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Turns out both grow in my area, and look identical to this when young. Yikes! So based on a post yesterday, I took this outside and sliced it in half. So far it looks promising (I think?) and I'm not dead yet.

This was found growing in a Colorado yard near the base of an elm tree, in an area where there are also rotting cottonwood roots. Altitude is right at 5000 feet. It wasn't my yard so I'm not sure how many days it may have been growing before I picked it today. I have put both halves in the fridge for now, is there any other information I can provide to help identify it?

A full size copy of the inside can be viewed here: http://sourpuss.net/projects/mycology/2023-08-13/IMG_7239.JPG

I've been running systems up to Buster and have always had the 'quiet' option in the grub settings to show the regular service startup messages (the colored ones showing [ok] and such but not all the dmesg stuff). I just upgraded a server to bullseye and there are zero messages being displayed now except an immediate message about not being able to use IRQ 0. Worse, google can't seem to find any information on this. If I remove the quiet option from grub then I see those service messages again, along with all the other stuff I don't need.

What is broken and how do I fix this issue? I assumed it would be safe to upgrade by now but this seems like a pretty big problem if I ever need to troubleshoot a system.

[Edit] In case anyone else finds this post searching for the same issue… Apparently the trick is that now you MUST install plymouth, even on systems that do not have a desktop environment. For whatever reason plymouth has taken over the job of displaying the text startup messages now. Keep your same grub boot parameters (quiet by itself, without the splash option) and you will get the old format of startup messages showing once again. It’s been working fine the old way for 20+ years but hey let’s change something just for the sake of confusing everyone.

[Edit 2] Thanks to marvin below, I now have a final solution that no longer requires plymouth to be installed. Edit /etc/default/grub and add systemd.show_status=true to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT. In my case to full line is:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet systemd.show_status=true"

Don't forget to run update-grub after you save your changes.

I run my own email server, and a friend received a compromised laptop from work which resulted in a spam attack from Russia yesterday. Turtle settings saved the days with thousands of emails still in the queue when I saw the problem, however it made me realize that everyone with accounts on my server are local, do not travel, and have no requirement to send emails from outside the country.

I found how to use the smtpd_discard_ehlo_keyword_address_maps setting in postfix to block a CIDR list of IPs, then found a maintained list of IPs by country codes on github. Cool so far, and a script to keep my local list updated was easy enough.

Now the question is, what countries should I be blocking? There are plenty of lists of the top hacking sources, but it's hard to block #2 (the US) when that's where I am located. But otherwise, does anyone have a list of countries they outright block from logging on to their servers? From the above google searches I have 17 countries blocked so far, and in the first 30 minutes already stopped login attempts from three of those countries, so it appears to be working.

Of course I could write a script to parse my logs to see who has already made attempts, but that's what services like fail2ban are for, and I'm just wondering if there are any countries in particular I should directly block? My list so far includes the following: ae bg br cn de hk id in ir iq il kp ng ru sa th vn

The question itself may not be that interesting, but I thought at the very least some folks might be interested in my experience and think about doing something similar themselves. I can post more details of what I did if there is any interest.

First pics of my first pins. I cut slits in the bag on Sunday and saw the first pins appear yesterday morning, now they're growing fast. This clump is already a full inch (25mm) tall, and I have four openings in the bag that are all pinning. I've been misting them a couple times a day but now I'll be working from home until next Monday so I can try to spray them more often.

For anyone who hasn't seen my previous posts, I started out with a very small sample of spawn from ebay just over two months ago. I expanded that out in jars of rye berries and popcorn kernels, and then on July 4th I split a jar between two fruiting bags with pasteurized straw (I also have two bags of blue oysters and opened one of those on Sunday, but no pins from it yet).

This is my first time trying to grow mushrooms so I've been researching and asking questions every step of the way, but so far so good! I also have never tasted oysters before so that will be a new experience too. Now I just have to temper my impatience until it's time to harvest...

[Update] Adding a second pic this morning. This is about 12 hours later and they've grown significantly again. For reference, the bag is about the size of a sheet of paper.

[2nd update] It's been five days now since I opened the bag for fruiting. Here's a pic of what the mushrooms currently look like. As far as what I've read, I expected them to get MUCH larger than this, but with the upturned caps I really believe these are done growing and should have been harvested yesterday (note this image shows the largest clump of the group). Any thoughts?

My first oyster pins appeared today and I've been thinking about humidity control. I have this big tub I made my still air box from and I've been wondering about using it to hold the two fruiting bags I have. I was concerned that maybe the X slices wouldn't get enough fresh air if I covered them, but then I've been worried about keeping up the humidity. Now that I'm seeing some pinning though I'm feeling like the humidity is more important? I live in Colorado, which isn't quite desert but the humidity in the house typically drops below 40% during the day (it's high right now because we've been getting some rain showers).

For reference, my SAB is a typical DIY, made from a large tub with just a couple hand-sized holes cut out. There's not a lot of airflow in that room anyway, and I'm not sure how much fresh air the mushrooms need once they start growing. Of course I realize they won't be able to stay in the SAB too long, I know they'll outgrow the available space, but I'm just thinking for the next few days, or however long it takes them to really fill in.

So, any thought on this? Should I close them up in the box or just leave them in open air?

I have Openfire set up with the monitoring service plugin which we have been using with Pidgin on the desktop. One of the things I've noticed is that when I sign in to another computer on the same account, I do not get a history of recent messages (which I thought the monitoring plugin was supposed to provide).

The other thing that doesn't seem to be working right is when I am logged in to two computers simultaneously (using the same account). I expect to see chat messages showing up on BOTH devices so I can go between machines, which again is something I thought the monitoring plug was supposed to provide.

The settings I believe are related are under "Offline messages" which I have set to always store, and retain for up to 30 days. Should I bee looking for anything else?

I have been using Pidgin with XMPP on Google for years, so I know both the XMPP protocol and the Pidgin client are capable of handling this functionality. I've been digging around trying to find a solution, and see a lot of things claiming Pidgin is the culprit here, but those messages are a decade old. I can't seem to find any information on the subject for Openfire newer than about 2016.

I'm hoping there's a setting I need to change or another plugin I need to add to get both of these features working on my server? I really love the software otherwise but this seems like a really basic function that should just work, and I am hoping someone can point me to whatever I'm missing.

So my two bags of pink oysters, which haven't appeared to be doing much on anything, have suddenly pinned right behind the air vent on both bags. The first picture is a bunch of little guys like I expected it to start out as, but the second bag is one massive stem as wide as the cap! For reference, the air vent patch black clicks on these bags are about 1.25" wide.

Did I do something wrong in sealing the top of the bags, or is it common to see this happen right behind the vent? Maybe I put too much straw in the bags? It's hard to see in the pictures, but they seem pretty healthy, however there has been VERY little mycelial growth in these bags so far and it seems premature to start opening them up. Any suggestions?

In addition to damage at the port terminal where grain for China was stored, a second attack has now resulted in damage to the Chinese consulate.

I have some pink spawn which was being expanded out in jars of rye berries and popcorn kernels. There's been good growth and since a couple weeks ago the jar appeared to be completely colonized (at which time I left one jar sitting and moved another jar to a couple fruiting bags). It's been sitting on the basement floor since then, but I've noticed some pink coloration that seems to have gone throughout the jar, and there seems to be a bit of the pink also in the fruiting bags.

I prepared some jars of blue oyster spawn at the same time, using the same batch of rye and popcorn, and those jars are still snow white. This has me wondering, could I have possibly gotten contamination ONLY in the pink oyster jars while all of the blue oyster jars somehow escaped contamination? Or is this pink color natural for pink oysters? It just seems like an awful big coincidence that only the pink oysters would get contaminated when everything was prepped together in the still-air box and there was definitely cross-exposure between the jars.

Since this is my first batch of oysters I'm just not sure what I should be expecting.

At the suggestion of another member I tried expanding my spawn on popcorn kernels. This involved boiling for about 20 minutes, drying, then pressure-canning for 90 minutes at 15psi. After cooling my spawn was divided between the jars, which were allowed to grow for a little over two weeks. On Monday I transferred the contents of a couple jars to fruiting bags with pasteurized straw and started seeing growth by the next day. I thought all was well.

On Wednesday, I started noticing some green stems. As I've been watching, this is actually growth from the popcorn kernels, and it's happening in all four bags! Now I'm quite frankly amazed that the cheapest generic popcorn from the store even has the capability to sprout, but after I put it through all that cooking I would have assumed it simply wasn't possible. I also wonder why it didn't start trying to grow in the original jar, and why it waited until it was in the bags?

So is there anything I should do about this? It will probably be at least another couple weeks before the mycelium is grown out enough to open some air holes for fruiting and I'm worried the corn will be trying to create its own holes before then, but maybe the bag is tougher than it looks. Anyway, any suggestions other than letting it go and waiting to see what happens?

tl;dr: Spawn grown on popcorn kernels, now popcorn is sprouting despite extensive cooking.

[Update] It's NOT the popcorn, there were other seeds in the straw!

I've lost track now of how long since I started on this, but I think it's been 2-3 weeks since I transferred my original spawn to grain jars? All of the jars have been fully colonized except for one jar of pink oysters, which fought against some kind of contamination but seems to have gotten going again. It had some good looking growth though, so I decided to use that jar plus one jar of blue oysters (but grown on popcorn kernels) for my first attempt at fruiting. If it is too weak and fails, well if was worth a shot and I wouldn't have gotten anything else from it anyway.

I'm using some 8" fruiting bags from ebay, and pasteurized chopped straw in a lime water bath overnight then let it drain today for about 2.5 hours. Each quart jar of spawn was split between two fruiting bags.

Now here comes the scary part... I didn't have room inside to work on this, and knew working with the straw was going to be very messy, so I set up a table in the yard. I wiped everything down with 91% ISO as I went, but being outside has me worried about the chances of contam. Guess we'll see?

So now I have four stuffed fruiting bags hanging out in the garage where it will be a little warmer than the basement. I had considered putting the bags in my garden but I'm worried about squirrels and such getting into them (especially when they start to fruit) so I figured the garage was safer. I'm expecting another 2-3 weeks of expansion before they're ready to fruit, but it's just a game of wait&see now. And assuming I get some mushrooms from this batch, I can bring it back full-circle and start a new batch of spawn (this time directly in the grain jars) from what grows.

One question I have for everyone... I have three more jars of spawn that are pretty well completely grown in (one popcorn and two rye berries). Should I put these in the refrigerator until I'm ready to transfer them to fruiting bags? I'm not sure how long they can survive at room temperature but I seem to recall they can hang out in the fridge for 3-4 months without any problem?

Usually we see some potholes at the end of the snow season which get repaired fairly quickly... but this year... oh boy. Seems like they didn't start showing up until all the rain hit, and then they were everywhere, and so far I've seen very few getting fixed (and some that were fixed have opened up again).

My SUV has been pulling hard to the right the last few weeks. I finally got a chance to jack it up today, checked the wheel bearings and A-frames as the common culprits. Instead what I found is the lower A-frame has actually been pulled over on one side by nearly 1/2". I moved it back to roughly where it's supposed to be so I'm not tearing up my tire until I can get in for a proper alignment, but sheesh, could we maybe get some crews out to start patching the worst of the potholes at least? Usually our fair city is so quick on getting these things fixed!