* Posts by L'Ecossais

10 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2015

Ubuntu upgrade had our old Nvidia GPU begging for a downgrade

L'Ecossais

Is upgrading with the legacy driver in place the issue?

I read this article with particular interest as I have the same model of Thinkpad as Liam and as a Windows user, but with some Linux experience, have one eye on the October deadline.

Given the comment about trying ahead of time, I decided to adopt the "Live CD" approach to see how the laptop would behave depending on the video chip(s) were configured in FW. I therefore downloaded the latest versions of Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Opensuse and Debian. To my surprise, given Liam's experience, all of them worked quite happily with the Nvidia chip in Optimus mode.

I'm afraid I'm not very experienced in querying systemd based OS's for driver versions but viewing the dmesg files in Ubuntu and Mint, both of these were using nouveau version 1.4.0. For the record, Mint was based on Ubuntu 13.3.0 using kernel 6.8.0-51 whereas the Ubuntu Live image is Ubutu 14.2.0 using kernel 6.11.0-8. The other distro's reported using the Nvidia chip in the output of lspci.

I think the lesson from this is that the "average user" could quite easily migrate from Windows to any of these Linux distro's with only the learning curve of a new OS to face rather than the difficulties of mixing and matching kernel versions with proprietary drivers.

NB Obviously a quick test of each distro didn't stress the setup too far but if all the "average user" does is surf the web, use email, watch some videos and edit Office docs, I think they could quite happily use older HW rather than follow the MS landfill mandate.

Lastly, isn't it strange how we stick with outdated terms like Live CD when it's more likely to be a USB key and talk about taping TV programs when we're actually recording them to an HDD!

Lenovo Thinkpad Z13 just has this certain Macbook Air about it...

L'Ecossais

Re: Is it a Lenovo thing?

Well Lenovo offer an install image for download which one would hope includes the appropriate drivers. I would expect Dell do also.

(Full disclosure: I'm formerly of System x support so worked for both IBM and Lenovo. I also know that the legal position is that if you supply a system with an installed OS image, you have to provide a method to reinstall, hence the former practice of the OEM providing a recovery partition. I presume offering a download fulfills that requirement)

L'Ecossais

Be Prepared

Hi Liam,

Maybe think about cloning the ESP partition with Clonezilla USB Bootable before testing Linux installs?

Just saying....

Excel Hell: It's not just blame for pandemic pandemonium being spread between the sheets

L'Ecossais

Compatibility mode

It seems to me that the cause of the problem here is very simple. Excel can in some circumstances default to "compatibility mode" which has XLS as the default file save. To resolve it, you have to set the default file save type in File/Options.

As to the error message when a Save is attempted, it is likely that the import and save were automated and any error message potentially logged. As the situation came to light on a Monday, what are the odds someone came in to work, viewed the logs, or even got an automated email, and had the Oh Sh!t moment.

Everyday doings of a metropolitan techie: Stob's software diary

L'Ecossais

Re: Still useless...?

I have to disagree about clonezilla vs dd - I've always found it to be faster than dd as it only copies used space and is much easier to use to clone disks of different sizes. It's worth noting that if none of Clonezilla's more sophistacted techniques works, it uses dd as lowest common denominator!

As far as R61i is concerned, I fitted the good lady wife's R61i (type 7650) with a 500Gb spinnning rust disk back in the day, and had no problem getting it recognised. The BIOS (v1.03) is set to use AHCI as its SATA setting - maybe that would help. It is now her reserve machine as she has something newer but it still works well.

Noise from blast of gas destroys Digiplex data depot disk drives

L'Ecossais

Time to invest in SSD's?

It's not as if it hasn't happened before - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/17/glasgow_council_it_meltdown/

WPA2 KRACK attack smacks Wi-Fi security: Fundamental crypto crapto

L'Ecossais

Re: I don't get how this works without the PSK...

Having reviewed the article and the video a couple of times, I think the following is the explanation, but not being an expert, I'm open to corrections :)

The key (pun intended) is that the router vulnerability seems to allow wardriving kit to inject Handshake 3 into the network traffic to acquire the ability to decrypt traffic on a read-only basis. The hijacking of client devices is stage 2 of the process. The video does not deal with the injection of the packets necessary to get the decryption key, only the creation of a MITM attack on an Android device - the MAC address suggests a Samsung phone.

The capability to eavesdrop on a router is backed up by the following from the article:-

"Despite this, however, the ability to decrypt Wi-Fi traffic could still reveal unique device identifiers (MAC addresses) and massive amounts of metadata (websites visited, traffic timing, patterns, amount of data exchanged etc.) which may well violate the privacy of the users on the network and provide valuable intelligence to whoever's sitting in the black van.”

Ultimately, if there was no eavesdrop capability, there would be no MITM attack capability as the ability to inject encrypted packets to set up the "rogue channel" would not exist. Hence the statement at the end of the video that patching of routers is the fix.

Lenovo: If you value your server, block Microsoft's November security update

L'Ecossais

An OS update that changes your server's firmware?

From MS16-140:-

The security update addresses the vulnerability by revoking affected boot policies in the firmware.

Since when has Microsoft had the authority to change a feature of your HW without prior consultation?

Google's home tat falls flat as a soufflé – but look out Android makers

L'Ecossais

Fear and Loathing in Android OEMs

"But the least surprising news, that Google is serious about its own brand phones, may well precipitate the long-overdue shake out of Android OEMs. It’s the moment they have been dreading since Google’s first Nexus in 2010. Have a read back to our coverage to get a sense of the fear and loathing:"

What Android OEMs should actually fear is the market realising that only Google phones get proper security updates for the phone's lifetime. The lack of those make battery lifetimes irrelevant. Any phone that no longer gets updates is no use even if the battery is replaceable.

Bookworms' Weston mecca: The Oxford institution with a Swindon secret

L'Ecossais

Source code of liberty?

It got annulled by the pope three months later and was only re-issued after John's death by the Regent Council (That would be the Barons then!) in charge of the under-age Henry III.