LINUX Unplugged - 579: Lost & Found

Episode Date: September 8, 2024

Secret moments from the show you've never heard before. We kick off with some hardware hurdles, then dive into the news and share a few surprising stories.Sponsored By:Core Contributor Membership: Take $1 a month of your membership for a lifetime!Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices! 1Password Extended Access Management: 1Password Extended Access Management is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and they ensure that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps. Support LINUX UnpluggedLinks:💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM

Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux Talk Show. My name is Chris, and it's just me right now because I'm giving the boys the weekend off as I record Brent's traveling through the, quote, worst part of Canada, and I'm hoping Wes is on a beach, and I wanted everybody just to have a chill weekend as they get back into town. But don't worry, we've got some brand new fresh content that you've never heard before. It was suggested by a member, and this week we're going to deliver some moments from the member version of the show that you've never heard and we're going to have some gadget reviews in here a couple of them we'll also have a couple of news events one more recent one from further back in the past and then just some really fun moments that happen on the stream that can really only happen when we don't have a doc we're

following or a script or anything like that i do want to thank our friends over at Tailscale. Tailscale.com slash unplugged. It is the easiest way to connect a device, services, or anything you've got directly to each other, wherever they are, protected, as Wes would say, by WireGuard. Build a simple network across complex infrastructure. Bridge multiple different data centers and your LAN together and create one flat mesh network.

It is also ideal for replacing your legacy business VPN infrastructure. Go try it for free on 100 devices and see how you can really build something out brand new. I have no inbound ports on any of my firewalls and you don't need to either. Check it out. Support the show. Get it for free on 100 devices at tailscale.com slash unplugged. So I hope you really enjoy them. Before I run and I get into all of that, I think we're still planning to do one more pre-recorded episode this month, later in the month.

We'll be back live on the 15th. But I would like to solicit from you our worst takes. Moments that were bad in the show. Boost in the moments that you think we got something wrong that we can react to. And I want to do that as a pre-recorded episode just to clear the air, you know? I mean, I know we're perfect,

but by my count, I found two segments. And I'm betting if I put it out there to the audience, you can find more than twice where we made a mistake. Give us an opportunity to react to it, but also follow up and share our current thoughts because we've been doing this show for, let me check my notes here, 227 years. 227 years, huh? See, that's why you got to write this stuff down.

And so I'm sure in that time frame, we got something wrong. So find it and tell us about it. And if it's a good one, we'll try to do a reaction to it and respond with our more current take later this month. But that's it for me right now. That's all I have at the start. Hope you enjoy. As you're hearing this, we're off in Texas.

We may even have a live stream this morning if you're listening to this early in the morning. Levi, the podcast dog, is sitting in on Brent's spot over there. He's got your chair, Brent, with a blanket. He makes it look more comfortable than you do, I have to say. It was his spot before. And he doesn't perch on the arm like you do. You know, he just... Well, I only sit on the arm because I know that this seat is for him.

Nobody ever covers that dog up. Somebody's got to cover him up. Yeah, there you go. Oh, yeah, that's better. Thanks, Wes. No one covers me up. No, but we do feed you carrots. That is true.

So I got myself a little device that I want to tell you guys about. There was a, I haven't done like an early access purchase for hardware in a really long time. But I got one. It's called the local deck and they have an early access version. That's like $63. And it's like a lower tech version of the stream deck. Instead of like having a led displays, they have their backlit,

but you print off the icon and you slip it in there. Ah. And the whole thing runs off of an ESP32. Okay. And it's got a bunch of buttons, 24 buttons with customizable backlighting, RGB, so you can set the color of the backlight. And the idea is you integrate it with, like, Home Assistant or whatever.

24 buttons, RGB backlit, Wi-Fi connectivity by the ESP32. They're using MX Brown switches, 70 million presets. And if it's using ESPHome, it's going to integrate immediately with Home Assistant. So you're going to have something that you could, for $60, you could mount on the wall and control almost all of your functionality. It's really neat.

I'll put a link in our web chat if people are interested in it. Do you have plans for what you're going to use it for? I think where I have a tablet right now, I might swap out the tablet. So I don't know. We'll see. Here at the studio would be a good spot

because outside of Brent's room upstairs, there's a tablet that I use so infrequently that when I sit down to actually use it, I have to refresh and have it reload the home assistant interface. Cause it's just basically gone to sleep. Um, wifi power saving or whatever is kicked in.

And it might be nice just to replace that with a physical button that I just press as I'm coming up or down the steps. Yeah, that makes sense. It does sound pretty slick. Yeah. Yeah. It's a neat little device.

So the name of it, again, if you want to, if you want to check it out, it's called the local deck. Um, it is-order. My Local Bytes has it right now. It's USB-C in gray, black, or white. They have an EU type C plug for the other end or a USA, depending on which one you order. And right now, it's $63 at the discount price. a USA, depending on which one you order. And right now, it's $63 at the discount price. I mean, that could just be worth it for the housing, the backlighting.

You know, somebody had it. I almost won. I'm almost talking myself into another one. Just because it really seemed handy. Am I going to have to get one? Gosh. You got to get a home assistant instance going first. You know? You got to get a home assistant.

You got to automate some things over there. I think you'd really like it, Wes Payne. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I got to get a home assistant. You got to automate some things over there. I think you'd really like it, Wes Payne. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I've had one in the past. It just, you know. Maybe you should wait. You know, maybe the housing market will take a good dive. You can get yourself a real fancy Seattle house, you know, for a good price.

And then we'll just go crazy with the home automation. Okay, that sounds great. Wouldn't that be a hell of a thing? Yes. You've earned it. You have earned it. I don't know. I'll let you know how the local deck turns out when I receive it.

I actually am not quite clear on when I'm supposed to get it. I think it's sometime this quarter, but I'm not sure. That is the one downside of this kind of thing, right? It ships when it ships. Yeah. Neat idea, though. Neat idea. And if your project can wait, then totally fine.

So I got a new piece of hardware in the studio. Oh, surprise hardware. New old, you might say. That's Neo hardware. I wanted to grab a USB floppy disk reader. Oh, wonderful news. And this one does A and C. It's got all your Bs.

And USBs. With it, they include a lot of pieces of paper. A lot of different things. Okay, we got a user manual. I can see that from here. Yeah, a user manual for a floppy drive. Well, these kids today, they never used one. You got to teach them.

Yeah. What would you, how would you describe this font? It's not quite Comic Sans, but it's like maybe. It's in the genre of papyrus almost. Yeah, yeah, right. It's kind of meant to look like handwriting. Yeah, it's definitely a script-type font. Wow.

Right. Yeah, and there's like 11 points on this. That's a letter. It's a letter. From the CEO, I think. Yeah, it says, Dear Valued Customer, this is William, the CEO of Rayo Brand. Thank you for choosing our external 3.5-inch floppy disk reader. Now, it kind of gets a little sad.

I mean, I don't know. I will say points for customizing the printout for the individual product. Well, get ready for this, okay? It gets a little more customized, okay? As a child of the 80s and the 90s, I grew up surrounded by floppy disks, cassette tapes, and VHS recordings. This reader brought back a flood of memories and allowed me to relive a cherished moment.

We know that many people around my age still keep a lot of old floppy disks too, so we sincerely hope that this floppy disk drive can help you retrieve beautiful memories. Wow! However, the times are moving forward, but the floppy disk era has passed. Both floppy disks and the floppy drive disks are now outdated, so you may feel that this product is not smart enough when we use the floppy disk drive.

Hope for your kind understanding. There's a bit of a language barrier. And with declining number of readable floppy disks, it's unclear how long our product will be available on the market. Use it now while you still can. And back up your floppy disks now while you still can read them. Please read the instructions carefully before using the product. Below is the important tips for using this item.

Honestly, you kind of got to give them some creds for that. You should be telling Jill Blow, computer user, to do that. Like, you should be telling Joe Blow computer user to do that. Yeah. If they still have floppies, they think they can read. And then it goes to set expectations low. Not all your disks will be readable. That's a factor of age, not the drive. Floppy disks are a product of the 80s and 90s of this last century.

Has a history of 30 to 40 years due to retention of times too long. Windows 11.10 systems have a lot of show-hide options for File Explorer, so you may not be able to see some of the drives. This is the one that is going to bite me in the butt. You ready? Number four on this list. I'm just going through some of the highlights. Number four.

When using this USB floppy drive, please connect to the back of a USB port if yours is a desktop. Please insert the disk into the drive firstly, then plug the USB connector into your computer USB port. Then your computer disk into the drive firstly then plug the usb connector into your computer usb port then your computer will recognize the drive so i am plugging it into the back of the system 76 launch keyboard hub and it specifically says in here do not use a usb hub please this is number 10 please do not use an usb hub usb extension cable or usb adapter to prevent the drive from working properly

due to insufficient power. I think it's probably going to be okay. Lots of little issues with Windows. And I thought, hey, they gave us this too, like a thank you card. You want to open that? Tell us what it is. It's got an adorable little cartoon, couple of cats with balloons at the bottom.

Isn't that nice? Gotta love that. I love it. Could have been dogs, but still. Oh, it's the warranty card. The Horeo warranty card. Hats with balloons at the bottom. Isn't that nice? Gotta love that. I love it. Could have been dogs, but still. Yeah. Oh, it's the warranty card. The Horeo warranty card. Oh. Bonafide. Oh.

Try your luck scratch area. Yeah, it's got a little scratch area there. Up to 99% off. Yeah. We are holding a raffle. There are 10 buyers who are lucky enough to get the top discount coupon in our store each month. Wow. Well, maybe you want to buy another floppy drive, Wes.

You know? You want to get another floppy drive. There you go. It's also got, like, a job ad on the bottom. Really? On the warranty card? Dear Brand Experience Officer. That does sound like you.

We sincerely invite you to become our Brand Experience Officer. Oh, not, so, officer. not an ambassador, but an officer. You will be eligible to experience our latest products for free. We hope you can give us your valuable suggestions on our product improvement and help our brand become better. Looking forward to you joining. Yeah, looking forward to it. Email reyuvipsupport at 163.com. Yeah, 163.com is their domain.

That's in the little handwritten letter, too. Well, do you want to give this a scratch? No, you should scratch it. Also, check out this user manual that it comes with. It's like one of those folds out like a map. Yeah. It sounds like this is a real PETA in modern Windows. So, first of all, Windows hides the floppy disk now.

So first of all, Windows hides the floppy disk now. Also, when you swap disks, Windows is so lazy about updating the Explorer stuff that it won't actually show you the new files. You have to go in and manually do an F5 or a view refresh on Windows now. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Do we win anything? 50% off. Hey. I wonder if everybody's a winner.

So if we want to get another floppy drive, 50% off. Maybe I should get one. Yeah. The instructions talk about nostalgia, but I was guessing that you guys were going for your own German battleship. Well, we also have a rail system to run here. So it says that I should have the disk in before I power it up. Are you going to listen to that, though? That's like telling you to preheat your oven.

I know, I know. It's funny, though, because I did plug it in, and the device shows up as the disc, not as a drive, but the device shows up. Intended to operate that way. Interesting, huh? Yeah. So what we have here is we have two 2 1⁄2-inch floppies,

a Sigma 2HD brand, that was given to us at the Spokane meetup. Can I take a look at that? Yeah. And so there's two discs, part one and part two. And they supposedly contain episode five, careful, 567 of the show split across two floppy drives. I remember those. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm going to put it in the, Ray, you, I know I'm dropping it all over. I'm tooOS. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to put it in the – You be careful. I know. I'm dropping it all over. I'm too excited, Wes. I'm very excited. I haven't loaded a floppy disk in a long time.

Right? This is a great moment. The ka-chunk is there. And just to be a real turd, I'm going to use – because it's got USB A and C. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and use C. Yeah, modern. Yeah.

I feel like it's the way to go when you're hooking up a floppy drive. So I'm going to plug it into the back of the launch. This is a lot of plugging in for Linux Unplugged. Oh, it's getting accessed. Sounds legit. That old familiar sound. It's definitely

taking a second. Uh-oh. Oh, there it goes. Okay, it just showed up. Okay, all right. So last time it showed up immediately. This time it clearly has to read the floppy disk. Oh, that's interesting.

It's doing something. I missed this. It's quiet. Yeah, it is quiet. I have it right up to the microphone. Just funny to imagine, like, it's mechanical, right? Yeah. Mechanical action being applied. I don't remember being this slow. microphone i mean it's just funny to imagine like it's there's it's mechanical right there's yeah mechanical action being applied i don't remember being this slow i they probably don't make them

as well as they used to right i mean this has really taken a long time to open you are not authorized to mount this device what how am i not authorized here you were but you know smack talking windows and you're like oh floppy's just gonna work in linux huh i well it's interesting i wonder i don't even know how to mount it on the command line. How can I not be authorized to mount a device? I'm on Ubuntu. Do I need to be in some sort of group? You want to try it?

You're not in the Floppy group, man. I know. I'm going to safely remove it. Oh, there might be a Floppy group, huh? Of course there is. Oh. It wasn't the old days. I bet you're right.

Let's go take a little look by the way i'm trying to eject it and it's taking forever do you do you want to try plugging into your machine over there yeah yeah you might want to put yourself you're right i have to be in the freaking floppy and i would have to log out to do that you know well maybe it's worth it maybe maybe all right you know you could use p-mount i do use what now p-mount it's mount but wrapped in policy kit so you can use your pseudo privileges without having your pseudo t-mount you tell me that now after i'm already done here but that's do we know as in platypus oh p-mount okay that would makes more sense with policy kit and all. How funny is this?

It's still trying to unmount. I don't remember being this slow. Yeah, it's quite slow. Okay, I think it's done. I don't know. Okay, yeah, all right. I'm going to give this to you while I put myself in the group. You can play with it for a minute.

Use A or C if you like. Okay. Let's try lucky number A. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, that's a little more original or I guess more classic. Well, let's get our old pal D message going. Yeah. Wes, this doesn't require suspenseful music.

That's a little over the top. Although I appreciate the flair for drama. Product? T-E-A-C-V? Yeah. Ooh, buffer I-O error on dev SDB. AC page rate. Hopefully that's a... Failed result.

Host byte did okay. Driver okay. Medium error. Cannot read medium. Unknown format. Yeah, that's... A bunch of those. I'm worried about the format,

because how do you put an episode of Linux Unplugged across two floppy disks? Okay, but I do now see... Plasma showed me something. Well, Chris, you have been explained where the compression and all the other stuff has been done to squish it in and still doesn't fit.

Right. Well, the thing that I'm thinking is, how do you get one file to span two disks without some sort of compressor-decompressor that understands part one and part two. That's what I'm wondering. Oh, let me see if my groups are working. Let me see if that worked. Groups, right? Just groups? Oh. Hmm. I wonder if I have to restart

the graphical entire session, because I logged out and logged out. Or logged out and logged back in, and I still don't see them in the floppy room. I thought I was being clever. Yeah, I wonder how it's, is it just the raw bits on the drive? Is there a file system? Right, that's what I want to know.

I tried to do an F disk on it, but it seems to think there's a two terabyte, four partitions and two of them are multiple terabytes. So I don't, that doesn't seem right. I don't think that's right, Wes. I don't think that's right. Oh, here we go.

Okay. I got it mounted and there's an Opus file on here. Ah, Opus. Okay. Opus. Yeah, I can hear it. It's really going. So are you in the floppy group?

Did you have to do that or did you use P mount? No, I just mounted it in Dolphin. Oh, okay. Yeah, interesting. I wonder why mine... It is a NixOS system instead of Ubuntu-based, so they might not have been partitioned that way. Oh, right.

I forgot you reinstalled. Right. Well. Do I copy it off and then send it to you? Or just... Oh, right, because we don't have the audio, huh? Yeah. Hmm.

Yeah, you could drop it in our chat sure i am uh gonna also be in the group so i can use the floppy disk drive well yeah you got it i would like to know how it sounds because if it's possible i have a dream of distributing like a members recording on a floppy disk like a members episode or something but or like even maybe like a certain episode of the show gets only distributed on Floppy. Something. Yeah, that'd be fun. Okay, well, I'm still 0% copying, but I expect it to pick up at any

minute. Yeah, once it gets going, it's got to read itself. So let me see, what group am I in now? Does it defeat the purpose? Yeah, now I'm in Floppy. What was the question? Does it defeat the purpose if you were to have some auto-downloader stored in the floppy, but downloads the full quality? Hmm.

I could imagine like... Yeah, I could imagine something like that. You're pre-Nixon over there. Well, I want to pre-Nix if you're going to pre-Nix. Yeah, I don't know. What about a flake that just, you know? What about like a Nix installer that installs, detects your OS, installs Nix on your system, then pulls down an MP3, but the script we distribute on a floppy disk only?

Would that be legit? Oh, I can hear it's copying. Well, it said it failed at one point. Do you want me to? I can try to just play it directly. Because now that I'm in the floppy group. Well, now a bunch of dolphins not responding. Yeah, you got to give it a minute.

Okay, that's fine. Let me get my ejector button. While you get ready to eject, I wanted to mention that we talked briefly last week that Manjaro was going to have an immutable version. Well, it's out now for testing, everybody. So surprise, surprise. Manjaro Immutable is out now. They say the goal of this release is to gather community feedback on the overall technology. It is an experimental release.

It does not represent the final version. No support guaranteed. Do not use it as your primary OS. Do you get it? Minimum 32 gigabytes of storage required, 64 gig storage recommended, and you need UEFI boot to support actually booting it. It uses ArcDep to diff and compare package differences between updates. And this is the package management is ArcDep. You can switch between GNOME and KDE images, sudo ArcDev deploy, and then you can adjust other settings in slash ArcDev

slash config. It'll support rollback to previous deployments using systemd and bootctl commands based on image IDs. You'll be able to build your own images using ArcDev's tool. Wait, say that last bit again? It's going to support rollback to previous deployments using systemdboot and bootctl commands based on image IDs. Okay.

Oh, you got it to give up? I did, yeah. Oh, good. You know what's always fun about these is I suppose we could always damage the disk too somehow or something. Right. That's fun. I liked that I got a little floppy icon in my plasma tray. That is just delightful.

I'd never seen that. No, me either. I've always just seen like a USB thingy, you know, like. All right. So I'm going back into the launch on USB-C. Disk is in the drive. Following Xero instructions. Yeah, here we go.

Spinning up. I wonder. So you saw an Opus file, huh? So I could probably play it with VLC. No problem. Do that. Yes, listen to it work. Okay, I've got the mount option here.

Mount and open. It is stupid slow. It's hard not to multitask when it's... Oh. Yes. It just says accessing in the plasma menu. You are not authorized to mount this device. And now I'm in the floppy group.

Come on. And you logged out and logged in? Yep. Yep. I even gave it the old reboot just to make sure. Yeah. And I went into my terminal, did groups, and I show up in the floppy group. All right.

I don't believe it that I don't have access, but. I don't either. It showed right up on mine. Shows right up, huh? Yeah. And I did the same thing you did i think i just clicked on the what if you got a dolphin that is well i'm using plasma sure but i don't know well i just told to safely remove like a like a folio okay i think it can now yeah now it

can be safely wow it's it's still really working though doesn't seem like it should be removed when it's doing that seems like it's doing something. That's the thing about it. You're like, how long do I wait? How long do I let this go? So speaking of file systems, I don't know if you saw, but there is like a group setting up for Fedora, the ButterFS stakeholders group, and there's not really been a SIG, a special interest group, for Fedora before. Sort of surprising because it's been four years that they've been chipping Butterfest

now, if you can believe it. But the Fedora Butterfest SIG will now have a dedicated matrix chat, a mailing list, and other centralized resources for stakeholders. Wow. They also mentioned when they were starting it up that they're looking at other Butterfest enablement to pursue the future of Fedora among possible features for FredFS Fedora is supporting bootable ButterFS snapshots and transparent

file system encryption. Okay. That sounds good. Yeah, it does. Although I look at what they're doing over there at UBlue and I'm like, well, I think that's maybe a different way to go. It's like, do you want file system snapshots? Do you want image snapshots? What flavor of snapshots would you like?

Why not mix and match? Yeah, I suppose you could. It's like, do you want file system snapshots? Do you want image snapshots? What flavor of snapshots would you like? You know? Why not mix and match? Yeah, I suppose you could. I suppose you could. But it's interesting that they've, I don't know, like the ButterFS response was initially strong, but then it just sort of plateaued. What do you mean by that? Well, like you really haven't seen them like integrate any other additional features of ButterFS into Fedora. You haven't seen it spread into a CentOS.

It really hasn't gone anywhere but Workstation. I'm not even sure if some of the other spins even have ButterFS by default. That's a good question. Don't you find that interesting a little bit? A little peculiar? Well, yes and no. I mean, I think it's probably this is maybe one of the

momentums forward, but if you're not if you don't have that alignment it seems hard to make right you can enable it but you can't how far do you go with like

ButterFS specific things yeah if you know that only the subset of your base that are using it are going to benefit or have it work right with well you're not going to

get it to more users unless you do more with it I mean I don't know I just I guess maybe this is the first step to that, if you have a special interest group. Like, snapshots is a great idea. That's brilliant.

It's a great idea. We should have more snapshots. I guess keep an eye on it. It'd be wild if... You've got to frame it, too, right? Like, I mean, compared to the Red Hat environment, it's still going pretty well in the Fedora land. Here's where I think it'd get really crazy, Wes. You ready for my craziness theory?

You have Fedora Workstation, and it goes this route of snapshots and deployments through file system images. And then you would have UBlue, Universal Blue, going the route of accomplishing the same thing through images and containers. I don't know. I find that to be, we could have two very different approaches trying to solve the same problem within the same family of Linux distributions.

I mean, I think we already do in a lot of ways, right? I mean, just between all the different approaches. Plus, at the end of the day, they're not that different, right? Like on one hand, you have OS tree managing sort of the links between all of the different files and the different trees and duping. That's kind of the same thing as what a cow file system is doing

under the hood, too, right? And whether you're doing it, you're shipping it as a container with an OS tree-specific thing or just a container that's a regular file system, a regular files, or you're doing a system systemd like system extension thing or

a tar or a butterfs sub volume. I think there's a lot of similarities if they're all kind of expecting the regular bits that you would have on a root file system. Yeah. Yeah, I just... Then it just becomes sort of like what are your delivery mechanisms?

It's funny. Just time to get excited about Bcash. I was just looking while you were talking. I was just looking at my D message. Error, dev, std, sector 32, op, buffer IO error on dev, std, logical block 4, async page read. Dev, std, can't open block dev. But then I get – but then when I, in Plasma, I tried going through Dolphin, like you suggested. I got the, it just came up

in the same notification area saying, access denied for mounting device. But then when you look at dms, it's just talking about sector 32 read errors and stuff. Yeah, it wasn't clear to me, like, how much, is that, are those real? Or is that just like the way that the drive is presenting?

Well, I could try mounting it as root and see what happens, right? Do you get the same error if you don't use the keyboard? Oh, that's a good question. I was seeing de-message errors like that. That was going to be bad. a USB 2.0 only 3.0 socket issue where you really need a USB 2.0

socket to get it to work correctly. I don't know because I saw the file, right? So if I go on the command line I can see the file. Dolphin says I don't have access to it, but if I go to slash media slash my username slash disk Oh, you just shown that whole thing?

If you want your username. Oh, so you think it's saying that I don't have access to the file system? I don't know. What is the file system, I wonder? It looks like it's VFAT, so it's probably not a permissions thing. But it's interesting that Dolphin thinks I can't access it when I can clearly see the file right here. Yeah, that is weird. I wonder if there is an issue with the disk. I'll try copying the file on the command line and see if I can.

It's going. It's going. I'll try copying the file on the command line and see if I can. It's going. It's going. I'll just let it go for a bit, and we'll see. And then if I can play it, I can play it. Oh, let's shake that off. Let's shake that off with our friends at 1Password, the number 1password.com slash unplugged. So here's a quick question for you.

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apps and devices? This is where 1Password comes in. Extended access management from 1Password helps you secure every sign-in on every app for every device. It solves the problems that traditional IAMs or MDMs just don't touch. It's security for the modern workplace, the way people actually work, acknowledging the way they actually work, which, by the way, also reduces friction between IT and the staff. It just makes everybody happier. It's available now for Okta and Microsoft Entra and it's in beta for Google Workspace. Go check it out at 1password.com

slash unplugged. The number one password dot com slash unplugged. Now, of course, the reason why I didn't use my laptop is because it was running Windows and it was out the entire trip. This is an NBC News special report.

Here's Hoda Kotb. Good morning. Good to see you. You are coming on the air right now with breaking news. A massive global technical outage tied to CrowdStrike, which is a major cybersecurity provider, has knocked critical computer infrastructure offline all across the country and, in fact, all around the world. It's an issue with a software update. It's impacting lots and lots of Microsoft computer systems worldwide, from businesses to emergency services, 911, traffic lights, transit systems. And it's having a major impact on airlines as well.

American, Delta, United, they're all keeping their flights crowded. They all shouldn't be using windows in critical use. I thought Delta was on open shift. Come on. Yeah, yeah. It's probably like one end-user kiosk. Yeah, the kiosk. Staff stuff that they're using for maintenance or who knows what. I think so. But this is pretty unusual.

This was one of those they broke into national programming with breaking news to tell everybody about this. One of those rare times that the world remembers IT people exist. Right. Yeah, it's always when there's an outage. CrowdStrike says a sensor configuration update to Windows systems triggered a logic error that resulted in a system crash and a blue screen of death on impacted systems. Okay. Which then somehow can blue screen? Yeah. Microsoft estimates that CrowdStrike's update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or they claimed less than 1% of all Windows machines.

Okay. Those seem like fuzzy numbers to me. The fix requires each machine to be manually rebooted. Also, it's the ones that matter, right? Exactly. You probably put CrowdStrike on the things that you're worried about or in production. That's what I was thinking. Yeah.

A similar incident hit McAfee in 2010, which I recall quite clearly. Interestingly enough, CrowdStrike's CEO was the CTO of McAfee at that time. Oh, a little cowboy in the mix, huh? I don't know. So CrowdStrike also, I think, has been really crappy at communicating any kind of empathy about this problem. They've been extremely corporate in their communication style, and it's been bad. This is – well, it was a worldwide story. It still is.

Now today, as we record on a Sunday, which is July 21st, 2024, Microsoft has released a tool that does help repair the machines, but you still have to go to each machine physically. Probably boot it into safe mode, right? Yeah. That's what they were – yeah what a freaking nightmare it's one of those stories that i saw come through on my phone while i was driving i was like what and i couldn't get to it right away until we stopped and i was just like wow what a story what a story and it speaks to like vendor lock-in and centralization it speaks speaks to how fragile Windows is, and we'll get to Linux stuff in a second. It speaks to how Windows gets used in places and in ways it never, ever should have ever been used. And it speaks to a problem where we have these massively complex systems and sort

of these uni ways of deploying them, managing them. And it's just all these things on, you know, the single point of failure aspect of it to me is just really hard to get over because it's something that these commercial operating systems implicitly are impacted by. They have intrinsic third-party risk, which is Microsoft and their partners and then a lot of these software packages that you put on top of them.

And most of the time, these packages, in this antivirus category, if you will, I'm using a very broad definition there, auto-update. So you can have all the change management practices in the world. You can debate what updates you're going to deploy and how you're going to tweak this and that. But meanwhile, CrowdStrike Falcon in the back end is just auto-updating. Whatever it wants. And if you happen to leave your machines on that night it got taken out i can't help that it just kind of it's like a microcosm of what the current security thoughts and worlds especially in the business sector are right like you you get to

this point where your board or your auditors whoever else like if you don't have this crowd strike sensor or an equivalent from a similar proprietary vendor you're not going to pass your checks you're not going to get the check. You're not going to get the checkmark. You're not going to get the green light or the investment. Yeah. So I've seen people not get investments. That's the thing. I've seen people not pass audits.

That's the thing. And now, what I just didn't really realize was happening until this happened, and I saw people talking about it, is, of course, people are so afraid of ransomware and stuff that they're buying cybersecurity insurance. Oh, yeah. And you don't get your cybersecurity insurance unless you have something like this. And in theory, that sounds good, right? Like you're doing the due diligence to say, like, are you taking, you know, are you putting sensors in place that can tell you if things are going wrong?

But it stops there. And of course, like you can't even get access to a lot of the software until you've signed a contract and it starts getting deployed. And it's certainly not open source. Right, right. Oh, definitely. Yeah, it's it also is ironic that the software you use to protect yourself like this is often more source of trouble than the actual threat you're protecting. Yes, there's irony in that, too.

And so when this happened, of course, us Linux users were we're having a kind of kind of having a laugh. We were kind of having a laugh. We were kind of enjoying this a little bit. But despite popular belief, CrowdStrike updates have actually crashed Linux boxes pretty recently. I just don't think it made much news because the scale was just not there. The variety is much higher. But CrowdStrike update took out RHEL about a month ago, caused a kernel panic. Red Hat has a customer portal update about that.

And CrowdStrike took out, I should say, up-to-date Debian stable systems in April, caused Debian stable systems to crash. Of course, when I say it took out Red Hat, it also means it took out Rocky and Alma and all the Red Hat derivatives as well. And if it took out Debian 12, then it's very possible it would take out an Ubuntu system.

And of course, like, right, a lot of these things, like, you got to justify, they need deep hooks to do all the scanning they want to do. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The Hacker News author who was talking about his Debian systems getting wiped out, he wrote this, quote, in our own postmortem, there was no real ability to prevent the same thing from happening again. We push our software. He's doing a quote, Like he's quoting them. Quote, we push software to your machines anytime we want, whether or not it's urgent, without testing it.

Seems to be the core model, particularly if you're small IT or part of a large enterprise. What they're selling to the enterprise is exactly that they'll do that. They're selling, oh, we, you know, when something comes out, we'll ram those updates down your system so fast that you're protected before you even knew it was an issue. Well, this is what you get. This is what you get.

Hey, I thought you weren't supposed to use rolling releases in the enterprise. Lenart's got a good take. I liked Lenart Pottering's take. Oh, yeah? System Day author says, if you want my takeaway from the CrowdStrike issue, I'd say boot counting, boot assessment, and automatic fallback should be a must for today's systems. Heyo. Before you invoke your first kernel, you need to have tracking of boot attempts

and logic for falling back to older versions automatically. It's a major shortcoming that this is not a default behavior of today's distros, in particular the commercial ones. 100% agree here. You know, if you could just roll back automatically, it's staggering that it's 2024 and windows doesn't do that. Staggering ridiculous.

And, Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Brent. Yeah. I'm just, you know,

the very first thought I had when I saw this was that I think this is probably the best way to kill a business, right? Because their whole promise is that this won't happen because of their offering. But, you know, they were the cause of it. So do you think, because you have a bit more of a corporate-y background than I do in this kind of style, do you think this is going to take them down? Oh, no. Like the Linux stuff the last couple of months, they'll just get brushed off aside and they'll just keep going. They'll lose some sales.

They'll lose some sales, but CrowdStrike's in deep. CrowdStrike's in deep, very, very deep. They're like the blessed one by the federal government. They're in forever. So they're not going anywhere. The good news is there are ways to have your cake and eat it too on Linux. And it's already been solved on Linux. Matthew Garrett writes, quote, Linux would have prevented this is literally true because my former colleague KPSI wrote a kernel security module that lets EDR implementations load eBPF into the kernel to monitor and act

on security hooks. And CrowdStrike now uses that rather than requiring their own kernel module that would have otherwise absolutely allowed this to happen. Everybody should say thank you to KP. And to our pal eBPF, which is making a lot of this kind of dynamic kernel behavior possible, whether it's firewall activities or security things. Yeah, so recent versions, if you have a more modern Linux system, you can take advantage of the EBPF implementation and they don't have to use their own crappy kernel module. But if you're on an old, crusty, oh, I'm sorry, stable RHEL distro, well, you're going to have to use the old way of doing things because you're not going to get that for another five to ten years. Then you can take advantage of the stuff that we on the

field have been using for a decade. Also worth pointing out, and probably mentioned, but systemdboot supports boot assessments and boot count. He did happen to mention that. If you can use systemdboot anyway, it's available in a Linux system near you. It is sort of frustrating to have

the pieces there, eBPF, systemd boot. Like, we could handle these better, require less custom modules, and recover better if we just strung everything together. The stuff's already there. So it means it'll probably happen. What I'm hearing you say is that Windows should use the Linux kernel?

Is that what you said? Pah! Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Those guys over there. I mean, I feel bad for all the IT folk that what you said? Pah! Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Those guys over there. I mean, I feel bad for all the IT folk that, you know, is having to work massive buku over time, probably killing themselves

trying to get the fix out there. It sucks. So, you know, feel that. Yeah. What about the story about Southwest Airlines? Southwest Airlines remains unaffected by the CrowdStrike system update error because they're using Windows 3.1.

Is that real? I don't know. It makes you wonder, like, what systems? That's the Brent strategy, right? Like he's going with Tumbleweed where you up... Hey, no, it worked for you, man. Remember how you missed the XE vulnerability and the SSH regression vulnerability? Yeah, I did. Take that. You skipped right over those because your system has gone from being so insecure, it worked for you, man. Remember how you missed the XE vulnerability and the SSH regression vulnerability? Yeah, I did. Take that.

You skipped right over those because your system has gone from being so insecure. It's secure again. I think you're on the other side of the valley. Thank you. Especially if you got – I take that as a compliment. If you could somehow switch to like a 4 Series kernel. Right.

4.15. Yeah. Good one. Solid. Solid kernel. Yeah. But this is their strat over there at Southwest Air. Maybe this is how they save money is they don't invest in IT infrastructure.

That's how they keep the cost down for the flights. Oh, wow. I don't know if it's true or not. If anybody has any inside scoops on that. I think that's very unsettling. It makes me afraid to fly Southwest. It does make – like are these sandbox systems? Are they networked?

Of course they're networked. Also, the giant stupid dome in Vegas, blue screen, because that thing's powered by Windows. So people in Vegas just saw a giant. Yep, giant Windows blue screen. Giant. They got a picture on the Weapon X. I think someone was going to put that up there at some point anyways, right? Because you can pay to put up, like, whatever you want for about an hour on the sphere over there in Las Vegas.

And so that's a brilliant thing to put up, although nobody paid for it in this case. Seeing all the flight tracker ticker screens with blue screens of death is the most unsettling thing to me, though. It's like, oh, God, people are using Windows in places. It's just there's no need. Yeah, there really is no need.

You know, there's plenty of reasons to deploy Windows, unfortunately, but it's fine. It's just where we're at. But kiosks? You know what they would do instead of Windows? They wouldn't do some custom lean mean Nix or Alpine. They'd do Android. And then they'd screw it up.

First of all, they'd do two releases ago and it'd be on a kernel that's not even supported anymore with Bluetooth bugs and all of that that had been figured out a long time ago. And they'd leave the Bluetooth on. Of course they would. Yeah. So, cause they're just going to get a dev board that has all the stuff built in. So that's what they do instead. So I don't really know if it'd be any better. Do we have any thoughts on Mozilla getting a new CEO?

Anything come to mind? I haven't heard much about it yet. Yeah, I don't, I have been processing it. So, um, yeah, I knew a new CEO, uh, Laura Chambers has been appointed as CEO. She's been reading the product. She's been leading the product divisions, I guess, or leading product organizations for a while is what they say. They want to align the corporate strategy with the mission, which always sounds great, I guess, with a collaborative approach between the executive chair and the CEO and leadership. It sounds complicated. with the mission, which always sounds great, I guess, with a collaborative approach between the executive chair and the CEO and leadership. It sounds complicated.

They want to address institutional issues with the internet and they feel like there is an opportunity for Mozilla to shape the future of AI. I'm curious. How many times does Firefox show up in the announcement? Okay. So one. So here times does Firefox show up in the announcement? Okay, so one. So here's where Firefox shows up. Outstanding execution-focused process capabilities, doubling down on our core products like Firefox and building out capabilities in innovation pipeline to bring new compelling products to the market.

Would you believe they managed to upset me with that one sentence? Nope. products to the market would you believe they managed to upset me with that one sentence nope so uh doubling down on our core products like firefox and what else mozilla what else is a core product mozilla what when they say it like firefox like it's a side thing yeah like like they have this thing that we kind of have over here. Like they have anything else that is actually a revenue generator. Right? Without Firefox, the money goes away. As far as I understand.

Well, without Google, the money goes away. Well, that's what I mean. That's what I'm getting at. But yeah. Yeah, exactly. I just find that to be interesting.

So as far as I understand, the current CEO is really just moving to a different position, right? Yeah, sounds like it. Like the corporate executive chairwoman role or something like that. Okay. Been there for 25 years at Mozilla. Laura Chambers is described by the Mozilla Post as a dynamic board member who will step into the CEO role for the remainder of this year.

So an interim CEO? Now that seems odd, right? Why not just have the current CEO hang out for the rest of the year? Well, maybe something happened. Yeah. They're not really saying in all their corporate speak there. Ms. Chambers has an impressive background in leading product organizations at Airbnb, PayPal, eBay, and most recently the CEO of Willow Innovations. Laura is well-equipped to guide Mozilla through this transitional period. So she's going to be until the end of the year, and they're calling this a transitional period.

Her focus, so during this transitional period, is this technically considered a lame duck CEO? You know, like how the president, once like they're out, they kind of become a lame duck because everybody starts getting behind the new person. I mean you're coming in. You got 11 months to run this thing. I don't know. It's weird.

Her focus is going to be on delivering products that advance our mission and building platforms to accelerate momentum. So we're going to accelerate momentum. Quote, Laura and I will be working closely together throughout February to ensure a seamless transition. As my role of executive chair, I'll continue to provide advice. Wow.

It always concerns me when a new CEO from, or even any kind of management comes from something completely different, you know? Yeah. Well, it makes you wonder, huh?

Hello, Alex. Are you there? Hi, Alex. Well, Jim Whitehurst came from fricking airplanes to Linux, didn't he?

So, you know, true. And then, and then he made it rain. Like the guy literally turned on the money faucet and just went, you know what? I'm out. He seems like an interesting – but he kind of wrapped his head around the business and the language of the business and all of that pretty quickly.

Well, see, he had red hatters around his little finger. Whatever he did was a master class. Miss Chambers is only the interim CEO for a transitional period lasting until the end of the year, they write. So, great. We'll see. Maybe interim CEO becomes permanent CEO. Yeah, but only one reference of Firefox in the entire thing. Linuxunplugged.com slash membership.

Go set your membership and support on autopilot with our membership program, and you get access to the members feed you're listening to right now. You actually get two different feeds to pick from. You can have the show you've always listened to just without ads, like this moment right now, and just get the same show, or get the bootleg version, the live, longer, often very long version, where we try to cram additional conversations and content in there to make it something worth your time, as it's also a way to

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I'll still keep that promo code SUMMER going for a little bit longer. So you can take $1 a month off forever. It's for a lifetime of your account. That's pretty good. LinuxUnplugged.com slash membership. We did some smash burgers. Brent had to go out and find himself some veggie burgers so he could participate. And that tulip traffic was raw.

Oh, yeah. Of course. The amount of people that come out to take selfies in front of flowers is unbelievable. You would have prime access if you were getting that Insta-influencer going again. Oh, I sure could, man. Plus, you got the cute dog already.

I should really be thinking about it. Can you monetize an Instagram account? Did you say monetize? You can. How do you monetize an Instagram account? Is it like YouTube where you get a certain amount of followers and then you can just an Instagram account? Did you say monetize? You can. How do you monetize an Instagram account? Is it like YouTube where you get a certain amount of followers and then you can just turn it on? I'm not sure. I think on Instagram it's more like you get – you do your like working for sponsors and or sponsor products and or – I don't think it's like as easy on as the YouTube. But maybe that's changed.

I don't know. Oh, OK. All right. Especially now they have a bunch of newer stuff. But maybe that's changed. I don't know. Oh, okay. All right. Especially now they have a bunch of newer stuff.

So you're saying if I'm an Instagram influencer, then I had to work a little harder to monetize? You'd probably like, I don't know, reviewing stuff or talking about the new things that you got. Which, I mean, you get new things. Tricky is just making them pay. New things is great. It'd be a great place to sell them mattresses.

Yeah. Ideally, maybe Apple Vision Pros? I'm not sure. So, you know, Brent's hanging out with us after my dad was over. We did the scavenger hunt. We did the birthday celebration. We ate the burgers. Then the kids decided it was play with hair night.

Oh, I saw some of this. And so they started styling everybody's hair. And my daughter says, Brent, you got a bump on your head. Uh-oh. And I learned – you know, every time Brent comes over, you learn these stories and you're like – there was another one, which I should have written down. You're like, you son of a bitch. You have not told me about this yet? And I know there was one while we were at Texas.

There was another one. We were like – Oh, there was. And then when we were at scale, we found out that he's a graceful ice skater. So this time I discovered that Brent was born with a – was like a fully formed head, like a head – a thick skull right at birth. You could say a skull deformity. And so like most babies have a soft head for passage. Not Brent.

Oh, difficult child. Brent had a fused skull. Wow. True moose energy. Craniosynostosis, I'll have you know. Whoa. Okay. So as a young child, as a young lad.

Just a young moose. Like right after birth or shortly after birth, they cut your skull open? Yeah. No big deal. Everybody gets that, right? Wow. And so you have a scar or what? I have a scar that goes from like right about my forehead.

About your hairline there? All the way back to like the crown of my head. Wow. Yeah. Have you ever shaved your head and looked at it? Yeah, we did one time. Like it was, I don't know i was probably like 15 something like that and my brother and i were like hey you want to support someone for this cancer thing and

everybody's shaving their heads and we did that and it was like oh right forgot about that part your brother has the same thing yeah i have a twin brother and he has the identical scar um because he had the identical problem that makes makes sense. It would kind of be unfair if he didn't. No kidding. But it also means like in a movie, you can't use the scar to tell him apart. We should tattoo Brent, I still think. Yeah. Although like you were talking about this bump on my head and that's how this all came

up. He has just different deformities because of this. Like I've got a bump in the front and like a corner in the back. I don't know. He's got different stuff going on. Yeah, let's say that. Yeah, like a Klingon. That makes sense.

That's how it would work. What a thing for parents to have to deal with. Oh, yeah. You have these two young twins, and they both need head surgery. And it's not a thing that they could solve in my 200,000 population city. Of course, right. So we had to travel like to Toronto, which is also a big deal.

And traveling, you know, with newborn twins. With hard heads. Yeah, so a whole ordeal for them. Why did we do this again? Wow, man. Wow. What a thing. Makes my kids sound easy.

And now we've got a bread. Yeah. What a wonderful way that worked out but the thing that the thing that he was going on to say that night that really struck me is he has to go in every 30 days for a head adjustment so it's just a little cranky that explains why he misses the show sometimes he seems really different yeah is this the same guy who was on here last week brian in the chat room says i was actually excited when windows 2000 came out because Really different? Yeah. Is this the same guy who was on here last week? Brian in the chat room says, I was actually excited when Windows 2000 came out because it was a proper OS at the point with NT Kernel officially added to it.

I was so disappointed at the point that I'd been working on Mandrake for a year. You know, I was too. I was a beta tester of Windows NT 5 and, you know, definitely saw the bugs. And so that's why I was not super excited about adopting what later became renamed as Windows 2000. One of the best startup... You know, we should probably give credit. NT Kernel shook out to be a pretty badass kernel, really. They're still going.

Yeah. This was one of my favorite startup sounds for Windows 2000. And it had, I think, the best boot screen, too. I like their NT5 version, but I thought it turned out pretty nice. Like, back then, when your computer booted, it was an accomplishment. Like, you felt like you wanted to celebrate, so that just felt perfect. Because it was slow, and it might not happen. It was a big deal.

So having that, you know that kind of triumphant... You know, I put Windows 2000 on one of the very first PCs I ever built like myself. Not the first one I used or anything, but yeah. Well, it wasn't a common thing to use it as a desktop back then. No, I was going to do XP, but I was going to have to go to the store and buy it, right? And I don't know,

one of my mom's friends was like an IT person and he's like, oh, I can get you a copy of Windows 2000. No problem, kid. Well, in 2000 was really a better version than Windows XP. Yeah, so it worked out great. It was clean. It was professional. It was targeted at work. Considering my previous experience of the 98 and ME, like 2000 was great.

Yeah, no kidding. Boy, ME was a dumpster. It so was. So bad. Although that is where they introduced Windows snapshots for the first time, where you could take a snapshot of your system and then back it up. Although it was often broken. But ME is where they finally introduced that.

Let's be clear. I had plenty of DOS time, too. All right. I guess I skipped 95. I had some DOS time, and I also had a Norton Commander that my dad had installed on his DOS machine. And then at my mom's house, it was mostly Macs. So early on, I was very much a 2 OS. And then, you know.

See, these are the perverse upbringing conditions that lead to, you know, folks trying to run. Become Nix DGens. Yeah. Yeah. Running things like Asahi Linux. I don't know. Macintoshes. Yeah.

Sam DGens from Uptown. Yeah, right. Declarative Dijon. Declarative Dijon. I kind of would be that. I'd be down for it. Yeah. Oh, shit. That got me.

Living in my trailer. I call it a trailer, but it's really a wonderful bus. I shouldn't. I shouldn't. She might be listening. Lady Joops is. Yeah. I believe after these many years. it's really a wonderful bus. I shouldn't – she might be listening. Lady Jupes is – I believe after these many years – She's tricked out at this point. She's alive now, right?

There's enough components in her in life. Sort of magic school bussy but with like a tech vibe instead of biology. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. A little cabin vibe too going on in there. I think that's what they were going for with the design was like a cabin. That's their two modes with RVs is they'll either try to make them like a modern condo.

They got three modes, modern condo, rustic cabin, or yacht. That's what they try to go for. I think we got the rustic cabin, which is fine. I'll live with that. I don't mind rustic cabin. I hope you with that. I don't mind rustic cabin. I hope you enjoyed that. I do actually have the local deck right here in my hot little hands. I use it here in the studio. So if you'd like a review of the local deck, do let me know. Also, I'm soliciting the moments we got wrong so that way we can make good and follow up or at least

continue to embarrass ourselves. That could be a possibility too. So yeah, those are the couple of things to give us feedback on and we'll be back at our regular bat time next Sunday at noon Pacific 3 p.m. Eastern. So we'd love to have you join us for that. It's always fun.

Get the mumble room rocking once again. We try to keep it up to date the best we can over at Jupiter broadcasting.com slash calendar. You can go check out the self-hosted podcast. We talked a little bit about the new colo system. And let's see. Oh, you know what? If you haven't checked out this week in Bitcoin, it's a great opportunity to learn,

at least see if you can get some of your presumptions challenged. Presuming you have presumptions, which I probably have. Perhaps should not presume, as they say. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Unplugged program. I hope you enjoyed this sort of laid back, fun edition. And I hope you join us right back here next Sunday, as in Tuesday. Thank you.