[conspire] CABAL day; election analysis is done; Debian 9.13 Stretch --> 10.6 Buster

[Michael Paoli]

Yeah CABAL - sorry I missed.
I was in the middle of my last major Operating System (OS) upgrades
from Debian Stretch to Buster,
this one: Debian 9.13 Stretch --> 10.6 Buster
and also fair bit non-trivial, as it's direct on hardware,
and is my (primary and effectively "only") personal laptop,
and it's also fair bit of a workhorse (to large extent also
functions like a fairly beefy yet quiet relatively powerful server).
Alas, took a while to work out a few kinks (not totally unexpected,
given the volume of changes - and nothing too horrific).
Let's see ... some of 'em, in approximate reverse chronological order:
o X - no keyboard or mouse response - needed (at least as work-around) to
   add user (notably me) using startx to group input ... lacking that,
   no response from keyboard or pointer - couldn't even switch virtual
   consoles or stop xserver from keyboard (while troubleshooting, I did
   a failsafe that would whack it if I didn't touch or remove a file:
   http://www.mpaoli.net/~michael/bin/Startx
   )
o qemu-kvm & libvirt & friends - needed a few configuration tweaks for
   that to work again, likewise also for live migrations to work again,
   also needed one minor Virtual Machine (VM) virtual CPU config tweak
   for it to work with live migrations (again?) - at least on one VM,
   but interestingly the BALUG VM didn't need this one particular
   virtual CPU tweak.
o apparmor - though worked quite well enough on some other installations,
   at least for this host it was getting in the way way too dang much,
   e.g. was burning too much time trying to get bind9 operational again,
   so just completely disabled apparmor for now (may revisit it later).
   Some of the issues in apparmor were significant enough, couldn't
   even, e.g. for bind9 / named, drop it down to complain or disabled
   mode, as even that would fail.
o systemd's getty settings (notably what virtual terminals enabled) didn't
   pick up sysvinit's configs for that - so some minor tweaks needed there
o sysvinit / systemd ... started off with sysvinit ... alas, package,
   dependencies - directly or indirectly on systemd - too many pieces out
   of kde and gnome, most notably (or at least especially kde) ... and a
   rather convoluted and indirect dependency, but a dependency nonetheless,
   rather than remove all that stuff, tried switching to systemd and ...
   seemed to behave reasonably sane on this host (at least thus far) ...
   unlike the last time I tried systemd on this host - it was too f*cked
   up and a total no-go (on various counts) at that time - especially that
   it couldn't even properly handle /etc/fstab and get things mounted -
   it utterly failed at that ... but that was then, this is now ... seems
   relatively "okay" - thus far ... well, at least to the extent systemd
   might be considered ... "okay"(?).
o perhaps some other less memorable / less time suck bits I'm not
   thinking of off-hand
o there were various package adjustments needed along the way too ...
   stuff that needed to be (manually) added, etc., for most everything to
   work.  All seems relatively okay ... so far - still checking and
   double-checking (and doing some more clean-up) ... but so far lookin'
   pretty good.  :-)

So, CABAL ... yesterday, and ... August (the first virtual CABAL, right?),
was there also a September CABAL meeting - I don't think I saw
mention/announcement on the conspire list (I'm guessing/presuming
it didn't happen ... and that we can presume the in-person physical
bits on BALE about CABAL are probably still, in practical terms,
no go per COVID-19 'n all that).

Yeah, election analysis.  Yeah, I fairly recently encountered some
other folks, too, that quite utilize that (and yeah, I've been finding
it handy too).

> From: "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: [conspire] Saturday, Oct. 24th is (belated) CABAL day;  
> also, election analysis is done
> Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2020 02:10:13 -0700


> TOPIC 1 of 2:
>
>
> Well, I utterly failed to have a CABAL meeting on Jitsi Meet a couple
> of weeks ago, so we'll do it _today_ (Saturday the 24th), 4pm - 8pm.
>
>     October 2020
> Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
>              1  2  3
>  4  5  6  7  8  9 10
> 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
> 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
> 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
>
>
> Where?  Here, via videoconferencing:  http://meet.jit.si/cabal
>
>
> You will need:
>
> o  Computer w/supported Web browser.  Best results reported with:
>       o  Chromium
>       o  Chrome
>       o  Microsoft Edge v. 79.0.309 or later
>       o  (some others, e.g., Firefox, might work but are not guaranteed)
>
> o  A computer with mic and speakers/headphones.  Headphones/earbuds
>    are recommended (because they avert audio feeback loops).
>
> Upon joining @ that URL, your browser will probably ask if the page
> may have permission to connect to your microphone and speaker.  Say yes.
>
>
> If you haven't done computer videoconferencing before:
>
> o  You can check your setup for problems at https://test.webrtc.org/ .
>    (Don't worry about minor bobbles like 'Reflexive connectivity'
>    getting dinged.)
>
> o  You might want to show up 15 minutes early, to thrash out problems.
>    (Problems are common during first-time videoconferencing.)
>
> If you can't (or would rather not) videoconference in, via Web browser,
> you can _instead_ join audio-only by dialing in telephonically.
>
> Call-in numbers and access PIN follow.
>
> PIN: 3654 3335 40
>
> Country     Dial-in Number
> US          +1.512.647.1431
> UK          +44.203.885.2179
> France      +33.1.87.21.0005
> Germany     +49.89.380.38719
> Netherlands +31.85.208.1541
> Spain       +34.932.205.409
> Canada      +1.437.538.3987
> Australia   +61.8.7150.1136
> Brazil      +55.21.3500.0112
> Japan       +81.3.4510.2372
> Switzerland +41.61.588.0496
>
>
>
>
> TOPIC 2 of 2:
>
> It was a really hard slog, this time, but I've completed my guide to the
> November 3rd ballot:
>
> http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/election-2020-11-03.html
>
> --
> Cheers,                           "2020 is pulling out more plot devices than
> Rick Moen                         a TV series on the brink of being  
> canceled."
> rick at linuxmafia.com                          (Seen on Reddit, Oct. 2, 2020.)
> McQ! (4x80)