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Gordie
Posts: 153
Joined: Tue 23 Aug 2016, 15:26
Location: Nolalu, Ontario, Canada

#2731 Post by Gordie »

Colonel Panic wrote:Thanks. Just for the heck of it, I'm downloading the live disk of OpenBSD but I don't know whether I'll install it or not (probably not - it's been my experience that Linux distros and BSDs don't sit well together on the same hard drive).
That USED to be what I thought too but times have changed. The problem I experienced came from my lack of understanding of the different terms used to explain partitions of the hdd. Once I found the answer it is easy for me now
--
Cheers
Gordie
Slackware64-Current, Thinkpad W510, Intel i7, 8G/500G, Lilo / Legacy.
Fatdog64 + 6 Puppies on USB flash drives.
Windows 10 / Slackware64-Current, HP desktop, Intel Core2 Duo, 4G/500G/250G, Lilo / Legacy.

Gordie
Posts: 153
Joined: Tue 23 Aug 2016, 15:26
Location: Nolalu, Ontario, Canada

#2732 Post by Gordie »

Colonel Panic wrote:That's interesting. I tried OpenBSD (or a live disk based on it, whose name I forget) but I found it a bit slow compared to the Linux distros I'd tried up until then. What's it like for speed now?
I find it slow. Seems like the graphics driver needs attention. Things like automount won't work no matter what I do, Only can do ext2 so is impossible for me to get Slackware and BSD to communicate with a usb thumb
--
Cheers
Gordie
Slackware64-Current, Thinkpad W510, Intel i7, 8G/500G, Lilo / Legacy.
Fatdog64 + 6 Puppies on USB flash drives.
Windows 10 / Slackware64-Current, HP desktop, Intel Core2 Duo, 4G/500G/250G, Lilo / Legacy.

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Colonel Panic
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Joined: Sat 16 Sep 2006, 11:09

#2733 Post by Colonel Panic »

Gordie wrote:
Colonel Panic wrote:That's interesting. I tried OpenBSD (or a live disk based on it, whose name I forget) but I found it a bit slow compared to the Linux distros I'd tried up until then. What's it like for speed now?
I find it slow. Seems like the graphics driver needs attention. Things like automount won't work no matter what I do, Only can do ext2 so is impossible for me to get Slackware and BSD to communicate with a usb thumb
That's a shame. I think if mission-critical security is a top priority for you OpenBSD is probably a good choice, but otherwise I'm left wondering what advantages it offers over a Linux distro such as Slackware (which I suppose it most closely resembles). Also, I format my partitions with ext4 as standard so it doesn't sound like they'd sit well with OpenBSD on the same hard drive.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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rufwoof
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#2734 Post by rufwoof »

Colonel Panic wrote:I think if mission-critical security is a top priority for you OpenBSD is probably a good choice, but otherwise I'm left wondering what advantages it offers over a Linux distro
I like how its integral - kernel, userland (including X) and documentation all bound together. man pages are fantastic, and errors in that text are recorded/managed as any other 'bug'. Makes things far simpler, avoids systemD and collectively can be much better security audited. By default OBSD boot is very secure. They even tweak 3rd party programs such as firefox to be more secure by default. Package (program) installation is as easy as pkg_add xxxx

I've switched back from -current to install/use -release/stable and I'm using openup to provide all the binary patches/updates to both the base system and packages (third party programs). Nice and quick/easy to keep patched up.

The default of being secure does mean that the default setup is slower than if you tweak some of the settings. Async disk IO for instance instead of synd'd. Some graphics tweaks as well ... and speed is comparable, perhaps even better than Linux whilst still being acceptably secure for a typical desktop setup.

Of the three windows managers in the base system I find fvwm to be too configurable. Tempts you into tweaking things often. So I mostly flip between cwm and twm preferring cwm on a laptop type setup, twm for a desktop. The default configs for those aren't to most peoples taste so you do have to make changes there, but for instance cwm config is pretty simple/light, my .cwmrc for instance consists of just ...

Code: Select all

fontname "sans-serif:pixelsize=24"
ignore xclock
borderwidth 4
color inactiveborder AntiqueWhite
color activeborder LightCoral
color selfont "#CCCCFF"
color font "#000000"
color menufg "CCCCFF"
color menubg "222222"
gap 4 0 0 0
bind-key 4-f window-fullscreen
bind-key 4-r restart
bind-key 4-q window-delete
bind-key 4-Left "mixerctl outputs.master=-12"
bind-key 4-Right "mixerctl outputs.master=+12"
bind-mouse M-1 window-resize
bind-mouse 4-2 window-lower
bind-mouse 4-1 window-move
bind-mouse S-1 window-hide
sticky yes
command "  Xterm      " 'xterm -geometry 80x24'
command "  FireFox    " "firefox-esr"
command "  Xfe        " "xfe"
command "  Xfw        " "xfw"
command "  XCalc      " "xcalc"
command "  gnumeric   " "gnumeric"
command "  mtpaint    " "mtpaint"
command "  osmo       " "osmo"
command "  Exit       " pkill cwm

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greengeek
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#2735 Post by greengeek »

rufwoof wrote:The default of being secure ...
How do you define "secure" though. Does this involve trusting someone else or do they give the user the same power puppy users have? What extra security do they have compared to puppy users (and who controls/manages that security?)

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rufwoof
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#2736 Post by rufwoof »

"Secure by Default"

To ensure that novice users of OpenBSD do not need to become security experts overnight (a viewpoint which other vendors seem to have), we ship the operating system in a Secure by Default mode. All non-essential services are disabled. As the user/administrator becomes more familiar with the system, he will discover that he has to enable daemons and other parts of the system. During the process of learning how to enable a new service, the novice is more likely to learn of security considerations.

This is in stark contrast to the increasing number of systems that ship with NFS, mountd, web servers, and various other services enabled by default, creating instantaneous security problems for their users within minutes after their first install.

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Colonel Panic
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#2737 Post by Colonel Panic »

rufwoof wrote:
Colonel Panic wrote:I think if mission-critical security is a top priority for you OpenBSD is probably a good choice, but otherwise I'm left wondering what advantages it offers over a Linux distro
I like how its integral - kernel, userland (including X) and documentation all bound together. man pages are fantastic, and errors in that text are recorded/managed as any other 'bug'. Makes things far simpler, avoids systemD and collectively can be much better security audited. By default OBSD boot is very secure. They even tweak 3rd party programs such as firefox to be more secure by default. Package (program) installation is as easy as pkg_add xxxx

I've switched back from -current to install/use -release/stable and I'm using openup to provide all the binary patches/updates to both the base system and packages (third party programs). Nice and quick/easy to keep patched up.

The default of being secure does mean that the default setup is slower than if you tweak some of the settings. Async disk IO for instance instead of synd'd. Some graphics tweaks as well ... and speed is comparable, perhaps even better than Linux whilst still being acceptably secure for a typical desktop setup.

Of the three windows managers in the base system I find fvwm to be too configurable. Tempts you into tweaking things often. So I mostly flip between cwm and twm preferring cwm on a laptop type setup, twm for a desktop. The default configs for those aren't to most peoples taste so you do have to make changes there, but for instance cwm config is pretty simple/light, my .cwmrc for instance consists of just ...

Code: Select all

fontname "sans-serif:pixelsize=24"
ignore xclock
borderwidth 4
color inactiveborder AntiqueWhite
color activeborder LightCoral
color selfont "#CCCCFF"
color font "#000000"
color menufg "CCCCFF"
color menubg "222222"
gap 4 0 0 0
bind-key 4-f window-fullscreen
bind-key 4-r restart
bind-key 4-q window-delete
bind-key 4-Left "mixerctl outputs.master=-12"
bind-key 4-Right "mixerctl outputs.master=+12"
bind-mouse M-1 window-resize
bind-mouse 4-2 window-lower
bind-mouse 4-1 window-move
bind-mouse S-1 window-hide
sticky yes
command "  Xterm      " 'xterm -geometry 80x24'
command "  FireFox    " "firefox-esr"
command "  Xfe        " "xfe"
command "  Xfw        " "xfw"
command "  XCalc      " "xcalc"
command "  gnumeric   " "gnumeric"
command "  mtpaint    " "mtpaint"
command "  osmo       " "osmo"
command "  Exit       " pkill cwm
Good post. When I'm in Debian Stretch I use a variant of Dan Lilliehorn's ctwmrc file, here (Ive enlarged the menu fonts and added a couple more programs to mine);

https://www.ctwm.org/ctwmrc

It works well but unfortunately still looks somewhat drab (grey, grey and more grey) so I may get round to changing that soon.

Here's a Computer Science professor's page on ctwm;

https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/laptop/ctwm/
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

Gordie
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Location: Nolalu, Ontario, Canada

#2738 Post by Gordie »

Colonel Panic wrote:
Gordie wrote:
Colonel Panic wrote:That's interesting. I tried OpenBSD (or a live disk based on it, whose name I forget) but I found it a bit slow compared to the Linux distros I'd tried up until then. What's it like for speed now?
I find it slow. Seems like the graphics driver needs attention. Things like automount won't work no matter what I do, Only can do ext2 so is impossible for me to get Slackware and BSD to communicate with a usb thumb
That's a shame. I think if mission-critical security is a top priority for you OpenBSD is probably a good choice, but otherwise I'm left wondering what advantages it offers over a Linux distro such as Slackware (which I suppose it most closely resembles). Also, I format my partitions with ext4 as standard so it doesn't sound like they'd sit well with OpenBSD on the same hard drive.
I have been curious about FreeBSD for years now. GhostBSD was a shoe-in for me since it has a live system for me to try.
So much is different from Slackware I am now a duck without water. Seems the lack of (gag) systemd is where most of the similarity is lost. Anyway, now want to find a bootloader to boot Windows 10, Puppy Linux (frugal) and GhostBSD on the same machine. Windows/Puppy on sda1 and BSD on sdb1 (separate hard drive)
--
Cheers
Gordie
Slackware64-Current, Thinkpad W510, Intel i7, 8G/500G, Lilo / Legacy.
Fatdog64 + 6 Puppies on USB flash drives.
Windows 10 / Slackware64-Current, HP desktop, Intel Core2 Duo, 4G/500G/250G, Lilo / Legacy.

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rufwoof
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#2739 Post by rufwoof »

Colonel Panic wrote:When I'm in Debian Stretch I use a variant of Dan Lilliehorn's ctwmrc file
cwm is good for laptops (mousepad), twm is good for desktops (mouse) IMO. twm comes as integral part of X Windows System so conceptually any Unix like system that is running X windows system will have twm.

I've configured mine so that a right click of a windows title bar shows the same main menu as when the desktop is right clicked. I also include a windows title button (ball) that when clicked raises the iconlist so all other open windows can be quickly/easily accessed/switched-to. I've set a coloured theme so that the iconlist, window titles and menu entries all have the same colour for the same program, as a form of visual aid.
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Colonel Panic
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#2740 Post by Colonel Panic »

Thanks for replying rufwoof. I think they both have their uses on the desktop.

I use twm in Slack-based distros because the configuration file doesn't get overwritten as it does in Debian (where I use ctwm). Ctwm also allows you to send a window to another desktop, which twm doesn't (because it only supports one desktop).

Your twm configuration looks good though. Mine works well but there's no denying it looks like a 1990s window manager - retro with a capital 'R'.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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rufwoof
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#2741 Post by rufwoof »

Colonel Panic wrote:Ctwm also allows you to send a window to another desktop, which twm doesn't (because it only supports one desktop).
I'm content with the one desktop (flip between maximised windows), and a single monitor. I've never been able to train one eye on one monitor the other eye on another :) In the rare cases of when I do do side by side comparisons, 50/50 vertical split windows suffices for me.

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Colonel Panic
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#2742 Post by Colonel Panic »

rufwoof wrote:
Colonel Panic wrote:Ctwm also allows you to send a window to another desktop, which twm doesn't (because it only supports one desktop).
I'm content with the one desktop (flip between maximised windows), and a single monitor. I've never been able to train one eye on one monitor the other eye on another :) In the rare cases of when I do do side by side comparisons, 50/50 vertical split windows suffices for me.
Thanks for replying.

I only have the one, 21" monitor, but I like to be able to move windows off the desktop without closing them as I can in, say, Fluxbox or Openbox (or CTWM) to keep the desktop space I'm using relatively uncluttered.

*Quite often I'll have logged in as a user without system-wide admin powers (especially in a Debian-based distro which requires you to do that) and I'll be using a terminal to launch an application, especially one that needs root privileges so as to be able to access the whole file system; and once I've done that I like to be able to move the terminal elsewhere (i.e. to another desktop) so that it doesn't get "in the way."

It's also convenient if I'm listening to a music video on Youtube to be able to move the window containing the video elsewhere whilst I'm working on a document in the main window.

* Another reason for launching an application from a terminal is that if it crashes, you get a record as to why it happened which you don't get if you launch it from a menu or an icon on the desktop.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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Colonel Panic
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#2743 Post by Colonel Panic »

I also installed the latest version of Slackware (32-bit), but tried in vain to build LibreOffice in it; there was always one more file the program was trying to ljnk to and which I didn't have.

Found I'd forgotten how easy distros with package management systems make it.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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Colonel Panic
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#2744 Post by Colonel Panic »

I've just downloaded the ISO of MX-17, 17.1 RC, but unfortunately I found a problem with the bootup which got stuck at "Waiting for /dev to be fully populated" ...

It might just be a bad burn, but all the same I'm waiting for my registration on the MX forums to go through (it hasn't done yet) so that I can report it.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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rockedge
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#2745 Post by rockedge »

I've just downloaded the ISO of MX-17, 17.1 RC, but unfortunately I found a problem with the bootup which got stuck at "Waiting for /dev to be fully populated" ...
I just was able to get MX-17 to start and run well as a VirtualBox machine on a host machine running XenialPup64-7.5 built from Woof-CE yesterday.

newest virtualbox with kernel modules built with the kernel source 4.9.58

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Colonel Panic
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#2746 Post by Colonel Panic »

Thanks for replying. Thinking it may have been just one bad iso file, or disk, I downloaded another copy of the iso and burnt it off but with the same result; it got stuck at "Waiting for /dev to be fully populated" ...

I give in (for now at least). Oh well, at least Gentoo still works on my machine (I'm posting from Exton's respin of it) and I've always got on well with AntiX itself.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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Billtoo
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#2747 Post by Billtoo »

@Colonel Panic

I installed the 64bit version of MX-17.1-RC1

System: Host: mx1 Kernel: 4.15.0-1-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3
Distro: MX-17.1-RC1_x64 Horizon March 6, 2018
Machine: Device: desktop System: ACER product: Aspire M5620 v: R01-A4 serial: N/A
Mobo: ACER model: G33T-AM v: 1.0 serial: N/A
BIOS: American Megatrends v: R01-A4 date: 12/19/2007
CPU: Quad core Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 (-MCP-) speed/max: 1602/2403 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GF108 [GeForce GT 430]
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.2 ) driver: nvidia
Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 430/PCIe/SSE2 version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 384.111
Network: Card: Intel 82566DC-2 Gigabit Network Connection driver: e1000e
Drives: HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (1.5% used)
Weather: Conditions: 32 F (0 C) - light showers snow Time: March 8, 1:38 AM EST
Info: Processes: 200 Uptime: 27 min Memory: 894.9/7980.2MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.54

The installer is a lot faster than the Ubuntu OS's, about 15 minutes.
I spent more time adding applications that I wanted and configuring
things.

Working nice so far.
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belham2
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#2748 Post by belham2 »

Hi colonelpanic,

I run latest MX-17 frugal, totally in ram on several machines, and it boots perfectly. Have tried it across my Intel Core I3 and Amd Athlon II machines (old & new), and have not faced a problem. Same goes for AntiX. Both MX & AntiX seem boot indestructible, haha, no matter how much I change & add & especially modify boot parameters (using their excellent wiki(s) as a base). Am posting from this MX-17 OS, Intel Core I3 laptop, booted frugal and now running-totally-in-ram (usb was removed, just running in pure ram, 8GB worth)...and it's been going for months. Once a week, plug the USB back in, do a remaster (since updates come in from both Debian and the MX-team soon as they're released in the wild---and all updates apply with ease while still in ram, just waiting for me to remaster that once-a-week). The MX included remaster GUI is clear & concise, I simply punch "Personal" to save all my Personal settings during remaster (this is something Puppy sorely needs to learn from!!), the remaster program just goes, effortlessly showing you visually what it is doing the whole time. Then, I simply reboot & and unplug the USB once again to remain/run totally in ram. It is awesome for a machine that I leave on 24-7. This has been running for over two months now with MX-17 & this setup. This setup is especially excellent if I come across something on the web I do not like, or I am worried about. I simply shut the machine down, no harm no foul since it all has been in ram. Plug the USB back in, and I am instantly back up & running again. When you add the ease of use of Firejail & Firetools they've setup, plus the great MX package offering(s) program, this distro (at the moment, imho) absolutely cannot be beat, and I use them all, from SUSE through Fedora to Ubuntu/Debian (and their many children) to Mint to Slackos to Puppies & DDogs & etc, etc :wink: Hope it works out for you.
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ally
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#2749 Post by ally »

@belham

could you give an example of your mx grub(4dos) boot entry, I cannot get mine started

edit [also, I used to have sda1 (windows), sda2 (puppy frugal), sda3 (data) and a swap file

I have had to delete the swap to create sda4 where mx17 resides, gparted says I need to create an extended partition but do not understand how to proceeed] - solved, thanks semme

cheers

:)

more edit - some success. got it to boot

I had to burn a dvd, the usb install didn't generate the boot menu to configure, create a partition with antiX-Frugal as the label name

run dvd with persist f5 (I used frugal-home)

edit grub4dos with

Code: Select all

#Frugal
 title MX-17 frugal-sda5
 root (hd0,4)
 kernel /antiX-Frugal-4.13.0-1-amd64/vmlinuz quiet noxorg bdev=sda5 bdir=antiX-Frugal-4.13.0-1-amd64  nomodeset persist 
 initrd /antiX-Frugal-4.13.0-1-amd64/initrd.gz
adjust the details according to your system

root (hd0,x) as my partition is (sda)5 then partition number =4
sdax as required
"antiX-Frugal-4.13.0-1-amd64" or whichever is generated at the install

only problem now is incorrect language and timezone not saved from initial boot - solved, add lang=en_UK tz=Europe/London to end of kernel line
Last edited by ally on Thu 08 Mar 2018, 19:22, edited 5 times in total.

backi
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#2750 Post by backi »

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