Could be QOS or packet shaping going on at your ISP, or just throttling or congestion. Speed tests only really test for typical traffic patterns, so will give you a warped view: it certainly disagrees with your observed measurements. There are lots of factors that can affect how quickly traffic passes between two hosts on the internet, but domestic broadband is generally the worst of all worlds - you usually share bandwidth with other subscribers, and although the throughput can be quite good, the latency and error rate can be quite bad, and you can get fragmentation as frame sizes can differ between network segments, causing buffering especially when congestion is occurring. Your ISP might also have deprioritised your type of traffic, or they might be dropping packets, which causes retries, and thus slows your connection down.

Yep can confirm. I was a computer technician in a UK university throughout the 1990’s, and we had 8 labs with PCs and Macs, and at the very beginning, BBC Micros, Atari STs, and even Sun SparcStations. Not sure I miss it - certainly not the hassles with configuring interrupts on expansion boards, getting CD-ROMs working on “older” PCs, juggling conflicting DOS config.sys and autoexec.bat configs, or self-combusting mice. I did enjoy it, though - being right there as the World Wide Web was born, and each new year brought faster CPUs, better colour graphics, and progressively worse versions of Windows…

Had to do some work with SuSE post Novell acquisition for a customer. IIRC the package manager is a bit odd, but I haven’t looked at it in what nearly 15 years, so I can’t really remember much about it. What I CAN remember involved running packet traces using Wireshark - it was mostly network problems, I think, so nothing to do with SuSE. It was certainly very popular in Europe, though I have no idea what they’re doing these days!

You never know … maybe THIS year!

The way windoze 11 is going - people really hating it - you never know, but I’m not holding my breath. Linux is still very niche, and people are wary of “strange” “new” things, especially FREE ones - where’s the catch? I’ve seen it surge and blossom over the years, but it’s still got a really tiny install base (as long as you don’t count Android and embedded tech, where the OS and kernel are largely irrelevant to the user). But I don’t see people moving over to Linux in droves any time soon, really: I’ve seen too much.

For context, I’ve been using it since [dredges up old memories] slackware was new, so about 1994, when a work colleague and I installed it (off about 20 floppies) onto an old 386sx PC with probably 4MB of RAM. Been using it ever since - and from Red Hat 4 onwards (about 1999) it’s been my only OS on my own computers. I’ve always preferred it, and I’ve seen it grow in so many ways - I’d still use it if it was illegal. I haven’t tried EVERY distro, but I have tried most. These days I mostly stick with Debian or Debian-based distro’s (I’m currently on Mint LMDE).

Don’t have any experience with this particular model, but I have found that with most printers on Mint you don’t have to “do” anything at all - if it’s on the network or plugged into the USB, the system will find it and install a driver automatically. I’ve used MANY printers with Linux over the years, and some were a right PITA to set up, but so far all the printers I’ve tried with mint have “just worked”. The only problem I’ve had recently was that when I updated to the Debian Trixie based LMDE 7, a bug in CUPS misconfigures EPSON ET2860 when automatically discovered, but it still works on stock Mint 22.3 without manual intervention. The fix is to manually add it, rather than accepting the auto discovered one, so it’s a problem with the discovery function, not drivers, and I suspect it’s due to some kind of quirk with this printer’s firmware that defines how it interacts to discovery queries on the local LAN.

Yeah it was wild, but I suspect few orgs do things that way any more.

You mean in the context of high availability?

tl;dr: It’s to test if the cluster fail-over configuration is working properly.

So this was before things like Kubernetes or Terraform were a thing, so had to be done by the operating system itself. The simplest HA cluster is made of two nodes, one in “active node”, the other “passive”. The active node does all the work, and the passive node just keeps its data synchronised with the active node. I used to use DRBD for this, which is a system for copying writes to the active node over a network link to the passive node. That only gives you a “second, up-to-date copy” which is not that useful on its own - you also need a way to automatically switch over to using the passive node if the active one “dies”, and for that I used to use “heartbeat”, which simply passes packets back and forth between the two cluster members - ping-pong style - and if the passive node notices that the active node hasn’t sent its scheduled packet for, say, 10 seconds, it cuts it off the current active node (kills it), and promotes itself to the active role, thus preserving the service. Killing the “other node” is necessary to stop data corruption or user requests going to a node that can’t actually service them, and is called STONITH - Shoot The Other Node In The Head. STONITH can involve an electronically controlled switch, which literally cuts off power to the “other” node, or can isolate it on the network, by shutting down its network ports on the switch, or in a VM setup, sending a notification to the hypervisor to kill the VM.

The reason you need to be able to kill the kernel on the active node, is that when you manually shut down the active node, it automatically informs the passive node that it’s going down, known as an “orderly fail-over”, and you’re not actually testing if the heartbeat fail-over works, you’re just testing an orderly fail-over. Killing the active node’s kernel tests that the passive node is properly configured to take over during a catastrophic failure of the active node. You can watch the heartbeat status go from “up” to “down”, and then see the passive node decide to take over, promote itself and bring up its services, and begin processing requests.

To make sure it’s all working, you need to test orderly fail-overs first, from both nodes, then test disorderly fail-overs both ways, by using the kernel gun on the active node.

Things moved on from Heartbeat-based HA clusters to multimode clusters managed by Corosync and other software, enabling other strategies to be employed. This was eventually supplanted by “orchestration” systems like Kubernetes, and proprietary Virtual Cloud systems that move this functionality to the platform rather than the operating system.

Nah man. “kill” doesn’t shut the system down quickly. This is the “instant death” way - the kernel reset gun - no shutdown scripts, no disk sync, just reset to BIOS boot sequence, instantly:

As root:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq

echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger

If you change out the “b” in the second command for “o” it will just halt the kernel instead of rebooting. Still switched on, but the system is doing absolutely nothing.

I used to use this trick all the time to test high availability server clusters.

Sounds great, look forward to seeing that. After using it a bit more, another thing occurred to me - there’s no way to open arbitrary files. I don’t use MarkDown for “just notes” or “just one thing”, I keep markdown files all over the place. I had set the repository directory to be that of my blog posts during first run, but then I can’t open things in my notes directory or documents folder, and I can’t see anywhere in the settings dialogue to change it. Am I missing something?

Yeah “but not as annoying” lol. No idea what you mean about jeeps: I’m in the UK, and not a car enthusiast either.

Seems quite good - I’ve tried a LOT of MarkDown editors over the years, but until quite recently, I’d stuck with Zettlr for a long time. I’ve recently reinstalled my laptop, which made me look for alternatives to some software, and I’ve been playing round with MarkText for the last few days, which seems nice.

HelixNotes is definitely good - if I had to drop MarkText, I think I could get on well with it. I like that they have a debian repository, so I can keep it updated with the usual system update software. I downloaded the AppImage as a quick test, but it didn’t work because it was compiled against an old version of glibc.

The only thing I don’t like so far is the format toolbar is at the bottom of the editor screen, and I haven’t found a way to move it.

What about Microsoft Bob? Doesn’t that count as their first attempt?

It didn’t quite work like that. They used to arrive boxed in batches. The keyboards were worth about £100 back then - so would be worth a lot more in today’s money - and they were looked after with care whilst in transit. It was the end users (in offices) that put the gunk there.

Can confirm. Back at the beginning of my IT career (mid 1980’s), I worked as a temp for a computer manufacturer in their refurb repairs department. In those days, kit was so expensive that everything got repaired if it went wrong, and one of my jobs was repairing keyboards - PC keyboards, and dumb terminal ones - and the first part of the process was stripping and cleaning them. There was a lot more room for crumbs and dust back then, too, and man did they get full. Crumbs, staples, paper clips, hair grips, all sorts. I had literal mould growing in some of them. I remember the ones coming in from Italy were the worst for that for some reason.

Well, it depends what you call spam, how well known your server is (are your email addresses spread far and wide on the web or only known to a couple of people) but a lot of spam is automated and algorithmic, so most servers will be showered with speculative mail addressed to likely mailboxes - which your server still has to process, if only to bounce the message; if you have antispam measures, your server can just drop the connection when it detects a spammy sender (e.g. from an address on a black or greylist). I’m not currently running any mail servers, but a few years back when I did, I used to get about 80% spam incoming.

The list is immense, and I didn’t want to clutter my post with all the details. So just listing off things that spring to mind (because I don’t know what OP doesn’t know):

• Choosing an MTA - sendmail, postfix, exim, etc. and why you might choose one over the others
• Firewall settings
• Software/package management on your chosen distro
• Learning about DNS:
  • Host it - yourself via BIND
  • Or via a DNS service provider
  • DNS record types
    • Domains
    • Subdomains
    • A records/CNAMEs
    • MX records
    • Mail authority records - SPF’s
    • Mail encryption records - DKIM
• Spam filtering, anti-virus
• Learning how to configure your MTA, which requires learning:
  • the configuration file language your MTA uses
  • what all the options mean and what they do
  • what the bare minimum options are to get up and running
  • how to make sure your configuration is secure and won’t be exploitable by bad actors
  • how mail really gets delivered
  • how to setup secure smtp
  • how to set up SPFs
  • troubleshooting why GMAIL or Microsoft won’t accept your mail
  • troubleshooting why GMAIL or Microsoft have stopped accepting your mail
  • dealing with blacklists/greylists when someone sends too many messages, or something that “looks too spammy”
• Mail hosting pitfalls
  • Being an open relay
  • Rate limiting
  • Reputation management
  • Vulnerabilities that let a hacker take over your server
  • Resource management - disk, memory, processes, queues, etc.
  • Downtime when you need to do updates
  • Downtime if you change your DNS configuration

I’ve definitely missed some stuff, and each of those things requires knowing other stuff too, so you can see that it’s really a pretty deep subject. This is precisely why not many people self-host email themselves these days - the big guys have made it harder and harder to do so, in the name of eradicating spam, which they themselves are the biggest vectors for.

I’d suggest you start with a simple static web server if you’re looking for a good beginner project. Use something like Nginx, and just set it up on your local network at first, then work out how to harden it, and open it up to the real internet. There’s a lot less to learn for this usage case, and it’s less likely to get you into trouble.

I say that, because, after reading through the thread, it seems you are hoping to find an (educational) use for an old computer. I did Linux and Unix admin professionally for 15 years, for some famous brands. I would NOT recommend setting up a mail server as a first project - it’s complex in ways you will never expect, and will require learning skills and knowledge that are very specific and you literally can’t “start small and build up” because a lot of the things you don’t know yet will get you into big trouble. Essentially, it’s not too hard to set up the server software, and your hardware is certainly capable of running this task, but making it safe and secure IS hard these days - especially with all the encryption and anti-spam setups you have to learn how to do.

Listening to “Down in a Hole” by Alice in Chains whilst reading this… seems to fit. Thanks for this. Food for thought.

Yep. Currently working through Autistic Burnout, and one of my symptoms is Dissociation. Whenever I’m slightly stressed or concentrate hard on something, it kicks in. My head feels a bit “spinny”, but I’m not dizzy; I feel a bit “high”, but without the pleasant buzz of weed; when I move around, I kind of feel like a floating balloon on a string being pulled round by a toddler. My interoception (internal sense) is terrible at the moment, so I don’t get body maintenance signals like need to pee or drink, until I’m almost desperate, and I feel emotionally numb - I mostly seem to only “feel” strong negative emotions, positive ones if felt at all are pretty distant. I also get visual snow - like TV static in my vision - and a “laggy” feeling, which is often independent of, but somehow connected with the dissociation, which feels like living in a 3D game with too low a frame rate - my perception of my movement becomes stuttered, almost like there is a strobe light on, and it feels like I’m moving through treacle. It’s a bundle of fun.

Edit: I’d also intended to say, but I got distracted by my cat asking for food, that I hope you feel better soon. I’m sorry you are having to live through this. I find for me, it takes a few days to a week to wear off after I’ve been stressed - it seems to peak a day or so later, and then peter out over a number of days, as long as I avoid stress. I hope you can avoid your trigger.