Monthly Archives: February 2018

linuxlite english uk support

to enable linuxlite (& xubuntu) english uk support for office and firefox run

menu | settings | language support

drag english united kingdom to top of list

click apply systemwide

you can also add extra languages such as chinese

reboot

then browse to a chinese site such as http://www.saicmotor.com/chinese/index.shtml to check you can see the chinese characters correctly

linuxlite (& xubuntu) xml editors

linuxlite (& xubuntu) csv & xml editors

vscode csv & xml extensions

if fact vscode has 100’s of extensions not only extensions for CSV and XML

linuxlite and ubuntu midi and wave players

in linuxlite and ubuntu to get midi and wave players to work you need to install some packages such as sox and timidity

# aptitude install sox
# aptitude install playmidi
# aptitude install gsequencer
# aptitude install timidity
# aptitude install wildmidi

 

then download some midifiles such as

 

you can then play .WAV files and .MIDI files

$ play /boot/startupsound.wav
$ wildmidi Downloads/Mike_Oldfield_-_Moonlight_Shadow.mid
$ timidity Downloads/Mike_Oldfield_-_Moonlight_Shadow.mid

 

timidity has an amazing karaoke mode too

$ timidity Downloads/Mike_Oldfield_-_Moonlight_Shadow.mid 
Requested buffer size 32768, fragment size 8192
ALSA pcm 'default' set buffer size 32768, period size 8192 bytes
Playing Downloads/Mike_Oldfield_-_Moonlight_Shadow.mid
MIDI file: Downloads/Mike_Oldfield_-_Moonlight_Shadow.mid
Format: 1 Tracks: 10 Divisions: 384
Track name: Soft karaoke
Text: @KMIDI KARAOKE FILE
Track name: Words
Track name: melody 
Track name: sologitr
Track name: gitarren
Track name: fl�chen 
Track name: bass 
Track name: drums 
Track name: GS BY UT

Language: ENGL
Title: Moonlight Shadow
Title: Mike Oldfield
Title: Kar file made by Cowon MacLeod
@WThis song
@Wmay be used for non-commercial purposes only!

The last that ever she saw him
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
He passed on worried and warning
Carried away by a moonlight shadow.
Lost in a river last saturday night

 

unfortunately playmidi and xplaymidi still seem to be broken

$ xplaymidi Downloads/TwoForThePriceOfOne.mid 
Playmidi 2.4 Copyright (C) 1994-1997 Nathan I. Laredo, AWE32 by Takashi Iwai
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details please see the file COPYING.
open /dev/sequencer: No such file or directory

 

even if timidity is running as a service but with errors

# service timidity status
● timidity.service - LSB: start and stop timidity
 Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/timidity; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
 Active: active (exited) since Tue 2018-02-20 20:05:26 GMT; 14min ago
 Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)

Feb 20 20:05:25 ll38 systemd[1]: 
Starting LSB: start and stop timidity...
Feb 20 20:05:25 ll38 timidity[29186]: 
* Starting TiMidity++ ALSA midi emulation...
Feb 20 20:05:26 ll38 timidity[29186]: ...done.
Feb 20 20:05:26 ll38 systemd[1]: 
Started LSB: start and stop timidity.
Feb 20 20:05:27 ll38 pulseaudio[29200]: 
[autospawn] core-util.c: Home directory not accessible: 
Permission denied
Feb 20 20:16:51 ll38 systemd[1]: 
Started LSB: start and stop timidity.

 

 

linuxlite ubuntu unattended upgrades

linuxlite and ubuntu gnu/linux installs may have automatic unattended upgrades installed and enabled

to check the status of your system

$ aptitude show unattended-upgrades

if installed you can disable it by editing /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades or remove the unattended-upgrades package

# aptitude remove unattended-upgrades
# rm /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades
# reboot

 

https://github.com/chef/bento/issues/609

In past versions of Ubuntu, unattended package upgrades were handled by creating a cron job in /etc/cron.daily responsible for running apt. With 16.04 and the shift to systemd, unattended upgrades are handled by a systemd unit. The new systemd unit has OnCalendar set to 6am and 6pm, along with Persistent set to true. The result is that a full apt-get update && apt-get ugrade will run the first time the box boots, in order to “catch-up” with missed runs.

see also

debian linuxlite 3.8 (ubuntu 16.x) intel microcode

debian linuxlite 3.8 (ubuntu 16.x) intel microcode

after yoiu have installed this you should see

# journalctl | grep microcode

Feb 19 14:57:18 lili kernel: microcode: 
CPU0 sig=0x40651, pf=0x1, revision=0x1d

Feb 19 14:57:18 lili kernel: microcode: 
Microcode Update Driver: v2.01 <tigran@aivazian.fsnet.co.uk>, 
Peter Oruba

microcode – everything you ever wanted to know

microcode – everything you ever wanted to know

you need forget everything you thought you knew about microcode was in the old Z80 days

run cat /proc/cpuinfo to see what cpu chip & microcode version you have

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 69
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4310U CPU @ 2.00GHz
microcode : 0x1d
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr 
pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss syscall 
nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon nopl xtopology 
tsc_reliable nonstop_tsc eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 
pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes 
xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm invpcid_single 
retpoline kaiser fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 
invpcid xsaveopt arat
bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2
bogomips : 5202.00

 

have a look at your logs to see if you have any microcode patches

dmesg | grep "microcode"

journalctl -b -k | grep "microcode"

 

you need to enable nonfree deb/rpm repos so you get access to microcode packages

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian jessie main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free

 

then install the microcode package

aptitude update
aptitude install amd64-microcode

 

check your kernels params and reboot

 

Notes

Unfortunately, the license of the microcode update data from AMD and Intel are not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
Therefore, microcode update data will be available through the non-free distribution. The new processor microcode update system is available for both non-free Wheezy and non-free Squeeze (through the backports repository).

Meltdown (the vulnerability affecting only Intel chips) cannot be fixed with microcode updates alone and requires changes to core OS functionality, which may reduce performance further.

Spectre (the vulnerability affecting Intel, AMD and ARM chips) may be able to be worked around with microcode updates alone.

virtualisation and amd and intel speculative execution security bugs

virtualisation and amd and intel speculative execution security bugs

if you want to use amd and intel microcode updates that mitigate against “branch target injection” (aka meltdown and spectre) defects in their CPUs you may want to patch your host and enable hypervisor-assisted guest mitigation so virtual machine guests also function

https://www.vmware.com/us/security/advisories/VMSA-2018-0004.html

  • Hypervisor-Specific Mitigation
  • Hypervisor-Assisted Guest Mitigation
  • Operating System-Specific Mitigations

See also