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teceem: I know about lightning - I was just wondering if the rain had anything to do with it. ;-)
Apologies! Well, if it doesn't rain inside your house (and more specifically over your computer), i guess you should be fine. :P

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teceem: My parents (small town) used to unplug things - but I've been living in a city for decades and because of the many taller buildings around, lightning strike is very improbable. I never have to worry about weather conditions.
Even if there isn't a direct strike on your house, you may still be affected from a nearby lightning strike. The probability is certainly low, so you choose whether you live with the risk involved or unplug everything.

That said, thunderstorms in my hometown are usually rare, but depending on the season we may still see hundreds to thousands nearby strikes for the duration of a storm. During such events, i always disconnect everything from the mains and just sit by the window to enjoy the storm.
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dtgreene: * Raspberry Pi 4: Leave on. The Pi has no power button (except the Pi 400), and I believe it doesn't support sleep mode, but it uses up much less electricity than other computing devices.
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Carradice: What do you use the Raspberry for? Emulators? As a Chromecast equivalent? I have been wondering about these devices. I guess it would be even possible to play remotely with Steam link or Geforce?
I actually use it for Zoom and Jitsi.

(Note that I'll probably be using it less once in-person events resume, but that may still take a while.)
Depends.

If I am going to be using it in an hour or two: I seed open source. Always seed open source.
If I am not going to be using it very soon: I shut it down.
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vv221: This is not how computer hardware works. Their components get wear out by power cycles, not by the time they spend in use.
Constant power and the heat have nothing to do with it at all? I want that kind of high-tech stuff. Where do I get it?
Sleep, it's there for that precise reason.
For staying in the house, typically I flick on Xlockmore or Xscreensaver. If I'm not sure I'll be returning within 30 minutes, I might systemctrl suspend.

Extended periods and End of Day, I shut it off.
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vv221: This is not how computer hardware works. Their components get wear out by power cycles, not by the time they spend in use.
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DoomSooth: Constant power and the heat have nothing to do with it at all? I want that kind of high-tech stuff. Where do I get it?
heat is good at winter
Never been able to get the hibernate working properly the few times ive tried both on windows 7 and 10, so my current system?. I shutdown maybe every few days. Leave it on at random not connected to internet
Hybrid hibernate used to cause major issues with my laptop after Windows 10 reached a certain release level. It ranged from being unable to wakeup to essentially being frozen when trying to shut down or restart. Been perfectly fine since I disabled that years ago.

Basically leave in sleep and restart once a month. Standby mode is your friend for devices. Your device will last longer and contrary to what enviro nuts try and tell you, only costs you slightly extra during non winter months since the standby wattage goes towards heating your space. I'll gladly take the extra electricity cost if it means my devices last years longer vs if you constantly turn them off and on.
Post edited January 14, 2021 by Kabuto
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scientiae: Win10 has a very annoying log-in process.
Nope. It's wonderful. The optional (on by default) loading of startup applications already during the login screen is great. Makes booting up even faster when you have a fast computer and an SSD.

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scientiae: (WinXP, Win3.1)
You probably mean Win8.1? Win3.1 was not an operating system, per se. It was more of a graphical interface for the operating system at the time, MS-DOS. And loading Win3.1 was pretty fast even on old 386 computers. No network, no problems. (Network came with Win3.11/NT3.51.) It was when all this internet stuff and constant updates started to come with Win95/NT4 generation when things became slow.

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scientiae: there are all sorts of background processes taking the focus from the keyboard when I try to enter my password, to the point that the wireless keyboard will nearly always have a buffer-dump multiple of a single keypress when the log-in process returns.
Oh, that sounds annoying. If it is a desktop, you can set it to log in automatically. It's not secure in case someone physically breaks and enters your house, though. If it's a laptop, turn the loading of startup items already in the login screen off.

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scientiae: I also remove the CAT5 cable connecting it to the modem. Every time. (There are network protocols that wake up computers.
I hope you mean CAT5e, unless you have a 10/100 network. But why don't you turn off Wake on LAN from the BIOS if that worries you?

I use WOL all the time. I even have buttons on my phone's desktop to turn on various computers around the house and/or see their status. Just a simple icon that sends a magic packet to the selected mac address -- magic packet is basically just a mac address and a bunch of times the letter F. Turn off WOL and the NIC is not listening for a magic packet.

Shutting my computers down remotely with an easy button on phone's desktop is a bit trickier. But it's still quite easy with JuiceSSH's snippets -- you can make a desktop icon that runs a command via ssh. Easy peasy.

Just use encrypted connections if the security worries you.

Anyway, you can either learn to use the scary functions of your computer, or you can just turn them off. There's really no need to unplug the cable every time.
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scientiae: (WinXP, Win3.1)
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frogthroat: You probably mean Win8.1? Win3.1 was not an operating system, per se. It was more of a graphical interface for the operating system at the time, MS-DOS. And loading Win3.1 was pretty fast even on old 386 computers. No network, no problems. (Network came with Win3.11/NT3.51.) It was when all this internet stuff and constant updates started to come with Win95/NT4 generation when things became slow.
Windows 3.1 (and 95/98/ME) were horribly buggy and unstable. Yes, you might get decent performance, but you would also get random crashes. DOS was not much better; it was also a buggy mess.

Anyone used to older computers will probably remember how DOS was significantly less stable than the OSes and software commonly found on other computers like the Apple 2 family.

Or, anyone who used Linux in the early days will remember how much more stable (in terms of not crashing) it was than the mainstream proprietary operating systems.

(Anyone here use (pre OS X) Macintoshes back in the day? Were they more stable than DOS/Windows, or were they just as prone to crashes?)

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frogthroat: I use WOL all the time. I even have buttons on my phone's desktop to turn on various computers around the house and/or see their status. Just a simple icon that sends a magic packet to the selected mac address -- magic packet is basically just a mac address and a bunch of times the letter F. Turn off WOL and the NIC is not listening for a magic packet.

Shutting my computers down remotely with an easy button on phone's desktop is a bit trickier. But it's still quite easy with JuiceSSH's snippets -- you can make a desktop icon that runs a command via ssh. Easy peasy.
I'm wondering if there'd be a way to set up a Raspberry Pi, or even an ESP8266 or other microcontroller, so that, in response to an SSH request, it would:
* Check if a certain computer is awake. If not, wake it up.
* Regardless of whether the computer was awake when the connection was attempted, forward it to that computer.
(The other computer would be one that consumes significantly more powerful than the Pi or microcontroller while awake, and that supports a sleep mode; otherwise, doing this wouldn't make sense.)
Post edited January 14, 2021 by dtgreene
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dtgreene: Windows 3.1 (and 95/98/ME) were horribly buggy and unstable. Yes, you might get decent performance, but you would also get random crashes. DOS was not much better; it was also a buggy mess.
What on earth were you doing with them to get them unstable? OK, MS-DOS was not 4DOS, Linux or Netware, but it wasn't that unstable. As long as you didn't have any leaks since 16-bit OS was a bit bad at memory handling.

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dtgreene: Or, anyone who used Linux in the early days will remember how much more stable (in terms of not crashing) it was than the mainstream proprietary operating systems.
And completely immune to viruses. Remember the love letter virus? I don't. I read the mail, warned the person from whose email account I got it and then deleted the mail.

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dtgreene: I'm wondering if there'd be a way to set up a Raspberry Pi, or even an ESP8266 or other microcontroller, so that, in response to an SSH request, it would:
* Check if a certain computer is awake. If not, wake it up.
* Regardless of whether the computer was awake when the connection was attempted, forward it to that computer.
Yes.

Write a script that pings the computer you want to check. But I don't really see the point of RPi in between here. You can do that directly from whatever is sending that SSH request.

But you could do so much more with RPi. For example: get a controller for leds and build some buttons. A LED for each computer you have, connect to controller, controller to RPi, connect the buttons to the IO (or to the controller if you have a lot of computers). Set the RPi to periodically ping your computers. If there is a response, keep the LED on for that computer. If no response, turn the LED off. The button can be tied to a script that when pressed, it does the check and if there is no response, send a magic package, if there is a response, send a shutdown command. Then you can have a plate on your wall with LEDs showing you which computers are on and which are off, and a button under each LED so with a simple button press you can toggle the on/off state of each computer. If you don't like that you have the USB-cable and the network cable coming down from the plate, use WIFI so you have only the USB-cable for power.

Or, if you like the LEDs but don't want big physical buttons, forget about the buttons. Just buy an IR-receiver and connect it to the IO (check the voltages, you might need a resistor in between). Raspbian comes in-built with LIRC. Then just program any of your remote controls to do the same thing. This way you can have the LEDs on your wall with the IR-receiver so you can easily see which computer is on and which is off, and use a remote control to turn each of them on or off.

edit: if you don't have any extra remote from any old TV, VCR, DVD player, whatever, you can get those from flea markets, used electronics shops or eBay for pocket change.
Post edited January 14, 2021 by frogthroat
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dtgreene: Anyone used to older computers will probably remember how DOS was significantly less stable than the OSes and software commonly found on other computers like the Apple 2 family.
I've never experienced any instability with (MS) DOS. (3.3, 5.x, 6.x)
Post edited January 14, 2021 by teceem
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teceem: (MS) DOS. (3.3, 5.x, 6.x)
I see you're a man of culture. It was pretty awesome to have Edit with 5.0 so you didn't have to configure config.sys and autoexec.bat with Edlin like in 3.3.
low rated
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dtgreene: I'm wondering if there'd be a way to set up a Raspberry Pi, or even an ESP8266 or other microcontroller, so that, in response to an SSH request, it would:
* Check if a certain computer is awake. If not, wake it up.
* Regardless of whether the computer was awake when the connection was attempted, forward it to that computer.
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frogthroat: Yes.

Write a script that pings the computer you want to check. But I don't really see the point of RPi in between here. You can do that directly from whatever is sending that SSH request.

But you could do so much more with RPi. For example: get a controller for leds and build some buttons. A LED for each computer you have, connect to controller, controller to RPi, connect the buttons to the IO (or to the controller if you have a lot of computers). Set the RPi to periodically ping your computers. If there is a response, keep the LED on for that computer. If no response, turn the LED off. The button can be tied to a script that when pressed, it does the check and if there is no response, send a magic package, if there is a response, send a shutdown command. Then you can have a plate on your wall with LEDs showing you which computers are on and which are off, and a button under each
LED so with a simple button press you can toggle the on/off state of each computer. If you don't like that you have the USB-cable and the network cable coming down from the plate, use WIFI so you have only the USB-cable for power.

Or, if you like the LEDs but don't want big physical buttons, forget about the buttons. Just buy an IR-receiver and connect it to the IO (check the voltages, you might need a resistor in between). Raspbian comes in-built with LIRC. Then just program any of your remote controls to do the same thing. This way you can have the LEDs on your wall with the IR-receiver so you can easily see which computer is on and which is off, and use a remote control to turn each of them on or off.

edit: if you don't have any extra remote from any old TV, VCR, DVD player, whatever, you can get those from flea markets, used electronics shops or eBay for pocket change.
The situation involves me likely not being near the computer (perhaps I'm at one of thoes in-person events we used to have), but still need to be able to access it remotely (say, by ssh). In this case, LEDs at home would not be visible.

(Also, an alternative that doesn't involve building physical things would be to connect the Pi to an Adafruit Circuit Playground, which has 10 NeoPixels (which can be used like LEDs) and 2 buttons. You would still need to program the Circuit Playground (but CircuitPython is an option if you don't want to dive into C/Arduino stuff), but you can then have it communicate with the Pi via USB (or possibly Bluetooth, if you get the Bluefruit).