Root Access - 2016-09-21 (page 1 of 4)

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12:49 AM

Learned a bit of a lesson while doing some experimentation on my cloud desktop server: Responsiveness can be improved when the CPU is saturated (e.g. a graphically intensive application, as there's no hardware OpenGL acceleration) by giving the VNC server process (Xvnc in my case) priority using sudo renice -5 <server PID>. It's better for the graphically intensive application to slow down slightly rather than have the VNC server drop frames while encoding and sending the data to the client.

You want to make sure the UI gets the highest priority.

Not on a server.

This is a special case.

I'm using this as a cloud desktop. It's a separate system from the server hosting my website.

@Bob: busy right now?

It's a bit of an experiment of mine, but one that's proved to be useful in several situations. The cloud desktop instance has an Xfce desktop and has been used to remotely print files to my printer at home, act as a SOCKS proxy, and run a few graphical applications. This instance doesn't do anything directly or indirectly tied to a public Web service—these are on the main server (which, as it should, has no GUI.)

I know that on a production server, you do not want to disrupt any services that are running on the system.

It's partly inspired by a programmer's experiment of replacing his laptop with a Linode and an iPad.

Nov 25 '15 at 5:42, by bwDraco

With a tablet, a Bluetooth keyboard (perhaps integrated into a case), and (optionally) a Bluetooth mouse, you can be productive pretty much anywhere. Add a mobile broadband service (or even tether from your smartphone) and you may never need a laptop again.

(see context for more on the cloud desktop concept)

That Brazilian Headless Horse

1:24 AM

But then you need a decent, ubiquitous internet connection.

Damn, I wish I could just magically become healthier.

And if you're going to go through the pain of a crappy BT keyboard you might as well get a convertible...

I know, I know...

@ThatBrazilianHeadlessHorse Get well soon.

(That might be worth pinning, considering what it implies.)

That Brazilian Headless Horse

@bwDraco I will. That's nothing serious, just annoying. My throat aches, it's raining since Sunday, plus the cold winds, plus the extra hours I'm volunteering to the WordCamp, plus the stress of my upcoming presentation on said WordCamp. Plus the stress of being my building's manager.

If I could just rest and sleep I'd recover in a couple days.

Saturday I'll be MUCH less stressed =]

@bwDraco Huh...? Are you referring to me? What does it implies?

Never mind if it isn't a big deal.

I thought you were seriously ill.

Again, get well soon.

That Brazilian Headless Horse

I just got the flu. Or a cold. Always confuse both. And possibly a sinusitis beginning, my sinuses hurt a bit.

And a chronic lack of sleep

@bwDraco Thanks for your concern anyhow :)

1:39 AM

@DavidPostill Doggy attacked me :/

Hello everyone

Exam in an hour... wish me luck :)

3

@DavidPostill possibly rabid, need to go and observe if it is still alive after a few days

Yikes!

That Brazilian Headless Horse

@Rahul2001 I wish you talent.

2 hours later…

3:44 AM

Getting a spike in background activity on my main server. SSH daemon is temporarily stopped; a couple of subnets have been blocked.

3:55 AM

no takebacksies. — Galik 7 hours ago

DenyUsers *@222.186.*

One line in sshd_config should bring things under control.

4:12 AM

Or just use public key crypto and not bother with ip blocking

I've always used public-key auth.

Nov 22 '14 at 4:50, by DragonLord

I really see no way someone's going to successfully brute-force a 4096-bit RSA key

Also, rebooted the server after 49 days of uptime.

(on Linode, Xen and paravirtualized KVM instances boot with the latest kernel, by default)

...and Linode updates its standard kernel on nearly every major release.

4:36 AM

...good night.

5:14 AM

anandtech.com/show/10698/…

...and there you have it. PCIe 3.0 x4 has been saturated.

Sep 30 '15 at 21:26, by DragonLord

The fastest consumer SSDs already exceed 2.5 GB/s. Only a matter of time before consumer hardware hits the 4 GB/s limit on PCIe 3.0 x4.

Now we have this SSD 960 PRO and it hits 3.5 GB/s. Pretty sure Samsung's hitting the limits of the PCIe 3.0 x4 bus (whose theoretical limit is just short of 4.0 GB/s).

SSDs are saturating PCIe 3.0. Now what?

Bear in mind that M.2 and even U.2 are limited to four lanes of PCIe. The only other option at this point is an HHHL expansion card, which obviously only works on desktops.

The new controller generates far less heat, too, so thermal throttling should be much less of an issue.

Considering that the PCIe interface has historically not been expected to run anywhere near its theoretical limit (graphics cards rarely saturate PCIe 3.0 x16), I seriously doubt PCIe 3.0 PHYs are tuned to attain such extreme sustained through.

*throughput

3500 MB/s is 89% of the 3940 MB/s limit imposed by the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface.

Typically, SATA SSDs top out at 520-550 MB/s under ideal conditions, or about 87-92% of the theoretical limit of SATA 6 Gbps.

I feared this would happen before we have a new interface to feed the ever-growing beast...

Many years ago, SSDs very quickly ran into the SATA barrier, first at 3 Gbps, and then at 6Gbps, which no rotating HDD could ever hope to attain. Now we've hit the PCIe 3.0 barrier. We now have consumer SSDs that are capable of saturating PCIe 3.0 x4. Now what?

!!/headdesk

ChatBot John Cavil

5:45 AM

user image

5:57 AM

The inevitable has happened: a consumer #SSD has saturated PCIe 3.0 x4 (3500MB/s = 89% of 3940MB/s limit) http://www.anandtech.com/show/10698/samsung-announces-960-pro-and-960-evo-m2-pcie-ssds @anandtech

Tweeted by bwDraco on September 21, 2016 at 5:57 AM

6:20 AM

pcworld.com/article/2921412/…

Before you know it, someone comes out with an SSD that saturates the fastest storage interface available in consumer PCs.

I can't get over this.

Journeyman Geek

7:17 AM

Apparently FDE on my work system is borked. Joy.

@JourneymanGeek :(

...and by my own foolishness, managed to short VBUS to data on one of the ports on my PowerCore 20100 power bank. PowerIQ no longer works on that port, the control chip connected to the data pins have failed open so devices charge slow on that port :(

(thankfully, I do have a workaround for that via my USB power meter and the failure mode is a "safe" one in that nothing is shorted; the other port still works normally)

Eh, probably just a blown fuse.

Most decent chargers have a SMD fuse on the port.

Very likely possibility, but it sucks that the data pins are open-circuit on that port.

Well, I smelled a light burn smell for a tiny moment. It just disappeared afterwards.

An IC would have burned out for longer.

Well, that's probably a fuse.

user image

:(

7:31 AM

lol

There goes my 30k :(

Hm. Already broke my 1-answer-per-month quota for this month.

@bwDraco Open it up and look for burn marks. If it's a SMD fuse you could probably replace it pretty easily.

Or maybe not so easily... would have to figure out what the fuse rating is. And that's hard with SMD.

Not exactly into opening up a device that otherwise works.

Though, it should be pretty tiny (say, under 50mA?) so maybe just stick one in.

The port isn't completely broken. It's just that the data pins are disconnected, making it noncompliant with the USB spec and causng devices to refuse to pull full power from it.

I'll live with it, and I do have a device that can circumvent this (my Drok power meter has its own fast-charging mode which can do the negotiation in place of the power bank's PowerIQ feature)

Jul 7 at 1:31, by bwDraco

- Hold the button as you insert the meter into the port to select Connected, Quick Charge, or Disconnected modes; let go when the desired mode appears on the display. Connected mode (USB Connect) passes the data wires through to allow communication. Quick Charge mode (USB Fast) connects the data pins to a charge controller that is capable of negotiating with the downstream device for fast charging (including Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0, if the power source supports it). Disconnected mode detaches the data pins altogether (they are left "floating"). A fourth mode "Zero" recalibrates the zero p…

(and I have no Quick Charge devices or sources so there's no driving 12V into a 5V device; shouldn't be so dumb as to go into 12V mode without a load, though)

Floating data pins are a no-no, which is why my devices refuse to charge at full speed on that port.

7:48 AM

Hmm. There might be a more serious problem because my tablet's dmesg output (with root) contains the following:

bq2419x 0-006b: Charging Fault: input fault (VBUS OVP OR VBAT<VBUS<3.8V)

Any idea what this means?

This does not happen with merely disconnected data pins (in which case a non-standard charging port is reported but not a "charging fault"). This error message specifically appears with the damaged port.

8:18 AM

OVP is probably OverVoltage Protection... I guess

Catty McCatFace

8:49 AM

@Bob awww

@ThatBrazilianHeadlessHorse me too. Or pneumonia. How weird

9:20 AM

10 hours. 2% battery left. Hotspot all day.

Not bad! Especially on 2800 mAh.

The Huawei one only lasts about that long and it's got a 3000 mAh battery and a worse radio and only a single network and is a dedicated modem/hotspot.

Tomorrow's test: second SIM disabled.

After that, gotta test stamina mode.

Pretty high cell standby usage... 30%

I wonder if disabling the second one would drop that.

@CattyMcCatFace :(

oh wait it's autumn up north

Catty McCatFace

10:12 AM

@Bob You'll die of old age

@CattyMcCatFace o.O

Catty McCatFace

@Bob Some girl above me was coughing up blood the other day, she said she wasn't contagious. Never trust a girl who says she won't give you a disease.

Journeyman Geek

Oo

o.O

Catty McCatFace

00

10:22 AM

O_O

Catty McCatFace

Atchoo

Journeyman Geek

dowses @CattyMcCatFace in Lysol

Catty McCatFace

10:47 AM

Lysol (/ˈlaɪsɒl/ LYE-sol) is a brand name of cleaning and disinfecting products distributed by Reckitt Benckiser. The line includes solutions for hard and soft surfaces, air treatment, and hand washing. The active ingredient in many of the Lysol products is benzalkonium chloride. The active ingredient in the Lysol Power and Free line is hydrogen peroxide. Scents from Lysol include Crisp Linen, Floral, Fruit & Citrus, Gourmand, and Fresh. == History == The first Lysol Brand Antiseptic Disinfectant was introduced in 1889 by Dr. Gustav Raupenstrauch to help end a cholera epidemic in Germany. The...

I am not a hard or soft surface, air, or hand

Well, soft surface maybe.

Journeyman Geek

I almost said dettol but I think that's a commonwealth thing

Hm. We appear to have a cat. I don't remember getting a cat.

@JourneymanGeek Don't worry, we're all commonwealth here :P

> Is Dettol harmful to cats?
> Dettol is toxic to many animals, especially cats

Catty McCatFace

11:06 AM

bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-37426644

> A Sydney teenager portrayed as the face of youth unemployment in Australia has revealed she fabricated her story.

The young women spoke to the newspaper in the car park of a welfare centre car park in Mount Druitt, a western Sydney suburb negatively stereotyped as having high levels of poverty.

They told the paper they preferred to spend their days "chilling" at McDonald's and driving an old hatchback off road than working.

> Social Services Minister Christian Porter has been resisting calls to increase the A$38 (£28; $28) per day youth welfare allowance, which he described as purposely low in order to make it "challenging to subsist".

WTF $38 a day "challenging to subsist"?!

That's more than I would get from disability benefits, housing benefits, and unemployment benefits combined, and that's already 50% higher than youth rates because over 25's get more.

Journeyman Geek

that's more than I spend a month ._.

Catty McCatFace

Yeah... "Purposely low" for Australia apparently

Yet I've had like three aussies tell me it's "not that expensive to live in Australia"

I wonder if I could claim unemployment in Australia while living in Thailand... like royalty...

@CattyMcCatFace wtf is a "youth welfare allowance"?

maybe "youth allowance"...

which would give you ~$30/day if living away from parents

humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/…

maybe newstart allowance

@CattyMcCatFace also that's only like 22 GBP, not 28 -_-

I wish the AUD was that strong

Catty McCatFace

11:24 AM

@Bob It's implied to be unemployment allowance for youths?

> They were branded a new breed of "dole bludger", sparking a media debate about NEETs, young people "not in employment, education or training".

The treasurer had vowed to personally look into their unemployment benefits.

@CattyMcCatFace sooooo... youth allowance

no "welfare" in that name

Catty McCatFace

> Youth Allowance is an income support payment available to full-time students and Australian Apprentices aged 16–24, and to job seekers and those undertaking a combination of other activities leading to employment aged 16–20.

Yeah

@CattyMcCatFace I want to know how they got $38/day

Catty McCatFace

@Bob I was thinking more "Since when was the UKP that weak, 1:1 vs. US Dollar?!"

@CattyMcCatFace That too :P

Catty McCatFace

11:28 AM

@Bob Well they did admit they fabricated the whole thing eventualy

> Single, with no children, younger than 18 years, and required to live away from parental home to study undertake training or look for work
$433.20 per fortnight

= $30.94

8 mins ago, by Bob

which would give you ~$30/day if living away from parents

:P

except I did floor() instead of round()

@CattyMcCatFace There is that special payment rate one but idk what you need to get that

> Operation is successfully.

Catty McCatFace

> Single job seeker principal carer granted an exemption from Mutual Obligation Requirements because you are either:

a registered and active foster carer
providing home schooling for your children
facilitating distance education for your children
caring for a large family, where you are the principal carer of 4 or more dependent children younger than 16 years, or a child in secondary school aged 16 to 19 years, or
caring for a child and you are a relative, other than a parent, as directed by a Parenting Order made through the Family Court

crap, gotta pay my card

Catty McCatFace

@Bob It's all here: humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/…

@CattyMcCatFace isn't that the page I linked? :P

Catty McCatFace

11:33 AM

@Bob Didn't notice! Chat was scrolling too fast

@CattyMcCatFace oh. in other words, children.

Catty McCatFace

Apparently Finnish unemployment is like 700 euros a month, and you don't even have to be in Finland to get it

MRO is basically have a plan to find a job humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/…

Catty McCatFace

"Special" children: Ordinary children get:
"Single, with children $567.60"

Dammit why are these out of stock :( geekbuying.com/item/…

Catty McCatFace

11:35 AM

@Bob Why those in particular? USB adapters are fairly generic no?

Unless they're one of the few that aren't spec-violating

@CattyMcCatFace They're not spec-violating, and they're cheap

Catty McCatFace

@Bob That's probably why they're out of stock then :-P

@CattyMcCatFace Yep :(

@CattyMcCatFace They're that-google-guy-approved: amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1A8DH5KRORHRJ/…

also I just ordered a Mi4c for my mum (cc @JourneymanGeek) so she'll need some adapters :\

Catty McCatFace

Oh gosh, another one of these transition periods....

I'm still not fully over Mini USB yet :-o

@CattyMcCatFace I think I still have a single mini cable in the drawer

just in case (TM)

@CattyMcCatFace No Type-C phones for me yet :P

Catty McCatFace

11:39 AM

@Bob My bicycle lights charge over mini-USB

Gotta burn through those micro cables first

Catty McCatFace

Admittedly, they're 5+ years old, and one of those things I don't really replace till they break

speaking of which, why the hell did I just order another pack of the micros last month

Catty McCatFace

lol

@Bob I've got MicroUSB cables falling out of every bag/pocket/compartment everywhere I go now

Went from "Couldn't find any" to "40% of the weight of my luggage is MicroUSB cables I didn't know I had"

Even the Xperia is micro

Zenfone would've been C

yes, I paid something like $200 extra just for microusb (nah)

Catty McCatFace

11:41 AM

> 2x USB 3.0 and 2x USB 3.0 ports around the back

Wat

o.O

Catty McCatFace

Oh they meant 2x USB 3.0 and 2x USB 2.0 ports around the back

oh

I thought that means 2 on the front and 2 on the back

Catty McCatFace

"Get funny diversions such as a suggested funny YouTube clip or play games directly within your chat."

I misread that as "Play funny games directly with your cat"

Yes that would be an AWESOME feature to have in Google's new messenger.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob the OPs are kinda forgiving of non standard cables...

Catty McCatFace

11:45 AM

> Microsoft is going to disable and delete the GWX-app from all existing Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs. This comes two months after the free upgrade-offer for Windows 10 ended.

Only 12 months overdue

Catty McCatFace

11:59 AM

Getting used to the homelessness thing. Only reason I want a home is just for the address, and because I miss having a lag-free computer

5-year-old 2-core laptop is sloppy when you're used to a 4-6 core Skylake i7's and Xeons.

Journeyman Geek

lol

does it at least have an SSD or maxed out ram?

@CattyMcCatFace s/funny/annoying/g

evening folks

@JourneymanGeek "(non) standard cables" shouldn't even be a thing

in fact, your oneplus requires a non-standard cable, if we're going by usb standards...

Journeyman Geek

@Bob literally I cannot get any cable I've tested to misbehave

Catty McCatFace

12:03 PM

@JourneymanGeek Both, but maxed out RAM on this thing is 8GB

@Sathya Afternoon

Journeyman Geek

so they're all standard

or they arn't

Catty McCatFace

Current RAM commit... 9GB and that's shortly after a restart. Normally it sits around 13-15GB

@JourneymanGeek dodgy cables tend to be more of a problem for the source than the sink

@DavidPostill @bob heya, how you folks doings

Journeyman Geek

12:04 PM

@CattyMcCatFace heh, that's roughly as good as my better laptop,

Catty McCatFace

I want the damn laptop/tablet/thingumy I want to become available already :-(

@Sathya 'lo

Journeyman Geek

@Bob ampere tests maximum current... and that works

Catty McCatFace

@JourneymanGeek Old desktop and work desktop had 24GB, home desktop had 32GB -_-

I'm not used to 8GB

Journeyman Geek

(2, 4, 16)

12:05 PM

@JourneymanGeek it doesn't test max anything, it records max current as reported by the phone...

Catty McCatFace

Maybe I just need to find a more RAM-frugal web browser

Journeyman Geek

work laptop would have 3, if I could actually get in...

@Sathya Ok. Upped my flag rate by using Smokey :)

Catty McCatFace

@Bob True, since most of the time the sink expects 5v and has precise current control anyway.

HOWEVER if it's a variable voltage source, then you start having problems...

@JourneymanGeek the problem was the device drawing more than the source expected, and blowing a fuse/burning a trace in the source

if the source supports 5V/3A, then your typical dodgy usb-c cable won't break it

Journeyman Geek

12:07 PM

@Bob yup, so I have no idea if any of my cables would actually do that

Catty McCatFace

Huh, Chrome://Memory is gone :-(

@JourneymanGeek that's just because you're lucky to have sources that support that current

has nothing to do with the phone

Journeyman Geek

@Bob tested with a standard 2A source tho

@DavidPostill aha

@JourneymanGeek you got a usb tester?

Catty McCatFace

12:08 PM

> Project Eraser is the effort to simplify Chrome by unlaunching features and code-paths that no longer provide enough value to justify their complexity either in the code or in the UI. Starting in M-43 we are proactively seeking out opportunities to remove or never launch new functionality on the basis of keeping Chrome code simple and maintainable and Chrome UI easy to understand and intuitive to navigate.

Journeyman Geek

nope?

Catty McCatFace

Oh fer fucks sake

either the source is (luckily) under-specced, or your phone decided not to draw more (voltage drop?)

or you're lucky to have all compliant cables

Journeyman Geek

I think its the latter

Catty McCatFace

@Bob Or all of the above, which is why non-compliant cables causing actual problems took a Google engineer with a grudge to uncover

12:10 PM

@CattyMcCatFace also because Google neglected to protect the ports on their laptop -_-

Journeyman Geek

@CattyMcCatFace or its a problem specific to google's hardware ;p

Catty McCatFace

@JourneymanGeek I said that months ago, but meh.

Google engineers might find that offensive if they read this and I want Google to like me

Journeyman Geek

but I'm pretty specifically saying I don't know ;p

that said, lots of motherboards will die if you draw to much from usb :\

Catty McCatFace

@Bob Other motherboards specifically advertise how uber-protected their USB ports are

12:11 PM

you'd think they could afford a PTC fuse, but nawp

Catty McCatFace

user image

@CattyMcCatFace ..."dram fuse"?

Journeyman Geek

FUSE ALL THE THINGS!

Catty McCatFace

> ASUS ESD Guards offer an active protective circuit desig

@CattyMcCatFace Find common memory issues

Catty McCatFace

12:13 PM

Active ESD guard?

Monitor memory use in realtime with the Chrome Task Manager

Catty McCatFace

WAT

Yeah I'd like to see a circuit that can actively process an ESD...

user image

Journeyman Geek

o0

Not sure if Firefox fail, driver fail, or GPU fail

12:26 PM

lookie like you overclok you gpu too much :-)

12:40 PM

@Psycogeek It's not overclocked -_-

1:17 PM

On the plus side, we definitely killed that cancer over there, even if we caused a bunch more everywhere else.

hello

hi

namaste

@Bob that looks eerily similar to the stuff I had a few weeks ago, but mine went away on reboot and driver update

*hugs his iPhone 7 Plus 256GB Space Gray*

1:34 PM

@allquicatic that reminds me, I should bt-test the xperia

@Bob lol

I bought an Avantree Leaf on a whim as a throw-in on Amazon. It works well, supports aptX Low Latency, but its antenna seems weaker than the Imperial BART 1... I get little tiny, non-intrusive (low volume; it's nice for a change) "pops" about a few times an hour with the Avantree Leaf and my BeoPlay H8

very good bluetooth audio so far on the 7 Plus, similar to the 6s Plus

horrific screen-on battery life with Spotify though, because LCD and Spotify is a black mode app

also I much preferred the physical home button over the new "haptic" home button

it might just take some getting used to though

10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT EVERYDAY OBJECTS

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Transcript for

Sep '1621

Root Access

For all you Super Users out there. You have backups, right?

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