JDPFu.com 2025

FTP, File Transfer Protocol, has been around since the beginning of the internet in the early 1970s. It transfered files when the internet was a safer, more trusting, place. That isn’t the case anymore. Using FTP to host files is probably a bad idea for almost everyone. FTP is like Telnet. No encryption is used for anything. These days, we know that is bad.

In the mid-1990s most organizations stopped using telnet and switched to ssh, secure shell. FTP needs to be replaced for the same reasons. Below I’ll describe why very few people should use plain FTP anymore to remotely access files.

About a month ago, an editor at a large blog website followed one of my links in a comment there back here and offered to republish the story. I was already seeing increased traffic from that link on their site – like 10x more than my normal daily traffic – and it scared me. I don’t have the bandwidth to handle that sort of traffic and my Ruby on Rails blog software … er … pretty much sucks from a scalability perspective. What did I do?

May 2021 Update

• Added kernel, header, module removed command to purge them from APT.


• Clarified /forcefsck options, slightly.

Jan 2020 Update
A little cleanup.

June 2018 Update
The big ideas below haven’t changed. Really the main change is to using apt instead of aptitude or apt-get for package management. apt is a newer, simpler, front-end to apt-get that does some housekeeping things automatically. I’ve been using apt for about 2 yrs.

Nov 2015 Update
If you want 5 years of support for your Ubuntu system, then it is important to check the Ubuntu Release Support webpage to verify the official support dates. For example,

• 14.04.1 support ends April 2019
• 14.04.2 support ends August 2016
• 14.04.3 support ends August 2016
• 15.10 support ends July 2016
  What does this mean?
  Use aptitude update on 14.04.1 systems to maintain the LTS support. If aptitude dist-update is used, then support time is significantly reduced. For a desktop that will be updated to 16.04 LTS, it probably doesn’t matter. For a server that will not be update before August 2016, this is very important.

2014 Update
After years of using apt-get, I’ve finally seen the aptitude light. Aptitude has solved a few dependency problems that apt-get puked over. It is smarter. Now I’m recommending that aptitude be used over apt-get. That is the only change below and for almost every common use, swapping apt-get for aptitude is the only change. That is the situation in this article. I did not update any comments to reflect this change. Learn more about aptitude from the Debian Wiki.

2013 Update
With newer Linux installs, there has been a huge problem with old kernels not being cleaned up automatically. For some people, this has caused their package manager to get stuck with an out of storage error. Until they can remove the issue, their system is stuck in APT-Hell. Not good at all. This article has been updated to add cleaning up kernels to the list.

Original Article Continues

I decided to write this entry after reading an article over a Lifehacker by Whitson Gordon titled What Kind of Maintenance Do I Need to Do on My Windows PC.

What kind of maintenance do I need to do on my Ubuntu/Debian/APT-based PC? Good question. It is pretty simple … for desktops. This article is for APT-based desktop system maintenance, NOT for Linux servers. Linux servers need just a little more love to stay happy. I haven’t used RPM-based distros in many years, so I’m not comfortable providing commands to accomplish the things you need to do, but the methods will be similar.

Let’s get started.

Install System and Application Patches/Updates

This will patch the OS and all your applications.

$ sudo apt  update; sudo apt full-upgrade

Done.

Don’t worry. This only updates the current distro to new packages and new kernels. It will not install a new release. If you need to stay on the current kernel, use

sudo apt safe-upgrade

. I’ve needed this only a few times in 15+ yrs of being a Linux administrator.

The apt manpage is pretty good and explains the subtle differences between upgrade, safe-upgrade and full-upgrade options. man apt will show it.

Read about more tips below.

Adobe has decided to stop development for their fairly new Adobe-AIR platform on desktop Linux. For some reason, they will continue development on Android. Huh? Doesn’t Adobe know that Android is Linux?

AIR on 64-bit Linux Sucked

I tried AdobeAIR on a 64-bit Linux desktop about a yr ago to try a stock tracking app. It was slow and heavy so I removed it. Where I work, we dislike proprietary solutions that force vendor lock-in. AIR will not be installed on any of our machines regardless of OS and we advise our clients of the issues with AIR and all proprietary tools. The same applies to Silverlight. We won’t install it here and recommend that our clients do not as well. I would remove Flash if there wouldn’t be a revolt and I’ve already removed Adobe Acrobat from all our systems. We use alternatives with better security (or just fewer attackers). Adobe management doesn’t seem to understand how to build software that can be secure. They certainly haven’t shown a desire to do this based on the number of unfixed zero day exploits published continuously.

The folks over at PenDriveLinux have been busy. They have a new version of their multi-boot creation tool for flash drives, YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer). YUMI-0.0.1.7.exe is the current released version, replacing MultibootISO.

The MultibootISO tool never worked for me. I was using unetbootin to load a single ISO onto a single flash drive, but often I’ve needed gparted, then DBAN, then PARTIMG, then an full Linux like Ubuntu 10.04 or Puppy or TinyCore. With YUMI, you can have all of those on a single flash drive and select which to use at boot time. It seems to work fine.

They finally added an Unknown ISO option so ANY ISO you have with a distro can be added to the boot menus. The boot-up screens are automatically organized nicely by type of tool.

I just placed about 5 ISO files onto a single 2GB flash drive. As I write this, Android-x86 is booting on a netbook. SWEET! I can’t wait to try it out for an hour or so before trying out the new MeeGo x86 release. As long-time readers know, I run Maemo today, so MeeGo would be the next update for that device.

Well, I’ve attempted to boot 3 different OSes.

1. MeeGo failed almost immediately.
2. Lubuntu displayed the boot screen, asked for a language and eventually failed.
3. Android x86 was left to boot for over 30 minutes – the ……………. just kept coming.

The gparted ISO that I specified didn’t show up in the boot menu – I used a different ISO at the 3rd decimal point – mine was newer. I probably should have put it into the Unknown ISO group.

Some Good News

SpinRite did work perfectly. It is running now across all the partitions to refresh any lazy bits.
I moved the gparted ISO into the Unknown ISO group. Hopefully, it will work better there.

Many of us backup important data to optical disks like CDROM or DVD media. Over time, that media is known to fail. This means that every 5-10 years, a plan to migrate all the critical data to newer media needs to be included. It also means that when data is stored to this type of media, steps should be taken to protect the data. Recently, I had a need to pull some data, old family movies, from a DVD. The movies were stored as xvid/mp3 data inside an AVI container. Anyway, after loading the disk onto a network drive, the movie began playing, then abruptly stopped about 2 minutes into the hour long movie. I have other copies on other media … somewhere, but this would be a good opportunity to try a contingency plan that I’ve been using for at least 10 years.

Read more below.

Today I wanted to add another OS to a netbook, an Asus Eee. My common practice is to boot a gparted ISO from a USB flash drive, move some data and partitions around and add a new logical partition to the end of the extended partition space. Write everything back out to disk. Then I’d boot the install disk/ISO and install to that newly created partition. Life was good, usually.

Today, I was greeted with gparted showing unallocated for the entire drive, all 160GB – unallocated. Ouch. This is the first time I’ve had partition table issues, ever, in over 20 yrs.

Today I was notified by my DNS provider that someone had requested the password be reset. They sent the reset link in the email on file and told me the IP address of the requester – in this case it was from Taipei, Taiwan 112. Good thing the DNS guys have a correct email address for me, huh? I suspect they hacked the ISP email address which I haven’t used in about … 10 years. Sometimes you get lucky. DNS – Domain Name Service is the telephone book of the internet. Learn more about DNS from Wikipedia.

• I won’t be resetting that password anytime soon. It is fairly long and random.
• I will be blocking all access to this blog from that ISP, however.

Subnet Blocked

Below is the email that we just received concerning the long promised Silicon Dust HD HomeRun Prime Networked QAM cable recorder with CableCARD decryption. It supports Multistream-CableCARDs (m-cards).

It appears this device will only with with Windows7 Media Center due to DRM requirements for CableCARD compatibility. That could be an issue for many Linux users.

HDHomeRun® PRIME™ News…

You signed up to receive HDHomeRun PRIME news on our website and thought we had forgotten about you? Not at all…
Today’s big news – the HDHomeRun PRIME just became available for pre-order!

HDHomeRun PRIME:

• Premium digital cable TV for your PCs
• Triple tuner – watch/record three channels at once from one or multiple computers
• CableCARD – all the digital cable channels you subscribe to, including HD and premium channels in 100% digital quality
• Windows 7 Windows Media Center – full featured DVR
• XBOX 360 – extend Windows 7 Windows Media Center to your big screen through your XBOX 360
• More information: HDHomeRun PRIME and HDHR3-CC
• Pre-ordering through NewEgg: HDHomeRun PRIME

HDHomeRun PRIME 6CC:

• Home-theater form factor – add 6 premium cable TV tuners to your home theater system
• More information: HDHomeRun PRIME and HDHR3-6CC
• Pre-ordering for the 6CC will be online in the coming week

Pre-ordering notes:
Orders will be fulfilled by NewEgg in the order in which they are received for each model. Your credit card will not be charged until near the ship date.
Both models are expected to begin shipping in volume in July, with the 6-tuner model expected to ship a little ahead of the 3-tuner model.

Ted H – CEO
Silicondust Inc. USA

Questions

There are a few questions that this email doesn’t answer:

1. Will the CableCARD decryption work with MythTV, GB-PVR, BeyondTV, SnapStream and other non-MS-Windows Media Center solutions?
2. Linux systems supported?
3. Can recordings be archived for playback by non-DRM devices?

Network Upgrade May Be Needed

The tuner does have GigE networking (1000 base-tx), which is needed to stream 3 full HD programs. If you get this device, you’ll need a GigE switch and may need a GigE router to avoid dropped packets on your network. The good news is that GigE switches are $20 and work just fine. Many WiFi routers that support 802.11n include GigE switches, but you’ll want to check yours, since 50% are still only 100base-t. Older wifi routers with 802.11g are are almost always 100base-t. If you don’t know networking, just get a GigE router and it will be easier. No switch needed.

Pricing

3 Tuner Model

I just looked at Newegg and the HDHR3-CC (3 tuner model) is $250 + $7 shipping. It also lists only Windows7 as the supported OS. No others.

6 Tuner Model

NewEgg doesn’t have a page for the 6-tuner model mentioned in the email above.

I’ve been a Skype user for many years. I’ve even had the paid subscription for months at a time. Generally, it did what I needed better than other solutions, until I tried to make it my home phone too. That worked, but not as well (quality) as I’d like.

Anyway, I find myself trying to get the latest versions of Skype for my systems this morning and ran into a few issues.

Here are things that didn’t work for me – for a normal user, these would be show stoppers.