WEBVTT 00:00:11.321 --> 00:00:15.881 Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux doc show. My name is Chris. 00:00:16.061 --> 00:00:16.681 My name is Wes. 00:00:16.941 --> 00:00:17.801 And my name is Brent. 00:00:18.301 --> 00:00:21.861 Hello, gentlemen. Well, coming up on the show this week, it's easier than ever 00:00:21.861 --> 00:00:25.381 to build your own custom live rescue environment. 00:00:25.501 --> 00:00:28.241 So we're going to take a look at some of our favorite tools and some new ones 00:00:28.241 --> 00:00:32.781 we came across, then recover some real data and also go over how to build your own. 00:00:32.941 --> 00:00:36.421 Then we'll round it out with some great boosts and picks and a lot more. 00:00:36.521 --> 00:00:39.381 So before we get to all of that, let's say time appropriate greetings to our 00:00:39.381 --> 00:00:41.021 virtual lug. Hello, Mumble Room. 00:00:41.321 --> 00:00:44.621 Hey, Chris, hey, Wes, and hello, Brent. And good morning. 00:00:44.961 --> 00:00:48.961 And good morning to all of you. And shout out to everybody in our Matrix chat 00:00:48.961 --> 00:00:50.621 room, too, that everybody joins us. 00:00:50.721 --> 00:00:52.981 It's a Tuesday on a Sunday, and we have a lot of fun. 00:00:53.361 --> 00:00:57.181 We've been going now for about 45 minutes or so just to kind of warm up, 00:00:57.521 --> 00:01:00.641 you know? That's the secret to a good show is you don't just come in cold. 00:01:00.901 --> 00:01:01.541 Certainly not. 00:01:01.641 --> 00:01:04.581 And we do our warming up live. We also make it available for our members. 00:01:05.061 --> 00:01:09.301 Also, good morning to our friends over at Defined Networking. 00:01:09.301 --> 00:01:11.341 Go to defined.net slash unplugged. 00:01:12.841 --> 00:01:16.641 If you're building network infrastructure, you got to think about the long game here. 00:01:17.021 --> 00:01:21.441 Manage Nebula is a decentralized VPN built on the open source Nebula platform 00:01:21.441 --> 00:01:26.181 for people who want speed, resilience, and most importantly, 00:01:26.481 --> 00:01:28.881 real ownership of the stack that you depend on. 00:01:29.441 --> 00:01:32.561 Nebula was originally built to securely connect Slack's global infrastructure, 00:01:33.101 --> 00:01:36.921 and it still reflects all kinds of that scale-first design today, 00:01:36.921 --> 00:01:41.401 with optional self-hosted lighthouse nodes for extra control so you manage the 00:01:41.401 --> 00:01:43.001 resilience and the source of truth. 00:01:43.681 --> 00:01:48.481 I use it, you know, just to host backups between two hosts, and companies like 00:01:48.481 --> 00:01:51.281 Rivian use it for securing their entire global fleet of cars. 00:01:51.601 --> 00:01:55.261 The range there is incredible. Get started, 100 hosts for free, 00:01:55.321 --> 00:01:59.081 no credit card required. Go to defined.net slash unplugged. Check it out. 00:01:59.461 --> 00:02:03.161 Support the premier sponsor of the show. We appreciate them very much. 00:02:03.241 --> 00:02:05.481 Defined.net slash unplugged. 00:02:08.065 --> 00:02:13.245 Well, next weekend is LinuxFest Northwest. Starts, as you're listening to this, 00:02:13.405 --> 00:02:18.685 just five days away, which is probably physically less time than Brent has to 00:02:18.685 --> 00:02:20.205 get here. How about that? 00:02:21.445 --> 00:02:26.525 I think I was doing the math, and it puts you roughly at eight-hour days? 00:02:26.805 --> 00:02:28.685 No, my math says 10-hour days. 00:02:28.725 --> 00:02:28.985 Really? 00:02:29.105 --> 00:02:29.505 Yeah, yeah. 00:02:29.725 --> 00:02:32.945 I did a little look up here before the show, because, like, someone should calculate 00:02:32.945 --> 00:02:37.525 this, and I figured I should probably do that. 3,745 kilometers, 00:02:37.785 --> 00:02:39.905 which in miles is, well, the same. 00:02:40.165 --> 00:02:43.045 36 hours, Googs claims. 00:02:43.625 --> 00:02:50.145 36 hours Google time, which means probably about 42, 43 hours van time. 00:02:50.845 --> 00:02:52.945 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still possible. 00:02:53.745 --> 00:02:55.205 Yeah, yeah. 00:02:55.405 --> 00:02:55.845 Just a little time. 00:02:55.885 --> 00:02:59.785 I hope everything's in great shape. I would go over everything. 00:02:59.945 --> 00:03:04.045 Oh, yeah. I've been charging the battery for the last day because I left it, 00:03:04.085 --> 00:03:07.745 you know, I left my little tracking cell phone plugged in, and it totally killed 00:03:07.745 --> 00:03:10.585 the battery all the way down to zero. So starting off. 00:03:10.585 --> 00:03:11.745 So road ready is what you're saying. 00:03:11.925 --> 00:03:13.225 Road ready. Road ready. 00:03:13.545 --> 00:03:18.225 I mean, the opportunity here for a betting pool, you know, does he make it on Saturday? 00:03:18.625 --> 00:03:22.005 Does he make it after the live show on Sunday? That's good odds. 00:03:22.145 --> 00:03:23.845 You know, good odds. We'll see. We'll see. 00:03:24.625 --> 00:03:29.545 But we do have ourselves on the schedule. At least Wes and I will be there. Probably, Brent. 00:03:30.225 --> 00:03:35.885 If you want to boost in between now and then, we can kind of see how folks did in that episode. 00:03:36.085 --> 00:03:39.445 Yeah, you can make your prediction, and then the sats also go to his gas to 00:03:39.445 --> 00:03:41.265 get him here. So, you know, it's a win-win. 00:03:41.305 --> 00:03:44.125 You should also boost in which part of the van is going to fall apart halfway 00:03:44.125 --> 00:03:47.285 throughout the continent and see if we win. 00:03:48.525 --> 00:03:50.325 No, you don't like that. Does that stress you out? Oh, sorry. 00:03:50.485 --> 00:03:53.925 Why are you putting that out there? What are you thinking? What are you doing? 00:03:54.445 --> 00:03:56.645 Don't put that out there. I'd like a heads up before I get there. 00:03:56.645 --> 00:04:02.165 You've got like 45 hours of solid. You have more than the average work week 00:04:02.165 --> 00:04:04.125 of driving ahead of you and you're putting that out there. 00:04:04.205 --> 00:04:07.485 You realize you're going to do more than a week's worth of work of driving. 00:04:08.065 --> 00:04:11.845 It's going to be fun. You want to join me? You can fly out here. We'll do it together. 00:04:11.885 --> 00:04:16.585 Let's do it. If I didn't have other shows, I would. I love you. 00:04:18.105 --> 00:04:24.965 Also want to just keep putting it out there the BSD challenge for episode six hundred and sixty six, 00:04:28.965 --> 00:04:32.845 we're still collecting your ideas on how to make that great I 00:04:32.845 --> 00:04:36.065 think we'll technically probably kick it off in 665 and 00:04:36.065 --> 00:04:38.705 do the completion in 666 don't you think that's the 00:04:38.705 --> 00:04:43.345 way to do it we need a little time to yeah and then that's the canonical episode 00:04:43.345 --> 00:04:48.105 of the actual challenge and the results will be 666 so that's our plan we'd 00:04:48.105 --> 00:04:51.345 love your ideas and we'd love you to do it with us too we covered it more in 00:04:51.345 --> 00:04:55.085 last week's episode in detail and I think the mission will be to try to have 00:04:55.085 --> 00:04:56.625 all the details pretty solid for you, 00:04:57.165 --> 00:05:00.485 in probably next episode or so the tricky thing about that is it's Linux Fest 00:05:00.485 --> 00:05:03.485 so that might not happen but by 6.65 for. 00:05:03.485 --> 00:05:08.925 Sure I'll be talking PSD at Linux Fest what's that just kidding it's a welcoming Unix like environment. 00:05:08.925 --> 00:05:09.885 Yeah that's true that's true, 00:05:12.425 --> 00:05:17.565 well we were taking a look recently because we have had some system outages, 00:05:17.885 --> 00:05:20.325 different reasons, different stories, which we'll share later in the show. 00:05:20.705 --> 00:05:24.945 And so it was a great opportunity to just poke our heads up and see what new 00:05:24.945 --> 00:05:28.585 tools are out there to build a rescue session on Linux. 00:05:29.045 --> 00:05:32.385 And there are new tools, some that are coming just around the corner that aren't 00:05:32.385 --> 00:05:33.585 out yet that we'll tell you about. 00:05:33.945 --> 00:05:37.905 And they are extremely handy because it makes it possible to extend these things 00:05:37.905 --> 00:05:42.085 in ways that wasn't originally possible with these. So before we get there, 00:05:43.334 --> 00:05:45.814 I wanted to talk about how the Windows side does this for a second, 00:05:45.814 --> 00:05:51.374 because this time around, I spent some time trying out what is considered the 00:05:51.374 --> 00:05:54.414 best rescue live session for Windows. 00:05:54.734 --> 00:06:00.194 It's Heron's Boot CD, and it uses that Windows PE tool to customize it. 00:06:01.774 --> 00:06:06.834 And guys, it's great. If you are a Windows user listening to this, 00:06:06.874 --> 00:06:09.014 or if you are maybe at work in a 00:06:09.014 --> 00:06:13.374 Windows universe, and you need a rescue environment that is Windows-based, 00:06:14.194 --> 00:06:16.814 Heron's Boot CD is really good. 00:06:17.074 --> 00:06:22.194 It's a very customized version of Windows 11. It's the best implementation of 00:06:22.194 --> 00:06:24.494 Windows 11 I've ever seen because it looks like Windows 2000. 00:06:24.754 --> 00:06:28.374 It's like all classically themed and everything. Basic standard start menu. 00:06:28.394 --> 00:06:29.494 But it's real Windows 11. 00:06:29.654 --> 00:06:29.834 Yeah. 00:06:30.054 --> 00:06:30.774 That's so great. 00:06:30.954 --> 00:06:31.154 Yeah. 00:06:31.234 --> 00:06:31.674 Yeah. 00:06:31.674 --> 00:06:37.814 I know. I know. It is. It has a plethora of tools, anti-malware and anti-virus, 00:06:37.914 --> 00:06:38.994 which is something you need on these. 00:06:39.314 --> 00:06:42.974 Lots of different backup and data recovery tools, hard drive management tools, 00:06:43.114 --> 00:06:44.674 partitioning tools of various kinds. 00:06:44.994 --> 00:06:48.634 Hardware analyzers to try to test your hardware or just give you a report. 00:06:49.154 --> 00:06:53.114 Password recovery, specifically stuff that's designed for earlier and now newer 00:06:53.114 --> 00:06:55.574 versions of Windows NT, both. I mean, I was telling the boys, 00:06:55.674 --> 00:06:56.674 it's like it's a kitchen sink. 00:06:57.014 --> 00:07:00.574 It's really a kitchen sink of utilities. But in the Windows world, 00:07:00.694 --> 00:07:04.434 that's kind of what you want because you don't have a go-to package manager. 00:07:04.794 --> 00:07:06.934 You might maybe you don't have a driver for the network card. 00:07:07.234 --> 00:07:10.854 So in the Windows world, I think it is really nice to just have all this stuff pre-installed. 00:07:11.014 --> 00:07:15.134 It makes it one of the bigger live CDs we're going to talk about because it 00:07:15.134 --> 00:07:16.774 comes in at like 3.2 gigabytes. 00:07:17.014 --> 00:07:19.014 Still, that's not bad considering Windows. 00:07:19.354 --> 00:07:23.154 And just about every freaking recovery tool that runs on Windows is pre-installed 00:07:23.154 --> 00:07:24.854 on this thing. And it's well organized. 00:07:26.383 --> 00:07:29.783 This is what I've heard about. I just never quite intersected with it in my 00:07:29.783 --> 00:07:31.083 Windows admin-ing days. 00:07:31.583 --> 00:07:35.543 And it's, you know, snarky Linux user here. I'm like, oh, Windows is going to 00:07:35.543 --> 00:07:38.963 do a live CD. Oh, that's going to be rich. 00:07:39.823 --> 00:07:42.743 That's the attitude I went in. So I'm sitting, I got my notes up, 00:07:42.803 --> 00:07:46.123 and I'm like, oh, I'm going to roast this. And I'm like, the first couple of 00:07:46.123 --> 00:07:47.023 times I couldn't get it to boot. 00:07:47.583 --> 00:07:51.303 And then I swapped a couple of my VM options, came right up after that. 00:07:51.403 --> 00:07:56.443 I mean, it takes a little bit because it has to do some sort of pre-boot hardware 00:07:56.443 --> 00:07:59.643 detection thing i don't know quite how they're doing and then once windows loads, 00:08:00.323 --> 00:08:03.743 it has to run some pre-loaded modification stuff 00:08:03.743 --> 00:08:08.003 to set up the networking all that but it does it all very quickly relatively and 00:08:08.003 --> 00:08:12.563 it was immediately a great experience so if i were in this ecosystem and i was 00:08:12.563 --> 00:08:17.623 more comfortable in windows to try to recover data this is absolutely a way 00:08:17.623 --> 00:08:20.503 to go and i'll put a link to this in the show notes i ended up spending a lot 00:08:20.503 --> 00:08:25.043 more time with this than i expected just because i liked it so much um now i. 00:08:25.043 --> 00:08:28.803 Wonder if it could be in a nice environment just to have as a quick way to get 00:08:28.803 --> 00:08:32.983 a windows thing running can you just could you just boot it up in a vm or something 00:08:32.983 --> 00:08:35.943 if you just needed to do something quick to test on windows. 00:08:35.943 --> 00:08:39.343 Yeah i wonder uh i think the limiting factor and i'm not is it like a. 00:08:39.343 --> 00:08:40.483 Pe environment is. 00:08:40.483 --> 00:08:45.303 It yes okay yes and i and i don't know i don't think you could i don't know 00:08:45.303 --> 00:08:48.343 if you could sign into a microsoft account like so i don't know if you could 00:08:48.343 --> 00:08:50.243 install things from the store so. 00:08:50.243 --> 00:08:52.223 You might be yeah Yeah, limited in what you could actually get running on there. 00:08:52.363 --> 00:08:53.663 But just straight up trying Windows. 00:08:55.204 --> 00:08:56.944 Yeah, it works for that. It was good. 00:08:57.144 --> 00:09:00.124 Or maybe you needed to run a quick random Windows binaries that didn't run a 00:09:00.124 --> 00:09:02.944 line or something. Not a giant. I'm not saying install Office on there or anything, but just... 00:09:02.944 --> 00:09:05.424 Or, you know, maybe you just need a quick Windows VM, right? 00:09:05.624 --> 00:09:08.384 Yeah. You don't want to... Because you don't have to go through the whole install. 00:09:08.544 --> 00:09:09.564 Which is so much fun. 00:09:10.024 --> 00:09:14.484 Yeah. All right, now, we have to give honorable mention to the classic. 00:09:15.684 --> 00:09:19.584 One of the OGs in this space, formerly known as System Rescue CD, 00:09:20.224 --> 00:09:21.944 now just goes by System Rescue. 00:09:23.184 --> 00:09:27.344 It's kind of the definitive Linux rescue toolkit out there. Bootable. 00:09:27.564 --> 00:09:30.104 You go in there, it's got just about every tool you could possibly imagine. 00:09:30.264 --> 00:09:31.604 A minimal GUI environment if you want it. 00:09:32.924 --> 00:09:36.524 Data recovery tools. Now clocking in at 1.2 gigabytes. 00:09:37.764 --> 00:09:38.384 Not bad. 00:09:38.704 --> 00:09:41.044 And I'm going to try to make my case later in the show, but I'm just going to 00:09:41.044 --> 00:09:42.584 present this now as we get into more. 00:09:42.744 --> 00:09:45.744 I don't even know if you can find a smaller than 2 gig USB drive out there. 00:09:45.904 --> 00:09:47.964 Well, that's a fair point. That's a fair point. 00:09:49.550 --> 00:09:51.350 The next one we're going to talk about would still fit on a CD. 00:09:52.230 --> 00:09:57.010 But before I get off System Rescue CD, they have so much stuff pre-installed. 00:09:57.970 --> 00:10:06.270 I think these distributions should consider also adding open code to these environments. 00:10:07.810 --> 00:10:10.570 And I know that's going to sound weird, but I'll try to make my case later in 00:10:10.570 --> 00:10:13.870 the show. I think they should consider adding open code as a recovery tool. 00:10:14.930 --> 00:10:18.590 And I think it matters a lot. We'll come back to that because first I want to talk about Phenix. 00:10:19.110 --> 00:10:24.330 I will say, are you going to mention that, you know, System Rescue recently 00:10:24.330 --> 00:10:26.690 added support for our favorite file system? 00:10:27.570 --> 00:10:28.050 ZFS? 00:10:28.530 --> 00:10:31.710 Well, I think it does have ZFS support already. But no, BcacheFS. 00:10:32.190 --> 00:10:32.670 Whoa. 00:10:33.210 --> 00:10:34.050 Oh, that's great. 00:10:34.110 --> 00:10:37.870 Just recently, end of last month, they got the kernel up to long-term supported 00:10:37.870 --> 00:10:43.630 Linux 6.18.20 and the BcacheFS tools and kernel module to version 1.37.3. 00:10:44.150 --> 00:10:47.050 So, yeah, there's also a bunch of stuff like there's YQ now. 00:10:47.050 --> 00:10:50.010 Others okay you got me beat there but phoenix is 00:10:50.010 --> 00:10:53.410 great if a you're debian first and 00:10:53.410 --> 00:10:58.190 b you want something that could actually still fit on a cd rom so phoenix clocks 00:10:58.190 --> 00:11:05.150 in at 577 megabytes it's based on debian i forget whichever one runs linux 616 00:11:05.150 --> 00:11:12.230 with some updated packages from that and this also ships now, Fenix as of 2.5.1 00:11:12.670 --> 00:11:16.410 is the first version to release a OCI container image. 00:11:16.710 --> 00:11:17.630 Ooh, nice. 00:11:17.850 --> 00:11:20.210 And I'm wondering what you could use that for. It feels like there's something 00:11:20.210 --> 00:11:22.030 you could use that for. I'm not quite sure what. 00:11:23.634 --> 00:11:29.534 But could be useful. And it's Debian-based, CLI-focused, so that's really where 00:11:29.534 --> 00:11:31.714 they go out with a number of comprehensive repair tools, 00:11:32.394 --> 00:11:35.834 and they've done things like recently they've turned on ZRAM compression, 00:11:36.374 --> 00:11:39.334 they've enabled SSH remote access, and other things to kind of make it useful. 00:11:39.434 --> 00:11:42.334 I suppose one version might be if you just booted any old random ISO that had 00:11:42.334 --> 00:11:46.674 internet access, you could pull down that container and then mount in whatever 00:11:46.674 --> 00:11:49.454 actual disk you were trying to do recovery on, and you'd have all of its tools. 00:11:49.914 --> 00:11:54.654 Yeah, that would be very useful. Sort of an on-demand rescue environment. 00:11:55.294 --> 00:11:59.834 So that's Fenix, F-I-N-N-I-X. Link to that in the show notes. 00:12:01.214 --> 00:12:04.854 Before we get into what we ran into recently, I want to talk about how this 00:12:04.854 --> 00:12:10.054 is going to get so easy to create your own in just probably about a year, maybe less. 00:12:11.014 --> 00:12:15.934 This has been in the works for a while, but Fedora 45 plans to enable persistent 00:12:15.934 --> 00:12:19.194 overlays when you flash Fedora to a USB stick. 00:12:20.254 --> 00:12:25.294 Now our buddy neil has been working on this in fedora since 2024 and his original 00:12:25.294 --> 00:12:29.834 code he started on this since 2020 so that's how long this feature has been in the works, 00:12:30.454 --> 00:12:35.354 and the idea is is that when you flash fedora to a thumb drive you leave some 00:12:35.354 --> 00:12:42.454 unallocated space on that sucker and then by default when fedora 45 boots there'll 00:12:42.454 --> 00:12:45.614 be a boot menu entry selected by default, by default, 00:12:46.794 --> 00:12:51.134 that will just initialize that new partition and mount a writable overlay to it. 00:12:52.784 --> 00:12:57.864 Now you have a persistent storage to install packages, tools like OpenCode or 00:12:57.864 --> 00:12:59.964 DD Rescue, whatever it might be that you need. 00:13:00.104 --> 00:13:03.904 Or a way even just for some of the stuff those tools write to dot files in your 00:13:03.904 --> 00:13:05.444 home dir or whatever you could have. 00:13:05.644 --> 00:13:08.944 And you take that thumb drive with you and that stuff persists. 00:13:09.504 --> 00:13:13.004 And the next machine you go to, it has that. It has your SSH key set up perhaps. 00:13:13.304 --> 00:13:15.504 Maybe it has your, you know, whatever you need to be logged into, 00:13:15.704 --> 00:13:18.164 logged in, your password manager, whatever it is. It's got it. 00:13:19.384 --> 00:13:22.764 Super neat. And all you have to do is just leave a little unallocated space 00:13:22.764 --> 00:13:26.244 on the disc and Fedora 45 will just take care of the rest. 00:13:26.624 --> 00:13:30.304 And that is going to be such an unlock for building your own custom disc. 00:13:30.424 --> 00:13:35.184 And it's not there yet because it requires some upstream work in Drakkut and some other things. 00:13:36.729 --> 00:13:39.909 It does make sense, though, talking about sizes of USB drives. 00:13:40.069 --> 00:13:43.489 Like, if all you're doing is DDing this thing on there, there probably is some 00:13:43.489 --> 00:13:45.689 space at the end of that that isn't actually being used. 00:13:45.749 --> 00:13:49.109 Yeah, when do you not? Right? Like, even a 16 gig, really. I mean, 00:13:49.169 --> 00:13:51.949 these images are, what, four or five gigs sometimes? Yeah. 00:13:52.149 --> 00:13:56.269 You touched a bit on the, I don't know, the complexity, the things needed to 00:13:56.269 --> 00:13:59.549 get across the line, and I just like the text here and the change. 00:13:59.929 --> 00:14:03.909 Since we introduced live media in Fedora Linux 7, the 00:14:03.909 --> 00:14:06.689 actual mechanism in which the live environment sets itself up 00:14:06.689 --> 00:14:10.229 has been complex and intricately tied to the method in which we produce the 00:14:10.229 --> 00:14:13.909 media using kickstarts the nature of the implementation of those scripts means 00:14:13.909 --> 00:14:17.289 that they are hard to understand and debug which has caused problems in the 00:14:17.289 --> 00:14:20.229 past whenever we've needed to update them so hopefully this kind of change would 00:14:20.229 --> 00:14:23.909 also set to modern you know not only would you get some better features but 00:14:23.909 --> 00:14:26.389 like better more maintainable plumbing too. 00:14:26.389 --> 00:14:31.269 I think we could talk about this when it lands but it's also a great example 00:14:31.269 --> 00:14:35.669 of I guess on the surface, it seems like a seemingly simple feature. 00:14:36.509 --> 00:14:42.189 And yet it's been in the works for years and years because of just the upstream cooperation it takes. 00:14:42.309 --> 00:14:47.129 And it's a great example of a small feature that just takes persistence to get actually shipping. 00:14:47.309 --> 00:14:49.429 But when 45 lands, 44 is next. 00:14:50.009 --> 00:14:53.269 So the next release after 44, when that lands, this will just, 00:14:53.409 --> 00:14:56.269 in theory, be a default feature. And you just create your own live environments just by using it. 00:14:57.089 --> 00:14:59.889 I mean, that is going to be massive for just everyone out there. 00:14:59.889 --> 00:15:04.849 So that will probably be one of the ways you could just make your own with very little fuss. 00:15:04.909 --> 00:15:07.209 What we're going to talk about is not that. 00:15:10.759 --> 00:15:13.839 First, I want to thank our members for making this episode possible. 00:15:14.019 --> 00:15:16.679 I mean, quite truly making it possible. You can support the show by going to 00:15:16.679 --> 00:15:20.759 linuxunplugged.com slash membership or support the whole network and get access 00:15:20.759 --> 00:15:23.319 to all the features for all the shows at jupyter.party. 00:15:23.499 --> 00:15:25.899 When you become a member, you get access to the bootleg version, 00:15:26.099 --> 00:15:27.639 clocking in about an hour right now. 00:15:28.339 --> 00:15:32.199 Or you can get yourself the ad-free version, which still has all of Editor Drew's 00:15:32.199 --> 00:15:33.819 nice touches and is a little bit tighter. 00:15:34.059 --> 00:15:36.519 So if you've got a little shorter schedule, it's perfect for that and you don't 00:15:36.519 --> 00:15:39.819 have to hear these segments over and over again. or you can just support the 00:15:39.819 --> 00:15:42.199 show on autopilot and just do the right thing knowing that this show is made 00:15:42.199 --> 00:15:44.559 for the community and possible because of the community. 00:15:44.939 --> 00:15:49.239 And we really do support and appreciate your support and really try to do right 00:15:49.239 --> 00:15:53.639 by you because of it because you are our number one client. You are the number one customer. 00:15:53.959 --> 00:15:58.319 Thank you so much. And if you haven't done it yet, it could be a great time 00:15:58.319 --> 00:16:01.539 with LinuxFest coming up. You can show up and say, hey, I just became a member. Shake a hand. 00:16:01.899 --> 00:16:04.759 We'll give you a virtual beer at least because we can't afford to buy everybody 00:16:04.759 --> 00:16:08.479 a beer. But the sentiment will be like we got you a beer, right? 00:16:09.999 --> 00:16:11.899 Yeah let's go with that yeah. 00:16:11.899 --> 00:16:12.699 Sure sure sure, 00:16:16.179 --> 00:16:20.179 Well, I decided to do it not that way. Why would you do it the standard way 00:16:20.179 --> 00:16:22.339 when you could do it the non-standard way? 00:16:23.599 --> 00:16:26.799 Really, this whole rescue USB 00:16:26.799 --> 00:16:31.899 drive has been a progression for me in supporting family members mostly. 00:16:32.539 --> 00:16:39.159 Years ago, when I set up my parents and brothers and other family members on 00:16:39.159 --> 00:16:42.359 Linux, I thought some stuff occasionally goes wrong. 00:16:42.359 --> 00:16:45.359 Sometimes hardware sometimes you know they're traveling and you get 00:16:45.359 --> 00:16:48.179 run over you know your laptop gets run over by a dump truck 00:16:48.179 --> 00:16:51.599 or something like that and i always wanted some way 00:16:51.599 --> 00:16:55.019 to be able to help family members from 00:16:55.019 --> 00:16:58.159 a distance if their computer goes down because i felt responsible if i'm going 00:16:58.159 --> 00:17:03.019 to switch you to a new operating system that i tout as you know better then 00:17:03.019 --> 00:17:09.479 i want to have some way to help you if it's not better um so i have always convinced 00:17:09.479 --> 00:17:13.179 uh everyone I moved to Linux to always, 00:17:13.299 --> 00:17:18.119 always, always, always, always carry a live USB drive that's dedicated with 00:17:18.119 --> 00:17:21.819 Linux on it so that something goes wrong, you can boot into that thing and I can help you. 00:17:22.919 --> 00:17:26.859 Now that has been very useful. And I have to say, people have followed that 00:17:26.859 --> 00:17:31.519 advice quite nicely because they typically forget the USB drive in their laptop bag. 00:17:31.619 --> 00:17:34.899 And then like a year and a half later, I'm like, Hey, do you have that USB drive? 00:17:34.999 --> 00:17:37.019 Like, Oh, do I look for that somewhere? 00:17:37.219 --> 00:17:39.299 And yeah, it's in your bag somewhere. You just got to find it. 00:17:39.419 --> 00:17:41.959 And sure enough, it saves the day. 00:17:42.099 --> 00:17:48.379 But the hardest part I always had was that these were just live drives. 00:17:48.539 --> 00:17:50.119 And so they were always vanilla. 00:17:50.299 --> 00:17:52.979 So whenever I was booting it up to try to help someone, I was like, 00:17:53.079 --> 00:17:58.659 okay, I need to now spend the next 15, 20 minutes guiding you through connecting it to the internet, 00:17:59.259 --> 00:18:06.179 getting me SSHSS or some kind of remote access, maybe through something like a Rust desk. 00:18:06.359 --> 00:18:09.239 So that process I wanted to eliminate. 00:18:09.499 --> 00:18:11.899 And I started working on that recently where. 00:18:13.122 --> 00:18:16.662 I iterated this concept and instead of 00:18:16.662 --> 00:18:19.902 having a live drive on a usb just installed linux 00:18:19.902 --> 00:18:23.462 to the usb yes that is a terrible idea most 00:18:23.462 --> 00:18:27.222 of the time but with a rescue drive you're only 00:18:27.222 --> 00:18:29.962 booting this thing up well hopefully you're never booting it up but 00:18:29.962 --> 00:18:33.422 if you need to you're going to boot it up once or twice maybe a year right so 00:18:33.422 --> 00:18:39.742 drive longevity with having a whole operating system running off of just the 00:18:39.742 --> 00:18:44.962 flash drive is a bad idea generally but in this particular case i thought that's 00:18:44.962 --> 00:18:48.842 maybe an okay compromise talk. 00:18:48.842 --> 00:18:50.782 To me a little bit about before you go further because. 00:18:50.782 --> 00:18:51.322 I actually. 00:18:51.322 --> 00:18:55.822 Just did the same thing for my process i thought why am i using these custom 00:18:55.822 --> 00:18:59.662 why not why don't why don't i just install to a thumb drive and then have something 00:18:59.662 --> 00:19:05.722 i can install tools to and whatnot did you like download a distro installer 00:19:05.722 --> 00:19:09.462 and run through the installer and point it at the thumb drive or did you. 00:19:09.462 --> 00:19:10.342 Like do an image. 00:19:10.342 --> 00:19:12.602 And flash it what was your process for that bit right there. 00:19:12.602 --> 00:19:19.342 Well in this iteration i just installed directly to the flash drive so just 00:19:19.342 --> 00:19:25.202 treated that like any old install nothing special just said hey please install 00:19:25.202 --> 00:19:29.022 you know please install Linux to this flash drive. 00:19:29.422 --> 00:19:34.222 And then I did a couple things like connected it to the Wi-Fi network that they 00:19:34.222 --> 00:19:38.442 use most of the time and logged into my mesh VPN and things like that. 00:19:38.542 --> 00:19:41.822 So that at least I had a couple of default tools available. 00:19:42.262 --> 00:19:46.242 And so then it was really just another Linux system on a flash drive that you 00:19:46.242 --> 00:19:49.142 could plug into any computer and it would boot up and have a couple, 00:19:49.582 --> 00:19:52.842 you know, pre-setup configurations just to make the process easier. 00:19:53.222 --> 00:19:54.382 How was the performance? 00:19:55.002 --> 00:19:55.442 Well, 00:19:56.556 --> 00:19:59.296 you know fine in a 00:19:59.296 --> 00:20:01.956 rescue situation but you know you're running off a 00:20:01.956 --> 00:20:05.296 flash drive so that's not great and what i 00:20:05.296 --> 00:20:08.336 ran into was it works 00:20:08.336 --> 00:20:11.536 great until you feel like you need to update that 00:20:11.536 --> 00:20:17.056 drive yeah so yeah yeah so i made one you know for my mother which she carried 00:20:17.056 --> 00:20:22.136 and forgot about which is perfect and then i was like hey i'm around like maybe 00:20:22.136 --> 00:20:25.756 i can update your flash drive to something more modern considering it's a year 00:20:25.756 --> 00:20:30.016 and a half old and we should have some modern linux on there and i went what. 00:20:30.016 --> 00:20:30.936 A good son what. 00:20:30.936 --> 00:20:37.656 You know i know i'm thinking ahead and then the update process was oh yeah painful 00:20:37.656 --> 00:20:41.136 because it's been a year and a half so you're replacing every single package 00:20:41.136 --> 00:20:47.076 on that thing and that is the exact thing flash drives are terrible at is the random, 00:20:47.216 --> 00:20:49.596 you know, rights to all over the place, 00:20:49.876 --> 00:20:53.456 it took forever to the point where I thought, 00:20:54.285 --> 00:20:57.205 I need to iterate this idea again, because this is not working for me. 00:20:57.405 --> 00:21:01.565 So while I was waiting for it to update, I was like, there's got to be a better way. 00:21:01.945 --> 00:21:04.145 So turns out, of course there is. 00:21:04.605 --> 00:21:09.065 So my next iteration, which I'm always looking for advice, you help me make this better. 00:21:09.205 --> 00:21:13.605 But the next iteration just worked on that idea and did a bit of a hybrid. 00:21:13.865 --> 00:21:16.725 So I used Nix OS because Nix OS 00:21:16.725 --> 00:21:24.125 is It's really great for building your own custom versions of something. 00:21:24.345 --> 00:21:29.045 So I already have a Nix OS configuration for my mother's laptop. 00:21:29.045 --> 00:21:32.725 But then I was like, well, I just want to give her exactly what she's used to, 00:21:32.945 --> 00:21:35.545 but trim that down to just the essentials. 00:21:36.725 --> 00:21:40.485 And then let's do some other crazy stuff. Like maybe we could just boot the 00:21:40.485 --> 00:21:45.825 entire thing to RAM because I don't think we need to be using the flash drive at all. 00:21:45.945 --> 00:21:49.245 Right. Just use it to hold the information and transfer that somewhere more 00:21:49.245 --> 00:21:51.325 useful when you're booting up the system. 00:21:51.525 --> 00:21:54.285 So sure enough, that is extremely easy to do. 00:21:54.845 --> 00:21:58.785 And the other way that helps is her current laptop only has one. 00:21:58.825 --> 00:22:03.645 It's like a really super slim, low budget laptop. 00:22:03.785 --> 00:22:05.425 She freaking loves that thing because it doesn't weigh anything, 00:22:05.525 --> 00:22:08.205 but it only has one USB A port. 00:22:09.085 --> 00:22:12.765 So if you're plugging in a live USB drive, perfectly fine. 00:22:12.765 --> 00:22:17.985 But if you want to do anything like plug in a backup hard drive or something 00:22:17.985 --> 00:22:22.645 like that you can't so moving the entire system to ram means you can pull that 00:22:22.645 --> 00:22:27.205 live drive out and the system still runs perfectly fine so that is a big plus 00:22:27.205 --> 00:22:31.865 as well and other nice things like um. 00:22:32.984 --> 00:22:35.844 Not installing to the drive but 00:22:35.844 --> 00:22:38.784 creating an image instead using the nix os 00:22:38.784 --> 00:22:45.844 installer iso so you can use installation cd base dot nix module which is exactly 00:22:45.844 --> 00:22:51.384 what the nix os installer uses and there's just pile on top a few of your custom 00:22:51.384 --> 00:22:57.284 configurations so i just somehow managed to craft my own Nix OS, 00:22:57.864 --> 00:23:03.684 not the installer, but a specialized Nix OS live boot environment with my own 00:23:03.684 --> 00:23:08.204 customizations that automatically logs into my mesh VPN. 00:23:08.204 --> 00:23:11.304 It has recovery tools on there that I like. 00:23:11.444 --> 00:23:16.024 It even, you know, boots up fish on the terminal by default for me. 00:23:16.144 --> 00:23:17.964 And it has custom. 00:23:17.964 --> 00:23:25.424 Extensions in Firefox and takes out a bunch of plasma stuff that I don't need 00:23:25.424 --> 00:23:29.844 by default on a rescue disc and it's fantastic. 00:23:29.844 --> 00:23:32.904 Nicely done this is very very 00:23:32.904 --> 00:23:35.664 similar to what i did based off my desktop for my 00:23:35.664 --> 00:23:38.604 recovery process i was like i just could take most of 00:23:38.604 --> 00:23:42.864 what is my desktop strip out some of the ancillary desktop applications and 00:23:42.864 --> 00:23:48.504 flat packs and then i have all the tooling i need i have all my keys let's go 00:23:48.504 --> 00:23:52.744 like it actually worked really really well but i did not do your copy to ram 00:23:52.744 --> 00:23:55.724 idea which i think oh you gotta take that one yeah yeah. 00:23:55.724 --> 00:23:58.384 Wasn't that easy that's one thing i haven't done either i mean i've done it 00:23:58.384 --> 00:24:00.444 in the past with other isos but not in the combo. 00:24:00.444 --> 00:24:00.864 With this. 00:24:00.864 --> 00:24:06.924 Particular setup yeah i've used this trick for years actually um ubuntu certainly 00:24:06.924 --> 00:24:11.204 has a kernel option just called to ram. 00:24:11.204 --> 00:24:12.204 That you. 00:24:12.204 --> 00:24:17.184 Can use so at boot even if you're just on any live iso at boot you can just, 00:24:18.041 --> 00:24:22.021 change the kernel parameters before you boot and add to RAM, 00:24:22.121 --> 00:24:23.121 and it'll do that for you. 00:24:23.381 --> 00:24:27.381 So that I've used specific. I learned that specifically for my mother's laptop 00:24:27.381 --> 00:24:30.581 because it had this one USB problem I had to get around. So that was, 00:24:30.581 --> 00:24:31.601 that was a really nice trick. 00:24:31.981 --> 00:24:37.121 In NixOS, it's slightly different called copy to RAM, but, but it is a trick 00:24:37.121 --> 00:24:39.801 that the Linux kernel has been able to do for a very long time. 00:24:39.801 --> 00:24:43.621 So it's a, it's a nice little thing to keep in, your hat. 00:24:43.781 --> 00:24:48.361 It is really nice in a rescue environment to have things like your preferred 00:24:48.361 --> 00:24:53.261 desktop environment, to have the ButterFS tools, or to have Firefox, 00:24:53.521 --> 00:24:57.061 all these things that you kind of need to really get a system up and going. 00:24:57.141 --> 00:24:58.401 It's nice to just have that. 00:24:58.701 --> 00:25:02.001 Yeah, so you don't have to spend a bunch of time every reboot reinstalling it. 00:25:02.101 --> 00:25:08.301 Yeah, exactly. So now you have something you can keep, but how do you keep it up to date? 00:25:08.461 --> 00:25:13.941 That seems to be the next level of this would be something that would auto update somehow. 00:25:15.704 --> 00:25:18.884 Like my thinking has been, what if instead of a thumb drive, 00:25:19.164 --> 00:25:25.564 next time I install a system, the first thing I do is I install a rescue system in a little partition. 00:25:25.924 --> 00:25:28.164 Yeah, that's something I've done before and liked a lot. 00:25:28.624 --> 00:25:31.484 And then I install the rest of the system as a separate install. 00:25:31.724 --> 00:25:35.724 And then maybe there's a once a week reboot into the rescue environment that 00:25:35.724 --> 00:25:38.184 updates the rescue environment. And if the update is successful, 00:25:38.344 --> 00:25:41.264 then reboots back into the main environment. That's the bit I'm. 00:25:41.264 --> 00:25:45.924 You could probably set up a setup where you like flashed it instead if you wanted 00:25:45.924 --> 00:25:47.784 to. If you isolated the stuff you wanted to keep. 00:25:47.784 --> 00:25:50.404 That's a great idea. You build it, update it on the host system, 00:25:50.464 --> 00:25:51.764 and then you just flash the update. 00:25:51.984 --> 00:25:54.584 Yeah, which could also maybe work if you were still doing a USB drive too. 00:25:54.904 --> 00:25:58.344 Again, you'd want to make sure you separate it out with partitions or some mechanism 00:25:58.344 --> 00:25:59.444 for the data you wanted to keep. 00:25:59.564 --> 00:26:02.944 And just leave the drive plugged in. And then you could just update it that way too. 00:26:03.684 --> 00:26:09.604 I believe Pop! OS implemented this kind of feature when they first came out and users loved it. 00:26:09.604 --> 00:26:12.764 One thing i would argue although i 00:26:12.764 --> 00:26:15.564 most of the reason i was trying to 00:26:15.564 --> 00:26:18.524 trim down this image as much as possible is that flashing 00:26:18.524 --> 00:26:22.124 to any usb drive is just slow and painful and you should 00:26:22.124 --> 00:26:29.504 only ever do if you really need to um but i it also saves for the use case where 00:26:29.504 --> 00:26:34.284 if you're on the move and you lose a laptop it gets stolen you drop it in the 00:26:34.284 --> 00:26:38.624 water or something like that Maybe you still have a USB drive and you can install 00:26:38.624 --> 00:26:41.004 on a new machine you get, you know, 00:26:41.144 --> 00:26:44.004 at Best Buy or something just on the go. 00:26:44.884 --> 00:26:47.984 If you have a partition, obviously you can't do that. If you, 00:26:48.104 --> 00:26:51.724 you know, your entire laptop gets stolen or you left at a coffee shop or something. 00:26:51.904 --> 00:26:56.684 But you can easily have both solutions, I think. Yeah. 00:26:56.724 --> 00:26:56.804 Sure. 00:26:58.507 --> 00:27:02.347 Well, that's, it's funny that you and I kind of both went down the same path, but you had success. 00:27:02.507 --> 00:27:05.867 You did recover pretty much all the data that you set out to recover with, 00:27:06.127 --> 00:27:08.067 uh, when you were working on a separate issue. 00:27:08.127 --> 00:27:10.667 So tell me a little bit about that because I think you told the members, 00:27:10.807 --> 00:27:13.067 but I don't know if you told the audience that you were doing like two weeks 00:27:13.067 --> 00:27:17.487 of drive recovery spelunking too. Just give us a, like the quick recap on that. 00:27:18.367 --> 00:27:21.827 Yeah. When you love your family, uh, you do crazy things for them. 00:27:22.587 --> 00:27:23.787 The things you do for your brother. 00:27:23.787 --> 00:27:26.567 Ah so when your trend brother says hey i got 00:27:26.567 --> 00:27:29.947 some old you know hard usb hard 00:27:29.947 --> 00:27:33.307 drives i've been backing up to for years now all of a sudden today they don't 00:27:33.307 --> 00:27:38.907 seem to you know be behaving like they used to so i thought okay i'll i'll spend 00:27:38.907 --> 00:27:42.567 you know an hour helping him recover some data off some old hard drives that 00:27:42.567 --> 00:27:47.047 he's been backing up to that i think i probably suggested that he do that years ago and uh, 00:27:48.448 --> 00:27:55.688 Well, I was able to successfully use OpenCode to help me just like test my assumptions 00:27:55.688 --> 00:27:58.488 on how I was going to approach recovering data. 00:27:59.148 --> 00:28:03.108 Luckily, I was able to do it from a distance and I had a server already built 00:28:03.108 --> 00:28:06.668 there that I should have moved all those backups to years ago. 00:28:06.968 --> 00:28:10.108 Okay. So you had a remote box. 00:28:10.288 --> 00:28:15.428 I did have a remote box with plenty of storage in it. Just sitting there waiting. 00:28:15.808 --> 00:28:17.528 Okay. I got you. That's handy. 00:28:17.528 --> 00:28:20.208 It is super handy and then like you had made. 00:28:20.208 --> 00:28:22.868 You had made some assumptions about how you're going to recover the data and 00:28:22.868 --> 00:28:26.628 then you you're like hey i'm going to run it past the machine see what the machine says. 00:28:26.628 --> 00:28:29.508 Yeah so he was getting a couple read errors so i thought okay 00:28:29.508 --> 00:28:32.208 one way to do is just you know use our sync to pull a 00:28:32.208 --> 00:28:35.128 bunch of data off but i'm going to run into read errors obviously i could 00:28:35.128 --> 00:28:38.568 log those and then investigate later but then 00:28:38.568 --> 00:28:41.788 you know there's smarter people on the internet who've done it probably better 00:28:41.788 --> 00:28:46.048 than i have so it turns out dd rescue is a fantastic tool that's perfectly built 00:28:46.048 --> 00:28:50.868 for this use case i'd heard of it forever never used it before i always planned 00:28:50.868 --> 00:28:55.608 hey next time i want to do this i'm going to use dd rescue but i'm not familiar with it so, 00:28:56.328 --> 00:29:03.668 having a little i have to say having a little open code wrapper around some of these like, 00:29:04.808 --> 00:29:06.728 bulletproof tested tools for 00:29:06.728 --> 00:29:11.208 data recovery is so nice because i could just think about the big picture. 00:29:11.548 --> 00:29:15.768 And then the implementation detail about which flags you need to use for a tool 00:29:15.768 --> 00:29:19.448 that you haven't used before, I didn't need to think about. 00:29:19.668 --> 00:29:25.188 So I could just worry about, are we keeping the data as safe as possible and 00:29:25.188 --> 00:29:31.028 where to put it, how to treat it, what is an acceptable level of risk while doing the recovery? 00:29:31.248 --> 00:29:35.368 And then the implementation was just taken care of by the computer, 00:29:35.508 --> 00:29:37.928 which is a really nice way to do it. 00:29:38.148 --> 00:29:41.128 So it was sort of pulling the strings on DD Rescue for you. 00:29:41.408 --> 00:29:44.488 Exactly. So I could say, okay, let's use DD Rescue, but. 00:29:45.361 --> 00:29:49.481 Treat the drive really kindly. It's a USB drive. It heats up. 00:29:49.621 --> 00:29:53.981 So let's reduce the bandwidth that the rescue is going to happen so that we 00:29:53.981 --> 00:29:54.981 don't heat this thing up. 00:29:55.701 --> 00:29:58.921 And then of course, when I told my brother, I was making good progress. 00:29:58.921 --> 00:30:03.661 He was like, Oh, well I found, you know, four other USB hard drives in my closet. 00:30:03.841 --> 00:30:05.701 Would you pull the data off those two? 00:30:06.341 --> 00:30:09.961 So, uh, I said, yes, cause I love my brother. 00:30:10.241 --> 00:30:13.481 And, um, but that meant I could get open 00:30:13.481 --> 00:30:16.821 code to help me just write some scripts to so that 00:30:16.821 --> 00:30:19.621 i could just check in every couple hours and say okay 00:30:19.621 --> 00:30:22.241 well pull all the data off all of the drives but do it 00:30:22.241 --> 00:30:25.421 sequentially and uh there's different 00:30:25.421 --> 00:30:28.581 file systems on here so use check tools for the 00:30:28.581 --> 00:30:31.781 different file systems in line before you do the recoveries and 00:30:31.781 --> 00:30:34.481 while you're doing the recovery reduce the bandwidth for all 00:30:34.481 --> 00:30:38.021 the drives because because they're all usb drives but uh 00:30:38.021 --> 00:30:41.201 you know so don't saturate the usb either 00:30:41.201 --> 00:30:44.341 because i don't want the usb bus to like fail 00:30:44.341 --> 00:30:47.301 for some reason four hours into the recovery of all 00:30:47.301 --> 00:30:50.841 these things so it was nice to be able to put like safe 00:30:50.841 --> 00:30:54.261 parameters around both the hardware and the 00:30:54.261 --> 00:31:01.361 data on disk and the software to just do this as a gentle recovery from a distance 00:31:01.361 --> 00:31:07.281 like i'm literally thousands of miles away and also to get a bunch of really 00:31:07.281 --> 00:31:12.701 sweet looking reports about how the rescue went and all that stuff so yeah great experience and. 00:31:12.701 --> 00:31:15.741 You got the you got almost all the data right you got like with with. 00:31:15.741 --> 00:31:20.661 Yeah i got 99.889 percent of the data, 00:31:21.548 --> 00:31:23.528 You know, that's not so bad. 00:31:23.728 --> 00:31:24.508 Not so bad. 00:31:24.728 --> 00:31:25.828 And a happy brother, I'm sure. 00:31:26.548 --> 00:31:29.548 Yeah, I'll still have to break to him that one of his files isn't working. 00:31:29.928 --> 00:31:33.808 Well, when you do that, what you do is you go over to like DriveSavers and you 00:31:33.808 --> 00:31:38.128 just get them the cost to do data rescue from DriveSavers and then be like, 00:31:38.448 --> 00:31:41.188 but I did it for free. I just didn't get this file. You know, like that's not so bad. 00:31:41.368 --> 00:31:42.128 Buy me dinner sometime. 00:31:42.648 --> 00:31:42.868 Yeah. 00:31:45.068 --> 00:31:48.488 Now, Wes, I know you've been messing around with a few things kind of adjacent 00:31:48.488 --> 00:31:49.948 to this area as well recently. 00:31:50.468 --> 00:31:55.028 And we have some cool tools linked in the show notes. What from that batch do you want to talk about? 00:31:55.388 --> 00:31:59.008 Yeah, well, I will just say that it is kind of delightful how easy NixOS makes 00:31:59.008 --> 00:32:03.608 it to make your own, where you can build an actual ISO or have just a system 00:32:03.608 --> 00:32:07.488 that you can flash on with an IMG file or just be able to mount or whatever. 00:32:07.628 --> 00:32:11.168 I was just looking, because I need to update mine based on your two's brilliant 00:32:11.168 --> 00:32:13.288 ideas, because I tried this, I don't know. 00:32:13.971 --> 00:32:17.471 A year and a half ago two years ago yeah but it's under a hundred lines of code 00:32:17.471 --> 00:32:20.151 because there are just these modules as brent was talking about that you can 00:32:20.151 --> 00:32:23.651 import and then the rest is just as much like you can go all the way to having 00:32:23.651 --> 00:32:28.451 like a most of a full desktop or you can have a minimal system that just you 00:32:28.451 --> 00:32:30.631 know presents a cli that shows up on your mesh or whatever. 00:32:31.591 --> 00:32:36.991 But i was kind of musing on like you know what is what would you want in terms 00:32:36.991 --> 00:32:40.531 of like an installed system on your host or on a usb drive there's also now 00:32:40.531 --> 00:32:45.611 you know we live mostly in like an efi world maybe you want to have legacy compatibility, 00:32:45.911 --> 00:32:48.451 maybe you don't. It kind of depends on the fleet you're trying to support and all that. 00:32:48.791 --> 00:32:52.711 And we live in like a world of UKIs and other things where maybe you could have 00:32:52.711 --> 00:32:56.731 just a single file that you drop on your EFI partition that you boot into. 00:32:57.031 --> 00:32:58.971 And I was kind of looking around to see what people were doing. 00:32:58.971 --> 00:33:03.431 And we've used Ventoy in the past, but, you know, it has its quirks and issues 00:33:03.431 --> 00:33:05.771 and skepticism, rightfully so. 00:33:06.031 --> 00:33:09.191 And there's like a lot of baggage and history with Ventoy. And 00:33:09.191 --> 00:33:11.951 I was interested to see that there was sort of a new project i 00:33:11.951 --> 00:33:15.011 hadn't heard of called aegis boot that 00:33:15.011 --> 00:33:18.231 i think plays a similar role that you guys might find interesting okay 00:33:18.231 --> 00:33:22.791 it's a tool that creates usb rescue sticks capable of booting any linux iso 00:33:22.791 --> 00:33:28.671 while keeping uefi secure boot fully enforcing unlike alternatives like bento 00:33:28.671 --> 00:33:34.151 umi multi-boot usb they're required disabling it or enrolling custom keys aegis 00:33:34.151 --> 00:33:37.771 boot leverages the same signed boot chain that distributions already use. 00:33:37.971 --> 00:33:42.151 So it uses the Microsoft signed shim that a lot of distros are using, 00:33:42.231 --> 00:33:45.251 and then it's using a canonical signed grub and their kernel, 00:33:45.351 --> 00:33:50.191 and then it boots a Ratatouille Rust Rescue Tui. 00:33:51.391 --> 00:33:56.511 And it has some custom code to go hunt around. 00:33:56.691 --> 00:33:59.151 So it's a two-partition setup, kind of like how Ventoy does, 00:33:59.231 --> 00:34:01.851 right? It's got its system code and the EFI stuff that it boots into. 00:34:02.111 --> 00:34:05.211 And then it's got an ISO area you can dump these files onto, 00:34:05.511 --> 00:34:11.231 and it mounts and scans the ISO files to find the Linux kernels and the parameters for them. 00:34:12.127 --> 00:34:12.607 And? 00:34:12.767 --> 00:34:17.467 And then, because this is a project I'm highlighting, it presents them to you. 00:34:17.607 --> 00:34:20.187 It checks them out to see if they're signed and you can actually boot them or not. 00:34:20.247 --> 00:34:20.687 Yes. 00:34:20.907 --> 00:34:25.287 And then when it goes to boot them, because you're already running Linux, it uses kexec. 00:34:25.587 --> 00:34:26.147 Oh, yeah. 00:34:27.027 --> 00:34:31.787 There it is. Aegis boot. So this is potentially a Ventoy replacement, 00:34:31.947 --> 00:34:32.727 maybe a little more modern. 00:34:32.927 --> 00:34:35.867 Yeah, it's a single Rust EXE you can download. 00:34:35.867 --> 00:34:41.127 They have some different profiles if you want it to pre-download a bunch of ISOs onto the drive. 00:34:41.127 --> 00:34:45.547 It's all in one sort of flashing tool that's available as part of it it has 00:34:45.547 --> 00:34:51.527 nix os windows arch linux fedora all kinds of support very cool. 00:34:51.527 --> 00:34:56.327 Well leave it to west to find the most modern tool using the most uh i don't 00:34:56.327 --> 00:35:00.387 know interesting and fun tooling under the hood chris i feel like we gotta catch 00:35:00.387 --> 00:35:04.507 up again this week on the tooling that wets is using i know like well. 00:35:04.507 --> 00:35:05.947 I want like a hybrid of yours. 00:35:05.947 --> 00:35:06.947 And west's. 00:35:06.947 --> 00:35:07.827 Setup well i think. 00:35:07.827 --> 00:35:08.287 You can get. 00:35:08.287 --> 00:35:11.167 That because you could you could make the USB with this Aegis tool, 00:35:11.367 --> 00:35:15.587 but then put your custom NixOS or whatever ISO on there, and then it would just boot it. 00:35:15.687 --> 00:35:18.467 The only thing you boys aren't considering, and it's a project we talked about 00:35:18.467 --> 00:35:21.647 a long time ago, so fair enough that it's easy to forget these things. 00:35:21.727 --> 00:35:22.807 We've talked about so many of these. 00:35:23.067 --> 00:35:27.527 But do you remember, I think it was netboot. I'm going to it right now, XYZ? 00:35:27.807 --> 00:35:30.507 Oh, yes. Netbooting was another thing I wanted to mention as part of this, 00:35:30.587 --> 00:35:33.147 although it's a different whether or not you want to rely on the network. 00:35:33.467 --> 00:35:36.407 Right. But if you've got a machine that supports network booting, 00:35:36.487 --> 00:35:40.807 which is like all of them, you can run netboot and I actually do have netboot.xyz 00:35:40.807 --> 00:35:44.507 running in a container on my network you do have to have DHCP and all of that 00:35:44.507 --> 00:35:49.647 giving out it's a little bit to set up because you have to have DHCP that can 00:35:49.647 --> 00:35:54.227 give out like the TFTP server information and the information to boot off of the IPIXI server, 00:35:55.105 --> 00:35:59.685 But if you have the ability to set that, then you can have a network boot system 00:35:59.685 --> 00:36:04.565 for all your systems on your LAN and just choose the network option and they 00:36:04.565 --> 00:36:07.285 will discover this and boot the ISO image you have queued up. 00:36:07.845 --> 00:36:10.985 Also another one where if you didn't, depending on your firmware, 00:36:11.285 --> 00:36:14.485 you can also drop like a UEFI thing that does the Pixie as well. 00:36:15.085 --> 00:36:18.805 Yeah. So I was wondering, I mean, could you have Aegis in there too? 00:36:18.905 --> 00:36:21.485 Like there's a whole, like I'm just thinking with NetBoot, there's a whole angle 00:36:21.485 --> 00:36:24.725 to this that could take this to the next level where you wouldn't even need a custom partition. 00:36:25.105 --> 00:36:28.645 Or a thumb drive if you're just working on your LAN. 00:36:29.125 --> 00:36:33.825 And that, to me, that could be a real unlock. If anybody out there has that setup, send it in. 00:36:33.925 --> 00:36:36.785 You can almost imagine you're Pixie to Aegis, but then it's Linux, 00:36:36.945 --> 00:36:41.005 so it can sort of mount the Samba share of your ISOs, and then it kegs X into one of them. 00:36:41.605 --> 00:36:43.685 Oh, that's glorious. That's glorious. 00:36:43.985 --> 00:36:49.745 I was just wondering how modern Aegis actually was, since I called it modern. 00:36:49.745 --> 00:36:55.305 And it looks like the project is very active with the last commit eight minutes ago. 00:36:55.925 --> 00:36:59.205 So Wes is right on the most modern activity here. 00:36:59.505 --> 00:37:04.545 I've tried it all of once last night, so I just found it. Tester beware. 00:37:04.685 --> 00:37:07.205 Yeah, it looks old. I mean, it looks new. It does look new, but it looks very 00:37:07.205 --> 00:37:08.645 promising. It's a good find, Wes. 00:37:14.065 --> 00:37:18.025 We have several ballers this week, but at the top of the list, 00:37:18.025 --> 00:37:26.205 Greg the Lawyer sent in three boosts with a total of 122,345 sets. 00:37:33.305 --> 00:37:34.345 Wow. Thank you, Greg. 00:37:34.765 --> 00:37:38.385 I started listening a couple of years ago when I got back into Linux after a 00:37:38.385 --> 00:37:42.505 long break. I was very pleased to discover the world of home labbing and to 00:37:42.505 --> 00:37:44.845 see how far Linux had truly come. 00:37:45.245 --> 00:37:48.225 My first distro back in the day was Slackware. 00:37:49.065 --> 00:37:53.685 When I returned, I tried Debian and Fedora and then landed on Arch for quite 00:37:53.685 --> 00:37:56.965 a while. Thanks to you guys, I'm now on that Nix OS train. 00:37:57.585 --> 00:38:02.505 I'm just getting started, but I really like Nix. Everything about it is so intentional. 00:38:03.065 --> 00:38:06.385 Everything I add is documented because, well, it has to be. 00:38:06.945 --> 00:38:11.985 That's true. I do love that. It's great for people that are very, 00:38:12.105 --> 00:38:15.345 very implicit about how their system must be set up to every detail. 00:38:15.625 --> 00:38:19.185 And it's also great for people that cannot remember at all how their system is set up. 00:38:20.165 --> 00:38:21.465 You wouldn't know anyone like that. 00:38:21.485 --> 00:38:26.665 No, I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't. Oh, man. Thank you, Greg. Appreciate that very much. 00:38:26.845 --> 00:38:30.085 Yeah, Greg, I have the full, it kind of got cut off. I have the full one and 00:38:30.085 --> 00:38:34.685 Greg links to the next OS config repo that he has. So we can include that. 00:38:35.045 --> 00:38:39.425 Thank you, Greg. Appreciate that. All right. Our next baller is optic gray and 00:38:39.425 --> 00:38:42.365 he came in with 88,888 sats. 00:38:46.652 --> 00:38:49.612 That's great. Forgeo sounds like a great GitHub alternative, 00:38:49.612 --> 00:38:51.912 but why not use GitLab locally hosted? 00:38:52.292 --> 00:38:57.992 That's another good option for sure. GitLab's like a little more enterprise-y 00:38:57.992 --> 00:39:00.992 in feel and sort of setup and components and stuff. 00:39:01.132 --> 00:39:06.932 Totally doable to self-host, but Forgeo is just a really easy sort of like turn 00:39:06.932 --> 00:39:12.332 on one Nix OS service, and it runs like a mostly single sort of systemd thing. 00:39:12.432 --> 00:39:15.552 And the front end's a lot like what you would expect if you were just coming 00:39:15.552 --> 00:39:17.252 over from GitHub as well, which is nice. 00:39:17.412 --> 00:39:20.712 I have used GitLab a lot, so that part would be fine. I like GitLab. 00:39:20.972 --> 00:39:23.792 Well, there's a lot of free software projects that we use that are just on GitLab. 00:39:23.852 --> 00:39:25.672 So it's definitely a great option. 00:39:25.812 --> 00:39:29.092 Yeah, and there's a lot of, you know, there's more forges than that too to consider. 00:39:29.312 --> 00:39:33.972 That was just one that I knew had functionality that I liked and was easy to get going. 00:39:34.192 --> 00:39:35.912 Also just shipped an update after our episode. 00:39:35.992 --> 00:39:36.572 That's true. 00:39:36.712 --> 00:39:37.552 So a new version is out. 00:39:37.932 --> 00:39:43.012 Well, the DudaBinds comes in with 77,777 cents. 00:39:48.329 --> 00:39:53.989 Hey it's been a while i wanted to boost so many times but i didn't have the time we understand, 00:39:55.289 --> 00:40:00.289 for the stage four bsd challenge i say you test how gaming works you pick a 00:40:00.289 --> 00:40:05.149 game that's supposedly supported in bsd and you get points for managing to install 00:40:05.149 --> 00:40:10.389 and play all right i'll try to participate i have a dell xbs and an x260 lying 00:40:10.389 --> 00:40:12.489 around nice and then for what it's worth, 00:40:13.029 --> 00:40:15.309 I like the AI content So. 00:40:15.309 --> 00:40:21.949 The dude I'm writing this down right now Level 4 Chris frantically writing Taking 00:40:21.949 --> 00:40:23.489 notes Thank you sir that's good. 00:40:23.489 --> 00:40:24.669 Where'd you get the fountain pen? 00:40:25.989 --> 00:40:31.749 It is dipped with the blood of my enemies Adversaries 20 Upgrade, 00:40:34.229 --> 00:40:41.229 Adversary 17 comes in with 20,001 sats He says I think the other host name was 00:40:41.229 --> 00:40:43.629 Alex or something like that Oh, okay, I'm reading them out of order, I see. 00:40:43.889 --> 00:40:47.169 There used to be a podcast about self-hosting that was really done well for many years. 00:40:47.309 --> 00:40:50.869 There was an episode about a self-hosted Code Forges, and other ones mentioned 00:40:50.869 --> 00:40:55.409 DC roasting us, like Git T that automatically mirrors to GitHub. 00:40:55.929 --> 00:40:59.109 I think one of the hosts had a name like yours. There might have been another 00:40:59.109 --> 00:41:01.549 one in there, something like Alex. Oh my gosh. 00:41:02.349 --> 00:41:04.249 Atversaries 20, roasting me. 00:41:05.349 --> 00:41:09.909 Does send in a good link to episode 129 of self-hosted Forged Alliance. 00:41:10.169 --> 00:41:13.129 There you go. talk about some get tea in there sounds good. 00:41:13.129 --> 00:41:17.369 Spooky set come comes in with 10 000 sats, 00:41:20.169 --> 00:41:22.049 live boost woohoo. 00:41:22.049 --> 00:41:23.469 Hey thank you for the live boost this. 00:41:23.469 --> 00:41:24.889 Was from uh last week. 00:41:24.889 --> 00:41:30.489 That's awesome it's always nice getting those live thank you set come goofy. 00:41:30.489 --> 00:41:33.529 Ambitions boosted in one two three four five sets, 00:41:38.337 --> 00:41:42.757 Hello, Chris, Wes, and Brent. I'm a Jupyter Party member, and I primarily listen 00:41:42.757 --> 00:41:47.577 to your show to get insight into new open source tools that will be useful for me. 00:41:47.757 --> 00:41:49.017 I'm currently listening to 00:41:49.017 --> 00:41:53.817 661 for the second time, and I just wanted to say, keep up the good work. 00:41:53.957 --> 00:41:58.057 I really appreciate your content on OpenAI Agents and NixOS. Yes. 00:41:58.757 --> 00:42:02.137 Goofy, thank you for both the membership support and the feedback on that. 00:42:02.217 --> 00:42:02.497 Mm-hmm. 00:42:02.717 --> 00:42:09.777 Thank you very much. Appreciate that. JQube3 came in with 16,482 sats. 00:42:11.817 --> 00:42:14.697 I really enjoyed this episode and would love even more in-depth coverage like 00:42:14.697 --> 00:42:18.477 it. I enjoyed all your AI coverage. I know it can't all be AI all the time, nor should it be. 00:42:18.817 --> 00:42:21.477 I think you guys are doing an excellent job. Keep it up. No, thanks. 00:42:22.117 --> 00:42:24.777 Great. You know, and we are, like the last two episodes, it's come up, 00:42:24.877 --> 00:42:26.837 but it's not the topic of the show. Thank you for the feedback, 00:42:26.857 --> 00:42:28.437 everybody. That's good signal. 00:42:29.057 --> 00:42:31.877 It'd be interesting to see what the vibe is at LinuxFest Northwest. 00:42:32.957 --> 00:42:35.517 Wouldn't that be interesting? See if people are talking about it. 00:42:36.677 --> 00:42:42.097 Podbun bussin with the road ducks. Maybe the chapters could be more granular 00:42:42.097 --> 00:42:47.277 and include specific topics such as AI or Nix for the people that complain about too much of either. 00:42:47.497 --> 00:42:50.817 I don't mind the topics, but some of the nerdy stuff does go over my head. 00:42:51.077 --> 00:42:55.137 Shout out to Editor Drew's excellent chapter titles and always really great. 00:42:55.137 --> 00:43:02.117 You could see a fun project where there's like a GitHub post or maybe a 4GO 00:43:02.117 --> 00:43:07.337 of our chapters JSON that could get iterated on by the community. Oh, totally. 00:43:07.537 --> 00:43:10.217 You could go in there and publish it and update it because it's just a JSON 00:43:10.217 --> 00:43:12.097 file. That's the beauty of the cloud chapters. 00:43:12.337 --> 00:43:17.837 I would also say if the nerdier stuff goes over your head now, 00:43:17.837 --> 00:43:23.117 it's still sinking in somewhere. And if you pay attention, that nerdier stuff, 00:43:23.117 --> 00:43:25.837 you will understand more and more and more of it. 00:43:26.017 --> 00:43:28.357 That's just the beauty of hanging out with a bunch of nerds. 00:43:28.957 --> 00:43:33.817 Well, Daja boosted in 6,969 Satoshis. 00:43:36.181 --> 00:43:41.321 Oh, does anyone else have that problem of the boost audio clips slipping into 00:43:41.321 --> 00:43:42.801 your everyday vernacular? 00:43:43.201 --> 00:43:46.721 Well, I've accidentally dropped, they're doing a lot with mayo these days. 00:43:46.821 --> 00:43:51.441 And that is a tasty burger in several conversations without even thinking about it. 00:43:52.141 --> 00:43:54.401 I just called my coworker a rich 00:43:54.401 --> 00:43:59.261 lobster. I guess it's just a sign of how integrated JB is into my life. 00:43:59.461 --> 00:44:00.021 I love it. 00:44:00.121 --> 00:44:01.041 Well, it happens to us. 00:44:03.201 --> 00:44:08.981 That is another boost here. One thing that gets lost in the license conversation 00:44:08.981 --> 00:44:14.241 is that, as it currently stands, LLMs are just large license launderers. 00:44:14.581 --> 00:44:19.861 One of the great things about copyleft FOSS is that you know that all derivations 00:44:19.861 --> 00:44:23.421 will continue to benefit humanity by also being FOSS. 00:44:23.581 --> 00:44:29.221 But as it is now, we lose all freedoms as soon as someone makes a proprietary 00:44:29.221 --> 00:44:31.761 derivation using an agent. 00:44:31.761 --> 00:44:35.821 Roll over and take it because they're going to violate your code and the freedoms 00:44:35.821 --> 00:44:39.221 of your users anyway isn't a very good stance. 00:44:39.481 --> 00:44:43.721 And neither is put up a bunch of useless walls that also violate your user freedoms. 00:44:44.261 --> 00:44:49.301 It just feels silly that the two leading arguments on the subject break FOSS 00:44:49.301 --> 00:44:51.081 ethos in different ways. 00:44:52.123 --> 00:44:55.863 I think if we can get both sides to come to an agreement on an interface that 00:44:55.863 --> 00:45:00.703 lets AI access the code and also respect the license, we could get the best of both worlds. 00:45:01.023 --> 00:45:05.543 Even if it's just a setting that you can give to your agent to include or exclude 00:45:05.543 --> 00:45:09.723 source material that is compatible with the license of your project or something similar. 00:45:10.223 --> 00:45:14.103 If you're also writing GPL, go ham. If you're writing proprietary, 00:45:14.463 --> 00:45:18.583 then you can consciously make the choice on whether or not to abide by that license. 00:45:18.583 --> 00:45:22.483 That's another benefit to something like that would be that folks at companies 00:45:22.483 --> 00:45:28.443 that block copyleft dependencies can actually enjoy all the fun AI stuff we 00:45:28.443 --> 00:45:30.623 have without worrying of getting in trouble. 00:45:30.843 --> 00:45:34.263 Of course, that's all really easy to say than to do. 00:45:34.883 --> 00:45:39.603 It is easy to say, like you could see just it could be a markdown file or HTML 00:45:39.603 --> 00:45:44.463 file or a dot file that just says, you know, don't train. It could be very simple. 00:45:44.883 --> 00:45:48.363 But I wanted to maybe reframe this a little bit, because I think maybe that's 00:45:48.363 --> 00:45:51.903 where you're getting hung up and having a hard time squaring it. 00:45:52.103 --> 00:45:54.703 And I think when you can't really square it, maybe that's an opportunity to 00:45:54.703 --> 00:45:55.543 see if you got the math right. 00:45:55.743 --> 00:46:00.423 And Wes, I'd like to know your input on this. But I think there is a broader 00:46:00.423 --> 00:46:04.823 question that has to be answered before this particular situation can be sorted out. 00:46:04.883 --> 00:46:10.003 And that broader question is, what is code laundering? Is an open source developer 00:46:10.003 --> 00:46:13.403 that goes to Stack Exchange that gets inspired by a post on Stack Exchange and 00:46:13.403 --> 00:46:15.903 writes a similar equivalent version of that in their own code, 00:46:16.063 --> 00:46:17.363 was that code laundering? 00:46:18.714 --> 00:46:21.914 And if that is the equivalent of what an LLM, is it code laundering when the 00:46:21.914 --> 00:46:23.814 LLM does it based on your request? 00:46:24.214 --> 00:46:27.934 Because it's not Google or Anthropic that's asking the machine to do that. 00:46:27.934 --> 00:46:29.734 It's the user prompting the machine to do that. 00:46:29.854 --> 00:46:33.334 But the user would also be going to Stack Exchange and just aping what's on 00:46:33.334 --> 00:46:35.574 Stack Exchange or an example they find on GitHub. 00:46:36.794 --> 00:46:40.394 And we don't consider that code laundering. We just consider that to be standard 00:46:40.394 --> 00:46:43.914 practice, how you develop software. I'm curious to know what you think on that nuance. 00:46:44.354 --> 00:46:47.394 Yeah, I mean, there's just a lot of nuance to go around because there's different 00:46:47.394 --> 00:46:51.454 questions. There's the training time question and how that works and what code 00:46:51.454 --> 00:46:55.254 was used there and the statistical nature and how you think that the system 00:46:55.254 --> 00:46:57.694 works and the actual outcomes of all of that, right? 00:46:57.814 --> 00:47:01.774 And then there is now this question of agents in practice and what if you have 00:47:01.774 --> 00:47:05.354 one agent that sort of reads the code and outputs a spec that is an arguable 00:47:05.354 --> 00:47:08.514 clean room sort of thing and then you have someone else do the coding. Does that work? 00:47:08.634 --> 00:47:09.734 That's a whole thing. There's just all kinds. 00:47:09.734 --> 00:47:15.794 And so there's just a lot of, I do think Daj is right that we have not really 00:47:15.794 --> 00:47:19.754 maybe got to the part where a lot of the norms and expectations have adjusted. 00:47:19.754 --> 00:47:23.114 And we need to keep having these conversations because there are a lot of nuances 00:47:23.114 --> 00:47:24.754 and sort of things to discuss. 00:47:24.914 --> 00:47:26.994 So I appreciate the thoughtful response. 00:47:26.994 --> 00:47:29.734 It's almost like if we locked in something now, it would probably be too premature. 00:47:30.534 --> 00:47:33.414 The thing continues to move forward while we're figuring it out. 00:47:33.434 --> 00:47:33.734 It sure does. 00:47:33.874 --> 00:47:38.854 Yeah, that is it right there. Great boost. Thank you, sir. Gene Bean comes in with a row of ducks. 00:47:39.834 --> 00:47:43.994 I've had a basic Forgeo instance on Nix for a while, and I've had it offing 00:47:43.994 --> 00:47:46.414 via PocketID, and I'm pretty happy with that. 00:47:46.794 --> 00:47:51.534 Seems like a nice setup. PocketID is a cool little sort of minimal OIDC provider 00:47:51.534 --> 00:47:54.494 for auth stuff, but it just uses passkey, so it's super simple. 00:47:54.674 --> 00:47:57.014 I'll take Arctic, too. ArcticSpender comes in with another row of ducks. 00:47:58.134 --> 00:48:01.934 For the love of all that is holy. You guys, enough about AI. 00:48:02.234 --> 00:48:06.914 I work in IT and I'm sick and tired of every vendor talking about their AI offering. 00:48:07.114 --> 00:48:09.234 You can't spell failure without AI. 00:48:09.534 --> 00:48:12.354 I stopped listening about halfway through this one. Please don't give me a safe 00:48:12.354 --> 00:48:16.094 haven where I don't have to hear about the joys of you know what. 00:48:16.474 --> 00:48:18.674 You know, it was interesting. I was having a conversation with the wife last 00:48:18.674 --> 00:48:22.134 night. And she finds some of these tools useful for her small business. 00:48:22.434 --> 00:48:27.374 At the same time, absolutely hates that the vendor software she's using is shoving it into like. 00:48:27.374 --> 00:48:31.574 She has a field for like filling out patient chart notes and they've literally 00:48:31.574 --> 00:48:38.714 put an ai wizard in every field oh of the text field which now occludes all 00:48:38.714 --> 00:48:42.774 of the text you can fit in there so she can't read all the text in there and none of it's useful. 00:48:42.774 --> 00:48:44.994 It's extra javascript that's just kind of. 00:48:44.994 --> 00:48:47.434 Floating around there's like tons of hipaa concerns that they haven't properly 00:48:47.434 --> 00:48:49.994 explained to her so she's not comfortable with that yeah of course right and 00:48:49.994 --> 00:48:53.494 it's like so she is both like boy it's really useful as a small business owner 00:48:53.494 --> 00:48:56.274 for some of these things and boy I really hate this, 00:48:56.854 --> 00:49:00.954 so I get it Artic I get it thank you for that feedback appreciate that hey Mr. 00:49:01.014 --> 00:49:08.854 20's back yeah this is a duplicate boost but we still got the SATs so we appreciate it 10,250 thank. 00:49:08.854 --> 00:49:10.274 You adversaries you are great. 00:49:10.274 --> 00:49:15.594 But then Woodland Geeks comes in with a row of ducks and an opportunity for 00:49:15.594 --> 00:49:21.034 you Chris though I think you've already talked about this on the launch maybe oh it was a pre-show, 00:49:22.414 --> 00:49:25.454 members you get the good stuff I wanted to share this link. 00:49:25.594 --> 00:49:28.394 I'm sure you guys are on top of this, and probably will show up in the week's 00:49:28.394 --> 00:49:29.394 episode, but head to share. 00:49:29.794 --> 00:49:33.774 You can see many different sides of what is going on here. Chris Rant opportunity. 00:49:34.014 --> 00:49:34.794 Talking about mythos. 00:49:34.914 --> 00:49:40.074 Yes, and it's a link to a Forbes article, What is GLaD mythos and why Anthropic won't let anyone use it? 00:49:40.254 --> 00:49:43.274 Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 00:49:44.585 --> 00:49:48.605 Well, there's a dude here trying stuff and succeeded in sending a row of ducks. 00:49:50.185 --> 00:49:55.245 First agents, now private GitHub replacements. Y'all are reading my mind. 00:49:55.245 --> 00:50:00.185 I'm currently starting my home lab from scratch over again on a new computer. 00:50:00.565 --> 00:50:07.345 And I see infrastructure as code and AI are my two primary focuses. 00:50:07.645 --> 00:50:10.985 It's great to hear y'all's input on that. Please keep it up. 00:50:11.185 --> 00:50:15.645 Dude, that is such a fun time. you know when you're rebuilding like with everything 00:50:15.645 --> 00:50:19.825 you've learned yes it's a lot of work and for me it would be a crushing overwhelming 00:50:19.825 --> 00:50:23.925 amount of work but it's so fun when you actually like it's like how i dream 00:50:23.925 --> 00:50:27.565 of i would never do this but i dream of building my own rv taking everything 00:50:27.565 --> 00:50:30.085 i've learned and just building the ultimate rv you know that would. 00:50:30.085 --> 00:50:30.705 Be a real. 00:50:32.545 --> 00:50:35.825 Please keep us posted i'd love to know how that goes and glad to hear we're 00:50:35.825 --> 00:50:39.925 helpful we'll keep trying to do so and if you screw something up now you know how you can rescue it, 00:50:42.585 --> 00:50:49.185 Magnolia Mayhem came in with 2,000 sats and says boost thank you Mayhem appreciate you. 00:50:50.145 --> 00:50:52.545 Tom Otto comes in with 5,000 sats, 00:50:54.692 --> 00:50:59.492 I love the episode 666 demonic challenge plan. One idea for a challenge would 00:50:59.492 --> 00:51:02.212 be to run Linux binaries or even a Linux container. 00:51:02.512 --> 00:51:06.252 I think Brent in particular might enjoy NetBSD on some dumpster hardware. 00:51:06.632 --> 00:51:08.752 They can run on remarkably small machines. 00:51:09.652 --> 00:51:10.732 He knows your taste. 00:51:10.732 --> 00:51:11.072 I think. 00:51:11.212 --> 00:51:15.732 He does know your taste. You do like those dumpster machines. That's a great one. 00:51:15.872 --> 00:51:21.492 I think I feel like maybe not hard enough because they have the Linux compatibility 00:51:21.492 --> 00:51:23.592 layer, which gives you a lot. 00:51:23.592 --> 00:51:25.352 You do have to set that up. 00:51:25.352 --> 00:51:28.812 You do and that could be the challenge also what 00:51:28.812 --> 00:51:32.952 i find and this is just me coming in with my preconceptions and bias eyes but 00:51:32.952 --> 00:51:37.452 what i find is the bsd guys love to talk about stuff working great oh that's 00:51:37.452 --> 00:51:41.252 a solved problem and then you go to use it and you realize it's about a 20 or 00:51:41.252 --> 00:51:45.152 30 solution that they're fine with but if you're used to something on linux 00:51:45.152 --> 00:51:48.732 is inadequate maybe it'll be like that stay tuned to find out. 00:51:48.732 --> 00:51:54.032 Boost in now complete noobs did boost in with a row of ducks. 00:51:55.636 --> 00:52:02.136 It's just a link to a website here, v4call.com. v4call.com, Complete Noobs Project. 00:52:02.776 --> 00:52:08.356 It says, this is a .0.1 concept phase. Use at your own risk. 00:52:08.496 --> 00:52:09.896 Wes, what did you figure out here? 00:52:10.156 --> 00:52:14.896 Well, I found an info page. v4call is a decentralized video voice and text platform 00:52:14.896 --> 00:52:16.116 built on the Hive blockchain. 00:52:16.376 --> 00:52:19.596 Users set their own rates for receiving calls and messages. Callers pay with 00:52:19.596 --> 00:52:21.816 Hive's stablecoin or custom tokens. 00:52:22.196 --> 00:52:25.516 So it's, okay, video and voice. All right, on Hive. 00:52:25.636 --> 00:52:32.236 Interesting okay there you go v4v call our v4call.com well i do need to come 00:52:32.236 --> 00:52:35.216 up with some sort of call system for the launch you know because i'm paying 00:52:35.216 --> 00:52:38.756 for a hosted solution out of my paypal account but my paypal account's been 00:52:38.756 --> 00:52:44.216 frozen because i used it how dare you i know so yeah. 00:52:44.216 --> 00:52:45.116 That's the mistake really. 00:52:45.116 --> 00:52:47.776 Yeah that's what i get that's what i get so now i have to 00:52:47.776 --> 00:52:51.276 go through like a 20 point identification process i'm 00:52:51.276 --> 00:52:55.176 not even kidding i think it's like 17 different documents and like several questionnaires 00:52:55.176 --> 00:52:59.636 uh to get access to my account so that way i can pay the bill to use the thing 00:52:59.636 --> 00:53:02.656 to use the call service so yeah i probably should work on that but you know 00:53:02.656 --> 00:53:06.216 next week's linux fest so thank you everybody who boosted in and makes the show 00:53:06.216 --> 00:53:09.896 possible also sends us the signal on the episode you really have no idea how 00:53:09.896 --> 00:53:10.776 much it really means to us 00:53:11.216 --> 00:53:14.636 it really is something and also thank you everybody who streams sats as you 00:53:14.636 --> 00:53:19.016 listen 18 of you did it collectively you stacked 58,035 sats that ain't too 00:53:19.016 --> 00:53:22.776 bad y'all that ain't too bad when you combine it together, though, with our boosters. 00:53:22.776 --> 00:53:25.996 We really have a good one this week. Very grateful. We stacked, 00:53:28.716 --> 00:53:30.136 444,740 sats! 00:53:30.456 --> 00:53:30.636 Wow. 00:53:33.224 --> 00:53:33.704 Yes. 00:53:35.804 --> 00:53:39.564 Fountain FM makes it really easy to boost these days with Fiat or SATs. 00:53:39.624 --> 00:53:42.444 And of course, there's a lot of options if you go the self-hosted AlbiHub route. 00:53:43.324 --> 00:53:47.364 Newpodcastapps.com will get you started on that. And you send in a boost over 00:53:47.364 --> 00:53:50.044 2,000 SATs and we will read it on a future episode. 00:53:50.424 --> 00:53:53.644 And it means a lot. Your split goes to myself, to Mr. Payne, 00:53:53.964 --> 00:53:56.624 to Brentley, to Editor Drew, and to the podcast developer. 00:53:56.864 --> 00:53:59.984 And a little bit goes to the Index as well. So it supports the whole ecosystem. 00:54:00.444 --> 00:54:04.484 All of that is in the RSS feed, open to you in the public. You can view it. 00:54:04.564 --> 00:54:06.844 You can audit it. You can see if that ever changes. 00:54:07.244 --> 00:54:08.864 That's just a little bit of how we do this. 00:54:11.111 --> 00:54:17.031 So before we go, we got a smattering of picks this week. I found a GUI to clean 00:54:17.031 --> 00:54:18.931 out metadata from various files. 00:54:19.131 --> 00:54:21.471 You know, there's so many things that get just embedded in documents, 00:54:21.611 --> 00:54:23.491 PDFs, images, especially. 00:54:23.931 --> 00:54:27.451 And Metadata Cleaner is what it says right there on the tin. 00:54:27.631 --> 00:54:32.611 It is a GTK GUI to go through and identify the metadata in a picture file, 00:54:32.891 --> 00:54:36.271 a text file, a video file, whatever it might be, and then help you strip that 00:54:36.271 --> 00:54:40.091 metadata out before you share it. And it is available on Flathub. 00:54:40.571 --> 00:54:44.151 And it's pretty lean, pretty mean, not much else to it. Very simple UI. 00:54:44.371 --> 00:54:47.051 Speaking of GitLab, it seems to be primarily hosted over there. 00:54:47.231 --> 00:54:52.491 Yes, and it is GPL3. So that is just called simply metadata cleaner. 00:54:52.951 --> 00:54:55.731 But Wes, you've been messing around with something a little different. 00:54:56.311 --> 00:55:00.471 Yeah, well, I also kind of had this need. I mean, I have had for a while, 00:55:00.611 --> 00:55:03.651 but just decided to solve it a new way for whatever reason. 00:55:03.991 --> 00:55:08.891 So I searched around Nix packages as one does and i found mat2 which is just 00:55:08.891 --> 00:55:13.271 a convenient little cli metadata removal tool you. 00:55:13.271 --> 00:55:14.491 Just pointed out a file kind of a thing. 00:55:14.491 --> 00:55:17.651 Yeah i put a little sort of demo here in the doc um 00:55:17.651 --> 00:55:20.331 you can just run it right from nix packages with nix run if you want 00:55:20.331 --> 00:55:22.971 but uh yeah you just kind of tell it 00:55:22.971 --> 00:55:25.971 what file you want you could pass dash s just to show the metadata so 00:55:25.971 --> 00:55:30.331 here's like a um an example from my phone you can see a bunch of details that 00:55:30.331 --> 00:55:33.911 i probably don't need other people knowing necessarily great for your own archival 00:55:33.911 --> 00:55:37.351 stuff perhaps right and then all you do is you run it with no arguments by default 00:55:37.351 --> 00:55:42.851 it just makes a new it adds like base name dot cleaned so you get like okay 00:55:42.851 --> 00:55:44.671 image dot clean so you know that. 00:55:44.671 --> 00:55:45.871 One's safe that's the one you share. 00:55:45.871 --> 00:55:48.671 Yeah so it doesn't touch the existing files it just makes a bunch of new files 00:55:48.671 --> 00:55:53.051 in there it's easy to automate with something like x args or parallel or you 00:55:53.051 --> 00:55:56.631 know those kinds of tools so it's clean simple easy to use i. 00:55:56.631 --> 00:56:00.031 Do like the idea of just it's on the command line run it real quick don't. 00:56:00.031 --> 00:56:03.691 Wrap it in a script if you want and you know so you just do it on regular files 00:56:03.691 --> 00:56:04.911 you intake things through yeah. 00:56:06.527 --> 00:56:09.607 Of course, with these days, you could probably still get a lot of information 00:56:09.607 --> 00:56:11.667 just from the stuff that's in the photo, depending on where you take it. 00:56:11.707 --> 00:56:13.187 But it's good at least clean that up, right? 00:56:14.047 --> 00:56:17.667 Now, this next one's making some news. So we want to take a quick look at it 00:56:17.667 --> 00:56:21.847 for you and mention it because it's one of these quintessential macOS apps that's 00:56:21.847 --> 00:56:24.927 actually come to Linux this week. And it's called Little Snitch. 00:56:25.147 --> 00:56:28.107 And you might be familiar with it. Every time an application on your computer 00:56:28.107 --> 00:56:29.527 opens up a network connection… 00:56:29.897 --> 00:56:33.397 It just does so in the background without you knowing, which is fine, right? 00:56:33.517 --> 00:56:37.197 But wouldn't it be kind of interesting to have insight on what's opening up, 00:56:37.237 --> 00:56:40.037 what applications are doing what, and kind of how much data you're using? 00:56:40.397 --> 00:56:42.877 Linux didn't have this with Little Snitch until they released it. 00:56:42.957 --> 00:56:44.817 There used to be a Mac-only app. Now it's available. 00:56:44.917 --> 00:56:47.517 You can see exactly what applications are talking to what servers. 00:56:47.597 --> 00:56:50.177 You can block the ones you don't want talking to those servers. 00:56:50.337 --> 00:56:54.197 You can keep an eye on historical data and the amount of traffic volume over time. 00:56:54.497 --> 00:56:56.977 The connection view has a lot of interesting things on there. 00:56:57.077 --> 00:57:00.437 Current and past network activity by application. shows you what's being blocked 00:57:00.437 --> 00:57:03.857 by your rules and block lists and tracks data volumes and traffic history. 00:57:03.937 --> 00:57:08.057 This will run on any Linux distribution with kernel 612 or above. 00:57:08.357 --> 00:57:11.517 It's not quite equivalent to the macOS version. It is missing a few things, 00:57:11.777 --> 00:57:15.177 mostly because of the limitations, for better or for worse, I think for better, 00:57:15.317 --> 00:57:18.517 of what eBPF will allow some of the tooling to get access to. 00:57:18.677 --> 00:57:20.677 And yes, it is powered by eBPF. 00:57:20.737 --> 00:57:23.397 That's right. So you actually got it working there on your machine. 00:57:23.577 --> 00:57:27.657 Yeah. It is like the license situation. There's a bunch of open source parts, 00:57:27.657 --> 00:57:31.237 but some of it is still proprietary. I think maybe ported over from the... 00:57:31.237 --> 00:57:36.197 View and shareable, but proprietary. And so it's like the backend stuff is free. 00:57:36.737 --> 00:57:39.197 The only thing that's, I think, proprietary is maybe some of the GUI stuff, 00:57:39.317 --> 00:57:40.657 but it's viewable and shareable. 00:57:41.217 --> 00:57:45.357 So there you go. But they provide precompiled binaries you can just download for Linux. 00:57:45.577 --> 00:57:48.757 So I was able to download those and not too much work, a little patch elf, 00:57:48.837 --> 00:57:49.797 got them running on NixOS. 00:57:50.097 --> 00:57:54.757 So I made a, well, had OpenCode help me make a basic little slake for that on my GitHub. 00:57:55.137 --> 00:57:58.117 So it was easy enough to run. So that means it'll definitely run on most standard 00:57:58.117 --> 00:57:59.637 Linux distributions quite easily, I think. 00:57:59.917 --> 00:58:03.697 You run it. It comes with a systemd service already with, like, 00:58:03.777 --> 00:58:06.837 nice, exactly the permissions it actually needs. Or you can just run it with 00:58:06.837 --> 00:58:08.637 sudo if you want to test it out. 00:58:09.017 --> 00:58:12.077 Because it needs some of the, like, you know, sysadmin, or not full sysadmin, 00:58:12.817 --> 00:58:16.417 but needs some of the network admin permissions to be able to hook things in and all that. 00:58:16.757 --> 00:58:20.757 And then it runs a daemon in the background. So you pop it up as a web UI, 00:58:20.917 --> 00:58:25.137 port 3031. and you can see i put a picture in the dock they're kind of clean 00:58:25.137 --> 00:58:29.717 looking modern ui with a nice feels responsive drill down breaks down a lot 00:58:29.717 --> 00:58:31.037 of the different traffic there it, 00:58:31.622 --> 00:58:34.962 I automatically detected the stuff I was pulling down from Nix as I was building 00:58:34.962 --> 00:58:37.522 something in the background while I was trying it out. So that was fun to see. 00:58:37.722 --> 00:58:40.882 Huh. That is kind of nice when you're doing a system update or something and 00:58:40.882 --> 00:58:43.962 you just kind of want to watch. Like I'll often use bottom for this. I love bottom. 00:58:44.122 --> 00:58:48.002 But this is more specifically network level, which is great. 00:58:48.782 --> 00:58:49.962 Did you try blocking anything? 00:58:50.282 --> 00:58:52.502 No, not yet. I am curious to try that though. 00:58:52.962 --> 00:58:57.662 Hmm. It is neat to see one of these quintessential Mac apps land on Linux. 00:58:57.982 --> 00:59:00.162 Even if it's not fully the same. 00:59:01.037 --> 00:59:03.677 With all of these Mac users switching over, it's great timing. 00:59:03.937 --> 00:59:07.397 It really is. And I mean, kind of a long time coming. There'd been other open 00:59:07.397 --> 00:59:12.037 source sort of like attempts at this kinds of software that we've even talked about on the show. 00:59:12.177 --> 00:59:16.557 But I do wonder what it says that now was the time that it moved. 00:59:16.717 --> 00:59:20.477 Me too. All right. Who snuck in PCAPDroid? Who snuck that in here? 00:59:20.497 --> 00:59:25.937 Oh, I snuck in a little bonus pick on the same topic as Little Snitch that I 00:59:25.937 --> 00:59:27.517 found recently for Android. 00:59:28.117 --> 00:59:31.177 So this is a privacy friendly of course open 00:59:31.177 --> 00:59:33.917 source of course but it's an android app that 00:59:33.917 --> 00:59:37.957 lets you also do similar things track analyze and block the connections made 00:59:37.957 --> 00:59:43.157 by other apps on your android device and you can dump the traffic inspect the 00:59:43.157 --> 00:59:47.577 http decrypt some of the tls traffic if you want all sorts of stuff i use this 00:59:47.577 --> 00:59:51.157 to just well you kind of get curious what's your cell phone really doing in 00:59:51.157 --> 00:59:53.077 the back and especially my cell phone i'd. 00:59:53.077 --> 00:59:55.297 Really like to know what my cell phone's up to yeah. 00:59:55.297 --> 01:00:00.537 It is every single time you do this on any device you it is mind-boggling and 01:00:00.537 --> 01:00:06.737 very enlightening so i recommend you pick up pc ap droid just run it for like 01:00:06.737 --> 01:00:10.837 an hour and see what the heck's going on on that device of yours pcap. 01:00:10.837 --> 01:00:15.257 Droid and we will have a link to that in the show notes that's a nice find gentlemen so now we'll. 01:00:15.257 --> 01:00:18.737 Have more info uh not only on our desktops but on our mobile. 01:00:18.737 --> 01:00:22.277 Devices we're cleaning up your metadata and protecting your network this week 01:00:22.277 --> 01:00:26.717 while also rescuing your data. It's a very utility-focused episode, I guess. 01:00:26.857 --> 01:00:28.617 Or we're having a lot of problems behind this week. 01:00:31.517 --> 01:00:34.457 We've got to play it off. We've got to play it off. No, this wasn't that at 01:00:34.457 --> 01:00:39.077 all. We're getting very, very excited about LinuxFest Northwest. It is next weekend. 01:00:39.577 --> 01:00:40.057 What? 01:00:40.357 --> 01:00:46.397 Yeah. So you will get the full report from the Pacific Northwest's largest community-run 01:00:46.397 --> 01:00:50.397 Linux event and one of the OGs going for... 01:00:52.036 --> 01:00:55.296 Something like 25, 26 years now. I don't know. I don't know how long I've been 01:00:55.296 --> 01:00:56.496 going. It's been a long time. 01:00:56.696 --> 01:00:58.196 It doesn't feel real yet, but it's going to be great. 01:00:58.356 --> 01:01:01.636 I have been going to LinuxFest Northwest since I've been in high school. 01:01:03.336 --> 01:01:07.436 And I'm a little out of high school now. So that's how long I've been going. 01:01:08.536 --> 01:01:11.936 Woo! The first time I went, I went with a high school teacher of mine. 01:01:13.056 --> 01:01:14.016 That's wonderful. Yeah. 01:01:14.076 --> 01:01:14.856 Let's keep it going. 01:01:15.036 --> 01:01:18.616 I mean, there's a reason I keep going every year, right? You don't go for 26, 01:01:18.736 --> 01:01:20.836 27 years unless maybe 28. 01:01:20.936 --> 01:01:23.336 I don't know. I don't know what it is. You don't go for that long unless it's 01:01:23.336 --> 01:01:25.536 really something special. So I hope to see you there. 01:01:26.556 --> 01:01:29.236 Lfnw.org if you want more details. We'll put a link in the show notes too. 01:01:29.416 --> 01:01:31.576 And of course, you can always make it a Tuesday on a Sunday. 01:01:31.736 --> 01:01:34.676 Wherever you are, you can join us live 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. 01:01:34.976 --> 01:01:38.896 Eastern. We may be somewhere around there a little bit because we have a live. 01:01:39.016 --> 01:01:40.516 We've got to do a lot of setup and all of that. 01:01:40.636 --> 01:01:44.816 But jblive.fm or jblive.tv will be where you can catch it if you can't make 01:01:44.816 --> 01:01:46.336 it physically to LinuxFest Northwest. 01:01:47.336 --> 01:01:50.536 Now, Wes, before we go, we should tell people about some of the cool advanced 01:01:50.536 --> 01:01:52.756 features we have around the show, because it's not just audio. 01:01:53.076 --> 01:01:56.636 Yeah, that's right. We take advantage of the podcast 2.0 namespace. 01:01:57.196 --> 01:02:01.376 In particular, that gets those mighty fine cloud chapters we mentioned earlier on. 01:02:01.996 --> 01:02:03.996 Dynamic JSON delivered to you just when 01:02:03.996 --> 01:02:08.276 you need it. And if you want more information, check out our VTT files. 01:02:08.396 --> 01:02:11.536 Those are also found in the feed under the podcast transcript tag. 01:02:11.536 --> 01:02:14.736 It is neat, too, to see more of these, particularly these ones we just mentioned, 01:02:14.876 --> 01:02:18.516 getting picked up by more and more vendors and whatnot, including even Apple 01:02:18.516 --> 01:02:20.576 Podcasts, which is amazing now. 01:02:20.616 --> 01:02:24.496 So if your podcast client doesn't have support for this, you should message 01:02:24.496 --> 01:02:26.456 the developer and let them know that they've been beaten by Apple. 01:02:26.576 --> 01:02:30.536 It's all standard stuff, right? VTT, SRT files. There's lots of open source 01:02:30.536 --> 01:02:33.316 libraries folks can bring in to help make use of this stuff. 01:02:33.436 --> 01:02:36.196 And the other one that hasn't seen as much traction, but it is an app like Fountain 01:02:36.196 --> 01:02:39.816 and Podverse and Cast-O-Matic, of course, is live stream support. 01:02:39.936 --> 01:02:43.056 We are live every single Sunday. There's not a lot of podcasts that do that anymore. 01:02:43.576 --> 01:02:46.156 JBLive.tv and FM is also where you can listen to it. 01:02:50.541 --> 01:02:54.161 And we have links to just about darn near everything we've talked about. 01:02:54.601 --> 01:02:59.661 We try to catch it all, and we put that over at linuxunplugged.com slash 663. 01:02:59.961 --> 01:03:03.281 We also sneak an alternate enclosure into the feed these days, 01:03:03.301 --> 01:03:05.241 so just go crep around for that. 01:03:05.341 --> 01:03:08.001 There might be a video version in there for you with visuals of what we talk 01:03:08.001 --> 01:03:09.601 about and stuff. You never know. 01:03:09.961 --> 01:03:12.961 We are so much looking forward to seeing you, so we hope to see you at LinuxFest Northwest. 01:03:13.161 --> 01:03:17.101 But if we don't, friends, we'll catch you right back here in the feed like we 01:03:17.101 --> 01:03:20.581 always do next Tuesday, as in Sunday. Thank you.