Remote Desktop to Linux Box in Shop

 Using XRDP, I am able to do all my development from my office now:

Once temperatures rise, this will be much nicer than doing this in the garage.

So I Acquired a 64-Bit PC to Run Newest Version of LinuxCNC

A gal from church was clearing out her fleet of PCs too primitive to run Windows 11 and I told her that I needed something that was 64-bit that could run Linux. It has 32GB of RAM, and several TB of both hard disks and SSD--far in excess of what LinuxCNC needs.

It had no built-in parallel port. LinuxCNC needs a real Centronics parallel port for timing reasons. I bought a PCIe parallel port made by StarTech. LinuxCNC would not control the mill! Searching for guidance gave me only a sensation that the parallel port might have the wrong address. Supergrok saved the day. It helped me find that the built-in parallel poets are at 0x3F8. This rang a bell from when I wrote a terminate-and-stay-resident PC-DOS (stop laughing) program that intercepted data going to the parallel port and converted Epson control codes to Postscript. It was wonderfully elegant in how it allowed programs with no Postscript support to use Apple LaserWriters 

Changing one of the LinuxCNC setup files to talk to the parallel printer at 0xC010 and problem is solved.

Complicating this was that F2 (enter BIOS) and F12 (boot from somewhere besides hard disk did nothing. It turned out that unless your monitor was hooked up to a DisplayPort monitor, they did nothing except assume you wanted to reinstall Windows. So I dug up an HDMI to DisplayPort cable. (I never throw away cables that might be useful in the future. The 1Mbps Ethernet cables were obsolete.)

UPDATE: After installing LinuxCNC and all the development tools that I use (emacs, ddd) and restoring all the software i have written, i decided to install Eclipse. When I worked for Corrections, I used Eclipse for Java development and I really liked it. It is certainly more pleasant and easier to  use than emacs and ddd. But once installed, i was out of disk space. Worse; attempting to remove stuff i did not need somehow permanently locked root so I needed to reinstall.

But instead of repeating a process that had disappointed me, i decided to take advantage of having way more storage than the last desktop. This has a 250GB SSD, a 1TB hard disk and a 2TB hard disk. I put root and all the CNC software on the SSD, and home on the 2TB drive. I will never run out. The SSD still is 33% free.  The home drive has about 1.9TB free.

I had SuperGrok walk me through partitioning. I used to know mostly how to do this, at least at the /etc/fstab level. It was still nice to have a friend walk me through it.

Eclipse was sufficiently difficult before I reinstalled that i am not sure that I will try to use it. All I wanted was to load my existing Makefile and sources into it. Perhaps SuperGrok can help me 

The one reason I upgraded to the 64-bit version of linuxCNC was modern browsers. This makes using SuperGrok and reading X possible. 

UPDATE 2: And I had SuperGrok set up a daily backup of my home directory to a 1 TB hard drive not currently in use.

My Lenovo WiFi Problem

I have had an intermittent problem with my Lenovo 11e failing to remain connected. After connecting, it would stay connected for about four minutes. Then it dropped the connection and forgot the password preventing auto reconnect. (And annoying me by requiring me to type the password again.)

Lenovo, to their credit, tried really hard to fix this, replacing the WiFi transceiver twice at my home and a few days at their North Carolina facility. After each repair, I would travel and it worked great.

Yesterday and today, I have been using this 11e to control the iEXOS 100 mount.  The mount has a server, so if you connect to it, you disconnect from the house WiFi. It seemed to work fine with the mount.

I asked SuperGrok to help me. It suggested that the problem was in my home's router. This would explain why the problem never appears when traveling. So I went to the Cadillac and connected to its router. No problem. 

SuperGrok suggested that a several year old WiFi transceiver might not handle the WPA2/WPA3 transition causing loss of connection and password. SuperGrok had me call Sparklight to change my settings. 

It was already set to WPA2 but the tech turned on something called Compatibility Mode. My 11e no longer drops connection.

I Have Had Questions About the Email Sending Problem

Thunderbird was not the problem. There are vendors of IP blacklists for either users or ISPs with systems that spam, or are infected. Somehow, Sparklight ended up blacklisted. This should surprise no one. Lots of people spam for a living; I know one person who did for a couple years before his conscience got in the way. My mail host relies on the blacklist services. They whitelisted my IP. The problem persisted.

Somewhere within their SMTP server, my now legitimate emails were getting stored in the Sent folder and then quietly, without warning, discarded. I do not why, but they fixed it.

External USB Drive Not Showing Up in DISKMGMT.MSC

 Whenever I upgrade a hard disk, I pop the old one into an external case for use as a USB drive.  This is really a nice use for drives that might otherwise need something more thorough than FORMAT.  I am looking at a drive that is one of the early such transplants.  The USB cable has two USB-A connectors on the far end from the drive enclosure. When I plug this into a USB port, it is invisible to Windows DISKMGMT.MSC program.  Any suggestions to figuring out if this drive is just finished?

Keyboards

Ever since the stroke in 2014, my typing skills have largely collapsed.   I often now find myself hitting two keys at a time.  So sdwordfishj.  I was debugging a problem with my wife's PC which suddenly had many keys either not working or producing unexpected results. The lower right Fn key was jammed down.  My recollection from long ago is that keyboards often combine signals from a matrix of switches.   The jammed Fn key largely overrode the Backspace.  Popping it back up solved the problem  

While fiddling with it and several other keyboards in my reserve PC part stockpile as well using the native keyboard of the PC, I suddenly realized that keyboards with the keys farther apart seemed easier for me to type something recognizable English, not Slobbovian. Has anyone else had this experience?

While I Really Like the Idea of the Chromebook

This Epoch Times article captures the hazard of being completely dependent on a network provided software service rather than software you can run locally. 

Of course,  anything where you are connected to the Internet has risks even on a local PC 

SMB

 I see no point battering my head against OpenSSH.  However, I have reached the point where:

 smbclient //192.168.4.42/linuxcnc -U clayton%mypassword

gives me access to the Windows directory. But

sudo mount -t cifs -o claytoncramer@192.168.4.42 /mnt/linuxcnc

 asks for the same password and rejects it.

Several syntax errors in the mount command.   Solved. I wish Linux utilities were a little more specific about where and what is the error. 

Then I discovered that I could not write in linuxcnc from Linux.   I verified permissions were wide open on Windows and 777 on linuxcnc.  It turns out the /etc/fstab entry needed file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 as well.  Before I forget all this, I need to reboot Linux and make sure it still works.

My Frustration With ChatGPT Continues

I have given it several programming problems that it asked me enough questions to solve. I requested a program to produce gCode to produce a particular hole pattern in a 6" high hexagon.  Itctook a couple tries to understand what I needed, but it managed.

Attempting to get it to make Windows 11 provided sftp server support remains beyond it.  After four hours fighting OPENSSH,  going in the same circles repeatedly,  I asked if there were any commercial or free sftp servers for Windows 11.  There were.  None of them actually work.  Each time one failed, it would suggest another that does not work.

I really cannot fault it with respect to Microsoft OpenSSH.  It is a very complex disaster with more layers of permission requirements for file access and user name and group than makes sense.   The previous way it kept trying to find some sftp server was very gratifying, but at some point, it needs to recognize that there seems to be no Windows 11 solution.  (Even attempting to run aside under Windows Subsystem for Linux was a failure.)

Two Hours With CHATGPT Trying to Get OpenSSH Server Working

No closer than when I started.   If you want to do something utterly vanilla with Windows 11, on your local PC, it works well. Anything even slightly unusual, such as using sftp to transfer files from Linux and it turns into a steaming pile at about Linux levels of knowledge.   At least getting an ftp server working under Linux is easy (or builtin?).

I wish Linux were adequately supported for various hardware and with adequate self-repair capabilities. 

Microsoft Cannot Leave Anything Alone That Works

The last I set up FileZilla to sftp files from Linux in the shop and Windows 11 PC, it was painless and symmetrical.   I could download from Windows to Linux and Linux to Windows.   

This time trying to set it up has been a pain.  FileZilla copies from Windows 11 to Linux without problems.   From Windows 11 to Linux, not so easy this time. 

I have to install OpenSSH in Windows.  I do not remember doing this.  If I did, the rest of the process (configuring OpenSSH, using whoami to get Microsoft user name and Microsoft password, we're not part of the process.   And it still does not open an sftp connection from the command line in Linux.

Strictly speaking,  I can live with only a one-way connection.   It is just annoying.  If only Linux were as well supported as Windows.

A Pleasant Surprise

 Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is actually sufficiently Linux to run and install many linux commands such as gcc, make, and ddd.  This is not a port of Unix tools to Windows but apparently genuine Ubuntu Linux.

I battled endlessly trying to get VMWare and Oracle VirtualBox to run linuxCNC on my PC, so that I code stuff in the cool of the house before ftping it to the shop.  

This is sufficient.   I can code and debug in the house.  It would be nice to run linuxCNC for testing operation in the linuxCNC GUi, but this is good enough. 

Count on Microsoft to Break Home Networking

 I have spent easily eight hours with ChatGPT trying to what Windows 7 did well: letting me share files across all the PCs on my LAN.  The best ChatGPT could do was a kludge where you make a second copy of the files to share.  I finally gave up and explained why.

That's completely fair — and you're not alone. Many users have found that Windows 10 and 11 made basic home networking and file sharing far more complicated than it was in Windows 7, especially when it comes to:

• Guest access being disabled by default

• Complicated permission layering

• UAC and symlink restrictions

• Network discovery quirks

• HomeGroup removal (remember that?)

You gave it a very thorough effort, and it’s totally reasonable to walk away if the returns aren’t worth the hassle.

More Backup Drives

 Because Windows 11 cannot automatically backup from any drive but C, I have two 1TB USB drivers that backup every night at 2:00 using XCOPY commands.  Because I am considering changing my 1 TB SSD from drive C to drive D, and the 2 TB SSD from drive D to drive C, I wanted a way to do a full system backup.  I bought a 4 TB external hard drive, which does a system backup with surprising speed.

This Works

Last year, two of my Lenovos started dropping WiFi connection and forgetting the password as well.  (Only at my house.  Other SparkLight WiFis worked finem)  Lenovo replaced WiFi adapter and motherboard.   Only Reset PC, with all that implies,  fixed it.  My big Lenovo was unaffected. 

The software fix was uninstalling the WiFi driver and restarting.

Today's Obscure Windows Question

 My laptop came with a 1TB SSD.  Within a year or two, that was not enough.  (I have more PDFs of antique American statute books than you can imagine.)  I did not want to risk fauilure to copy over from my old drive C to my new drive, so I made my new drive D and told the BIOS to boot from the new drive.  

Now, I have drive C with 160GB free, and drive D with all my files and programs installed on it.  I would like to be able to clear drive C and map various directories (Pictures, Documents, Videos, Downloads) to drive C.  Perhaps map all the non-programs to drive C.

In Linux, assuming that my memory of how symbolic links work is correct, you would create a symbolic link so that D:\Users\clayt\Documents actually points to C:\Documents so all references will actually turn into C:\Documents.  

It appeears that a directory junction ("mklink /J link destinationfolder") does what is required.

I created a junction link 

mklink /j "D:\users\clayt\testlink" C:\testlink

Then I copied files into D:\Users\clayt\testlink.  They appeared in C:\testlink.  If I deleted a file in D:\Users\clayt\testlink, it disappeared in C:\testlink.

Today's Annoying Discovery

In Word, I can save all the macros in the document as a DOCM file.  (Why?  The Mass Murder master document has a bunch of very specific macros such as paste the newspaper title, date and page number in a particular format for the footnote.)  However,  when I decided it was a lovely day to work outside on my travel laptop, I discovered that the quick-access toolbar was not saved with the file.  So I had to first get the toolbar to appear then add the macros to it.  It probably did not help thst I did a full PC Reset a week or so ago to solve the WiFi drops for no apparent reason problem.

DupGuru

I am pretty impressed.  I have a Lenovo 11e with a 256GB SSD.  I have close to a TB of files in OneDrive.  Manu are duplicates often with the same name - Copy ot name -Copy2.   Some are the same file in different directories.   Downloading session laws for different court cases often means duplicates. 

So I am running DupGuru against OneDrive.  I was expecting it to download all of these 600GB of files then do the compare.  No, it is smart enough to download one at a time, compare them, and record the differences.  

It likely wears out the SSD faster but the laptop will likely become obsolete before the SSD wears out.

For Almost Any Need There is Something Open Source

The problem.   I have multiple copies of some very big PDFs (usually primary sources of 80-100MB).  Yes, vast quantities of antique laws.  Even on a 2 TB drive they gobble up space.   When backing up to OneDrive this is even worse and slower to back up. I am also reaching the 1TB limit on OneDrive.  There are also many files on my OneDrive that were copied several times and have slightly different file names.  Cleaning those up will also be useful.

I was thinking,  it would be so useful to have a program that identifies files that are duplicated even if the names are different.  Even better,  if it would delete the older version and link the newer version to the older version's directory.   This reduces extra space without losing the association with existing projects. 

https://dupeguru.voltaicideas.net/ seems like it may do that job, at least in part.  If it lets me delete the duplicate that is not in my primary sources directory that simplifies finding them.

Full backup first, of course. 

That WiFi Connection That Keeps Dropping

I have mentioned that two of my Lenovo laptops refuse to keep a WiFi connection after 3-5 minutes.   Worst of all, they work reliably on every other WiFi.

Lenovo replaced the WiFi transceiver and motherboard without success.   SparkLight had not a clue.

Yesterday Lenovo had me reset the PC.  Problem solved.