April 2024 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Weta Digital’s Technology Division Sold To US Firm
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Aug '25

01 Aug '25

Let me see if I understand this article <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/sir-peter-jackson-to-sell-weta-digital-…> correctly: the part of Weta Digital that used to develop the in-house 3D graphics/effects tools that they use in all those movies is being sold to US-based Unity Software. The part that is left will be called “WetaFX”, and will become a customer of Unity for the use of those tools, no longer doing its own development in-house. By the way, I’ve been looking at the Unity site <https://unity.com/>, and it looks like all their products are rentware (subscription-based).

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New systemd update will bring Windows’ infamous Blue Screen of Death to Linux
by Peter Reutemann 18 Nov '24

18 Nov '24

'Windows' infamous "Blue Screen of Death" is a bit of a punchline. People have made a hobby of spotting them out in the wild, and in some circles, they remain a byword for the supposed flakiness and instability of PCs. To this day, networked PCs in macOS are represented by beige CRT monitors displaying a BSOD. But the BSOD is supposed to be a diagnostic tool, an informational screen that technicians can use to begin homing in on the problem that caused the crash in the first place; that old Windows' BSOD error codes were often so broad and vague as to be useless doesn't make the idea a bad one. Today, version 255 of the Linux systemd project honors that original intent by adding a systemd-bsod component that generates a full-screen display of some error messages when a Linux system crashes. The systemd-bsod component is currently listed as "experimental" and "subject to change." But the functionality is simple: any logged error message that reaches the LOG_EMERG level will be displayed full-screen to allow people to take a photo or write it down. Phoronix reports that, as with BSODs in modern Windows, the Linux version will also generate a QR code to make it easier to look up information on your phone.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/linux-distros-are-about-to-get-a-ki… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Juice TV Hiccup
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Oct '24

15 Oct '24

Currently when I switch to FreeView Channel 200, it shows a frozen image with the text “Cinegy” and “Demo Version” on it. Searching for that name takes me to a site that talks about “software defined television”. Either their product licence has expired, or they never had one in the first place ...

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List Of IPTV Resources
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Sep '24

22 Sep '24

This user <https://github.com/iptv-org> just popped up in my GitHub feed. One repo <https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv> claims to be a list of links to over 8000 streaming TV channels from nations all over the world, while the other is a list of tools*, providers and other resources. Do be aware it’s a bit of a mixed bag: yes, there are legitimate channels (no encryption so far that I have noticed), but also some dubious-looking links. *Oddly, FFmpeg and youtube-dl aren’t in the list.

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Made Move To Wayland
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Jul '24

01 Jul '24

I’d been running Wayland OK on my laptop for some months now, but I held off putting it on my main machine for one reason: when I logged into a Wayland session, Emacs would not recognize my Compose key (which I have set to Caps Lock). Today I finally figured out I have to install the “emacs-pgtk” package instead of “emacs-gtk”; the former is built with a version of GTK that works with Wayland. And yes, my Compose key works again. Still have to get used to slightly different input behaviour: previously, once I hit Compose, nothing would appear until I finished the whole key sequence. Now it echoes each keystroke immediately as I type it, in place, overwriting the previous echo (starting with an underline for the Compose key itself), then when I have typed the last key, it overwrites the echo area with the final character.

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I Have No Luck With Keyboards ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 May '24

01 May '24

Yesterday I decided that my heavily-used clicky mechanical keyboard (a Das Keyboard 4) had accumulated far too much grime, and it was time to take the risk of cleaning it. In the past, every time I’ve tried cleaning a keyboard, it has never worked right afterwards. I’m a software guy, not a hardware guy. I found the keys quite easy to pry off. A light amount of leverage with a small screwdriver was helpful when space was tight, but once I’d cleared sufficient room around a key, I could pull it off just with my fingers. Even the wider keys were not hard. I found some warnings online against removing these, because of the trickiness of their extra stabilization mechanisms. But these were actually quite simple: a steel spring with its ends poked through two tiny brackets (removable, but best left in place) at each end of the key. It took a bit of pressure with the screwdriver to bend one end of the spring far enough to take it out of the hole, but it snapped immediately back to its original shape after I had taken the key out, so I saw no problem putting things back afterwards. The space bar was even simpler: just two additional support posts at the ends, in addition to the usual post (common to all the keys) that held the actual switch in the middle. After I had got all the keys off, the grime on the keyboard itself was a wonder to behold (I’ll spare you the details). I tried to use a bunched-up corner of a wet cloth, and even a vacuum cleaner with the smallest nozzle (again heeding warnings online against compressed air), and I was able to remove maybe half the accumulation of deposits, not much more. I figured that was good enough. Of course, in the process, I likely got some water into two slots that were exposed after I removed the keys. There was a recommendation online to leave things to dry for at least 6 hours. Call me impatient; I left it for just 5. Afterwards, I plugged it in, without the key caps, and tried a few keys, and was gratified to find they still worked. After that, I put back all the keys, now nice and clean and dry. Even the ones with those extra springs went back with only a slight amount of fiddling to re-engage with those brackets on the keys. And afterwards, the keyboard still worked. I left it plugged in, and went to do something else. Half an hour later, I came back to my computer ... and the keyboard was dead. Not a single response from any key. Put it back in the heater cupboard and left it overnight. No change this morning: still dead. So I feel very sad. I thought I had broken my keyboard jinx. But it’s currently zero for three. I have some other keyboards, of course, including a colourful oddity I bought from Dick Smith (whose layout leaves out the right-hand super/windows key), and a Kensington “washable” (dare I risk it?), with the pipe/backslash key in a different position. But I had grown accustomed to the volume control knob and other niceties of the Das Keyboard. Looking back through my records, I was surprised to discover I had bought it about ten years ago, from Mighty Ape. So I suppose it’s had a good run. But it seems nobody in NZ sells the things any more. So currently I mourn, and I also look for alternatives ...

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T2 Linux 24.5 Released
by Peter Reutemann 30 Apr '24

30 Apr '24

'A major T2 Linux milestone has been released, shipping with full support for 25 CPU architectures and several C libraries, as well as restored support for Intel IA-64 Itanium. Additionally, many vintage X.org DDX drivers were fixed and tested to work again, as well as complete support for the latest KDE 6 and GNOME 46. T2 is known for its sophisticated cross compile support and support for nearly all existing CPU architectures: Alpha, Arc, ARM(64), Avr32, HPPA(64), IA64, M68k, MIPS(64), Nios2, PowerPC(64)(le), RISCV(64), s390x, SPARC(64), and SuperH x86(64). T2 is an increasingly popular choice for embedded systems and virtualization. It also still supports the Sony PS3, Sgi, Sun and HP workstations, as well as the latest ARM64 and RISCV64 architectures. The release contains a total of 5,140 changesets, including approximately 5,314 package updates, 564 issues fixed, 317 packages or features added and 163 removed, and around 53 improvements. Usually most packages are up-to-date, including Linux 6.8, GCC 13, LLVM/Clang 18, as well as the latest version of X.org, Mesa, Firefox, Rust, KDE 6 and GNOME 46! More information, source and binary distribution are open source and free at T2 SDE.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/04/29/2325210/ To be honest, haven't heard of that distro before, but sounds interesting. Cheers, Peter

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Hackers try to exploit WordPress plugin vulnerability that’s as severe as it gets
by Peter Reutemann 29 Apr '24

29 Apr '24

'Hackers are assailing websites using a prominent WordPress plugin with millions of attempts to exploit a high-severity vulnerability that allows complete takeover, researchers said. The vulnerability resides in WordPress Automatic, a plugin with more than 38,000 paying customers. Websites running the WordPress content management system use it to incorporate content from other sites. Researchers from security firm Patchstack disclosed last month that WP Automatic versions 3.92.0 and below had a vulnerability with a severity rating of 9.9 out of a possible 10. The plugin developer, ValvePress, silently published a patch, which is available in versions 3.92.1 and beyond. Researchers have classified the flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-27956, as a SQL injection, a class of vulnerability that stems from a failure by a web application to query backend databases properly. SQL syntax uses apostrophes to indicate the beginning and end of a data string. By entering strings with specially positioned apostrophes into vulnerable website fields, attackers can execute code that performs various sensitive actions, including returning confidential data, giving administrative system privileges, or subverting how the web app works.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/hackers-make-millions-of-attempts-… Cheers, Peter

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Alternative To Microsoft Access
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Apr '24

27 Apr '24

If anybody asks about an alternative to Microsoft Access, I think SQLite used in combination with LibreOffice will give you a lot of functionality, including comprehensive SQL support and scalability to much larger databases. Of course you can use other backends, like MariaDB/MySQL, as well. SQLite just makes it easy to have an actual database file that you can copy/move about the place, without having to do database dumps/restores. If you don’t need multiuser support, it is very convenient. I notice that libreoffice-base is now a separate package under Debian (and I suppose its derivatives as well), no longer included in the “base” (heh) LibreOffice package. Make sure to install this, along with libsqliteodbc. Now, say you have an existing SQLite3 database that you want to access from LibreOffice. Suppose it is in the file /home/ldo/hack/lo_try/test.db. In order for databases to be accessible via ODBC, they need to have entries in your ~/.odbc.ini file. This is just a text file, in the good old .ini tradition. The format for entries is very simple, e.g.: [test-db] Description=Test database for LibreOffice Base Driver=SQLite3 Database=/home/ldo/hack/lo_try/test.db Now, when you launch the LibreOffice Base database wizard, you have options to “create a new database”, “open an existing database file”, or “connect to an existing database”. Choose that last one “connect to an existing database”. The popup menu shows the available back-end drivers: choose “ODBC”. Now, when you click “Next”, there should be a text field with a “Browse...” button; clicking this should show the names of entries in your ~/.odbc.ini file, e.g. “test-db” if you used the name in my example above. Select this, and click “Finish”. Next you will be prompted for a name to save the “database file”. This is just the LibreOffice Base document that contains the settings for connecting to the actual database: LibreOffice doesn’t know or care where the database back-end keeps the actual data. After having named the LibreOffice database file, you should see the main LibreOffice Base window. In the lower half, under “Tables”, you should see a list of the tables from the database file. You can double-click a table name to see a quick list of all its records. That’s as far as I’ve got. I see a “Design View”, “Form Wizards”, and “Report Wizards”, and all kinds of other fun stuff. Should be great for building simple database applications, with a minimum of programming.

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Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 'Noble Numbat' Officially Released
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '24

26 Apr '24

'9to5Linux: Canonical released today Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) as the latest version of its popular Linux-based operating system featuring some of the latest GNU/Linux technologies and Open Source software. Powered by Linux kernel 6.8, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS features the latest GNOME 46 desktop environment, an all-new graphical firmware update tool called Firmware Updater, Netplan 1.0 for state-of-the-art network management, updated Ubuntu font, support for the deb822 format for software sources, increased vm.max_map_count for better gaming, and Mozilla Thunderbird as a Snap by default. It also comes with an updated Flutter-based graphical desktop installer that's now capable of updating itself and features a bunch of changes like support for accessibility features, guided (unencrypted) ZFS installations, a new option to import auto-install configurations for templated custom provisioning, as well as new default installation options, such as Default selection (previously Minimal) and Extended selection (previously Normal)."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/04/25/2036234 Cheers, Peter

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