost.

Has the machine been disconnected from the power recently?  Thats when issues with the BIOS settings that are normally preserved by the coin cell battery surface.

[CAMRAMan]

Wizzair: your website is generally shite, but the app has been OK. However, when I went to check in using it today, the date of birth field had been set to 1/1/1800. If you think I am scrolling through 200+ years of months to get to get to the right one, you can go and bollocks. No manual input available...

[Salvatore]

I think my (fully backed up, before you ask) desktop Linux PC is on its way out. When I boot it, the fan sounds for about 10 seconds then stops before it tries again, and it repeats numerous times before eventually the fan goes VERY LOUD - this can only be stopped by unplugging. Eventually it boots more or less OK (I have to set the date each time I boot), and runs reliably all day. Perhaps I should leave it running permanently for the time being.

I bought it 2nd hand,  and if I google the model number returned by a sudo lshw it gives a date of 2007, which matches the date of the BIOS firmware.

Perhaps it's time for a replacement.

Resetting the date is normally the coin cell battery, fairly common on machines getting towards 10 years old.  Whether thats what is causing the other issues.... its possible, if the machine needs some specific settings in the BIOS, and they are getting lost.

Has the machine been disconnected from the power recently?  Thats when issues with the BIOS settings that are normally preserved by the coin cell battery surface.

I'm pretty sure the date resetting thing is a red herring.