From: ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld.invalid
On Sun, 31 Mar 2013, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in article
, Adam wrote:
>Moe Trin wrote:
>I suppose the biggest computer news for me is that, although it wasn't
>for reasons I'd intended, I got to use helot (my new-to-me Thinkpad
>T60, my first laptop) at two different hotspots, the hospital and the
>rehab.
As you get time to play more, you'll find that it really isn't that
difficult to get the links up/running.
>Some general observations: even when the wi-fi connection is at 54
>kbps, my share of that is relatively slow. I'm much better off
>downloading at home where I get a consistent 3 mbps (my DSL maximum).
No, it just _seems_ like 54 kb/s - the actual rate you get will depend
on how many other users there are, and whether the hot-spot provider
has put individual throttling mechanisms ("man tc") into place. While
wandering around my local branch library Friday evening, I observed
about 25 people with laptops, and they're all sharing _a_ connection
with the dozen "internet connected" PCs (as opposed to the five that
only make internal connection to the card catalog server). Even if
they've got a T3 (45 Mb/s) or OC-1 (51.84 Mb/s) connection to the
world (they don't - the best I've seen when the library is closed is 7
Mb/s) sharing it WILL result in less. Besides, the guy over there --->
is downloading the latest Mageia rc-3 DVDs ;-)
>Also, I'm used to seeing channels 1-11 (2 MHz) because my router (from
>2007) handles only 802.11bg. The laptop can handle 802.11abg but not
>802.11n. Apparently the routers (or whatever) at the hospital and
>rehab are 802.11a (or set to only use 802.11a) as they use channels
>50-100 or so around 5 MHz.
GHz, not MHz. 802.11a is essentially the same as 802.11g (up to 54
Mbits/sec) but is usually less interference prone. There are two
faster protocols (802.11n and 802.11ac), but they're less common. Each
band has it's own set of warts, and neither is as good as the other ;-)
>This makes sense as a lowest common denominator, as some folks may
>have older laptops.
which tend to be 2.4 GHz only.
>BTW in the channel 1-11 range, a few other setups are using channels
>2, 3, 4, 9, and 10. Am I correct in concluding that channels 2 and
>10, which overlap with the adjacent popular channel, don't have much
>of an advantage over 1 and 11?
In theory, they're actually worse off, because they also pick up
interference from channel 6 - a worse case would be using 3 or 4, or
8 or 9, where two the three "popular" channels would interfere (though
the individual amounts of interference is reduced somewhat, the total
may be higher than sitting on one of the "popular" channels).
[helot netstat]
>Here's results from helot at all three sites, concatenated, sorted and
>reformatted:
OK, boiling that down still further, you've got sshd listening on all
addresses (IPv4 and v6, loopback and "external"), a Mail Transfer
Agent (sendmail, postfix, exim or similar) and the printer daemon
listening on IPv4 and v6 loopback, the printer daemon listening on
UDP for _other_ print servers outside, and a DHCP client. Essentially
safe enough. though in theory the bad guys could advertise another
printer outside, and if you actually told your printing setup to try
to use that... I'm not sure where you'd be able to pick up your
print jobs... maybe it's down the hall or in the other building ;-)
[small surge protector]
>Sounds like a good use for my Staples store credits, if they have any
>on their website.
Agree - they aren't that expensive, and might help in the off-chance
of a nasty power spike.
>One other computer issue is coming up: as mentioned below, my parents
>will be moving out of their house. That's been my location for
>off-site backups and obviously I'll have to find new places. I
>realized I have two kinds of backups, dynamic and static.
"What is your disaster scenario?" What are you trying to protect
against? Off-site is for the case where your place is burglarized,
suffers fire/flood or a yak stampede (or similar natural/man-made
problem). On-site is for equipment failures. The on-site for you is
much easier now, having two functional systems, where you can copy data
from one to another. I've actually stopped using CDs/DVDs as backups
for the same reason I'm not using tape or floppies. I can buy external
media such as USB drives that hold more (Best Buy had 128 GB USB drives
for $80 as one example) and can fit into a small fire-resistant box in
the entry-way closet. At least for the shorter term, you'll still have
some storage capability with your father.
>"Dynamic" would be my most recent backup tarballs, currently about
>500 MB nightly,
You might be able to reduce that by using incrementals rather than full
backups of important stuff. A restore becomes more complicated, but
the total size needed should be less. I think I've mentioned that I
don't back up the basic system, but have the standard setup _data_ as
paper copies. The data (essentially /home/) now gets a monthly full
backup, and daily and weekly incrementals. A restore needs the monthly.
latest weekly and nightly "tapes" in that order. ("find /home -newer
last.monthly -type f" give weekly stuff to back up, while the nightly
is "-newer last.weekly".)
>and I think one of the "free backup" sites might be adequate for two
>or three recent ones of those, encrypted.
More than one site - but use the same _encryption_ key for "identical"
backups. (A recent discussion elsewhere: many encryption schemes can be
cracked if the bad guy has access to multiple copies of the same data
encrypted with _different_ keys - admittedly, "many" copies, but just
the same). This is completely different from the requirement to use
different names and authentication keys (passwords) at different sites.
>Static" offsite backups are things that aren't going to change but
>are important enough to me to keep a second copy elsewhere, such as
>the raw and processed vinyl and cassette rips I did last year. So
>far that's about 20 DVDs.
OK
>I haven't yet thought about a separate, yet accessible, place for
>those. A safety deposit box sounds like overkill, not to mention
>expensive.
Depends - because I have a "minimum" total in a bank, in addition to
giving me nearly zero interest (sheesh - 0.45% on a 1 year CD - well,
that's better than the 0.09% they're paying on "regular" savings) they
also give me a "free" safe deposit box (of the smallest size, but that
would hold at least a hundred CD/DVDs).
[bookcases]
>> I still have to find room for anything I bring in.
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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