neidu2

So, I was having a phone conversation with my boss yesterday. The topic was a clustered filesystem that can hold huge amounts of data, and how we would best allow local users to access this data without yhe storage cluster becoming overloaded (because of various reasons, the I/O is relatively slow. This was built for quantity, not speed).

Rights now there's an SMB share, and we're looking at replacing that so that we can have better control over the data throughput. My suggestion is to simply spin up an FTP server.

Then my boss asks: "I'm just curious, but would rsync or NFS work as a protocol instead?"

Well, it's a valid question, so the only thing I could do was reply with the honest answer as to why I chose FTP. Paraphrased and translated:

"Because some 20 years ago my then username carried a lot of recognition in certain communities revolving around software and media distribution, whose rights holders would not necessarily approve of said distribution. We used FTP, because when you're on an ADSL from 2002, you want to have as much fine control as you can to make sure your internet connection doesn't get flooded with requests. One connection at a time, and only one file at a time, which would be ideal in our particular case."

The response I got was a chuckle and that he couldn't think of a better endorsement of FTP as a preferred transfer protocol.

So there you have it - My career revolves a lot of skills that I picked up whole sailing the high seas. And coincidentally, my career now also involves literally sailing the high seas as these storage clusters are used on survey ships.

Long story short, my laptops DC input is no longer working. Yes, I've tested every aspect of the power supply. I even measured the motherboard input voltage, and it is being properly fed. I suspect a faulty DC-DC converter.

So, I had this idea of removing the battery permanently, and instead emulating it with a power supply with matching voltage. I don't really need the battery anyway (I mostly use a laptop for the form factor).

In theory, the laptop will then think it's running off of battery power. Permanently. Are there any consequences in terms of performance that could arise from this? Of course, the power settings will need to be adjusted, but beyond that I'm wondering if there's a hardware aspect that I cannot control.

Native English speakers... I hear the order of adjectives is important, and getting this wrong is jarring to read.

I'm making a pitch to upper management about building a "modular and versatile thingamawidget". Or is it "versatile and modular thingamawidget"?

If it doesn't matter, I think I'll go for the latter, as it abbreviates to something easily pronouncable without sounding like a paramilitary group or a ride sharing business.

I have a Dell Latitude 5420 laptop with LMDE, running kernel 6.1.0-12. This laptop has a builtin I219-LM ethernet controller that I can see via lspci. Some research indicates that this needs the e1000e kernel module, so I grabbed it from Intel, compiled it, and installed it. There were some complaints during the compilation, but nothing more than the average compilation process. Plus, it shows up in lsmod. Afterwards, lspci -vv displays it with the e1000e driver:

0000:00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (13) I219-LM (rev 20)
        Subsystem: Dell Ethernet Connection (13) I219-LM
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
        IOMMU group: 15
        Region 0: Memory at a6100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
        Capabilities: [c8] Power Management version 3
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0+,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
                Status: D0 NoSoftRst+ PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=1 PME-
        Capabilities: [d0] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
                Address: 0000000000000000  Data: 0000
        Kernel modules: e1000e

However, when I do lshw, it is listed as unclaimed:

  *-network:1 UNCLAIMED  
       description: Ethernet controller  
       product: Ethernet Connection (13) I219-LM  
       vendor: Intel Corporation  
       physical id: 1f.6  
       bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.6  
       version: 20  
       width: 32 bits  
       clock: 33MHz  
       capabilities: pm msi cap_list  
       configuration: latency=0  
       resources: memory:a6100000-a611ffff  

...and of course, it's still not showing in ifconfig. So, where do I go from here? Did I miss anything obvious?

And just for the record, I know that the ethernet port is working. It worked fine in Win11 before wiped the PC completely.

....to a reasonable degree, at least.

A couple of others I can think of:

• Crypto-boom of 2016ish: GPUs/mining rigs
• LLM/AI hype nowish: User generated data
• 90's dotcom bubble: Server space

Title, basically. My old torture device needs to be replaced, and while it's been mostly working OK, printers have no excuse for being as shitty as they are. So therefore I am looking for suggestions.

Specs:

• Must include a flatbed scanner
• prints in color
• Wifi connection preferred
• No PaaS or IaaS bullshit
• No driver weirdness. I'm going to use it on linux.
• Available "anywhere".
• Ability to sit powered and connected in my HarryPotteresque "server room" under the stairs for ages, unattended, and work without hazzle when I send it the bimonthly print job.

I know the geek community likes Brother. Any particular model?

For reference, this new printer will replace my aging Canon Pixma 4250.

Turns out Outlook sucks ass for anything not part of an office365 subscription, so I'm looking for something else. Preferably open source, preferably available via F-Droid.

One example I've seen is someone talking about being coconut-pilled.

Basically what the title says. Here's the thing: address exhaustion is a solved problem. NAT already took care of this via RFC 1631. While initially presented as a temporary fix, anyone who thinks it's going anywhere at this point is simply wrong. Something might replace IPv4 as the default at some point, but it's not going to be IPv6.

And then there are the downsides of IPv6:

• Not all legacy equipment likes IPv6. Yes, there's a lot of it out there.
• "Nobody" remembers an IPv6 address. I know my IPv4 address, and I'm sure many others do too. Do you know your IPv6 address, though?
• Everything already supports IPv4
• For IPv6 to fully replace IPv4, practically everything needs to move over. De facto standards don't change very easily. There's a reason why QWERTY keyboards, ASCII character tables, and E-mail are still around, despite alternatives technically being "better".
• Dealing with dual network stacks in the interim is annoying.

Sure, IPv6 is nice and all. But as an addition rather than as a replacement. I've disabled it by default for the past 10 years, as it tends to clutter up my ifconfig overview, and I've had no ill effects.

Source: Network engineer.

....så det så