If you are reading this, it means the Duffercast has, to everyone’s astonishment, managed to publish another episode! Rejoice!

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Series 4 Episode 10 – In this episode, Mark chats about his experiences with Elementary OS, he also speaks about the Kilkishen coding club which has had its second class, Wayne speaks about installing OSTicket, the new Raspberry Pi TV hat, Sonoj Festival, Ubuntu Server 18.04 quirks, more amazing under the hood tips and an Irish saying in this fortnights episode, have a listen…
00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 4 Episode 10 of the Binary Times. Bristol is bright and sunny, and Mark isn’t sure what time zone he’s in any more. At least the day is a good day to be alive in.
01:16 Wayne asks Mark what he’s been up to for the last two weeks, and Mark tells us. First he tells us that he’s sporting his new sweatshirt from Gabor and co at Hello Tux and loving it. He goes on to tell us that he has installed Elementary OS and he’s really impressed (the release notes for Elementary OS 5 Juno can be found here). Mark notes the Libre Office suite isn’t installed by default so the first thing he does is install it. Mark calls out Elementary’s coding editor and the file manager for special mention. He goes on to say that after first impressions he would even consider using it on laptops and for the Coding Club. Mark then talks a bit further about the Coding Club.
09:12 Mark asks Wayne what he’s been at. Wayne tells us he’s been going bonkers with Linux the last two weeks he’s been doing so many things. He first mentions the second annual Sonoj Convention that’s on right now. What he really likes is the fact that it can be streamed live and downloaded later.
12:49 The next thing Wayne chats about is the Raspberry Pi TV hat. This opens all kinds of opportunities for working with TV streams. Mark tells us that he recently got a POE hat but is unsure of its utility, while Wayne mentions that you can get a GPIO extender. Wayne lets us know that there are tutorials available already for the Raspberry Pi TV hat.
17:35 Wayne and Mook talk about the Ubuntu user statistics.

22:58 Wayne tells us a bit of a convulted story about KVMs, 16.04, 18.04 and OS-Ticket. Please find the following as notes to get osticket working on Ubuntu 18.04:
OSTicket setup on 18.04
The php packages require the universe repositories, this can be enabled (know this is the universal repository and not maintained by Canonical)thus:
sudo add-apt-repository universe
You can get OSTicket from github
You can get Mariadb 10.3 from here.
You need to link the osticket.conf to nginx’s default site using this command:
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/conf.d/osticket.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default.
A fix for the ‘Valid CRSF toke issue’ can be found here.
A fix for the ajax white box issue can be found here.
Untested WHITE BOX issue fixes can be found here, here and here.
27:04 Wayne tried to get Office 365 working with Thunderbird without success. Speaking of failures, Mark mentions that he recently upgraded his Ubuntu Touch phone but the upgrade has left his phone fairly unresponsive and unusable unfortunately. Wayne brings the chat back to OSTicket and why he wants to use it and mentions Zim as an alternative. The guys talk about using OSTicket, documentation and retirement.
33:47 Wayne tells us he bravely did a do-release upgrade to his 16.04 box over SSH and the guys discuss all the new changes to 18.04.
39:20 Under The Hood – Mark tells us that there are GUI frontends for systemd. These include systemdgenie, systemd-kcm (superceded by systemdgenie), systemd system manager and systemd manager, as well as cockpit. Mark found this out with the help of Linux Magazine!
Wayne’s first under the hood is a vim tip – Switching case of characters – Press “~” – if you keep pressing “~” it will switch case one character at a time. See this article for more. He goes on to say using the “.” repeats commands. Wayne goes on to tell us to create a simple webpage for the current working directory over port 8000, use this command:
Python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Robert wrote in to inform us that this module seems to come standard in any installation of Python 2 but something to be aware of is that in many distros, the "python" command is symlinked to Python 3. Since Python 3 doesn't include this module in its standard library, you need to run "python2 -m SimpleHTTPServer" to use it.
46:06 Irish saying of the podcast - "Faigh do chóta agus cuir ort é" Get your coat and put it on!

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Series 4 Episode 9 – In this episode, Mark chats about issues he is having with SimpleScan, Wayne talks more about Linux audio, upgrades to Nextcloud 14.0.3, cat5e cable lengths, Humble Bundle offerings, new sweatshirts, more amazing under the hood tips and an Irish saying in this fortnights episode, have a listen…
00:25 Wayne welcomes us to Series 4 Episode 9 on this, the 13th October, 2018. It’s beautiful, windy and cool in Bristol, and Mark tells us that he survived Storm Callum to tell the tale. Mark tells us that Extreme Weather can Extreme off for itself.
02:10 Wayne asks Mark what he’s been up to and Mark tells us. Paper work has a tendency to boggle Mark’s mind. Aside from that, Mark tells us to watch Mr.Robot Series 3. He also relates a cautionary tale regarding his use of simple-scan and not understanding the process that goes into scanning large amounts of documents. Mark tells us to festina lente, or hasten slowly.
10:43 Mark asks Wayne what he’s been up to. Wayne tells us that he’s continuing with his journey’s through Linux audio; he’s been using and donated to the zyn-fusion application, continuing to enjoy using the <ahref=”https://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/Applications:Carla”>Carla plugin and he’s been in contact with Unfa about an Ardour beginner’s course, and Unfa is waiting for Ardour 6. Wayne is interested to see what Ardour 6 will be like. He goes on to say that he has upgraded to Nextcloud 14.0.3 and so far so good, he’s happy with it, Nextcloud talk doesn’t rev up his fans as much, it’s bigger better faster stronger to paraphrase Daft Punk. Wayne is also impressed with the Nextcloud Security Scan checker. Mark and Wayne think that these features are important in staying secure.The guys agree that it’s important to reach for an A+.
20:55 This leads the guys to talk about network cables, minimum lengths of network cables, and spark gap erosion proof connections (IEC-60512-99-001 standard).
27:42 This leads the conversation onto the benefits of WiFi6.
32:10 Wayne brings the conversation around to the Head First Humble Bundle. Mark got the bundle and discusses his first impressions. Both Wayne and Mark think this head first style of learning may be a good thing. If you’re interested there’s only two days left, so get it now! Wayne and Mark go onto discuss the Make Electronics 2018 bundle. Both of them are unsure if they will get this bundle though. Mark mentions there is a FabLab in Limerick.
40:22 Wayne tells us about the new sweatshirts available from Hello Tux. Mark tells us he’s going to be wearing his Binary Times gear when they go to Freenode in a few weeks.
42:50 Wayne mentions a beginners guide to JACK that he found at the Libre Music Production website that’s worth a look for anyone interested in learning more about JACK.
43:50 Under the Hood. Mark’s Under the Hood is sudo apt remove [package-name] and sudo apt purge [package-name] to remove an application while leaving configuration files intact and to remove an application and all its associated files, respectively.
Wayne’s under the hood is about the memory split on the raspberry pi.
To access the memory split functionality, from the console type
raspi-config -> Advanced -> Memory Split

47:53 Irish saying of the podcast: “Cad atá tú a déanamh idir na fiacla” or What are you making between the teeth!
We hope you enjoy the podcast as much as we did making it!

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Series 4 Episode 8 – In this episode, we both speak about our attitudes to DRM, software as a service, Wayne does more digging around with Linux audio (especially Carla), more amazing under the hood tips and an Irish saying in this fortnights episode, have a listen…
00:24 Wayne Welcomes us to Season 4 Episode 8 from a sunny Bristol. Mark tells us that the fog is lifting and the skies are blue and all is calm in Kilkishen. Another Amazing Day for podcasting. The weather gets the guys talking about what activities are good to do in certain weather and how all this is related to Linux.
04:08 Wayne asks Mark what he’s been up to for the last two weeks. Mark tells us he’s been busy, and then goes on to talk about the International Day against DRM and what happened around the world for IDAD. The guys have a discussion around DRM which also takes in IoT devices, what people take stands on and the use and acceptance of proprietary software.
17:27 Mark brings the topic of conversation around to the LibreOffice Conference 2018 held in Tirana, Albania, from September the 25th – 28th. Mark talks about the programme and in particular the advantages Open Document Formats, Open Source and Open Standards.
20:29 Mark asks Wayne what he’s been up to, and it turns out that he’s been working on audio on Linux. Wayne tells us that he uses Ubuntu MATE 16.04 with the KXStudio plugins, in particular Cadence and Carla and goes on to tell us about the advantages of using these. Wayne goes on to tell us that he did come across the Sonoj Festival in Cologne in his search for documentation and they have created some great video tutorials (on audio!)
29:47 Mark asks Wayne if he has come across any good documentation for networking and systemd and goes on to ask the listeners if they have any advice on good documentation. He also asks the audience if they have any ideas on replacing feedburner.
33:33 Under the Hood: Wayne starts off with a tip on Thunderbird email client and that is to compact your folders on a regular basis.
Mark follows on from this to chat about what the Mozilla foundation is doing under the hood. Mark also asks if any of the audience has any links they could point him at in order to better help him know what is going on in terms of open IoT and SCADA. The lads discuss IoT. Wayne is ok with sitting in the dark if it means not using a cloud app, Mark gets all huggy and wants to embrace IoT. They finish off the conversation with more chat about how wonderful Nextcloud is.
48:03 Irish saying of the podcast “Gheobhaidh mé bosca nua sópa” or I will get a new box of soap. The guys thank their listeners, and we hope you enjoy it as much as they do making it.

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Series 4 Episode 7 – In this episode, Mark has been having trouble with his Pi-hole, a series of troublesome IT times in his office, Wayne has been upgrading routers, we speak about language and chickens, Matomo – the website analytical software, the EU copyright directive , more amazing under the hood tips and an Irish saying in this fortnights episode, have a listen…
00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 4, Episode 7 from a sunny, autumnal Bristol. He’s enjoying the weather, it’s good chicken weather! Mark greets us from an overcast, but calm Kilkishen. He fears that next week might be quite bad weather wise, watch this space, maybe retrospectively…
01:44 With the weather out of the way, Wayne asks Mark what he’s been up to in his Little Linux Land for the last fortnight. Mark tells us that he upgraded his pihole to version 4 and after adding some extra blocklists saw his blocked traffic go from ~3% to ~44%, which he puts down to snapchat. He goes on to tell us that both his pi-hole and his main desktop PC both stopped working last night, the reason for which he hasn’t figured out yet. Wayne reminds us that we’re talking about all good things about Linux. Mark blames nVidia for its sucky stupid proprietary drivers. This leads the guys to have a bit of a ‘production meeting’ mid podcast to discuss the advantages of being Irish and [ab]using the English language. All feedback on this production meeting welcome!

07:50 Wayne tells us that he has updated dd-wrt on all his routers. The flirtation with Microtik’s RouterOS is over after Ben, one of our contirbutor’s, mentioned an article focusing on MikroTik router vulnerabilities. Wayne thanks the DD-WRT community for all their hard work over the years. Wayne checks some info to ensure his reporting accuracy, and the lads joke about their recent efforts to improve the podcast.

10:41 Wayne tells us he also updated his Nextcloud instance. This leads to a discussion around how good Nextcloud is and also the new features available in Nextcloud 14.

16:40 Wayne tells us of the fun he’s had updating his servers to Ubuntu 18.04. Luckily he was prudent, he snapshotted his previous 16.04 server, and all is good. The guys discuss good sys admin practices, dabbling, and some meat and potatoes for good measure. Apologies to all the vegetarians out there!

19:12 Moving on from that, Wayne tells us that he upgraded his desktop to Ubuntu MATE 18.04. Wayne tells us he is using Lenovo’s Display Link and that Adnan Hodzic’s display link driver for Debian has proved immeasurably useful, thanks Adnan!

21:10 Wayne brings the conversation around to the latest Humble Bundles, ranging from UI/UX to Trivia to Smart homes / smart cities. The guys chat about a number of topics ranged around the ideas in these bundles.

29:50 In other stuff that Wayne has been doing, he’s discovered that Piwik has become Matomo. This leads to more conversation around privacy and more production meeting type discussions! Mark mentions the Miro Guide as another way to promote the podcast. Mark refers back to Squid’s point of providing information about open source technologies on proprietary platforms as a valid way to spread the free software message. It’s a tough one to crack. Welcome to lucky bag podcasting! The guys invite everyone listening to join in on providing their views.

35:50 Wayne talks Audio on Linux, specifically JACK, and some brilliant tutorials that he has come across explaining how to use JACK.

38:02 Mark follows up on the current state of the EU copyright Directive by telling us that the EU Parliament voted to adopt its position on digital copyright rules. Mark follows this with his own take on all this malarky, and the guys have a discussion around this.

43:05 Mark follows on from all this with a mention of the International Day against DRM Mark also mentions the Defective by Design’s DRM free guide to living.

47:00 Under the Hood – Mark’s Under the Hood is a quick one on how to do networking right on a Raspberry Pi and that is edit dhcpcd.conf and nothing else.

Wayne’s Under the Hood is to use the webpagetest.org website to test web page loading times.

48:25 Irish Saying of the Podcast – “Faoi mhóid bheith saor” – Sworn to be Free (ahem, apart from all the proprietary stuff, sorry!)

We hope you enjoyed the podcast as much as we did making it!

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Series 4 Episode 6 – In this episode, the binary times podcast welcomes Paul Clyne to the show, we speak about graphics card woes, Wayne talks about perceptions and first impressions, more amazing under the hood tips and an Aussie saying in this fortnights episode, have a listen…
00:24 Wayne introduces Series 4 Episode 6 of the Binary Times podcast from a slightly overcast but nice and mild Bristol. Mark joins us from an overcast, autumn definitely on the way, Kilkishen, while also introducing a new word “fantabalásach”, a mish mash of Irish/English meaning awfully great. While Wayne loves Autumn and Spring, Mark implores us to embrace all of life’s aspects. Wayne thinks this is weird.
01:19 Wayne asks Mark what he’s been up to for the last two weeks. Mark tells us he’s been busy with various things, one of those things being programming in Python (the book he’s forgotten the name of is Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python). He’s doing this along with Hugh, a regular attendee at the Ubuntu Hours in Ennis. He tells us that they are meeting up again next week to compare notes and is looking forward to that.
02:19 Mark goes on to tell us about some of his recent trials and tribulations with Steam and proprietary Nvidia drivers. He tells us first about Valve’s latest initiative to bring Window’s games to Linux via Steam Play and what needs to be done to enable Windows only games on Steam for Linux. To start you need to ensure you’re participating in the Beta, you can check this by clicking on Steam, Account and checking to see if Beta participation is “Steam Beta update”, if not click on the change button and choose Steam Beta Update from the drop down options. Once this is done (you’ll need to restart if Steam Beta Update wasn’t chosen), you need to click on Steam Play from the Steam Settings menu, and under advanced, check Enable Steam Play for all titles. All your windows games will now be available for install. Thanks to the Dublin Linux Group Telegram Channel for the tip. Mark goes on to tell us that games are freezing on him when he runs games, so he is planning on moving to the beta nvidia driver 396 provided by the graphics-drivers ppa, which Mark thinks may prove to provide exciting days ahead. Wayne offers the helpful advice that you can only fall over so many times before it becomes enough.
08:26 Wayne tells us that he’s had a few weeks where he’s finding it hard to look at the screen and so he hasn’t been doing an awful lot. He tells us about an insight he got from his manager’s reaction to Libre Office’s splash screen about the importance of software looking good to make people want to use it. Wayne goes on to talk about how he runs the servers for the Binary Times and after a call out to our Telegram Channel looking for decent log file analysis software, Maurizio informed us of an application called lnav. Wayne tried it out as a snap first, found problems due to the containerized nature of snaps, so he installed the statically linked binary available from the website. Wayne goes on to discuss the limitations that snaps bring with them. He follows this with some of the handier keystrokes available in lnav – d to skip forward 24 hours, shift d, o will go to the next and previous day. Wayne suggests reading the documentation available on the lnav website for further information. Wayne is impressed with lnav and thanks Maurizio for the tip.
16:48 Mark brings the conversation back to Libre Office and the recent blogpost on the busy month Libre Office has had last August. The guys discuss this and licensing issues with other proprietary office suites. Mark mentions the Register article about 1/5 of IT spending in Britain is going to Microsoft. Wayne and Mark applaud Microsoft’s business acumen.
21:02 Wayne introduces an interview that Mark did with Paul Clyne, a man who reclaims old disused PCs, refurbishes them and upgrades the operating system to Ubuntu MATE, before giving them away back into his community. An article about what he does can be found here. Well done Paul, keep up the great work!
Paul gives us our Aussie Saying of the podcast, which is “G’day, mate!”, which translates as “Good day to you friend”.
44:58 Under the Hood! Mark starts off with a simple one.To find out what the two characters mean at the start of the dpkg -l, type dpkg -l | head -3. Mark explains that head and tail are used to look at the start and end, respectively, of the output of a command.

48:04 Waynes under the hood is around GNS3, and it is a book on pfsense that he found which was produced by Netgate.
We hope you enjoyed the episode as much as we did making it!

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Series 4 Episode 5 – In this episode, the binary times podcast gets a favourable review, Mark has tried out various studio OS’s, Wayne is still hanging around in GNS3 and talks about Mikrotik routers, more Ubuntu MATE discussions , more amazing under the hood tips and an Irish saying in this fortnights episode, have a listen…
00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 4 Episode 5 from a wet and muggy Bristol. Mark tells us it’s a soft day in Kilkishen. Winter has finally arrived, fires and being lit, and the shop across the road from Mark has just installed an ice cream machine.
02:22 Wayne asks Mark what he’s been at in his linux world for the last two weeks. Mark mentions the recent review the guys received on Linux Links inspired Mark to improve his audio set up. At first, Mark decided to go all hardcore and install Slackware and design his own digital studio with the help of Slackermedia. This was against Wayne’s better judgement. Mark tells us it’s been a long time since he installed Slackware, and the last slackware derivative distro he installed was Turbolinux (he remembered incorrectly, the distro he installed was VectorLinux 5.8 and he has the discs to prove it)! Things haven’t changed much in the slackware world as LILO is still the bootloader and this and the amount of maunual setting up required prompted Mark to make an executive decision to drop Slackware for now and come back to it when he had more time, probably when he retires, though slackware might not be around then because of the 2038 bug. Mark installed Ubuntu Studio instead and concentrated on setting up his audio. Mark thanks the Ubuntu Studio development team for helping make all this possible.
08:10 Mark asks Wayne about his last two weeks with Linux. Wayne tells us that he has been spending more and more time with GNS3. He also tells us that he purchased a mikrotik router that comes with RouterOS. Wayne goes on to tell us that there is a Router OS image available for GNS3, with which he’s been playing around with and having some fun. He’s still struggling with whether he should be playing with pfSense or RouterOS, all comments and feedback welcome. Mark tells us that he’s waiting for his Turris Mox.
16:15 Wayne has been looking into the differences between CAT5e, CAT6 and CAT6A. Each cable type basically allows you to carry more information further. He used an article from kit-communications for his information.
20:45 Wayne tells us how he saw an ad for NordVPN on prime time TV. This leads to a discussion around privacy and how privacy concerns are becoming more mainstream.
24:02 Wayne tells us about how coinhive malware has infected Mikrotik routers. This leads to a discussion around routers and patching, and the conclusion comes from the article: patch early and patch often
28:00 Wayne tells us that he’s removed Kubuntu 18.04 from his Thinkpad X220 laptop and has returned to Ubuntu MATE 16.04. He’s sticking with Ubuntu MATE 16.04 until end of life because it’s so rock solid (you can check end of life by typing ubuntu-support-status at the command line). Wayne also mentions the linux links review as he will now endeavour to keep his pronouncements as accurate and up to date as possible. He was also really happy with the placing of the Binary Times in the Linux Links Linux Podcast Scene article.
33:47 Mark mentions that since upgrading to Kubuntu 18.04 he has noticed a problem with playing steam games in that they tend to crash more often. Since he’s talking about Steam he mentions the news that Valve seems to be working on tools to get Windows games working on Linux. This brings the conversation around to whether having proprietary applications on free platforms is a good idea, before Mark quickly mentions that the “Respects Your Freedom” certification programme continues to grow. He also mentions that the FSF is looking for a Business Operations Manager. Wayne bought his X220 in the belief that libreboot would some day be available for it. Mark goes on to mention an article they both read on how open source has failed and how free and open source software is being used to concentrate wealth through corporations use of it and abuse of software patents and copyright law. Mark finishes this piece with a mention of Defective by Design’s IDAD 2018 – A Day Without DRM, coming up on 18 September 2018.
40:03 This podcast is dedicated to celebrating Debian turning 25 !
40:50 Under the Hood: Wayne harps back to Ubuntu MATE for his Under the Hood. To reclaim some desktop realestate, he removed the word ‘menu’ from the top bar and also removed the date. He did this by opening a terminal and typing the following:
gsettings set com.solus-project.brisk-menu label-visible false.
To remove the date, right click on the time, then click preferences, then uncheck ‘show the date’.
Mark’s starts his Under the Hood with something that is not an under the hood but an interesting read: Neal Stephenson’s “In the Beginning was the Command Line”. His Under the Hood is from Debian’s manual: “commands for reading documentation”. The three commands he gives are:
man [section-number] subject – a crucial command for helping you to learn how to use it and other Linux commands.
info [subject] – provides hypertext like documentation in that you can jump around the documentation by following links in the text.
help [subject] – provides on-line help about bash’s built in commands.
47:57 Irish Saying of the Podcast: Saol fada chugat, Debian, or long life to you, Debian.
We hope you enjoyed this episode as much as we did making it!

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