erm, technical issues... please stand by

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that a host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is
SHA256:uN0VztksCsDhcc0u9e8BujQXVUpKZIDTMczCvj4tD2s.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /home/USER/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending RSA key in /home/USER/.ssh/known_hosts:2
Host key for github.com has changed and you have requested strict checking.
Host key verification failed.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

remove

ssh-keygen -R github.com

get new

ssh -T git@github.com

The authenticity of host 'github.com (20.26.156.215)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:+DiY3wv3V6TuJJhbpZ3sF/zLDA0zP3SvHdkr3UvCOqU.
This key is not known by any other names.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'github.com' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).


~/projects/javascript/Anagram Shark Attack JS-E $ git push
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

then

~/projects/javascript/Anagram Shark Attack JS-E $ ssh -T git@github.com
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).

check the github repo

git remote -v
origin  git@github.com:robgithub/AnagramSharkAttackJS-E.git (fetch)
origin  git@github.com:robgithub/AnagramSharkAttackJS-E.git (push)

log on to github. Go to profile/settings/SSH keys Add the key from

~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

now

ssh -T git@github.com
Enter passphrase for key '/home/USER/.ssh/id_rsa': 
Hi robgithub! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

Which actually means it works, it just will not allow you to actually ssh into a shell on github.

Copying and ISO to USB with cp

Brief intro. This blog post was supposed to be written in 2024, but it got lost somewhere.

As such this blog post is going to be a dump of my notes and is really only here as a reference for me (see disclaimer at the bottom of the page regarding not being me).

I came across a post that notes that creating a bootable USB doesn't need a GUI like unetbootin or even dd

forums.gentoo.org post

Intrigued I downloaded Boot Repair , which had been linked from help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

The download from Sourceforge was painful for a 2.5G file.

Note to self: avoid Sourceforge. Especially for large files. The download actually hung at 95% and trying again started optimistically but quickly went down hill ... and then up hill and down and FFS! is this 2024?

cp file.iso /dev/sdX

where sdX is my usb drive found by running

lsblk

I like lsblk because it shows both unmounted devices and mounted devices along with their mount points.

then I used dd to make a block for block copy of the device

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/tmp/file1.iso.dd

this file is that same size as the drive, which luckily is "only" 4 GB

then I did my normal dd to create a bootable usb

dd of=~/Downloads/boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso  if=/dev/sdX

then I dd'ed that

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/tmp/file2.iso.dd

and did a binary compare via md5sum

md5sum /tmp/file1.iso.dd
md5sum /tmp/file2.iso.dd

my notes get a bit garbled at this point and is reason for not posting sooner

I enter the Bios, set usb 1st boot, get LM logo (linux Mint), get failed to find something tries to boot from DHCP?

reboot, not recognised, power off/on not recognised

put in different machine not recognised !!

sort of, it is there

dd if=~/Downloads/boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso of=/dev/sde
dd: failed to open '/dev/sde': No medium found

cfdisk /dev/sde
cfdisk: cannot open /dev/sde: No medium found
fdisk -l /dev/sde
fdisk: cannot open /dev/sde: No medium found

dmesg
[ 1376.989837] usb 1-2: new high-speed USB device number 7 using xhci_hcd
[ 1377.129194] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=090c, idProduct=3000, bcdDevice= 1.00
[ 1377.129211] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 1377.129219] usb 1-2: Product: SM3255AA MEMORY BAR 
[ 1377.129225] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Silicon Motion,Inc. 
[ 1377.131191] usb-storage 1-2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 1377.131612] scsi host4: usb-storage 1-2:1.0
[ 1378.159394] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access              USB MEMORY BAR   1000 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[ 1378.160647] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Media removed, stopped polling
[ 1378.160790] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
[ 1378.161515] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk

lsblk
sde      8:64   1     0B  0 disk

SIZE 0B AGHhhhh!!

This is a novelty USB from 2010, Lucasfilms Luke in Hoth gear :( but I think its dead, that seems to be the majority consensus. The only dissenting votes are when they have unplugged and replugged multiple times and that feels like hitting a CRT TV (which I used to have to do, and it worked)

I gave it one last chance and plugged it into a very old window 10 machine...

It gave a announcement of USB device noise but the LED on the stick was not flashing :(

new drive, cp not dd boot using legacy mode gets to desk top of Linux Mint

and, it finds nothing, nada, nothing, no option to check of fix anything, but it did note the was encrypted drives which is true

but in Linux Mint desktop, I can see the encrypted drive and the boot drive. Mount the boot drive and see the normal grub/efi files

backed up my /home files from the encrypted drive and then...

Looked at the boot-repair report

=> No boot loader is installed in the MBR of /dev/nvme0n1

which sounds bad ( but is standard ) and although it lists a lot of stuff, there were no other errors or red flags.

Interestingly and in line with something another thread was discussing about a machine going into the BIOS after three reboots I found that this Dell laptop does exactly that, fails to boot three times, restarting completely on each failure.

Holding down shift did nothing, had to wait for it reboot (automatically) three times to go into the bios and then manually change the boot order

Time to get the Ubuntu live cd/iso

tried a few things, gave up formatted everything, scorched earth style!

note to self: do not leave blogs unblogged or expect this crap