BerkeleyLUG meetup this Sunday 2019-10-27 at Cafe Blue Door

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goossbears

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Oct 25, 2019, 1:38:49 PM10/25/19
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Hey everyone,

A reminder here that the second BerkeleyLUG
meetup of the month is this upcoming Sunday,
October 27th, "officially" happening from
11am to 2pm PDT at Berkeley's Cafe Blue Door.
 
The time and dates of meetups are also viewable
at www.berkeleylug.com/meetings
Unofficially, some of the BerkeleyLUG participants
have regularly hung-around at past meetups, working on
various projects and/or engaging in discussion/training
even well past the "official" ending-time.

Cafe Blue Door is located at 2244 Bancroft Way;
across the street from Cal's Edwards Stadium near
the extreme Southwestern corner of the campus.
Also see its Yelp page at https://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-blue-door-berkeley
and its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/BerkeleyFloorCafe/
When you enter the front door of the cafe, look
around for a gathering of other recognizable Linux
aficionados sitting around the large table with laptops
and other small computing devices as well as for the
small sign indicating the presence of the group.

Those of you dropping by this Sunday for the meetup
are welcome to bring along a limited number of extra
surge-protected power strips and long, grounded
extension cords for powering the various computing
devices you're bringing along with you, duly taking
into account the cafe's power-outlet and space
constraints surrounding the large table.
As before, we would kindly request that all meetup
attendees please accommodate everyone else
present at the table even including non-BerkeleyLUG
patrons at the Cafe, especially now that the Fall
Semester is in full swing with so many of Cal's
students choosing to study at the Cafe.

Thanks, Cheers and See ya' there!
-A

ace36

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Oct 27, 2019, 2:11:51 PM10/27/19
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A reminder here that the second BerkeleyLUG
meetup of the month is this upcoming Sunday,
October 27th, "officially" happening from
11am to 2pm PDT at Berkeley's Cafe Blue Door.

Will unfortunately have to miss today's meetup :-(
Hope that others will show up and have some
good Linux/OpenSource discussion and work on
their/your projects :-)
-Aaron

tom r lopes

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Oct 27, 2019, 4:14:38 PM10/27/19
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Three of us here.  Was very crowded at first but eventually we got the big table.  

Wifi is ok but a bit slow.  

Thomas

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Michael Paoli

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Oct 27, 2019, 5:24:42 PM10/27/19
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CalVisitor Wi-Fi also seems to be working reasonably okay today (it's
generally marginally within range) ... that also has both IPv4 & IPv6.
In fact sending this from/via it.
$ curl https://www.ipv4.balug.org/myip https://www.ipv6.balug.org/myip
192.31.105.243
2607:f140:6000:1c:3ea9:f4ff:fe24:656c
$

tom r lopes

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Oct 27, 2019, 8:13:45 PM10/27/19
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Recap:  

Quite a challenge getting a table.  (Rumor is that electricity is shut off on campus).  
But by 1 pm all were able to sit down at the big table.  

Juan brought by a laptop running Trisquel Linux which is a "free" version of Ubuntu.  I.e. Ubuntu with 
all binary blobs removed.  
Problem was WIFI not working.  We went down the wrong path at first but eventually solved the problem.  
The mistake was mis-identifying the wireless card.  We started looking at a device which was actually the 
Ethernet.  And a bunch of stupid stuff was tried (my fault -- I need to be smarter)  
So, what finally worked: USB tether to the phone and run apt update the apt upgrade.  
Run lspci to determine the wireless hardware.  It is an Artheros chip using the ath9k module.  This is 
supposed to be completely open and blob-free.  
dmesg | grep ath9k shows the card detected and a network interface created.  
But Network Manager is not showing any networks!  
Next I wonder if the wireless radio is turned off so I try to run rfkill but rfkill was not installed.  
But still thinking maybe the radio is off and look around and find the physical wireless switch!  
All that run-around and it was just a switch on the front.  


On other news Ubuntu 19.10 released.  It comes with kernel 5.3 which among other stuff has 
improved support for Atom Baytrail CPU's  
I will try it on one of my convertible Baytrail tablets.  Let you guys know how it works.  
I have Arch Linux running on one and it is very nice.  But it would be good to get it running with 
Ubuntu as the install is much easier esp. for the noobie.  

Thomas

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schubert bach

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Oct 28, 2019, 2:18:04 PM10/28/19
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Very nice Job Thomas

thanks alot!!
J.C

Michael Paoli

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Oct 30, 2019, 3:15:47 AM10/30/19
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And if/when one doesn't have rfkill installed ...:

> From: "tom r lopes" <tomr...@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: BerkeleyLUG meetup this Sunday 2019-10-27 at Cafe Blue Door
> Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2019 17:13:38 -0700

> but rfkill was not installed.

# find /proc /dev /sys -name '*rfkill*' -exec ls -Lonid \{\} \; | sort -bn
37371 drwxr-xr-x 6 0 0 Jun 21 09:31 /sys/module/rfkill
37404 drwxr-xr-x 2 0 0 Oct 30 07:01 /sys/class/rfkill
37405 drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 Jul 31 14:47 /sys/devices/virtual/misc/rfkill
37405 drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 Oct 30 07:03 /sys/class/misc/rfkill
40100 -r--r--r-- 1 0 4096 Oct 30 07:03
/sys/module/dell_laptop/parameters/force_rfkill
40156 drwxr-xr-x 4 0 0 Aug 25 00:54 /sys/devices/platform/dell-laptop/rfkill
40157 drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 Aug 25 00:54
/sys/devices/platform/dell-laptop/rfkill/rfkill0
40157 drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 Oct 30 07:03 /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0
40179 drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 Aug 25 00:54
/sys/devices/platform/dell-laptop/rfkill/rfkill1
40179 drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 Oct 30 07:03 /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1
40241 drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 Aug 25 00:54
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.1/0000:03:00.0/ieee80211/phy0/rfkill2
40241 drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 Oct 30 07:03 /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill2
40266 -r--r--r-- 1 0 4096 Oct 30 07:03
/sys/module/dell_rbtn/parameters/auto_remove_rfkill
71569 crw-rw-r--+ 1 0 10, 57 Jun 14 10:46 /dev/rfkill
#
Notice also that some of those are same inode number on same filesystem,
thus (are or link to) same file.
# grep . /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill*/{hard,soft} | sort
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/hard:1
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/soft:0
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1/hard:1
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1/soft:1
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill2/hard:1
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill2/soft:0
# ls -l /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Oct 30 07:03 /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0 ->
../../devices/platform/dell-laptop/rfkill/rfkill0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Oct 30 07:03 /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1 ->
../../devices/platform/dell-laptop/rfkill/rfkill1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Oct 30 07:06 /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill2 ->
../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.1/0000:03:00.0/ieee80211/phy0/rfkill2
# rfkill list
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
1: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: yes
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
#
... flip the hardware switch, and:
# rfkill list
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
1: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
12: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
# grep . /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill*/{hard,soft} | sort
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/hard:0
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/soft:0
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1/hard:0
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1/soft:1
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill2/hard:0
/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill2/soft:0
#
Flip the (Wi-Fi) softs:
# echo 1 | tee /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill[02]/soft >> /dev/null
# echo 0 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1/soft
# rfkill list
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
1: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: yes
13: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
#
Set 'em as they were before:
# echo 0 | tee /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill[02]/soft >> /dev/null
# echo 1 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1/soft
# rfkill list
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
1: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
#

tom r lopes

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Oct 30, 2019, 4:04:59 AM10/30/19
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Wow, nice!  

Thomas

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goossbears

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Oct 30, 2019, 8:43:32 AM10/30/19
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On Wednesday, October 30, 2019 at 12:15:47 AM UTC-7, Michael Paoli wrote:
And if/when one doesn't have rfkill installed ...:

etcetera, etcetera, etcetera............
 

And if/when one or more persons would like to know a bit more understandable and less cryptic information about 'rfkill' (less than a handful of web-accessible references)....

1. Directly quoting from the Linux Wireless Wiki for rfkill of reference [1]:

About rfkill

rfkill is a small userspace tool to query the state of the rfkill switches, buttons and subsystem interfaces. Some devices come with a hard switch that lets you kill different types of RF radios: 802.11 / Bluetooth / NFC / UWB / WAN / WIMAX / FM. Some times these buttons may kill more than one RF type. The Linux kernel rfkill subsystem exposes these hardware buttons and lets userspace query its status and set its status through a /dev/rfkill. Given that at times some RF devices do not have hardware rfkill buttons rfkill the Linux kernel also exposes software rfkill capabilities that allows userspace to mimic a hardware rfkill event and turn on or off RF.


2. kernel.org's 'rfkill - RF kill switch support' at reference [2].
3. Lynxbee's fairly straightforward 'How to Turn ON &amp; OFF Bluetooth, LAN, Wireless / WiFi from command line in Ubuntu' at reference [3].
4. The rfkill(8) Linux manual page at reference [4].

-A

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