Re: readonly installer, (SOLVED)

[Anders Andersson]

On Thu, Apr 4, 2024 at 4:06 AM Stefan Monnier  wrote:
>
> > I have a 128 MB USB flash drive from back in the day that includes a write
> > protect switch.  There are few products today that offer that feature.
>
> Side note: AFAIK this "write protect switch" doesn't prevent writing.
> It just tells your card reader that you'd like to avoid writing to it.
> Whether it ends up doing what you want depends on the hardware exposing
> that info to the driver and the driver paying attention to it.

This is certainly true for SD cards, but as OP is talking about a USB
flash drive, such a switch might very well enforce a physical on-drive
write protection that can't be overridden even by a compromised
operating system. Of course, you never know with proprietary hardware
unless the design is published or someone traced out the connections.

Getting my PCMCIA Serial card to work

[Anders Andersson]

I like old PCMCIA cards, and would like to get a serial card to work
on a Thinkpad X40 running Debian 12.5.

The card is just called "Serial I/O PC Card" and should be physically
and electrically compatible, 3.3V/5V, 16 bit. I think it is this:
https://shop.ocr.ca/media/pdf/Socket-Mobile/srliopc.pdf

It didn't immediately work when I inserted it, and instead of spending
hours following the red herring down the rabbit hole I thought I
should try asking here first for a change. This is what I get from
dmesg:

[  331.059401] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: pccard: PCMCIA card
inserted into slot 0
[  331.059429] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: memory probe
0xd820-0xdf9f:
[  331.060446]  excluding 0xd898-0xd90f 0xdaf0-0xdb67
0xdbe0-0xdc57 0xdcd0-0xdd47 0xddc0-0xde37
0xdeb0-0xdf27
[  331.068677] pcmcia (null): pcmcia: registering new device
pcmcia(null) (IRQ: 3)
[  331.141504] orinoco 0.15 (David Gibson
, Pavel Roskin , et al)
[  331.197037] spectrum_cs 0.0: Failed to initialize firmware (err = -16)
[  331.197062] spectrum_cs: orinoco_init() failed

When I searched for "spectrum_cs" and "orinico" I got a lot of results
for some PC Card WLAN interface, which isn't right. Does anyone
recognize this? It should have a bog-standard 16550 compatible UART
and PCMCIA is more or less an ISA bus so I did not foresee any
problem. Is it perhaps incorrectly detecting my card as a WLAN card?

// Anders

Re: Looking for archive management system for backups burned to optical discs

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 4:03 PM Thomas Schmitt  wrote:
>
> About timestamps and incremental backup:
>
> If you only go for mtime, them you miss changes of file attributes
> which are indicated by ctime.
> Even more, timestamps alone are not a reliable way to determine which
> files are new at their current location in the directory tree.
> If you move a file from one directory to the other, then the timestamps
> of the file do _not_ get updated. Only the two involved directories get
> new timestamps.
> So when the backup tool encounters directories with young timestamps
> it has to use other means to determine whether their data files were
> moved. scdbackup uses recorded device and inode numbers, and as last
> resort recorded MD5 sums for that purpose.
>
> (Of course, content MD5 comparison is slow and causes high disk load,
> compared to simple directory tree traversal with timestamps and inode
> numbers. So scdbackup tries to avoid this when possible and allowed
> by the -changetest_options in the backup configuration file.)
>
>
> Have a nice day :)
>
> Thomas
>

This is one thing I enjoy with btrfs. It knows exactly every little
thing that changed to your files since last time you backed it up,
without having to scan everything. Even if you manually try to fake
the datestamps etc. Finding that information is more or less instant,
making backups easy.

Re: Debian 12 System Requirement

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 10:27 AM CHENG YING KIT KEITH 
wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
>
>
> Can I install Debian 11 or 12 with “Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2699 v3 @
> 2.30GHz” CPU?
>
> Do they both support the following application
>
> Nginx 1.22.1
>
> PHP 8.2.7
>
> Mariadb 10.11.4
>
>
> On the other hand, may I know the minimum requirement of Debian 11 and 12?
>
>
>
For what it's worth, my main workhorse is an even older Xeon, E3-1270 about
3 years older than yours. I installed debian 12 without even questioning if
it worked, because of course it would, and it works extremely well! The OS
is snappy with the default Gnome on Wayland on my 3840x1600 monitor, and
that's with a pretty slow mid-range GPU from 2016.

You should definitely not be afraid of running debian on this machine! RAM
and storage I/O will be your main limits.

Re: Xorg fails, no gui: systemd issue?

[Anders Andersson]

On Sat, Dec 9, 2023 at 3:01 AM Andrew M.A. Cater  wrote:
>
> On Fri, Dec 08, 2023 at 06:13:59PM +, John - wrote:
> > Since I last (3 December) upgraded the software (sid)  on my old Thinkpad, 
> > my gui fails to come up. The last line of /var/log/Xorg.0.log reads:
> > (EE) systemd-login: failed to take device /dev/dri/card0: Message recipient 
> > disconnected from message bus without replying
> > I've  been trying for weeks to fix it, including tracking down all suggests 
> > from googling the error message, without success. Can anyone help me figure 
> > out what the problem is?
> > Thanks.
> >
>
> Hi John,
>
> Today is the 8th of December - strictly, that's barely a business week.
>
> Debian expressly comes with no guarantees. You are running sid a.k.a
> unstable - that comes with still fewer guarantees other than breakage
> from time to time.

I find this quite rude. Nothing in OPs post suggests that he demands
or expects any help, yet you're quick to point out there are no
guarantees. So? Who asked about guarantees?


> You are expected to be able to fix breakage in sid
> yourself or you get to keep both pieces :)
>
> You may find that the issue has been fixed if you update today: you may not.
> There's not much there in logs to help any of the rest of us who don't
> habitually run sid.

Aren't you even allowed to ask for help if you run sid? Where else to
ask other debian users for pointers than the debian user list? Is
there a specific list for sid users only?


> This is explicitly *not* a sarcastic suggestion: if you can't run sid,
> then I would suggest you reformat your disks and install Debian stable.
> Most of the people either active on this list or lurking and reading on
> the sidelines run Debian stable for a reason.

It does not come of as sarcastic, just condescending, as if OP does
not already know what sid is.


> If you are a Debian maintainer, you are expected to build new software in
> unstable for it to propagate to testing and (eventually) to the next Debian
> major release. Outside that, unless you are actively interested in testing
> and fixing breakage as it occurs, there is little justification for running
> sid as a daily operating system.
>
> Sid is explicitly *not* a chance to run the latest, greatest bleeding edge
> software reliably on a sustained basis without the occasional crash or
> significant problems.

Again, OP never claimed anything different. Something broke, as
expected. OP asks for help trying to fix it. Can't you simply let
people who want to help answer? If no one knows, then fine, OP is on
his own.

Re: debian forgot usr pw

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, Dec 8, 2023 at 9:10 AM  wrote:
>
> On Fri, 8 Dec 2023 12:17:35 +0700
>   Max Nikulin  wrote:
> >
> > On 08/12/2023 08:49, gene heskett wrote:
> >> I've now set a root pw, about 34 chars, so they'll be a couple eons
> >>guessing it AND (horrors) have written it down.
> >
> > Consider pass phrases.
> >
> > 
> > Deep Dive: EFF's New Wordlists for Random Passphrases
> > By Joseph Bonneau July 19, 2016
> >
> > is declared to be an improvement of diceware.
>
> What is diceware?
> Why trust EFF?
>
> > kepassxc supports generation of pass phrases based on the EFF word
> >list. A couple of memorable pass phrases (for different scopes) may
> >protect other passwords stored in a password manager.
> >
> > https://xkcd.com/936/ Password Strength
>
> Or trusting "https://xkcd.com/936/ Password Strength" ?

The xkcd link has all the information necessary to explain why it can
be trusted. It's like asking "Why trust that 1+1=2?" Maybe it's not,
but that's a philosophical question for snotty teenagers, not a
question for anyone doing anything useful.

Re: Print flakes off mailing labels, use a fixative?

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Dec 5, 2023 at 1:46 PM D MacDougall  wrote:
>
> On 12/4/23 16:52, Tom Browder wrote:
> >
> > HP printer and toner, Office Depot labels.
> >
> > I bought so hair spray and will try that.
> >
> > -Tom
>
> I just looked at Office Depot website and the only labels I see that are
> for both laser and inkjet are an off brand.  I see why you went for the
> off brand, they are a whole lot cheaper than the Avery labels the same
> size, but maybe this is why.  100 sheets for $13. Twice as many labels
> for 1/3 the price.  I might have tried them too.
>
> I really don't see how hairspray or any other liquid spray could do any
> good.  If you think it will seep under the toner and glue it down that
> seems problematic to me and it might make the labels peel off.
> Cellophane tape might work better.
>
> I think you said that you took the label to the UPS store and their
> printer had the same problem so the problem is definitely the labels and
> best just swallow hard and buy the Avery labels.  (Or just write the
> address with a ball point pen.)
>
> -Don

Please take this discussion about paper adhesive private or to a
suitable forum - it has not have anything to do with debian in a long
time, I'm amazed it's still tolerated!

Re: Found a liar

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Dec 5, 2023 at 11:52 AM  wrote:
>
> https://linux-packages.com/debian/package/zsh
>
>
> sudo apt update
>===>>>  sudo apt install zsh
> NEVER,
>NEVER
>   DO
>   THAT
> BECAUSE:
> sudo apt remove zsh
> and your box doesn 't work any longer as you want it to work
> Of course there are some who will do it, but please keep an other VT open to
> install zsh again to keep you box useable and you can work, not just play
> games

Wrong.

It's rude to accuse others of lying when what they write is perfectly
correct. You're also spreading misinformation.

Re: Documentation for KVM/QEMU?

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 11:43 AM Hans  wrote:

> Maybe the op wqould like to test aqemu, which is a graphical frontend for
> qemu
> and it might be easier for him to configure.
>
> In the comparision of aqemu (with using kvm) and VirtualkBox and
> Virt-Manager
> my feeling was, Virtualbox the slowest and both Aqemu and VirtManager
> faster.
> The latter two are were looking both even fast.
>
> However, virt-manger IMHO still is not very user friendly, especially for
> beginners,  and also its documentation is not much at the moment. But
> please
> be respectfull (or is considerately the correct idiom?): virtmanager is
> rather
> new and has not many people involved, so it might become better in the
> future.
>
> Virt-manager has great potential.
>

Wait what, new? It's from 2006 and doesn't seem to have received many
feature updates since the first time I used it 10 years ago, mostly upkeep
to make it work with newer python/qemu.

"still is not very user friendly", "its documentation is not much at the
moment". I'm not holding my breath!

Re: Is this accurate

[Anders Andersson]

On Sat, Oct 21, 2023 at 8:37 AM Keith Bainbridge  wrote:
>
> Or is there more to it than this writer is declaring?
>
> uses the EXT4 filesystem by default. You can convert the filesystem to BTRFS 
> to take advantage of the in-built compression features. Using compression can 
> reduce the disk usage by up to 60% without any noticeable impact on CPU 
> usage. It also improves storage performance, since less data needs to be read 
> and written to the SD Card. BTRFS also supports filesystem snapshots that 
> allow you to roll back the system to a previous state in case of issues.
>
> The article is about Ubuntu on raspberry pi, but may relate to debian in 
> general.

This is technically accurate, but I would like to add two reservations:

1. 60% sounds optimistic, but possibly realistic if you're talking
about the OS install that will have a lot of text and uncompressed
executables. I've used btrfs compression for years but never measured
the actual storage gain.

2. btrfs snapshots are awesome but "rolling back" is not easy,
especially not in debian. I think other distributions makes it easier
by adding grub hooks to boot into an older state, but it could be
difficult to set this up.
I use snapshots mostly for reliable and fast backups, since you can
send the difference between two snapshots to another machine in no
time. It's also used automatically for my LXD containers.

If I'm wrong, I hope someone chimes in to correct me.



> I'd really like a pointer to a non-technical how to set it all up, if accurate

Can't help much with that, I learnt the hard way.


// Anders

Re: Does debian installer use volume names for LVM? (was: Re: trixie update/upgrade strangeness)

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2023 at 10:32 AM Max Nikulin  wrote:
>
> I am curious if debian installer uses volume names in /etc/fstab when
> LVM is involved (either guided or manual partitioning).

I'm pretty sure it does, I checked a few of my machines that I'm
reasonably sure I haven't modified too much, and the mounts from LVM
are indeed specified as /dev/mapper/. in /etc/fstab.

I don't know what grub does, though.

Re: apt error, fresh install Debian 12/Dell desktop

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Oct 10, 2023 at 1:19 PM Bob Crochelt  wrote:
>
> Hi:
> Fresh install Debian 12.  All seems well.  However, when I install a new 
> package, in this case fvwm, the package installs fine, but there is an error 
> at the end...
>
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-amd64:
> linux-image-amd64 depends on linux-image-6.1.0-12-amd64 (= 6.1.52-1); however:
>   Package linux-image-6.1.0-12-amd64 is not configured yet.
>
> dpkg: error processing package linux-image-amd64 (--configure):
> dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
> Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.36-9+deb12u3) ...
> Processing triggers for man-db (2.11.2-2) ...
> Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.142) ...
> update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.1.0-12-amd64
> raspi-firmware: missing /boot/firmware, did you forget to mount it?
> run-parts: /etc/initramfs/post-update.d//z50-raspi-firmware exited with 
> return code 1
> dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure):
> installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess 
> returned error exit status 1
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> linux-image-6.1.0-12-amd64
> linux-image-amd64
> initramfs-tools
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
>
> So far all the packages I have installed have worked fine...
>
> Should I ignore this or do something?

This is a bit crazy. It can't be a "fresh install" if you have the
amd64 kernel trying to configure the closed firmware for a raspberry
pi. Why is "raspi-firmware" installed? What's your actual computer and
how did you install debian?

Same Debian, different hardware = different OpenGL version?

[Anders Andersson]

I recently installed Debian stable on my old desktop and my trusty old
Thinkpad X200, without messing with any driver settings. Both are
running the default gnome desktop with the same kernel.

I installed the terminal emulator 'kitty' from the main repository on
both machines but it only works on my desktop.

The relevant bug report for kitty
(https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/2536) tells me that kitty
requires OpenGL 3.3, and to check with "glxinfo | grep OpenGL
version".

On my desktop I get: OpenGL version string: 4.6 (Compatibility
Profile) Mesa 22.3.6
On my thinkpad: OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 22.3.6

Is there anything I can do about this using open source drivers? I
don't know enough about OpenGL, if it's a software issue or if it's
simply that the old intel GPU in the Thinkpad X200 can not work with
new OpenGL, while the AMD RX460 in my desktop can?

Re: btrfs snapshots (of root file system)?

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Oct 1, 2023 at 7:20 AM hw  wrote:
>
> Hi,

Hello! I'm not going into much detail but maybe I can guide you to
better be able to find what you want.

> with btrfs, how do I make a snapshot of the root file system?  The
> purpose is to update software and being able to go back to a previous
> state if necessary.
>
> There doesn't seem to be a command to create snapshots but only
> subvolumes?  How does a subvolume turn into a snapshot?  (The root
> file system is, of course, not on a subvolume.)

Everything in btrfs is a suvolume, including the root (aka
"top-level"). A snapshot is merely a subvolume created *from* another
subvolume, and can optionally be read-only.

You can take a snapshot of the top level subvolume by doing "btrfs sub
snap / @foo". Documentation for creating both empty subvolumes and
snapshots are in btrfs-subvolume.

> How do I merge snapshots?  IIRC, when you remove a ZFS snapshot, the
> older state is merged to the state the snapshot is in.  Apparently
> btrfs can only delete snapshots --- and it seems like a bad idea to
> delete the root file system.  How would I boot from it when it's been
> deleted?

I don't think you can merge snapshots the way you describe. I don't
see how it could be atomic? You can however move subvolumes around
freely, create new snapshots at will, and select the boot subvolume
either by the "subvol=" mount option or by setting the default
subvolume (btrfs sub set-default).

> Can I make a snapshot on a different volume?  The manpage doesn't say
> that the destination of a subvolume must be on the same volume, and in
> any case, I should be able to do that.

You can create snapshots anywhere *within the same filesystem*. To be
fair, the manpage says "A BTRFS subvolume is a part of filesystem" and
"A snapshot is also subvolume". It could be more clear.

Re: door bell like sound effect

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 12:50 PM Karl Vogel  wrote:
>
> Out of morbid curiosity (and boredom), I started wondering what types of
> audio files I had on my systems.  I ran "file --mime-type" on 6.8 million
> files, looked for "audio/whatever" and got the file extensions.
>
> Extension  MIME-type
> ---
> .8svx  audio/x-aiff
> .aif   audio/x-aiff
> .aifc  audio/x-aiff
> .aiff  audio/x-aiff
> .ape   audio/x-ape
> .arm   audio/amr
> .auaudio/basic
> .flac  audio/flac
> .m4a   audio/x-m4a
> .mp3   audio/mpeg
> .mpc   audio/x-musepack
> .oga   audio/ogg
> .ogg   audio/ogg
> .opus  audio/ogg
> .raaudio/x-pn-realaudio
> .voc   audio/x-unknown
> .wav   audio/x-wav
>
> If nothing else, it's faster to run "locate" and look for file extensions;
> running "file" on that much crap took nearly 9 hours.

I got curious so I performed the same exercise on 2737754 files (18
TB) taking over 2.5 hours:

real159m40.601s
user38m47.758s
sys16m34.408s

I realized that it did it twice because of a snapshot so it's only
half the files, but here's the result:

1 ft audio/x-mod
1 mid audio/midi
2 ac3 audio/vnd.dolby.dd-raw
2 data audio/mpeg
2 opus audio/ogg
4 3gp audio/x-m4a
4 ape audio/x-ape
4 it audio/x-mod
5 m4a audio/x-m4a
16 snd audio/x-aiff
20 t audio/x-aiff
25 mp3 audio/x-wav
84 wav audio/x-wav
104 s audio/x-aiff
115 ogg audio/ogg
248 xm audio/x-mod
768 b audio/x-aiff
916 a audio/x-aiff
11805 flac audio/flac
26521 mp3 audio/mpeg
74874 mod audio/x-mod

Notably it's missing 52884 .sid files which 'file' did not recognize,
and a number of NES and SNES audio files.

Re: random number generator missing after upgrade

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Aug 13, 2023 at 11:09 PM Björn Persson  wrote:
>
> Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> > Maybe related to https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Disables-RNG-AMD-fTPMs
>
> Not likely. That article is about a firmware TPM that comes with newer
> Ryzen processors. Older Ryzens supposedly don't have it. The processor
> in my APU2 is a GX-412TC, not a Ryzen at all, and my TPM is a discrete
> chip from Infineon. The change in question is supposed to disable the
> random number generator only if the TPM lists AMD as its manufacturer.

I agree that the patch looks ok, but I remember being hit by a kernel
change that inadvertently changed the behavior on other systems too
(ECC RAM background scrubbing), but nobody really noticed because it
was not in much use.

I suspect that the case of having an external TPM on an AMD system is
such an unusual case, and I couldn't trace exactly where that patch
checked the AMD string, so perhaps it's picking up the AMD string
earlier on, and decides to disable all TPM on the AMD system. At least
the timing of the problem and the patch is suspicious.

Re: Gradle version in bookworm

[Anders Andersson]

On Sat, Aug 5, 2023 at 6:51 PM Roberto C. Sánchez  wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 05, 2023 at 05:21:55PM +0100, Mark Fletcher wrote:
> > Gradle is not some minority, hardly-used tool, so there is presumably
> > a reason why the package hasn't been updated in Debian. Anyone know
> > what it is?
> >
> Becuase it's Very Hard Work(TM).
>
> Updating Gradle in Debian was proposed as a project under Freexian's
> Project Funding initiative and it was accepted and work was done on it
> for several months:
> https://salsa.debian.org/freexian-team/project-funding/-/issues/19
>
> However, it seems like there are rather serious blocking issues that
> have halted progress.

Impossible, fake news. It's Java. When I still coded C and assembly in
the nineties everyone told me that Java would solve the issue of
portability forever. Write once, run anywhere! Just run it, no
worries!

Prevent laptop from suspending when a user is logged in through SSH

[Anders Andersson]

I just installed a plain debian 12.1 on my good old Thinkpad X200, my
first debian 12 install since I'm waiting for things to settle down
before I upgrade my other computers.

Going smooth so far and my first snag (after bug #1037304) is that it
just kicked me out of all my ssh sessions. Example from an active git
command that was aborted:

remote: Enumerating objects: 6944, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (6944/6944), done.
remote: Compressing objects:  73% (2131/2919)
Broadcast message from pipe@airwaves (Tue 2023-08-01 21:04:47 CEST):

The system will suspend now!

Timeout, server airwaves.computerwelt not responding.

At the time the laptop was on AC power and I was logged in as the
primary user in the default gnome session, but the laptop was sitting
idle except for my SSH sessions - all mostly active with aptitude, git
commands, text editing etc.

Does anyone know the "correct" solution to this? There's no difference
in activity for me hacking away in a terminal over SSH compared to a
terminal in a window on the laptop itself, so why isn't it registered
as "activity" for the automatic suspension?

Re: package managers problem

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 9:36 AM gene heskett  wrote:
> On 6/20/23 00:32, Anders Andersson wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 5:38 AM gene heskett  wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm with you Paul, if Anders know how to do it, please PUBLISH the how.
> >> For a while on bullseye, a "sudo -E synaptic" worked, then even that
> >> died mid-bullseye, somebody plugged a perceived hole and didn't bother
> >> to mention it to the many thousands of users.
> >
> > There's really nothing to publish. I started synaptic from my desktop
> > environment using the default icon installed by the debian package. No
> > weird "sudo" incantations. It asks my password and then starts up.
> >
> from an xfce4 terminal shell, it bitches about wayland and exits, from
> the pulldown menu's it asks for a passwd with a much bigger passwd
> requester and when I enter my sudo pw it silently goes away. It does not
> run here,

I don't have synaptic in the path, but the icon is setup to start a
program that *is* in my path: synaptic-pkexec

Maybe you can try that, I think that's responsible for asking about
your password.


> And when I ask why, everyone takes me to task for trying to run the only
> package manager that works and has decent search function. What desktop
> are you running? I'm xfce4 here.

I'm running Gnome. Maybe synaptic is not compatible with xfce?

Re: package managers problem

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 5:38 AM gene heskett  wrote:
>
> On 6/19/23 22:41, pa...@quillandmouse.com wrote:
> > On Tue, 20 Jun 2023 03:58:18 +0200
> > Anders Andersson  wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> >> I've been watching this thread from afar for a while and it still
> >> puzzles me why people keep bringing up wayland. I've been running
> >> wayland for years, and synaptic works with no issues as far as I can
> >> tell. Is this just FUD from a user that never tried it or is something
> >> broken on that user's system?
> >>
> >
> > A couple of years ago, I switched to Wayland temporarily and was unable
> > to run Synaptic (with an error message). The phenomenon is real. I
> > don't know how you manage it. But I don't recall anyone on this thread
> > besides you claiming it could be done.
> >
> > Paul
> >
> I'm with you Paul, if Anders know how to do it, please PUBLISH the how.
> For a while on bullseye, a "sudo -E synaptic" worked, then even that
> died mid-bullseye, somebody plugged a perceived hole and didn't bother
> to mention it to the many thousands of users.

There's really nothing to publish. I started synaptic from my desktop
environment using the default icon installed by the debian package. No
weird "sudo" incantations. It asks my password and then starts up.

Since I normally don't use Synaptic and have not started it in years
as far as I can remember, I have not configured it to do anything
special. As demonstrated by Didier Gaumet in this thread it works by
default on a fresh install of debian stable.

All the bugs I find online are from the time before bullseye.

Re: package managers problem

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Jun 18, 2023 at 10:34 AM DdB
 wrote:
>
> Am 17.06.2023 um 14:38 schrieb Greg Wooledge:
> > On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 11:03:59PM -0400, pa...@quillandmouse.com wrote:
> >> Why isn't there a ONE WAY for packages to be managed?
> >
> > Because each user has a different preference.  Just read this thread
> > for example, and see all the differing opinions about how we like
> > our packages to be managed.
> >
> >
> Back in the days, i have been using synaptic myself. And after reading
> this thread, i was curious about its appearance today. Thus, in my
> virtualised buster install, i did log out of wayland and logged in as
> "system X11 default" (under the wheel on login screen). Then, i was able
> to install synaptic and use it, although the gnome-software mentionned
> its source being debian-old-oldstable-main.
>
> I seem to have left it behind since stretch, when i moved to commandline
> tools instead. When things got really hairy, i recall having used
> aptitude on few occasions, but only after thorough experimentation in
> virtualized world, before applying the steps on bare metal.
>
> But since most of you are on bullseye, with a huge crowd even already
> landing in bookworm, this report from an outdated software will most
> certainly be neglected. FWIW, i chose to let you know anyway.

I've been watching this thread from afar for a while and it still
puzzles me why people keep bringing up wayland. I've been running
wayland for years, and synaptic works with no issues as far as I can
tell. Is this just FUD from a user that never tried it or is something
broken on that user's system?

Re: Settings: focus when mouse over window?

[Anders Andersson]

On Thu, Jun 1, 2023 at 6:44 AM  wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jun 01, 2023 at 12:08:29AM -0400, Nicholas Papadonis wrote:
>
> > I have the default Gnome WM installed.  Does it provide a similar option?
>
> I did a web search (no, not the google) with the terms
>
>   gnome metacity "focus follows mouse"
>
> (metacity is, AFAIK, Gnome's window manager) and the
> answer seems to be... complex: it depends on whether
> you use Wayland or not. It seems to "kind of work",
> but in different ways.
>
> Look also for "sloppy focus": in general you don't want
> your focused window to lose focus when you move the
> pointer to the "background window". But perhaps you do
> want that.

I don't know why you would force "metacity" in there, it's *not* the
window manager, so no wonder you get weird results.

Just enable "Focus on Hover" in the Gnome Tweaks settings: "Window is
focused when hovered with the pointer. Windows remain focused when the
desktop is hovered."

It has worked flawlessly for ages, as long as I've used Gnome 3 (the
default in debian for a long time), and there's no difference in
behaviour between wayland and xorg.

Re: where are the actual ".deb" packages? all I see are "pkgcache.bin" and "srcpkgcache.bin" . . .

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 4:09 AM davidson  wrote:
>
> On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 Albretch Mueller wrote:
> > Basically, I am trying to download all packages that are part of the
> > installation dependencies of a given one into a directory of my
> > choosing to then install packages on an unexposed machine.
>
> Like Roberto Sanchez wrote, this sounds like a use-case for the
> apt-offline package (which I have not used).

For what it's worth, I was very happy with apt-offline last time I
used it but that was a couple of years ago.

It did exactly what I expected and what OP seems to want: It allows
one to keep an offline Debian machine up-to-date and install software
complete with all necessary dependencies.

Re: ping

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Nov 14, 2022 at 4:21 AM Greg Wooledge  wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 13, 2022 at 09:05:03PM -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > On Sun 13 Nov 2022 at 14:50:58 (+), Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > > On Sun, Nov 13, 2022 at 06:04:51AM -0800, pe...@easthope.ca wrote:
> > > > root@joule:/home/root# /bin/ping -c 3  192.168.0.12
> > > > PING 192.168.0.12 (192.168.0.12) 56(84) bytes of data.
> > > > 64 bytes from 192.168.0.12: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.079 ms
> > > > 64 bytes from 192.168.0.12: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.114 ms
> > > > 64 bytes from 192.168.0.12: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.113 ms
> > > >
> > > > --- 192.168.0.12 ping statistics ---
> > > > 3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2041ms
> > > > rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.079/0.102/0.114/0.016 ms
> > > > root@joule:/home/root# echo $PATH
> > > > /usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin:.
> >
> > Nobody has commented on that final period yet …  …  …  …  …  …   ↑
>
> I didn't see it.  Yeah, that's *nasty*.  I don't think it's directly
> related to whatever the OP's current problem is, but it's a trap waiting
> to strike.
>
> The OP is clearly not running a standard Debian system.  With root's
> home directory having been moved, and now with some evidence that the
> PATH given to root has a massive security hole in it, I'm convinced
> this is some derivative OS.
>
> Perhaps whoever put the ":." on root's PATH is also responsible for
> the alias or function that's overriding "ping".  I'm starting to get
> rather curious about this whole situation.
>
>
Yes, this user runs as root all the time, from previous threads:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2022/02/msg00041.html

Re: deduplicating file systems: VDO with Debian?

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Nov 7, 2022 at 3:04 AM hw  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I discovered that Redhat has VDO[1] to take care of deduplicating file
> systems.
> Aptitude didn't find any packages towards that.
>
> Is there no VDO in Debian, and what would be good to use for deduplication
> with
> Debian?  Why isn't VDO in the stardard kernel? Or is it?
>
> I'm not looking for deduplication that happens some time after files have
> already been written like btrfs would allow: There is no point in
> deduplicating
> backups after they're done because I don't need to save disk space for
> them when
> I can fit them in the first place.
>
>
> [1]:
>
> https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/deduplicating_and_compressing_storage/deploying-vdo_deduplicating-and-compressing-storage#doc-wrapper
>
>
You could always buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux license, sign up for a
support contract, and ask if they could start supporting other operating
systems? ("Each branch on this project is intended to work with a specific
release of Enterprise Linux").

I would be more worried if my backup storage didn't have enough room for at
least a full fresh and unique backup from one client.
 - If it doesn't and something unexpected happens (user fills the whole
disk with something, malware encrypts all data = changes everything to
unique files, etc) then it will fill up the disk and ruin every other
backup.
 - If you *do* have room for one client but not many more, you can always
deduplicate after each client backup which should regain everything if
nothing changed.

Re: Will firefox-esr move to version 102 in bullseye?

[Anders Andersson]

On Sat, Sep 24, 2022 at 7:53 PM Tixy  wrote:
>
> On Sat, 2022-09-24 at 18:46 +0100, Tixy wrote:
> > On Sat, 2022-09-24 at 18:52 +0200, Anders Andersson wrote:
> > [...]
> > > What's more, I no longer have to continue my research about
> > > hardware-accelerated video playback in the browser which prompted all
> > > of this - it just started working automatically after the upgrade.
> >
> > I just checked and you're right, no more tearing :-)
>
> Actually, I'm wrong, just ran tearing test video from YouTube and
> latest Firefox still tears, will stick with Vivaldi.
>
> --
> Tixy

Yes, I may have been "lucky" in the sense that I probably already had
the prerequisite libraries installed, and had perhaps already messed
with the required settings. There seem to be two orthogonal components
necessary to get smooth fullscreen video from youtube in firefox:
"Accelerated web page rendering" and "Hardware accelerated video
decoding".

For what it's worth, I now get smooth fullscreen 1080p video from
youtube with very little CPU load on a state of the art 14 year old
CPU and mediocre Radeon RX 460 from 2016 on a 3084x1600 monitor, all
on a standard debian stable gnome+wayland+firefox and free drivers (as
far as I know!) so it's definitely doable without much tweaking other
than having the right packages and maybe one or two settings in
firefox.

Re: Will firefox-esr move to version 102 in bullseye?

[Anders Andersson]

Sorry for top-posting, but it makes sense for this summary.

As indicated by the replies to my initial email, it is now late
September and firefox-esr has moved to version 102 in the stable
branch. I just upgraded without even noticing any difference,
definitely nothing that broke.

What's more, I no longer have to continue my research about
hardware-accelerated video playback in the browser which prompted all
of this - it just started working automatically after the upgrade. As
a "seasoned" linux user I'm not used to things going this smooth, so
thanks everyone involved for making this upgrade as painless and
invisible as expected from Debian stable.

On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 9:13 PM Sven Joachim  wrote:
>
> On 2022-08-24 15:01 -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 07:52:44PM +0100, Tixy wrote:
> >> Mozilla stops supporting the old ESR a few months after a new one is
> >> released [1]. So I assume Debian would ship the new one, certainly at
> >> least at the point the old one gets known security vulnerabilities.
> >>
> >> [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-esr-release-cycle
> >
> > Yes, this is correct.  A current timeline seems to be here:
> >
> > https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar
> >
> > Looking at the ESR column in the first table, 2022-08-23 brought us
> > ESR versions 91.13 and 102.2, while 2022-09-20 will have only version
> > 102.3.
> >
> > So, as of Sept. 20th (projected), the 91.x ESR branch will be unsupported,
> > and we'll all have to move to the 102.x branch, whether we want it or not.
>
> For Debian stable, I expect Firefox and Thunderbird to move to the 102
> branch after the next Bullseye point release, scheduled for September
> 10[1].  To build them, at least rustc 1.59 is needed, and Bullseye
> currently only has version 1.51 (packaged as rustc-mozilla).
>
> Cheers,
>Sven
>
>
> 1. https://lists.debian.org/debian-live/2022/08/msg6.html
>

Will firefox-esr move to version 102 in bullseye?

[Anders Andersson]

While investigating my options for hardware acceleration in the
browser I found a snippet on the debian wiki that I'm trying to parse:

From: https://wiki.debian.org/Firefox#Hardware_Video_Acceleration
> This is for Debian 11 / Bullseye
> [...]
> firefox-esr is projected to be updated to version 102 sometime in 3Q 2022.

Normally I would not expect anything in the stable distribution to get
a large update, but I know that firefox has been treated differently
in the past, and the wording in the wiki made me wonder.

Re: A question about alsa(1) and sox(1) internals

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2022 at 8:51 PM John Conover  wrote:
> The command:
>
> sox ... sine create 1000 vol -60 dB
>
> generates a 1 kHz. sine wave at 1 / 1000 full scale.
>
> Does the low level sine wave still consist of +/- 2^15 steps?
>
> (i.e., does the volume reduction occur during sine wave generation, or
> post generation?)

Normally sox does everything with 32-bit integers internally, 2^15
steps wouldn't show up anywhere unless you force the output to 16
bits. I'm not exactly sure how it keeps track of the volume when
processing with "vol", but I got curious and ran some tests.

Generating random values with sox built-in white noise generator and
saving the output to 64-bit doubles I got 30.4 "bits" for -10 dB, 29
bits for -20 dB etc, down to 18 bits for -90 dB.

 dB  Unique  Bits
-10  1440999152  30.4
-20  542466154   29.0
-30  190121342   27.5
-40  6500887426.0
-50  2185543224.4
-60  7256755 22.8
-70  2388275 21.2
-80  780808  19.6
-90  253960  18.0
-90,+70  542455597   29.0

Interestingly enough, chaining volume commands will "remember" the
command, so doing this:
   vol -90 dB vol +70 dB
gives the same resolution as doing a single vol -20 dB - it doesn't
quantize at the -90 dB level.

In summary: sox tries very hard not to discard information on the way
to the output.

Status of Virtualbox in debian

[Anders Andersson]

I remember when Virtualbox was removed from debian, and I remember the
reasons. That's why I was surprised when I saw a recent message to the
list where a user tried to install it. Searching for "virtualbox"
indeed shows me that it is available in stretch-backports and sid:
https://packages.debian.org/virtualbox=1

Has something changed that makes virtualbox workable again, or has it
*always* been available in sid?

Re: Odd reproducible problem - but is it a bug?

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 8:19 PM  wrote:
> On Mon, May 02, 2022 at 07:58:12PM +0200, Michael Lange wrote:
> > On Mon, 2 May 2022 10:17:06 -0500
> > Richard Owlett  wrote:
> > > I'm using Debian 10.7 with MATE DE [will be updated later this week]
> > > The machine is a Lenovo T510 and is setup to login as either "richard"
> > > or "root".
> > >
> > > If logged in as "richard" I can execute su {+ password} and receive a
> > > prompt indicating I'm "root".
> > >
> > > However if I then enter "update-grub", the response is
> > >"bash: update-grub: command not found"
> > > as if I were the unprivileged user "richard".
> >
> > you need to do
> >
> >  # su -
> >
> > (instead of just
> >
> >  # su
> > ),
> > otherwise $PATH will be inherited from user "richard" and thus lack the
> > entry "/sbin".
>
> Or just get used to say "/sbin/update-grub" ;-)
>
> (No, I'm not really being serious here. But half-acquiring this
> habit would have helped you to unravel the problem like in "Ah,
> I have the permissions but not the $PATH..."

On this note, I've always found it annoying that debian (and likely
others) don't put /sbin in the normal user's $PATH. A lot of the tools
there have uses other than modifying the system.

Re: dpkg --configure -a crashes system

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Feb 6, 2022 at 7:13 PM Dennis Wicks  wrote:
>
> I can't install/upgrade because I get the message
>
> > E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' 
> > to correct the problem.
>
> When I run the dpkg command I get one message
> > Setting up linux-image-4.19.0-18-amd64 (4.19.208-1)
>
> then within a few seconds the system crashes.
>
> Any ideas? Is there a log file I can look in that might
> contain something useful? Any help is appreciated!
>
> TIA!!
> Dennis

If I had this problem I would assume a hardware fault - dpkg shouldn't
crash the whole system. To debug it I would open up three terminals
that you can monitor, running these three:
1. sudo journalctl -f
2. sudo dmesg -Hw
3. sudo dpkg --configure -a (or whatever)

Hopefully any of those might give you a clue. If not, check "sudo
journalctl -b -1 -e" after the next crash, and see if something was
logged.

Re: Why did Norbert Preining (having maintained KDE) left Debian?

[Anders Andersson]

On Sat, Jan 15, 2022 at 11:29 AM Marco Möller
 wrote:
>
> Does somebody has information about what in the background has happened,
> which made Norbert leaving the team?
> Considering that Debian is a community project and myself feeling to be
> part of the community, although not actively involved in its maintenance
> and development, I am wondering what is going on in the community after
> his post from yesterday sounds like there are things happening in the
> community, which not all the community might be aware of.
> In his blog he wrote "After having been (again) demoted [...] based on
> flimsy arguments, I have been forced to rethink the level of
> contribution I want to do for Debian."
> https://www.preining.info/blog/2022/01/future-of-my-packages-in-debian/
>
> I wish that someone could publish some background information, neutral
> and respectful and without harming anybody. I am absolutely not
> interested to start here in public a war of recriminations. I simply
> feel that it would be worth for the health of the community to get a
> more transparent view on what is going on in the community.
> Do you have some background information which you could share in PLEASE
> neutral, well thought text, serving the community and its transparency
> instead of rupturing it?
> Thanks, Marco.

I read a few of the comments on the blog you linked to, and he replies
to one comment:

"No there is no public record (for now), as all happened on
debian-private. In due time I will document the whole process, since I
have access to all of debian-private until recently. Time to show what
really went on."

Maybe you just have to wait a while. This will of course only be one
side of the story.

Re: Unable to minimize Firefox 91.5.0esr at top of frame

[Anders Andersson]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 8:08 PM John Boxall  wrote:
>
> After upgrading to the latest Debian 10 (Buster) Firefox ESR (91.5.0esr
> 64bit), I found that I could not minimize the window by right clicking
> on the top of the window frame and selecting "Minimize", whether the
> menu bar was present or not. The menu for selecting minimize was not
> even present. I was able to perform the minimize with the old (78.x)
> release. I recently installed the latest FF release from the Mozilla
> site (version 95.0.2 64bit) and noted the same situation.
>
> Is this expected going forward or is this a bug?

This is probably expected going forward, because if you've used a
modernized website lately you should know that computer users are in a
minority, and that you should only use a touchscreen on a phone to
scroll through your personalized ads. Read more here:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/news/modern-clean-new-firefox-clears-the-way-to-all-you-need-online/

Only nerds and geeks would use advanced features like "Always on top"
etc. I've found a workaround where the menu containing "Minimize" and
other items shows up if you right-click on one of the window edges
*other* than the top: left, right, or bottom (where you would
left-click and drag to change the window size). However, neither of
these are accessible if the window is already maximized.

Re: Instalacja Debian8 błąd w Release

[Anders Andersson]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 3:13 PM piorunz  wrote:
>
> Witaj Wojciech,
>
> On 13/01/2022 11:02, Wojciech wrote:
> >
> > Kiedy mogę się spodziewać naprawienia ?
>
> Never. Jessie end of life was in June 2018, and LTS support has ended in
> June 2020, one and half years ago. It's a surprise that some Jessie
> packages are even available online somewhere. This is not guaranteed.

I would be more surprised if the packages were *not* available
somewhere, and I hope they are "guaranteed" the same way as the new
packages (that is, no guarantee other than the benevolence of the
community members). These things are very important for current and
future "software archeology" and for preserving the history and
evolution of computing.

Heck, I even had to install Debian Sarge a few years ago to try to
figure out how a very old piece of software was supposed to be built.
It was neat to have the whole ecosystem as a 2005 developer expected
and I'm very happy that the old versions were still downloadable!

Re: Debian version

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 1:24 PM Greg Wooledge  wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 09, 2021 at 09:22:25AM +, Koler, Nethanel wrote:
> > I am Nati, I am trying to find a variable that is configured in the 
> > linux-headers that can tell me on which Debian I am
>
> This sounds like an X-Y problem.  What's your real objective?
>
> There is NOT a one-to-one correspondence between a Linux kernel version
> and a Debian release version.  Debian allows you the freedom to use
> any kernel you want -- one of Debian's kernels, or one that you built
> yourself, or one that you copied over from an Ubuntu system, or whatever.

Or it might not be Linux at all, like
https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/ or
https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/

Re: How can I force "fsck -y" of a removable usb drive before mounting it?

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Jun 20, 2021 at 11:09 AM Ottavio Caruso
 wrote:
>
> I have a removable mp3 player that gets auto-magically mounted as:
>
> $ mount |grep sdb
> /dev/sdb1 on /media/oc/PHILIPS type vfat
> (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2
>
>
> Every time I plug it in, I get this message in dmesg:
>
>
> [47212.945001] FAT-fs (sdb1): Volume was not properly unmounted. Some
> data may be corrupt. Please run fsck.
>
> Whatever way I umount this drive (either manually via terminal or
> right-clicking the icon on the desktop), I get the above message when I
> re-mount it.
>
> Is there a way to tell Debian to perform a "fsck -y"
> on the drive before mounting it? For example, an entry in /etc/fstab or
> some trickery somewhere in systemd?

This should be a one-time thing, so if you unmount it from the
terminal and run fsck, it should work next time.

I don't think running fsck automatically is a good idea when you don't
have a way to check the output...

Re: OT: Music player with substantial speakers than can play things like mp3, wav files from an SD card or USB pendrive

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 1:51 AM  wrote:
>
> I'd like to find a fairly large (I mean not a tiny hand held thing that uses
> batteries and has tiny controls) music player that can play things like mp3,
> wav and other music files from either an SD card or a USB pendrive.
> ...

This is WAY too off topic. You're not even asking for something that
is related to computing, or free software. Hope someone will nip this
in the bud before the debian mailing list archive ends up with a
permanent advertisement for consumer hardware.

Re: Compared with debian 10.7, debian 10.8 (with realtime kernel) cyclictest test max latency has increased significantly

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 4:45 AM Peter Ehlert  wrote:
>
>
> On 2/7/21 6:22 PM, Hongbo Li wrote:
>
> hi！My machine used to run debian 10.7 with realtime kernel 
> (linux-img-rt-amd64)，everything is ok.  A four hours cyclictest test has a 
> result with max latency 8 microseconds. Yesterday I upgraded my machine to 
> debian 10.8,
>
> please read about Debian Point Releases ... 
> https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases/PointReleases

Which part of that page is relevant to OP? I don't see it.

Re: Why is idle not detected?

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Jan 6, 2021 at 9:47 PM Rainer Dorsch  wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am running Debian 10 and sometimes idle is not detected correctly on my
> (KDE) system and the desktop is not going to suspend.
>
> A typical candidate is a not correctly terminating vlc process which does not
> have a screen anymore but is still alive. Sometimes I cannot find out what
> causes the problem.
>
> Is there a way to find out what is the holding back the idle detection?
>
> I am thinking of something like doing a dry-run of the idle detection by cron
> with a report every few minutes and log the report (without actually
> triggering suspend if idle is detected). Whenever idle is not detected
> properly, the log file would tell the reason.
>
> Any idea or hint is welcome.

For me it is ALWAYS vlc, and it has been doing this at random for the
past year or two. No solution other than "killall -KILL vlc" now and
then and especially before leaving for the night. I don't know what
triggers this behaviour, it doesn't always leave stray processes
around.

Maybe some day I'm annoyed enough to file a bug report. This happened
with different GPUs, different monitors, Wayland vs. X11, and I see
this on Gnome in Debian testing.

Re: The .xsession-errors problem

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 5:43 PM Teemu Likonen  wrote:
>
> It seems that ~/.xsession-errors file can still grow to infinity in
> size. Sometimes it grows really fast. This is nothing new: we have all
> seen it and talked about it. What do you do to maintain this file?
>
>   - Do you just delete it when you happen to notice it's too big?
>
>   - Do you configure some rotating system, perhaps with logrotate(8)?
> (Why doesn't Debian have this automatically?)
>
>   - Do you add it to your backup system's ignore list so that a
> potentially big file doesn't fill your backups?
>
>   - What do Debian documentation and faq lists teach about maintaining
> this potentially huge file?
>
>   - Why is it normal that in Debian (and GNU/Linux) you need to manually
> delete a hidden file to keep it from filling your hard disks?
>
> Note that I'm not necessarily looking for help but different views are
> welcome. I'm mostly interested in the phenomenon that there still is
> this well-known indefinitely growing file and seemingly no automatic
> rotation.
>
> From my backups I found an ~/.xsession-errors file of size 111
> megabytes. Probably I deleted the file at that point and it started grow
> again.

Amateur. I found a 24 GB .xsession-errors once, on a 30 GB filesystem.
423 million lines. Most of them the same:

(indicator-weather:2201): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-CRITICAL **:
dbusmenu_menuitem_build_variant: assertion `DBUSMENU_IS_MENUITEM(mi)'
failed

Buggy crap can fill it up pretty fast.

Re: Get an error when i use new kernel

[Anders Andersson]

> stan clay  于2020年8月26日周三 上午10:26写道：
>> Yesterday, I upgraded unstable from stable and installed a new kernel, but I 
>> couldn't get into the system with the new kernel. I got an error

By unstable you mean sid? What is the new kernel version? I saw that
debian experimental has a new 5.8 kernel. sid should still use 5.7 at
the time of typing this email.

>  the error log is：
>
> [  26.367633] nvme :01:00.0: AER: PCIe Bus Error:
> severity=Corrected, type=Data Link Layer, (Transmitter ID)
> [  26.367633] nvme :01:00.0: AER:   device [1e0f:0009] error
> status/mask=1000/6000
> [  26.367633] nvme :01: AER:  [12]Timeout
>
> i use lspci to search this device(1e0f:0009),and i got the error device is
>
> ➜  ~ lspci -nn |grep 0009
> 01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller [0108]: KIOXIA Corporation Device 
> [1e0f:0009] (rev 01)
>
> the device is my ssd
>
> I searched the Internet for this error and found some similar errors and 
> solutions, such as in the grub.cfg Riga PCI = ***, etc., but it doesn't work 
> here. I found that their error reporting devices are different from mine

It may help if you tell us the location of these similar errors. Maybe
they are not similar at all, or maybe it's just a small change.

Re: I can't figure it out

[Anders Andersson]

1. Don't top-post.

On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 5:39 PM Peter Ehlert  wrote:
>
> 1. use a Subject that indicates your actual Question.
>
> 2. add comments to that original post
>
> 3. give some actual details about the Hardware and Software you are using.
>
> *if I was not really bored this morning I would completely ignore some
> wild "I can't figure it out" post.
>
> I Suggest you start over with a Fresh post
>
> (this is my only effort I will make to drag it out of you, that kind of
> statement tells me you are being a PRICK)
>
> Peter
>
> On 6/25/20 4:58 PM, bw wrote:
> > I've posted 5,000 messages on this list about how to hook up my
> > refrigerator to my ancient 386sx computer with 512k of ram.  I don't
> > understand why I keep posting and everybody gets mad.  I say I use debian
> > but I admit I cheat a little and install some other crap and I'm not gonna
> > tell you what unless you drag it out of me.
> >
> > Can anybody yhelp fix it?

2. I can't even comprehend how you can read the text and believe that
the author has an actual question.

3. Read the post again and then realize what you're trying to do.

Re: why foxit hasn't been included in buster?

[Anders Andersson]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2020 at 6:45 AM Long Wind  wrote:
>
> some say it's among best pdf reader for linux
> how to install it in buster or stretch?

Not sure why you expect it to be included, it looks like commercial
software. Is the source even available on their website?

Re: Be careful when editing /etc/fstab

[Anders Andersson]

I agree, but documentation doesn't seem to have high priority in
debian, it's a cultural issue. For example, in OpenBSD a developer
never changes anything without also making sure that the documentation
everywhere is up to date. It's become part of the mindset.

Yesterday I tried to learn about how LXC is integrated in
debian, at least the debian wiki article warned me that the page might
be outdated if I tried it on the brand new "stretch" distro! And "man
crypttab" explicitly says that it doesn't document what's actually
used, to read about that one has to go online.


On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 3:51 PM David Wright  wrote:
>
> On Wed 24 Jun 2020 at 09:32:53 (+0200), Anders Andersson wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 1:17 AM David  wrote:
> > > I just noticed a new bug report [1]:
> > > """
> > > Dear Installer Team,
> > >
> > > Please consider adding words informing users they should run
> > > "systemctl daemon-reload" after changing /etc/fstab.
> > >
> > > With stale mount units from an older /etc/fstab, users might observe
> > > "interesting surprises", f.e. systemd might umount newly mounted
> > > filesystems, if the in-memory mount units conflict with info in
> > > /etc/fstab.
> > > ""
> > >
> > > Apparently this is old news, I found a systemd bug report [2]
> > > from 2017. It links to documentation [3] that says:
> > > """
> > > On SysV systems changes to init scripts or any other files that define
> > > the boot process (such as /etc/fstab) usually had an immediate effect
> > > on everything started later. This is different on systemd-based
> > > systems where init script information and other boot-time
> > > configuration files are only reread when "systemctl daemon-reload" is
> > > issued. (Note that some commands, notably "systemctl
> > > enable"/"systemctl disable" do this implicitly however.) This is by
> > > design, and a safety feature, since it ensures that half-completed
> > > changes are not read at the wrong time.
> > > """
> > >
> > > Anyway I was not aware of this so I thought to share it here.
> > > Further information is welcome, if you have any.
> > >
> > > [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=963573
> > > [2] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/7291
> > > [3] https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Incompatibilities/
> >
> >
> > Yep, I always do a "systemctl daemon-reload" directly after editing
> > these files and looking in /var/run/systemd/generator/ to see if it
> > did everything right. The problem is how a user should know which
> > files are affected and not.
> >
> > I'm personally mostly affected by /etc/fstab and /etc/crypttab, but I
> > assume there are more auto-generated files.
>
> AFAICT neither of their man pages knows of the existence of systemctl,
> and man fstab seems completely unaware of the behaviour of systemd.
> The latter hardly seems surprising, as it was last updated when the
> stable version was wheezy.
>
> These factors might be one reason why some users write that systemd
> is poorly documented, or that they can't find the documentation for it.
> Yes, there's copious documentation of systemd itself, but some of the
> subsystems profoundly affected by it seem unaware of that in their
> own documentation.
>
> > A while back I started writing custom systemd unit files for mounts
> > and such, but now I've reverted back to using /etc/fstab directly for
> > most things and then possibly just dropping in custom extra options in
> > /etc/systemd/system/ if necessary. I did that because all of my
> > systems run on multiple fully encrypted raid disks, and it used to be
> > a mess trying systemd to understand that it has to decrypt everything
> > first and then try to assemble it and mount it. These days it's much
> > more clever.
>
> Cheers,
> David.
>

Re: Be careful when editing /etc/fstab

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 1:17 AM David  wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I just noticed a new bug report [1]:
> """
> Dear Installer Team,
>
> Please consider adding words informing users they should run
> "systemctl daemon-reload" after changing /etc/fstab.
>
> With stale mount units from an older /etc/fstab, users might observe
> "interesting surprises", f.e. systemd might umount newly mounted
> filesystems, if the in-memory mount units conflict with info in
> /etc/fstab.
> ""
>
> Apparently this is old news, I found a systemd bug report [2]
> from 2017. It links to documentation [3] that says:
> """
> On SysV systems changes to init scripts or any other files that define
> the boot process (such as /etc/fstab) usually had an immediate effect
> on everything started later. This is different on systemd-based
> systems where init script information and other boot-time
> configuration files are only reread when "systemctl daemon-reload" is
> issued. (Note that some commands, notably "systemctl
> enable"/"systemctl disable" do this implicitly however.) This is by
> design, and a safety feature, since it ensures that half-completed
> changes are not read at the wrong time.
> """
>
> Anyway I was not aware of this so I thought to share it here.
> Further information is welcome, if you have any.
>
> [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=963573
> [2] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/7291
> [3] https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Incompatibilities/


Yep, I always do a "systemctl daemon-reload" directly after editing
these files and looking in /var/run/systemd/generator/ to see if it
did everything right. The problem is how a user should know which
files are affected and not.

I'm personally mostly affected by /etc/fstab and /etc/crypttab, but I
assume there are more auto-generated files.

A while back I started writing custom systemd unit files for mounts
and such, but now I've reverted back to using /etc/fstab directly for
most things and then possibly just dropping in custom extra options in
/etc/systemd/system/ if necessary. I did that because all of my
systems run on multiple fully encrypted raid disks, and it used to be
a mess trying systemd to understand that it has to decrypt everything
first and then try to assemble it and mount it. These days it's much
more clever.

Re: have you seen this inside....

[Anders Andersson]

On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 12:51 AM Seeds Notoneofmy
 wrote:
>
> a debian buster machine?
>
> ATI Radeon HD5450 PCI-e
>
> https://www.amazon.de/Sapphire-Radeon-HD5450-Grafikkarte-Speicher/dp/B0036DD4CO
>
> If so, how did you get it working, please?

1. Insert into computer.
2. Boot.

If this doesn't work for you, you need to post a description of the
error because it should just work out of the box.

Also, next time please respect the time of the thousands of people who
are going to read this message live or search for it during the next
years by selecting a more descriptive title...

Re: Could RAM possibly be just 3-4 times faster than bare hdd writes and reads? or, is the Linux kernel doing its 'magic' in the bg? or, ...

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 12:15 PM Albretch Mueller  wrote:
>
>  HDDs have their internal caching mechanism and I have heard that the
> Linux kernel uses RAM very effitiently, but to my understanding RAM
> being only 3-4 times faster doesn't make much sense, so I may be doing
> or understanding something not entirely right.

I suggest that you google a bit on how to do fileystem benchmarks
first, then try it and report back if something is still odd. There
are many ways but "dd" is not the way unless you really dig through
the sync flags and understand what they do. I normally use "fio" but
it's not very friendly (so it suits me).

However, I just recently put a fast NVMe SSD in an older server with
(lots) of DDR3 ECC RAM. The RAM bandwidth for one node/CPU is about
10-12 GB/s, and the SSD bandwidth is nearing 2 GB/s for most loads.
That's getting close to your figures!

Re: bash-completion pros/cons

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 9:48 PM David Wright  wrote:
> Where bash-completion does get in the way for me is, for example,
> where you download a file that's, say, a PDF but it arrives via wget
> called, say, index_0001.3872359.html, for whatever reason.
> So you type   xpdf inde [TAB]   and bash-completion refuses to
> complete the name any further. If you're lucky, typing   * [RETURN]
> will work, if there aren't any disruptive filenames which match
> inde*, but in other cases the fastest workaround I know is to type
> [HOME]less[SPACE][END] whereupon bash-completion is happy to match
> any old filename for the less command, which you then rub out.
>
> That's just one example, but it represents a whole class where it
> seems that a bunch of files have disappeared because bash won't match them.

First time this happened to me (it also happens with buggy
completion-scripts where the author doesn't know all the ways to use
the tool) I found that bash maps M-/ to "complete-filename" by
default. This can be used in all contexts. The only problem is that I
always forget the combo.

Re: How long will this take?

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 4:00 PM Nicolas George  wrote:
>
> Anders Andersson (12020-06-10):
> > Because the police raiding my house for dealing drugs is not a
> > realistic threat. Looking at my drives for running Tor could be.
>
> I have tried to explain that your threat assessment is inadequate, you
> do not want to listen. Fine, keep wasting your time on your own private
> security theater.

It would only take a quick google to show that this is something that
actually happens. Maybe you want to believe it doesn't, but that
doesn't make it less true.

Re: How long will this take?

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 3:33 PM Nicolas George  wrote:
>
> Anders Andersson (12020-06-10):
> > Except wiping a disk is trivial. Just start the job and come back
> > later to a clean disk. It's not like you have to wipe it by hand. I do
> > it routinely before I put a disk to use that's going to be used for a
> > couple of years.
>
> There is no "except" about: define your threat model; if it requires
> wiping, wipe. If it does not, wiping is just a waste of time, little or
> lots, still a waste. And it is a waste of power too.
>
> There are many things that are trivial to do with a hard drive and could
> benefit security in far-fetched scenarios. Did you wipe the possible
> traces of cocaine? Did you weight it to check it matches the specs? Did
> you take pictures of all angles? All these and many others are trivial.
> Why one but not the others?

Because the police raiding my house for dealing drugs is not a
realistic threat. Looking at my drives for running Tor could be.

Re: How long will this take?

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 1:14 PM Nicolas George  wrote:
>
> Anders Andersson (12020-06-10):
> > Too bad if you end up in a routine police investigation and they find
> > child pornography when scanning the disks for deleted files.
> >
> > "Must have been the previous owner" is a valid defense, but I'd rather
> > not end up having to use it.
>
> Ah, but maybe the previous owner had discovered a cheap cure for
> covid-19 and big pharma had them silenced. You would be wiping the last
> traces of their research!
>
> Seriously, first we were talking about hard drives straight from the
> factory in China, making the thread… industrial espionage, I suppose?
> And now we are talking about child pornography found in an unrelated
> seizure.
>
> So, for that to be relevant, you would need that all the following
> conditions to be met:
>
> - the previous owner had child pornography on this disk;
>
> - unencrypted;
>
> - they gave it away their disk in a way that makes it reusable;
>
> - without wiping it themselves;
>
> - cops show up at your door and take the drive to examine it;
>
> - they do it before regular use has wiped it.
>
> That is a fine Drake equation you got here, but maybe not a rational
> justification for spending days wiping a drive.
>
> For any security measure, it is easy to find afterwards a far-fetched
> scenario where it makes a difference. But that is how TV writers work,
> not security. For security, we must first define the attack model, and
> then search for defense. Otherwise we end up barricading the back door
> while the key to the front door is still under the mat.

Except wiping a disk is trivial. Just start the job and come back
later to a clean disk. It's not like you have to wipe it by hand. I do
it routinely before I put a disk to use that's going to be used for a
couple of years.

Re: How long will this take?

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 8:28 PM Nicolas George  wrote:
>
> Jude DaShiell (12020-06-09):
> > High security operations do this routinely.  They properly don't trust
> > parts are as labeled from manufacturers especially manufacturers that
> > send any of their stuff or get any of their stuff from China.
>
> There is no trust to have. The previous contents would be overwritten on
> the first actual write of a file.
>
> And if the filesystem reads a sector that has never been written, that's
> a serious bug in the operating system.

Too bad if you end up in a routine police investigation and they find
child pornography when scanning the disks for deleted files.

"Must have been the previous owner" is a valid defense, but I'd rather
not end up having to use it.

Re: Suspicious output during apt update

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 9:31 AM Darac Marjal  wrote:
>
>
> On 13/05/2020 07:05, Ihor Antonov wrote:
> > Today during apt update I got a very strange error message (below)
> > Running apt udpate did not seem to reproduce the issue.
> >
> > Does anyone know what is this? And why does it tell "get haircut" ?
> >
> > 
> > $ sudo apt update
> > [sudo] password for ngor:
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Fetched 14.9 MB in 4s (3,979 kB/s)
> > Entity: line 4: parser error : xmlParseEntityRef: no name
> > e original message barList of languages in a config file instead 
> > iso-codesFind &
> > 
> >^
> > Entity: line 8: parser error : EntityRef: expecting ';'
> > - get haircut @s 24 @r d  14 @o r
> >^
> > Entity: line 11: parser error : EntityRef: expecting ';'
> > @r y  4  11  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8  TU
> >^
> > Entity: line 11: parser error : EntityRef: expecting ';'
> > @r y  4  11  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8  TU
> > ^
> > Entity: line 11: parser error : EntityRef: expecting ';'
> > @r y  4  11  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8  TU
> >   ^
> > Entity: line 11: parser error : EntityRef: expecting ';'
> > @r y  4  11  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8  TU
> >  ^
> > Reading package lists... Done
> > Building dependency tree
> > Reading state information... Done
> > 12 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.
> >
> That's an odd one because, as far as I can tell
> (https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=get\s%2Bhaircut=0) the
> phrase "get haircut" isn't anywhere in Debian. That would imply that
> it's in a datafile on your computer. You could try grepping your hard
> disk for that phrase and see what files it turns up in?


"get haircut" doesn't show up in many places, but I suspect it relates
to emojis used for example in libreoffice. I noticed that the
libreoffice packages were recently upgraded in testing.
(/usr/lib/libreoffice/share/emojiconfig/emoji.json for example)

Re: Suspicious output during apt update

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 8:05 AM Ihor Antonov  wrote:
>
> Today during apt update I got a very strange error message (below)
> Running apt udpate did not seem to reproduce the issue.
>
> Does anyone know what is this? And why does it tell "get haircut" ?
>
> 
> $ sudo apt update
> [sudo] password for ngor:
>
> ...
>
> Fetched 14.9 MB in 4s (3,979 kB/s)
> Entity: line 4: parser error : xmlParseEntityRef: no name
> e original message barList of languages in a config file instead 
> iso-codesFind &
>   
>  ^
> Entity: line 8: parser error : EntityRef: expecting ';'
> - get haircut @s 24 @r d  14 @o r
>^
> Entity: line 11: parser error : EntityRef: expecting ';'
> @r y  4  11  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8  TU
>^
> Entity: line 11: parser error : EntityRef: expecting ';'
> @r y  4  11  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8  TU
> ^
> Entity: line 11: parser error : EntityRef: expecting ';'
> @r y  4  11  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8  TU
>   ^
> Entity: line 11: parser error : EntityRef: expecting ';'
> @r y  4  11  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8  TU
>  ^
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> 12 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.


Don't know what it is but I got exactly the same thing. I just ran
update again and since it didn't occur again, I forgot all about it. I
assumed it had to do with me running a testing distribution. Didn't
happen on the debian stable box that I just tried.

Re: Looking for video card recommendation

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 7:02 PM Alberto Sentieri <2...@tripolho.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks. Adding contrib solved the problem.
>
> On 5/5/20 8:24 PM, Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
> > On 05.05.2020 20:29, Alberto Sentieri wrote:
> >> Last time I installed it I downloaded the driver from NVIDIA web
> >> site. I was able to install it and it worked well, but updates
> >> started bothering me. Maybe I should have tried a Debian repo, but I
> >> did not and I have no recollection of the reason.
> >>
> >> Anyway, I was trying to install it now using debian repos (deb
> >> http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main non-free), as you
> >> suggested, and I got this. Any suggestion?
> >>
> >> # nvidia-detect
> >> Detected NVIDIA GPUs:
> >> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GF119
> >> [NVS 310] [10de:107d] (rev a1)
> >>
> >> Checking card:  NVIDIA Corporation GF119 [NVS 310] (rev a1)
> >> Your card is only supported up to the 390 legacy drivers series.
> >> It is recommended to install the
> >> nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver
> >> package.
> >> # apt-get install nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver
> >> Reading package lists... Done
> >> Building dependency tree
> >> Reading state information... Done
> >> Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
> >> requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
> >> distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
> >> or been moved out of Incoming.
> >> The following information may help to resolve the situation:
> >>
> >> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
> >>  nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver : PreDepends: nvidia-installer-cleanup
> >> but it is not installable
> >>   Depends:
> >> nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver-libs (= 390.116-1) but it is not going to
> >> be installed or
> >> nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver-libs-nonglvnd (= 390.116-1) but it is not
> >> going to be installed
> >>   Depends: nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver-bin
> >> (= 390.116-1) but it is not going to be installed
> >>   Depends:
> >> xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-legacy-390xx (= 390.116-1) but it is not
> >> going to be installed
> >>   Depends:
> >> nvidia-legacy-390xx-vdpau-driver (= 390.116-1) but it is not going to
> >> be installed
> >>   Depends:
> >> nvidia-legacy-390xx-alternative (= 390.116-1) but it is not going to
> >> be installed
> >>   Depends:
> >> nvidia-legacy-390xx-kernel-dkms (= 390.116-1) but it is not going to
> >> be installed or
> >> nvidia-legacy-390xx-kernel-390.116
> >>   Depends: nvidia-support but it is not
> >> installable
> >>   Recommends:
> >> nvidia-settings-legacy-390xx but it is not installable
> >>   Recommends: libnvidia-legacy-390xx-cfg1
> >> (= 390.116-1) but it is not going to be installed
> >>   Recommends: nvidia-persistenced but it
> >> is not installable
> >> E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
> >>
> >
> > Package "nvidia-installer-cleanup" is in "contrib" section, so you
> > have to add it too. Don't forget to invoke "apt update" after that.


Just a reminder for people who are going to search for this in the
future. We live in a world where you vote with your wallet. Try not to
support manufacturers who are working against you when you want to use
a free platform.

Re: Changing timestamps in video files

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 4:17 PM David Wright  wrote:
>
> On Wed 29 Apr 2020 at 13:16:17 (+0200), Anders Andersson wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 12:54 PM elvis  wrote:
> > > On 29/4/20 8:29 pm, Anders Andersson wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 5:57 PM Steve Keller  
> > > > wrote:
> > > >> Is there any tool in Debian that is able to change the timestamp in
> > > >> video files, e.g. .mov, .avi, .mp4, etc.?
> > > >>
> > > >> For image files I use jhead -ta  but I haven't found
> > > >> anything for video.
> > > > $ ls -gGh faked_evidence.avi
> > > > -rw-r--r-- 1 700M Apr 29 12:26 faked_evidence.avi
> > > > $ touch -t 0512241337 faked_evidence.avi
> > > > $ ls -gGh faked_evidence.avi
> > > > -rw-r--r-- 1 700M Dec 24  2005 faked_evidence.avi
> > >
> > > Don't try that on faked_evidence.pdf
> > >
> > > Pdfs have an internal timestamp you need to change as well.
> > >
> > >
> > > I think this is what he wants for movie files, but I am not sure they
> > > have the time encoded into them...
> >
> > Sure. We can only guess what goes on in OPs mind. Could be basically
> > anything, so I imagine this list of replies will grow until OP tells
> > us what they want.
>
> Well, the OP wrote "in video files", which rules out touch.
> It's pretty obvious that the OP is more interested in modifying
> timestamps more like the one seen here, reading 210.718067.
>
> $ ffprobe 2037DFB67323C9DBA31FA6AE9C27A2670855D94A
> Input #0, mpegts, from '2037DFB67323C9DBA31FA6AE9C27A2670855D94A':
>   Duration: 00:00:07.57, start: 210.718067, bitrate: 4413 kb/s
>   Program 1
> Metadata:
>   service_name: Service01
>   service_provider: FFmpeg
> Stream #0:0[0x100]: Video: h264 (High) ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), 
> yuv420p(progressive), 1920x1080, Closed Captions, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k 
> tbn, 59.94 tbc
> Stream #0:1[0x101]: Audio: aac (LC) ([15][0][0][0] / 0x000F), 44100 Hz, 
> stereo, fltp, 102 kb/s
> $

Or maybe he wants to change actual timestamps in video files, like
this? https://i.stack.imgur.com/UcoNw.jpg

It's far from obvious that he wants fragment timestamps since they
would not apply to image files as he mentioned in the first post.

Re: Changing timestamps in video files

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 12:54 PM elvis  wrote:
>
>
> On 29/4/20 8:29 pm, Anders Andersson wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 5:57 PM Steve Keller  wrote:
> >> Is there any tool in Debian that is able to change the timestamp in
> >> video files, e.g. .mov, .avi, .mp4, etc.?
> >>
> >> For image files I use jhead -ta  but I haven't found
> >> anything for video.
> > $ ls -gGh faked_evidence.avi
> > -rw-r--r-- 1 700M Apr 29 12:26 faked_evidence.avi
> > $ touch -t 0512241337 faked_evidence.avi
> > $ ls -gGh faked_evidence.avi
> > -rw-r--r-- 1 700M Dec 24  2005 faked_evidence.avi
>
> Don't try that on faked_evidence.pdf
>
> Pdfs have an internal timestamp you need to change as well.
>
>
> I think this is what he wants for movie files, but I am not sure they
> have the time encoded into them...

Sure. We can only guess what goes on in OPs mind. Could be basically
anything, so I imagine this list of replies will grow until OP tells
us what they want.

Re: Changing timestamps in video files

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 5:57 PM Steve Keller  wrote:
>
> Is there any tool in Debian that is able to change the timestamp in
> video files, e.g. .mov, .avi, .mp4, etc.?
>
> For image files I use jhead -ta  but I haven't found
> anything for video.

$ ls -gGh faked_evidence.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 700M Apr 29 12:26 faked_evidence.avi
$ touch -t 0512241337 faked_evidence.avi
$ ls -gGh faked_evidence.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 700M Dec 24  2005 faked_evidence.avi

Re: multiple desktop environments and performance

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 11:07 PM Anil F Duggirala
 wrote:
>
> I would like to know if having multiple (say 3) different desktop
> environments would have an effect in performance of my machine, as
> opposed to having a single one. If I have Gnome already installed and
> then install Lxqt and Mate. Would you expect to see any effect on the
> performance when using any one of them? (as opposed to having only one
> installed) (I guess when I say performance I mean what a newbie like me
> means, snappiness, more resources available)

The answer to your literal question is "No, I would not *expect* to
see any effect" other than of course the obvious extra storage
requirements and the extra time it takes for you having to select
which one to use at startup.

Then of course there can be the odd bug destroying your expectations...

Re: Hiding apps

[Anders Andersson]

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 6:54 PM Peter Ehlert  wrote:
> On 10/24/19 8:38 AM, Frank McCormick wrote:
> >
> > I am running Debian Sid with Mate. I would like to run tzclock at
> > startup, but it appears in the taskbar as a regular program.
> I am not familiar with tzclock ... I don't believe it is the same as the
> clock in the Mate panel.

I'm curious: Why did you then answer, for a completely different program?

> > Is there a way to hide it from the taskbar ?
> The clock in the Mate panel can be removed by right clicking on it.
> First "unlock" and then select. "remove from panel"

Ok, but this would remove the clock. The user wants a clock. A
specific clock, even.

Re: OT: Reason to buy a Raspberry Pi ;-) (was Re: shell wrappers for trig and other mathematical functions)

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 8:06 PM  wrote:
>
> Somewhat OT, but (maybe) interesting anyway?
>
> For a long time, I've been aware of the program Mathmatica (by Wolfram
> Research) that does a lot of math, including, iirc, things like symbolic
> integration and differentiation.  (Everybody should have those capabilities at
> their finger tips ;-)
>
> Anyway, my thinking on this topic is that I wouldn't mind having a program
> dedicated to the uses the OP brought up (I keep a session of bc - l open in a
> terminal for quick calculations).
>
> But I couldn't remember the name of the Mathmatica program (nor the guy who
> wrote it, who is fairly famous for it), so I went googling and came up with
> the following pages which reminded me of the name, but also pointed out that,
> apparently if you buy a Raspberry Pi, you get a free copy of Mathmatica.  So,
> I will seriously consider buying a Raspberry Pi.
>
> (The (Wikipedia) pages listed below also give the names of various competitors
> to Mathmatica, including Mathcad -- disclaimer -- I've never used either of
> these programs, nor probably any of the others listed on these pages (but I
> didn't really look at the names of the other programs):)
>
>* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_algebra_systems]]
>
>* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_numerical-
> analysis_software]]

Funny you should write this just when I'm hacking away in maxima.

Maxima works well in debian and every other platform, and it's my
go-to software for working with symbolic calculations and rational
numbers. To be honest, I use it whenever I need to calculate
*anything*, because it always gives exact results by default. It's
also nice to use software where the source code has comments from the
seventies. None of this modern C rubbish.

I can recommend wxMaxima which renders the formulas a little cleaner.

I personally try to stay away from closed software and hardware which
is why I use debian, and why I don't want neither Mathematica nor a
Raspberry Pi.

Re: A followup on github discussion

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 5:56 PM Roberto C. Sánchez  wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 06:39:51PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 09:12:48AM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> > > On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 03:53:50PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> > > >   So, dear list,
> > > >
> > > > this is just a quick followup on discrimination practices employed by
> > > > GitHub.
> > > > Today it was brought to my attention that GitHub has restricted access
> > > > to users who live in countries that have US sanctions applied - [1].
> > > >
> > > > Therefore, if somebody is still had any doubts that GitHub does not
> > > > respect software freedoms - leave any hope. GitHub is unsuitable for
> > > > hosting free software.
> > > >
> > > Well, that's a very nice slant you put on the issue.  As a public
> > > company in the US, GitHub is expected to respect US law.
> >
> > And last time I've checked, so is Software In Public Interest.
> >
> >
> > > Certainly there are instances where civil disobedience is called for,
> > > but violating export regulations is perhaps not the best choice.
> >
> > And the same logic can be applied to SPI and therefore Debian Project.
> > Or, maybe not?
> >
> Perhaps you are not familiar with Debian project history.  There was a
> time when cryptographic software in Debian was hosted outside the US (in
> the "non-US" repository) so that Debian users outside the US could have
> access to strong crypto-enabled packages (e.g., Mozilla with more than
> 40-bit encryption).
>
> Does Debian's respect for US law in that case somehow manifest itself as
> black mark against the project?  Should Debian as a project have just
> said, "forget it, we'll host the strong crypto here in the US for
> everybody in the world, even though it is against the law, whatever the
> consequences?"
>
> The laws/regulations around that "strong crypto is a munition" have
> mostly been resolved, thanks in part to the advocacy of people in
> projects, like Debian.

You seem to contradict yourself a bit here - at least if you argue for
GitHub's stance. As you yourself point out, Debian went around the
law. Because of that, no user was affected even while the law was
still relevant. GitHub does not offer a workaround (yet). If they
lobby for that - great. In the meantime, their choice of location seem
to limit their ability to offer the same freedom to everyone.

Re: Hibernation takes too long

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 4:50 AM Michael Kesper  wrote:
> Am 21. Juli 2019 02:45:39 MESZ schrieb Shahryar Afifi 
> :
> >here is my setup:
> >X61 with Middleton's bios (SATA 2)
> >...
>
> ...
> The X61 will throttle SSD throughput as it has less bandwidth than modern 
> SATA adapters. So, transferring those 6 GB
> will take time...

OP apparently runs a modified BIOS that removes the crippled X61 SATA
and at least enables SATA II. I've considered giving my old X61 the
same treatment. I seriously doubt that the SATA II bus speed is the
bottleneck here.

Re: BTRFS snapshot space consumption (was: New laptop: need advice on choice...)

[Anders Andersson]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 7:08 PM Felix Miata  wrote:
>
> Anders Andersson composed on 2019-04-13 17:31 (UTC+0200):
>
> > Felix Miata wrote:
>
> >> Because of its snapshotting, BTRFS requires considerably more space than 
> >> older
> >> filesystems, as much as double.
>
> > A btrfs snapshot takes approximately zero space. Where did you get
> > this idea from?
>
> (not an exhaustive list)
>
> 1: "Disk Space Full Because of Snapper" on https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:BTRFS
>
> 2: Since 2015, BTRFS has been the default / filesystem on openSUSE, which
> recommends minimum / filesystem size of 20GB for EXT4, compared to 40GB for 
> BTRFS.
>
> 3: Much more common / filesystem freespace exhausted threads on mailing lists 
> and
> web forums from BTRFS users compared to EXT4 users, with the usual 
> recommendation
> to delete one or more snapshots to free space.
>
> 4: 
> https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Help.21_I_ran_out_of_disk_space.21
>
> 5: 
> https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Why_is_free_space_so_complicated.3F
>
> 6:
> https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-containers-122/docker-on-btrfs-using-much-space-in-var-lib-docker-btrfs-4175622037/#post5811463



Of course you will run out of space if you keep taking snapshots!
Btrfs never does this, but you can do it *manually* or with
third-party tools. When you take a snapshot, btrfs will keep
everything until it's deleted. That's why everyone says that if you
run out of space, you can delete snapshots. If the advise to the user
is to delete a snapshot, it is something that the user did *because*
they wanted to retain those files.

The "Snapper" user has *installed* a tool that takes snapshots all the
time - obviously you will run out of space because every file you
modify or delete will still be stored in its original version until
you remove the snapshot.

Re: New laptop: need advice on choice of file system types

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 4:51 PM Tom Browder  wrote:
>
> I have used ext4 for many years while I have been watching zfs and
> btrfs being developed. I am now considering using one or both on at
> least one partion during my upcoming new Debian installation.
>
> Can anyone recommend either one for a normal (non-developer,
> non-hobbyiest) user who does backups and values his data and wants
> reasonable reliability?

I've used btrfs on every machine for a many years, and I'm very happy
with it. Run it on my server with various disks, desktop, and laptop.
It has saved my data from silent corruption due to bad hardware where
ext4 would just return bad data, and it's a breeze to take very quick
backups thanks to the snapshot and btrfs-send functions. You just have
to learn the new tools.

I've replaced disks more or less live on my sever and it works well.

I'm not going to play with hacking in a non-native filesystem. ZFS is
great if you run FreeBSD, but I run debian main and prefer not to
support contrib and non-free.

Re: New laptop: need advice on choice of file system types

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 11:36 PM Felix Miata  wrote:
>
> Tom Browder composed on 2019-04-12 09:50 (UTC-0500):
>
> > I have used ext4 for many years while I have been watching zfs and
> > btrfs being developed. I am now considering using one or both on at
> > least one partion during my upcoming new Debian installation.
>
> Because of its snapshotting, BTRFS requires considerably more space than older
> filesystems, as much as double.

A btrfs snapshot takes approximately zero space. Where did you get
this idea from?

Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 5:43 PM David Wright  wrote:
>
> On Sun 17 Mar 2019 at 13:19:29 (+0100), Anders Andersson wrote:
> >   I got myself a USB 3.5" disk drive and want to format a 3.5" HD disk
> > so that it Just Works™ as a standard MS-DOS floppy.
>
> I'm not sure that you really can. What's your reasoning for
> doing this? Are you just spoiling for an unnecessary fight?
> Or do you really want to boot off it?

I want to use a floppy disk to transfer information between computers
and other devices which expects 3.5" HD diskette formatted for use
with DOS. Since it was the industry standard for "sneakernet" file
transfer for over a decade, I don't think it's a strange use case.
What did I miss?

Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 1:46 PM Curt  wrote:
>
> On 2019-03-17, Anders Andersson  wrote:
> >   I got myself a USB 3.5" disk drive and want to format a 3.5" HD disk
> > so that it Just Works™ as a standard MS-DOS floppy.
> >   Normally I would have used mformat from the mtools package, but it
> > appears that I can not supply a device name, just "emulated names"
> > like A: which are then translated to /dev/fd0 etc.
>
> It seems you're supposed to use '/etc/mtools.conf' for this kind of
> thing.
>
>  drive m: file="/dev/sdc"
>
> Then:
>
>  mformat m:

Thanks! This worked well, all the mtools utilities now works with the USB drive.

I wonder when the GNU people will understand that no one wants their
enforced info files and start write actual manual pages for the tools.
Normally the manual pages has a "See Also" section, but mformat does
not mention the configuration file or refers to the mtools manual page
which does.

Re: Disable left-ctrl?

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 4:42 PM Selim T. Erdoğan
 wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 06:16:32PM -0500, Boyan Penkov wrote:
> > I am now writing my thesis, and have the genesis of some pretty
> > significant EMACs pinky.  (I use my left pinky for the left ctrl most
> > of the time, which is setting me up for failure.).
> >
> > To this end, I’d like to disable the left ctrl key only, and force
> > my brain to use the right one.  Better yet, I’d like the screen to
> > flash or something then I inadvertently hit left-ctrl.
>
> Have you tried making the Caps Lock key function as a Ctrl key?
> It makes things much easier on pinkies.

This is the only valid answer and is often easy to do in Linux (Gnome
Tweaks has a simple checkbox for this). I have to do it on every
computer I use with a PC keyboard. On a *real* computer, the control
key is placed in a sensible location, see for example
http://xahlee.info/kbd/i/kb/sun_keyboard_left.jpg or
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Amiga_1200_Nahaufnahme.jpg

I would like to have a long talk in a locked room with the person who
thought that HEY IM AN IMPORTANT MANAGER AND I ALWAYS TYPE IN CAPS SO
LETS PUT CAPS LOCK IN THE MOST PROMINENT POSITION.

Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc

[Anders Andersson]

  I got myself a USB 3.5" disk drive and want to format a 3.5" HD disk
so that it Just Works™ as a standard MS-DOS floppy.
  Normally I would have used mformat from the mtools package, but it
appears that I can not supply a device name, just "emulated names"
like A: which are then translated to /dev/fd0 etc.
  The problem is that my disk drive shows up as a SCSI device on
/dev/sdc and I can not find a way to tell mformat to use it, so it
seems that I have to use the traditional mkfs.fat to format my disk.
  However, there are dozens of parameters such as number of FATs, FAT
size, "media type", and I don't know anything about that! Can someone
figure out what type of magic I need to supply to mkfs.fat for it to
do exactly what mformat would to do a floppy, or alternatively, how to
make mformat work with /dev/sdc?

Re: [OT] scanned files are large in size

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 7:40 PM  wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 01, 2019 at 12:34:38PM -0500, kamaraju kusumanchi wrote:
> > A scanned document from Canon pixma mx870 printer is significantly
> > larger compared to the same document scanned on a different scanner.
> > When I look at both the images side by side on a PC, there is no
> > visual difference between the two. I am trying to understand the
> > underlying cause and fix it if possible.
> >
> > As shown below, scanned_in_office.pdf is 332Kb, scanned_on_mx870.pdf is
> 1.7 Mb.
> >
> > % ls -al scanned_in_office.pdf scanned_on_mx870.pdf
> > -rw-r--r-- 1 rajulocal rajulocal  331796 Jan  1 11:54
> scanned_in_office.pdf
> > -rw-r--r-- 1 rajulocal rajulocal 1775460 Jan  1 11:48
> scanned_on_mx870.pdf
>
> Yep. The one image is encoded as CCITT (aka Group 4, aka fax [1]), which is
> passable for low res B images, but not that much for hi-res or color (or
> gray scale). It compresses much worse than the other which is JPEG, which
> is
> expressly made for hi-res and color (or grayscale) images.
>
> OTOH, CCITT is lossless and JPEG lossy ;-)
>

Not sure what you mean by "compresses much worse" here, but the CCITT
version is much smaller than the JPEG version. Maybe you meant that CCITT
looks worse after compression, which is weird when you also write that
CCITT is lossless!

Re: btrfs and deduplication

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 9:56 AM, Markus Raps  wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> currently iam trying to get deduplication working in debian/btrfs
>
> #so i created a btrfs filesystem
>
> mkfs.btrfs /dev/vdb1
> mkdir /mnt/btrfs
> mount /dev/vdb1 /mnt/btrfs
>
> # create some random file
> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/mnt/btrfs/img bs=1M count=1024
> for i in {1..30}; do cp /mnt/btrfs/img /mnt/btrfs/img$i; done
>
> # dedup this stuff
> jdupes -S -B -r /mnt/btrfs/
> Examining 31 files, 1 dirs (in 1 specified)
> Deduplication done (30 files processed)
>
> raps-debian btrfs # btrfs fi df /mnt/btrfs/
> Data, single: total=31.50GiB, used=30.96GiB
> System, DUP: total=32.00MiB, used=16.00KiB
> Metadata, DUP: total=222.94MiB, used=33.69MiB
> GlobalReserve, single: total=33.56MiB, used=0.00B
>
> raps-debian btrfs # btrfs fi usage /mnt/btrfs/
> Overall:
> Device size:  32.00GiB
> Device allocated: 32.00GiB
> Device unallocated:1.04MiB
> Device missing:  0.00B
> Used: 31.03GiB
> Free (estimated):549.41MiB  (min: 549.41MiB)
> Data ratio:   1.00
> Metadata ratio:   2.00
> Global reserve:   33.56MiB  (used: 0.00B)
>
> Data,single: Size:31.50GiB, Used:30.96GiB
>/dev/vdb1  31.50GiB
>
> Metadata,DUP: Size:222.94MiB, Used:33.69MiB
>/dev/vdb1 445.88MiB
>
> System,DUP: Size:32.00MiB, Used:16.00KiB
>/dev/vdb1  64.00MiB
>
> Unallocated:
>/dev/vdb1   1.04MiB
> raps-debian btrfs #
>
>
>
> hm ... hasn't worked.
> wrong tool ? did i missed something
> or have i completely misunderstood deduplication?


I can not answer this, but as a long time user of btrfs who has never
tried deduplication I got curious, so I tried to recreate your result
on my debian testing workstation, and for me it worked. Here is the
log of exactly how I created the filesystem, and the output from btrfs
fi usage before and after running jdupes. As you can see from the
usage after deduplication, both the allocated and used space has
decreased to what would be expected.

Perhaps your kernel is too old? It is possible that you are being hit
by the issue described here:
https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Changelog#By_feature

"The range for out-of-band deduplication implemented by the
EXTENT_SAME ioctl will split the range into 16MiB chunks. Up to now
this was the overall limit and effectively only the first 16MiB was
deduplicated."

I can't say I understand much about it, but it was fixed in kernel
4.18 which happens to be what I use.



# btrfs --version
btrfs-progs v4.17
# uname -a
Linux spacelab 4.18.0-1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.18.6-1 (2018-09-06)
x86_64 GNU/Linux
# lvcreate spacelab -n dedup -L 100G
# mkfs.btrfs /dev/spacelab/dedup
# mount /dev/spacelab/dedup /mnt/
# dd if=/dev/urandom of=/mnt/img bs=1M count=1024
# for i in {1..30}; do cp /mnt/img /mnt/img$i;done
# btrfs fi usage /mnt
Overall:
Device size: 100.00GiB
Device allocated:  33.02GiB
Device unallocated:  66.98GiB
Device missing: 0.00B
Used:  31.04GiB
Free (estimated):  67.98GiB(min: 67.98GiB)
Data ratio:  1.00
Metadata ratio:  1.00
Global reserve:  33.23MiB(used: 0.00B)

Data,single: Size:32.01GiB, Used:31.01GiB
   /dev/mapper/spacelab-dedup  32.01GiB

Metadata,single: Size:1.01GiB, Used:33.36MiB
   /dev/mapper/spacelab-dedup   1.01GiB

System,single: Size:4.00MiB, Used:16.00KiB
   /dev/mapper/spacelab-dedup   4.00MiB

Unallocated:
   /dev/mapper/spacelab-dedup  66.98GiB
# jdupes -S -B -r /mnt
Scanning: 31 files, 1 items (in 1 specified)
Deduplication done (30 files processed)
# btrfs fi usage /mnt
Overall:
Device size: 100.00GiB
Device allocated:   2.02GiB
Device unallocated:  97.98GiB
Device missing: 0.00B
Used:   1.00GiB
Free (estimated):  97.99GiB(min: 97.99GiB)
Data ratio:  1.00
Metadata ratio:  1.00
Global reserve:  16.00MiB(used: 0.00B)

Data,single: Size:1.01GiB, Used:1.00GiB
   /dev/mapper/spacelab-dedup   1.01GiB

Metadata,single: Size:1.01GiB, Used:1.38MiB
   /dev/mapper/spacelab-dedup   1.01GiB

System,single: Size:4.00MiB, Used:16.00KiB
   /dev/mapper/spacelab-dedup   4.00MiB

Unallocated:
   /dev/mapper/spacelab-dedup  97.98GiB

Re: calibre ebook project?

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 7:53 PM, Karen Lewellen
 wrote:
> I do not even follow this logic because beyond reaching humans in a position
> to assist me in joining a forum that I could not join myself because  their
> particular human verification processes could not be used by me.

If you can not pass the human verification process you must be a robot!

Re: cannot open display: localhost:0.0

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Sep 23, 2018 at 4:24 PM, Grzesiek Sójka  wrote:
> On 9/23/18 10:30 AM, Étienne Mollier wrote:
>>
>> On 9/23/18 1:48 PM, Grzegorz Sójka wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi there,
>>>
>>> I need to allow remote applications to connect to xorg. Since I log in
>>> using lxdm i have tcp_listen=1 in /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf. Thus Xorg is running
>>> without -nolisten tcp flag. Unfortunately:
>>>
>>> $ xhost +localhost; DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 xterm
>>> localhost being added to access control list
>>> xterm: Xt error: Can't open display: localhost:0.0
>>>
>>> Any suggestions??
>>>
>>
>> Maybe try:
>>
>> xhost +LOCAL:
>> DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 xterm
>
>
> It does not work:
>
> # xhost +LOCAL; DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 xterm
> xhost:  bad hostname "LOCAL"
> xterm: Xt error: Can't open display: localhost:0.0

Are you using Wayland? If you're using debian testing you probably use wayland.

Re: (OT) Top Posting (was Re: Gimp Babl too old)

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 6:17 AM, Kenneth Parker  wrote:
> Seriously, how do others of you deal with navigating this Debian List on
> Android, while being a "Good Netizen"?

Personally I don't. A phone is a horrible tool for composing texts and
is nowhere near a replacement for a computer. Using an inferior tool
is no excuse to inconvenience others. My pet peeve here is when people
try to use the Stack Exchange app or whatever, and excuse the lousy
formatting on "I'm on the phone", but thanks for pointing out another
one: gmail top posting! It's bad enough in an an actual browser on a
real computer...

I loathe the "appification" of everything these days, dumbing down
everything to the lowest lousiest common denominator for people who
can only point and click with their thumbs.

(I was about to write  but I will never stop ranting about this!)

Re: Previously Bootable: Stretch using Grub with GPT, LUKS, & BTRFS

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 3:28 AM, Joel Brunetti  wrote:
> I'm having trouble booting a previously bootable system.
> This system has been in use since very shortly before the Stretch release
> and has always been Stretch.
> I'm using Grub to boot a fully encrypted system. Each drive is partitioned
> with GPT and encrypted using LUKS. The drives are then used together with
> BTRFS.
> [...]
> When I boot I get on either device:
> error: no such device: (UUID of my decrypted luks volume / btrfs pool)
> error: unknown filesystem

I understand that you unlock using grub, do you ever get a passphrase
prompt before those messages?

(I have a somewhat similar setup but I unlock from initramfs and have
an unencrypted /boot so I doubt my experiences are relevant)

Re: Wanted - Debian(preferred)/Linux handheld

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2018 at 5:47 PM, Tony van der Hoff  wrote:
> On 20/08/18 16:16, Glenn English wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 19, 2018 at 1:35 PM Eric S Fraga  wrote:
>>> On Thursday, 16 Aug 2018 at 14:28, Glenn English wrote:
 It's all over Amazon (search: planet gemini pda computer), but, as
 best I can tell, there's no computer.
>>> I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "there's no computer."  The
>>> Gemini is not vapourware.  It exists.
>> When I looked the other day, there were lots of books and such, but no
>> hardware. Gemini was there, but their computer wasn't.
>>
> Try Here:
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gemini-4G-WiFi-Space-Grey/dp/B07DNG5YMG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8=1534779869=8-1=gemini+pda

OP stated in the initial email and a follow-up to the first person who
answered, that he is looking for a US distributor. That's what people
have been talking about. If you can find it on amazon.com, please
share the link, because I can't find the actual computer.

Re: Literal postings, was Re: Wanted - Debian(preferred)/Linux handheld

[Anders Andersson]

On Sat, Aug 18, 2018 at 6:42 PM, David Wright  wrote:
>
> . A lot of OPs provide very little background information. Sometimes
> this may be because they don't know what *is* relevant, but often a
> thread turns into an episode of "Twenty Questions" because of what
> seems like a reluctance to reveal any facts about their system.
>
> . Following this, when the OP apparently "disappears" after making
> their first post, people are left little option but to make guesses
> about what their problem might be caused by.

In my opinion, the *proper* course of action is then to ask for more
information instead of guessing. If OP then does not reply, then
there's no need to keep going.

I believe that my views on this have changed after the Stack Exchange
network of websites sprung up. It makes such a huge difference in
clarity when bad questions are forcibly closed until corrected.


> . Some OPs provide facts which, when people start investigating, are
> found to be incorrect, so the thread bifurcates into those accepting
> the factoid and others disputing it.

This is of course unfortunate but something even I have to admit that
we have to accept. :)

Re: Wanted - Debian(preferred)/Linux handheld

[Anders Andersson]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 7:47 PM, Richard Owlett  wrote:
>
> P.S. I wish my initial posts be taken literally. 

I wish this for every question on the mailing list but sadly that
rarely happens, leading to a lot of pointless traffic to wade through.
On every question there's always the "helpful" people who just wants
to share their 2 cents worth of opinion and derail the question in the
process.

I guess that's partially because a lot of people don't know how to ask
a question so everyone assumes that it is not to be taken literally.

Maybe I'm not a hundred years old like you guys, but on the inside I'm
just as grumpy, err, I mean "opinionated"!

Re: does btrfs have a feature?

[Anders Andersson]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 3:47 AM, Zenaan Harkness  wrote:
> Another correction below:
>
>> BTRFS also makes it extremely easy to expand an array if you add more
>> disks, WITHOUT mucking around with LVM and md-raid. Just a simple
>> command (something that ZFS cannot easily do at this time)
>>
>> btrfs device add /dev/sdX /path/to/array
>> btrfs filesystem balance /path/to/array
>
>   “as simple as zpool add  ”
>
> >From here:
>   http://list.zfsonlinux.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/2018-August/031938.html
>
> Note that ZoL does not yet auto-rebalance (although there is at least
> one script around to do it manually - copying files - and rebalance
> can also be done manually with: zfs send ...; zfs receive ...

I thought the problem was that you can't actually mix-and-match block
devices of different sizes easily in ZFS, you need to plan ahead. I
don't know the details because I've never used ZFS, but when I read
about it I see a lot of warnings about striping and vdevs and whatnot.

With btrfs you can just throw any block devices together and it will
automatically use whatever it can, restricted to the level of
redundancy you requested.

Re: does btrfs have a feature?

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 12:26 PM, Stefan K  wrote:
> In the beginning of btrfs, most blogs, websites, magazins said btrfs will be 
> THE next standard linux filesystem, so now after araound 10years it doesn't 
> look so good, or?
>
> Who use btrfs in production? What do you think - does have btrfs a feature 
> (because ZFS on Linux is more and more stable, RedHat said we don't want 
> btrfs anymore and focus to xfs)
>
> I use btrfs on some new bare-metal machines for the root-disks, because it 
> has a build-in RAID1 and snapshots, I know LVM and md-raid have also this 
> possibilities but in btrfs it is much easier. I don't use it for data or 
> other things(mail, database, etc), cause it is slow compared to ext4/xfs. I'm 
> also wondering why the hell btrfs don't support ssd's for caching like zfs.

Before people start discussing *features*, note that OP uses the
mostly non-standard spelling "feature" when he means "future".

Re: Slow boot

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 8:45 AM, Johann Spies  wrote:
> I can push the power on button on my laptop, go and make coffee and
> come back and wait a few minutes before I can work.
>
> The following services each takes longer than 10 seconds to activate:
>
>  systemd-analyze blame
> 1min 21.617s apt-daily.service
>  1min 2.473s systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
>   1min 926ms console-setup.service
>  47.192s postgresql@10-main.service
>  38.873s exim4.service
>  29.176s shorewall.service
>  23.365s wicd.service
>  22.402s mariadb.service
>  18.925s nmbd.service
>  13.917s udisks2.service
>  13.177s ModemManager.service
>  11.865s libvirtd.service
>
> I can disable apt-daily.service but I do not think the system will
> work properly if I disable the second.  The third one (console-setup)
> seems to have a bug:
>
> systemd[1]: Failed to start Set console font and keymap.
> It is looking for a file (symbols/us-intl) that does not exist
> Aug 14 08:02:55 sitasie console-setup.sh[769]: setupcon: The keyboard
> model is unknown, assuming 'pc105'. Keyboard may be configured
> incorrectly.
> Aug 14 08:03:55 sitasie console-setup.sh[769]: /usr/bin/ckbcomp: Can
> not find file "symbols/us-intl" in any known directory
>
> This is the joy that I get since systemd became the standard.

Not sure you can blame systemd here, except that without systemd you
would have no clue what took so much time. Most of these services
shouldn't take that long to start, and systemd is just the messenger
here. What more, the system should still boot up without most of
these, especially the databases.

Part from console-setup being broken, I'm a bit curious about your
hard drive activity and if you have a rotating platter drive or an
SSD.

If you start up apt-daily, two databases and libvirt in parallel on a
rotating platter laptop drive, I'd expect a huge amount of disk
thrashing.

I don't remember now if it's possible to log I/O activity, but maybe
you can inform us about the physical drive at least?

Re: New `no sound' problems

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 7:25 PM, deloptes  wrote:
> Dale Forsyth wrote:
>
>> It seems to be damned recursive, the problem...  After yesterday's
>> full-upgrade in Sid, my old Acer One without sound once again...
>> Everything seems all right: alsamixer, aumix, pulseaudio installed...
>> Last time this happened, it was solved installing pulseaudio and
>> alsaplayer-alsa...  Now it won't... Please help.
>
> STOP USING SID

I won't stoop low enough to use all caps, but...

1. Stop replying to spam
2. Stop misquoting others. What you quoted as Dale Forsyth was written
by Rodolfo.

Re: OT: What time is it, really?

[Anders Andersson]

On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 7:35 PM, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> On Thursday 09 August 2018 12:26:24 Martin wrote:
>> Am 09.08.2018 um 18:15 schrieb Gene Heskett:
>> > On Thursday 09 August 2018 11:16:27 Martin wrote:
>> >> Am 09.08.2018 um 17:12 schrieb Nicolas George:
>> >
>> > Then I suggest you reread man ntp.conf, and /etc/ntp.conf, and edit
>> > it as root until you do understand it. Note that changes to take
>> > effect, need a root session of "service ntp restart".
>>
>> Wrong topic, may be?
>> I used to use ntpd. Then tried systemd-timesyncd to act a a server.
>> Which it will not do. Hence, I run ntpd.
>
> Wrong topic? Note that nowhere in that portion of my msg you snipped, was
> systemd.timesyncd mentioned. It may have been in some other part of that
> message that I didn't author, and which you also snipped.
> You might want to let some of the stuffing out of that shirt. I was
> trying to be helpfull because the docs do suck a bit.  And helpfull
> people are harder and harder to find because of folks with an attitude

You're the one with the attitude here. Martin claimed that the
documentation for systemd-timesyncd sucked, and that it can not serve
time to a local network. You then go on to lecture him about reading
the documentation for NTP, "until you understand it", something he
obviously already does since he is already using it. After he
clarified the context, Instead of apologizing you reply with an attack
about his stuffed shirt.

What's the deal with the mpfr versioning? libmpfr4 vs. libmpfr6

[Anders Andersson]

I just noticed that there are two packages for libmpfr:

https://packages.debian.org/sid/libmpfr4

https://packages.debian.org/sid/libmpfr6


Funny thing is, this is what the versioning says on those pages:
Package: libmpfr4 (3.1.6-1)
Package: libmpfr6 (4.0.1-1)

...ok, that's strange. Even weirder, they are both built from the same
sources: mpfr-4.0.1-1.

I feel like I'm missing something. For example, what does the
"3.1.6-1" mean in libmpfr4? I assumed it was the underlying version
but it can't be if it's built from the 4.0.1 sources?

And why libmpfr6 when it's actually version 4 (there's no version 6 of mpfr).

Re: Android Debian - Lets start Debian for Android hw phones

[Anders Andersson]

On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 5:50 PM, Samuel  wrote:
> could you add a support for wiko
> I have a wiko lenny 4 plus

Sure! Probably a small job. I'll submit a patch tomorrow to port
debian to android.

Re: Optimized VM setup

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Dec 24, 2017 at 5:06 AM, Rusi Mody  wrote:
> And this time (for the first time?) I saw that majority of the class were
> running Linux (usually but not always Ubuntu) on a VM on a Windows — 
> typically Windows-10
>
> This made those machines markedly sluggish.

I wonder if some of those students are using a strange VM.

I use Ubuntu as a guest in a virtual machine professionally at work,
on a Windows 10 host laptop. I use the free VirtualBox manager, and
the VirtualBox Ubuntu guest plugins.

Ubuntu is running as smooth as is expected from the bare metal. I run
it in full screen on one monitor, and the rest of the people in the
office were impressed when their octave scripts ran faster in the
virtual machine than on the Windows host.


Make sure that your students 1) Enable hardware virtualization on the
computers - this may have to be enabled in BIOS. 2) Use VirtualBox -
it's a free download and (most) of it is open source. 3) After
installing Ubuntu, make sure they install the Guest Additions,
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VirtualBox/GuestAdditions

There may be other options I can't remember now, I don't have
everything at hand.

Re: HiDPI migration: desktop environment issue

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Dec 24, 2017 at 11:24 AM, Jerome BENOIT
 wrote:
> Hello, I am currently migrating to a HiDPI box (akda Retina box).
>
> Since the arrival of GNOME3, I have used Xfce as an alternative to GNOME[2]:
> I have been happy so far with this choice. Right now, I migrating to
> a retina box: it appears, unfortunately, that Xfce support for HiDPI is low.
> small (if not tiny) icons there, big fonts here; and so forth.
> I have tried to fix it to stick to Xfce; after all Xfce is lightweight.
> But the issue is that X is not yet ready to manage HiDPI properly:
> a lot of tweaks are needed to get something almost readable.
>
> I read that Cinnamon and MATE, both former clones of GNOME[2], have HiDPI in 
> mind:
> is there any other possibility ? which one is the best in terms of weight and 
> HiDPI support ?

If you can pull yourself from a Windows 95-era start menu and
always-visible panels, try the natural and more modern and updated
successor: Gnome 3. Really.

I've never found the claims of Xfce being lightweight to hold up under
scrutiny. It's often more sluggish than Gnome 3 on the clients I've
compared.

Right now I'm having the most issues with Xwayland here on debian
testing, but that should be orthogonal to the choice of desktop
environment. I should start another rant about debian's handling of
wayland in a different thread I guess! :)

Re: LUKS password gets printed as stars

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 10:25 PM, Richard Hector  wrote:
> On 21/12/17 22:16, Curt wrote:
>> On 2017-12-20, Richard Hector  wrote:
>>>
>>> On 21/12/17 02:02, Curt wrote:
 Also, I'm uncertain whether suppression of the asterisk-echo qualifies
 as "security by obscurity"
>>>
>>> I think most people accept that obscurity is quite reasonable for
>>> passwords ...
>>>
>>> Richard
>>>
>>
>> Wonderful, Dick, however, I was referring to the specific expression
>> "security by (or through) obscurity," which denotes something else.
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity
>
> I'm aware of that concept. But making it harder to see the length of the
> password makes it harder to guess the password, no? Which has got to be
> good?

No. I've been facepalming myself through this thread but I can't
really keep my mouth shut anymore.

All this is very misguided. Knowing the length of your password means
that it takes about 1-2% less time to brute-force it, no matter how
many characters you use.

This is because every extra character multiplies the difficulty by
about 50-100 depending on what type of characters you pick from.

Let's say you use a 10 letter password, from a pool of 100 characters
for each letter and someone is brute-forcing it. If they *know* that
you have 10 letters in your password, they will have to try on average
100^10/2 = 5000 times before they find the right
password.

Now, what happens if they *don't* know? They will have to start
testing all possible 1-letter passwords, then 2-letter, 3-letter etc:
(100^1 + 100^2 + 100^3...)/2 = 50505050505050505050. Wow, to
brute-force without known the number requires 1.01% more calculations.

Re: unison compatibility in stretch

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, Dec 13, 2017 at 5:44 PM, Tony van der Hoff  wrote:
> On 13/12/17 15:40, Curt wrote:
>> Sorry for butting in once again, but you do have unison-all installed,
>> the metapackage which allows specifically for the -addversionno "kludge" by
>> bringing in versions 2.32 and 2.40 as per the following post curiously
>> similar to your case (two machines, one with Debian Jessie and one with
>> Debian Stretch)
>>
>> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/233504/how-to-use-multiple-versions-of-unison-on-one-system
>>
>> and then working around the eventual minor version number truncation
>> bug, if indeed it still exists, as per my previous cryptic message.
>>
>  I'm fed up with trying bodgy work-arounds, which really should not be
> required. I have now spent so much time on this issue that I've become
> thoroughly disenchanted with Unison (which is great when it works) that
> I'm taking my custom elsewhere.

Do you have a good alternative? I'm fed up with Unison since a long
time, because of such an important tool not handling different
versions, and the impracticality of writing it in yet another
experimental language requiring its own complete little world to build
and run.

Re: Bug (?) affecting dramatically laptop battery life introduced in the latest debian testing updates

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Nov 27, 2017 at 5:19 PM, Pietro Vischia
 wrote:
> I have a Lenovo T460P, and with stretch I enjoyed a reasonable battery
> life (~4 hours). At the beginning of November I switched to buster,
> and things were still OK.
>
> Last week I made an upgrade as usual, and since reboot the battery
> lasts half an hour to one hour tops, which led me to think that a bug
> has been introduced in the latest updates.
>
> I am not sure of how to pinpoint which is the package responsible for
> that, although I suspect it might be either the ACPI package or the
> battery module of the kernel: could you perhaps please suggest me the
> best way to pinpoint the culprit for producing a detailed bug report?

I would do two things, to find out the root cause: Who or what is
using a lot of current?

1) Use good old 'top' to see if some process is running a lot.
2) Install and use the tool 'powertop' by intel (IIRC). It can list
the actual hardware component using power, for example backlight,
wifi, and suggest ways to put it to sleep.

After you have found the culprit, maybe you can find an apt/dpkg log
and see if something relevant changed.

Re: Disappearance of the kernel

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 2:29 PM, agustín torrijos orenes <
agustintorrijosore...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I installed version 9.0 "Stretch" looking with the repositories to
> testing, I am almost sure that updated to version 10.0 "Buster".
>
> I performed a cleanup of the system with the instructions "autoclean,
> clean, revome, autoremove", and it seems that I uninstalled all the kernel.
>
> When I rebooted I could not enter the Grub anymore, I just got some
> instructions that asked for my password, but when I entered it nothing
> happened.
>

You must have left out quite a lot of information about your system for
this to even make any sense at all. Passwords are not really randomly
enabled.

It's difficult to start helping unless you tell us what "some instructions"
means.

If you just installed it, can't you just reinstall it from scratch?

Re: How to gain control over the system?

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Jul 9, 2017 at 12:51 AM, Fungi4All  wrote:

> On Sat, 2017-07-08 at 23:57 +0200, Kaj Persson wrote:
>
> > But now I discovered an issue, I cannot manage my desktop. I have
> > always at the previous installations, and they are quite many now, been
> > advised to, for security reason, leave the root password unset, which
> causes
> > the root account go passive, and for all tasks where I need root
> > authority I  go via su/sudo.
>
>
> It is a bad idea despite of what security gurus may advise.  You may lose
> your system
> and never get it back.
>


It's an even worse idea to listen to people on the internet who ignore
"security gurus" based on rumours. You can easily restore or change the
root password if it's lost or unset.

Re: (OT) problem with unknown software

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 1:33 AM, ghe  wrote:
>
> For several days, I've been getting email from myself, with no date,
> title:
>
> Problem: /dev/sdd is UNKNOWN at 2017-05-18 11:56:30 from sbox
> ()
>
> The body:
>
> /dev/sdd () is Unavailable
>
> The Received: header:
>
> Received: from localhost (sbox.slsware.net [])
> by srv.slsware.net (srv.slsware.net) with ESMTP id 5701F2C06E2
> for ; Thu, 18 May 2017 11:56:29 -0600 (MDT)
>
> #1: There is, for sure, a /dev/sdd on the machine (it's half of md1, the
> number 2 RAID1 array), and
>
> #2: I can't remember what I installed (with Aptitude, almost certainly)
> that's doing this.
>
> Does anyone know what piece of bent software can find /dev/sda, b, and
> c, but not sdd? Or what I did to break it?

You don't write your debian version, or even if you *are* running
debian. Presumably you do, since you write here!

If you're running stretch, maybe it is because the recent update to
initramfs-tools messing with the RESUME variable?

Re: Live Fille System Backup

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 1:17 AM, Sergei G  wrote:
> I would like a backup tool that does not bring a million dependencies with
> MBs of files.  Something that works on server without X Windows and can send
> backup to an externally attached USB drive.  Nothing fancy.   No network
> infrastructure.  Incremental backups would be greatly appreciated.  Ability
> to pipe to a compression program is a plus, just like I did with dump.
> [...]
> Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

You won't like my solution, and it doesn't work with your current
setup because it requires a specific file system: btrfs[1]. I'm
posting it here for two reasons:
 1) You might consider using btrfs on new installs
 2) Someone else may search and find the thread

After switching to btrfs I can now take instant snapshots of selected
filesystems, transfer these to remote servers for backup, and most
important: btrfs can track the *exact difference* between two
snapshots taken over time, and only transfer the changes. All of this
is very quick, because the filesystem already knows exactly what
changed: Permission bits, file sizes, deleted files, changed data,
whatever, all is already kept in a log. It also means that nothing
will be missed, for example ACL bits etc.

The delta is just a simple stream of data that can be compressed if
necessary. Typically it is transmitted to a backup server where it is
"replayed" so that you have a full clone of the original system.[2]

In debian I use the little tool, btrbk[3], to automate all of this.
You can simply do it manually if you want.

[1] https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page
[2] https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Incremental_Backup
[3] https://github.com/digint/btrbk

Re: Firefox ESR 52 in stretch

[Anders Andersson]

On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 2:27 PM, Liam O'Toole <liam.p.oto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2017-05-03, Anders Andersson <pipat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I was checking up on different versions of Firefox and noticed that
>> there was a new ESR (52) released March 7, 2017. I see that stretch is
>> still using ESR 45.
>>
>> It would be really nice to have this newer version before stretch is
>> finalized, but since stretch is now in freeze, I suppose that requires
>> some special handling.
>>
>> I'm curious to know if there has been any discussions about this.
>
> Debian tracks Firefox ESR releases. So stretch will get version 52
> sometime before the end of life of version 45, regardless of its
> (stretch's) release date. This is a rare exception to the "stable"
> aspect of Debian releases.

Thank you. I was under the impression that firefox-esr in debian only
tracked one specific ESR, though still receiving the upstream updates.

Firefox ESR 52 in stretch

[Anders Andersson]

I was checking up on different versions of Firefox and noticed that
there was a new ESR (52) released March 7, 2017. I see that stretch is
still using ESR 45.

It would be really nice to have this newer version before stretch is
finalized, but since stretch is now in freeze, I suppose that requires
some special handling.

I'm curious to know if there has been any discussions about this.

Re: Firefox: security vs flexibility or rtfm?

[Anders Andersson]

On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 8:35 PM, Mark Copper  wrote:
>> Would mozilla.support.firefox on news.mozilla.org be more productive as your
>> description suggests an OS independent problem?
>
> I think the issue has been raised and rejected at Firefox. Although OS
> independent, I was thinking a work-around might involve the
> distro--Chromium is gone but maybe there's a browser we didn't
> consider, for instance. We only need one browser to work as these
> tasks are all performed in house.

There are loads of browsers.

https://packages.debian.org/stable/web/

Search for "browser", find a suitable one.

Re: Gnome Desktop w/ icons

[Anders Andersson]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 8:05 PM, Ethan Rosenberg
 wrote:
> How do I get a desktop with normal icons.  All I am getting now is a heading
> on the left saying "activities" w/ no ability to place Icons on the desktop.

Install gnome-tweak-tool (this is a must for everyone using Gnome3,
you can't modify anything without it). Then go to "Desktop" and enable
"Icons on Desktop".