[sf-lug] Jit.se meeting notes for today Sunday, August 2, 2020

[Bobbie Sellers]

Hi LUGers,

     I logged on about 10:50 AM    Well a lot of you all
were not at the meeting which was probably just as well.
Jit.ze meetings are still a learning experience for most of us.

     Attendees were your humble correspondent in San Francisco.
     Akkana Peck signing in from New Mexico.
     John S. from San Mateo.
     Michael Paoli
     Alex K.
     Ken Schaffer from Marin.
     Tom.
     John not even a final initial
     Someone came in briefly and left again.
     Chris Peeples, a gentleman with EB Transit apparently.

     The chief activity was showing up for the meeting.
     There was some discussion of the new so-called "Boothole"
vulnerability.  This is mainly a danger to careless users of the
Microsoft program launcher depending on Secure-Boot to
keep them safe.  It can affect GRUB as well and the worst
effect so far was an abortive attempt at fixing GRUB which
resulted in unbootable computers.

     I tried to brag about PCLinuxOS 64 getting out a new
compiler version and a new kernel 5.7.10 and the minor
problems we encountered but no one was listening.
Just as well because before starting these notes
I did more updates and now at 5.7.12.

     Chris Peeples was attempting to create a bootable Flash
Drive to install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS in place of his previous
version which was 14.04.  He had deleted his first download
of course so that the iso had to be gotten and fortunately
he had a fast connection.
     He got more tips than he needed from the rest of us but
Michael Paoli got him all the way to the installed Ubuntu 20.04,
when Mr. Peeples decided he could handle the rest of the
configuration.  This took until 3 PM.

     Mr. Peeples also thought that getting help over jit.se was
good because with shared screens we did not all have to lean
over his screen to see what was wrong.  In these months
of plague of course that would not be appropriate Social
Distancing.

     Now lots of us signed out early to pursue what are called,
i understand, "Real Life Activities".   I know very little about
those these days.  But the SFPL will be opening again in
August for pickups of reserved items.

     I tried to demo the REMnux 7 tool which is designed to
be run in a Virtuality and mine was running on VirtualBox.
Screen reflections interfered with the viewing so after
an attempt at sharing Geeko current version on the
Distrowatch site I put that away.  I was on the Jit.se on
the Dell E7450 and was running the demos on the
Dell E6540.  Next month assuming we have one, I will
have moved most of my Virtual machines to the Dell 7450.

     And if we ever get to a new meeting in person the tablet
will be loaded with Linux Pro digital magazines for the
attendees perusal.  So I hope that we get back to it soon
because we already have 4 months of digital issues jam-packed
with interest.

     Ken had some problems with his connection as he was trying
to use WiFi and that gave him several hours of problems.  The
signal was apparently not strong enough to maintain the connection.
As he noted he will be using Ethernet cable next month.

     I left the computer a couple of times to deal with matters
of no interest but each time when I got back the computer
had to be rebooted and the connection re-established.
     I had to do the power button to get these done as
the interface was unresponsive but as I mentioned above
these are still learning experiences so I hope that non-attendees
will come in to learn how to do Jit.se meetings.  Sadly the
next meeting will not be until September 6 on Labor Day
weekend.   Unless someone wants to try it on a Monday?

     One annoyance was the "barbershop mirror problem" where
the shared screen starts duplicating itself and we are unable
to do much to get out of that probem until the user of the
shared screen shuts down the extra images we recieve,

     Well with everyone else that was there today there
are plenty of people to make any correction required to
my observations.

     Bobbie Sellers  -