Re: Cannot open *.asc files with gpg -- because no pinentry

[Ken Heard]

On 2023-01-06 22:48, Jerome BENOIT wrote:

Hi, I had some similar issue a long time ego.

So far I can remember the following page was very useful, in particular 
section 9.2:


https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GnuPG

best,
Jerome


Thanks for the tip, it looks good.  When I have a chance to test it next 
week, I will let the list know the result.


Regards, Ken

Cannot open *.asc files with gpg -- because no pinentry

[Ken Heard]

When I try to do so I receive the following message:

[GNUPG:] ENC_TO 091EE1D5633F19F2 16 0
[GNUPG:] KEY_CONSIDERED 7D605C8CDA5240843A6B9A8394D949CCE9099937 0
[GNUPG:] KEY_CONSIDERED 7D605C8CDA5240843A6B9A8394D949CCE9099937 0
gpg: encrypted with 4096-bit ELG key, ID 091EE1D5633F19F2, created 
2007-12-05

"KenHeard (swimmerken) "
gpg: public key decryption failed: No pinentry
[GNUPG:] ERROR pkdecrypt_failed 67108949
[GNUPG:] BEGIN_DECRYPTION
[GNUPG:] DECRYPTION_FAILED
gpg: decryption failed: No secret key
[GNUPG:] END_DECRYPTION

After an internet search I found one responder who suggested that 'the 
issue might be in the configuration of your gpg-agent'.  So I checked 
the contents of the gpg-agent.conf file.  There were only two lines:


default-cache-ttl 300
max-cache-ttl 99

At this point I ran command gpg-agent which returned 'gpg-agent running 
and available'.


Another responder said that running the following two commands worked 
for him:


pkill gpg-agent
gpg-agent --pinentry-program=/usr/bin/pinentry-gtk-2 --daemon

Before running those two commands I found that I had the following 
pinentries:


/etc/alternatives/pinentry*
/usr/bin/pinentry-curses*
/usr/bin/pinentry-tgt*
/etc/alternatives/pinentry-x11*

I then ran those two commands twice, for -curses and -tgt.  It may have 
worked for him but did not for me.


I finally tried to add to the gpg-agent.conf file the second of those 
two commands, also twice, but before trying to decrypt an *anc file I 
ran file pkill gpg-agent.  That arrangement did not work either.  By now 
I had run out of suggestions.


I would consequently appreciate any advice as to how to decrypt my *.anc 
files.


By the way, I was able to run from an Xterm in succession the commands 
gpg -k and -K, which -- without the use of any passkey -- returned 
information about my public and secret keys in succession.


Other maybe useful information: I am using Bullseye and had added to my 
file .bashrc the following two lines:


GPG_TTY=$(tty)
export GPG_TTY

Re: Will my reconstructed fstab work?

[Ken Heard]

On 2022-11-04 01:52, mick.crane wrote:

On 2022-11-03 04:52, Ken Heard wrote:

A few days ago using vim I added to my desktop fstab file a line for a
new portable storage device.  in the process I somehow managed to
screw up fstab.  Unfortunately I saved the screwed up version of fstab
before I noticed the damage done to it.




01 -e8b57fb2ac09static file system information.
02 -e8b57fb2ac09
03 -e8b57fb2ac09lkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
04 -e8b57fb2ac09vice; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way
to name devices
05 -e8b57fb2ac09at works even if disks are added and removed. See 
fstab(5).


It is likely unrelated but I had a thing a while ago while editing files 
with vim/nano that random text from within the file would be randomly 
inserted elsewhere in the file which was incredibly disturbing.

mick.


It's what I call the inherent inconstancy of computers; you never know 
what they are going to do!


Ken

Will my reconstructed fstab work?

[Ken Heard]

fatumask=0077  0   1
14-e8b57fb2ac09ot was on /dev/sda1 during installation
15 -e8b57fb2ac09020-1029  /dosvfatutf80   0
16 -e8b57fb2ac09os2 was on /dev/sdb1 during installation
17-e8b57fb2ac09AF2-0A16  /dos2   vfatutf80   0
18 -e8b57fb2ac09mapper/Morcom-HOME_crypt /home   ext4 defaults 
   0   2

19 -e8b57fb2ac09mapper/Morcom-VAR /varext4defaults  02
20 -e8b57fb2ac09mapper/Morcom-SWAP_crypt noneswapswap	 0 
  0

21 -e8b57fb2ac09r0  /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0   0
22 -e8b57fb2ac09tmpfs   nodev,nosuid,size=20%   0   0
23 -e8b57fb2ac0944477-7f18-4443-a77b-c5827f977449 /media/fdr ext2 		 
user,noauto,noatime 0	0
24 -e8b57fb2ac09cebfb3-b568-493f-853b-e1b7ca5cc3a2 /media/fde ext2 
user,noauto,noatime 0 0

25 -e8b57fb2ac09/media/ssda ext4 user,noauto,noatime 0 0
26 -e8b57fb2ac099167-8497-4471-ae0c-e8b57fb2ac09 /media/phda ext4 
user,noauto,noatime 0 0
27 UUID=0fee2d01-2441-4699-a4ae-bb45c417b8ee /media/ssda ext4 
user,noauto,noatime 0 0
28 UUID=e26255ab-e6c5-4bcd-941c-7378b7cf4083 /media/ssdb ext4 
user,noauto,noatime 0 0

29 UUID=3DB1-1700   /media/fdg  vfatuser,noauto,noatime 0   0
30 UUID=5966-5502   /media/fdp  vfatuser,noauto,noatime 0   0
31 UUID=1170-1657   /media/hca  vfatuser,noauto,noatime 0   0
32 UUID=0E0A-0F26   /media/hcb  vfatuser,noauto,noatime 0   0
33 UUID=1E82-122E   /media/hcc  vfatuser,noauto,noatime 0   0
34 UUID=1D1F-1032  /media/xca   exfat   user,noauto,noatime 0   0
35 UUID=1909-1458   /media.xcb  exfat   user,noauto,noatime 0   0
36 UUID=6238-3434   /media.xcc exfatusr,noauto,nonatime 0   0
37 UUID=206F-163F   /media/xcd  exfat   user,noauto,noatime 0   0
38 UUID=3630-6530   /media/xce  exfat   user,noauto,noatime 0   0
39 UUID=3065-6630   /media/xcf  exfat   user,noauto,noatime 0   0
40 LABEL=ostree /media/phdc ext4user,noauto,noatime 0   0

The screw up started a few days ago when I entered into the file a new 
portable storage device, line 26 above.  That entry itself was 
successful.  In addition however the beginning of the text of all lines 
1-26 was overwritten by -e8b57fb2ac09, which happens to be the last 12 
digits, plus the preceding hyphen, of the UUID of the added storage 
device on line 26.  Lines 27-40 were spared the overwrites.  I have no 
idea how these overwrites happened; it certainly was not the result of 
any conscious action on my part.


Regards, Ken Heard

Re: printing pages in reverse order not possible in LO 7.2.5.2.0+

[Ken Heard]

On 2022-02-13 18:09, Ken Heard wrote:
In order to print documents on both sides of the paper using a printer 
without collating ability, I always printed first in reverse order the 
even pages.  I then  print in numerical order the odd pages on the back 
side of the paper on which the even pages are printed.  In this way the 
pages do not need to be collated manually.


While this version of LO still allows printing separately the odd and 
even pages, I discovered to my horror that it no longer allows printing 
of pages in reverse order.


The help page however still says that all one has to do to print in 
reverse order is to


1.    Choose File - Print.
2.    Click the General tab.
3.    Choose Print in reverse page order.
4.    Click Print.

In view of the foregoing it would appear that disappearance of the 
reverse print option was unintended.  In that case when can we helpless 
users expect this error to be corrected?


I don't know how I managed to miss the 'More' which causes the 'Print in 
reverse order' option to emerge.  In fact there are two 'Mores', one for 
'Range and Copies' and the other for 'Page Layout' .  The first one 
opens more options most of which I cannot use because the printer I am 
using is a simplex.  The one option I can use and want to use is "Print 
in reverse order'.  (I am not too sure what additional
options the second 'more' opens; they mostly seem to relate to 
collations which a simplex printer cannot do.)


I must however in my defence say that in the help entry for reverse 
printing there is no reference to the first 'more'.  I naturally 
inferred that an intermediate step was not necessary, as it probably was 
at some point in the dim and distant past.  I assume it likely that help 
revisions lag behind changes in the software, understandable.  The 
general layout of the print window could nevertheless stand improvement.


In any event many thanks to all for your help, in particular for Dave 
Barton's screen shot which made everything crystal clear.


Regards, Ken

Dcopserver not loading

[Ken Heard]

Very soon after I started to use the TDE 14.0.11 version I began
receiving DCOP error messages, having the effect of preventing use of
various applications like Firefox and LibreOffice. After online research
and experimentation on my part I discovered that I could solve such
preventions if before opening TDE I ran in a tty as root the following
three commands:
'dcopserver -- serverid', which returned nothing, then 'dropserver' and
finally again 'dcopserver -- serverid'.  This time however that command
returned something like the following:
'[dcopserver] local/Morcom:/tmp/.ICE-unix/dcop5698-1636014592'

>From this point on there were no longer any more DCOP error messages. I
had full use of the TDE and various applications until when I next
closed completely the computer.

It is consequently my understanding that running the 'dcopserver'
command is presumably required as part of the initial boot-up.  If such
is usually the case I would appreciate knowing what I need to do to have
my computer, named Morcom, do so as well.  Can anyone tell me?

Regards, Ken

Access to files in wiki.debian.org.

[Ken Heard]

Does anybody know when access to wiki.debian.org will be opened?  There are
two files there, UEFI and GrubEFIReinstall, that I need in order to find
out how to install a boot loader in my desktop.  On 2021-09-11 I was able
to read these files on another computer; but not thinking that it would be
necessary, I did not download them then.  Would they be available from
another source?  I did a Google search but could not find another another
one.

As suggested in a post to the debian-user list last August I sent an email
to w...@debian.org with my 1P address and the names of the files I need.  I
do however find it passing strange that while the wiki had apparently been
locked down since mid-August or earlier,  in mid-September I did have
access on wiki to both but not since.

Regards, Ken

Bullseye installation failure because boot loader not installed

[Ken Heard]

 I recently upgraded a desktop computer by replacing major parts in it
including the mainboard and CPU. I now want to install in it a more up to
date operating system than Wheezy which was the one used before the
upgrade. Having noted that the release of Bullseye is imminent I decided to
use the RC2 iteration of Bullseye rather than Buster.
I consequently downloaded file 'Debian-bullseye-DI-rc2-amd4-netinst.iso'
and also the 2021-07-18 version of the 'Debian GNU/Linux Installation
Guide".

I had considerable difficulties with the installer, to the effect that it
took me about 27 hours off and on over 10 days with nine false starts. I
managed to complete the installation but with one crucial exception. In due
course I want to impart to you my complete installation experience -- but
not before that exception is rectified. I refer to the last item on the
installation menu, 'Install the boot loader' -- it was never installed. The
verbatim transcript of the messages received from the installer at this
point and my answers thereto follow.

Install the GRUB boot loader. First message from the installer:
It seems that this new installation is the only operating system on this
computer. If so, it should be safe to install the GRUB boot loader to your
primary drive (UEFI partition/boot record).
I gave my consent to have the GRUB boot loader to my primary drive. Second
message:
You need to make the newly installed system bootable, by installing the
GRUB boot loader on a bootable device. The usual way to do this is to
install GRUB to your primary drive (UEFI partition/boot record). You may
instead install GRUB to a different drive (or partition), or to removable
media,

Device for boot loader installation:
Enter device manually
/dev/sda (ata-ST2000DM008-2FR102_ZFL3PHLG
/dev/sdb (ata-ST2000DM001-1CH164_Z340HH9V

I chose to install it on /dev/sda.

The installer however did not like the answer and sent me a third message:
It seems that this computer is configured to boot via EFI, but maybe that
configuration will not work for booting from the hard drive. Some EFI
firmware implementations do not meet the EFI specification (i.e. they are
buggy!) and do not support proper configuration of boot options from system
hard drives.

A workaround for this problem is to install an extra copy of the EFI
version of the GRUB boot loader to a fall back location, the “removable
media path”. Almost all EFI systems, no matter how buggy, will boot GRUB
that way.

Force GRUB installation to the EFI removable path?  or 
Once again I did not really have much choice in the matter; so I chose
 and pressed 'Enter', but the installer did not seem to like that
answer either.
Next a series of messages crossed the screen too quickly for me to read
them, and then the screen went blank. Not only was the ‘Install the boot
loader’ aborted but also was aborted whatever would follow – if anything.

I would consequently be very grateful if someone could tell me what needs
to be done to provide the boot loader and how to do it. I am quite eager to
start using this computer as soon as possible.

By the way I was able to find a way into the computer by doing a Knoppix
live installation. I examined the files in /boot/grub, the one belonging to
the computer, not to Knoppix. I discovered that in directory /boot/grub
there is no grub.cfg file. Also there is no directory /boot/efi. Finally I
noted that from the installer start page grub commands are accessible.

On 2021-08-12 I sent this message to sub...@bug.debian.org; but I was told
that my message will be ignored unless I identify the package to which it
relates and its version. My situation is such that i don't think i can
provide such information.

For the record the mainboard is a Gigabyte B450 I Aorus pro wifi. The CPU
is a 4 core AMD RyZen3 3200G with Radeon Vega 8 Graphics. I will not be
using a separate GPU. There are two 2 tb hard drives for a RAID1, with LVM.

Regards, Ken

Re: Acer Aspire 3 A315-21 laptop has mono sound only?

[Ken Heard]

Hello,

On 19/03/20 05:44 PM, Ken Heard wrote -- my original post on the subject:

I think that this particular laptop has mono sound.  I have been using 
it temporarily to stream content by HDMI to a LG HD monitor and then by 
fibre optical cable to a NED D3020 V2 hybrid amplifier and finally to a 
pair of bass reflect speakers.  Unfortunately sound comes out of only 
one speaker.


After extensive tests I have determined to my satisfaction that the 
problem is in the laptop.  I can test the two speakers built in the 
laptop separately, but I have no way of knowing whether the sound so 
produced is mono or stereo.  I could find no specs for this laptop with 
details about the sound card.



First, my apologies to all for my tardiness in not answering sooner the 
responses I received about the problem explained in my original post. 
All were helpful.  My tardiness was caused by problems with my desktop 
which had to take priority, such as a failed hard drive and for a few 
days every boot's starting by opening the BIOS with the message "BIOS 
has been reset – please decide how to continue". After dealing with 
these and some other problems I resumed efforts on my part to solve the 
problem described in my original post quoted above.


In the second quoted paragraph I claimed that I had made extensive 
tests.  Unfortunately they were not extensive enough. This time I did 
the sensible thing, I started by testing the Acer laptop alone. I 
connected a pair of ear buds to the laptop 3.5 mm earphone jack and 
streamed something from YouTube which had sound.  What I heard in *both* 
ears was sound!  So much for my nonsense of only mono sound; the laptop 
was doing perfectly what it should.


I then repeated with more care the tests previously done as to why there 
is no sound to the left speaker when connected by an HDMI cable from the 
laptop to the monitor.  To start these tests I used camcorder to provide 
sound imput.  The HDMI connecting cable in this case has a mini HDMI 
plug at the camcorder end and a standard size plug at the other. By 
disconnecting the amp from the monitor, plugging the buds directly into 
the monitor headphone jack and plugging the HDMI cable successively into 
the two HDMI input jacks in the monitor I heard sound in both ears in 
both cases.


I then connected the monitor to the amplifier and repeated the same 
tests described in the previous paragraph. There was sound from both 
speakers in both cases.


The next series of tests involves connecting the two HDMI cables I have 
between the laptop and the monitor.  Both have standard size plugs at 
each end. On is a cheap 3 metre one; the other is 5 metres long and of a 
higher quality.  For these tests each cable was plugged successively to 
both jacks in the monitor, and both cables were tried in each direction 
between the laptop and the monitor.


I first disconnected the amplifier from the monitor and listened on the 
buds plugged into the monitor 3.5 mm headphones jack.  I repeated these 
tests with the amplifier connected by a fibre optic cable to the monitor.


The result for all the tests described in the last two paragraphs was 
the same.  In every case there was sound from only one channel. (I also 
made sure that each speaker could work if plugged into the right speaker 
jacks.  They both did.)


To me it seems improbable that both HDMI cables would be faulty at the 
same time; that surely is too much of a coincidence, especially as one 
is supposed to be a good one. If that assumption is correct then the 
HDMI jack on the laptop must be at fault.  At the moment however I only 
have one source to test both cables, only the laptop.


I do have however a desktop computer which I purchased in 2015 and 
installed Debian Wheezy in it.  This computer is the one I have normally 
used ever since, the laptop since 2018 being the backup.


In the past four years however -- in spite of much on line research and 
numerous posts back and fourth on the Debian user list -- I was never 
able to get sound to work, .  It is now my intention – once I have a two 
month window in which to do so – to replace in the desktop Wheezy with 
Buster.  With any luck I may have only sound working on it.


On that assumption I will have another device to test both HDMI standard 
cables. If only one of them works in these tests then the question to 
answer is why it did not work for the laptop.  If both work on this 
device then the fault must be the HDMI jack in the Acer laptop.


Regards, Ken

Re: Acer Aspire 3 A315-21 laptop has mono sound only?

[Ken Heard]

On 19/03/20 09:10 PM, Joe wrote:




If you're getting convincing stereo, then the problem is elsewhere in
the path. I always suspect HDMI of anything that involves it. Yes, it
can do many channels, and something with 'HDMI' stamped on it should do
at least stereo, but that may be the weak link in the chain. You should
have a headphone jack on any modern screen which handles audio, try
your cheap earphones in that, with sound via HDMI. Again, VLC provides a
quick mono/stereo switch, but many sound hardware drivers can also do
that.


I did what you suggested, and only one ear received any sound. The next 
step is to try another HDMI cable.  Thanks all for the suggestions.


Regards, Ken

Acer Aspire 3 A315-21 laptop has mono sound only?

[Ken Heard]

I think that this particular laptop has mono sound.  I have been using 
it temporarily to stream content by HDMI to a LG HD monitor and then by 
fibre optical cable to a NED D3020 V2 hybrid amplifier and finally to a 
pair of bass reflect speakers.  Unfortunately sound comes out of only 
one speaker.


After extensive tests I have determined to my satisfaction that the 
problem is in the laptop.  I can test the two speakers built in the 
laptop separately, but I have no way of knowing whether the sound so 
produced is mono or stereo.  I could find no specs for this laptop with 
details about the sound card.


Lack of such specs indicates to me that Acer does not want people to 
know that this laptop is mono only. Is mono sound the norm for low 
market laptops such as this one and notebooks?


Ken Heard

Re: Script does not do what it is told to do

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2019-10-26 9:55 p.m., The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2019-10-26 at 21:33, Ken Heard wrote:
> 
>> The tar scripts now look like this. 
>> --- 
>> #!/bin/bash # Script to back up all browser files in directory
>> /home/ken/mozilla. echo here tar -cpzf
>> /media/fde/backups/kbrowsers.tgz  --exclude-caches --wildcards -T
>> docs/tarlists/kbrowsers.lst 
>> --- This one
>> exceptionally has 'echo here" above the tar command at the 
>> suggestion of Kushal Kumeran.
> 
> Where is this script located (full path and filename)?
> 
> If I'm reading things right, you also might want to either put the
> 'cd /home/ken' line back (no need for the other cd), or use the
> full path to kbrowsers.lst instead of a relative path; otherwise
> this won't work right if you run it from any directory which
> doesn't have that relative path under it.
> 
> (If kbrowsers.lst has relative paths in it, this might not work 
> correctly from another location without the cd anyway, even if you
> do use a full path on the command line. I don't have experience
> with that tar feature myself.)
> 
>> Also at his request I ran the following two commands: 'which
>> tarkbrowsers' which returned '/home/ken/bin/tarkbrowsers', and 
>> 'cat $(which tarkbrowsers)' which returned 
>> --- # Script
>> to back up all browser files in directory /home/ken/mozilla. 
>> CURPWD=$PWD cd /home/ken tar -czf
>> /media/ssda/backups/kbrowsers.tgz  --exclude-caches --wildcards
>> -T docs/tarlists/kbrowsers.lst cd $CURPWD 
>> --- As this
>> return includes the change of directories commands it is clear 
>> that somewhere there is a series of extraneous scripts but the 
>> software is being coy about telling me where they are.
> 
> Eh? No, it isn't. It already told you clearly that this latter
> script is '/home/ken/bin/tarkbrowsers'.
> 
> Your mail doesn't (seem to?) give us enough information for us to 
> identify where the former of the two given scripts is, but
> presumably you know where to find that one, since you were able to
> give its contents here.
> 
> If you don't want to run this latter version of the script, either
> move it out of its current directory (which is apparently in your
> PATH), or replace it with the version you do want to run.
> 
> 
> (I'm presuming that the newline between '--exclude-caches' and 
> '--wildcards' in each script is an artifact of the mail process,
> and not present in the actual on-disk script. If it *is* present
> there, then these are both going to break and not do what you
> expect.)
> 
Thank you for your prompt response.  I understand what you mean about
full and relevant paths.  I will have to look into this issue; it may
affect the outcome of the script regardless of the computer as both
the Toronto and Thailand computers are set up the same way, with the
same paths, etc.

Regards, Ken

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Re: Script does not do what it is told to do

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

I want at this time to thank all of you for taking the time to provide
various suggestions as to how to fix the problems I describe in my
original post and in my previous thread 'Signs of hard drive failure?'
My reason for the thank you is that early Monday morning 28 October I
am leaving for Thailand and will not be back in Toronto until
mid-April 2020 and so will not have time for any follow up before I
leave.

Consequently when my Toronto computer is closed tomorrow it will not
be opened or used for the next six months approximately. For those six
months I will be using my desktop computer in Thailand which will have
been idle from April 2019 to November 2019. I will however summarize
here what I have found out so far in Toronto.

With regard to possible hard disk failures, with the help of some of
you I found out that the internal two hard drives have some life left
in them.  What had failed however some of my backup portable devices,
a 1 tb portable USB hard drive and two of my six high capacity (32-64
tb) USB flash drives, all of which I use for back-ups.  What I think
had not failed was a SanDisk Extreme 500 (500 gb so they say, but
somewhat less) solid state USB portable drive.

So for my working files which I will be taking with me I am using one
of the 'good' 64 tb USB flash drives mount on /media/fde, and maybe
the the SanDisk on /media/ssda. My working files will be compressed
into some twenty tarballs written to the fde drive, but not on the
ssda for reasons explained below. I am also storing those tarballs in
Dropbox.

The scripts for these two devices follow.  Both are encrypted.
- --
#!/bin/bash
# Script to open and mount fde

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen UUID=26bb9cea-4ac0-47fa-838b-067baeb1936f fde
mount /media/fde
- --
#!/bin/bash
# Script to open and mount ssda

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen UUID=347eec80-ede8-4b10-bef6-24065ced3e97
ssda mount /media/ssda
- ---
As I had found that all these scripts could operate without changing
the working directory back and forth from /home/ken I removed from
them all the lines changing the working directories which shocked,
horrified and amazed many of you.

The first script above works; it can open the fde drive.  The second
one does not work, but it will work if the tar command is extracted
from the script and run independently in a virtual terminal.  (By the
way I have sudo set up to allow me to open every file without
password, as this is the only computer on the premises.)

The tar scripts now look like this.
- ---
#!/bin/bash
# Script to back up all browser files in directory /home/ken/mozilla.
echo here
tar -cpzf /media/fde/backups/kbrowsers.tgz  --exclude-caches
- --wildcards -T docs/tarlists/kbrowsers.lst
- ---
This one exceptionally has 'echo here" above the tar command at the
suggestion of Kushal Kumeran.  Also at his request I ran the following
two commands:
'which tarkbrowsers' which returned '/home/ken/bin/tarkbrowsers', and
'cat $(which tarkbrowsers)' which returned
- ---
# Script to back up all browser files in directory /home/ken/mozilla.
CURPWD=$PWD
cd /home/ken
tar -czf /media/ssda/backups/kbrowsers.tgz  --exclude-caches
- --wildcards -T docs/tarlists/kbrowsers.lst
cd $CURPWD
- ---
As this return includes the change of directories commands it is clear
that somewhere there is a series of extraneous scripts but the
software is being coy about telling me where they are.  As about a
fortnight ago all these scripts worked as they should have, it may be
possible that the ones which do not work now are those which I did not
change in the meantime.

So here is where the matter stands now.  I will be using these scripts
in Thailand and determine whether these idiosyncrasies occur there,
where I will have a buster machine instead of the stretch one I am
still using in Toronto.  So I may be on the thread again in Thailand,
and or possibly again in Toronto in April 2020.

Regards, Ken Heard







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Re: Firefox Seems to Have a Mind of It's Own

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Spelling error in the title.  'Its' as a possessive adjective does not
have an apostrophe.  "It's" with the apostrophe is only used as a
contraction of 'it is' or 'it has'.

Regards, Ken
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Re: Script does not do what it is told to do

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2019-10-24 8:40 p.m., deloptes wrote:
> Ken Heard wrote:
> 
>> Whenever I run this script -- or several others like it
>> 
>> #!/bin/bash # Script to back up all browser files in directory
>> /home/ken/mozilla. STARTDIR=$PWD cd /home/ken tar -czf
>> /media/fde/backups/kbrowsers.tgz  --exclude-caches \ --wildcards
>> -T docs/tarlists/kbrowsers.lst cd "$STARTDIR"
>> 
>> it returns the following:
>> 
> 
> this is not possible because in the script you tell tar to create
> archive in /media/fde/backups/

Yes, that is the location where I want the archive kbrowsers.tgz to be
put.

>> ken@Turing:~$ tarkbrowsers tar (child):
>> /media/ssda/backups/kbrowsers.tgz: Cannot open: No such file or
>> directory tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now tar:
>> /media/ssda/backups/kbrowsers.tgz: Cannot write: Broken pipe tar:
>> Child returned status 2 tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting
>> now
>> 
> 
> and here you are failing to write
> /media/ssda/backups/kbrowsers.tgz

/media/ssda/ .. does not exist, neither as a directory or in /etc/fstab

>> It is trying to save the tarball to a different portable storage 
>> device, ssda, which had failed and consequently is no longer in 
>> /etc/fstab.  How could such a thing happen?
>> 
> 
> obviously it is another script or whatever

But how?

>> However, if I pull the line with the tar command out of the
>> script and running it independently it does what it is told.  If
>> there is something wrong with the script I can't find it.
>> 
>> I also tried the script with the second line reading
>> STARTDIR="$PWD"; but that change made no difference, the result
>> was the same.
>> 
> 
> The question is where do you want to write the data - if on media
> attached then create entry in /etc/fstab so that you can mount it
> in consistent way, change the script and the problem will be gone.

/media/fde is the mount point for the device to which will be written
the archive.  It is properly mounted, and I can write files to it and
read those files.  As I said in my original post I am able to write
the archive successfully to /media/fde/backups/ by copying the tar
command line to a console and read the contents of the tarball.

> I have seen all kind of stupid and ugly admin scripts, where the
> author himself does not know how or why it is or it is not working
> at the end.
> 
> regards

Regards, Ken



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Re: Script does not do what it is told to do

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2019-10-24 7:12 p.m., Anuradha Weeraman wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 06:37:08PM -0400, Ken Heard wrote:
>> tar -czf /media/fde/backups/kbrowsers.tgz  --exclude-caches \ -
>> --wildcards -T docs/tarlists/kbrowsers.lst
> 
> Try removing the single '-' at the beginning of the second line...

In this instance it does not matter whether that '-' is there or not.
 Pulling that line out of the script and running it independently
works both with and without it.

Regards, Ken



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Script does not do what it is told to do

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Whenever I run this script -- or several others like it

#!/bin/bash
# Script to back up all browser files in directory /home/ken/mozilla.
STARTDIR=$PWD
cd /home/ken
tar -czf /media/fde/backups/kbrowsers.tgz  --exclude-caches \
- --wildcards -T docs/tarlists/kbrowsers.lst
cd "$STARTDIR"

it returns the following:

ken@Turing:~$ tarkbrowsers
tar (child): /media/ssda/backups/kbrowsers.tgz: Cannot open: No such
file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: /media/ssda/backups/kbrowsers.tgz: Cannot write: Broken pipe
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

It is trying to save the tarball to a different portable storage
device, ssda, which had failed and consequently is no longer in
/etc/fstab.  How could such a thing happen?

However, if I pull the line with the tar command out of the script and
running it independently it does what it is told.  If there is
something wrong with the script I can't find it.

I also tried the script with the second line reading STARTDIR="$PWD";
but that change made no difference, the result was the same.

Help please!

Regards, Ken


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Re: Signs of hard drive failure?

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

At about 04:35 EDT today 2019-10-22 Tuesday I ran 'sudo smartctl -t
long /dev/sdb'.  At 12:48 I ran the command in the next line.  The
result is below after the next paragraph.

Based on the results below relating to /dev/sdb and the results
relating to /dev/sda quoted in my previous email today, I conclude
that while smartctl considers my two hard drives three years old and
consequently prone to failure -- what else really is new, all devices
are prone to failure -- my current backup problems are not related to
failure of either or both of these drives.  As I stated in my original
post, they have been in use for only 1.75 years.  I shall consequently
continue to examine at my scripts for errors in creating tarballs for
my backups.

Regards, Ken
- ---

ken@SOL:~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb
smartctl 6.6 2016-05-31 r4324 [x86_64-linux-4.9.0-9-amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke,
www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (AF)
Device Model: ST2000DM001-1ER164
Serial Number:Z4Z0TKY8
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 0796a3479
Firmware Version: CC25
User Capacity:2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:7200 rpm
Form Factor:  3.5 inches
Device is:In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-2, ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 3b
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:Tue Oct 22 12:45:42 2019 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection:
Enabled.
Self-test execution status:  (   0) The previous self-test routine
completed
without error or no self-test
has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:(   80) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:(0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection
on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection
upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:(0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:(0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supporte
d.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:(   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:( 219) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:(   2) minutes.
SCT capabilities:  (0x1085) SCT Status supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME  FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f   115   099   006Pre-fail
Always   -   90023624
  3 Spin_Up_Time0x0003   096   096   000Pre-fail
Always   -   0
  4 Start_Stop_Count0x0032   100   100   020Old_age
Always   -   557
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010Pre-fail
Always   -   0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f   073   060   030Pre-fail
Always   -   24992023
  9 Power_On_Hours  0x0032   096   096   000Old_age
Always   -   3834
 10 Spin_Retry_Count0x0013   100   100   097Pre-fail
Always   -   0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count   0x0032   100   100   020Old_age
Always   -   556
183 Runtime_Bad_Block   0x0032   100   100   000Old_age
Always   -   0
184 End-to-End_Error0x0032   100   100   099Old_age
Always   -   0
187 Reported_Uncorrect  0x0032   100   100   000Old_age
Always   -   0
188 Command_Timeout 0x0032   100   100   000Old_age
Always   -   0 0 0
189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a   096   096   000Old_age
Always   -   4
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   070   065   045Old_age

Re: Signs of hard drive failure?

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

As instructed at approximately 19:00 on 2019-10-21 Monday I ran first
'sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sda' which returned the following:

ken@SOL:~$ sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sda
smartctl 6.6 2016-05-31 r4324 [x86_64-linux-4.9.0-9-amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke,
www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
Sending command: "Execute SMART Extended self-test routine immediately
in off-line mode".
Drive command "Execute SMART Extended self-test routine immediately in
off-line mode" successful.
Testing has begun.
Please wait 212 minutes for test to complete.
Test will complete after Mon Oct 21 22:38:34 2019

Use smartctl -X to abort test.

Without aborting the test, at approximately 03:20 on 2019-10-22
Tuesday I ran 'sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda which produces the following
result:

ken@SOL:~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl 6.6 2016-05-31 r4324 [x86_64-linux-4.9.0-9-amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke,
www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (AF)
Device Model: ST2000DM001-1ER164
Serial Number:Z4Z0WAAC
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 07969f376
Firmware Version: CC25
User Capacity:2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:7200 rpm
Form Factor:  3.5 inches
Device is:In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-2, ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 3b
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:Tue Oct 22 03:41:10 2019 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection:
Enabled.
Self-test execution status:  (   0) The previous self-test routine
completed
without error or no self-test
has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:(   80) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:(0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection
on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection
upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:(0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:(0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supporte
d.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:(   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:( 212) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:(   2) minutes.
SCT capabilities:  (0x1085) SCT Status supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME  FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f   117   099   006Pre-fail
Always   -   165044768
  3 Spin_Up_Time0x0003   096   096   000Pre-fail
Always   -   0
  4 Start_Stop_Count0x0032   100   100   020Old_age
Always   -   558
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010Pre-fail
Always   -   0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f   074   060   030Pre-fail
Always   -   29287810
  9 Power_On_Hours  0x0032   096   096   000Old_age
Always   -   3826
 10 Spin_Retry_Count0x0013   100   100   097Pre-fail
Always   -   0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count   0x0032   100   100   020Old_age
Always   -   557
183 Runtime_Bad_Block   0x0032   100   100   000Old_age
Always   -   0
184 End-to-End_Error0x0032   100   100   099Old_age
Always   -   0
187 Reported_Uncorrect  0x0032   100   100   000Old_age
Always   -   0
188 Command_Timeout 0x0032   100   100   000Old_age
Always   -   0 0 0
189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a   097   097   000Old_age
Always   -   3
190 

Re: Signs of hard drive failure?

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Today Bob Weber wrote, in part:


> I would first check if the raid was working.  Use "cat
> /proc/mdstat". You will see something like this for each raid drive
> configured:
> 
> md0 : active raid1 sdb1[3] sda1[2] 28754230 blocks super 1.2 [2/2]
> [UU]
> 
> Make sure that both U's are there.  If not be careful because the
> raid is operating on one disk.  Before you reboot copy all the
> important data from that raid drive.

I had tried that, and both U's were there.

> Next use smartctl to do a long self test.  Use "smartctl -t long 
> /dev/sda".  You can still use the machine but it will slow the
> test down.  The tests take a long time and smartctl will estimate
> how long. Then do the second drive "smartctl -t long /dev/sdb".

I will do these tonight while I watch the results of the Canadian
election.

> If these pass then you could try booting with a system rescue CD.
> First check what drive names it has used by running "ls /dev/md*".
> You will see something like /dev/md0 or /dev/md123. Now check the
> filesystem on the raid drive with "fsck -f /dev/mdx" replacing x
> with what you found in the previous command.

To be kept in reserve; I have used Knoppix before.

> That should keep you bust for a while.

Indeed.  The other three responders also found problems with my
scripts; so I will have to look into those as well.

> Let the list know what you found.

Of course.

Regards, Ken




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Signs of hard drive failure?

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

In the past week or so some in my computer procedures have become
sluggish, and some others have not worked at all.

For example the following script works:

#! /bin/bash
CURPWD=$PWD
cd /home/ken
tar -czf /media/fde/backups/kfinancescurrent.tgz --wildcards\
- --exclude-from=docs/tarlists/kfinancesarchive.lst docs/01-kens/Finances
cd $CURPWD

Whereas this one does not work now but did two weeks ago:

#!/bin/bash
# Shell script to create a tgz file for the contents of the
# /home/ken/docs and the /usr/local/ directories,
# minus the files in file /home/ken/docs/tarlists/kexcludedocs.lst
# This script may be run from any directory to which the user has
write # permission.

# Start by creating a variable with the current directory.
CURPWD=$PWD
# Change directory to /
cd /
# Create the tarball.
tar -czpf media/fde/backups/kdocsfull.tgz  -X
/home/ken/docs/tarlists/kdocsfullexclude.lst -T
/home/ken/docs/tarlists/kdocsfullinclude.lst
# Return to the starting directory.
cd $CURPWD

Now when I try to run it it returns the following:

ken@SOL:~$ tar -czpf media/fde/backups/kdocsfull.tgz  -X
/home/ken/docs/tarlists/kdocsfullexclude.lst -T
/home/ken/docs/tarlists/kdocsfullinclude.lst
tar (child): media/fde/backups/kdocsfull.tgz: Cannot open: No such
file or directorytar: home/ken/docs: Cannot stat: No such file or
directory
tar: usr/local: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

All the files/directories which this script cannot stat do in fact
exist, proven by the fact that the first script uses the same
directories, but different files in those directories.

As these symptoms can indicate I think hard drive failure or potential
failure I am trying to explore this possibility.

I am using Stretch and TDE with two 2 TB Seagate Barracuda hard drives
in a RAID 1 configuration.  Both drives were purchased at the same
time and were installed in the box on 2016-05-30.  Although hree and
one half years ago, this particular box is only used six months out of
twelve.  I would not have thought that drives -- if they last the
first year -- would not show signs of failure after 1.75 years.

In any event, I ran smartctl -a on both drives.  For both "SMART
overall-health self-assessment test result [was] 'PASSED'"
Nevertheless for all the specific attributes, identical for both
drives, three of them had the indication 'Pre-fail' and 'Old-age' for
the other nineteen.

I also ran 'badblock -v'.  Both had 1953514583 blocks.  The test for
/dev/sda was interrupted at block 738381440, and for /dev/sdb at block
42064448.

I am not sure what all these test results mean, or how accurate they
would be for indicating if or when a failure would occur. It did occur
to me that if after copying all my data files to an external hard
drive I could replace the /dev/sdb device with a new one and copy all
the data in /dev/sda on the assumption with a new and presumably
pristine drive the OS given the choice would access the data it wanted
from the drive which responded the quicker.

If that approach worked I could replace the other drive in another
year or two (really one year of use) so that both drives in the RAID 1
would not be of the same age.

Comments and advice as to the best way of getting this computer back
to 'normal' to the extent that such a state could ever be 'normal'.

Regards Ken

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Re: USB flash drive opens read only -- how to fix?

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2019-10-02 2:51 a.m., to...@tuxteam.de wrote, in part:

> Yep. Never forget -- there's a whole computer with its own OS in 
> your flash drive. That "write protect" (sometimes) available as a 
> physical switch is just communicated to your drivers via some 
> protocol over USB.

Interesting point.  So it is likely a permanent hardware failure after
all.

Ken

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Re: USB flash drive opens read only -- how to fix?

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2019-10-01 11:03 p.m., David Christensen wrote:

> I have read that some USB flash drives will revert to read-only
> mode when they detect an internal error.

Makes sense I suppose, but in a negative way. I did not know that
flash drives (some? all?) do have this feature.

> This gives the user a chance to copy out their data.

I would have had to do so if the data there I needed to keep.

> My limited experience with failing USB flash drives is that they go
> from read-write to read-only to useless in a matter of minutes or
> seconds.

Strange.  I had two other flash drives fail at about the same time;
both I was able to resuscitate with luksformat. Neither of those had
the ro marker.

> What happens if you insert the USB drive into a Windows machine and
> try to format it (cancel out before doing the actual format)?
> macOS? FreeBSD?  Other?

I will have to try using it with other versions of the Turing machine
as soon as I have access to same.

Ken



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Re: USB flash drive opens read only -- how to fix?

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2019-10-01 5:33 p.m., Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> Le 01/10/2019 à 23:09, Ken Heard a écrit :
>> 
>> - - after unmounting and closing encryption running as root
>> 'wipefs -a -f /dev/sdd' returns 'wipefs: error: /dev/sdd: probing
>> initialization failed: Read-only file system'.
> 
> The USB flash drive is probably physically write-protected. Check
> the kernel logs juste after inserting it for confirmation.

Here are the kern.log entries created the most recent time this drive:

Oct  1 19:25:21 SOL kernel: [28463.821015] usb 9-4: new SuperSpeed USB
device number 15 using xhci_hcd
Oct  1 19:25:21 SOL kernel: [28463.844007] usb 9-4: New USB device
found, idVendor=0951, idProduct=1666
Oct  1 19:25:21 SOL kernel: [28463.844010] usb 9-4: New USB device
strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Oct  1 19:25:21 SOL kernel: [28463.844012] usb 9-4: Product:
DataTraveler 3.0
Oct  1 19:25:21 SOL kernel: [28463.844014] usb 9-4: Manufacturer: Kingst
on
Oct  1 19:25:21 SOL kernel: [28463.844016] usb 9-4: SerialNumber:
000AEB91EC07BD41230C0068
Oct  1 19:25:21 SOL kernel: [28463.845810] usb-storage 9-4:1.0: USB
Mass Storage device detected
Oct  1 19:25:21 SOL kernel: [28463.845973] scsi host9: usb-storage 9-4:1
.0
Oct  1 19:25:23 SOL kernel: [28464.861194] scsi 9:0:0:0: Direct-Access
Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 PMAP PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
Oct  1 19:25:23 SOL kernel: [28464.861817] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdd] 61226496
512-byte logical blocks: (31.3 GB/29.2 GiB)
Oct  1 19:25:23 SOL kernel: [28464.862088] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdd] Write
Protect is off
Oct  1 19:25:23 SOL kernel: [28464.862090] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode
Sense: 45 00 00 00
Oct  1 19:25:23 SOL kernel: [28464.862248] sd 9:0:0:0: Attached scsi
generic sg4 type 0
Oct  1 19:25:23 SOL kernel: [28464.862365] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdd] Write
cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Oct  1 19:25:23 SOL kernel: [28465.042599] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdd] Write
Protect is on
Oct  1 19:25:23 SOL kernel: [28465.042604] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode
Sense: 45 00 80 00
Oct  1 19:25:23 SOL kernel: [28465.043086] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached
SCSI removable disk
Oct  1 19:25:37 SOL kernel: [28479.639563] EXT4-fs (dm-7): mounting
ext2 file system using the ext4 subsystem
Oct  1 19:25:37 SOL kernel: [28479.642175] EXT4-fs (dm-7): mounted
filesystem without journal. Opts: (null)

One entry says that Write protect is off, but a later entry says that
is is on.

How could this drive be physically protected from writing to it when
there is no switch on the drive itself to unable (or release) such
physical protection?

Regards, Ken




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USB flash drive opens read only -- how to fix?

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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Messieurs et mesdames:

Command 'mount' returns among other things the following two lines:

/dev/mapper/fde on /media/fde type ext2\
(rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime,block_validity,barrier,user_xattr,acl)

/dev/mapper/fdc on /media/fdc type ext2\
(ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime,block_validity,barrier,user_xattr,acl)

The first line above (divided into two here) is what 'mount' shows for
all my encrypted USB flash drives when opened -- they are all opened
with 'rw'.

The second lino above is what is shown for only one of my incrypted
USB flash drives; it opens with 'ro'.  When this drive is opened and
mounted the message returned is 'mount: /dev/mapper/fdc is
write-protected, mounting read-only'.

This situation is very strange.  Something somewhere causes this drive
to be opened 'ro' instead of the 'rw' specified for this mount point
in file /etc/fstab.

Not only can I not find out where I cannot find a way make this drive
'rw'. It is consequently useless.  Among the workarounds I tried are:

- - the commands 'sudo chmod' to change permissions.  (I own the
  directories and files in the drive.)

- - after dismounting the drive but keeping the encryption open running
 'sudo mount -o remount,rw /media/fdc' which returns the same message
  mentioned above: 'mount: /dev/mapper/fdc is write-protected, mounting
  read-only'.

- - after unmounting and closing encryption running as root 'wipefs -a -f
  /dev/sdd' returns 'wipefs: error: /dev/sdd: probing initialization
  failed: Read-only file system'.

- - 'sudo luksformat -t ext2' /dev/sdd after going through the
  preliminaries returns 'Could not create LUKS device /dev/sdd
  at /usr/sbin/luksformat line 91,  line 30'

- - 'sudo mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdd' after asking if I really want to go ahead
   with this command returns '/dev/sdd: Read-only file system while
   setting up superblock'.

After some on line searches it appears that to regain use of this
flash drive (it contains no essential data) I will have to go through
several steps to erase LUKS and then use the 'dd' command to wipe the
drive clean.  I am still afraid to use that command because of the
potential damage that can be caused by one or more bad 'if' and 'of'
settings if there is not an easier way.  Does anyone here know of one?
 In any event I would surely know how this situation would arise in
the first place.

Regards, Ken Heard

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Cannot connect to HP printer

[Ken Heard]

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Hash: SHA1

I am presently using stretch.  I have a USB connection between the
computer and the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M475dw.  Command lsusb shows the
connection.

Command HP-setup finds the printer, but the last line says:

QXcbConnection: XCB error: 3 (BadWindow), sequence: 1323, resource id:
25167914, major code: 40 (TranslateCoords), minor code: 0

The result is that I cannot print.  Also neither xsane nor vuescan
will open.

I can however connect to both the printer and xsane via the ethernet,
but not vuescan.  As I prefer vuescan and can use it via the USB I
will use USB for the printer for both printing and scanning.

Advice and help appreciated.

Regards, Ken
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Date format for Thunderbird 60.7 -- partial success in changing it

[Ken Heard]

The latest version of Thunderbird for Debian Stretch, 70.7 which I now
use, still allows only the US date format, MM-DD-, but for me at
least expresses the time as HH:MM (24 hour clock).  In a partially
successful attempt to change the date format I did the following.

1. Ran update-locales 'LC_Time=en_DK.UTF-8'; file /etc/default/locale
now reads as follows:
LANG="en_CA.UTF-8"
LANGUAGE="en_CA:en"
LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8,
hereby confirming that en_DK.UTF-8 is my system wide time default.

2. 'Date and Time Formatting' options at 'Edit->Preferences->Advanced'
originally read as follows:

o Application locale: English (United States)
o Regional settings locale: English (Denmark)

The second of the two options was the default selection.  I tried both
options and then rebooted.  The result however the same; the date/time
format was MM-DD- HH:MM, the useual US date format, but the time in
24 hour format.

3.  Next, in file prefs.js (Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Config Editor)
I changed line 'intl.accept.languages' to read 'en-DK,en' instead of
'en-US,en'. Those two lines then read as follows:

o Application locale: und [whatever that means]
o Regional settings locale: English (Denmark) [no change]

Both options changed the desired date format to the SI standard
-MM-DD. However the time instead, of being HH:MM as before (24 hour
clock), was now a twelve hour clock format, complete with a.m. and p.m.
after the time as appropriate.

So, by exchanging the date format to the one I wanted I am forced to
have to put up with a retrograde format for the time.  While this result
is not completely satisfactory I reluctantly find the the price for the
SI date format in exchange for the retrograde time format worth paying.

In order to have both the date and time formats conform to the SI
standard, I tried one other change in the pref.js file, this time in
'extensions.superDateFormat.dateFormat" which had the following
date/time setup: "%Y-%m-%d %R', This format would be the correct one for
both time and date: -MM-DD 00:00, the latter in 24 hour format.  As
%r however is the symbol for 12 hour clock time, I exchanged the %R for
%H:%M.  The time still stayed at 12 hour.

Can anyone advise me as to how to have both the date and time formats
conform to the SI standard, or any other way to work around this
particular fault of Thunderbird 60.7?

Ken





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Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: USB hard drives -- recommendations?

[Ken Heard]

On 26/01/19 03:06 AM, Celejar wrote:

On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 09:24:56 -0800
"James H. H. Lampert"  wrote:


Fellow List members:

Would anybody care to voice an opinion on USB external hard drives in
the 2 terabyte size range, for automated backup purposes?

We've been looking at the Seagate "Expansion" and the WD "Elements";
I've noticed that on Amazon, both have a fair number of negative reviews
citing reliability issues. (We recently discovered that our current
Seagate had apparently failed on us.)

Any opinions? Seagate? WD? Toshiba? Something else?


I so far am not having any trouble with something called "Seagate Backup 
Plus Portable Drive" -- "product of China (HDD), assembled in Thailand" 
as proudly proclaimed on the cases. These two I purchased in Thailand 
and am using them there. The spec sheet claims that they work with both 
USB 2.0 and 3.0, but likely with a lower transmission speed with 2.0. I 
am using them only on 3.0, not having tried either on 2.0.(1)


They are usable 'right out of the box' with Mac computers and also with 
Micro$oft, complete with built-in 'hardware' encryption if you choose to 
use it.  I of course chose not to use any of it and so reformatted both 
with ext4 and luks encryption.


They also come with a 'limited' three year warranty. I have only had 
them for a year; so far I have had no need to test those 'limitations'. 
Finally they come in six decorator colours, light and dark blue, red, 
gold, silver and black, useful to tell them apart if you have more than 
one.  I stuck to black for both of them as I have another way to tell 
them apart -- relative depth.


The height,width and depth of the 1 TB model are respectively 114, 77 
and 11 mm.  The height and width of the 4 TB model are the same; the 
depth however is 20 mm.  In view of the height and width the 
electro-mechanical drives used in these drive must be the 63.5 mm size. 
In view of the depth difference I suspect that there is one such drive 
in the

1 TB model, but two such drives in the 4 TB model.  Besides
the 1 and 4 TB models, also available are 2 and 5 TB models.

(1) https://www.seagate.com/as/en/consumer/backup/backup-plus/

Ken

Re: Thunderbird 60 ignores LC_TIME environment variable

[Ken Heard]

On 2018-10-02 3:07 p.m., Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Tue, Oct 02, 2018 at 02:47:52PM -0400, Ken Heard wrote:

$ LC_TIME=de_DE.utf8 thunderbird


This command doesn't work for me.


You have to generate the locales that you want to use.

dpkg-reconfigure locales >
Check it by running "locale -a" to see which locales are available on
your system.


I had long since already done that.  Among the available locales was and 
still is en_DK.utf8.


Ken

Re: Thunderbird 60 ignores LC_TIME environment variable

[Ken Heard]

On 2018-08-20 3:27 p.m., Stefan Pietsch wrote:

On 20.08.18 11:57, Curt wrote:

On 2018-08-20, Stefan Pietsch  wrote:

Dear list,

after the upgrade from Thunderbird 52.9.1 to 60.0 (Debian sid) it seems
for me that the environment variable LC_TIME is ignored.

I used the following command to set 24h time format in Thunderbird.

$ LC_TIME=de_DE.utf8 thunderbird


This command doesn't work for me.


With Thunderbird 60 setting the LC_TIME or LANG variables will not help.
Can someone confirm this?


I can't confirm anything but this bug report

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1426907

looks both pertinent, and, after a cursory read (recent posts re 60 toward the
bottom), discouraging concerning your plight (at least for the moment).


Thanks for the hint to that bug id.

I had to set the "Date and Time Formatting" option (exists since TB
version 56) in the Advanced Preferences AND the variable LC_TIME when
starting Thunderbird to get it working.



Regards,
Stefan


The date and time option for me has two choices:

Application locale: English (United States)
Regional settings locale: English (Canada)

The result for me is the same for both. It is the ISO 8601 format for 
the date, but for time the format is 12 hour plus AM/PM.


How did you manage to the ISO 8601 time format be setting the LV_TIME 
format?


Regards, Ken

Calculator with "tapes"

[Ken Heard]

Does Debian have a calculator package which has the equivalent of the 
tape produced by mechanical machines to show the entire calculation.  I 
find such "tapes" essential when for example I am adding a long list of 
numbers and need to check after the addition is done to verify that all 
the numbers were entered correctly.


Regards, Ken

Display full date in Thunderbird

[Ken Heard]

I start Thunderbird with the following script:

#! /bin/bash
export LC_TIME=en_DK.utf8 && thunderbird "$@"

For emails sent or received today only the time is shown, e.g., 13:17.
For emails sent or received more than a week ago, the year, month, day 
and time are shown, e.g., 2018-06-13 07:43.


For emails sent and received a week after today only the year, month and 
time are shown, e.g., 2018/06 19:53.


How do I get Thunderbird to use the same format for dates/times more 
than a week old?


This problem appeared after upgrading from Jessie to Stretch with 
Thunderbird 52.8.0 in Stretch.  I used in Jessie the same script quoted 
above, where all dates after today were 2017-03-28 23:19.  (I do not 
remember which version of Thunderbird I had in Jessie.)


Regards, Ken

Re: I do not want to install Linux

[Ken Heard]

On 2018-02-08 15:57, Michael Fothergill wrote:

> Actually Kali Linux [1] is pretty cool and definitely worth a look.
> And, as a Debian derivative, it is a wonderful illustration of the
> things the Debian culture makes possible (another being Ubuntu, of
> course).
> 
>> ​I guess I could give it a try.  I have run Bodhi Linux.  That is quite
>> good.
> 
I would rather wait for Brahma and try to avoid Shiva, but I may have to
settle for Vishnu.

Ken




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Cannot read my draft emails.

[Ken Heard]

In my Jessie box I recently converted from Icedove to Thunderbird
52.2.1.  As part of that conversion I also upgraded Enigmail to version
2:1.8.2-4~deb8u1 which is in the Thunderbird extensions list.

Before the conversion I never encrypted my emails, but I did digitally
sign them.  I expected to be able to do the same with Thunderbird and
presumably so far I nave done so.

I now in Drafts emails which I now want to edit and send.  When I try to
open them for editing in the text section nothing appears except this
message:

This is an encrypted OpenPGP message.
In order to decrypt this mail, you need to install an OpenPGP add-on.

In addition to Enigmail I also have  gnupg 1.4.18-7+deb8u3,
gnupg-agent 2.0.26-6+deb8u1 and gnupg2 installed, as well as six
packages with pgp in their names.  I find it however strange that
apt-cache no longer finds those packages. I also find it strange none of
the options in the Thunderbird Enigmail menu is operative.  If something
else is needed, what would it be?

In short, can anyone tell me what is going on?  I want my email client back!

Regards, Ken Heard

Re: Installed Stretch, but no command line

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2017-07-23 19:08, Felix Miata wrote:
> Ken Heard composed on 2017-07-23 18:25 (UTC-0400):
> 
>> Felix Miata wrote:
> 
>>> Ken Heard composed on 2017-07-23 12:21 (UTC-0400):
> 
>>>> Ctrl-alt-F1 shows the blank screen which appears at the end
>>>> of the boot.  I think the problem is that what appears on
>>>> opening tty2 to tty5 should appear in tty1 but for some
>>>> reason does not -- instead the blank screen.
> 
>>> /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty1.service
>>> probably says
> 
>>> TTYVTDisallocate=yes
> 
>>> Changing to
> 
>>> TTYVTDisallocate=no
> 
>>> should on subsequent boots leave init messages on tty1, but 
>>> plymouth may need to be purged for that to happen.
> 
>> I tried that, but after I entered my /home password the boot
>> continued and then stopped.  After waiting fifteen minutes or so
>> I concluded that the machine hanged.
> 
> All my installations have that set to no, so it's very surprising
> to me that this could happen.
> 
>> I tried using the recovery mode from GRUB, but that hahged the
>> machine as well.  I then tried rescue mode from the installation
>> disk.  If it is possible to use that to put the Yes back, I could
>> not figure it out.
> 
>> What do I do now?
> 
> If you had made a copy before your edit it would be a simple matter
> to rename it. :-(
> 
> That said, that file is a plain text file. Any editor available in
> rescue mode can put it back once the Stretch / partition is
> mounted. Try nano first, which for most people is much more
> intuitive than traditional Linux editors like vi.
> 
> Something to try first: append plymouth.enable=0 to the kernel
> cmdline for an otherwise normal boot. Also try appending a 3, which
> should block startup of the GUI login manager, but also should make
> normal ttys 1-6 available.
> 
All your suggestions require that I be able to boot the computer and
log on as root from a tty, but as already explained I cannot do that.
 For rescue mode I need access to the original /etc directory.  I
looked for a way to do that but could not find one.


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Re: Installed Stretch, but no command line

[Ken Heard]

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On 2017-07-23 16:12, Felix Miata wrote:
> Ken Heard composed on 2017-07-23 12:21 (UTC-0400):
> 
>> Ctrl-alt-F1 shows the blank screen which appears at the end of
>> the boot.  I think the problem is that what appears on opening
>> tty2 to tty5 should appear in tty1 but for some reason does not
>> -- instead the blank screen.
> /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty1.service probably
> says
> 
> TTYVTDisallocate=yes
> 
> Changing to
> 
> TTYVTDisallocate=no
> 
> should on subsequent boots leave init messages on tty1, but
> plymouth may need to be purged for that to happen.

I tried that, but after I entered my /home password the boot continued
and then stopped.  After waiting fifteen minutes or so I concluded
that the machine hanged.

I tried using the recovery mode from GRUB, but that hahged the machine
as well.  I then tried rescue mode from the installation disk.  If it
is possible to use that to put the Yes back, I could not figure it out.

What do I do now?

Ken


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Re: Installed Stretch, but no command line

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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On 2017-07-23 07:43, songbird wrote:
> Ken Heard wrote:
>> 
>> Just finished installing Stretch, using a RAID1, LVM and
>> encryption for home (passkey) and swap (random key).  It is at
>> the moment a basic installation with X-server-Xorg, but no DE
>> yet.
> 
> if you use the control-alt F1 - F? sequence do you get a login
> prompt?  (check F7 and F8 too)

I should have thought of that, but when I wrote my original post I was
tired and frustrated.  Thanks for the reminder.

This morning I did as you suggested.  Yes, ctrl-alt-F2 to F6 does open
a console where I can log in one of them as my user and in another as
root.  So far I seem to be able to execute all the commands I need to
or want to in both.

For example, in my user I was able to run startx, which prodices a
bluish hue screen with the Debian swirl. I can't go any further
because I do not have a desktop environment yet.  My next step is to
install one and see what happens.

Ctrl-alt-F7 and F8 open nothing, not surprising as F7 and above are
normally reserved for graphical user interfaces (GUI), which I have
not yet installed.

Ctrl-alt-F1 shows the blank screen which appears at the end of the
boot.  I think the problem is that what appears on opening tty2 to
tty5 should appear in tty1 but for some reason does not -- instead the
blank screen.
> 
>> As part of the boot it accepts my /home password, but I do not
>> get the command line. I end up with a blue-grey screen. No input
>> from mouse or keyboard is accepted.  To close the computer I have
>> to use the power switch.
> 
> oh, this doesn't sound good, but since you don't describe your
> keyboard or mouse type i'm not sure if you need to change something
> in the bios or what for them to show up.  check the bios if you
> have settings that might help.  use a different keyboard and/or
> mouse to check that something shows up.

Keyboard is fine; it has worked on another computer,  I have nothing
yet installed which uses the mouse.

> your X setup may need adjusting.  check /var/log/Xorg.0.log and
> X*.log.old  if you have no log files install rsyslog.

Probably not necessary, but I shall see after the DE is installed.

>> I can open it in recovery mode, and after I enter the root
>> password I can get the command line as root. But I don't know
>> what to do next to effect a rescue.  From the root command line I
>> can however close the computer properly with "shutdown -h now".
>> 
>> I did notice when the computer was booting normally -- not in
>> rescue mode -- the following lines loop many times until the
>> computer gives up:
>> 
>> Running /scripts/local-block Failed to connect to lvmetad Failed
>> to find logical volume SOL1/swap_crypt
>> 
>> According to several posts on line, this behaviour is a nuisance
>> but not fatal.  As some people suggested on line I tried to get
>> rid of this nuisance by changing in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf
>> use_lvmetad=1 to =0, but to no effect.
>> 
>> If I have to I can live with the nuisance, but I cannot live
>> without the command line.
>> 
> i do know that at times some partitions are set up but may not be
> found due to various issues.  i make life simpler by using volume
> labels and adjusting /etc/fstab to use those instead of UUIDs.

Probably a good idea; I shall try it.

> the problem i had was that the reformat of the swap partition got
> rid of my label.  so now if i do anything that touches the swap
> partition i reset the label.

Regards, Ken


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Installed Stretch, but no command line

[Ken Heard]

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Just finished installing Stretch, using a RAID1, LVM and encryotion
for home (passkey) and .  It is ant the moment a basic installation
with X-server-Xorg, but no DE yet. As part of the boot it accepts my
/home password, but I do not get the command line. I end up with a
blue-grey screen. No input from mouse or keyboard is accepted.  To
close the computer I have to use the power switch.

I can open it in recovery mode, and after I enter the root password I
can get the command line as root. But I don't know what to do next to
effect a rescue.  From the root command line I can however close the
computer properly with "shutdown -h now".

I did notice when the computer was booting normally -- not in rescue
mode -- the following lines loop many times until the computer gives up:

Running /scripts/local-block
Failed to connect to lvmetad
Failed to find logical volume SOL1/swap_crypt

According to several posts on line, this behaviour is a nuisance but
not fatal.  As some people suggested on line I tried to get rid of
this nuisance by changing in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf use_lvmetad=1 to =0,
but to no effect.

If I have to I can live with the nuisance, but I cannot live without
the command line.

Help please, anyone.

Regards, Ken

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Stretch installer: cannot encrypt /home

[Ken Heard]

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I want to encrypt my /home directory but the Stretch installer will
not let be do it.  I got so far as to create a RAID1 and then lvm2 to
create several logical volumes, but I could not encrypt the logical
volume for the /home directory.

In the overview of my partitions the one for my home directory reads
as follows:

LVM VG SOL1, LV home 2.0 TB lINUX device-mapper  (linear)
#1  2.0 TBK crypto (SOL1-home_crypt)
Encrypted volume (SOL1-home_crypt) - 2.0 TB Linux device-mapper (crypt)
#1  2.0 TBK   lvm

What I think I should be able to do now is to select the last line
above so I can enter the file system. the password and the mount point
/home.  When I select that line nothing happens,

If I select "configure encrypted volumes", I am asked to save my
partitioning scheme, After doing so another window appears with two
choices, "Finish" and "Create encrypted volumes".  Selecting the
latter asks me to select the devices to encrypt, but the one I want to
encrypt does not appear there.

Either way installer will not let me go any further.

Have others had this problem?  If anyone found a solution I would
appreciate knowing how you did it.

Regards, Ken Heard





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Re: why can't I visit this web site

[Ken Heard]

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On 06/06/17 08:44 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> Just as a data point, it seems to work for me in Wheezy / Iceweasel
> / Firefox ESR--I see lots of content, but all in a foreign language
> using--what's the right word?--pictographs?--those "picture
> characters" used in several far east languages (e.g., Chinese).

I think the word you want is one of logogram, logograph or
grammalogue, meaning in all three cases a word represented by a single
sign.

Ken


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Re: What file system to use?

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2017-02-03 03:03, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:
> On 02/02/17 20:58, Ken Heard wrote:
>> I use USB flash drives and 480 GB SanDisk portable drives for
>> some backups. I started by using ext4 on one of the flash drives.
>> The next day I tried to boot the computer, but found that the
>> computer hung. Only at this point did I find out that those
>> drives are not capable of journalling.
> 
> I use USB flash drives with ext4 for backups and have not had any 
> problems with journalling. I have had at least one successful
> journal recovery, after an inadvertent disconnection before
> unmount. What problems did you encounter?
> 
> I optimised my ext4 backup filesystems for a small number of large
> files (compressed archives) with:
> 
> mkfs.ext4 -J size=4 -m 0 -T largefile4 -O "^resize_inode"
> /dev/sdb1 tune2fs -c 0 -i 0 -L Backup /dev/sdb1
> 
> My /etc/fstab contains:
> 
> LABEL=Backup /media/backup ext4
> noatime,noauto,user,errors=remount-ro 0 0
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
First I should say that the result I described in my original post
occurred in a computer with Debian Wheezy as the OS.  I do not know
whether the result would be the same with Jessie, and frankly I am not
really anxious to find out.

Second, all these drives were encrypted with cryptsetup.  Encryption
plus ext4 with journalling may have been too much to ask of the
operating system.

Third, the last thing I did the evening before the morning when the
computer crashed was to transfer a series of uncompressed jpg files to
a USB flash drive.  I assumed that the transfer was finished when the
bang reappeared on the command line; so I shut down the computer. I
did not unmount the drive before shutdown.  It may be that the
journalling requirements for the transfer were never finished when the
bang appeared, and were still unfinished at shutdown, thereby causing
the computer not to boot the next morning. I will never know now.  I
did of course have to reinstall the OS starting on that day.

Finally, I discovered that trying to open an encrypted USB flash drive
in Dolphin caused Dolphin to crash.  I had to use Konqueror instead.
I filed a bug report for the crash. I have never checked to see
whether the bug was fixed.

All the events described in my original post and in this one took
place in December 2014.  I continue since then to use Konqueror for
such encrypted drives with ext2.  This arrangement works for me, and
my curiosity does not extend so far as to find out whether I still
need to use it three years later.

Regards, Ken Heard



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Re: What file system to use?

[Ken Heard]

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On 2017-02-02 08:47, Gary Dale wrote:

> There shouldn't be any problem with ext4. It's been the Linux
> standard for years now. I can't even imagine what the backup issue
> would be unless they were trying to make some kind of sparse backup
> using FS internals.

I use USB flash drives and 480 GB SanDisk portable drives for some
backups. I started by using ext4 on one of the flash drives. The next
day I tried to boot the computer, but found that the computer hung.
Only at this point did I find out that those drives are not capable of
journalling.

So I either had to use ext4 with the journalling feature disabled or
revert to ext2 for these drives.  I chose the latter, as simpler and
less susceptible to errors.  I have had no trouble with them since.

Regards, Ken Heard





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Wheezy no longer accepts my passwords to open /home and /mnt partitions on boot

[Ken Heard]

In my Wheezy box I have two encrypted hard drive partitions, 
/dev/mapper/md07_crypt for /home and /dev/mapper/md05_crypt for /mnt. (Mnt is 
no longer used. That partition was originally for /tmp; in a weak moment I 
persuaded myself that I needed to encrypt /tmp. I have since changed the mount 
point for /tmp to tmpfs and consequently changed the mount point of 
/dev/mapper/md05_crypt to /mnt pending its deletion. In the meantime it still 
has to be opened.)

This morning, when I tried to boot this box, I found that the passwords for 
those two partitions were not accepted. Finally, after entering the correct 
passwords numerous times, the following messages were received. 

[info] Loading kernel module loop.
[info] Loading kernel module coretemp.
[info] Loading kernel module it87.
[ok] Activating lvm and md swap ... Done
[] Checking file systems ... Fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
BOOT was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
BOOT: 245/120960 files (20.4% non-contiguous) 58505/241664 blocks
Fsck.ext4 No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/mapper/md07_crypt.
Possibly non-existent device?
VAR: recovering journal
Fsck died with exit status 9
Failed (code 9).
[FAIL] File system check failed. A log is being saved in /var/log/fsck/checkfs 
if that location is writable.
{My note: that location was not writable; so no such log was created.}
Please repair the system manually ... Failed!
[warn] A maintenance shell will now be started. CONTROL-D will terminate the 
shell and resume system boot ... (warning)
Give root password form maintenance
(or type CONTROL-D to continue):

After entering the root password the root bang appeared.

At this point I did not know what to do by way of reparing the system manually. 
I consequently closed the box, first by running "shutdown now". After various 
messages flashed by on the monitor I was asked once more to give the password 
for maintenance or type CONTROL-D again. After typing CONTROL-D again my user 
login appeared, but of course I could not log in. At that point I was finally 
able to close the computer with the Alt-S command.

I hope that somebody or bodies can tell me what to do to make this computer 
usable again -- short of having to do a completely new installation.

Regards, Ken Heard

-- 

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
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DBus error: how to fix.

[Ken Heard]

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I last upgraded my Wheezy installation on 2016-11-11. Ever since,
whenever I run "apt-get update" or "apt-get upgrade", at the end the
following message appears:

Error: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: Failed
to execute program /usr/lib/dbus-1.0/debus-daemon-launch-helper: Success

That directory exists and the script file (if that is what it is) is
also exists. Is there something that script file should do but cannot
do for some reason?

Ken Heard


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-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

Extending file system after enlarging a logical volume

[Ken Heard]

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In my jessie box I need to increase the non-encrypted root partition
(/) size from 14G to 19G.  I was able successfully to increase the
logical volume (and decrease the space available in the volume group
accordingly) but am not sure how to do the next step.

The following command produced the result shown.

root@BDS:~# fsadm resize /dev/BDS1/root
resize2fs 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014)
Filesystem at /dev/mapper/BDS1-root is mounted on /; on-line resizing
required
old_desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 2
resize2fs: Read-only file system While checking for on-line resizing
support
fsadm: Resize ext4 failed

Does the phrase "on-line resizing required" mean that I have to
unmount /dev/BDS1/root, then run the fsadm command and finally remount
/dev/BDS1/root?  Is unmounting the basic partition (/) safe while
presumably some of the files there are being used by the computer?

I think I read somewhere that to resize an ext4 partition did not
require unmounting it.  Perhaps it it is required.

Regards, Ken Heard
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Mount /tmp on tmpfs jessie and stretch -- howto?

[Ken Heard]

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I would like in my jessie and stretch boxes (one of each, both with
systemd) to mount /tmp on tmpfs instead of a hard drive partition tmp
or /dev/mapper/SOL1-tmp.  I assumed that to do so I could not have
either of those partitions; so I unmounted them and then deleted them
as a partition or as part of a LVM as the case may be.

I then created a created a line in /etc/fstab as follows:
tmpfs   /tmp/   tmpfs   nodev,nosuid,size=20%   0   0.  When I rebooted I
received dependency errors.

In addition to the line above /etc/fstab still had a line
/dev/mapper/SOL1-tmp/tmpext2defaults0   2.

However, df shows the first line (tmpfs /tmp etc.), but not the second
(/dev/mapper/SOL1-tmp etc.)

Obviously something is wrong but what?  I know that file
/etc/default/tempfs cannot be used in systemd, but I am at a loss to
know what if anything replaces it in systemd.  Apparently it is not
enough to add the tmpfs /tmp tmpfs etc line in /etc/fstab or run
"systemctl enable tmp.mount".
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Re: Failure messages relating to strict.pm -- shutdown

[Ken Heard]

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On 2016-08-25 16:31, Ken Heard wrote:

> Shutdown however does not seem to work.  Selecting turning off the
> computer from the DE closes the DE and opens tty1 which is ready
> for a login.  Logging in as root and running "shutdown now" has no
> effect.  I have to shut down by holding the start button down for
> four seconds.

I did determine that package systemd-sysv, which contains the command
/sbin/shutdown, is installed, but for some reason /sbin/shutdown does
not work.

> Another thing I find strange -- after booting and opening my user
> only tty1 and tty7 are available.  Tty2 through tty6 do not exist.
> 
> Regards, Ken
> 
> 

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Re: Failure messages relating to strict.pm

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2016-08-25 07:39, Kushal Kumaran wrote:

> Looks like you have a local (broken) perl installation in
> /usr/local that is interfering with the
> /usr/bin/deb-systemd-helper.
> 
> deb-systemd-helper has a shebang line of #!/usr/bin/env perl, which
> is picking up the first perl available in $PATH, which is 
> /usr/local/bin/perl in your case.
> 
> Remove /usr/local/bin from your PATH and try again.  If you have
> the PERLLIB or PERL5LIB environment variables set, unset them as
> well.
> 
> # export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin

Did that.

> # unset PERLLIB # unset PERL5LIB

Neither of these variables existed, but I unset them anyway.

Running apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade still produces the same
error messages quoted in my original post.

It seems that the downloaded packages are not unpacked or installed.
The first package in the list to be unpacked is apt; it seems to be
the one which causes the error messages. Since this package cannot be
unpacked the whole process is aborted -- none of them is unpacked or
installed.

On the other hand the DE now appears to be stable.  Shutdown however
does not seem to work.  Selecting turning off the computer from the DE
closes the DE and opens tty1 which is ready for a login.  Logging in
as root and running "shutdown now" has no effect.  I have to shut down
by holding the start button down for four seconds.

Another thing I find strange -- after booting and opening my user only
tty1 and tty7 are available.  Tty2 through tty6 do not exist.

Regards, Ken

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Failure messages relating to strict.pm

[Ken Heard]

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At the end of a package update and upgrade today of Stretch the
following messages appeared.

apt-listchanges: Mailing root: apt-listchanges: news for SOL
debconf: Perl may be unconfigured (Can't locate strict.pm:
/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.22.2/strict.pm: Permission
denied at (eval 1) line2.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 2.) -- aborting
(Reading database ... 76727 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libapt-pkg5.0_1.3~rc2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libapt-pkg5.0:amd64 (1.3~rc2) over (1.3~rc1) ...
Setting up libapt-pkg5.0:amd64 (1.3~rc2)
(Reading database ... 76727 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libapt-pkg5.0_1.3~rc2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libapt-pkg5.0:amd64 (1.3~rc2) over (1.3~rc1) ...
Can't locate strict.pm:
/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.22.2/strict.pm: Permission
denied at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 52.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 52
.
dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit
status 13
dpkg: trying script from the new package instead ...
Can't locate strict.pm:  Permission denied at
/usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 52.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 52
.
dpkg: error processing archive
/tmp/apt-dpkg-install-GpvFkF/1-apt_1.3rc2_amd64.deb (--unpack):
   subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 13.
Can't locate strict.pm:
/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.22.2/strict.pm: Permission
denied at /usr/bin/deb-systemd- helper line 83.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/bin/deb-systemd- helper line 8
3.
Can't locate strict.pm:
/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.22.2/strict.pm: Permission
denied at /usr/bin/deb-systemd- helper line 83.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/bin/deb-systemd- helper line 8
3.
Can't locate strict.pm:
/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.22.2/strict.pm: Permission
denied at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-helper line 83.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/bin/deb-systemd- helper line 8
3.
Can't locate strict.pm:
/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.22.2/strict.pm: Permission
denied at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 52.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 52
.
Errors were encountered while processing:
  /tmp/apt-dpkg-install-GpvFkF/1-apt_1.3rc2_amd64.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg/ returned an error code (1)

Can anyone tell me what the foregoing means?  If it is of any help, I
do have two problems with Stretch.  First I cannot close the computer
using shutdown -- I have to close it by holding down the start button
for four seconds.

Second, after opening my user in the DE, the DE remains on the monitor
for only a few seconds.  The monitor then reverts to the tty1 command
line and asks me to log in.  I can do so either as root or my user but
am restricted to use of the usual commands.

Regards< Ken Heard

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*ERROR* Unable to find select subconnector property

[Ken Heard]

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When I opened my Jessie box today I for once ran dmesg.  The last ten
lines thereof read as follows:

[   45.377328] NFSD: Using /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery as the NFSv4 state
recovery directory
[   45.384608] NFSD: starting 90-second grace period (net
818ba200)
[   53.192364] [drm:select_subconnector_show] *ERROR* Unable to find
select subconnector property
[   53.232210] [drm:subconnector_show] *ERROR* Unable to find
subconnector property
[   68.261234] [drm:select_subconnector_show] *ERROR* Unable to find
select subconnector property
[   68.295298] [drm:subconnector_show] *ERROR* Unable to find
subconnector property
[   74.927462] [drm:select_subconnector_show] *ERROR* Unable to find
select subconnector property
[   74.958852] [drm:subconnector_show] *ERROR* Unable to find
subconnector property
[   80.850145] [drm:select_subconnector_show] *ERROR* Unable to find
select subconnector property
[   80.885065] [drm:subconnector_show] *ERROR* Unable to find
subconnector property

Are these errors something about which I need to concern myself?

Regards, Ken Heard



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Re: Using sudo in a script.

[Ken Heard]

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On 2016-08-03 15:16, Jude DaShiell wrote:
> Why not try a -H switch on the sudo line in your script and see
> what happens?

I did.  The answer was nothing.

Regards, Ken

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Re: Using sudo in a script.

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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On 2016-08-03 12:21, Ken Heard wrote:
> I would like to create a short script to mount and unmount SCXC
> cards. For these exfat cards to do either in Jessie has to be done
> as root.
> 
> I have set up sudo so that my user can run any command as root.
> the following command will mount the card without asking for my
> password.
> 
> sudo mount -U 6238-3434 /media/xca
> 
> (My file /etc/fstab contains the following line:
> 
> UUID-6238-3434  /media/xca  exfat   rw,users,noauto,noatime 0
> 0)
> 
> In order to automate the process I wrote the following script named
> mxca :
> 
> #!/bin/bash # Script to mount xca from any directory. CURPWD=$PWD 
> cd /home/ken sudo mount -U 6238-3434 /media/xca cd $CURPWD
> 
> Running mxca alone does not produce the required result.  Running
> sudo mxca together however does, even though the sudo command is
> also in the script.
> 
> I can unmount the card by running command sudo umount /media/xca,
> but I would like a similar script named uxca to do the same thing
> for unmounting.
> 
> Is there a way to make sudo do its thing in these scripts so that
> I can mount and unmount the SDXC card by running the script
> commands mxca and uxca by themselves?

I have since discovered a command "/sbin/mount.fuse" and "fusermount
- -u" which are supposed to allow a non-privileged user to mount and
unmount exfat devices; but I haven't figured out how to use them yet.
 A simple "/sbin/mount.fuse /media/xca" or "fusermount -u /media/xca"
do not work.  Other than fixing the format of the UUID device indicate
from UUID- to UUID= I have yet to experiment with Don Armstrong's
other suggestions.  I thing I would rather get /sbin/mount.fuse and
fusermount -u to work instead.

Regards, Ken


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Using sudo in a script.

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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I would like to create a short script to mount and unmount SCXC cards.
 For these exfat cards to do either in Jessie has to be done as root.

I have set up sudo so that my user can run any command as root.  the
following command will mount the card without asking for my password.

sudo mount -U 6238-3434 /media/xca

(My file /etc/fstab contains the following line:

UUID-6238-3434  /media/xca  exfat   rw,users,noauto,noatime 0 0)

In order to automate the process I wrote the following script named mxca
:

#!/bin/bash
# Script to mount xca from any directory.
CURPWD=$PWD
cd /home/ken
sudo mount -U 6238-3434 /media/xca
cd $CURPWD

Running mxca alone does not produce the required result.  Running sudo
mxca together however does, even though the sudo command is also in
the script.

I can unmount the card by running command sudo umount /media/xca, but
I would like a similar script named uxca to do the same thing for
unmounting.

Is there a way to make sudo do its thing in these scripts so that I
can mount and unmount the SDXC card by running the script commands
mxca and uxca by themselves?

Regards, Ken Heard


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Re: iceape availability

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2016-02-26 16:33, Bret Busby wrote:
> On 26/02/2016, Ken Heard <kensli...@teksavvy.com> wrote:
>> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1
>> 
>> On 2016-02-25 22:46, Bret Busby wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> I currently have and use, seamonkey v 2.29 (.1, I think), as
>>> the latest version of which I have been aware, has been
>>> available as a .deb package.
>> 
>> Is that package available for Debian, or only for the Ubuntu
>> offshoot? I ran Lisi's URL for =Seamonkey instead of =Iceweasel
>> but received a nil return.  Since the demise of Iceape I am using
>> Seamonkey, presently version 2.31, directly from Mozilla, with
>> Wheezy.
>> 
>> Ken
>> 
> 
> It is a .deb package, and, from memory, runs on Debian as easily as
> on Ubuntu.
> 
> Try 
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/files/mozilla/apt/pool/ma
in/s/seamonkey-mozilla-build/
>
>  which includes 2.39.
> 
Thank you, Bret, I was not aware of the Ubuntuzilla project.  I will
have to try that version of Seamonkey, and perhaps use it instead of
the "pure" one I got from Mozilla.

Regards, Ken

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Re: iceape availability

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2016-02-25 22:46, Bret Busby wrote:
> On 25/02/2016, Richard Owlett  wrote:
>> On 2/25/2016 7:38 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:
>>> On Thursday 25 February 2016 12:59:29 Siard wrote:
 On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 14:08:20 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> I searched for a .deb package, for iceape, so that I could
> download the package for the iceape suite, to try to
> install it.
 
 AFAIK, Iceape, being the Debian version of Seamonkey, has
 been discontinued for quite some time now. There is only an
 old version for squeeze (oldoldstable) in the repos.
>>> 
>>> https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=default=all=an
y=names=Iceape
>>>
>>>
>>> 
Lisi
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> That has *SECURITY* patches. But what upstream version is it 
>> based on? SeaMonkey is currently at 2.39 .
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> I currently have and use, seamonkey v 2.29 (.1, I think), as the 
> latest version of which I have been aware, has been available as a 
> .deb package.

Is that package available for Debian, or only for the Ubuntu offshoot?
 I ran Lisi's URL for =Seamonkey instead of =Iceweasel but received a
nil return.  Since the demise of Iceape I am using Seamonkey,
presently version 2.31, directly from Mozilla, with Wheezy.

Ken

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Re: updating debian 8 (jessie) stable to permanent testing

[Ken Heard]

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On 2016-01-25 10:34, Francis Gerund wrote:
>>> 
>>> -- or, would something else be better?
>>> 
>> 
>> Something else would be better- not using jessie-backports. If
>> you're already using testing, enabling jessie-backports is
>> pointless and will put you halfway into FrankenDebian territory.
>> Beware.
>> 
>> I would do something like this:
>> 
>> deb http://http.debian.net/debian testing main deb
>> http://http.debian.net/debian testing-updates main deb
>> http://security.debian.org testing/updates main
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hi.
> 
> I am not using testing - yet.  Here is the current
> /etc/apt/sources.list :
> 
> # deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 8.2.0 _Jessie_ - Official amd64
> NETINST Binary-1 20150906-11:09]/ jessie main
> 
> deb  http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessiemain 
> contrib non-free deb-src  http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie
> main contrib non-free
> 
> deb  http://security.debian.org/  jessie/updatesmain 
> contrib non-free deb-src  http://security.debian.org/
> jessie/updatesmain contrib non-free
> 
> # jessie-updates, previously known as 'volatile' deb
> http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updatesmain contrib
> non-free deb-src  http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates
> main contrib non-free
> 
> # jessie-backports, previously on backports.debian.org deb
> http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports  main contrib
> non-free deb-src  http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports
> main contrib non-free
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ---  So, how about this proposed /etc/apt/sources.list :
> 
> 
> # deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 8.2.0 _Jessie_ - Official amd64
> NETINST Binary-1 20150906-11:09]/ jessie main
> 
> deb  http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testingmain 
> contrib non-free deb-src  http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing
> main contrib non-free
> 
> deb  http://security.debian.org/  testing/updatesmain 
> contrib non-free deb-src  http://security.debian.org/
> testing/updatesmain contrib non-free
> 
> # jessie-updates, previously known as 'volatile' deb
> http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing-updatesmain contrib
> non-free deb-src  http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing-updates
> main contrib non-free
> 
> # jessie-backports, previously on backports.debian.org # deb
> http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports  main contrib
> non-free # deb-src  http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/
> jessie-backports  main contrib non-free
> 
> Is this about right, to convert from stable to permanent testing?
> Or has having backports enabled already made it not doable?

Adam Wilson did say _not_ to use jessie-backports, as it would be
"pointless".  You could I suppose use testing-backports instead, but
there will be nothing in it until after testing becomes stable.

Regards, Ken



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Re: updating debian 8 (jessie) stable to permanent testing

[Ken Heard]

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On 2016-01-25 09:29, Adam Wilson wrote:



> Something else would be better- not using jessie-backports. If
> you're already using testing, enabling jessie-backports is
> pointless and will put you halfway into FrankenDebian territory.
> Beware.
> 
> I would do something like this:
> 
> deb http://http.debian.net/debian testing main deb
> http://http.debian.net/debian testing-updates main deb
> http://security.debian.org testing/updates main

Is it possible at this stage to use stretch instead of testing?  Then
when testing becomes stable it will not be necessary to change the
sources.list again -- unless of course at that point you want to go
directly to the new testing.

Regards, Ken

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Konqueror default view mode -- how to make it ‘really’ permanent?

[Ken Heard]

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My default view profile for Konqueror is ‘File management’.  In that
profile I have set the ostensible default view mode to ‘detailed list’.
However, during a Konqueror session it does not always stay that way;
sometimes it reverts to ‘icon view’.

For example, if I open a text file from Konqueror, the file will open
in the application I have specified in ‘file associations’:
LibreOffice for odt files, Kedit for txt files, etc.  After such files
are closed from Konqueror, the file list reverts to ‘detailed list’.

If however I open any other file type, such as a jpg file, after such
file is closed the file list reverts to ‘icon view’ instead of the
ostensible default ‘detailed list’ file view.  How do I cause
Konqueror in such situations to revert to that default?

In file .kde/share/config/konquerorrc there is the following entry:

[ModeToolBarServices]
external=konq_detailedlistview

Is that entry related to the problem I am experiencing?

Regards, Ken
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Sound from computer to TV monitor via HDMI -- how?

[Ken Heard]

onf.d/asoundrc.conf:

Pcm.! Default   {
type hw
card 0
device 7
}

(b) Adding the following to /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/asoundrc.conf:

defaults.ctl.card 1
defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.timer.card 1

I tried both, and also tried various combinations of card and device
numbers.  None had the desired effect.  In fact when I tried any of
these and left the other entries in that file open, access to the
analogue speakers was cut off.

So where do I go now?  I will be thankful for any help received from
other users on this list.

Regards, Ken Heard






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Re: sudo does not respond to settings in /etc/sudoers

[Ken Heard]

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On 2015-11-16 19:02, Andreas Henriksson wrote:

> For what it's worth, if you want to avoid logging out/in you can 
> temporarily join the group in your shell by using "newgrp sudo".

Thank you for that tip; it is useful to know.

Ken


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Re: sudo does not respond to settings in /etc/sudoers

[Ken Heard]

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On 2015-11-15 23:26, Teemu Likonen wrote:

> Maybe you added the user to the "undo" group

Surely you mean the "sudo" group?

> but forgot to test it with a new login session. Group changes
> don't affect the current login session (unless newgrp is used).

My eureka moment! I forgot to logout and in again as my user before
testing the various options. I tested the two options to do what I
wanted to do as described in my original post, but not both on, or
open at the same time. I found that adding to the "user privilege
specification" section in the sudoers file the following line DOES work:

ken ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

However, removing that line, and in the TDE User Manager (Kuser)
simply adding my user to the "sudo" group does NOT work. That option
DOES nevertheless work in my Jessie box. Strange.

Thanks guys for collectively putting me on the right track.

Ken




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sudo does not respond to settings in /etc/sudoers

[Ken Heard]

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In my Wheezy box I want to be able to run any root command as my user
without having to enter a password to do so.  I assume that there are
two ways to do so: either make my user a member of the sudo group, or
add a line to sudoers giving such privileges to my user.  Neither worked.

My sudoers file reads as follows:

#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# Please consider adding local content in /etc/sudoers.d/ instead of
# directly modifying this file.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
#
Defaultsenv_reset
Defaultsmail_badpass
Defaults
secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# User privilege specification
rootALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
# ken   ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL
# martinAll=(ALL:ALL) ALL
# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# See sudoers(5) for more information on "#include" directives:

#includedir /etc/sudoers.d

I first entered the line under "user privilege specification"
beginning with "ken" -- without the "#" of course -- it did not work.
 Next I commented out that line and added to the sudo group "ken" my
user.  That did not work either.

The command "visudo -c" returns the following:

/etc/sudoers: parsed OK
/etc/sudoers.d/README: parsed OK
/etc/sudoers.d/tde-secure-path: parsed OK

Strangely enough I have the same sudoers file in another computer
using Jessie.  On that computer both the options I tried for the
wheezy computer worked.

Is this a bug for the Wheezy computer, or is there something I did not
do or did wrong to prevent me from achieving the result I desired?

Regards, Ken


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BIOS size limit for USB flash drives

[Ken Heard]

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Is there any limit to the size of a USB flash drive with the ext2 file
system encrypted on it which can be addressed through the BIOS
interface?  (I am using Debian Jessie.) The largest size I am now
using is 32 gb drives but would like to use 64 gb or even 12 gb drives.

Regards, Ken



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Re: Open URLs in Icedove emails in Iceweasel, how?

[Ken Heard]

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On 2015-06-20 15:37, Christian Seiler wrote:
 On 06/20/2015 02:24 PM, Ken Heard wrote:
 On 2015-06-19 11:27, Christian Seiler wrote:
 
 You can try to set a default browser explicitly:
 
 xdg-mime default iceweasel.desktop x-scheme-handler/http \ 
 x-scheme-handler/https
 
 I ran that command as route and the following was returned:
 
 touch: cannot touch
 ‘/root/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list’: No such file or
 directory /usr/bin/xdg-mime: 781: /usr/bin/xdg-mime: cannot
 create /root/.local /share/applications/mimeapps.list.new:
 Directory nonexistent touch: cannot touch
 ‘/root/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list’: No such file or
 directory /usr/bin/xdg-mime: 781: /usr/bin/xdg-mime: cannot
 create /root/.local /share/applications/mimeapps.list.new:
 Directory nonexistent
 
 Did I do something wrong?

Before running Christian's xdg-mime command as root I ran it as my user.
Since it did not have the desired effect I then ran it as root with the
result described above.

However a few minutes ago I read the manual page for sdg-mime.  I then
discovered a file ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list.  This file
has three lines in it:

[Default Applications]
x-scheme-handler/http=iceweasel.desktop
x-scheme-handler/https=iceweasel.desktop

This command Christian gave me did not work on 19 or 20 June and is not
working today.

 This is really weird. Did you run that as root? (Note that running
 GUI applications as root is discouraged due to security issues.)
 But then, if you log in graphically, that directory should be
 created automatically...
 
 If you want to get rid of the immediate error, you can do (as
 root) mkdir -p /root/.local/share/applications
 
 But if you run xdg-mime as root itwill then only change the 
 preferences for root... So unless that's what you want, you should 
 note that  the commands I mentioned are to be run as your normal
 user and change the preferences only for that user. They are not
 directly meant to be run as root.
 
 If you want to change these settings globally (note that a user
 can override them, using e.g. the above command), you can create
 (as root) a file /etc/xdg/mimeapps.list and put in the following
 content:
 
 [Default Applications] x-scheme-handler/http=iceweasel.desktop 
 x-scheme-handler/https=iceweasel.desktop
 
 (It's an ini file, add the entries if the file already exists.)

I tried doing that, but it did not work either.

 Very useful in this context: 
 https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Default_applications (As far
 as I can tell, there is little Arch-specific content on that
 specific wiki page and it applies to most distributions.)

I agree with your comment in parentheses about ArchWiki pages.  In
some cases their pages are better than the Debian and Ubuntu
official ones.

I in the ArchWiki Default_applications page I found the path list for
MIME types and applications.  The two paths I have already tried the
fourth and sixth in that list.  I today tried the second on that list;
that one did not work either.

As I use the TDE DE I finally tried the first on that list, changing
the name of the file to TDE-mimeapps.list  -- with an unsuccessful result.

I am not sure what to do next.  It may be a TDE problem; if so I
should post my problem on the TDE list.  Otherwise it appears to me to
be a bug.

Regards, Ken
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Re: Open URLs in Icedove emails in Iceweasel, how?

[Ken Heard]

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On 2015-06-21 14:29, Christian Seiler wrote:
 On 06/21/2015 08:19 PM, Ken Heard wrote:
 On 2015-06-21 12:19, Christian Seiler wrote:
 Could you check Icedove configuration?
 
 Edit - Preferences -  Advanced - Tab: General - Config
 Editor - I know what I'm doing
 
 then see what the settings are for (as far as they exist):
 
 Answers below:
 
 network.protocol-handler.app.http   user setstring  iceweasel %u
  network.protocol-handler.app.https default string
 x-www-browser network.protocol-handler.expose-all   default
 boolean false network.protocol-handler.expose.http  default
 boolean true network.protocol-handler.expose.https  default
 boolean true network.protocol-handler.external.http does not
 exist network.protocol-handler.external.https   does not exist
 
 If I understand the system correctly, it should not matter
 whether the string for the first two is iceweasel %u or
 x-www-browser.  Either or both should work if the x-www.browser
 is set to iceweasel, as it is in the box I am using.  In fact
 setting both to x-www-browser should be better, thereby leaving
 it up to the user to determine the browser using
 update-alternatives to choose one.
 
 Maybe the %u is a problem here (I know it's valid in .desktop
 files, but maybe not in Mozilla preferences), so could you perhaps
 reset the value for network.protocol-handler.app.http to its
 default value? (Using the context menu accessible with the right
 mouse button).

I tried iceweasel without the %u and then changed iceweasel to
x-www-browser which is the default.  No change.

 Funnily enough, on my system, x-www-browser is not iceweasel (I 
 never set that explicitly), but I did set xdg-mime as I described; 
 my settings in icedove are all defaults (.app.http is also
 default: x-www-browser, otherwise they are identical to your
 settings), nevertheless, links in emails open in iceweasel here.
 
 OTOH, I don't use TDE - so maybe it's a matter of icedove having 
 some logic when it comes to desktop environments?

Maybe?  The only other thing I can think to do of is to post a message
to the TDE list, to see if anyone there has anything to say about my
problem.

 Btw. did you try to start icedove from the command line (close any 
 running instance beforehand), then click on a link and see if
 there are any error messages that are printed?

I did as you suggested.  The following messages were received and then
icedove opened as usual.

(process:15184): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion
'sys_page_size
 == 0' failed
enigmail.js: Registered components
mimeVerify.jsm: module initialized

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Re: Open URLs in Icedove emails in Iceweasel, how?

[Ken Heard]

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On 2015-06-21 12:19, Christian Seiler wrote:

 On 06/21/2015 05:50 PM, Ken Heard wrote:
 Before running Christian's xdg-mime command as root I ran it as
 my
user.
 Since it did not have the desired effect I then ran it as root
 with the result described above.
 
 However a few minutes ago I read the manual page for sdg-mime.  I
 then discovered a file ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list.
 This file has three lines in it:
 
 [Default Applications] x-scheme-handler/http=iceweasel.desktop 
 x-scheme-handler/https=iceweasel.desktop
 
 This command Christian gave me did not work on 19 or 20 June and
 is not working today.
 
 What does the following do? (as your local user)
 
 xdg-open https://www.debian.org/
 
 If that opens Debian's Homepage in Iceweasel, the xdg-mime 
 associations work properly and it's a problem with Icedove.

Yes, that command did indeed open the Debian homepage.

 If not, I'm unsure what the cause is.
 
 I am not sure what to do next.
 
 Could you check Icedove configuration?
 
 Edit - Preferences -  Advanced - Tab: General - Config Editor 
 - I know what I'm doing
 
 then see what the settings are for (as far as they exist):

Answers below:

 network.protocol-handler.app.http user setstring  iceweasel %u 
 network.protocol-handler.app.httpsdefault string  x-www-browser 
 network.protocol-handler.expose-all   default boolean false 
 network.protocol-handler.expose.http  default boolean true 
 network.protocol-handler.expose.https default boolean true 
 network.protocol-handler.external.httpdoes not exist 
 network.protocol-handler.external.https   does not exist

If I understand the system correctly, it should not matter whether the
string for the first two is iceweasel %u or x-www-browser.  Either
or both should work if the x-www.browser is set to iceweasel, as it is
in the box I am using.  In fact setting both to x-www-browser should
be better, thereby leaving it up to the user to determine the browser
using update-alternatives to choose one.

So it would appear that it is an icedove problem.  Is anyone else
experiencing this problem?  Should a bug report be filed?

Ken


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Re: Open URLs in Icedove emails in Iceweasel, how?

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Christian,

On 2015-06-19 11:27, Christian Seiler wrote:

 You can try to set a default browser explicitly:
 
 xdg-mime default iceweasel.desktop x-scheme-handler/http \ 
 x-scheme-handler/https

I ran that command as route and the following was returned:

touch: cannot touch ‘/root/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list’: No
such file or directory
/usr/bin/xdg-mime: 781: /usr/bin/xdg-mime: cannot create /root/.local
/share/applications/mimeapps.list.new: Directory nonexistent
touch: cannot touch ‘/root/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list’: No
such file or directory
/usr/bin/xdg-mime: 781: /usr/bin/xdg-mime: cannot create /root/.local
/share/applications/mimeapps.list.new: Directory nonexistent

Did I do something wrong?

Ken

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Open URLs in Icedove emails in Iceweasel, how?

[Ken Heard]

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I am using Jessie with the latest versions of icedove (31.7.0-1) and
iceweasel (31.7.0esr-1~deb-8ul) installed.  update-alternatives
- --config x-www-browser already points to iceweasel %u.  In addition
file ~/mozilla/icedove/9vgk89rr.default/user.js contains the following
two lines:

user_pref(network.protocol-handler.app.http, iceweasel %u);
user_pref(network.protocol-handler.app.https, iceweasel %u)

But still I cannot open URLs in icedove emails automatically in
iceweasel.  What else do I need to do to activate this feature?

Regards and thanks in advance for any help provided,

Ken Heard
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Re: Change for systemd the UUID of the home partition, how to?

[Ken Heard]

On 10/06/15 09:48 AM, Sven Arvidsson wrote:


What does your /etc/fstab look like?


Like this:

file system mount point   type  options   dump  pass
/dev/mapper/BDS1-root /   ext4errors=remount-ro 0   1
/dev/mapper/BDS1-boot /boot   ext2defaults0   2
/dev/mapper/BDS1-home_crypt /home   ext4defaults0 
2

/dev/mapper/BDS1-tmp_crypt /tmpext2defaults0   2
/dev/mapper/BDS1-var /varext4defaults0   2
/dev/mapper/BDS1-swap_crypt noneswapsw  0 
0

/dev/sr0/media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0   0
UUID=640F-A4A6  /media/fda  vfatrw,user,noauto,noatime  0   0
UUID=27AD-9963  /media/fdb  vfatrw,user,noauto,noatime  0   0
UUID=FC68-7915  /media/fdc  vfatrw,use,rnoauto,noatime  0   0
UUID=E883-A903  /media/fdd  vfatrw,user,noauto,noatime  0   0
UUID=9016-4EF8  /media/sdd  vfatrw,user,noauto,noatime  0   0

The basic construction is a RAID1 (two 1 tb hard drives) which form the 
only physical volume for LVM2, and there is only one virtual volume BDS1 
in this physical volume.  This virtual volume has six logical volumes, 
all beginning with BDS1.  Three of these are encrypted; swap with a 
random passkey, and /tmp and /home with their own passkeys.


When I first installed Jessie in the box, I assigned all the space in 
the virtual volume to these six logical volumes.  At the partitioning 
phase of the installation the space assigned to the /var partition I 
based on what I had done for Squeeze and Wheezy.  That size proved too 
small for Jessie.


To enlarge the size for the /var for Jessie I first had to reduce the 
size for /home.  I found on line instructions as to how to do so.  Those 
instructions unfortunately did not tell me that the crypt has to be 
resized as well as the file system and the logical volume.  The result 
was that the all the data in the /home partition were obliterated. 
Fortunately I had backed up all of them.


The new encrypted /home partition that I now had to create has a 
different UUID.  I copied it to file /etc/crypttab which now reads as 
follows:


#BDS1-home_crypt UUID=5ea1826e-2824-4544-a33b-e2c72d65e60e none luks
BDS1-home_crypt UUID=29aeb184-8d5c-4165-824a-2b8a11e477e9 none luks
#BDS1-home_crypt UUID=e59565df-6a23-45fd-af55-5c0b7040eedd none luks
BDS1-swap_crypt /dev/mapper/BDS1-swap /dev/urandom cipher=aes-	 
xts-plain64,size=256,swap

BDS1-tmp_crypt UUID=a9360e7f-7ddb-41c4-9dfe-51a8a41db7e4 none luks

The first line above is commented out because it is the UUID for 
BSD1-home_crypt which I entered in error.  The UUID I entered in the 
second line is I assume the correct UUID to open BDS1-home_crypt, being 
in fact the UUID listed by blkid (quoted below) as the UUID for 
BDS1-home.  The third line, commented out, was the UUID of the /home 
partition before it was resized.  The last two lines for swap and /tmp, 
which I left unchanged.


After resizing the /home and /tmp partitions and rebooting I was not 
asked to enter the passkeys for these two partitions.  Instead the 
process went to recovery mode.  I consequently entered the root password 
and ran 'journalctl -xb.  Here are the major error messages I received:


BSD system-crypt-generator [185]: Failed to create init file 
/run/systemd/generator.systemd-crypt-setup@BSD1.


BSD systemd [182]: 
/lib/systemd/system-generator/systemd-cryptsetup-generator failed with 
error 1.


Then later were two more:

BDS system [1]: Job dev-mapper-BDS1\x2dtmpcrypt.device/start timed out
BDS system [1]: Timed out waiting for device 
dev-mapper-BDS1\x2dtmp_crypt.device.


These last two were repeated two more times with different device names, 
\x2dhome_crypt.device and \x2dswap_crypt.device.


So, as I said in my second post, I need to do something to make systemd 
recognize the UUIDs in the /etc/crypttab file.


The last error message was about something quite different:

BDS system [1]: Failed to start Console System Startup Logging.

Since no logging is being done in a syslog file I take this message to 
mean that in resizing the /var partition that process was broken.  That 
result may have been caused by the fact that merely booting the computer 
causes the /var partition to be busy.  The only way I could unmount it 
was by commenting out the /var line in file /etc/fstab and reboot.  I 
could then resize it. Afterwards I commented the /var/ line back in 
again, thereby causing it to be remounted.  So I now also need to know 
how to reactivate the Console System Startup Logging.


After all these changes I was able to open both the /home and /tmp 
partitions by running cryptsetup luksOpen.  After doing so command blkid 
produced the following.


/dev/sdb1: UUID=8819eaea-bac1-3907-cbc0-90413f1d9bdb 
UUID_SUB=884424dc-ea70-d13c-6c86-4416cb54c39e LABEL=BDS:0 
TYPE=linux_raid_member PARTUUID=0007499e-01

Re: Change for systemd the UUID of the home partition, how to?

[Ken Heard]

On 2015-06-10 13:17, Don Armstrong wrote:

On Tue, 09 Jun 2015, Ken Heard wrote:

After some research I found file /etc/crypttab which contains a list
of the UUIDs for encrypted partitions, /home in my case. I thought it
would be a simple matter of changing the relevant UUID to the current
one. It is apparently not.


Did you rebuild the initramfs at this stage? If not, you'll need to do
that first.


Yes, that needed to be done; and I did so.  Putting the relevant UUIDs 
in file /etc/crypttab, which I also did, however is not enough to have 
the boot process ask for the passkey for encrypted partitions and so to 
allow mounting of them, in my case /home and /tmp.  Systemd requires 
some other rebuilding to allow it to use the information in file 
/etc/crypttab.


So, unless someone on the list knows enough about systemd to tell me 
what to that process is and how to do it, I am reduced to two choices: 
either take the time (how long?) to learn about systemd, or to reinstall 
Jessie in the box.  If the latter, which probably will be quicker, it 
will be the third time I had to do so since mid-April when I first 
installed Jessie in this box.


Regards, Ken




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Change for systemd the UUID of the home partition, how to?

[Ken Heard]

For reasons which I won't go into now my encrypted home partition was 
obliterated. (Yes, all the data thereon had been backed up.)  I created 
a new one, but of course it does not have the same UUID as the previous 
one.


Jessie's systemd however on boot continues to look for the old UUID for 
that partition.  Consequently the encrypted home partition can no longer 
be opened during the boot.


I would be grateful if anyone can tell me where the UUIDs of the 
encrypted partitions to be opened on boot, such as tmp and home, are 
stored so that systemd can find them during the boot?


Regards, Ken


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Re: Change for systemd the UUID of the home partition, how to?

[Ken Heard]

On 2015-06-09 11:18, Ken Heard wrote:

For reasons which I won't go into now my encrypted home partition was
obliterated. (Yes, all the data thereon had been backed up.)  I created
a new one, but of course it does not have the same UUID as the previous
one.

Jessie's systemd however on boot continues to look for the old UUID for
that partition.  Consequently the encrypted home partition can no longer
be opened during the boot.

I would be grateful if anyone can tell me where the UUIDs of the
encrypted partitions to be opened on boot, such as tmp and home, are
stored so that systemd can find them during the boot?


After some research I found file /etc/crypttab which contains a list of 
the UUIDs for encrypted partitions, /home in my case.  I thought it 
would be a simple matter of changing the relevant UUID to the current 
one.  It is apparently not.


I found a reference to systemd-cryptsetup-generator, the manual for 
which makes reference to further steps which I do not understand. 
Systemd-cryptsetup-generator does not seem to be a command.


After changing the relevant UUID in the crypttab file I discovered that 
a reboot caused the /home directory to be opened without my entering the 
passkey.  The computer however did not go on the install the DE; instead 
it went to recovery mode.


Regards, Ken




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Re: no root file system after encryption

[Ken Heard]

On 2015-05-05 12:39, David Christensen wrote:

snip


Briefly -- to obtain encrypted file systems, the process is to create
partitions, mark them as encrypted volumes, configure the encrypted
volumes, and then put LVM and/or file systems into the encrypted volumes.


Why not the other way?  I have been doing it the other way for years 
with no perceived difficulties: create RAID1 with two drives, then LVM, 
 and set up encryption for three LVM virtual partitions, swap (random 
key), tmp and home (both with passphrases)-- everything else in 
unencrypted virtual partitions.


Regards, Ken Heard



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Re: Jessie sufficiently stable for general use?

[Ken Heard]

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On 2015-03-10 10:53, Sivaram Neelakantan wrote:


 As someone who is a deb newbie following these posts, can the
 gurus make up their collective minds and let forth the mantra
 invocation that I need to invoke?  ;)
 
 I just want a tidy ship and all I want is the One True
 Directive(TM).

Is such a thing possible it IT?

Regards, Ken


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Re: Jessie sufficiently stable for general use?

[Ken Heard]

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Thanks everybody for the collected wisdom.  So for me now Jessie RC1
is it.

Regards, Ken

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Jessie sufficiently stable for general use?

[Ken Heard]

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In the next month or so I will have to do a clean OS installation in
two desktops. Jessie is now frozen (Debian's contribution to retarding
global warming?); and there are apparently fewer RC bugs at this point
after the freeze than there were at the same point in time after the
freezing of previous releases.

I see that RC1 of Jessie is now available.  I would consequently
appreciate opinions as to whether Jessie is now or will be by mid
April sufficiently stable for such installations, or should I install
Wheezy instead and upgrade to Jessie when it is officially declared
stable?

I would much prefer the one step approach -- install Jessie within two
months and live with non RC bugs for a while -- to the two step
approach -- Wheezy now and upgrade to Jessie six months later more or
less.  Perhaps when I get around to those installations there may be a
further RC release of Jessie?

Regards, Ken
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Re: wordperfect 5.1 for unix, and debian?

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-12-18 00:01, Morten Bo Johansen wrote:
 On 2014-12-17 Karen Lewellen wrote:
 
 I have a still in the package copy of wordperfect 5.1 for UNIX.
 I got this because wordperfect is my main word processor on my
 primary computer and I would welcome, if at all possible, to use
 it  with Linux as well. Is there any reason why the program
 cannot be installed on a machine running Debian squeeze?
 
 If you could somehow get hold of a copy of WP 5.1 for Dos, I used
 that with good results under Dosemu -- many, many years ago. ;)
 
 Morten

When WP 5.1 was the Queen of word processors it was my word processor
of choice. Some thirty years ago when I was in graduate school I used
is exclusively.  I continued to use it until the early 2000s but not
nearly as intensively.

Also in the early 2000s I started to wean myself from Microsoft.  Part
of the weaning was to move gradually to FOSS word processors, based on
the open office format (ODF) (1), especially LibreOffice and its
predecessors.  There was quite a steep learning curve, but once I
learned the ODF system I did not want to go back to anything else.

These days almost all word processors use the ODF.   Transfer of
documents between the twenty or so word processors, etc., for example
from a MS Word .docx file to a LibreOffice .odt file and the reverse,
is well nigh effortless.

I nevertheless still have Dosemu with WP 5.1 for DOS installed in my
Wheezy computer.  I can use it if I have to for access to what I wrote
way back then.

But where I need to lift texts from what I wrote in the 1980s for
inclusion in something I am writing now, I import such texts to
LibreOffice and reformat them.  Doing so I find less time consuming
than trying to remember the ways of WP 5.1.

WP still exists.  The current version is X7 which has its devotees.
It is however still proprietary, and what still exists for Linux is
the Microsoft version on top of Wine.(2)  For reasons already stated I
strongly recommend anyone still wedded to WP to convert to a word
processor using the ODF.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect


Regards, Ken


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Cannot make update-alternatives do what I want

[Ken Heard]

In my Wheezy machine I use Iceweasel 31.2.0 as my primary web browser. 
I also have an Lenny version -- I think -- of Iceape installed because I 
wanted a simple html composer.  Unfortunately to have Iceape composer I 
must install Iceape suite which also includes a browser.


So both browsers are mentioned in the x-www-browser section of 
/etc/alternatives.  The Iceape browser is the auto selection, and the 
Iceweasel browser is listed as a manual alternative.


Command update-alternatives --config x-www-browser ostensibly allows 
me to change to the preferred manual browser by selecting it.  I did 
so but when for example I want to go to a website mentioned in an email 
(I use Icedove as my email client) the Iceape browser is still used for 
that purpose.  I tried exiting my user and logging in again -- and also 
rebooting the machine -- to no avail.  Checking the browser selection in 
alternatives is still the one I selected, namely Iceweasel, not Iceape.


Is there something I need to do to make this change work?

Regards, Ken


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Re: Cannot make update-alternatives do what I want -- workaround

[Ken Heard]

I got around the problem described above -- perhaps the long way around 
-- first by purging that old version of Iceape.  Doing so made Iceweasel 
the sole browser mentioned in the x-www-browser section of 
/etc/alternatives.


To provide a simple composer that I am used to I installed the latest 
version of Seamonkey directly from its website.  It is unfortunate that 
I have to install all of Seamonkey just to get the one part I want. 
Also, this installation is not part of the Debian package management system.


So my question now is whether there is in the Debian system an 
equivalent to the simple composer now provided in Seamonkey and formerly 
in Iceape.  It does not appear that Iceape will ever again appear as a 
Debian package.


Regards, Ken


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Re: Cannot make update-alternatives do what I want

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-11-07 17:47, Christian Seiler wrote:
 Am 2014-11-07 10:32, schrieb Ken Heard:
 In my Wheezy machine I use Iceweasel 31.2.0 as my primary web 
 browser. I also have an Lenny version -- I think -- of Iceape 
 installed because I wanted a simple html composer.  Unfortunately
 to have Iceape composer I must install Iceape suite which also
 includes a browser.
 
 So both browsers are mentioned in the x-www-browser section of 
 /etc/alternatives.  The Iceape browser is the auto selection,
 and the Iceweasel browser is listed as a manual alternative.
 
 Command update-alternatives --config x-www-browser ostensibly 
 allows me to change to the preferred manual browser by
 selecting it. I did so but when for example I want to go to a
 website mentioned in an email (I use Icedove as my email client)
 the Iceape browser is still used for that purpose.  I tried
 exiting my user and logging in again -- and also rebooting the
 machine -- to no avail.  Checking the browser selection in
 alternatives is still the one I selected, namely Iceweasel, not
 Iceape.
 
 Is there something I need to do to make this change work?
 
 Most graphical applications don't call x-www-browser to run a
 browser but rather use the freedesktop.org MIME handling mechanism
 to select the browser (that way the user can change their own
 default without having to be root and without changing the default
 of other users).
 
 If you want to set the default for all applications following the 
 freedesktop.org MIME specification, you should install the
 xdg-utils package (if it's not already installed) and do the
 following (as the user you want this to happen with):
 
 xdg-mime default iceweasel.desktop x-scheme-handler/http \ 
 x-scheme-handler/https
 
 This will cause all XDG compliant applications to use Iceweasel as
 its default browser - but only for the user that issued that
 command.
 
 The .desktop file must be either installed in your home directory
 under ~/.local/share/applications/ or system-wide under 
 /usr/share/applications.[1]
 
 It is also possible to set a system-wide default, but to my
 knowledge there is no tool available to do that directly, you
 should look at the specification as for how to do that.
 
 Note that the application that is chosen from within
 Iceweasel/Icedove is random unless a default is explicitly set,
 because they just read in all applications that support that mime
 type, and the first one they find wins. But the first one is random
 because they depend on the order the .desktop files appear in the
 directory.
 
 Note also that while xdg-mime default is respected by all major
 desktop environment software (KDE SC, GNOME, XFCE, Iceweasel/-dove,
 ...), some graphical options of setting these things (such as
 Iceweasel/-dove file associations, KDE control panel for default
 programs / file associations) will only set these settings for
 their specific environments, but not globally. But as I said: they
 will respect a global default set by xdg-mime. (I don't know about
 GNOME or XFCE, maybe those actually do set the default.)
 
 You can find the latest versions of the relevant specifications
 here:
 
 http://standards.freedesktop.org/mime-apps-spec/mime-apps-spec-latest.html

 
http://standards.freedesktop.org/shared-mime-info-spec/shared-mime-info-spec-latest.html
 
 
 For icedove specifically, you might also want to look at the
 following user preferences:
 
 network.protocol-handler.app.http 
 network.protocol-handler.app.https 
 network.protocol-handler.app.ftp 
 network.protocol-handler.expose.http 
 network.protocol-handler.expose.https 
 network.protocol-handler.expose.ftp
 
 If those are explicitly set, they will override anything set in the
 XDG mime database.
 
 Christian
 
 [1] If you want to use KDE4 applications on Wheezy, whose desktop
 files are in a subdirectory of /usr/share/applications, this is a
 bit more complicated; you have to prefix 'kde4-' there, for example
 'xdg-mime default kde4-konqueror.desktop x-scheme-handler/http'.
 But if you query the default ('xdg-mime query default
 x-scheme-handler/http'), it will only return 'konqueror.desktop',
 instead of the 'kde4-konqueror.desktop' that is the actual setting.
 The KDE4 packages should probably have put their .desktop files
 directly in /usr/share/applications...
 
Thanks for the information above.  I will experiment with the various
options.  Another problem which emerged: if that old version of Iceape
is installed I cannot install the current Wheezy version of Enigmail
unless I provide an override.  Since I would not use Enigmail with
Iceape the override solution may be possible.  In the short run
however the work around I described in my second post will do.

Regards, Ken

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Using device UUSBs with cryptsetup to open already encrypted USB sticks

[Ken Heard]

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The command syntax for opening such a device is

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen device name

As I understand the syntax, the device designation can be /dev/sd??
where the first question mark is the third letter of the device selected
by the OS, and the second question mark is the partition number. Since
device designation in this way is not constant I would like to use the
UUID of the device instead of having to check beforehand which sd
desognation the OS chose when each such stick is attached to the computer.

Running sudo blkid -L I found the UUIDs for each stick which are quite
long, e.g., UUID=65e7697c-d5fa-4e16-84e9-c45d2f81dd69.  I assume I can
somehow use such a UUID to indicate the device instead /dev/sd??, but I
cannot figure out how.  The cryptsetup man page does not say how, nor
could I find out how by googling.

If I knew how I could create individual script files to open and close
each stick.  I would be using the bash shell for such scripts. (The
script would also include the mount/unmount command by using the
- UUID assigned to each stick after access to it is opened.)

I would consequently appreciate it if someone could tell me how.

Regards, Ken Heard

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Re: Using device UUSBs with cryptsetup to open already encrypted USB sticks

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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Ken Heard wrote:
 The command syntax for opening such a device is
 
 sudo cryptsetup luksOpen device name
 
 As I understand the syntax, the device designation can be /dev/sd??
 where the first question mark is the third letter of the device selected
 by the OS, and the second question mark is the partition number. Since
 device designation in this way is not constant I would like to use the
 UUID of the device instead of having to check beforehand which sd
 desognation the OS chose when each such stick is attached to the computer.
 
 Running sudo blkid -L I found the UUIDs for each stick which are quite
 long, e.g., UUID=65e7697c-d5fa-4e16-84e9-c45d2f81dd69.  I assume I can
 somehow use such a UUID to indicate the device instead /dev/sd??, but I
 cannot figure out how.  The cryptsetup man page does not say how, nor
 could I find out how by googling.
 
 If I knew how I could create individual script files to open and close
 each stick.  I would be using the bash shell for such scripts. (The
 script would also include the mount/unmount command by using the
 - UUID assigned to each stick after access to it is opened.)
 
 I would consequently appreciate it if someone could tell me how.

After three hours of searching I finally found the answer to my own
question:

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen
/dev/disk/by-uuid/65e7697c-d5fa-4e16-84e9-c45d2f81dd69 fdc

(All on one line with a space between the luksOpen and the /dev/ ...)

Regards, Ken

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Re: Replacement RAID hard drives - do they have to be clean?

[Ken Heard]

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Gary Dale wrote:
 On 16/09/14 03:03 PM, Ken Heard wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 One of my boxes has a RAID1 using two Seagate SATA 3.0 1 tb hard drives.
   I need to replace one of them, and I would like to use as a replacement
 a Samsung SATA 2.0 1 tb drive which already has on it data which I do
 not need to keep.

 My first question is: although both drives are the same size, can I get
 away with having one drive a Seagate 3.0 and the other Samsung 2.0?

snip

 Any replacement drive has to be large enough to hold the RAID data. If
 your current RAID1 array is 3T, you cannot add a 2T drive to it without
 first shrinking the file system then the RAID array.
 
 You could however copy all the data to a new RAID1 array consisting of
 the 2T drive only, then add a 3T drive to it. The new array will again
 only hold 2T.

As it happens all of the drives involved are the same size, 1 tb; so I
would not have to deal with the problem you raise.  What however is
different is the *type* of drive; one is SATA 2.0 and the other is 3.0.

Regards, Ken

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Replacement RAID hard drives - do they have to be clean?

[Ken Heard]

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One of my boxes has a RAID1 using two Seagate SATA 3.0 1 tb hard drives.
 I need to replace one of them, and I would like to use as a replacement
a Samsung SATA 2.0 1 tb drive which already has on it data which I do
not need to keep.

My first question is: although both drives are the same size, can I get
away with having one drive a Seagate 3.0 and the other Samsung 2.0?

It occurred to me that if I made the change described in the first
paragraph -- but without somehow making the data already on it
unreadable -- there would be a different data set on each drive; so that
the RAID1 software would not necessarily know which drive should be the
data source to copy to the other drive.  It also occurred to me that the
software could combine the data on each drive, so that both drives would
have both data sets.

I consequently assume that the data on the replacement drive must
somehow be made unreadable.  Is that assumption correct?  If so, do the
data have to be shredded, or is it sufficient simply either to
delete them or simply reformat the drive?

Finally, once I have a clean new drive installed, will the RAID1
copying process partition the new drive the same way as the other drive
and copy the files without further human intervention?

Regards, Ken Heard

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Re: Iceape and Debian 7.x

[Ken Heard]

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iceape browser is available in squeeze-backports, but not in wheezy or
jessie.  It is however available in sid; so it may in time be moved to
jessie.  Maybe the sid version may work in jessie now.

The squeeze-backports version of squeeze may work in wheezy; I haven't
tried it but intend to.

The only part of iceape I ever used was composer.  Is there an
equivalent to iceape composer available in wheezy, that is to say one
that is as simple to use as iceape composer?  I use it only to download
such things as newspaper articles I want to keep but need a simple
composer to do light editing on them.  I do not create complicated web
pages.

Ken


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Re: Debian 5 -- data is plural.

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-05-21 04:23, Anthony Campbell wrote:
 On 20 May 2014, Weaver wrote:
 
 [snip]

 Pedantic or not, I'd never treat data or media as singular. An
 still worse usage, which I find even with some scientific speakers,
 is to use bacteria as singular. If we are going to anglicise the
 word, which I think is a defensible view, we should make the plural
 to be bacteriums.

And criterions as well, I suppose.  In any event I shall continue to
speak and write English the same way I was taught it from 1943 to
1955, and French as well which I learnt at the same time.

Regards, Ken







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Re: Debian 5 -- data is plural.

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-05-19 16:22, Mike McGinn wrote:

snip

 I would suggest identifying an backing up the scientific data. I
 would suggest putting a backuo program in place and auditing the
 backups to make sure that all the scientific data is backed up.
 Only then would I think about upgrading.

Please note everybody that the word data is plural.  The beginning
of the last line quoted above should consequently read all the
scientific data *are* backed up.  Other posts in this thread make the
same error.  The singular of data is datum.

Other words in the same family are: medium - media, criterion -
criteria, bacterium - bacteria.  There are several others.

Regards, Ken Heard

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Re: Debian 5 -- data is plural.

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-05-20 12:03, Lisi Reisz wrote:
 (Sorry, Ken. resending correctly to list.)
 
 On Tuesday 20 May 2014 16:00:42 Ken Heard wrote:
 Please note everybody that the word data is plural.  The 
 beginning of the last line quoted above should consequently read
  all the scientific data *are* backed up.  Other posts in this
  thread make the same error.  The singular of data is datum.
 
 This is of course, gramatically correct.  But I would argue that, 
 although in formal writing it should certainly be treated as a 
 plural, in colloquial speech it no longer is.  I would also argue 
 that emails are colloquial speech not formal writing.

I would not consider my e-mails be colloquial speech.

 This does not apply in the same way to all of your group.  Where
  it is needful to have both a singular and a plural, as in 
 bacterium/bacteria and criterion/criteria it would be perverse to 
 make a plural by putting an s on the plural!  (Though some people 
 do.)

Some people however do use the word medias.  On the other hand does
anyone use the word datas?  If not, it is logical to conclude that
they give word data a plural meaning.  In that case, if it is the
subject of a sentence or clause it should take the plural form of the
verb.

 Language changes, whether one wishes it or not.

In most cases out of ignorance.

 We no longer speak the English of Shakespeare or the King James' 
 Bible.  I still sometimes catch myself using the present 
 subjunctive in speech.  I do not think that I am correct to do so.
  For this usage it is dead.  Indeed, for all intents and purposes,
  the imperfect subjunctive is dead.

I use both the present and imperfect subjunctive all the time in
speech, and even in e-mails.

Regards, Ken

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Re: Debian 5 -- data is plural.

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-05-20 12:16, Filip wrote:

 On Tue, 20 May 2014 17:03:16 +0100 Lisi Reisz 
 lisi.re...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 (Sorry, Ken. re-sending correctly to list.)
 
 On Tuesday 20 May 2014 16:00:42 Ken Heard wrote:
 Please note everybody that the word data is plural.  The 
 beginning of the last line quoted above should consequently 
 read all the scientific data *are* backed up.  Other posts in
 this thread make the same error.  The singular of data is 
 datum.
 
 This is of course, grammatically correct.  But I would argue 
 that, although in formal writing it should certainly be treated 
 as a plural, in colloquial speech it no longer is.  I would also
  argue that emails are colloquial speech not formal writing.
 
 This does not apply in the same way to all of your group.
 Where it is needful to have both a singular and a plural, as in 
 bacterium/bacteria and criterion/criteria it would be perverse
 to make a plural by putting an s on the plural!  (Though some
 people do.)
 
 Language changes, whether one wishes it or not.  We no longer 
 speak the English of Shakespeare or the King James' Bible.  I 
 still sometimes catch myself using the present subjunctive in 
 speech.  I do not think that I am correct to do so.  For this 
 usage it is dead. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, the 
 imperfect subjunctive is dead.
 
 Lisi
 
 
 
 The dictionary agrees with you.
 
 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/data
 
 Both constructions are standard. The plural construction is more 
 common in print, evidently because the house style of several 
 publishers mandates it.

The Oxford English Dictionary however agrees with me.

Regards, Ken



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Re: In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-04-25 10:03, Brian wrote:
 On Thu 24 Apr 2014 at 12:55:26 -0400, Ken Heard wrote:
 
 I am consequently stuck with python 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 which seems
 to work with everything using python, but hplip wants the pure
 version of python rather than the unofficial version provided
 by deb.mozilla.net.  So I am back to Andrei's proposed solution,
 which I will not be able to try until next month.
 
 As you said
 
 Apt-get will not however install package python-dev
 2.6.6-3+squeeze7
 
 So instead of working against 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 why not co-operate
 with it and install python-dev_2.6.6-13~bpo60+1? It is obtainable
 from
 
 http://mozilla.debian.net/pool/iceweasel-esr/p/python-defaults/
 
 'dpkg -i' should get it put on the system. It works for me but
 YMMV.

I tried what you suggested.  The response I received when I ran that
command follows.
- -
BDS:~# dpkg -i
/usr/local/share/hplip-3.14.4/python-dev_2.6.6-13~bpo60+1_all.deb
Selecting previously deselected package python-dev.
(Reading database ... 141562 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking python-dev (from .../python-dev_2.6.6-13~bpo60+1_all.deb) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python-dev:
 python-dev depends on python2.6-dev (= 2.6.6-1~); however:
  Package python2.6-dev is not installed.
dpkg: error processing python-dev (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 python-dev
- --

Regards, Ken




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Re: In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-04-25 18:07, Ken Heard wrote:
 On 2014-04-25 10:03, Brian wrote:
 On Thu 24 Apr 2014 at 12:55:26 -0400, Ken Heard wrote:
 
 I am consequently stuck with python 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 which
 seems to work with everything using python, but hplip wants the
 pure version of python rather than the unofficial version
 provided by deb.mozilla.net.  So I am back to Andrei's proposed
 solution, which I will not be able to try until next month.
 
 As you said
 
 Apt-get will not however install package python-dev 
 2.6.6-3+squeeze7
 
 So instead of working against 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 why not
 co-operate with it and install python-dev_2.6.6-13~bpo60+1? It is
 obtainable from
 
 http://mozilla.debian.net/pool/iceweasel-esr/p/python-defaults/
 
 'dpkg -i' should get it put on the system. It works for me but 
 YMMV.
 
 I tried what you suggested.  The response I received when I ran
 that command follows. - 
 BDS:~# dpkg -i 
 /usr/local/share/hplip-3.14.4/python-dev_2.6.6-13~bpo60+1_all.deb 
 Selecting previously deselected package python-dev. (Reading
 database ... 141562 files and directories currently installed.) 
 Unpacking python-dev (from .../python-dev_2.6.6-13~bpo60+1_all.deb)
 ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python-dev: 
 python-dev depends on python2.6-dev (= 2.6.6-1~); however: Package
 python2.6-dev is not installed. dpkg: error processing python-dev
 (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were
 encountered while processing: python-dev 
 --

After receiving the previous message it occurred to me to try to
install python2.6-dev. I did so successfully.  I then ran your command
once again; python-dev_2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 was this time successfully
installed.

Next was the smoke test; I ran command sh hplip-3.14.4.run.  It ran
through successfully all the steps except one; it could not install
package cupsys-bsd because that package does not exist in Squeeze --
it is succeeded by cups-bsd.  When hplip-3.14.4.run got to the
Printer setup section it returned the message error: hp-setup
failed. Please run hp-setup manually and closed down.

So I dutifully ran hp-setup. It produced a window entitled Smart
Install Device(s) detected.  The text in the window read as follows.

 Smart install is enabled in HP LaserJet 400 colorMFP M475dw
 devices. Do you want to download and disable smart install to
 perform device functionalities?

I was given two options Download and disable and Cancel.  The
former was enclosed in a double box, presumably to indicate that that
option is the preferred one.

Not knowing what anything about smart install I first selected
cancel.  I then got another error message: error: Failed to disable
smart install.  Please refer link
'http://hplipopensource.com/node/367' for more information.

At this point I went back to the previous window and chose the other
option -- to disable smart install.  As soon as I had done so another
message appeared: 'Searching... (bus=usb, search=(None), desc=0)
Receiving digital keys: su - -c /usr/bin/gpg --no-permission-warning
- --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 0xA59047B9'

Then the counter -- a succession of -\/|\/- symbols churning around in
the same place -- started.  After 1.5 hours of such churning I thought
it was high time to exit from hp-setup and did so.

Any further suggestions, anyone, on how to activate this
printer/scanner/fax machine, etc.?

Regards, Ken
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Re: In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-04-24 05:29, Curt wrote:
 On 2014-04-23, Brian a...@cityscape.co.uk wrote:
 
 You have already been told: it is not required if you *want* to 
 set up printing. You may feel the need to *have to* set it up 
 that way but the reasons are unspecified.
 
 
 I believe he's trying to build the most recent version of hplip 
 (thus the requirement for development libraries) because his 
 printer, to function correctly, or to function fully or
 completely, needs a newer version of hplip than the one provided in
 Squeeze.

Yes indeed.  Besides being a printer, it is also a scanner and a fax
machine.

 I read all about it yesterday, found his printer at this site
 
 http://hplipopensource.com

That site is the *only* place where I found drivers, etc. for this
printer++ -- hence the need to solve the problem described in my
original post, to which Andrei likely provided the solution.

 and indeed there was a table somewhere that gave a minimum hplip 
 version higher than the one in Squeeze.  However, there was
 another table which seemed to indicate that the printer should work
 (at least partially) with Debian 6.0.  I am a little confused.
 
 It seems he's downloaded an automagical install script which 
 configures and builds the hplip software with little user 
 intervention (or something).  Why it's barfing on the version of 
 python-dev in Squeeze puzzles me. If you choose to install 
 manually, you must download the Regular Tarball; the build and 
 install instructions for Debian are found at this url:
 
 http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/manual/distros/debian.html


 
Here's the minimum system requirements:
 
 http://hplipopensource.com/node/295
 
 At the above url it says, amongst other things:
 
 Python 2.2 or higher and python-devel (Python 2.3+ for fax 
 support)
 
 Isn't 2.3+ lower than the version in Squeeze?
 
 Maybe my comprehension of the whole deal is faulty.

I need to look into the points you have raised.  I am confused also. I
may find some answers when I install the drivers after getting my
Wheezy box working.  Thanks for the info.

Regards, Ken




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Re: In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-04-23 18:32, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
 On Mi, 23 apr 14, 11:25:50, Ken Heard wrote:
 
 0. Make sure your packages are ok
 
 dpkg --audit
 
 Command returned nothing.
 
 Good.
 
 1. Confirm which packages need to be downgraded
 
 aptitude search '?narrow(?installed,?origin(backports))'
 
 This command also returned nothing.
 
 Oups, forgot they are not in backports *anymore*. Try this instead
 
 aptitude search '?narrow(?installed?version(bpo))'

Ran this command, and only the following was returned.

E: Expected ',', got ')'.

 2. Make sure you have all needed debs downloaded locally, *in 
 advance*.
 
 Do you mean creating a local repository for the two debs I need, 
 adding that repository to /etc/apt/sources.list and running
 apt-get update?  The two packages I want to install are already
 in the squeeze repository.
 
 No, I mean download the .deb files.

Okay.

 For safety you should probably also have the debs of packages 
 currently installed so you can revert if something goes wrong.
 
 If you didn't clean apt's cache these will be in 
 /var/cache/apt/archives,
 
 That directory contains only 123 deb files; obviously many more
 than 125 are currently installed.  I have never consciously
 cleaned the cache.  Does something in a chron file perhaps clean
 it periodically?
 
 otherwise download them from snapshot.debian.org.
 
 I looked at the website, it would be quite an effort to find a
 date which would cover the current state of all packages
 installed in the box.  I would doubtless miss many.
 
 Not all packages, just the debs for python and python-minimal 
 corresponding to your installed versions.

Understood.  Makes the search task much easier.

 3a. use dpkg --force-depends to remove python and
 python-minimal
 
 dpkg --force-depends --purge python python-minimal
 
 If I understand it correctly, --force-depends will warn me of
 broken dependencies only; it will not remove package chains which
 will not work when those two packages are removed.
 
 dpkg is a low level tool, if you ask it to remove (just) python and
  python-minimal it will not try to be smart and remove more.
 However, without the --force switch it will refuse to do it,
 because it would result in broken dependencies.

Understood.

 3b. use dpkg to install the stable versions
 
 dpkg --install stable deb files
 
 As the two files I want are already in old stable (squeeze), and
 that is where /etc/apt/sources.list points to, surely all I would
 need to do is merely list them.
 
 sources.list is for apt, dpkg needs .deb files.

So stable deb files here means the whole file, not just the name as
is done in apt-get and aptitude, e.g., python*.deb -- replacing the
asterisk with all the information between the name and the extension.

 Alternatively you can also use
 
 dpkg --force-downgrade --install stable deb files
 
 but my feeling is that purging and installing is safer.
 
 Probably, but setting up a reverting backup as you described does
 not inspire confidence.  Perhaps it would be better to do without
 printing -- I do not have another printer -- until I can upgrade
 to Wheezy in a month or two.  I could live with that option but
 with bad grace.
 
 That is your choice to make.

In the meantime between posts I managed to resuscitate an older HP
Deskjet which I can use while in another box I get Wheezy and the new
printer to work.  I still however want to try your proposed solution
in the Squeeze box when there is no longer any danger if something is
irrevocably broken, and report the results to the list.

Regards, Ken


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Re: In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-04-23 11:08, Lisi Reisz wrote:

 snip

 And you've no doubt done this. 
 http://www.linuxfoundation.org/search/node/laserjet%20pro%20400

I had already tried both your suggestions and found nothing.  The only
place I found anything was hplipopensource.com.  When I tried to
install the necessary I ran into the problem described in my original
post.

What I do find strange is that I managed to install two packages from
squeeze-backports which are no longer in squeeze-backports.
Consequently the procedure followed by hplipopensource.com for the
printer is looking for the versions of those two packages in squeeze
only and will not let me proceed until I install them.

Because the packages from squeeze-backports have higher version
numbers than their squeeze only equivalents neither apt-get nor
aptitude will let me downgrade only those two packages; both insist on
removing most of the packages for my desktop -- kde-trinity.  Andrei's
proposed solution requires use of dpkg, which is the back end for both
apt-get and aptitude and if used with the appropriate options will do
what I want to do.

Regards, Ken

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Re: In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-04-23 11:08, Lisi Reisz wrote:

 snip

 And you've no doubt done this. 
 http://www.linuxfoundation.org/search/node/laserjet%20pro%20400

I had already tried both your suggestions and found nothing.  The only
place I found anything was hplipopensource.com.  When I tried to
install the necessary I ran into the problem described in my original
post.

What I do find strange is that I managed to install two packages from
squeeze-backports which are no longer in squeeze-backports.
Consequently the procedure followed by hplipopensource.com for the
printer is looking for the versions of those two packages in squeeze
only and will not let me proceed until I install them.

Because the packages from squeeze-backports have higher version
numbers than their squeeze only equivalents neither apt-get nor
aptitude will let me downgrade only those two packages; both insist on
removing most of the packages for my desktop -- kde-trinity.  Andrei's
proposed solution requires use of dpkg, which is the back end for both
apt-get and aptitude and if used with the appropriate options will do
what I want to do.

Regards, Ken

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Re: In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-04-24 11:26, Brian wrote:
 On Thu 24 Apr 2014 at 10:39:19 -0400, Ken Heard wrote:
 
 What I do find strange is that I managed to install two packages
 from squeeze-backports which are no longer in squeeze-backports.
 
 Python 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 was never in squeeze-backports in the
 first place. You most likely got it from the unofficial
 mozilla.debian.net.

Yes, I most likely did.  I had at one point added to sources.list
deb.mozilla.net squeeze-backports iceweasel-release and for a while
was using iceweasel 10.  When I discovered that using that version
caused as many problems as it solved I removed that line from
sources.list and went back to debian's own squeeze-backports and
downgraded to iceweasel 3.something.

I am consequently stuck with python 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 which seems to
work with everything using python, but hplip wants the pure version
of python rather than the unofficial version provided by
deb.mozilla.net.  So I am back to Andrei's proposed solution, which I
will not be able to try until next month.

Regards, Ken



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Re: In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-04-24 11:20, Brian wrote:

snip

 If you can do without the scanner and fax functions you might find
 that providing a PPD to CUPS using localhost:631 is sufficient to
 enable printing, A PPD for your machine should be in
 ~/hplip-3.14.4/prnt/ps.
 
 The ~/hplip-3.14.4 directory is created with 'sh hplip-3.14.4.run'

I found it and installed it using localhost:631 but still get an error
message when I try to print.  As I have already said I cannot follow
up until sometime next month.

 Squeeze is lacking support for the m475 because it was frozen
 before the device came on the market. Should you get your computer
 into a sensible state to satisfy hplip-3.14.4.run I can assure you
 the software builds successfully.

More than likely.

Regards, Ken

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Re: In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-04-23 05:08, Brian wrote:
 On Tue 22 Apr 2014 at 23:49:42 -0400, Ken Heard wrote:
 
 I just acquired a HP LaserJet Pro 400 multi-function printer 
 model M475dw.  I am now trying to set it up in my Debian Squeeze
  6.0.9 box by using command hplip-3.14.4.run provided by 
 http://hplipopensource.com. One of the packages required in order
 to set this printer up is python-dev.
 
 python-dev isn't required to set up printing.

It is required if I want to set it up -- or have to set it up -- using
http://hplipopensource.com.

 That can be done using http://localhost:631

I tried this option but could not find a ppd file for the particular
printer mentioned above.

 or with lpinfo plus lpadmin.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by the above.  They do not
seem to be root commands.  I am aware that lpadmin is a group of which
I am a member.

Regards, Ken



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Re: In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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On 2014-04-23 03:00, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

 On Ma, 22 apr 14, 23:49:42, Ken Heard wrote:
 
 Is there a way to replace python and python-minimal version 
 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7 without
 destroying anything else?
 
 This situation probably qualifies for using dpkg directly. Beware,
 what I'm suggesting below is dangerous and untested. If it breaks
 your system you get to keep the parts.
 
 0. Make sure your packages are ok
 
 dpkg --audit

Command returned nothing.

 1. Confirm which packages need to be downgraded
 
 aptitude search '?narrow(?installed,?origin(backports))'

This command also returned nothing.

 2. Make sure you have all needed debs downloaded locally, *in
 advance*.

Do you mean creating a local repository for the two debs I need,
adding that repository to /etc/apt/sources.list and running apt-get
update?  The two packages I want to install are already in the squeeze
repository.

 For safety you should probably also have the debs of packages
 currently installed so you can revert if something goes wrong.
 
 If you didn't clean apt's cache these will be in 
 /var/cache/apt/archives,

That directory contains only 123 deb files; obviously many more than
125 are currently installed.  I have never consciously cleaned the
cache.  Does something in a chron file perhaps clean it periodically?

 otherwise download them from snapshot.debian.org.

I looked at the website, it would be quite an effort to find a date
which would cover the current state of all packages installed in the
box.  I would doubtless miss many.

 3a. use dpkg --force-depends to remove python and python-minimal
 
 dpkg --force-depends --purge python python-minimal

If I understand it correctly, --force-depends will warn me of broken
dependencies only; it will not remove package chains which will not
work when those two packages are removed.

 3b. use dpkg to install the stable versions
 
 dpkg --install stable deb files

As the two files I want are already in old stable (squeeze), and that
is where /etc/apt/sources.list points to, surely all I would need to
do is merely list them.

 Alternatively you can also use
 
 dpkg --force-downgrade --install stable deb files
 
 but my feeling is that purging and installing is safer.

Probably, but setting up a reverting backup as you described does not
inspire confidence.  Perhaps it would be better to do without printing
- -- I do not have another printer -- until I can upgrade to Wheezy in a
month or two.  I could live with that option but with bad grace.

 4. Check with 'dpkg --audit' that everything is ok.
 
 Hope this helps, Andrei

Regards, Ken
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In Squeeze replacing python version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7

[Ken Heard]

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I just acquired a HP LaserJet Pro 400 multi-function printer model
M475dw.  I am now trying to set it up in my Debian Squeeze 6.0.9 box by
using command hplip-3.14.4.run provided by
http://hplipopensource.com. One of the packages required in order to
set this printer up is python-dev.

Python-dev is in the Squeeze repository as version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7.
It depends on python 2.6.6-3+squeeze7 also in the Squeeze repository,
but the version of python which is installed in my box is version
2.6.6-13~bpo60+1.

I note that the latter version of python is not in the
squeeze-backports repository now, but it must have been there at some
time in the past; otherwise I would not have been able to install it.
 (The same could also be said for python-minimal.)

Apt-get will not however install package python-dev 2.6.6-3+squeeze7
because is specifically depends only on python with the same version
number, not version 2.6.6-13~bpo60+1. The result is that I cannot
complete the setup for the new printer.

With the intention of replacing both python and python version
2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7 I started by trying to
run command apt-get purge python.  Apt-get wanted to remove 79 nine
other packages and install four packages of the python3 family.  It
also wanted me to run apt-get autoremove to delete the entire
kde-trinity and cups families and much else besides.

Is there a way to replace python and python-minimal version
2.6.6-13~bpo60+1 with version 2.6.6-3+squeeze7 without destroying
anything else?

Regards, Ken


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