/srv/irclogs.ubuntu.com/2021/09/04/#ubuntu-uk.txt

ballOh, my Ubuntu desktop just locked up.00:12
ball:-(00:12
daftykinso000:17
daftykinsand it still switched to a TTY ok?00:17
ballSadly no.  I had to hold in the power button.00:26
daftykinsnasty00:26
daftykinsdisk check + memtest time perhaps00:27
* ball nods00:35
ballI should retire all my PCs :-)00:35
ballI'll be back later, I think.00:36
ballNeed to get my son ready for bed.00:36
daftykinso/00:38
ballI'm back!03:05
ballpopey: Thought of you yesterday while I was potching with a ThinkPad.  Think it was an x280.12:52
ball(we're mostly using T14s at work now)12:52
daftykinsthose look alright12:53
balldaftykins: They seem very nice.12:56
daftykinsi've been fond of the ones i've bought for clients, especially the older generation ones i've snagged on ebay and put Linux on though :D12:58
daftykins£170 each for a pair of 5th generation intel (broadwell) ones12:58
penguin42heck, that's nothing13:00
daftykinsyep! and considering you can now ebay 8th generation ones for £450, obviously ignoring all the dodgy listings that have locked firmware etc... when people ask for a system that's where i lean! :D13:01
ballDo you have to disable "Secure Boot" to install Linux?13:02
daftykinsnah, i think there can be some complications if there's discrete graphics / hybrid graphics in the machine though13:03
ballI'd probably prefer integrated graphics.  I'm not using a GPU for maths and would happily trade that for lower heat and longer battery life.13:05
daftykinsyeah same here, for laptops my preference is lean and long life13:05
* ball nods13:05
daftykinsany plans to poke around testing your freezing system today?13:07
ballOnly thing about Thinkpads is that there have been so many different models, it's a job to keep track of them.13:07
penguin42and my experience with Lenovo firmware is it's a lot flakier on the ones with discrete graphics13:07
balldaftykins: I might run memtest86+, as you suggested.13:07
daftykinssounds good, may be tedious to wait for, but it saves pulling your hair out :D13:08
balldaftykins: This is an old computer that a colleague gave us a few years ago.  It was my son's desktop for a while and I "inherited" it after he upgraded to a Raspberry Pi 400.13:09
daftykinsah ha, does it have an HDD or SSD?13:10
ballHDD13:26
ballI don't see the model mentioned in dmesg output and I don't know the Linux equivalent of the commands I'd usually use to ask the disk how it's feeling.13:28
daftykinsdoubt it would be responsible for what you described, but it never hurts to look at the SMART data13:28
daftykinsif you install the 'smartmontools' package and then issue "sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda" that'll give you a nice table, or even pipe it directly to termbin and share here13:29
daftykinsi.e. "sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | nc termbin.com 9999"13:29
* ball tries it.13:29
ballhttps://termbin.com/tv0013:30
daftykins"oooooh, barracudaaaa!" :)13:31
penguin42looks happy13:32
daftykinsi think that looks just fine13:32
ballIt has been spinning for almost four years but I see zero reallocated sectors, so that's a good thing.13:33
ballThe computer was given to me without a hard disk drive so I just popped one in off the shelf.13:33
ballI have an SSD I could use but that means messing with brackets etc.13:34
daftykinsyeah, although trouble occurs much earlier than a successful remap, i never liked the way Seagates increment 'error' fields for normal operation13:34
daftykinsi don't see the point in mounting SSDs in desktop systems just sat at home, quite happy with dangling them :D13:35
* ball grins13:35
ballThey're light enough that Velcro would probably work.13:36
ball...but old habits die hard.13:36
ballAnyway, disk is find of this old chugger.13:39
ballI should price up a used ThinkPad though.13:42
daftykinsi quite like looking for the T series on ebay, so each successive intel generation is matched by the second digit... T450 like mine is 5th gen, T460, T470, T480 etc...13:46
daftykinsyou can genuinely keep just hopping between and the price ramps up13:47
ballI wonder how much a T420 would cost me.13:47
daftykinsoh that's way too old to consider13:47
ballSorry, T420s13:47
daftykinsi'd even consider 6th generation (skylake) the bottom floor by now, although a 4th or 5th isn't too bad13:48
ballHmm... looks like the T440s has m.2.13:48
daftykinshmm i think that'd be too early13:49
ballI'm having to look up which "generation" Coffee Lake is.13:51
ball8th, apparently13:51
ballLooks like our T14s are "10th generation"13:52
ballSo Comet Lake or perhaps Sunny Cove13:53
ballbrb13:53
daftykinsyip something like that :D13:53
ballLooks like they used some high-end Core i5 chips.14:05
daftykinsi5's are my minimum consideration really14:08
ballI'd be happy with a quad-core i3 but i5 is a sensible choice for our work laptops.14:11
daftykinsi've got an i3-8100 or so in a whitebox server, but i don't know what they perform like first-hand14:12
ballIn my last job we were happy with them for desktops14:13
ballLet me check my notes14:13
ballThink we used i3-8100 for the POS machines and perhaps i3-8300 for the office desktops (I liked the extra cache).14:14
daftykinsvery different kettle of fish if it's a 45W TDP or greater part versus a laptop CPU with a typical 15W mind14:14
* ball nods14:15
ballStacks of Lenovo desktops at work but I've not had a chance to look at those yet.14:16
daftykinsis there an ongoing refresh, or is that old stuff?14:17
ballThey cycle stuff out after a few years, I think.14:42
ballCurrently pulling 2018 models as the opportunity arises.14:43
ballbrb14:43
penguin42careful, daftykins will camp out in your skip for them14:43
daftykinshaha14:43
ballI suspect they're leased, though ICBW.14:59
ballWouldn't mind one of the tiny desktops, just to potch with.14:59
ballThey15:02
ballUgh... my daughter's laptop has a tiny keyboard :-)15:02
ballI could probably pick one up used.15:08
* ball is distracted by Dell OptiPlex15:32
daftykinso015:40
zxmpithat narrows it down to 28 years or so :-)15:44
* zxmpi looks at the specs of first optiplex :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_OptiPlex#Series_1,_2_and_315:51
zxmpi486!15:51
daftykins:D15:51
zxmpi3 isa and 1 vl slot! :-)15:52
zxmpifutureproof or what15:54
ballVLB was awful, mechanically.15:56
zxmpiit was better than isa15:56
ballEISA was available then though, iirc15:57
ball...and PCI shortly afterwards.15:57
ball(thankfully)15:57
zxmpiwasn't it vesa? it's been a while15:57
ballVESA was the organisation15:58
ballVLB = Vesa Local Bus15:58
zxmpiah yes, eisa to take on mca :-)16:00
* ball nods16:00
zxmpidon't think i ever saw more than 2-3 mca cards16:00
daftykinsi'm too young to have encountered VLB in the wild16:01
zxmpihere's an isa network card75 quid. here's the mca equivalent 350shekels. don't know why it didn't succeed16:01
ballI had a box full of MCA HBAs, NICs etc.16:01
ball...it was thrown away.16:02
zxmpifavourite was an intel aboveboard ram card. added 2mb of memory to a 286 ps/2 and turned it into expanded ram so it was a 286 pretending to be a 38616:03
zxmpiit was running novell headless non dedicated AND dos with win 3.1 on top running excel.16:04
ballExtended probably, rather than expanded.16:09
ball(expanded was an XT thing)16:09
zxmpino no, deffo expanded16:09
ballLIM EMS.16:09
zxmpithat was the weird thing, and faster than a 386 doing expanded ram with cpu. it was doing it in hardware16:10
ballEww.16:10
zxmpionce had to call ms with a problem with excel on it. when i explained the pc they denied it existed. went all downhill from there16:10
ballThat's vaguely obscene but nice for Lotus 1-2-316:10
zxmpieven by then lotus was disappearing fast before excel16:11
* ball nods16:11
ballDid they ever release Improv for Windows?  I forget.16:12
zxmpiit looked a lot more modern and was wysiwyg16:12
zxmpithink they did16:12
zxmpihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv#Windows_release16:13
ballok16:13
ballI must fight the temptation to buy an Optiplex16:22
zxmpijust keep telling yourself. it's a dell, it's a dell :-P16:38
ballHwh.16:39
daftykinsdude, it's Adele16:46
penguin42not bad for penguins17:54
ballpenguin42: Is it cold out?19:09
penguin42ball: I meant Adele's19:10
daftykins:D19:12
* ball wanders off to sit in the comfy chair.19:14
penguin42https://gitlab.com/penguin42/ohmy  is the pico project I've been fiddling with; it's at the 'basically works-ish' stage19:49
daftykinsvery neat idea :D19:50
penguin42it came to me after fighting a lot of alarm cabling19:52
daftykinsthe tedium of repeated placing probes and glancing?19:52
daftykinsassuming some manual task with a multimeter19:53
penguin42nod19:55
penguin42especially when you need to move leads over <------   while opening and closing doors ----->19:55
penguin42I need to make it a bit better before it's actually useful for that - but getting there19:56
daftykins:D19:57
daftykinsi had a couple of reolink IP cameras arrive today, i played with zoneminder briefly to start tinkering with handling them both - pretty neat 4K units, £95 for the pair19:57
penguin42oh that's ok20:02
penguin42hmm,  I need to get the spider web off one of mine20:03
daftykinsto the trusty broom!20:05
ballI fell asleep in the comfy chair.21:13
daftykins:D21:15
daftykinsa fine fate21:15
daftykinshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9OZ2A-c62g - hrmm nasty23:16
daftykins"Take-Two Suing GTA3 Reverse Engineering devs...and it doesn't look good | MVG"23:16

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