Torbay Tinkerers Meeting Saturday 27th September 2025
9:30 am to 12:00
STEAM Café & Discovery Centre, 13 Torbay Road, Paignton, Devon
There is a page for this on my new website
I am in the DCLUG Matrix room, I can answer questions there, I will then reply when I see the message.
| Mastodon | ShellLabs | Join Mastodon |
One month until end of Win10 Support
Just making this, as there is one month to go, until the end of Windows 10 support.
As detailed on my End of 10 page you have several options, and you don't need to by a new computer
@linuxmint@mamot.fr @Endof10@floss.social
If you would like some help or advice, consider joining the Devon and Cornwall Linux user group mailing list, and ask, we can try and help you upgrade to Linux, dual boot or just give some advice.
If you are on Matrix, then we also have a room on there too
I am NOT going to offer personal advice as everyone has a different need or situation, But it is worth seeking help as Microsoft just want you to buy new hardware (simple as new computers have AI hardware) so little other reason. Most people can probably get by without really needing those features anyway.
| Mastodon | ShellLabs | Join Mastodon |
Tinkerers Meeting – June 2025
The next meeting of the Tor bay Tinkerers group will be on Saturday 28th June 2025 from 9:30am
We meet at:-
STEAM Café & Discovery Centre 13 Torbay Road, Paignton.
We usually start off in the café, then move in to the back room, where the discovery centre is. However, we may also visit the Tea Shed which is in the Hyperspace café, this is located a short distance away in Victoria Square.
We will let the staff at the café know where we are, please ask.
Possible topics
If you would like to ask any questions, please message Helen via our Facebook page
Or message Paul via the DCGLUG Matrix Room
Related Links
Invite open to:
Tags
| Mastodon | ShellLabs | Join Mastodon |
ssh – secure shell
Secure shell is a remote login client. The following is from the man page
DESCRIPTION
ssh (SSH client) is a program for logging into a remote machine and for executing commands on a remote machine. It is intended to provide secure encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure network. X11 connections, arbitrary TCP ports and Unix-domain sockets can also be forwarded over the secure channel.
So as mentioned before, vfsync can't do everything, so if you do need a full Linux system to log in to and install what you want. By this, I am saying you also need to at least have sudo access to that remote system, even if this is a Raspberry Pi.
While being able to log in with
ssh user@host
Is useful, you still need a password, which is fine. If you want to use some services provided by [vern.cc] then you need to be able to log in with an authentication key. This can be generated with
ssh-keygen
DESCRIPTION
ssh-keygen generates, manages and converts authentication keys for ssh(1). ssh-keygen can create keys for use by SSH protocol version 2.
Which will generate a public / private key pair
man ssh-copy-id
NAME
ssh-copy-id — use locally available keys to authorise logins on a re‐mote machine
DESCRIPTION
ssh-copy-id is a script that uses ssh(1) to log into a remote machine (presumably using a login password, so password authentication should be enabled, unless you've done some clever use of multiple identities). It assembles a list of one or more fingerprints (as described below) and tries to log in with each key, to see if any of them are already installed (of course, if you are not using ssh-agent(1) this may result in you being repeatedly prompted for pass-phrases). It then assembles a list of those that failed to log in and, using ssh(1), enables logins with those keys on the remote server. By default it adds the keys by appending them to the remote user's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys (creating the file, and directory, if necessary). It is also capable of detecting if the remote system is a NetScreen, and using its ‘set ssh pka-dsa
key ...’ command instead.
There is some good information here too
The following allowed me to remote login to my Raspberry Pi from my desktop
cd .ssh (I did this so I was in the right place to generate the key)
ssh-keygen
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/Pi4.pub paul@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
ssh paul@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Login with password, and you will be asked for the passphrase the first time you do this. After which, you will be able to just ssh in without the password.
Replace the x's with your IPv4 address.
While using vern, I had to use
ssh-keygen -lf ./key.pub
To address an error, it came up with about keyboard authentication. This worked for me, but should not 'just' be used in every situation.
Graphical ssh
With Linux mint, it is also possible to connect the file manager nemo to a remote server.
File –> Connect to server, then fill in the credentials.
With folder, it is probably a good idea to enter the path to your home directory on the remote server, so for a Raspberry Pi with a default username of pi, this is:-
/home/pi
Chat
I am on the Devon and Cornwall Linux user group mailing list and also their matrix channel as zleap, it is better to ask there, that way others can answer too.
Tags
#Bash,#Linux,#ssh,#RemoteAccess,#Security,#SSHKeys,#SecureShell
| Mastodon | ShellLabs | Join Mastodon |
Tinkerers Meeting – May 2025
The next meeting of the Tor bay Tinkerers group will be on Saturday 24th May 2025 from 9:30am
We meet at:-
STEAM Cafe & Discovery Centre 13 Torbay Road, Paignton.
Possible topics
To give you an idea of what we have been up to, please see the write-ups on this blog.
If you would like to ask any questions, please message Helen via our Facebook page
Or message Paul via the DCGLUG Matrix Room
Related Links
Tags
| Mastodon | ShellLabs | Join Mastodon |
Bash Shortcuts
This question was asked on the Linux Mint Matrix Support recently, I helped by looking up what was needed, and posting this as a reply, As this is also really useful and worth sharing more widely too.
Chat
I am on the Devon and Cornwall Linux user group mailing list and also their matrix channel as zleap, it is better to ask there, that way others can answer too.
Tags
#Bash,#BashScripting,#Bashscripting,#Keyboard,#Shortcuts
| Mastodon | ShellLabs | Join Mastodon |
File integrity
If providing downloadable files, it is important to ensure that the downloaded file is the same as that provided on the host server, this ensures the file has not been tampered with in some way. The end user needs a way to check what they have downloaded is safe.
One way to do this is to create a file checksum with md5sum
let's say we have two files
-rw-rw-r-- 1 psutton psutton 67200 May 3 19:42 jcr.pdf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 psutton psutton 433231 Apr 28 17:50 southwest1.png
We want to create a checksum for both files. To do this we can run
md5sum southwest1.png
502d4f9dacab9240f2622c032e6ea11f southwest1.png
md5sum jcr.pdf
b98edf4dd0afd0ede8ac6dabce66f522 jcr.pdf
This sends the checksum to stdout
So need a file to store this
md5sum jcr.pdf southwest1.png > md5sum2
We can then view the contents if this with
as previously discussed the > directs output to a specified file
cat md5sums
502d4f9dacab9240f2622c032e6ea11f southwest1.png
b98edf4dd0afd0ede8ac6dabce66f522 jcr.pdf
In this example, we listed the files we want to create a checksum for.
If we were to add a 3rd file say tux.png then we can do this and append the new checksum with
md5sum tux.png >> md5sums
Then example our new md5sums file
cat md5sums
502d4f9dacab9240f2622c032e6ea11f southwest1.png
b98edf4dd0afd0ede8ac6dabce66f522 jcr.pdf
d52cd5e7164eccd6da50e10d5a9c3dbf tux.png
So now that we have 3 files and a md5sums file, we can check all the files listed
md5sum -c md5sums
southwest1.png: OK
jcr.pdf: OK
tux.png: OK
Chat
I am on the Devon and Cornwall Linux user group mailing list and also their matrix channel as zleap, it is better to ask there, that way others can answer too.
Tags
#Bash,#BashScripting,#Bashscripting,#md5sums,#md5sum,#file, #integrity,#check
| Mastodon | ShellLabs | Join Mastodon |
Linux support for 486 and other CPUs
Linux developers consider discontinuing support for 486 and other CPUs
Linux support for 486 processors
Chat
I am on the Devon and Cornwall Linux user group mailing list and also their matrix channel as zleap, it is better to ask there, that way others can answer too.
Tags
#IT #Linux #LinuxKernel #Prozessoren #news
| Mastodon | ShellLabs | Join Mastodon |
Fun bash stuff
While these are not bash commands, there are a few fun tools.
One is fortune, this displays a random quote on the console or terminal.
fortune
Many pages make a thick book, except for pocket Bibles which are on very
very thin paper.
Another is cowsay which takes an argument and prints a picture of a cow (there are options to change how it looks or to other characters)
cowsay hello
_______
< hello >
-------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
As with other commands these can be combined
fortune | cowsay
________________________________________
/ I don't know half of you half as well \
| as I should like; and I like less than |
| half of you half as well as you |
| deserve. |
| |
\ -- J. R. R. Tolkien /
----------------------------------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
Options
cowsay -f tux hello
_______
< hello >
-------
\
\
.--.
|o_o |
|:_/ |
// \ \
(| | )
/'\_ _/`\
\___)=(___/
cowsay -f daemon hello
_______
< hello >
-------
\ , ,
\ /( )`
\ \ \___ / |
/- _ `-/ '
(/\/ \ \ /\
/ / | ` \
O O ) / |
`-^--'`< '
(_.) _ ) /
`.___/` /
`-----' /
<----. __ / __ \
<----|====O)))==) \) /====
<----' `--' `.__,' \
| |
\ /
______( (_ / \______
,' ,-----' | \
`--{__________) \/
Chat
I am on the Devon and Cornwall Linux user group mailing list and also their matrix channel as zleap, it is better to ask there, that way others can answer too.
Tags
#Bash.#BashScripting,#Bashscripting,#Cowsay,#Fortune
| Mastodon | ShellLabs | Join Mastodon |
Docker Containers
I don't have any experience with Docker or similar tech, but as this is popular, I am going to try and link to some tutorials for popular services, If these are useful great. I will give this a go at some point, but it will be more for learning rather than production.
Links
Chat
I am on the Devon and Cornwall Linux user group mailing list and also their matrix channel as zleap, it is better to ask there, that way others can answer too.
Tags
#Container,#Docker,#Deployment,#Mastodon,#PixelFed,#Peertube,#NextCloud,#NGINX,#Ansible
| Mastodon | ShellLabs | Join Mastodon |