March 2025 - Lug-nuts

Re: Systemd
by Kevin Brisson 18 Feb '26

18 Feb '26

Gary, computers are hard and shouldn't be used by retired folks. :) Run it like below, it will load last. Use AI for docs - much easier and faster than our brains. Type=idle Behavior of idle is very similar to simple; however, actual execution of the service program is delayed until all active jobs are dispatched. This may be used to avoid interleaving the output of shell services with the status output on the console. Note that this type is useful only to improve console output, it is not useful as a general unit ordering tool, and the effect of this service type is subject to a 5s timeout, after which the service program is invoked anyway. https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd.service.html Kevin

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We are live: Diego talks clojure
by Sen Hastings 31 Mar '25

31 Mar '25

https://gnulinux.tube/w/7zuJFP5wBya9sbYaTxb1wZ

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3rd installment of clojure
by Brian E. Lavender 31 Mar '25

31 Mar '25

Hi Everyone, We will have our third installment of Clojure at the next SacLUG meeting. https://www.saclug.org/articles/2025/april-2025.html It will be at the Raley's in Natomas. The meeting will be 6-8pm. I have the incorrect time on the website. I am fixing it now! Brian -- Brian Lavender https://www.brie.com/brian/ "There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." Professor C. A. R. Hoare The 1980 Turing award lecture

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Oddities
by Linus Sphinx 31 Mar '25

31 Mar '25

Poking Fedora 41 gently with a stick, are odd versions still bad juju? Feeling like I should wait for 42.

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meeting tonight at the Raley's in Natomas. Topic Clojure.
by Brian E. Lavender 19 Mar '25

19 Mar '25

Diego Martinez will present clojure. https://www.saclug.org/articles/2025/march-2025.html https://www.raleys.com/store/447 6-8pm Raley's 4650 Natomas Blvd. Sacramento CA, 95835 See you there! Brian -- Brian Lavender https://www.brie.com/brian/ "There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." Professor C. A. R. Hoare The 1980 Turing award lecture

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rc.local
by Gary 17 Mar '25

17 Mar '25

Before, I could just add things to rc.local if I wanted them to run at start up.According to the systemd docs, I should still be able to do that. According to the web, and my experience, it doesn't work. NP. I'll just make a systemd unit and do it right. There are 12 different kinds. Trying to read the docs and figure out what to do is going to be fun. I just copy a template from the web that is suppose to do what I want. There apparently aren't any tools to make this easier because, "It's all really simple already." Conceptually, it does look fairly straightforward, if I had the info I needed. Which is probably there. I just have to do a lot of reading and get a lot of religion. My executable runs and does what I want. Let's fire up the systemd service and see what happens. Oh, SELinux happens. I haven't played with SELinux. Perhaps now is a good time to learn. I am somewhat curious why the SELinux interface tells me a temporary workaround and not a permanent fix. But, with what it does tell me, I figure I have to learn about SELinux policies. Are you kidding me? I have to install an _devel package. I can follow the cookie cutter script, which has 10 nontrivial steps. I start, but I don't get the results that the script tells me I should. Since I don't know what I'm doing, I have no idea if this will be a problem or not. There are only 10 or so man pages I need to read. I'm sure none of them are short. How long has this stuff been around now? Am I missing something? Because it looks like something I stepped in once. We went from adding a line in a file, to all this. It is allegedly more secure.But it looks to me that things could be a lot easier and someone made a big mistake somewhere. I haven't decided how I'll proceed. I either turn off SELinux and start my stuff automatically. Or keep starting it manually, as I do now. It's on a box I like to keep secure, so there is that. Is there a way out or around that I have missed?

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Systemd
by Gary 13 Mar '25

13 Mar '25

After my last post, I started thinking that perhaps systemd is designed to take advantage of multicore processors during startup. That might explain a lot. After doing a bit of googling on whether on not different CPU's can access RAM at the same time, since start up is all about getting things into RAM, it turns out probably not. In fact, one post indicated that a "boot CPU 0" is used for the whole startup. While it may be nice to have the system figure out what needs to run in what order, was it really that hard to execute things in lexical order and just name them appropriately. You pretty much have to do that math anyhow. In my little unit, my script needs the firewalld. Both my unit and the firewalld unit want "multiuser". Mine runs first and dies. I have to expressly tell systemd to run after the firewalld, which isn't a target. How is this easier? On a separate note, I found it really nice that neither the nft docs, nor the firewalld docs tell you how to persist changes. You have to read the firewall-cmd docs. Google told me that. Eventually. This is really poor too. I recently realized I can still use iptables even though the distro dumped me into nft. I don't really see an advantage to nft and I'm not even sure of firewalld's role. I'm thinking of going back to iptables. It is a complex thing to make things simple and a simple thing to make things complex. It looks like we've really gone down that rabbit hole.

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Lug-nuts March 2025