@BraswellJay you don't need one with word. In Word, just export as pdf.

I did this in the past, but not sure how relevant it is for you here?

https://mangolassi.it/topic/17916/ubuntu-setup-for-steam-play-and-lutris-gaming-with-nvidia-graphics?_=1670778770294

I've just been gaming on Windows lately, bottom line is it's just easier and less time consuming for some of the games I play. So it's dependant on that.

@Carnival-Boy said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:

I don't own a personal laptop.

@Carnival-Boy said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:

I'm not really IT

Are you?

@scottalanmiller said in Todays' replacement for Teamviewer:

@notverypunny said in Todays' replacement for Teamviewer:

@Mario-Jakovina said in Todays' replacement for Teamviewer:

@gjacobse said in Todays' replacement for Teamviewer:

@Dashrender said in Todays' replacement for Teamviewer:

are you needing a free solution?

I wouldn't expect Teamviewer to give you unattended access for free. Heck they start nagging and possible disabling the use if they see you abusing the 'free' option.

This is for a 70+ year old club member for his own personal use between his laptop while in Florida and his home computer... so needs to be super simple and reliable and repeatable and - yea... free. And stupid simple.

Then try Ultraviewer: https://www.ultraviewer.net/en/

EDIT: It is free to but it has some ads.
Also, I'm not sure whether the free license allows you to wake up system if it goes to sleep.

Honestly doubt that any solution will be able to wake the remote machine if it's in sleep and it's the only client on the far end. The products that I've used or looked at usually rely on another "awake" node at the same site to send WoL. If it's just the 1 machine in FL and 1 machine at home, there's nothing available to kick the sleeping machine... Unless there's something that I'm missing?

yeah, for sure, by definition it can't wake it if it is asleep. It has to be awoken by another machine on the network. The program can't run to wake itself up.

There may be a bios setting to automatically wake or start the device on a schedule. Maybe that can be part of it, along with in-OS sleep setting to prevent that, so that he can shut it down manually when done for the day.

@scottalanmiller said in I am looking for a PHP / MySQL programmer for odd jobs:

@JasGot NTG has developers now for exactly this reason. This past year our requests for development work have exploded and it has gone from something we didn't do to half our billable hours in three months, it's crazy.

Which languages are most in demand? Or do you limit the work you accept?

@DustinB3403 depending on what you want, you can also:

$app = Get-ChildItem -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall' | Get-ItemProperty | Where-Object -Property DisplayName -EQ "Microsoft Edge"

$installDate = $app.InstallDate

@DustinB3403 said in Query Regsitry using a Variable:

@Obsolesce Yeah I got that far along, what I need to pull is a specific string from the output.

I have a few other ways that I was manipulating the string, like writing the entire output to a file and then pulling the 23rd line (for example) but that literally gets everything on that line.

When all I want is the InstallDate

Get-ChildItem -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall' | Get-ItemProperty | Where-Object -Property DisplayName -EQ "Microsoft Edge" | Select-Object -Property InstallDate

$InstallDate = Get-ChildItem -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall' | Get-ItemProperty | Where-Object -Property DisplayName -EQ "Microsoft Edge" | Select-Object -Property InstallDate
$InstallDate
$InstallDate.InstallDate

Get-ChildItem -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall' | Get-ItemProperty | Where-Object -Property DisplayName -EQ "Software"

#or

Get-ChildItem -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall' | Get-ItemProperty | Where-Object -Property DisplayName -Match "Software"

On a nice hike

@Fredtx said in 1 large disk or 2 smaller disks for a file server?:

I'm creating a new file server, which will be a VM. The source (original file server) has 1.7TB of used storage. 641GB of that is Marketing (mainly videos), and the rest is Engineering (cad files), User folders (docs,etc), and miscellaneous folders.

Would it be better for me to create 2 virtual disks on the target (new file server), and give the Marketing team their own disk? Or should I just move everything over to 1 big virtual disk?

2 virtual disks versus 1 virtual disk would only matter if you need to do some kind of QoS at the vdisk level. Also, depending on how you do shares and your backup infra may matter, or maybe not.

@gjacobse said in Anyone have a decent 3D printer?:

@Obsolesce
I am sure there is a ratio and pattern needed for the mask, but how would your pattern compare to already designed models?

Tri-Bahtinov Mask via STL-Finder

There's a lot there, lots of sizes and types, no way I'll find exactly what I'm looking for.

Lots of thickness and pattern variance. The thickness doesn't matter at all (2mm thickness is likely fine), just that you don't want it to break easily or be flimsy. The pattern varies depending on focal length, and varies by many other factors. But it doesn't matter where the design comes from. The one I made worked very well. I printed it out on paper, cut it out with a razor blade, and tested it on my scope and it worked well. The only issue is that it's made of paper, very flimsy, etc.

I used Inkscape to convert it to a 3D model for STL. No issues there at all. It looked good in everything. It appears like every pattern on that site you linked, did it the exact same way as I have.

How much does the material cost and in time/electricity to print it?

I did end up finding them at telescopescanada.ca for less than $40 shipped. So I might just go that route if I can't get it done myself for less or without a ton of effort. I found 2 designs that work really well in my testing, and luckily one of them telescopescanada.ca is basically the same.

@gjacobse said in Anyone have a decent 3D printer?:

Few questions

What type of filament are you needing as there are many.

What is this for?

Was the file on ThingaVerse, or 3dCuts or another site?

I don't really know much about the filaments, but the PLA that was used seems like it'd be good enough once I sand it down to be smooth. Maybe other filaments are smoother out of the printer? I don't know.

This is a Tri-Bahtinov Mask for my telescope. I used a generator that outputs a drawing as a SVG file that I can open up in Inkscape to convert to polygon data, and into an STL file for 3D print.

Example I need, but not sure how well it'll 3D print:

@gjacobse said in Anyone have a decent 3D printer?:

Holy crap - yea,.. that's a burnt print.

I have an Ender 3 Pro and it does a decent job of things... As long as, as with anything, you pay attention to a number of factors. Sadly I don't have photos of some of the prints I've done, and the photos I do have are ones I can't release.

Filament, speed, flow, temp and bed adhesion are may factors to deal with. I haven't been able to print ABS as it just peels right off. I do decent with PLA and TPU...

There is a lot that I don't know how to do and don't know if I want to try,.. but I've learned a bit also.

Here is a file I printed for a friend:

I thought since they had a decent 3D printer (Makerbot Replicator+) it would have turned out to be a least usable. I'm not sure how they let come out like that. It was printed in PLA, but I don't really care what's used, so long as what prints out is usable. I've never 3D printed anything, so I don't really know a whole lot about it, but given they have what seems like a decent printer and they operate a printing service, I thought it'd have at least turned out a bit better than it did.

I'm wondering if anyone have a decent 3D printer that works decent for precise printing and knows how to use it so it doesn't look like it was printing during an earthquake.

I attempted to print something for free using a local library, but when I picked it up, seen that it was just totally butchered.

Here's what it's supposed to look like, the .stl file:

And here's what I got from the library:

As you can see, just totally butchered.

If anyone might be able to help me out, I'd like to see what it'd take to get something like this or similar printed and sent. There's another design I'm testing atm.

@scottalanmiller on the other hand, it's a hell of a lot harder and questionable walking out the door with a full server than it is with a / some hard drives. Same with virtual disks, can't copy them to another system and extract data if they are encrypted. I'd still err towards encrypting data at rest (full disk encryption). Also, why aren't servers physically secured?

@Dashrender said in Hard disk encryption without OS access?:

@Obsolesce said in Hard disk encryption without OS access?:

My main point and concern was in regard to end-user devices where the most relevant cases are lost or stolen devices (laptops/phones/etc.).

Sure, but that was really the point of the OP

@JasGot

@JasGot said in Hard disk encryption without OS access?:

The software product they use for running their business is the only app on the server and the software vendor will not allow access to the server OS.

This is primarily a server encryption discussion.

Yes I get that. But I was really just responding in regard to the "just stealing your computer" bit. That moreso implies personal computer, at least to me. Maybe he meant breaking into a datacenter and just stealing a server, but that didn't seem like that's what he meant.

@scottalanmiller said in Hard disk encryption without OS access?:

@Obsolesce said in Hard disk encryption without OS access?:

You're likely referring to the fact that many do not do it properly, but that isn't a valid argument that full disk encryption doesn't work.

Most systems can't allow downtime if a human cannot be present. The problem with full disk encryption is that...

1. It protects against very little. It's a newly valueless threat in the server space, it's fear mongering that makes people concerned about it, even in highly critical government systems there is rarely a real threat to be protecting against.
2. To be effective at all it requires such an onerous system. You have to have human(s) that hold the keys and are always available to the system to unlock it which means you need multiple people, sharing access, that are always there (or somewhere with access) which is generally costly, often defeats the value of the system, and creates huge risks of its own.
3. In a case where most attackers would overcome issues in #1, kidnapping or threatening someone with the password is generally trivial by comparison.

Yes, in the server space I'm with you 100%. It will require extra work and I also agree with the other points. While not impossible to automate using non-human methods, it's likely not going to happen, so yeah.

My main point and concern was in regard to end-user devices where the most relevant cases are lost or stolen devices (laptops/phones/etc.). You leave it in the taxi or it gets stolen somewhere... a proper setup will prevent data access.

But yes, there is the kidnapping and threatening as you say... so why implement any data security at all then? Why have a password for example on any device if someone could simply kidnap or threaten you and get it anyways? I mean while it could happen, but it's generally not the main threat and MOST CERTAINLY is not a reason to never encrypt your disks or use passwords, or lock your house when you leave...

@scottalanmiller said in Hard disk encryption without OS access?:

@Obsolesce said in Hard disk encryption without OS access?:

It should always be. And if not, like in cases where your hardware doesn't support it (no TPM), then you would be forced to use a password to unlock it.

In essentially all cases, you'd want that anyway. Otherwise the fear of someone just stealing your computer remains. They just take the whole thing, turn it on, and attack it anyway that they want since it is decrypted, violating the intent of the rule.

"Just" stealing someone's computer and turning it on to attack away will not work when protected properly, for example, BitLocker full disk encryption + BitLocker startup PIN + proper DMA attack protection (likely the case by default with modern hardware). The TPM simply won't release the key any other way. So you can't really argue against that. Anyone who cares about the security of data on end-user devices will always enforce proper protection.

With server data, similar rules apply. You also want full disk encryption as well as the other protections, so that "just" taking the whole server and attacking away won't work either.

You're likely referring to the fact that many do not do it properly, but that isn't a valid argument that full disk encryption doesn't work. It does work, when used properly and how it was designed to work. When someone says you should use full disk encryption, it's implied that it's done properly. Any security measure can be done improperly and therefore made useless. That a given, so it must be implied done correctly.

Found some more info: https://ubuntu.com/core/docs/uc20/full-disk-encryption

@scottalanmiller said in Hard disk encryption without OS access?:

@Obsolesce said in Hard disk encryption without OS access?:

Full disk encryption is tied to the TPM for example

Actually it often is not. It CAN be, and that's a nice feature in some cases. BUT, how do you move those drives to another server when you do that (maybe it's easy, but what does the TPM do then?) Assuming drive mobility is a factor, and typically it is, you can't use that kind of full disk encryption, but you are stuck with the normal kind which doesn't use any special hardware. Then you get the assumed portability of the hardware, but just stealing the drives is enough.

It should always be. And if not, like in cases where your hardware doesn't support it (no TPM), then you would be forced to use a password to unlock it. Full disk encryption with the key in the keyhole is pointless. I've not heard of any other way of doing it, that wouldn't make sense.

You can easily move drives to another system, in that case you'd need to enter the recovery key to unlock it.