This is a reprint of a previous article, by request. The information contained therein is probably out-dated by a few years. Therefore, I make no promise that the instructions below for setting up Epson scanning on Raspberry Pi is any way accurate.

This is the article that almost didn’t happen.  I need my Epson all-in-one for scanning, and if I couldn’t get it working, then I was going to disconnect the Pi, reformat and repurpose (and I have other purposes for one, certainly).  In fact, I had gotten printing working even over Airprint, so this was the last obstacle.  I was prepared to disconnect it, but I decided to give it yet one more try, and I finally got some success. Continue reading “Geek Friday: Setting up Epson Scanning on Raspberry Pi”

Systemd vs System V init wars continues with latest “How to crash systemd clickbait

When it comes to certain “holy wars” in the IT realm, I’m certainly not inclined to root for one side or the other when it comes to certain complicated items like system init. However, I feel that when it comes to foaming at the mouth clickbait posts filled with the sky-is-falling logic due to one bug (that must be done locally, no less), then I feel compelled to highlight the other side to re-balance the ship.

What I really don’t understand is the human tendency to put the same intensity into certain aspects of computing as they do in politics or religion, and the systemd vs System V init wars are certainly that.

The systemd team has recently patched a local denial of service vulnerability affecting the notification socket, which is designed to be used for daemons to report their lifecycle and health information. Some people have used this as an opportunity to throw a fresh tantrum about systemd.…

Source: How to Throw a Tantrum in One Blog Post – Medium

Microsoft recently introduced Bash on Ubuntu on Windows 10 for developers. Does it work?

Not long ago, I was unable to use TeamViewer to remote into my laptop to use ssh. So, I attempted to install putty and other tools in order to ssh into a server from a Windows 10 machine. My disappointment in how it worked was even larger than I would have anticipated.

It seems weird that we are decades into using the Internet, and Windows tools still really lack at doing server support. Apparently, I am not alone, though, and Microsoft has included a bash shell from no less than Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, in their latest developer release.

And, I even heard it would support ssh.

This gave me a burning desire to at least give it a try.

The downside is that I had to get my computer back onto the Windows Insider Program, which meant re-enabling a lot of the more chatty portions of Windows 10 that were locked down for privacy reasons. However, that’s part of the deal that you are supposed to give feedback and such as part of the program, so this is actually a case where some of these otherwise intrusive elements makes sense.

Well, I finally got the Insider preview installed, and I enabled the Subsystem for Linux (Beta). You can read more about the entire procedure at FossBytes‘ “How To Install And Run Bash On Ubuntu On Windows 10 Right Now“. I opened a command prompt and typed “bash” and pressed [Enter]. The installation took a little longer than I had anticipated, but a while later I had an actual bash shell.

OK, but is this anything like opening a terminal in Linux? Can I really ssh and paste a password into the shell instead of typing everything on the command line like it’s 1993?

Sure enough, I opened a browser and copied the password from LastPass and pasted it into the bash window and I was on! Not only did ssh work, but the entire command window behaved similarly to a terminal window in Linux!

OK, I’m not giving up Arch tomorrow, but at least if I’m stuck on a Windows box, I can at least use familiar tools and not have to rely upon programs that simply don’t live up to the expectations.

 

AKA, What good is a checksum, anyhow?

A lot of download sites present checksums for you to check that what they host is actually what you download. I, for one, have always been dubious of such measures, and the recent Linux Mint breach proves what I’ve always suspected.
Continue reading “Linux Mint Breach Lessons”

How to do Bitcoin mining on the Raspberry Pi and what not to do.

So, I’ve been busy lately with, among other things, repurposing my Raspberry Pi for Bitcoin mining. Yet, in spite of a proliferation of guides on how to do Bitcoin mining on the Raspberry Pi, I struggled a bit with getting it all setup. So, while this is mostly about getting it all setup, this article is as much about the pitfalls to avoid. Continue reading “Bitcoin Mining on the Raspberry Pi”