The Binary Times – Series 1 Episode 9

Series 1 Episode 9 – A variey of topics discussed this fortnight, including Intel AMT vulnerability, Humble Bundle offerings, spreading the good word of Linux, more Midnight Commander , Command Line Linux tools and another epic Irish saying, have a listen.
00:24 Intro, only some weather and nail gazing. Mark is calling from the tech hub of Coolick, Killarney. Pick up the number of blips due to wireless tech and you could win a NICE biscuit.
01:52 Mark’s been trying to get everything working (successfully) in his mobile studio and has also come to the conclusion that he needs to spend some time tweaking his KDE Neon set up.
02:52 Wayne’s installed Ubuntu Mate on his CEO’s Toshiba Satellite and a HP Mini 210. Wayne’ll report back on this linux noob’s experiences.
12:45 Wayne extolls the virtues of Gumtree as compared to other trading sites.

14:45 Wayne’s extolling the virtues of Gumtree because he was able to pick up a roll of Kortex CAT5e for £15! He’s hoping to do some outdoor Raspberry Pi CCTV IP stuff with it.
19:12 Wayne’s made a template in Ardour for the podcast recordings!
20:09 Wayne talks about his servers’ setups, isolation, port setup and nginx reverse proxy servers.
24:46 Wayne talks about the Intel AMT vulnerability. Mark accepts the fact that security vulnerabilities will always exist because creators create and crackers crack. The intel software checker is not available for linux yet but apparently is on the way
NOTE: for those concerned an AMT status checker is available for linux, courtesy of Matthew Garrett.
31:58 Mark mentions the Humble Indie Bundle 18 and the Humble Book Bundle Make:Essentials.
35:38 Under the Hood:
Mark talks about the following:
apropos [insert keyword to search for], a command to search man pages for the provided keyword and to display the results on screen.
example being:
apropos audio | grep pulse
He mentions the following:
find
type
which
locate
slocate
ls
man apropos
pavucontrol

41:52 Wayne has a midnight commander (mc) tips section:
Ctrl + Space – on any directory shows the directory size opposite
Ctrl + – Opens up the bookmarks window, good for speedy access to directories
Alt + , – switch mc’s layout from left-right to top-bottom. Useful for operating on files with long names.
Here’s the link where Wayne is getting (some of) his tips from.
Dog’s eager for a walk help wind up this episode, but not before Wayne presents the Irish Saying of the fortnight: “Nil aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin” – There’s no fireplace like your own fireplace (ie. there’s no place like home).

The Binary Times – Series 1 Episode 8

Series 1 Episode 8 – A variey of topics discussed this fortnight, including OpenZFS intro from Wayne, Mark is trying out Linux Mint , Command Line Linux tools and another epic Irish saying, have a listen.
00:24 Intro, changing weather! Wayne and Mark talk about false starts.
01:26 Mark’s not been up to a whole lot apart from a course, he’s still trying out Linux Mint but is still not sure if he wants to switch, while also mulling over switching out Unity for KDE. He’s also set up another VM and put squid on it, as well as wishing he kept better notes.
04:01 Wayne has been fixing full boot partitions on VMs. Extending boot partitions isn’t the way to go, here’s how he fixed it:
uname -r (to find the currently installed kernel)
dpkg –list ‘linux-image*’ | grep ^ii (list all installed kernels)
sudo apt-get remove linux-image-[insert kernel version you want to remove] (remove unused kernel version)
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo update-grub
Taken from What is the safest way to clean up the boot partition
09:24 Wayne goes on to tell us about an article he read on omgubuntu relating how Firefox multiprocess is disabled on Ubuntu by default. This is because the Ubuntu modifications add-on that comes pre-bundled with the browser is not yet compatible with it. Enabling This Makes Firefox More Responsive On Ubuntu
13:03 Are we ready for more of what has Wayne been doing? Wayne rattles through some apt commands and tells us about the advantages of using apt over apt-get. Here are the commands:
sudo apt install (adds progress bar)
apt depends firefox (list all dependencies for firefox)
sudo apt remove
sudo apt purge (removes config files as well as program files)
sudo apt autoremove (remove old unused kernels – SSD space saving)
apt show firefox (show information about the application)
apt search mc (search for all instances of mc)
apt –help (view all apt commands)
17:02 Mark talks about the Zero Phone, a $50 smartphone made using the pi zero and arduino, and how it will be available soon on crowdsupply.
21:54 Wayne tells us about his journey with ZFS. ZFS learning links can be found as follows:
Ubuntu Wiki on ZFS
Open-ZFS Bootcamp
ZFS 101
Becoming a ZFS Ninja Part 1
a friendly guide for building ZFS based SAN/NAS solutions
36:26 The conversation moves from filesystems onto backups. Wayne’s got a good onsite backup regime in place, Mark blames his “office tidy up” for the lack of his.
40:17 Wayne’s concerned he didn’t do ZFS the justice it deserves and recommends we watch the youtube video links, while Mark reckons he’ll definitely check them out. We’ll find out next week… Meanwhile, thank you Sun for ZFS!
43:38 Under the Hood – Mark kicks off under the hood with screenfetch, a Bash screenshot information tool. The coolest thing about screenfetch is the ascii art logo (and all the other useful information it provides).
45:34 In terms of “serious command line stuff”, check this out (for a silly example):
(cd /tmp && ls > list.txt && mv list.txt ~)
48:05 Wayne tells us about various forms of diff and vimdiff:
diff is useful for finding the difference between config and text files (i.e between config.txt and config.orig) e.g.:
diff config.txt config.orig
diff -u adds modification dates and times, unified output, e.g.:
diff -u config config.orig
vimdiff shows both files opened in vim side by side with differences highlighted – VERY COOL!
vimdiff config config.orig
e.g. seq 1 7 f1.txt && seq 1 9 f2.txt && vimdiff f1.txt f2.txt
49:40 Mark is so happy that these podcasts are made!
50:27 Mark wants to briefly mention the Humble Very Positive Bundle before the Irish saying.
51:49 Have we used Conas atá tú yet? Nílim ró olc in aon chor – Im not too bad at all

The Binary Times – Series 1 Episode 7

Series 1 Episode 7 – A variey of topics discussed this fortnight, including various distros from Mark, more ssh tips from Wayne, Raspberry Pi, Command Line Linux tools, have a listen.
00:24 Intro, more sunny weather, Wayne and Mark talk about the relativity of time.
01:43 Mark’s been tidying his office, bought an Asus 24″ Gaming monitor to complete his dual monitor setup and has been trying out different distros:
Open Suse Leap 42.2, a nice responsive desktop, but encountered dependancy problems once packman repositories were enabled.
Netrunner, a run everything out of the box using KDE and Debian experience, but found to be slow and unpleasant.
Downloaded Zephyr but didn’t do anything with it. Please note that as of 19/04/2017, Zephyr has been discontinued and is now Crowz.
Deepin, a Debian unstable based distro with a really nice desktop experience based on a dock and hot corners / sides.
Linux Mint, a fantastic out of the box experience where everything works nicely. Mark’s concerns around Mint’s security strategy make him wonder if it is a good idea to use it as a daily driver.
06:48 This leads into a discussion around Ubuntu updates.
09:00 Mark continues his gripe against Gnome 3 and mentions the OMG Ubuntu article petitioning Mark Shuttleworth to make Plasma Ubuntu’s Next Desktop. He plans to sign it.
10:08 Mark goes on to mention the TuxDigital video on Why Ubuntu 18.04 Should Use KDE Plasma Instead of GNOME while Wayne shockingly admits he’s not a KDE fan because he’s into light DEs (eg. MATE) and the terminal.
13:07 Wayne suggests we should both try Gnome 3 in a VM, then realises that you have to install on hardware to get a real feel. Mark says that’s what he did with KDE Neon and tells us that Dolphin is the best file manager bar none.
14:41 Mark mentions TuxDigital is a channel he hadn’t heard of before and intends to spend more time there. Wayne’s looking forward to that!
15:17 Wayne describes the wonderful world of ssh and the authentication errors he has to put up with when setting up systems. His way around it is to type the following:
ssh -o PubkeyAthentication=no pi@[insert ip address of pi]
19:03 Wayne goes on to say that he’s continuing his messing around with raspberry pi, leds, buttons and pull down resistors and gives a shout out to the CamJam Edukit worksheets.
19:45 Wayne talks about ssh, scp and Gigolo. To recursively copy directories with scp, use the following command:
scp -r user@your.server.example.com:/path/to/foo /home/user/Desktop/
21:56 Wayne talks about his experience of upgrading his Samsung Galaxy S3 from cyanogen mod to LineageOS. It wasn’t good.
27:10 Mark tells us his ubuntu phone was ideal for him and he wonders what to do with it and his BQ M10 tablet. For now he’ll just wait and see what progress yunit and the UBports guys make. This leads onto a discussion on the benefits of open hardware and firmware and Mark calling for more movies like the Fast and Furious 8 to create awareness around poorly implemented proprietary firmware, governments legislating against same and a disbandment of the WTO!

33:48 Wayne talks about something that happened a few months ago, FOSSDEM and the videos of the presentations. Mark mentions a keynote given by Aaron Siego back in 2015 at OSC in which he talks about the importance of making great free software.
36:32 This turns the conversation around to how software developers get paid making free software. Elementary OS’ App center is mentioned as a method for getting paid, and Mark points out that most kernel developers are professional software developers in paid employment. Mark also tells us he is an associate member of the FSF, donates to Blender, is a lapsed supporter of KDE and uses Kolabnow as his email provider. He believes the money is in the services around the software rather than the software itself. Food for thought.
42:03 Under the Hood – Wayne mentions the following:
Ctrl+U – to delete from the position of the cursor to the beginning of the line.
Ctrl+R – Recursive search, to clear the result from Ctrl+R use Ctrl+G
Mark tells us about a really cool command that he’s forgotten but has something to do with ps -ea |grep [app that’s causing problems] to find the pid and kill [pid]. His notebook is buried somewhere in the office.
Use id to show the active user id and last to show the last logins on the system
Mark mentions who and Wayne trumps him with w. w tells Mark he’s idling…
48:07 Irish Saying for this Podcast: Go n-éirí an bóthar leat (May the road rise with you)!

The Binary Times – Series 1 Episode 6

Series 1 Episode 6 – A variey of topics discussed this fortnight, including Ubuntu latest news, mini greenhouse, Raspberry Pi, Command Line Linux tools, have a listen.
00:25 Intro, and yet again the guys would prefer to be outside enjoying the good weather.
01:17 Mark’s been busy and struggling to come to terms with Mark Shuttleworth’s announcement that Canonical are canning convergence and concentrating on the cloud and IOT, while Wayne’s upgraded to Nexcloud 11 to avail of the theming features and planted some herbs which are moistened using a Raspberry Pi water irrigation system that he found a tutorial for in The MagPi magazine.
09:24 Mark and Wayne talk about Canonical’s announcement and the repurcussions (unity 8 has already been forked). The conversation digresses to Vim when we discover that Mark bought a new Vim! Mug from Gamestop.
15:20 Wayne uses the opportunity to speak about Tom’s tip on Vim colour schemes called solarized.
16:33 Mark apologizes to listeners for the lack of show notes and ponders different methods of communications with them, all ideas to info@thebinarytimes.net welcome!
17:41 Mark goes back to speaking about the bombshell announcement that he just can’t get out of his head. This time he’s questioning the use of Gnome 3 as the default desktop for Ubuntu 18.04 and not the likes of KDE.
He also tells us that Martin Wimpress did an interview on the Ubuntu Podcast explaining Mate and Ubuntu Mate.
21:49 Wayne tells us about Pixel, the “Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight”.
25:58 Wayne talks about his inability to give up on Windows because of Music creation. He points us to Ge Wang’s Ted Talk on computer music for ways to use failed golf-improving hardware as a creator.
28:56 Under the Hood: Wayne starts the Under the Hood section while Mark scrambles to find something suitable. Alt-space, t to keep the current window on top. Mark can’t seem to get it to work in Unity, though he figures it out after the podcast. YMMV!
Mark suggests running gui programs from the terminal for troubleshooting purposes.
Wayne and Mark talk about ls type commands. lsblk, lspci -tv, lsusb -tv, lshw, lshw -c disk, lshw -short, lshw -sanitized all get mentioned, while Mark asks what is the dmesg option to show the time in a more readable format (dmesg -H).
Wayne tells us that inserting a space before a command prevents that command from being recorded in your history. This news wows and concerns Mark, so much so that he’s interested in finding out more.
42:30 Irish Saying for this Podcast: Conas atá tú (Howrya?)

43:47 Outro, Marks think this was fairly good episode…

The Binary Times – Series 1 Episode 5

Series 1 Episode 5 – A variey of topics discussed this fortnight, including iw4m, Raspberry Pi, Command Line Linux tools, have a listen.
00:25 Intro, the guys would prefer to be outside enjoying the good weather
01:18 Mark tells us about his continuing adventures with KDE Neon and how he got his erm, let me see, his nextcloud box working.
04:49 Wayne discusses Let’s Encrypt, load balancing and redundancy.
08:51 Wayne tells us how he’s been trouble shooting his read only on boot qcow2 drives using gparted
10:52 Wayne tells us why the servers were down, the importance of good documentation and the fun to be had with ssl certs.
13:10 Mark bemoans the Nextcloud box documentation while Wayne goes on to speak about upgrading his nextcloud instance.

15:22 Mark wonders whether he likes the Snaps concept anymore. Wayne ponders Snaps, Ubuntu Core and Ubuntu’s Corporate Nature.
17:58 Mark queries Wayne on what is the purpose of Mate and Cinnamon Desktop
22:06 Late Night Linux gets an honourable mention.
22:25 Wayne tells us about our first email from Tom talking about the i3wm window manager.Good Docs!
22:54 Mark rambles on about his adventures with KDE Neon, Handbrake and Unity while Wayne comments on how as Sysadmins we are prone to tinkering.
31:38 Wayne talks about the Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi Zero W otg cable problems and three api libraries, namely gpiozero, picamera and sense-hat.
34:00 The conversation changes to one around frogsand Castlegregory in Ireland.
35:54 The conversation returns to the Raspberry Pi, Pinet and Tiger VNC gets a mention.

39:05 Mark mentions Crowd Supply and GnuBee Personal Cloud 1 NAS in conjunction with the pinet.
40:17 Mark tells us he’s started reading Python Crash Course.
40:58 Under the Hood: Wayne’s terminal tricks are clear and ctrl-l and also in the news to us bit, ctrl-g to exit and clear the command line in the bash shell. In Wayne’s ongoing saga to convert the world to vim, he tells us to put “set -o vi” into our .bashrc. Follow the links for more tips and a cheat sheet on vim. Wayne goes on to tell us about Vimperator, an addon for firefox which gives you vi keybindings.
49:13 Mark’s under the hood: Hollywood.
51:50 Irish Saying for the show is…. Lá Breitha Sona duit, Happy Birthday to you

The Binary Times – Series 1 Episode 4

Series 1 Episode 4 – A variey of topics discussed this fortnight, including LimeSDR, Raspberry Pi, Command Line Linux tools, have a listen.
00:28 intro
00:48 Mark and Wayne talk about Mark’s new LimeSDR
11:58 Wayne talks about his latest adventures in Raspberry Pi and how he has purchased a new Raspberry Pi Zero W
13:54 Wayne wonders if he has the proper mindset for python, while sensehat’s api gets an honourable mention.
15:31 Wayne talks about how good the resources are for the AstroPi and Sensehat
17:10 This brings the conversation around to the technologically revolutionary times we’re living in, how to cope with it and how little linux we actually discuss
20:45 Baby steps: Mark brings up the fact that he’s completed the vimtutor and notes that vimtutor is installed by default on KDE Neon

24:01 Wayne summarises the astropi stuff, , sensehat resource sites he’s been looking at, and codeacademy learn python, because sharing the knowledge is why we’re here.
25:41 Wayne wonders are prices going up in Memory and SSDs
29:05 Under the Hood: – Mark talks about the tree command and how the -X switch and redirecting output to file could prove useful to help create system documentation / tutorials
32:09 Continuing under the hood, Wayne talks about Byobu, with some tutorial links here and here
35:35 Wayne tells an Irish joke!
36:19 Mark brings up trend 4 in Ericsson’s 10 hot consumer trands 2017 and this starts a discussion around AR and VR and watching spaces and changing worlds
40:26 The Irish saying for this show is Tóg go bog é and festina lente

The Binary Times – Series 1 Episode 3

Series 1 Episode 3 – A variey of topics discussed this fortnight, including KDE Neon, Raspberry Pi, Command Line Linux tools, have a listen.
01:25 Wayne tells us about his adventures with the Raspberry Pi and the projects he’s been getting into, the first being motionEyeOS , a security camera system for the Raspberry Pi. Wayne did a bit of research and found some USB cable extenders on line.
03:30 Wayne tells us about his garden pond and recording some busy frogs
06:47 Mark tells us about his work on the binary times logo(made with inkscape) and how he’s put KDE Neon on his “new” Lenovo Thinkpad T410. He goes on to tell us he’s thinking of purchasing the KDE slimbook and this starts a discussion around pricing and even the Ubuntu Edge
11:00 Wayne talks about our new website
12:01 Wayne talks about another Raspberry Pi project he’s been working on, The Rod Of Doom
14:57 Mark mentions the latest Humble Book Bundle is out and it’s for Raspberry Pi and Arduino
16:41 Wayne makes a correction on the last podcast information around vim.

17:10 Wayne and Mark discuss vimtutor
20:14 Wayne tells us that he’s purchased a sensehat
21:15 Wayne tells us some third hand news: Ubuntu Kylin has produced a windows 7 style desktop
22:27 Mark reminisces about an old video he remembers about KDE4
23:08 Mark tells us about a new security and privacy focused web browser, cliqz
24:47 Mark talks about number two and number three of Ericsson’s 10 Hot consumer trends in 2017
31:49 Supertuxkart is trying to get green lighted on Steam
34:21 Under the Hood: Wayne talks about Midnight Commander, Midnight Commander pdf manual and Use midnight commander like a pro
38:23 Mark’s under the Hood is how to use a carrot! No, it’s how to use the carat!
40:44 Wayne mentions that Munich’s county council is considering returning to Windows
42:33 The Irish saying for the podcast is Sláinte

The Binary Times – Series 1 Episode 2

Series 1 Episode 2 – A variey of topics discussed this fortnight, including SSH, Nano, VIM text editors, Raspberry Pi, Command Line Linux tools, have a listen.
01:20:00 Mark got a haircut, and Wayne did too!

01:46 Mark tells us that he’s been listening to badvoltage.org, Homeland and Jerusalem
03:31 Finally, some Linux chat! Wayne talks about SSH
06:33 Wayne starts to talk about his adventures in Raspberry Pi

<p>08:20 Mark mentions <a href="http://www.openhab.org/">Openhab</a> in conjunction with Raspeberry Pi projects
09:31 Mark tells us he's heard <a href="https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/02/09/openhab-arrives-as-a-snap/">Openhab arrives as a snap</a> 
<p>10:16 Wayne discusses Martin Wimpress' excellent <a href="https://flexion.org/posts/2016-12-raspberry-pi-3-powered-nextcloud-box-on-ubuntu-core/">guide</a> on setting up Nextcloud 11 on Ubuntu Core on a Raspberry Pi 3
11:29 Wayne returns the discussion to Raspberry Pi and the <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/sense-hat/">sense-hat</a>
14:21 Wayne's head melts while learning <a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a>
<p>15:13 In Breaking News For Us, <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-3-on-sale/">the Raspberry Pi 3 is on sale!</a>
16:35 Mark installs <a href="https://neon.kde.org/">KDENeon</a> on a raspberry pi? No! On a Dell Latitude D830 and a spare hdd
20:30 Wayne has a tip for <a href="https://ubuntu-mate.org/">Ubuntu Mate</a> users, ctrl-space to invoke search
21:52 In More Breaking News For Us, Ubuntu Unity has a <a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/01/get-easier-enable-low-graphics-mode-ubuntu">low graphics mode!</a>
22:51 Mark sneakily moves the conversation onto the Under the Hood tips section with <a href="http://dcfldd.sourceforge.net/">dcfldd</a>, an enhanced version of dd
25:15 Waynes under the hood tip is "sudo!!" for when you've forgotten sudo at the start of a command you want to run
28:24 Mark talks about <a href="https://www.nano-editor.org/">Nano</a> as a wordstar clone when in fact it's a clone of <a href="http://www.guckes.net/pico/">pico!</a>
29:25 Wayne talks about <a href="http://www.vim.org/">vim</a>, a modal text editor
<p>31:58 Mark mentions <a href="https://xkcd.com/378/">xkcd's take on linux text editors.</a>
32:39 Wayne helpfully mentions vim-tutor . If not installed you can install it using "sudo apt install vim-runtime"
34:48 Mark mentions Mike Saunder's (from Linux Voice) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfl9KQb_HVk">vim youtube video</a>
35:08 Wayne challenges Mark to go through the first two lessons of vim-tutor and Mark agrees

Wayne explains that the j,k,l and ; keys are used for navigation in vim, when in fact h, j, k and l are used for navigation (as can be seen in this <a href="http://www.viemu.com/vi-vim-cheat-sheet.gif">click here</a>)
37:18 Wayne reveals that <a href="http://www.vim.org/download.php/#pc">Vim is available for Windows</a>
37:42 Mark talks about <a href="https://www.eff.org/privacybadger">privacy badger</a> and <a href="https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere">HTTPS Everywhere</a>, privacy add on for web browsers from the <a href="https://www.eff.org/">EFF. </a>This provoked a wide ranging discussion around privacy and shopping
46:30 Irish Saying for the show is.... <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k13gInoyfzI">Ceart go leor,</a> fair enough!

Episode #3: ‘Independence Day’

Episode 3 is here!!! In celebration of Independence Day (and my birthday)… I play some ‘American’ themed song by some of my favourite artists. Tracks Played: Christian Kane – ‘American Made’ Callaghan – ‘Best Year’ Martina McBride – ‘Independence Day’ Nathan Osmond – ‘The Tailgate Song’ Topic: CMA Fest 2016, Nashville, TN. Source: Nash Country … Continue reading Episode #3: ‘Independence Day’