Jack Wallen?s list <https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-commands-deprecated-why-do-not-use/>
of commands you shouldn?t be using any more, and what to use instead,
is a mixed bag.
ifconfig/iwconfig vs ip/iw -- the latter newer ones (part of the Linux ?iproute2? suite) offer greater access to all the features of the
Linux network stack than the former, older ones, and so are preferable
in lots of ways. It is already possible to find setups which don?t
have the old commands installed by default; I?m not sure if any
distros have actually dropped the option for installing them
altogether, but no doubt that will happen at some point.
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways of
transferring files securely over SSH. scp did use to use its own
protocol at one point, but it has been upgraded to use the same
underlying protocol as sftp, so it?s perfectly fine to continue using
the same command, if that?s what you?re used to. There is no sign that
the scp command itself is going to be deprecated at any point, though
no doubt the option to fall back to the old protocol for
compatibility?s sake is likely to be removed eventually.
egrep/fgrep -- it has been true for decades (possibly has always been
true for the GNU utilities?) that egrep and fgrep are just synonyms
for ?grep -E? and ?grep -F? respectively. And it is true that the
alternative names are finally being deprecated after all these years,
so it behooves you to learn to use the ?grep? command for all forms.
netstat vs ss -- yes, another case of the newer iproute2-based command
taking over from the older, traditional command, and offering more
features besides. Same remarks as above apply.
route vs ip route -- iproute2 again.
arp vs ip neighbour/neighbor -- more iproute2.
Jack Wallen?s list <https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-commands-deprecated-why-do-not-use/>
of commands you shouldn?t be using any more, and what to use instead,
is a mixed bag.
On Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:54:43 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Jack Wallen?s list
<https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-commands-deprecated-why-do-not-use/
of commands you shouldn?t be using any more, and what to use instead, is
a mixed bag.
I'm getting ready to nominate Wallen for asshole of the year award.
ifconfig works fine for me and I don't have to read the whole damn ip man page to coax the info out of it.
It is present in Linux Mint 22.3 :) I was talking to the guy who is
running the library's Linux project. He himself has only been using Linux
for a few months and isn't comfortable on the command line. He asked if
there was something like 'ipconfig'. I'm glad he didn't ask why it's 'ifconfig'. That's been screwing me up for years.
He was also happy to find Linux has a 'hosts' file just like Windows.
Jack Wallen's list...
scp -- wrong.
transferring files securely over SSH. scp did use to use its own^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
protocol at one point, but it has been upgraded to use the same
underlying protocol as sftp, so it's perfectly fine to continue using
egrep/fgrep -- it has been true for decades (possibly has always been
true for the GNU utilities?) that egrep and fgrep are just synonyms
for "grep -E" and "grep -F" respectively. And it is true that the
alternative names are finally being deprecated after all these years,
so it behooves you to learn to use the "grep" command for all forms.
[Gratuitous use of high bit in subject noted.]
In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence DOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Jack Wallen's list...
scp -- wrong.
Strong opinion.
transferring files securely over SSH. scp did use to use its own^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
protocol at one point, but it has been upgraded to use the same
underlying protocol as sftp, so it's perfectly fine to continue using
On a foundation of sand.
Personally both scp and "(cd foo && tar cf ... ) | ssh 'cd bar && tar xf -'" more often than rsync.
egrep/fgrep -- it has been true for decades (possibly has always been
true for the GNU utilities?) that egrep and fgrep are just synonyms
for "grep -E" and "grep -F" respectively. And it is true that the
alternative names are finally being deprecated after all these years,
so it behooves you to learn to use the "grep" command for all forms.
Again, this is a dubious opinion. It doesn't matter to me if they are
the same binary or not, "egrep" is a lot easier to type than "grep -E"
and fgrep has the same advantage.
Elijah
------
rysnc has a terrible command line
On 1/14/26 16:54, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
ifconfig/iwconfig vs ip/iw -- the latter newer ones (part of the
Linux
?iproute2? suite) offer greater access to all the features of the
Linux network stack than the former, older ones, and so are preferable
in lots of ways. It is already possible to find setups which don?t
have the old commands installed by default; I?m not sure if any
distros have actually dropped the option for installing them
altogether, but no doubt that will happen at some point.
Sometimes more can be less. I rarely used ifconfig to
actually configure things - but use it often just to
see what's what. The Just The Important Stuff output
is better than 'ip's.
It also doesn?t seem to know about bridge membership:
$ ip addr show eno1.1
5: eno1.1@eno1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br0 state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 88:ae:dd:05:79:22 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
Jack Wallen?s list <https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-commands-deprecated-why-do-not-use/>
of commands you shouldn?t be using any more, and what to use instead,
is a mixed bag.
ifconfig/iwconfig vs ip/iw -- the latter newer ones (part of the Linux ?iproute2? suite) offer greater access to all the features of the
Linux network stack than the former, older ones, and so are preferable
in lots of ways. It is already possible to find setups which don?t
have the old commands installed by default; I?m not sure if any
distros have actually dropped the option for installing them
altogether, but no doubt that will happen at some point.
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways of
transferring files securely over SSH. scp did use to use its own
protocol at one point, but it has been upgraded to use the same
underlying protocol as sftp, so it?s perfectly fine to continue using
the same command, if that?s what you?re used to. There is no sign that
the scp command itself is going to be deprecated at any point, though
no doubt the option to fall back to the old protocol for
compatibility?s sake is likely to be removed eventually.
egrep/fgrep -- it has been true for decades (possibly has always been
true for the GNU utilities?) that egrep and fgrep are just synonyms
for ?grep -E? and ?grep -F? respectively. And it is true that the
alternative names are finally being deprecated after all these years,
so it behooves you to learn to use the ?grep? command for all forms.
netstat vs ss -- yes, another case of the newer iproute2-based command
taking over from the older, traditional command, and offering more
features besides. Same remarks as above apply.
route vs ip route -- iproute2 again.
arp vs ip neighbour/neighbor -- more iproute2.
On Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:54:43 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Jack Wallen?s list
<https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-commands-deprecated-why-do-not-use/
of commands you shouldn?t be using any more, and what to use instead, is
a mixed bag.
I'm getting ready to nominate Wallen for asshole of the year award.
ifconfig works fine for me and I don't have to read the whole damn ip man page to coax the info out of it.
He asked if
there was something like 'ipconfig'. I'm glad he didn't ask why it's 'ifconfig'. That's been screwing me up for years.
On Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:54:43 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Jack Wallen?s list
<https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-commands-deprecated-why-do-not-use/
of commands you shouldn?t be using any more, and what to use instead, is
a mixed bag.
I'm getting ready to nominate Wallen for asshole of the year award.
ifconfig works fine for me and I don't have to read the whole damn ip man page to coax the info out of it.
It is present in Linux Mint 22.3 :) I was talking to the guy who is
running the library's Linux project. He himself has only been using Linux for a few months and isn't comfortable on the command line. He asked if there was something like 'ipconfig'. I'm glad he didn't ask why it's 'ifconfig'. That's been screwing me up for years.
He was also happy to find Linux has a 'hosts' file just like Windows.
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> writes:
<snip>
ifconfig omits quite basic information. For example it misses out most
of the IPv4 addresses.
$ ifconfig br0
<snip>
$ ip addr show br0
<snip>
It also doesn?t seem to know about bridge membership:
$ ip addr show eno1.1
<snip>
On 15.01.2026 12:09 The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 15/01/2026 03:14, rbowman wrote:
He asked if
there was something like 'ipconfig'. I'm glad he didn't ask why
it's 'ifconfig'. That's been screwing me up for years.
Because interfaces can be used by other protocols than IP?
ifconfig supports setting other settings like irq, mtu, promiscuous
mode, media type. Although, I have not seen other settings for other
ethernet (or other media) protocols there.
I've not seen other address families in ifconfig, but iproute2 used toHe asked if
there was something like 'ipconfig'. I'm glad he didn't ask why it's
'ifconfig'. That's been screwing me up for years.
Because interfaces can be used by other protocols than IP?
On 1/14/26 22:14, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:54:43 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Jack Wallen?s list
<https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-commands-deprecated-why-do-not-use/ >>>
of commands you shouldn?t be using any more, and what to use instead, is >>> a mixed bag.
I'm getting ready to nominate Wallen for asshole of the year award.
ifconfig works fine for me and I don't have to read the whole damn ip man
page to coax the info out of it.
FULLY agreed ! 'ip' delivers WAY too much info in
crappy format or with lots or really weird CL params.
'ifconfig' tells you what you usually need to know
and can set important options easily.
"New And Improved" often ISN'T. Too many developers
with CompSci backgrounds now ???
It is present in Linux Mint 22.3 :) I was talking to the guy who is
running the library's Linux project. He himself has only been using Linux
for a few months and isn't comfortable on the command line. He asked if
there was something like 'ipconfig'. I'm glad he didn't ask why it's
'ifconfig'. That's been screwing me up for years.
Well, Win loathes to be like Lin and vice-versa :-)
He was also happy to find Linux has a 'hosts' file just like Windows.
Yep. A bit different though.
Me, gave up Win after XP. It just got worse and
worse and worse. HAD to do some office stuff with
Win workstations - but HATED it. No, they were
NOT gonna switch to Linux, could BARELY cope with
Winders. Only ONE other guy there understood/liked
Linux ... a Mint-o-Phile. All good. We got along well.
I eventually moved to MX for everything - a happy
medium with perks.
IMHO Windows' usability peaked somewhere between 2000 and XP ...
egrep and fgrep used to be separate tools.
Bridge Membership, VLANs and Bonding is something that ip has at
least backwards. I find that information incredibly hard to find.
On a foundation of sand.
rysnc has a terrible command line
On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:22:41 -0500, jayjwa wrote:
egrep and fgrep used to be separate tools.
I think even in AT&T Unix days, they were just alternative links to
the same ?grep? executable.
On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 06:19:42 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:
On a foundation of sand.
I go by the docs. The docs show that scp has been fixed to stop using
the old, deprecated protocol (at least by default). There is no
mention that the command itself is going to be deprecated any time
soon. Therefore, it must be safe to continue using. QED.
On 2026-01-15, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Eli the Bearded wrote:
On a foundation of sand.
I go by the docs. The docs show that scp has been fixed to stop using
the old, deprecated protocol (at least by default). There is no
mention that the command itself is going to be deprecated any time
soon. Therefore, it must be safe to continue using. QED.
No, that is not a logical conclusion.
It does invalidate what the article claims, but you cannot conclude that
it "must be safe". No offense meant to the programmers involved, I
merely mean that you cannot prove the absence of vulnerabilities.
On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:09:32 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 15/01/2026 03:14, rbowman wrote:
He asked if there was something like 'ipconfig'. I'm glad he didn't
ask why it's 'ifconfig'. That's been screwing me up for years.
Because interfaces can be used by other protocols than IP?
I'm going to assume Microsoft stole it so why change a letter? It's like \ versus /. At least 'we're using / for command parameters because...' is a reason.
On 2026-01-15, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
On 1/14/26 22:14, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:54:43 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Jack Wallen?s list
<https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-commands-deprecated-why-do-not-use/ >>>>
of commands you shouldn?t be using any more, and what to use instead, is >>>> a mixed bag.
I'm getting ready to nominate Wallen for asshole of the year award.
ifconfig works fine for me and I don't have to read the whole damn ip man >>> page to coax the info out of it.
FULLY agreed ! 'ip' delivers WAY too much info in
crappy format or with lots or really weird CL params.
'ifconfig' tells you what you usually need to know
and can set important options easily.
"New And Improved" often ISN'T. Too many developers
with CompSci backgrounds now ???
I generally agree, although "ip -brief addr" usually
gives me what I need in a concise form.
On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 07:15:04 -0500, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
Richard Kettlewell wrote this post by blinking in Morse code:
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> writes:
<snip>
ifconfig omits quite basic information. For example it misses out most
of the IPv4 addresses.
$ ifconfig br0
<snip>
$ ip addr show br0
<snip>
It also doesn?t seem to know about bridge membership:
$ ip addr show eno1.1
<snip>
Don't forget to mention that ip addr has nice color coding :-)
I suppose it would help if I knew what 'inet6 2600:100e:b036:72f8:38ba:e736:ff86:ba23/64 scope global deprecated dynamic mngtmpaddr noprefixroute'
is telling me or, for that matter what ifconfig's entry means.
inet6 2600:100e:b036:72f8:38ba:e736:ff86:ba23 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x0<global>
I'm not a network admin and it's all noise to me. '-h' and '-p' are the
same although 'j' does emit json.
On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:25:37 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
Bridge Membership, VLANs and Bonding is something that ip has at
least backwards. I find that information incredibly hard to find.
Here?s something else that still seems to be hard to find: given one
end of a ?veth? (virtual Ethernet connection) device pair, how do you
find the other end? Bearing in mind these are commonly used for
connecting between containers/VMs, so the two ends might not even be
in the same network namespace.
ÿ If you want a REALLY terrible command line, try ffmpeg ?
Please let us know what you want to know and what you want to do.
Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> writes:
On 2026-01-15, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Eli the Bearded wrote:
On a foundation of sand.
I go by the docs. The docs show that scp has been fixed to stop using
the old, deprecated protocol (at least by default). There is no
mention that the command itself is going to be deprecated any time
soon. Therefore, it must be safe to continue using. QED.
No, that is not a logical conclusion.
It does invalidate what the article claims, but you cannot conclude that
it "must be safe". No offense meant to the programmers involved, I
merely mean that you cannot prove the absence of vulnerabilities.
I?m not sure what the argument against scp is here or what the supposed foundation of sand is.
* scp is better suited to scripting and ad-hoc single-file transfers
than the interactive sftp command is; the two commands are optimized
for slightly different sets of use cases.
* Historically scp?s bizarre transfer protocol meant it had trouble with
spaces in filenames. Today its use of the SFTP protocol resolves that,
so there is no relevant difference from the sftp command there. (You
can tell it to revert to the old way if you want to see the
difference.)
* You can?t prove the sftp command, sftp server or rsync free of
vulnerabilities either, so there is no relevant difference there
either.
So what is the argument against scp? Or is this all just a bit of
pointless nit-picking?
rbowman wrote this post by blinking in Morse code:
On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 07:15:04 -0500, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
Richard Kettlewell wrote this post by blinking in Morse code:
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> writes:
<snip>
ifconfig omits quite basic information. For example it misses out most >>>> of the IPv4 addresses.
$ ifconfig br0
<snip>
$ ip addr show br0
<snip>
It also doesn?t seem to know about bridge membership:
$ ip addr show eno1.1
<snip>
Don't forget to mention that ip addr has nice color coding :-)
I suppose it would help if I knew what 'inet6
2600:100e:b036:72f8:38ba:e736:ff86:ba23/64 scope global deprecated dynamic >> mngtmpaddr noprefixroute'
is telling me or, for that matter what ifconfig's entry means.
That's on you, bro. Educate yourself. :-)
inet6 2600:100e:b036:72f8:38ba:e736:ff86:ba23 prefixlen 64 scopeid
0x0<global>
I'm not a network admin and it's all noise to me. '-h' and '-p' are the
same although 'j' does emit json.
I used to know a lot of this stuff (training and all), but haven't
used it in years.
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways of
transferring files securely over SSH.
Richard Kettlewell wrote:
Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> writes:
On 2026-01-15, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Eli the Bearded wrote:
On a foundation of sand.
I go by the docs. The docs show that scp has been fixed to stop using
the old, deprecated protocol (at least by default). There is no
mention that the command itself is going to be deprecated any time
soon. Therefore, it must be safe to continue using. QED.
No, that is not a logical conclusion.
It does invalidate what the article claims, but you cannot conclude that >>> it "must be safe". No offense meant to the programmers involved, I
merely mean that you cannot prove the absence of vulnerabilities.
I?m not sure what the argument against scp is here or what the
supposed foundation of sand is.
The article says it clearly:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways of
transferring files securely over SSH. scp did use to use its own
protocol at one point, but it has been upgraded to use the same
underlying protocol as sftp, so it?s perfectly fine to continue using
the same command, if that?s what you?re used to. There is no sign that
the scp command itself is going to be deprecated at any point, though
no doubt the option to fall back to the old protocol for
compatibility?s sake is likely to be removed eventually.
On 16.01.2026 07:53 Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
It looks like there's still no ip command in the BSDs, for example.
Indeed. they use ifconfig, netstat, arp/ndp and ss (replacement for
netstat).
On 2026-01-15 19:58, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
... "ip -brief addr" usually gives me what I need in a concise
form.
Ok, but more difficult to remember.
On Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:39:08 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-01-15 19:58, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
... "ip -brief addr" usually gives me what I need in a concise
form.
Ok, but more difficult to remember.
ip addr help
or, for those who aren?t squeamish about man pages:
man ip-address
(just remember you can?t abbreviate it to ?ip-addr?).
All that slower than simply calling again ifconfig.
On 16/01/2026 12:48, Carlos E.R. wrote:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways of
transferring files securely over SSH.
Are they? even if you runÿ rsyncd?
On Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:48:39 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
Please let us know what you want to know and what you want to do.
He is very obviously looking for reasons to dislike IPv6 and to stick to
IPv4.
Greetings Marc
Not in the least. I was only pointing out that ip presents information
I've never need up to this point in my life.
I will admit I like 192.168.1.102 better than fe80::e8fa:7f5c:da23:aa05.
I suppose with enough fucking around I could get sftp to work with IPv6 on
my LAN but I see absolutely no reason to.
I am using the rsync:// syntax, and I don't remember opening another
port than 22. :-?
I would have to check
On Sat, 17 Jan 2026 03:49:37 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I am using the rsync:// syntax, and I don't remember opening another
port than 22. :-?
I would have to check
I?ve never found a use for the rsyncd protocol, and I don?t think
anyone would recommend its use for anything serious any more. Just
look at the description <https://manpages.debian.org/rsyncd.conf(5)>:
it uses a laughably weak authentication handshake, and the data
transfer isn?t even encrypted.
SSH is the way to go.
I will admit I like 192.168.1.102 better than fe80::e8fa:7f5c:da23:aa05.
I suppose with enough fucking around I could get sftp to work with IPv6 on >my LAN but I see absolutely no reason to.
You will never be forced to use IPv6 in your LAN. I have IPv6 in my LAN,
but I don't have to use it.
On 2026-01-16 22:07, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
(just remember you can?t abbreviate it to ?ip-addr?).
All that slower than simply calling again ifconfig.
rsync can run without SSH. scp and sftp are still there. 'slogin'
disappeared for reasons I've since forgotten. scp is more for one file
while rsync is for many.
On 2026-01-16 15:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/01/2026 12:48, Carlos E.R. wrote:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways ofAre they? even if you runÿ rsyncd?
transferring files securely over SSH.
AFAIK yes, the transfer happens of the ssh port with ssh type of
encryption. That is what the article says, so take it with a pinch of
salt. Variances per distributions. It is true in openSUSE.
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
You will never be forced to use IPv6 in your LAN. I have IPv6 in my LAN,
but I don't have to use it.
I bet you're already using it more than you think.
I am forced to still use IPv4. That's bad.
My ISP started a Beta test, but I had to stop it. The router did not
have a firewall for IPv6 or was disabled.
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:
On 2026-01-16 15:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/01/2026 12:48, Carlos E.R. wrote:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways ofAre they? even if you runÿ rsyncd?
transferring files securely over SSH.
If you tell it to connect to an rsyncd then indeed it does not use SSH.
Personally I have never bothered with rsyncd...
AFAIK yes, the transfer happens of the ssh port with ssh type of
encryption. That is what the article says, so take it with a pinch of
salt. Variances per distributions. It is true in openSUSE.
The zdnet article says nothing about what protocol rsync uses.
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
My ISP started a Beta test, but I had to stop it. The router did not
have a firewall for IPv6 or was disabled.
That's the fault of your Router. Get gear that is worth its money.
On 2026-01-17 15:06, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
My ISP started a Beta test, but I had to stop it. The router did not
have a firewall for IPv6 or was disabled.
That's the fault of your Router. Get gear that is worth its money.
You forget that it is THEIR router, not mine. I can not just get a router.
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-01-17 15:06, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
My ISP started a Beta test, but I had to stop it. The router did not
have a firewall for IPv6 or was disabled.
That's the fault of your Router. Get gear that is worth its money.
You forget that it is THEIR router, not mine. I can not just get a router.
Ouch. Please forgive my European-Centric View, where residential
customers HAVE to get the option to choose their own router.
In your case, you'd need your own ethernet-ethernet router with an
IPv6 firewall. It also needs to support IPv6 DHCP PD (and your ISP
needs to do that as well, which requires them to have a basic clue
about IPv6).
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
You forget that it is THEIR router, not mine. I can not just get a
router.
Ouch. Please forgive my European-Centric View, where residential
customers HAVE to get the option to choose their own router.
On Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:13:44 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
You forget that it is THEIR router, not mine. I can not just get a
router.
Ouch. Please forgive my European-Centric View, where residential
customers HAVE to get the option to choose their own router.
Carlos is in Spain. ?
Here in NZ, we have a decently competitive Internet provider market,
too, like you have in Germany.
Jack Wallen?s list ><https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-commands-deprecated-why-do-not-use/>
of commands you shouldn?t be using any more, and what to use instead,
is a mixed bag.
ifconfig/iwconfig vs ip/iw -- the latter newer ones (part of the Linux >?iproute2? suite) offer greater access to all the features of the
Linux network stack than the former, older ones, and so are preferable
in lots of ways. It is already possible to find setups which don?t
have the old commands installed by default; I?m not sure if any
distros have actually dropped the option for installing them
altogether, but no doubt that will happen at some point.
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways of
transferring files securely over SSH. scp did use to use its own
protocol at one point, but it has been upgraded to use the same
underlying protocol as sftp, so it?s perfectly fine to continue using
the same command, if that?s what you?re used to. There is no sign that
the scp command itself is going to be deprecated at any point, though
no doubt the option to fall back to the old protocol for
compatibility?s sake is likely to be removed eventually.
egrep/fgrep -- it has been true for decades (possibly has always been
true for the GNU utilities?) that egrep and fgrep are just synonyms
for ?grep -E? and ?grep -F? respectively. And it is true that the
alternative names are finally being deprecated after all these years,
so it behooves you to learn to use the ?grep? command for all forms.
netstat vs ss -- yes, another case of the newer iproute2-based command
taking over from the older, traditional command, and offering more
features besides. Same remarks as above apply.
route vs ip route -- iproute2 again.
arp vs ip neighbour/neighbor -- more iproute2.
Le 18-01-2026, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> a ‚critÿ:
On Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:13:44 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
You forget that it is THEIR router, not mine. I can not just get a
router.
Ouch. Please forgive my European-Centric View, where residential
customers HAVE to get the option to choose their own router.
Carlos is in Spain. ?
Here in NZ, we have a decently competitive Internet provider market,
too, like you have in Germany.
In France we have a decently correct ISP market too. But it means we can chose our ISP. Mostly the biggest ISP come with their router and we have
to use it. The possibility to choose one's ISP doesn't imply we can
choose our router.
Le 18-01-2026, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> a ‚critÿ:
On Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:13:44 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
You forget that it is THEIR router, not mine. I can not just get
a router.
Ouch. Please forgive my European-Centric View, where residential
customers HAVE to get the option to choose their own router.
Carlos is in Spain. ?
Here in NZ, we have a decently competitive Internet provider
market, too, like you have in Germany.
In France we have a decently correct ISP market too. But it means we
can chose our ISP. Mostly the biggest ISP come with their router and
we have to use it. The possibility to choose one's ISP doesn't imply
we can choose our router.
On 2026-01-18 22:15, St‚phane CARPENTIER wrote:
Le 18-01-2026, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> a ‚critÿ:
On Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:13:44 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
You forget that it is THEIR router, not mine. I can not just get a
router.
Ouch. Please forgive my European-Centric View, where residential
customers HAVE to get the option to choose their own router.
Carlos is in Spain. ?
Here in NZ, we have a decently competitive Internet provider market,
too, like you have in Germany.
In France we have a decently correct ISP market too. But it means we can
chose our ISP. Mostly the biggest ISP come with their router and we have
to use it. The possibility to choose one's ISP doesn't imply we can
choose our router.
Absolutely, same situation in Spain.
Anyway, the context was a beta testing of IPv6, and I proved that at
lest one of the provided routers was not IPv6 ready. It did not activate
a firewall for IPv6.
I reported this, and they did some thing that closed all incoming IPv6 connections to my machines. Input ssh directly to a machine in my LAN
from outside became impossible in IPv6, and no means to open it up. And
that is a crucial feature of IPv6: no needing to use NAT and tricks in
the router to connect from outside to a machine inside.
In NZ, and I presume in Germany, too, the company that manages the
physical fibre connection is not an ISP, and is not allowed to become
an ISP.
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
In NZ, and I presume in Germany, too, the company that manages the
physical fibre connection is not an ISP, and is not allowed to become
an ISP.
No, in Gemany the fiber optic company can be the ISP as well, and in
some situations they are not even required to allow competitors on
their network. That requirement only appears if the line owner's
market share is so high that it is considered dominant.
That's really bad, since especially the smaller fiber companies don't
have much clue about to run a network, to install connections at scale
and to keep a decent service both regarding moving packets and fixing problems. The one thing that the fiber companies can to well is lying
at the customer, for example sending sales people from door to door
with the news that the residents MUST buy fiber because their DSL will
be turned off and decommissioned "later this year" and that they will
be without Internet if they don't sign up with the fiber company.
We already had that issue with DSL 20 years ago and didn't learn
anything from that. The DSL companies have learned their ropes, so
there is hope that the fiber companies will, eventually.
Greetings
Marc
On 17/01/2026 13:11, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:Ah. I do. None of my data is private that is being stored remotely
On 2026-01-16 15:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/01/2026 12:48, Carlos E.R. wrote:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways ofAre they? even if you runÿ rsyncd?
transferring files securely over SSH.
If you tell it to connect to an rsyncd then indeed it does not use SSH.
Personally I have never bothered with rsyncd...
I think it is straight streaming of bytes and that is it.AFAIK yes, the transfer happens of the ssh port with ssh type of
encryption. That is what the article says, so take it with a pinch of
salt. Variances per distributions. It is true in openSUSE.
The zdnet article says nothing about what protocol rsync uses.
Locally i have nfs mounts to move data around.
So I don't really use ssh protocols to copy data at all.
Jack Wallen?s list <https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-commands-deprecated-why-do-not-use/>
of commands you shouldn?t be using any more, and what to use instead,
is a mixed bag.
ifconfig/iwconfig vs ip/iw -- the latter newer ones (part of the Linux
....
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways of
...
egrep/fgrep -- it has been true for decades (possibly has always been
....
netstat vs ss -- yes, another case of the newer iproute2-based command
....
route vs ip route -- iproute2 again.
arp vs ip neighbour/neighbor -- more iproute2.
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
In NZ, and I presume in Germany, too, the company that manages the
physical fibre connection is not an ISP, and is not allowed to become
an ISP.
No, in Gemany the fiber optic company can be the ISP as well, and in
some situations they are not even required to allow competitors on
their network. That requirement only appears if the line owner's
market share is so high that it is considered dominant.
That's really bad, since especially the smaller fiber companies don't
have much clue about to run a network, to install connections at scale
and to keep a decent service both regarding moving packets and fixing problems. The one thing that the fiber companies can to well is lying
at the customer, for example sending sales people from door to door
with the news that the residents MUST buy fiber because their DSL will
be turned off and decommissioned "later this year" and that they will
be without Internet if they don't sign up with the fiber company.
We already had that issue with DSL 20 years ago and didn't learn
anything from that. The DSL companies have learned their ropes, so
there is hope that the fiber companies will, eventually.
On 17.01.2026 10:53 The Natural Philosopher wrote:
A general rule of conservative programming is 'don't learn anything
new until the old way simply does not work'
This is already the case. E.g. SUSE doesn't come with ifconfig, arp,
route etc. preinstalled. And in case network is not set up, you cannot install them.
On 1/17/26 18:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/01/2026 13:11, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:Ah. I do. None of my data is private that is being stored remotely
On 2026-01-16 15:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/01/2026 12:48, Carlos E.R. wrote:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways ofAre they? even if you runÿ rsyncd?
transferring files securely over SSH.
If you tell it to connect to an rsyncd then indeed it does not use SSH.
Personally I have never bothered with rsyncd...
I think it is straight streaming of bytes and that is it.AFAIK yes, the transfer happens of the ssh port with ssh type of
encryption. That is what the article says, so take it with a pinch of
salt. Variances per distributions. It is true in openSUSE.
The zdnet article says nothing about what protocol rsync uses.
Locally i have nfs mounts to move data around.
So I don't really use ssh protocols to copy data at all.
I'm currently looking at moving from backing up data on Samba shares, to ssh/rsync (due to symlink issues). I fell at the first hurdle of how to
have root access on both local and remote host. Eventually I created a
new remote user account with passwordless sudo, specifically for rsync.
The solution seemed a bit crap. It seemed that such a common usecase
should be better documented, like I was missing something.
Does rsyncd solve this root access problem? Is it a better/more orthodox solution.
I could potentially use nfs, but I do still use Windows occasionally, so would like access from Windows, I did briefly consider dual shares using both Samba and nfs.
On 1/17/26 18:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/01/2026 13:11, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:Ah. I do. None of my data is private that is being stored remotely
On 2026-01-16 15:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/01/2026 12:48, Carlos E.R. wrote:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways ofAre they? even if you runÿ rsyncd?
transferring files securely over SSH.
If you tell it to connect to an rsyncd then indeed it does not use SSH.
Personally I have never bothered with rsyncd...
I think it is straight streaming of bytes and that is it.AFAIK yes, the transfer happens of the ssh port with ssh type of
encryption. That is what the article says, so take it with a pinch of
salt. Variances per distributions. It is true in openSUSE.
The zdnet article says nothing about what protocol rsync uses.
Locally i have nfs mounts to move data around.
So I don't really use ssh protocols to copy data at all.
I'm currently looking at moving from backing up data on Samba shares, to ssh/rsync (due to symlink issues). I fell at the first hurdle of how to
have root access on both local and remote host. Eventually I created a
new remote user account with passwordless sudo, specifically for rsync.
The solution seemed a bit crap. It seemed that such a common usecase
should be better documented, like I was missing something.
Does rsyncd solve this root access problem? Is it a better/more orthodox solution.
I could potentially use nfs, but I do still use Windows occasionally, so would like access from Windows, I did briefly consider dual shares using both Samba and nfs.
On 2026-01-19 12:15, Marco Moock wrote:
On 17.01.2026 10:53 The Natural Philosopher wrote:
A general rule of conservative programming is 'don't learn anything
new until the old way simply does not work'
This is already the case. E.g. SUSE doesn't come with ifconfig, arp,
route etc. preinstalled. And in case network is not set up, you cannot
install them.
You can have your little cheat sheet, and during installation install
the list of add on packages that you want to have from the first minute
that are not installed by default. Say, I like midnight commander.
The one thing that the fiber companies can to well is lying at the
customer, for example sending sales people from door to door with the
news that the residents MUST buy fiber because their DSL will be
turned off and decommissioned "later this year" and that they will be
without Internet if they don't sign up with the fiber company.
I always find it interesting how much people are willing to learn and
work for not having to adapt to the important things they SHOULD
learn.
In France we have a decently correct ISP market too. But it means we can chose our ISP. Mostly the biggest ISP come with their router and we haveWhy do you have to use it? Here in NY, we have cable and fiber and maybe
to use it. The possibility to choose one's ISP doesn't imply we can
choose our router.
I'm currently looking at moving from backing up data on Samba
shares, to ssh/rsync (due to symlink issues). I fell at the first
hurdle of how to have root access on both local and remote host.
I always find it interesting how much people are willing to learn
and work for not having to adapt to the important things they SHOULD
learn.
The one thing that the fiber companies can to well is lying at the
customer, for example sending sales people from door to door with
the news that the residents MUST buy fiber because their DSL will be
turned off and decommissioned "later this year" and that they will
be without Internet if they don't sign up with the fiber company.
The router is not only an internet router: it also converts VoIP to
a standard copper pair connection where I connect my house landline.
It's astonishing how blatant salesgoons are about this kind of
thing. When $EMPLOYER got acquired by another company a few years
back, we had a competitor running around telling customers our
product was "going away" and even pretending to be the official
replacement. Naturally, they said this over the phone rather than in
an e-mail, so we never got anything legally actionable on them...
It's just a change of syntax.
It's astonishing how blatant salesgoons are about this kind of
thing. When $EMPLOYER got acquired by another company a few years
back, we had a competitor running around telling customers our
product was "going away" and even pretending to be the official replacement. Naturally, they said this over the phone rather than in
an e-mail, so we never got anything legally actionable on them...
How soon after that *did* the product go away ... ?
You really think "buy out and shut down competitor" is not a common
business tactic?
On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:21:39 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
The router is not only an internet router: it also converts VoIP to
a standard copper pair connection where I connect my house landline.
In our case, the ?ONT? box that terminates the fibre has separate
connections for phone landline versus Internet. The former goes
straight into a handset or handsets, while the latter is a standard
Ethernet connector that goes straight into my store-bought router.
The router says the Internet connection type is ?Dynamic IP?, which I
gather just means regular DHCP. So I could set up a Linux box, with a suitable accoutrement of Ethernet interfaces, in its stead, to operate
my own homebrew Internet router.
On 2026-01-19 12:45, Pancho wrote:
On 1/17/26 18:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/01/2026 13:11, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:Ah. I do. None of my data is private that is being stored remotely
On 2026-01-16 15:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/01/2026 12:48, Carlos E.R. wrote:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways ofAre they? even if you runÿ rsyncd?
transferring files securely over SSH.
If you tell it to connect to an rsyncd then indeed it does not
use SSH.
Personally I have never bothered with rsyncd...
I think it is straight streaming of bytes and that is it.AFAIK yes, the transfer happens of the ssh port with ssh type of
encryption. That is what the article says, so take it with a
pinch of salt. Variances per distributions. It is true in
openSUSE.
The zdnet article says nothing about what protocol rsync uses.
Locally i have nfs mounts to move data around.
So I don't really use ssh protocols to copy data at all.
I'm currently looking at moving from backing up data on Samba
shares, to ssh/rsync (due to symlink issues). I fell at the first
hurdle of how to have root access on both local and remote host.
Eventually I created a new remote user account with passwordless
sudo, specifically for rsync. The solution seemed a bit crap. It
seemed that such a common usecase should be better documented, like
I was missing something.
You can configure to access ssh as root without typing a password.
With key pairs, and have an agent remember the phrase for you, or
have none.
Does rsyncd solve this root access problem? Is it a better/more
orthodox solution.
Yes, rsyncd does this.
On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:54:15 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
The one thing that the fiber companies can to well is lying at the
customer, for example sending sales people from door to door with
the news that the residents MUST buy fiber because their DSL will be
turned off and decommissioned "later this year" and that they will
be without Internet if they don't sign up with the fiber company.
In our case that?s no lie. The copper network is being decommissioned,
region by region, and DSL along with it.
There is this stereotype of the Germans being well-organized; I can?t
help feeling that NZ has outdone them in this one instance, of
managing the transition to fibre. ?
On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:50:56 +0100
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
I always find it interesting how much people are willing to learn and
work for not having to adapt to the important things they SHOULD
learn.
Not everyone agrees that they *should* have to learn it.
On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:50:56 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
I always find it interesting how much people are willing to learn
and work for not having to adapt to the important things they SHOULD
learn.
The incremental cost of continual workarounds to avoid having to do
things the new way inevitably adds up to more than the up-front cost
of starting out doing things the new way in the first place.
On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 11:45:07 +0000, Pancho wrote:
I'm currently looking at moving from backing up data on Samba
shares, to ssh/rsync (due to symlink issues). I fell at the first
hurdle of how to have root access on both local and remote host.
With SSH, you can set up trust keys, using the authorized_keys file,
so a given account on one machine can accept access from one or more
accounts on other machines without needing a password.
I'm currently looking at moving from backing up data on Samba shares,
to ssh/rsync (due to symlink issues).
I could potentially use nfs, but I do still use Windows occasionally,
so would like access from Windows, I did briefly consider dual shares
using both Samba and nfs.
but theThe asymmetry results from traffic analysis done in the early days of 'consumer Internet'.
fiber operators artificially emulate the absurdly asymmetric plans
from the legacy technologies,
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:54:15 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
The one thing that the fiber companies can to well is lying at the
customer, for example sending sales people from door to door with
the news that the residents MUST buy fiber because their DSL will be
turned off and decommissioned "later this year" and that they will
be without Internet if they don't sign up with the fiber company.
In our case that?s no lie. The copper network is being decommissioned,
region by region, and DSL along with it.
Over here it's still a few years until then. I had TWO of those sales
people stopping by my place in the last six weeks, all claiming that I
need to sign up with their fiber RIGHT NOW to avoid my Internet from
being canceled under my feet.
My street doesn't even have the fiber-to-the-home laid yet (we have
the multicore conduit, but neither the building branch lines nor the
actual fiber in there yet), what they claim to be fiber is exactly the
same service they're selling right now,
fiber-to-the-curb-with-last-mile-DSL fr one of them, and fiber-to-the-neighborhood-with-last-mile-coax for the other.
The fiber-to-the-neighborhood-with-last-mile-coax company is even
unlikely to get access to the fiber-to-the-home infrastructure once
it's been built.
There is this stereotype of the Germans being well-organized; I can?t
help feeling that NZ has outdone them in this one instance, of
managing the transition to fibre. ?
I have to admit that we used to be well-organized, but especially
regarding public matters we lost it in the last decade. In the early
1980es, political corruption made us settle to running coax-based
copper cable TV to the buildings instead of doing fiber, and we're
still suffering from that mistake. The majority of residential
Internet here is DSL, with VDSL vectoring having re-monopolized the
market ten years ago, with some neighborhoods having copper coax cable providing an alternative for broadband.
We're building fiber like crazy and spending insane amounts of money,
but it'll be a couple of years until we'll have parity between the
copper technologies and fiber.
And, frankly speaking, I don't see the necessity of replacing existing
copper broadband with fiber. For example, I work online, I would be
lost without Internet at home, but I don't even have the maximum
bandwith plan that my technology (VDSL vectoring) offers. I would
change to another plan if it offered more upstream bandwidth, but the
fiber operators artificially emulate the absurdly asymmetric plans
from the legacy technologies, so fiber doesn't really have an
advantage for me (aside from less power demand and a few milliseconds
of less latency).
That being said, I'm going to have the fiber laid in the very second I
can have it laid, but that's mainly to keep the value of the real
estate (and I plan to use the digging activities to put a fat power
cable out there since the next car I buy will surely be electric).
On 20/01/2026 09:46, Marc Haber wrote:
but theThe asymmetry results from traffic analysis done in the early days of >'consumer Internet'.
fiber operators artificially emulate the absurdly asymmetric plans
from the legacy technologies,
On 2026-01-20 10:46, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:54:15 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
The one thing that the fiber companies can to well is lying at the
customer, for example sending sales people from door to door with
the news that the residents MUST buy fiber because their DSL will be
turned off and decommissioned "later this year" and that they will
be without Internet if they don't sign up with the fiber company.
In our case that?s no lie. The copper network is being decommissioned,
region by region, and DSL along with it.
Over here it's still a few years until then. I had TWO of those sales
people stopping by my place in the last six weeks, all claiming that I
need to sign up with their fiber RIGHT NOW to avoid my Internet from
being canceled under my feet.
Are they from your ISP?
It doesn't matter if there is no advantage, copper exchanges were
disabled and then removed, and the premises sold or rented.
That being said, I'm going to have the fiber laid in the very second I
can have it laid, but that's mainly to keep the value of the real
estate (and I plan to use the digging activities to put a fat power
cable out there since the next car I buy will surely be electric).
:-)
In my case, the fibre and the power are on the walls.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 20/01/2026 09:46, Marc Haber wrote:
but theThe asymmetry results from traffic analysis done in the early days of
fiber operators artificially emulate the absurdly asymmetric plans
from the legacy technologies,
'consumer Internet'.
Both DOCSIS and VDSL vectoring can't do symmetric. They rely on the
high data rate going from the central point to the branches.
Greetings
Marc
On 20/01/2026 13:34, Marc Haber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:It's not a question of 'cant': They were *deliberately designed not to*.
On 20/01/2026 09:46, Marc Haber wrote:
but theThe asymmetry results from traffic analysis done in the early days of
fiber operators artificially emulate the absurdly asymmetric plans
from the legacy technologies,
'consumer Internet'.
Both DOCSIS and VDSL vectoring can't do symmetric. They rely on the
high data rate going from the central point to the branches.
And they don't 'rely' on anything other than a piece of [coaxial?] wire.
The issue is that the total bandwidth (up + down) is limited. So you
select a protocol that fits most customers usage the best.
ADSL, VDSL and DOCSIS reflect that *choice*.
Back in the day we used other serial protocols that were symmetric. Like >ISDN
On 2026-01-20 10:46, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:54:15 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
The one thing that the fiber companies can to well is lying at the
customer, for example sending sales people from door to door with
the news that the residents MUST buy fiber because their DSL will be
turned off and decommissioned "later this year" and that they will
be without Internet if they don't sign up with the fiber company.
In our case that?s no lie. The copper network is being decommissioned,
region by region, and DSL along with it.
Over here it's still a few years until then. I had TWO of those sales
people stopping by my place in the last six weeks, all claiming that I
need to sign up with their fiber RIGHT NOW to avoid my Internet from
being canceled under my feet.
Are they from your ISP?
Here, they did not come. They phoned and simply offered an improvement.
I had TV via encoded pay satellite. They made an offer that was actually cheaper including TV, land line, internet, and mobile phone. Years
before my neighbours were forced to change.
I could see that the multiplexer box had only three clients in my block.
My street doesn't even have the fiber-to-the-home laid yet (we have
the multicore conduit, but neither the building branch lines nor the
actual fiber in there yet), what they claim to be fiber is exactly the
same service they're selling right now,
fiber-to-the-curb-with-last-mile-DSL fr one of them, and
fiber-to-the-neighborhood-with-last-mile-coax for the other.
The fiber-to-the-neighborhood-with-last-mile-coax company is even
unlikely to get access to the fiber-to-the-home infrastructure once
it's been built.
There is this stereotype of the Germans being well-organized; I can?t
help feeling that NZ has outdone them in this one instance, of
managing the transition to fibre. ?
I have to admit that we used to be well-organized, but especially
regarding public matters we lost it in the last decade. In the early
1980es, political corruption made us settle to running coax-based
copper cable TV to the buildings instead of doing fiber, and we're
still suffering from that mistake. The majority of residential
Internet here is DSL, with VDSL vectoring having re-monopolized the
market ten years ago, with some neighborhoods having copper coax cable
providing an alternative for broadband.
We're building fiber like crazy and spending insane amounts of money,
but it'll be a couple of years until we'll have parity between the
copper technologies and fiber.
And, frankly speaking, I don't see the necessity of replacing existing
copper broadband with fiber. For example, I work online, I would be
lost without Internet at home, but I don't even have the maximum
bandwith plan that my technology (VDSL vectoring) offers. I would
change to another plan if it offered more upstream bandwidth, but the
fiber operators artificially emulate the absurdly asymmetric plans
from the legacy technologies, so fiber doesn't really have an
advantage for me (aside from less power demand and a few milliseconds
of less latency).
Not here. I have 1G in both directions. Up to, that's the key word,
because GPON divides the total bandwidth between the clients.
It doesn't matter if there is no advantage, copper exchanges were
disabled and then removed, and the premises sold or rented.
That being said, I'm going to have the fiber laid in the very second I
can have it laid, but that's mainly to keep the value of the real
estate (and I plan to use the digging activities to put a fat power
cable out there since the next car I buy will surely be electric).
:-)
In my case, the fibre and the power are on the walls.
One reason to replace copper with fibre or fiber optical in
either case is that accessiblem lower voltage copper is being stolen
from public facilities.
It is resold to dealers in junk and recycling. It is a problem in
Bay Area Cities.
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-01-20 10:46, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:54:15 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
The one thing that the fiber companies can to well is lying at the
customer, for example sending sales people from door to door with
the news that the residents MUST buy fiber because their DSL will be >>>>> turned off and decommissioned "later this year" and that they will
be without Internet if they don't sign up with the fiber company.
In our case that?s no lie. The copper network is being decommissioned, >>>> region by region, and DSL along with it.
Over here it's still a few years until then. I had TWO of those sales
people stopping by my place in the last six weeks, all claiming that I
need to sign up with their fiber RIGHT NOW to avoid my Internet from
being canceled under my feet.
Are they from your ISP?
No. But of course they claim that I am already their customer. I'm
probably the only one in the street who does immediately spot that
lie.
It doesn't matter if there is no advantage, copper exchanges were
disabled and then removed, and the premises sold or rented.
That what used to be the copper exchange holding the telephony stuff
is gone already, we have MSANs (Multi Service Access Nodes) on the
curb where the fiber lines terminate and the VDSL vectoring lines
(usually just a couple of hundred meters long) branch out. VDSL
vectoring can do 250/40.
That being said, I'm going to have the fiber laid in the very second I
can have it laid, but that's mainly to keep the value of the real
estate (and I plan to use the digging activities to put a fat power
cable out there since the next car I buy will surely be electric).
:-)
In my case, the fibre and the power are on the walls.
Everyhing buried here.
On 2026-01-20, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
One reason to replace copper with fibre or fiber optical in
either case is that accessiblem lower voltage copper is being stolen
from public facilities.
It is resold to dealers in junk and recycling. It is a problem in
Bay Area Cities.
We've had a rash of thefts up here too. There's been a mention
of keeping a close eye on recycling depots to try to catch the
thieves.
The worst part is that some of the easiest copper to steal
is ground wire. We can only hope that the thieves get zapped
before some innocent victim does.
I rather enjoy symlinks in Windows these days, in msys2. Although
they're weirdly restricted, either need admin rights or need to turn
on "developer mode" to just create them.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 20/01/2026 13:34, Marc Haber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:It's not a question of 'cant': They were *deliberately designed not to*.
On 20/01/2026 09:46, Marc Haber wrote:
but theThe asymmetry results from traffic analysis done in the early days of
fiber operators artificially emulate the absurdly asymmetric plans
from the legacy technologies,
'consumer Internet'.
Both DOCSIS and VDSL vectoring can't do symmetric. They rely on the
high data rate going from the central point to the branches.
And they don't 'rely' on anything other than a piece of [coaxial?] wire.
The issue is that the total bandwidth (up + down) is limited. So you
select a protocol that fits most customers usage the best.
I am really impressed by your technical knowledge.
Can you explain how VDSL Vectoring with high bandwidth from the
branches to the central point would know about the traffic on the
other pairs to be able to appropriately distort the signal on the one
pair so that it arrives in a readable change?
ADSL, VDSL and DOCSIS reflect that *choice*.
Back in the day we used other serial protocols that were symmetric. Like
ISDN
When we still believed that a twisted pair of subscriber line would be limited to like 3,5 kHz of bandwidth.
Greetings
Marc
On 2026-01-20 20:01, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2026-01-20, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
ÿÿÿÿOne reason to replace copper with fibre or fiber optical in
either case is that accessiblem lower voltage copper is being stolen
from public facilities.
It is resold to dealers in junk and recycling.ÿ It is a problem in
Bay Area Cities.
Yes, here too, but phone copper wires are way too thin, or with lots of insulation, it is not profitable work.
Sometimes they steal the power wire of trains, leaving them stranded in
the middle of nowhere.
We've had a rash of thefts up here too.ÿ There's been a mention
of keeping a close eye on recycling depots to try to catch the
thieves.
The worst part is that some of the easiest copper to steal
is ground wire.ÿ We can only hope that the thieves get zapped
before some innocent victim does.
Some have. :-}
On 2026-01-19 12:45, Pancho wrote:
On 1/17/26 18:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/01/2026 13:11, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:Ah. I do. None of my data is private that is being stored remotely
On 2026-01-16 15:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/01/2026 12:48, Carlos E.R. wrote:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways ofAre they? even if you runÿ rsyncd?
transferring files securely over SSH.
If you tell it to connect to an rsyncd then indeed it does not use SSH. >>>>
Personally I have never bothered with rsyncd...
I think it is straight streaming of bytes and that is it.AFAIK yes, the transfer happens of the ssh port with ssh type of
encryption. That is what the article says, so take it with a pinch of >>>>> salt. Variances per distributions. It is true in openSUSE.
The zdnet article says nothing about what protocol rsync uses.
Locally i have nfs mounts to move data around.
So I don't really use ssh protocols to copy data at all.
I'm currently looking at moving from backing up data on Samba shares,
to ssh/rsync (due to symlink issues). I fell at the first hurdle of
how to have root access on both local and remote host. Eventually I
created a new remote user account with passwordless sudo, specifically
for rsync. The solution seemed a bit crap. It seemed that such a
common usecase should be better documented, like I was missing something.
You can configure to access ssh as root without typing a password. With
key pairs, and have an agent remember the phrase for you, or have none.
At Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:27:28 +0100, "Carlos E.R."
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-01-19 12:45, Pancho wrote:
On 1/17/26 18:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/01/2026 13:11, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:Ah. I do. None of my data is private that is being stored remotely
On 2026-01-16 15:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/01/2026 12:48, Carlos E.R. wrote:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways ofAre they? even if you runÿ rsyncd?
transferring files securely over SSH.
If you tell it to connect to an rsyncd then indeed it does not
use SSH.
Personally I have never bothered with rsyncd...
I think it is straight streaming of bytes and that is it.AFAIK yes, the transfer happens of the ssh port with ssh type of
encryption. That is what the article says, so take it with a
pinch of salt. Variances per distributions. It is true in
openSUSE.
The zdnet article says nothing about what protocol rsync uses.
Locally i have nfs mounts to move data around.
So I don't really use ssh protocols to copy data at all.
I'm currently looking at moving from backing up data on Samba
shares, to ssh/rsync (due to symlink issues). I fell at the first
hurdle of how to have root access on both local and remote host.
Eventually I created a new remote user account with passwordless
sudo, specifically for rsync. The solution seemed a bit crap. It
seemed that such a common usecase should be better documented, like
I was missing something.
You can configure to access ssh as root without typing a password.
With key pairs, and have an agent remember the phrase for you, or
have none.
I thought I'd jump in here, and point out that you can have
a passphraseless secret key on the client, and set the key
in authorized_keys to only be able to run a single command
(or a set of commands).
On 19/01/2026 11:45, Pancho wrote:
On 1/17/26 18:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:I had to look up what I in fact did..
On 17/01/2026 13:11, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:Ah. I do. None of my data is private that is being stored remotely
On 2026-01-16 15:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/01/2026 12:48, Carlos E.R. wrote:
scp -- wrong. rsync, scp and sftp are all different ways ofAre they? even if you runÿ rsyncd?
transferring files securely over SSH.
If you tell it to connect to an rsyncd then indeed it does not use SSH. >>>>
Personally I have never bothered with rsyncd...
I think it is straight streaming of bytes and that is it.AFAIK yes, the transfer happens of the ssh port with ssh type of
encryption. That is what the article says, so take it with a pinch of >>>>> salt. Variances per distributions. It is true in openSUSE.
The zdnet article says nothing about what protocol rsync uses.
Locally i have nfs mounts to move data around.
So I don't really use ssh protocols to copy data at all.
I'm currently looking at moving from backing up data on Samba shares,
to ssh/rsync (due to symlink issues). I fell at the first hurdle of
how to have root access on both local and remote host. Eventually I
created a new remote user account with passwordless sudo, specifically
for rsync. The solution seemed a bit crap. It seemed that such a
common usecase should be better documented, like I was missing something.
Does rsyncd solve this root access problem? Is it a better/more
orthodox solution.
I have a remote user rsync.ÿ With a password. This is place in an env variable in the backup script
e,g.
RSYNC_PASSWORD=mainly.crap
export RSYNC_PASSWORD
rsync -Cavxz --delete rsync@remote.host::vp1/etc /backup2/vp1
On the remote host is this
$ more /etc/rsyncd.conf
[vp1]
ÿÿÿÿpath=/
ÿÿÿÿComment = get server
ÿÿÿÿuid = root
ÿÿÿÿgid = root
ÿÿÿÿread only = true
ÿÿÿÿuse chroot = yes
ÿÿÿÿauth users = rsync
ÿÿÿÿsecrets file = /etc/rsyncd.secrets
and in the /etc/rsyncd.secrets file is
rsync:mainly.crap
rsync is invoked via inet
inetd.conf
rsyncÿÿÿÿÿÿ streamÿ tcpÿÿÿÿ nowaitÿ rootÿÿÿÿÿÿ /usr/bin/rsyncÿÿÿÿ rsyncd --daemon
and /etc/services...
rsyncÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 873/tcp
rsyncÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 873/udp
I could potentially use nfs, but I do still use Windows occasionally,
so would like access from Windows, I did briefly consider dual shares
using both Samba and nfs.
I am not sure there is an rsync client for windows.
Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> writes:
I'm currently looking at moving from backing up data on Samba shares,
to ssh/rsync (due to symlink issues).
So what's the status there, Samba and symlinks? I rather enjoy symlinks
in Windows these days, in msys2. Although they're weirdly restricted,
either need admin rights or need to turn on "developer mode" to just
create them.
I could potentially use nfs, but I do still use Windows occasionally,
so would like access from Windows, I did briefly consider dual shares
using both Samba and nfs.
I've tried the NFS client support in Windows but it didn't impress. It
has been a while though, I think it was in the Windows 7 and early
Windows 10 times.
sshfs has been enough for my needs for Linux fs access from Windows and
I do my Windows backups from Linux, mostly.
My concern was about having a root account.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root account, i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't. Whether this
strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to me.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password.
On 21/01/2026 00:32, Pancho wrote:
My concern was about having a root account.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't. Whether
this strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to me.
I always enable one.
Sometimes when there is an emergency you need not to have to type 'sudo'
to edit every file...
On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:32:29 +0000, Pancho wrote:
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password.
An interactive account doesn?t have to have a password.
Even if you configure a root password, you can configure SSH to
specifically disallow using it for remote access.
On 1/21/26 04:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/01/2026 00:32, Pancho wrote:
My concern was about having a root account.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't. Whether
this strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to me.
I always enable one.
Sometimes when there is an emergency you need not to have to type
'sudo' to edit every file...
sudo bash
On 20/01/2026 15:14, Marc Haber wrote:
Can you explain how VDSL Vectoring with high bandwidth from theLook it up. its not exactly rocket science.
branches to the central point would know about the traffic on the
other pairs to be able to appropriately distort the signal on the one
pair so that it arrives in a readable change?
When we still believed that a twisted pair of subscriber line would be
limited to like 3,5 kHz of bandwidth.
You really have got your knickers in a twist.
I only said ISDN because I suspected that uis all you would know about.
There was T1, or E1, for a start. And T2 and T3.
My concern was about having a root account.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root account, >>>> i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't. Whether this
strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to me.
I always enable one.
Sometimes when there is an emergency you need not to have to type 'sudo' >>> to edit every file...
sudo bash
I am not sure that duplicates roots environment exactly.
On 1/21/26 04:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/01/2026 00:32, Pancho wrote:
My concern was about having a root account.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't. Whether
this strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to me.
I always enable one.
Sometimes when there is an emergency you need not to have to type 'sudo'
to edit every file...
sudo bash
On 21/01/2026 08:58, Pancho wrote:
sudo bash
I am not sure that duplicates roots environment exactly.
On 1/21/26 04:17, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:32:29 +0000, Pancho wrote:
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password.
An interactive account doesn?t have to have a password.
Even if you configure a root password, you can configure SSH to
specifically disallow using it for remote access.
Yes, which I don't have, and was specifically trying to avoid having in
this instance for rsync. It is probably how most people do it in real life.
If you delay an emergency solution significantly by five keystrokes
per action that you're too slow a typist anyway.
On 1/21/26 04:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/01/2026 00:32, Pancho wrote:
My concern was about having a root account.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't. Whether
this strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to me.
I always enable one.
Sometimes when there is an emergency you need not to have to type
'sudo' to edit every file...
sudo bash
On 2026-01-21 09:58, Pancho wrote:
On 1/21/26 04:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/01/2026 00:32, Pancho wrote:
My concern was about having a root account.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't. Whether
this strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to me.
I always enable one.
Sometimes when there is an emergency you need not to have to type
'sudo' to edit every file...
sudo bash
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
On 1/21/26 13:04, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-01-21 09:58, Pancho wrote:ÿÿÿÿ Funny I have had situations where /home could not be mounted but
On 1/21/26 04:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/01/2026 00:32, Pancho wrote:
My concern was about having a root account.I always enable one.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't.
Whether this strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to me. >>>>
Sometimes when there is an emergency you need not to have to type
'sudo' to edit every file...
sudo bash
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
was able
to access my root account both via terminal and Desktop Environment.
ÿÿÿÿOn PCLOS we must set both root and user passwords on installation.
ÿÿÿÿIn the recent past we could use the same password for both but that
has been corrected. Probably a good thing...
We cannot start up in
the root account but access is available to most functions restricted to
root via terminal and GUI.ÿ From the Boot we can choose to enter
root terminal and I have not checked because I have enough to deal
with in RL but formerly we could login to root via terminal then
"startx"ÿ but that was not too useful.
bliss- Dell Precision 7730- PCLOS 2026.01- Linux 6.12.66 pclos1- KDE
Plasma 6.5.5
On 2026-01-21 09:58, Pancho wrote:
On 1/21/26 04:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/01/2026 00:32, Pancho wrote:
My concern was about having a root account.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't. Whether
this strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to me.
I always enable one.
Sometimes when there is an emergency you need not to have to type
'sudo' to edit every file...
sudo bash
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:04:58 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
Most Linux distros put the root home directory as /root, not in /home.
openSUSE used by default the same password for both, yes. We had a good
row about this (some argued that it was good enough for home users, and >easier on users coming from Windows), and finally the compromise was to >allow during installation to click somewhere and type a different
password for root.
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:04:58 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
Most Linux distros put the root home directory as /root, not in /home.
Yes and on occasion when /home hasn't been available, I've just been
logged in as ordinary user with a note saying something like home
directory not available, using / as home. Of course, can't do much when >system is in such a state but can login as user or root.
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:04:58 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
Most Linux distros put the root home directory as /root, not in /home.
Yes and on occasion when /home hasn't been available, I've just been
logged in as ordinary user with a note saying something like home
directory not available, using / as home. Of course, can't do much when system is in such a state but can login as user or root.
On 2026-01-21 09:58, Pancho wrote:
On 1/21/26 04:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/01/2026 00:32, Pancho wrote:
My concern was about having a root account.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't. Whether
this strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to me.
I always enable one.
Sometimes when there is an emergency you need not to have to type
'sudo' to edit every file...
sudo bash
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
On 2026-01-21 09:58, Pancho wrote:
On 1/21/26 04:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/01/2026 00:32, Pancho wrote:sudo bash
My concern was about having a root account.
AIUI, modern security advice is to not have an interactive root
account, i.e. with a password. So being a good boy, I don't.
Whether this strategy is practical in the real world is unclear to
me.
I always enable one.
Sometimes when there is an emergency you need not to have to type
'sudo' to edit every file...
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
openSUSE used by default the same password for both, yes. We had a good
row about this (some argued that it was good enough for home users, and
easier on users coming from Windows), and finally the compromise was to
allow during installation to click somewhere and type a different
password for root.
You didn't have configuration management back then to automate that?
On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:04:58 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
Most Linux distros put the root home directory as /root, not in /home.
On 2026-01-21 23:50, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:04:58 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you canMost Linux distros put the root home directory as /root, not in
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
/home.
That was a typo. Mind fudge.
I suppose it was:
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as user, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
On 2026-01-22, Anssi Saari wrote:
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:04:58 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
Most Linux distros put the root home directory as /root, not in /home.
Yes and on occasion when /home hasn't been available, I've just been
logged in as ordinary user with a note saying something like home
directory not available, using / as home. Of course, can't do much when
system is in such a state but can login as user or root.
I was wondering what was this about, but even if root's $HOME ends up
under /home, passwd and shadow are still under /etc, so yes, it should
still not prevent logging in? Or are we missing some detail here?
(Depending on the system (and whether there is encryption and so on), it might also be possible to have a root session without logging in, by replacing sysvinit or systemd (well, whatever gets executed as PID 1) by
a shell. Another approach is to get the disks mounted (possibly taking
into account encryption) from another system and chroot(1).)
On 2026-01-22 10:43, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
openSUSE used by default the same password for both, yes. We had a good
row about this (some argued that it was good enough for home users, and
easier on users coming from Windows), and finally the compromise was to
allow during installation to click somewhere and type a different
password for root.
You didn't have configuration management back then to automate that?
Automate what, the installation?
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-01-22 10:43, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
openSUSE used by default the same password for both, yes. We had a good >>>> row about this (some argued that it was good enough for home users, and >>>> easier on users coming from Windows), and finally the compromise was to >>>> allow during installation to click somewhere and type a different
password for root.
You didn't have configuration management back then to automate that?
Automate what, the installation?
Automate setting passwords to your standards.
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 20:32:25 +0800, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
It's just a change of syntax.
Plus a bunch of new functionality, too.
Think of the reason for change of syntax is keeping things more
regular with the accumulation of new concepts.
On 2026-01-22 21:43, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-01-22 10:43, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
openSUSE used by default the same password for both, yes. We had a good >>>>> row about this (some argued that it was good enough for home users, and >>>>> easier on users coming from Windows), and finally the compromise was to >>>>> allow during installation to click somewhere and type a different
password for root.
You didn't have configuration management back then to automate that?
Automate what, the installation?
Automate setting passwords to your standards.
Why would I need to do that? I am a home user.
every system I have been willing to use in the last 20
years has
made "/"(root) and "/home" in separate partitions. Foolish innovaters
as in Canonical
have allowed "/home" to be mounted only in "/"(root) which is to my
ideas of Linux
is practically disgusting
Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
every system I have been willing to use in the last 20 years has
made "/"(root) and "/home" in separate partitions. Foolish
innovaters as in Canonical have allowed "/home" to be mounted only
in "/"(root) which is to my ideas of Linux is practically
disgusting
I disagree with nearly everything you have written up there,
including the formatting. I don't think it is worth to have further discussion about that here.
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-01-22 21:43, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-01-22 10:43, Marc Haber wrote:
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
openSUSE used by default the same password for both, yes. We had a good >>>>>> row about this (some argued that it was good enough for home users, and >>>>>> easier on users coming from Windows), and finally the compromise was to >>>>>> allow during installation to click somewhere and type a different
password for root.
You didn't have configuration management back then to automate that?
Automate what, the installation?
Automate setting passwords to your standards.
Why would I need to do that? I am a home user.
You said "we had a good row", and mentioned a compromise. That led me
to the impression that you were talking about professional work in a
team.
In comp.os.linux.misc, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
Really? Not my experience at all. Instead I login and get dumped in /
instead of $HOME
Elijah
------
HOMEless does not mean unwelcome in Unix
Foolish innovaters as in Canonical have allowed "/home" to be mounted
only in "/"(root) which is to my ideas of Linux is practically
disgusting.
On 2026-01-23 04:33, Eli the Bearded wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as root, nor as anybody, to correct the issue.
Really? Not my experience at all. Instead I login and get dumped in /
instead of $HOME
Please remember that the above paragraph was a typing error or mind fart
and was corrected later.
If the emergency includes that /home can not be mounted, then you can
not login as any user, to correct the issue.
At least in openSUSE. No /home, no login, it silently fails (at least in graphical mode).
Elijah
------
HOMEless does not mean unwelcome in Unix
Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
Foolish innovaters as in Canonical have allowed "/home" to be mounted
only in "/"(root) which is to my ideas of Linux is practically
disgusting.
I'm curious about this, as all I can find on a brief Web search is discussions of whether and how to set up a separate /home partition on Ubuntu, rather than anything about it being disallowed. (How would you
even *do* that, anyway?)
At least in openSUSE. No /home, no login, it silently fails (at least in graphical mode).
Changing syntax and names can also hide secrets, and break history.
Kind of like creating a Dark Age by burning books and killing
scholars.
On Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:14:55 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
At least in openSUSE. No /home, no login, it silently fails (at least in
graphical mode).
So use a text console.
Weren?t you trying to claim at one point that text console logins wouldn?t work, while GUI ones would?
On Fri, 23 Jan 2026 18:38:02 +0800, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
Changing syntax and names can also hide secrets, and break history.
Kind of like creating a Dark Age by burning books and killing
scholars.
That doesn?t work in the age of version control.
On 24/1/2026 4:56 am, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 23 Jan 2026 18:38:02 +0800, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
Changing syntax and names can also hide secrets, and break
history. Kind of like creating a Dark Age by burning books and
killing scholars.
That doesn?t work in the age of version control.
Until there is a sudden unexplained disk crash? :)
| Sysop: | Jacob Catayoc |
|---|---|
| Location: | Pasay City, Metro Manila, Philippines |
| Users: | 5 |
| Nodes: | 4 (0 / 4) |
| Uptime: | 19:04:01 |
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| D/L today: |
540 files (253M bytes) |
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| Posted today: | 26 |