Re: [SOLVED] Re: One-user system.

[Marc Shapiro]

On 5/6/22 19:16, John Hasler wrote:

James H. H. Lampert writes:

I started with a TRS-80 Model I myself (and with high school
programming classes on an IBM 370/135 at the District Office, with
terminals connected over a pair of multiplexed phone lines [and a
maximum terminal speed of 300 Baud]).

Punch cards and an IBM 1620 at university.  The first computer I owned I
built using a Z80 SBC demo board. Cassette tape mass storage, modified
Selectric printer, OCLC crt terminal, homebrew OS.


I starting in college with punch cards an IBM 360 and a PDP 11/15 that 
actually let me sit at a terminal.  After I graduated I got a TRS 80 
Model III (Z80)  with cassette tape for mass storage and 16K of RAM.


Marc

Re: Thunderbird not allowing local accounts

[Marc Shapiro]

On 1/5/22 12:33, John Conover wrote:

pa...@quillandmouse.com writes:

On Wed, 5 Jan 2022 11:58:09 -0500
Celejar  wrote:


On Wed, 5 Jan 2022 09:44:24 -0500
"Paul M. Foster"  wrote:

...


Thanks for the info. Mozilla Foundation is seriously annoying me
lately.

Can anyone recommend another MUA which uses mbox format and is
relatively easy to configure?

Sylpheed?

Celejar


It's starting to look that way. Actually, I'm looking at claws-mail.


Yea, and claws-mail is not compatible with Gmail's oauth2, which is
now required by Google, (as of this month,) and Thunderbird is
compatible, but no longer supports local mbox delivery for a LAN.

Kind of a mess.

 John


DISCLAIMER:

    * I am running on Devuan, then days, not Debian

    * I get my Thunderbird directly from Mozilla  (Currently 91.5.1)

I have local accounts set up so that I can receive e-mail sent by cron.  
I have had no difficulty with receiving these e-mails. Over the last two 
months, I have used 91.4.0, 91.4.1, 91.5.0, and now 91.5.1.  None have 
given me any problems with receiving e-mail sent by cron to my local 
account.  Under "Local Folders" I have an account with my name.  
Properties shows the location of this to be 'mailbox:///var/mail/marc'.  
No soft links required.  Am I misunderstanding the problem, here?


Marc

Re: Updating kernels impossible when /boot is getting full

[Marc Shapiro]

Sorry, Stefan.  This was supposed to go to the list.


On 8/2/21 11:02 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 8/1/21 9:33 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

So really think hard before splitting off a filesystem outside of
volume management. I believe it is more likely to cause problems
than it is to avoid problems.

All my machines have a separate /boot partition (and everything
else in LVM).  These are all "historical accidents", because at the time
I set them up, the respective boot loader (LILO, Grub, U-Boot) didn't
know how to read LVM volumes, and I just never bothered to change.

But I fully agree with you: if your bootloader can read from LVM
(as is the case with Grub2), then you're better off without a separate
/boot partition.


 Stefan "not sure if U-Boot can read from LVM yet"



I am primarily running Devuan, these days, but I also still have 
root/boot partitions (boot is not separate from root) for Stretch and 
Buster.  My /boot directory contains 4 kernels and their associated 
files and the whole lot only takes up about 140MB. Since I use Lilo as 
my boot loader (and it can read LVM), and I don't use encryption, I 
can put everything (including root/boot) into a single LVM physical 
volume.  No hassles if I need to resize any partition, since they are 
all logical volumes in a single volume group on a single physical 
volume.  If I ever need more total space, which I find unlikely, I can 
add additional disks to the PV and then add space to any LVs as needed.


Marc

Re: Font color selection in MATE terminal

[Marc Shapiro]

On 6/22/21 9:23 AM, Siard wrote:

On Tue, 22 Jun 2021 17:32:55, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

On Ma, 22 iun 21, 08:14:08, Richard Owlett wrote:

I have vision problems.
I *MUST* have black on white text in all cases.
The program I'm running gives out colored text.
The MATE Help screen is NOT helpful.
Help please.

This has already been addressed before: you must change the color scheme
in the setting for MATE Terminal, to have it use black/dark gray/etc. as
needed for everything related to text.

The exact steps are different for each terminal emulator and I don't
have MATE Terminal installed here.

Well, I have. In the MATE Terminal settings (Edit > Profile Preferences),
tab 'Colors', under 'Palette', set 'Built-in schemes' to 'Custom' and
change every color in the color palette to black.

Here is a screenshot:
https://i.postimg.cc/2yv17y3Y/mateterminalcolors.png


Why select 'Custom'?

Richard needs black on white, so he should select 'Black on white'.  It 
works for me.  I have been using 'Custom', Yellow on Black, like my 
first monitor many years ago.  But selecting 'Black on white' gives 
exactly that.


Marc

Re: MATE desktop - changing icon of a Launcher

[Marc Shapiro]

On 3/24/21 2:14 PM, Dominic Knight wrote:

On Tue, 2021-03-23 at 09:26 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I've been use MATE almost since it came out.
IIRC I used to use a series of mouse clicks to determine the file
name
{including path} of the current icon.

On my current systems {one Stretch, one Buster} if I:

I am using Bullseye and Mate, for clarity, my icons are all on
taskbars, none are on the desktop.


   1. right click on the Launcher
   2. select properties
   3. left click on the current icon

I get a "Select Custom Icon" menu. In it I can select a directory to
search and it will display a list of available icons in that
directory.


I get "Choose an icon"


But I need to know the complete path to the current icon.

The path to the current (icon) directory is listed above the icons you
can select from. You would have to note this down as it is not possible
to select it for cut and paste purposes.


I can get the desired information by opening the launcher with a text
editor. {I want a "mouse click" method to obtain the information as
I'm
setting up a system for a very novice user.}

Suggestions?
TIA



No help I know but it does not currently seem possible to do exactly
what you require.
Cheers,
Dom


When selecting an icon from the desktop, I get the same results as 
Richard.  If I select an icon from a taskbar, I get the same results as 
Dominic .


You can get to the info strictly by mouse clicks for icons on the 
desktop by dragging the icon onto a taskbar, then follow the same steps 
that you listed.  You can delete the icon from the taskbar afterwards, 
but this is probably not what you really want.



Marc

Re: AppImage files (was: clipgrab as alternative to youtube-dl)

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/18/20 6:07 AM, Fred wrote:

On 11/17/20 11:47 PM, Anssi Saari wrote:

Fred  writes:


There is a binary for Linux available for download as a AppImage
file. What is an AppImage file and what does one do with it. The
program was probably compiled for Ubuntu.  Is it likely to also run on
Debian?


AppImage files are a kind of package that contain an app and all its
dependencies so yes, it's very likely it'll run on Debian. All you have
to do is make the AppImage file executable and run it. I recently got
into these since I have a problem with the Firefox Debian bundles but
someone maintains a current Firefox build as AppImage.



Hi,
Thanks for your answer.  I was able to get clipgrab to compile but the 
AppImage file is a later version and may be a better choice if it will 
run on Debian.


I am using it on a Ddevuan system and it works just fine.

Marc

Re: Error mounting LVM volume as root (SOLVED)

[Marc Shapiro]

On 10/11/20 2:04 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 10/11/20 6:34 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

That did it.  I am assuming that the system was just in the process of
changing from the initrc to the actual running system?  But how do I 
get the
boot sequence to activate the LVs automatically each time before 
attempting

to mount the / filesystem?

AFAIK you don't need to do anything special for that.
>From what I can tell, the initramfs (tries to) activate the swap and
root LVs, and then the rest of the boot activates them all.

If that doesn't work for you, you're going to have to dig deeper,


 Stefan


The swap LV seems to be getting activated, but not the root LV, so it 
keeps trying to mount an LV that is not yet activated and eventually 
it times out and drops me into a shell.  From there, I can manually 
activate all LVs and exit the shell and the boot process continues 
successfully.


Marc


After more Googling, I found the following page:


https://serverfault.com/questions/199185/logical-volumes-are-inactive-at-boot-time


The last answer on the page suggests a mismatch in the way the LV is 
named in:


    /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/lvm2

and

    fstab,

namely

    '/dev/vgname/lvname' instead of '/dev/mapper/vgname-lvname'.


Both of those files used '/dev/mapper/vgname-lvname', but /etc/lilo.conf 
was using '/dev/vgname/lvname'.  I changed /etc/lilo.conf to use the 
same format as the other two, re-ran lilo, rebooted, and it worked.  I 
then did the same thing for my Stretch partitions, and the system booted 
into Stretch with the LV mounted on / with no issues.


I had not thought that there was any real difference between the two 
formats, and this may well be the only instance where there is, but I'm 
going to use the '/dev/mapper/vgname-lvname' format in all locations 
from here on out.



Marc

Re: Error mounting LVM volume as root

[Marc Shapiro]

On 10/11/20 6:34 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

That did it.  I am assuming that the system was just in the process of
changing from the initrc to the actual running system?  But how do I get the
boot sequence to activate the LVs automatically each time before attempting
to mount the / filesystem?

AFAIK you don't need to do anything special for that.
>From what I can tell, the initramfs (tries to) activate the swap and
root LVs, and then the rest of the boot activates them all.

If that doesn't work for you, you're going to have to dig deeper,


 Stefan


The swap LV seems to be getting activated, but not the root LV, so it 
keeps trying to mount an LV that is not yet activated and eventually it 
times out and drops me into a shell.  From there, I can manually 
activate all LVs and exit the shell and the boot process continues 
successfully.


Marc

Re: Error mounting LVM volume as root

[Marc Shapiro]

On 10/10/20 7:42 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

I am attempting to mount an LVM Logical Volume as root, but I am getting an
error in the boot sequence when it attempts to mount the root filesystem.
The error is saying that it can not find /dev/block/254:15, which is the LV
that I am trying to mount. Then it falls into a shell.

When I run 'ls /dev/block' it shows /dev/block/254:0, which is the swap
volume (in the same LVM Volume Group as /dev/block/254:15), but does not
show any of the other LVs.  If it can recognize the LVM swap volume, why
does it not see the other LVs in the group?

Any chance you're inside the initramfs while this problem shows up?
I'd assume it's because the initramfs has only activated the swap and
root partitions (root for the obvious reason and swap to check for
a hibernation image).

Try `vgchange -ay` to activate the other volumes.


 Stefan


That did it.  I am assuming that the system was just in the process of 
changing from the initrc to the actual running system? But how do I get 
the boot sequence to activate the LVs automatically each time before 
attempting to mount the / filesystem?  I don't want to have to manually 
activate them each time I boot the system.



Marc

Error mounting LVM volume as root

[Marc Shapiro]

I am attempting to mount an LVM Logical Volume as root, but I am getting 
an error in the boot sequence when it attempts to mount the root 
filesystem.  The error is saying that it can not find /dev/block/254:15, 
which is the LV that I am trying to mount. Then it falls into a shell.


When I run 'ls /dev/block' it shows /dev/block/254:0, which is the swap 
volume (in the same LVM Volume Group as /dev/block/254:15), but does not 
show any of the other LVs.  If it can recognize the LVM swap volume, why 
does it not see the other LVs in the group?


Is there some way to get this to work?  I am trying to put everything on 
LVM so that I can use snapshots to get consistent backups of a running 
system.


Marc

Re: Sound (Alsa/PulseAudio) not working for ONE USER ONLY (addidional info)

[Marc Shapiro]

On 9/23/20 10:02 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

I am currently running Stretch, with alsa and pulseaudio.

This box has three users.  My wife and daughter both get sound through 
Firefox, as well as 'play filename.mp3'.  Neither method works for my 
login.  When using 'aplay filename.mp3' all users get static.


Some background:

A few months back, my /home partition was accidentally wiped. (It was 
mounted where I did not think it was.  No backups.  My bad. New 
external drive for backups, now.)  Data recovery managed to get back 
my wife's and daughter's directories, but not mine. My guess is that 
there were configuration files that I no longer have under my login 
that are necessary for sound.


An interesting note:  I just tried playing a file (play filename.mp3) 
while displaying the PulseAudio Volume Meter.  It says that sound is 
playing.  Then I noticed that it is showing volume for the 'Loopback 
Analog Stero'.  I did the same thing under my wife's and daughter's 
login and the sound was going to the 'Built-in Audio Analog Stereo'


How do I tell Alsa/PulseAudio to use the Built-in sound device, and 
not the loopback device?


Marc

I can change the fallback to the Built-in sound device using 
pavucontrol, but then, when I try to play an mp3 file, 'play' just locks 
up.  It displays the file data, and the line that shows its location in 
the file, but that line never changes.  Even Ctrl-C does not exit the 
program.  I have to close, and restart, LXTerminal.


Marc

Sound (Alsa/PulseAudio) not working for ONE USER ONLY

[Marc Shapiro]

I am currently running Stretch, with alsa and pulseaudio.

This box has three users.  My wife and daughter both get sound through 
Firefox, as well as 'play filename.mp3'.  Neither method works for my 
login.  When using 'aplay filename.mp3' all users get static.


Some background:

A few months back, my /home partition was accidentally wiped. (It was 
mounted where I did not think it was.  No backups.  My bad.  New 
external drive for backups, now.)  Data recovery managed to get back my 
wife's and daughter's directories, but not mine. My guess is that there 
were configuration files that I no longer have under my login that are 
necessary for sound.


An interesting note:  I just tried playing a file (play filename.mp3) 
while displaying the PulseAudio Volume Meter.  It says that sound is 
playing.  Then I noticed that it is showing volume for the 'Loopback 
Analog Stero'.  I did the same thing under my wife's and daughter's 
login and the sound was going to the 'Built-in Audio Analog Stereo'


How do I tell Alsa/PulseAudio to use the Built-in sound device, and not 
the loopback device?


Marc

Re: Buster with MATE without systemd

[Marc Shapiro]

On 9/16/20 9:12 PM, Patrick Bartek wrote:

On Wed, 16 Sep 2020 19:44:03 -0700
Marc Shapiro  wrote:


On 9/16/20 5:55 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Wed 16 Sep 2020 at 16:15:12 (-0700), Patrick Bartek wrote:

On Wed, 16 Sep 2020 13:52:15 -0400
Greg Wooledge  wrote:

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 10:32:14AM -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:

To make a long story short, after two or so weeks of research and
numerous failed trials, I came to the conclusion that systemd has
become too entrenched in the dependency tree of Buster to successfully
convert to systvinit.

If you specify "... on a desktop system", then maybe you're correct.

For most servers, it shouldn't be an issue.

The subject _was_ about desktops, MATE specifically, not servers.

However, my trials with Buster was from a year ago.  And I haven't
tried a sysvinit install with it since. Perhaps some systemd
dependencies have been eliminated.  Be great if they all were! Init
systems should never ever be dependencies.

I know little to nothing about DEs. However, I see that there are
people who run MATE without running a systemd init system. This (dated)
link makes a distinction between installation dependencies and runtime
dependencies, so I presume that you might be able to put up with the
presence of unused systemd packages in the installation.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/279603/using-mate-desktop-without-systemd

Later:
  

[…] Had no problems converting to
sysvinit with a terminal only system.  First thing I did.  I always
start my installs that way and build from there.  Lighter, faster, more
efficient system without all the crud that comes with a general DE
install.

I would certainly recommend that the OP did that, rather than
converting as an afterthought.

Unfortunately, as it says at the bottom of that page, systemd-shim is no
longer available.  It worked in Jessie, I used it then, but is not an
option, now.

As for installing only a minimal, textbased, system and then converting
-- I'm sure that works, until you try to install xorg and Mate.  That is
where things start to get 'fun.'  Dependencies are dependencies.
Running without a DE, or even a different DE is not an option in this
case.  I am not the only one using this box.  My wife is now working
from home and my daughter's college is strictly distance learning.
(Thank you Caronavirus Pandemic.) I can not go changing how things work
for them at this time.

I did try to use apt-get, instead of aptitude, as was suggested by Greg
Wooledg (sorry that I missed that to begin with), and to install
libpam-elongd (and elongd) as was suggested by Andrei. Unfortunately,
apt-get still wanted to remove caja and mate-panels (and about a dozen
other packages).  Without mate-panels, the DE is pretty much unusable.
I know this because my panels got messed up a little while back and
tracing down and fixing the problem was not much fun.

This seems to leave me with two options:

1) Bite the bullet and put up with systemd.

2) Switch to Devuan.  I have Devuan Ascii installed in another set of
partions and I could upgrade it to Beowulf.

I don't really like either of these options.  I have been running Debian
for the past 21, or 22 years (since Bo, i believe).  I'd rather not
switch.  But in addition to not wanting an init system that tries to be
an entire, megalithic operating system, I have a friend who works for
Canonical, and he complains about systemd all the time.

If anyone can suggest any other options, I am open to suggestions.

Upgrade your Devuan ASCII(Stretch) to Beowulf(Buster) and try it out.
Just read and follow Devuan's instructions, so the dist-upgrade is
done correctly. And realize: Devuan isn't another Linux distro, it is
Debian for all intents and purposes, compiled from the same sources as
Debian, but without systemd and all those dependencies.  It looks and
performs the same. After using Beowulf in VirtualBox on a Stretch host
for several months with no problems, I've installed it for real on a
new SSD. No problems. It's your's (and mine's) easiest solution to
systemd.

Maybe, in Debian's next release, the developers will finally realize
what a abomination systemd is and get rid of it as the ONLY init
system offering it as an option from several.


"Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."

  -- William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

Re: Buster with MATE without systemd

[Marc Shapiro]

On 9/16/20 5:55 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Wed 16 Sep 2020 at 16:15:12 (-0700), Patrick Bartek wrote:

On Wed, 16 Sep 2020 13:52:15 -0400
Greg Wooledge  wrote:

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 10:32:14AM -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:

To make a long story short, after two or so weeks of research and
numerous failed trials, I came to the conclusion that systemd has
become too entrenched in the dependency tree of Buster to successfully
convert to systvinit.

If you specify "... on a desktop system", then maybe you're correct.

For most servers, it shouldn't be an issue.

The subject _was_ about desktops, MATE specifically, not servers.

However, my trials with Buster was from a year ago.  And I haven't
tried a sysvinit install with it since. Perhaps some systemd
dependencies have been eliminated.  Be great if they all were! Init
systems should never ever be dependencies.

I know little to nothing about DEs. However, I see that there are
people who run MATE without running a systemd init system. This (dated)
link makes a distinction between installation dependencies and runtime
dependencies, so I presume that you might be able to put up with the
presence of unused systemd packages in the installation.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/279603/using-mate-desktop-without-systemd

Later:


[…] Had no problems converting to
sysvinit with a terminal only system.  First thing I did.  I always
start my installs that way and build from there.  Lighter, faster, more
efficient system without all the crud that comes with a general DE
install.

I would certainly recommend that the OP did that, rather than
converting as an afterthought.


Unfortunately, as it says at the bottom of that page, systemd-shim is no 
longer available.  It worked in Jessie, I used it then, but is not an 
option, now.


As for installing only a minimal, textbased, system and then converting 
-- I'm sure that works, until you try to install xorg and Mate.  That is 
where things start to get 'fun.'  Dependencies are dependencies.  
Running without a DE, or even a different DE is not an option in this 
case.  I am not the only one using this box.  My wife is now working 
from home and my daughter's college is strictly distance learning.  
(Thank you Caronavirus Pandemic.) I can not go changing how things work 
for them at this time.


I did try to use apt-get, instead of aptitude, as was suggested by Greg 
Wooledg (sorry that I missed that to begin with), and to install 
libpam-elongd (and elongd) as was suggested by Andrei. Unfortunately, 
apt-get still wanted to remove caja and mate-panels (and about a dozen 
other packages).  Without mate-panels, the DE is pretty much unusable.  
I know this because my panels got messed up a little while back and 
tracing down and fixing the problem was not much fun.


This seems to leave me with two options:

1) Bite the bullet and put up with systemd.

2) Switch to Devuan.  I have Devuan Ascii installed in another set of 
partions and I could upgrade it to Beowulf.


I don't really like either of these options.  I have been running Debian 
for the past 21, or 22 years (since Bo, i believe).  I'd rather not 
switch.  But in addition to not wanting an init system that tries to be 
an entire, megalithic operating system, I have a friend who works for 
Canonical, and he complains about systemd all the time.


If anyone can suggest any other options, I am open to suggestions.


Marc

Buster with MATE without systemd

[Marc Shapiro]

I have a fresh install of Buster which is running MATE as the Desktop 
Environment.  It has taken me until now to get it working, without 
messing up my current Stretch install on the same machine.  The next 
thing that I want to do is replace systemd with sysvinit.  I am not 
trying to start a flamewar about which is better.  I want sysvinit, not 
systemd, let's leave it at that.


I ran 'aptitude install sysvinit-core'.  This resulted in about 2 dozen 
packages to be removed (some of which, I would have removed anyway) and 
a similar number with unmet dependencies (mostly recommends).  I can 
live with that and work around any issues once I'm running on sysvinit, 
so I accept the option.


This gives me another screen full of text that basically says that it 
needs a terminal emulator, but xterm is being removed.  It wants to 
install pterm and, again, leave a number of recommends as they are.  OK, 
I accept that option.


Now I get a full screen of packages to be removed.  Most are libraries, 
and what seem to be MATE virtual packages, along with some other 
packages, including the GIMP.  I DO want MATE and the GIMP.  This looks 
like a problem.  I cancel the install.


So, my question is:  Can I replace systemd with sysvint and still keep 
MATE?  Do I need to let aptitude uninstall MATE, and then reinstall 
after sysvinit has been installed?  Or have MATE and the GIMP been 
updated in a way that requires systemd and not sysvinit?


If it is possible to do what I want, what is the easiest way to 
accomplish it?



Marc

Re: Question on 'dpkg --get-selections'

[Marc Shapiro]

On 9/12/20 12:29 AM, Sven Joachim wrote:

On 2020-09-11 22:03 -0700, Marc Shapiro wrote:


Is there any option to have 'dpkg --get-selections' NOT include
automatically installed packages?

No, dpkg has no notion of automatically installed packages, that is an
apt concept.


Otherwise, all packages show as manually installed, including those
that would otherwise have been automatically installed.

You can obtain a list of automatically installed packages with
apt-mark(1):

$ apt-mark showauto > automatically-installed-packages

Then, on the replicated system where you presumably had used
"dpkg --set-selections" to install the same set of packages:

# apt-mark auto $(cat automatically-installed-packages)

HTH,
 Sven


Thank you.  That is a perfectly acceptable solution to the issue.

Marc

Question on 'dpkg --get-selections'

[Marc Shapiro]

Is there any option to have 'dpkg --get-selections' NOT include 
automatically installed packages?  Otherwise, all packages show as 
manually installed, including those that would otherwise have been 
automatically installed.



Marc

Re: Does Debian have a "nag" tool?

[Marc Shapiro]

I've been using Remind for years (maybe decades).  It can handle all kinds
of repeating reminders, not just annual dates (ie birthdays and
anniversaries).  Very versatile.  It is a command line program, but comes
with TkRemind (a GUI front end).  Best not to use the GUI for setting up
reminders, though.  It doesn't have the versatility of doing it manually.

Marc


On Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 4:53 AM Joe  wrote:

> On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 06:30:13 -0500
> Richard Owlett  wrote:
>
> > Just missed girlfriend's birthday by 6 weeks :{
> > [just sent a 'mea culpa' email.]
> > Is there a better tool than "cron"?
> >
> > Just looked at its manpage.
> > I'm looking for something slightly different.
> >
> > Independent of when I turn on or first do something after midnight on
> > a specific date I want a reminder to be displayed unless I have taken
> > a specific action.
> >
> > As:
> >   1. I've known her for > 30 years.
> >   2. I'm a _senior_ citizen.
> >   3. She is a decade younger.
> > I am about to receive just retribution.
> >[She'll claim I'm forgiven due to senility.]
> >
> > Wish to prevent such a response next year ;/
> >
> > TIA
> >
> >
>
> Remind?
>
> --
> Joe
>
>

Re: Sharing /boot and /lib/modules with multiple distros

[Marc Shapiro]

On 6/6/20 2:58 PM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Sat, Jun 06, 2020 at 02:06:42PM -0700, Marc Shapiro wrote:

I usually have three different distros installed.  I was wondering
if I could have a separate partition (possibly in an extended
partition) containing /boot and /var/modules that would be mounted
in each of the distros.  This would eliminate having kernels,
initrds and kernel modules duplicated for each distro, while
allowing me to run lilo from any of them.  The only file that would
need to be duplicated would be /etc/lilo.conf, and it doesn't take
much space.  Is this a workable idea?

Sounds feasible, but there are some snags to watch out for:

  - distributions tend to customize the kernel; some more,
some less.
  - different distributions come with different kernel
versions: if the versions don't differ too much (e.g.
they get along with the same libc version) that might
not bite you

Expect some tinkering.

Cheers
-- t


Right now, I am looking at combinations of Debian and Devuan, so I don't 
think that this should be an issue.



Marc

Sharing /boot and /lib/modules with multiple distros

[Marc Shapiro]

I usually have three different distros installed.  I was wondering if I 
could have a separate partition (possibly in an extended partition) 
containing /boot and /var/modules that would be mounted in each of the 
distros.  This would eliminate having kernels, initrds and kernel 
modules duplicated for each distro, while allowing me to run lilo from 
any of them.  The only file that would need to be duplicated would be 
/etc/lilo.conf, and it doesn't take much space.  Is this a workable idea?



Marc

Re: trouble installing gnome

[Marc Shapiro]

On 6/6/20 8:58 AM, Brad Rogers wrote:

On Sat, 6 Jun 2020 11:14:13 -0400
leonard morin  wrote:

Hello leonard,


Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:

Both instances of that should either be deleted or have an # inserted at
the start of the line.  IMO, the former is preferable.

You may also wish to add an online repo, rather than relying on just the
CDs.

Also, if what the OP pasted into his post was his entire 
/etc/apt/sources.list file, he is not using the CDs, either. Those lines 
were also commented out.  The only uncommented lines where the ones that 
SHOULD have been comments:


--Snipped from original post 
--
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Bullseye_ - Official Snapshot amd64 
xfce-CD Binary-1 20200525-03:32]/ bullseye main contrib non-free
#deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Bullseye_ - Official Snapshot amd64 
xfce-CD Binary-1 20200525-03:32]/ bullseye main contrib non-free

 Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#debhttp://security.debian.org/debian-security  bullseye-security main contrib 
non-free
 Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb-srchttp://security.debian.org/debian-security  bullseye-security main 
contrib non-free
---

Re: Buster install using debootstrap. (SOLVED)

[Marc Shapiro]

On 6/5/20 6:31 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 6/4/20 11:30 PM, Sven Hartge wrote:

Marc Shapiro  wrote:


I also don't understand why it says that it could not create temporary
files in /tmp.  I am running this as root and /tmp is owned by root.
What am I missing?

/tmp (and /var/tmp/) should have the following permissions and rights:

  root:root 1777/drwxrwxrwt

apt runs its I/O processes as a different user "_apt" and if /tmp does
not have the sticky bit set, then it cannot create any files there,
causing the error.

Grüße,
Sven.

Thanks!  That took care of all the debian repositories.  Third party 
repositories are now having public key issues (not surprising).  How 
do I get and install the public key for deb-multimedia.org and 
virtualbox.org?



Marc


I got the public keys for deb-multimedia.org and virtualbox.org and all 
is good.  I just needed to google a little more (after having some dinner).



Marc

Re: Buster install using debootstrap.

[Marc Shapiro]

On 6/4/20 11:30 PM, Sven Hartge wrote:

Marc Shapiro  wrote:


I also don't understand why it says that it could not create temporary
files in /tmp.  I am running this as root and /tmp is owned by root.
What am I missing?

/tmp (and /var/tmp/) should have the following permissions and rights:

  root:root 1777/drwxrwxrwt

apt runs its I/O processes as a different user "_apt" and if /tmp does
not have the sticky bit set, then it cannot create any files there,
causing the error.

Grüße,
Sven.

Thanks!  That took care of all the debian repositories.  Third party 
repositories are now having public key issues (not surprising).  How do 
I get and install the public key for deb-multimedia.org and virtualbox.org?



Marc

Buster install using debootstrap.

[Marc Shapiro]

I have just installed Buster on a spare set of partitions using 
debootstrap, as documented in:


    Appendix D.3 of the Installation Guide.


When I got to configuring networking, I just copied 
/etc/networking/interfaces, /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, and 
/etc/resolv.conf from my Stretch partitions/directories to the Buster 
partitions/directories.


I also copied /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/fstab from Stretch to 
Buster, editing them as needed.


I have chrooted into Buster and everything looks good.  I can run 'apt 
show' and 'dpkg -l' (I like the way the new dpkg lets you scroll through 
the list instead of just running to the end.)  What I can not do is 'apt 
update'.  When I try that, I get the following output:


# apt update
Get:1 http://security.debian.org buster/updates InRelease [65.4 kB]
Err:1 http://security.debian.org buster/updates InRelease
  Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.UOJmdX for passing 
config to apt-key
Get:2 http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian buster InRelease 
[7736 B]

Err:2 http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian buster InRelease
  Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.9n943a for passing 
config to apt-key

Get:4 http://http.us.debian.org/debian buster InRelease [121 kB]
Err:4 http://http.us.debian.org/debian buster InRelease
  Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.1btx9y for passing 
config to apt-key
Get:3 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports InRelease 
[46.7 kB]

Err:3 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports InRelease
  Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.G6FHYS for passing 
config to apt-key

Get:5 http://www.deb-multimedia.org buster InRelease [19.5 kB]
Err:5 http://www.deb-multimedia.org buster InRelease
  Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.Iqzykk for passing 
config to apt-key

Get:6 http://www.deb-multimedia.org buster-backports InRelease [10.4 kB]
Err:6 http://www.deb-multimedia.org buster-backports InRelease
  Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.Sb90kl for passing 
config to apt-key

Reading package lists... Done
W: GPG error: http://security.debian.org buster/updates InRelease: 
Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.UOJmdX for passing config 
to apt-key
E: The repository 'http://security.debian.org buster/updates InRelease' 
is not signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is 
therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user 
configuration details.
W: GPG error: http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian buster 
InRelease: Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.9n943a for 
passing config to apt-key
E: The repository 'http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian 
buster InRelease' is not signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is 
therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user 
configuration details.
W: GPG error: http://http.us.debian.org/debian buster InRelease: 
Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.1btx9y for passing config 
to apt-key
E: The repository 'http://http.us.debian.org/debian buster InRelease' is 
not signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is 
therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user 
configuration details.
W: GPG error: http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports 
InRelease: Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.G6FHYS for 
passing config to apt-key
E: The repository 'http://http.debian.net/debian buster-backports 
InRelease' is not signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is 
therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user 
configuration details.
W: GPG error: http://www.deb-multimedia.org buster InRelease: Couldn't 
create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.Iqzykk for passing config to apt-key
E: The repository 'http://www.deb-multimedia.org buster InRelease' is 
not signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is 
therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user 
configuration details.
W: GPG error: http://www.deb-multimedia.org buster-backports InRelease: 
Couldn't create temporary file /tmp/apt.conf.Sb90kl for passing config 
to apt-key
E: The repository 'http://www.deb-multimedia.org buster-backports 
InRelease' is not signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is 
therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user 
configuration details.


I read the manpage for apt-secure and I am assuming that I am missing 
the GPG keys, but I did not see anything about this in the Installation 
Guide.  I'm sure that I missed something, somewhere, but I don't know what.


I also don't understand why it says that it could not create temporary 
files in /tmp.  I 

Re: Fwd: lists.debian.org has received bounces from you

[Marc Shapiro]

On 5/26/20 2:23 PM, Abhishek Dixit wrote:

What should I do for bounce messages I get.


-- Forwarded message -
From: *Debian Listmaster Team* >

Date: Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 2:16 AM
Subject: lists.debian.org  has received 
bounces from you

To: mailto:abhidixi...@gmail.com>>


Dear subscriber,

We've encountered some problems while sending listmail to your
emailaddress abhidixi...@gmail.com .

In the last seven days we've seen bounces for the following list:
* debian-user
        1 bounce out of 84 mails in one day (1%, kick-score is 80%)
        (https://lists.debian.org/bounces/ue_GpOw_vSJRYwJ9fC4rKw)

(The link above points to a copy of the latest bounce
and will be valid for seven days.)

If the bounce-rate passes the kick-score, our bounce-detection will 
forcibly

remove your subscription.

Bounces happen from time to time when spam slips through our filters 
but are

rejected by your mail provider.  If you are your own mail provider and use
'Before-Queue Content filtering', you should whitelist 
bendel.debian.org  from

Content filtering.

However: You can safely ignore this message (and you will not be 
unsubscribed

:-) ) if your bounce rate remains low.

For more information see https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/ListMaster/FAQ

You are welcome to contact listmas...@lists.debian.org 
 if you think this

message was sent in error.

        Sincerely,
The Listmaster Team
--
http://lists.debian.org



--
-

Abhi


I wouldn't worry about it.  When I get these (which is maybe once every 
month, or two) I check the bounced e-mail (from the link) to see if it 
was anything I really needed to read.  Then I don't worry about it any 
more.  You have a 1% bounce rate.  As the e-mail says, they will remove 
your subscription if it reaches 80%.  With 84 e-mails, they would have 
to received 68 bounces before it would become an issue.  For me, it has 
never been more than 1 bounce.  Nothing top worry about.



Marc

Buster without systemd?

[Marc Shapiro]

Supposedly, one can install/upgrade to Buster while maintaining sysv as 
init.  Or has this changed.  Over the past several months I have been 
attempting to upgrade to Buster, but I have been completely unsuccessful.


Has anyone managed to upgrade to Buster without installing systemd, or 
jumping through hoops that would drive a lion tamer mad?


I made a copy of all of my partitions so that I could do the upgrade 
while maintaining Stretch in case something went wrong. I'm glad that I did!


The first time that I tried this, I actually managed to upgrade to 
Buster and have everything appear to work.  Then I realized that I had 
only done an "upgrade" but not a "full-upgrade".  After that, X would 
not start.  I have, as I said, spent several months trying to get X 
working on Buster without systemd.  I have not been successful.  None of 
my later attempts ever got a working Buster with X, at all.


Is it possible to do what I want?  Or, after 21 to 22 years of using 
Debian (since Bo), do I have to switch to another linux distro?  I would 
rather not have to switch, but you choose the distro that suits your 
needs, and if Debian no longer suits my needs then I may have to.



Marc

Re: RCA Cable to USB Video input device

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/30/19 9:31 AM, Christian Seiler wrote:

Hi there,

Am 2019-12-14 07:45, schrieb Marc Shapiro:

I want to copy some videos from VCR and DVD to my computer for editing
(simple stuff, like removing commercials).  I found this device on
Amazon:


https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Converter-Capture-Support-Android/dp/B06X42H9VZ/ref=sr_1_3?m=A3ENZ260X3A00C=ATVPDKIKX0DER=1576302348=merchant-items=1-3=1 




It says in the title that it works on Linux, and at least one of the
reviews says it works on Debian.



From the listing you posted the device you have appears to have
a UTV007 chipset, and you can find some documentation on how to
make that work on Linux here:

https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Easycap#Making_it_work_4

I found that site, too.  That is what gives me hope that the device will 
work.


Thanks.

RCA Cable to USB Video input device

[Marc Shapiro]

I want to copy some videos from VCR and DVD to my computer for editing 
(simple stuff, like removing commercials).  I found this device on Amazon:



https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Converter-Capture-Support-Android/dp/B06X42H9VZ/ref=sr_1_3?m=A3ENZ260X3A00C=ATVPDKIKX0DER=1576302348=merchant-items=1-3=1


It says in the title that it works on Linux, and at least one of the 
reviews says it works on Debian.



There seem to be a lot of sellers with what looks like this exact same 
device.


Does anyone know anything about this device, or other, similar devices.  
Is it likely to require specialized drivers, or would generic drivers be 
able to access it?


Any suggestions on editing software would also be appreciated.  I have 
done simple audio editing before, but not video.  Would the editing 
software read the data directly from the USB port, or would I need to 
access the port with other software/commands.  I don't mind using the 
command line to access the port and save the file, if necessary.



Marc

Finalizing a Video DVD

[Marc Shapiro]

I have a DVD recorder hooked up to my TV and antenna. Unfortunately, the 
remote for it is non-functional and the option for finalizing the DVD+R 
discs is only reachable through the remote.  Why VCR/DVD players and 
recorders were designed to not be fully functional without their remote, 
I do not know.  I think it's foolish, but no one asked me.


My question is this:  Is there any software in the repository that can 
finalize these disks so that I can use them other than on the machine 
that created them?  On that machine, these disks play just fine.  I just 
can't play them anywhere else.  I don't need to add to them.  I just 
want to play them back.


Marc

Re: x and virtual consoles

[Marc Shapiro]

On 8/6/19 12:29 AM, Curt wrote:

On 2019-08-06, Ed  wrote:

On 2019-08-06 09:02+0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

On Lu, 05 aug 19, 21:56:55, Ed wrote:

How do you run two login managers though so that you can have two users
share the same computer without having to log out? In other words,
whilst I go and make dinner I want to allow someone else to sit here,
without having to shut applications down?

Some login managers have the "switch user" feature.

Does that feature take the user back to the login screen without leaving
the applications running?



https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LightDM

  LightDM's dm-tool command can be used to allow multiple users to be logged in
  on separate ttys. The following will send a signal requesting that the current
  session be locked and then will initiate a switch to LightDM's greeter,
  allowing a new user to log in to the system.

$ dm-tool switch-to-greeter

Looks promising.

I am another one of those who like to boot to a terminal and then run 
startx (which then runs mate), so this may not apply if you want to boot 
to a DE's login manager, but just to get it out there for those who are 
interested:


My wife, daughter and I each have separate logins on a single box.  On 
the rare occasions that the system gets rebooted, I log on to vt1 and 
run startx (using alias startx='clear; startx -- :0'), my wife logs on 
to vt2 and runs startx (using alias startx='clear; startx -- :1'), and 
my daughter uses vt3 and alias startx='clear; startx -- :2'.  After that 
ctl-alt-f1 gets to my session, ctl-alt-f2 gets to my wife's session and 
ctl-alt-f3 gets to my daughter's session.  All sessions running all the 
time.  The only disadvantage to this is that occasionally a web page 
that my daughter has up will decide that it's time to play music.  Then 
I have to find the offending page and mute it.  Other than that, this 
system has worked for us for years.


Marc

Re: Linux Journal epub files

[Marc Shapiro]

On 9/9/19 8:55 AM, steve wrote:

Le 09-09-2019, à 08:00:49 -0700, Marc Shapiro a écrit :

I tried to get the items from the archives suggested by other 
posters, but did not find epubs.  The no login required link from LJ 
was dead by the time I got to it. It died fast.  That is why I have 
this issue.  I suppose filling in those last few issues with pdfs may 
be my only answer.


Have you tried this: https://linuxjournal.rocks/digital.html


On 9/9/19 9:25 AM, Mattia wrote:


On Mon, 9 Sep 2019 08:00:49 -0700, Marc Shapiro 
 wrote:
I tried to get the items from the archives suggested by other 
posters, but did not find epubs.  The no login required link from LJ 
was dead by the time I got to it.  It died fast.  That is why I have 
this issue.  I suppose filling in those last few issues with pdfs may 
be my only answer.


Marc


https://files.linuxjournal.rocks/epub/

I can download them.


Thank you, Steve and Mattia.  I had not found that site, but it was 
exactly what I needed.  I grabbed the last year of epubs and pdfs for 
2005 to 2011.  I have most of the hardcopy back to August of 2000, but 
these are a lot easier to carry.



Thanks again,

Marc

Re: Linux Journal epub files

[Marc Shapiro]

On 9/9/19 5:15 AM, Nate Bargmann wrote:

* On 2019 08 Sep 14:56 -0500, Marc Shapiro wrote:

I have Linux Journal in epub format up through June of 2018.  I didn't grab
the others as they became available and by the time I realized that LJ was
closing permanently, the archives were no longer working.  Does anyone know
where I can find the newer issues (7/18 through end of publication) in epub
format?

Some of the commenters to the last post:

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-journal-ceases-publication-awkward-goodbye

were writing about hosting an archive.  I'm not sure if any of them did.

I did manage to grab all of the available PDF files and then grabbed
everything in HTML for good measure in my personal archive.  I could
pass along the needed PDF files if that would help you.  Note that I
have no expressed permission from Linux Journal to do so.

I just tried the supposed no login required link from LJ in the comments
but that link appears to be dead now.

- Nate

I tried to get the items from the archives suggested by other posters, 
but did not find epubs.  The no login required link from LJ was dead by 
the time I got to it.  It died fast.  That is why I have this issue.  I 
suppose filling in those last few issues with pdfs may be my only answer.


Marc

Linux Journal epub files

[Marc Shapiro]

I have Linux Journal in epub format up through June of 2018.  I didn't 
grab the others as they became available and by the time I realized that 
LJ was closing permanently, the archives were no longer working.  Does 
anyone know where I can find the newer issues (7/18 through end of 
publication) in epub format?



Marc

Re: Using MATE's workspaces effectively

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/19/2018 05:06 AM, songbird wrote:

you want launchers instead of actually running
programs?  in this age of SSDs and plenty of memory
i can tell you that i get done exactly what you want
with groups of programs running in each desired
desktop and it doesn't involve me having to wait
for anything to start or click on when i change
desktops...

   if i don't change anything in most of the open
applications then it doesn't matter if i kill them
off by shutting down from a command line.  next time
i boot the machine they're there waiting for me by
the time i sit down.

   so to me you are making more work for yourself
having to click items open.

   installing a completely different desktop just
because you don't like what is in the panel or on the
desktop (mate tweak will turn off all or some of the
desktop icons) for launchers strikes me as throwing
out the baby with the bathwater.

   another option (of similar sillyness IMO) is to
set up a different user for each group of items you
want in the desktop and panel.  it isn't too bad to
switch users and you can have your most common first
desktop/user logged in automatically when you boot
up.  but, again, oy...


   songbird

There are three users on my system.  Myself, my wife and my daughter.  
When the system is booted we each log on and run startx.  I log on from 
tty1, my wife and daughter are on tty2 and tty3.  All it takes to switch 
from one login to another is ctl-alt-f1, ctl-alt-f2, or ctl-alt-f3.  The 
switch is instantaneous.  Just remember -- they are separate logins.  
You can not copy and paste from one to another.



Marc


alias startx='clear; startx -- :0'

Re: Missing pyuic5, pyrcc5 and pylupdate5 from python3-pyqt5 (was Re: Missing qt5-designer in Stretch)

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/15/2017 03:19 AM, Christian Seiler wrote:

Hi there,

Am 2017-11-15 06:12, schrieb Marc Shapiro:

Now that QtDesigner is running I can look at the rest of the build
chain and I find that the programs listed in the subject (pyuic5,
pyrcc5 and pylupdate5 ) are missing from python3-pyqt5. According to
the docs on Sourceforge these should all be included in the upstream
package.  Has Debian split them off somewhere and not listed it as a
Depends, or Recommends?


$ apt-file search pyuic5
pyqt5-dev-tools: /usr/bin/pyuic5
pyqt5-dev-tools: /usr/share/man/man1/pyuic5.1.gz

To see what binary packages are built from the same source package
as python3-pyqt5:

1. Get the source package name:

$ apt-cache show python3-pyqt5 | grep ^Source:
Source: pyqt5

2. Get all binary packages associated with it (the "tr" is for better
readability):

$ apt-cache showsrc pyqt5 | grep Binary: | tr ',' '\n'

The reason Debian doesn't have a single binary package is that you
don't actually need these tools to _use_ PyQt5, only to develop it.
(Similarly to C/C++ development, where there also are separate
development packages.) This way you can select what you want to
install.

Regards,
Christian

Thanks for the tip on how to find all the packages from a single source 
file.  I'm not surprised that the dev tools are in a separate package -- 
I just couldn't find it.  I was looking through the files beginning with 
'python3-pyqt5', or 'python-pyqt5' so I missed the three (all of which I 
want) whose names begin with 'pyqt5' without the 'python' prefix.



Thanks again.

Marc

Missing pyuic5, pyrcc5 and pylupdate5 from python3-pyqt5 (was Re: Missing qt5-designer in Stretch)

[Marc Shapiro]

Now that QtDesigner is running I can look at the rest of the build chain 
and I find that the programs listed in the subject (pyuic5, pyrcc5 and 
pylupdate5 ) are missing from python3-pyqt5.  According to the docs on 
Sourceforge these should all be included in the upstream package.  Has 
Debian split them off somewhere and not listed it as a Depends, or 
Recommends?


Marc

Re: Missing qt5-designer in Stretch

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/14/2017 07:24 PM, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:

On 15/11/17 16:11, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 11/14/2017 12:58 PM, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:

On 15/11/17 04:48, Marc Shapiro wrote:

$ designer
designer: could not exec 
'/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin/designer': No such file or 
directory

$ assistant
assistant: could not exec 
'/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin/assistant': No such file or 
directory
qtchooser is defaulting to a version of qttools5-dev-tools that you 
do not have. You should be able to change this by setting QT_SELECT 
or by editing/symlinking the qtchooser configuration file 
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt-default/qtchooser/default.conf . "man 
qtchooser" for details.
Thanks!  That did it.  Ijust changed the first line in the config 
file from:

 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin
to:
 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/bin
All is good, now.


Great! Although you should note that Michael Biebl's suggestion to 
install "qt5-default" will do the same thing but be robust against 
package updates (I like his advice more than mine).


Kind regards,

But it wants to install 25 packages in addition to itself and take up 
29.8MB.  That seems excessive to do something that I have already 
aqccomplished with no additional packages.



Marc

Re: Missing qt5-designer in Stretch

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/14/2017 12:58 PM, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:

On 15/11/17 04:48, Marc Shapiro wrote:

$ designer
designer: could not exec 
'/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin/designer': No such file or directory

$ assistant
assistant: could not exec 
'/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin/assistant': No such file or directory


qtchooser is defaulting to a version of qttools5-dev-tools that you do 
not have. You should be able to change this by setting QT_SELECT or by 
editing/symlinking the qtchooser configuration file 
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt-default/qtchooser/default.conf . "man 
qtchooser" for details.


Kind regards,


Thanks!  That did it.  Ijust changed the first line in the config file from:

    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin

to:

    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/bin


All is good, now.


Marc

Re: Missing qt5-designer in Stretch

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/14/2017 12:18 AM, Christian Seiler wrote:

Am 2017-11-14 08:05, schrieb Marc Shapiro:
Am I missing something, somewhere?  Or is qt5-designer not packaged 
for Debian?


Designer for Qt5 can be found in the qttools5-dev-tools package
in Stretch.

Regards,
Christian

I installed qttools5-dev-tools package, but it still looks for designer 
and assistant in the old qt4 directory.  What am I doing wrong?


Marc


$ aptitude show qttools5-dev-tools
Package: qttools5-dev-tools
Version: 5.7.1-1
New: yes
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Multi-Arch: same
Priority: optional
Section: devel
Maintainer: Debian Qt/KDE Maintainers <debian-qt-...@lists.debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Uncompressed Size: 7,367 k
Depends: qtchooser, libc6 (>= 2.14), libqt5core5a (>= 5.7.0), 
libqt5dbus5 (>= 5.0.2), libqt5designer5 (>= 5.6.0~beta), 
libqt5designercomponents5 (>= 5.6.0~beta), libqt5gui5 (>= 5.7.0), 
libqt5help5 (>= 5.6.0~beta), libqt5network5 (>=
 5.0.2), libqt5printsupport5 (>= 5.0.2), libqt5quickwidgets5 
(>= 5.3.0), libqt5sql5 (>= 5.0.2), libqt5webkit5 (>= 5.6.0~rc), 
libqt5widgets5 (>= 5.6.0~beta), libqt5xml5 (>= 5.1.0), libstdc++6 (>= 
5.2), qtbase-abi-5-7-1

Recommends: libqt5sql5-sqlite
Breaks: qtbase5-dev-tools (< 5.6.0~), qttools5-dev (< 5.5.0-2~), 
qtbase5-dev-tools:i386 (< 5.6.0~), qttools5-dev:i386 (< 5.5.0-2~), 
qttools5-dev-tools:i386 (!= 5.7.1-1)
Replaces: qtbase5-dev-tools (< 5.6.0~), qttools5-dev (< 5.5.0-2~), 
qtbase5-dev-tools:i386 (< 5.6.0~), qttools5-dev:i386 (< 5.5.0-2~), 
qttools5-dev-tools:i386 (< 5.7.1-1)

Description: Qt 5 development tools
 Qt is a cross-platform C++ application framework. Qt's primary feature 
is its rich set of widgets that provide standard GUI functionality.


 This package contains a set of applications to browse the 
documentation, translate applications, generate help files and other 
stuff that helps in Qt development. These tools are among others:

 * assistant
 * designer
 * linguist
 * pixeltool
 * qdbusviewer
Homepage: https://www.qt.io/developers/
Tags: uitoolkit::qt

$ designer
designer: could not exec '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin/designer': 
No such file or directory

$ assistant
assistant: could not exec '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin/assistant': 
No such file or directory

Missing qt5-designer in Stretch

[Marc Shapiro]

I am running Stretch and installed python3-pyqt, which is supposed to 
provide QtDesigner:


Description: Python 3 bindings for Qt5
 PyQt5 exposes the Qt5 API to Python 3. This package contains the 
following modules:

 * QtCore
 * QtDBus
 * QtDesigner
 * QtGui
 * QtHelp
 * QtNetwork
 * QtPrintSupport
 * QtTest
 * QtWidgets
 * QtXml


but designer does not actually seem to be there.  The only file named 
'designer' on this box is trying to start the long since purged 
qt4-designer.


Aptitude can't find a standalone package for it, either.  It only finds 
qt4-designer, not qt5-designer:


marc@quixote:~$ aptitude search designer
p kdesignerplugin - Integration of KF5 widgets in Qt Designer/Creator
p kdesignerplugin:i386 - Integration of KF5 widgets in Qt Designer/Creator
p kdesignerplugin-data - Integration of KF5 widgets in Qt Designer/Creator
v kdesignerplugin-data:i386 -
p kgendesignerplugin - Integration of KF5 widgets in Qt Designer/Creator
p kgendesignerplugin:i386 - Integration of KF5 widgets in Qt 
Designer/Creator
p libbio-primerdesigner-perl - Perl module to design PCR primers using 
primer3 and epcr

p libqscintilla2-designer - Qt4 Designer plugin for QScintilla 2
p libqscintilla2-designer:i386 - Qt4 Designer plugin for QScintilla 2
p libqscintilla2-designer-dbg - Qt4 Designer plugin for QScintilla 2 
(debug)
p libqscintilla2-designer-dbg:i386 - Qt4 Designer plugin for QScintilla 
2 (debug)

i A libqt4-designer - Qt 4 designer module
p libqt4-designer:i386 - Qt 4 designer module
p libqt4-designer-dbg - Qt 4 designer library debugging symbols
p libqt4-designer-dbg:i386 - Qt 4 designer library debugging symbols
i A libqt5designer5 - Qt 5 designer module
p libqt5designer5:i386 - Qt 5 designer module
c libqt5designercomponents5 - Qt 5 Designer components module
p libqt5designercomponents5:i386 - Qt 5 Designer components module
p libqt5scintilla2-designer - Qt5 Designer plugin for QScintilla 2
p libqt5scintilla2-designer:i386 - Qt5 Designer plugin for QScintilla 2
p libqt5scintilla2-designer-dbg - Qt5 Designer plugin for QScintilla 2 
(debug)
p libqt5scintilla2-designer-dbg:i386 - Qt5 Designer plugin for 
QScintilla 2 (debug)

p libqxt-designer0 - LibQxt extensions to Qt Designer
p libqxt-designer0:i386 - LibQxt extensions to Qt Designer
v libreoffice-reportdesigner -
p qt4-designer - graphical designer for Qt 4 applications
p qt4-designer:i386 - graphical designer for Qt 4 applications


Am I missing something, somewhere?  Or is qt5-designer not packaged for 
Debian?



Marc

Re: X crashes when closing one of two running X sessions

[Marc Shapiro]

On 10/24/2017 09:14 AM, David Wright wrote:

On Tue 24 Oct 2017 at 08:29:50 (-0400), The Wanderer wrote:

On 2017-10-24 at 08:15, Greg Wooledge wrote:


On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 07:31:32AM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:


clear_console clears your console if this is possible.  It looks in the

That program is shipped as part of bash, so it looks as if this might
actually be considered a bash bug. I'd see about reporting it there, yes
- either in Debian or upstream.

Definitely not upstream.

wooledg:/usr/src/bash$ tar xzf bash-4.3.30.tar.gz
wooledg:/usr/src/bash$ cd bash-4.3.30
wooledg:/usr/src/bash/bash-4.3.30$ grep -ri clear_console .
wooledg:/usr/src/bash/bash-4.3.30$

I'd never even heard of it until now.  It's definitely a Debian add-on.

Thanks. I hadn't considered checking that way, but it's good to have
this confirmed.

I looked at my ~/.bash_logout and found I had recrafted it
long enough ago to forget doing it, just after starting to
use jessie.

It uses reset, and I often type reset myself, at times like
when the ssh pipe breaks during emacs -nw which throws you back
to a local bash prompt but with no visible cursor and a broken
command history recall.

Cheers,
David.

That fixed it here.  I noticed this problem a few months ago, but never 
tracked down the source.  About the only time anyone actually logs out 
of a terminal session on this box is if I need to reboot (such as for a 
new kernel).  This is an annoyance due to causing an unclean shutdown, 
but nothing more.  My workaround had been to shut down the X session on 
vt01 first, then the other two.  But this is better.  I replaced 
clear_console with a call to reset and the problem went away.  I shut 
down my dfaughter's X session and logged her out.  My X session on vt01 
is still up and running.



Thanks for the tip, David.


Marc

(SOLVED) Samba update, apt-listchanges, Pulseaudio, and X not starting

[Marc Shapiro]

I had a whole series of problems that cropped up, one after the other 
and trying to deal with them individually seemed virtually impossible.  
However...


The problem with Samba updates and apt-listchanges turned out to be a 
PEBKAC issue.  I was working with something in Python that needed Python 
3.  I decided to change one of my own scripts to be Python 3 
compatible.  Having done this, I thought, "Why don't I just change the 
default to Python 3?"  Bad idea.  Apt-listchanges (in Jessie) does not 
like Python 3.  Once I set the default back to Python 2.7 all the errors 
during "aptitude upgrade" went away. Once I was able to get Jessie fully 
up-to-date I made a copy of my partitions, made sure the new partitions 
were bootable, and upgraded them the Stretch.  Once I had Stretch 
running and properly configured the pulseaudio problems went away and 
X11 started working again.


Thanks to everyone who tried to help me sort through any of my many issues.

Note: apt-listchanges in Stretch specifically uses Python 3.


Marc Shapiro

Re: PulseAudio (Some users get sound, orthers do not)

[Marc Shapiro]

On 07/14/2017 02:09 AM, Curt wrote:

On 2017-07-09, Marc Shapiro <marcns...@gmail.com> wrote:

At some point in the past I was having sound issues which I traced to
pulseaudio.  I uninstalled pulseaudio and everything was fine.  Then
Firefox decided to require pulseaudio and my sound (in Firefox) went away.

I reinstalled pulseaudio and eventually got it working (I thought).
Well, it was working for me, but not for my wife and daughter,
apparently.  Both of them have recently let me know that they have been
without sound for an indeterminate period of time.

This morning, I went to my wife's login and ran:

pulseaudio --kill

rm ~/.config/pulse

pulseaudio --start

And that worked.  There were some warnings about not being able to find
the cookie file, which was understandable since I had just rm'd the
configuration directory.  But pulseaudio recreated the directory and
needed files and seems to be happy.  At least I am able to get sound
from the command line, as well as from Firefox.


When I tried to do the same thing under my daughter's login, however, I
get the warnings about the cookie file and ~/.config/pulse is NOT
recreated, so still no sound anywhere.  I have checked the permissions
of my daughter's  ~/.config/pulse directory and it is 644 with her user
as owner and group.  That matches ~/.config in my home directory and my
wife's.


The wiki suggests (for missing playback devices):

$ rm -r ~/.config/pulse /tmp/pulse-*
$ pulseaudio --kill
$ pulseaudio --start
I have not done 'rm -r  /tmp/pluse*' (the only such directory is empty), 
but I have done the rest under each of the three logins in the 
appropriate /home/ directories for each login.  My wife and I each get 
sound, but my daughter still gets silence.

https://wiki.debian.org/PulseAudio

I suppose you've verified in a mixer program and/or pavucontrol that all
is as should be.
Yes, I've checked both alsamixer and pavucontrol.  Everything looks the 
same under all three logins.



So why does pulseaudio not create the files it needs, like it did for me
and my wife?  Is there something else that I am missing? Any help will
be appreciated.

I don't have a ~/.config/pulse/ directory myself; I suppose in my case
pulse gets its config from /etc/pulse.

BTW, as it would appear that ~/.config/pulse/ is a directory and
not a file (unless I'm wrong in which case I'm wrong) I don't see how your
'rm ~/.config/pulse' command worked. But I guess I'm wrong because
certainly you would have noticed "rm: cannot remove 'pulse/': Is a
directory".

Or maybe during the redaction of your post you left out the '-r' flag by
inadvertence.

Correct.  The -r should have been included.

BTW, I solved the problem of the directory and files not being 
recreated.  My daughter had a .pulse sub-directory in her /home/ 
directory which prevented the new directory and files from being 
created.  Deleting that directory allowed the new directory and files to 
be created, but my daughter still gets no sound.


Marc

Re: SAMBA problems on Debian 8.8

[Marc Shapiro]

On 07/15/2017 08:09 AM, Jason Wittlin-Cohen wrote:
You are running an out-of-date version of samba 
(2:4.2.14+dfsg-0+deb8u6  vs. 4.2.14+dfsg-0+deb8u7+b1).  In addition, 
you seem to be missing samba-common-bin,  samba-dsdb-modules, and 
python-samba, all of which are dependencies of samba.


Try 'sudo apt-get install --reinstall samba'

If that doesn't include install the removed packages, run, 'sudo 
apt-get install samba-common-bin samba-dsdb-modules python-samba'


I, too, have been having problems that seem to point to samba.  Note 
that I am still running Jessie.


If I run 'sudo aptitude update' followed by 'sudo aptitude upgrade' I 
get the following:


-

The following packages will be upgraded:
  python-samba
The following partially installed packages will be configured:
  samba samba-common-bin
1 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/1,016 kB of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] y
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/apt-listchanges", line 29, in 
import anydbm
ImportError: No module named 'anydbm'
(Reading database ... 336173 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack 
.../python-samba_2%3a4.2.14+dfsg-0+deb8u7+b1_amd64.deb ...

  File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 63
except (IOError, OSError), e:
 ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit 
status 1

dpkg: trying script from the new package instead ...
  File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 63
except (IOError, OSError), e:
 ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
dpkg: error processing archive 
/var/cache/apt/archives/python-samba_2%3a4.2.14+dfsg-0+deb8u7+b1_amd64.deb 
(--unpack):

 subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 35, in 
from debpython.version import SUPPORTED, debsorted, vrepr, \
  File "/usr/share/python/debpython/version.py", line 24, in 
from ConfigParser import SafeConfigParser
ImportError: No module named 'ConfigParser'
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/python-samba_2%3a4.2.14+dfsg-0+deb8u7+b1_amd64.deb
needrestart is being skipped since dpkg has failed
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Failed to perform requested operation on package.  Trying to recover:
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python-samba:
 python-samba depends on samba-libs (= 2:4.2.14+dfsg-0+deb8u6); however:
  Version of samba-libs:amd64 on system is 2:4.2.14+dfsg-0+deb8u7+b1.

dpkg: error processing package python-samba (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of samba:
 samba depends on python-samba; however:
  Package python-samba is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package samba (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of samba-common-bin:
 samba-common-bin depends on python-samba; however:
  Package python-samba is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package samba-common-bin (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 python-samba
 samba
 samba-common-bin

-

So far as I can tell, samba only exists on my system because smbclient 
is suggested by CUPS and since my wife sometime prints from her Windows 
laptop I want to leave it installed (is this correct?).


Trying to reinstall, or update any of the samba packages just gives me 
more of the same.  How do I resolve this?


At some point I will want to upgrade from Jessie to Stretch, but I need 
a clean system before I can attempt that.


Marc

Re: PulseAudio (Some users get sound, orthers do not)

[Marc Shapiro]

On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 11:35:42PM -0700, Marc Shapiro wrote:

At some point in the past I was having sound issues which I traced
to pulseaudio.  I uninstalled pulseaudio and everything was fine. 
Then Firefox decided to require pulseaudio and my sound (in

Firefox) went away.

I reinstalled pulseaudio and eventually got it working (I
thought).  Well, it was working for me, but not for my wife and
daughter, apparently.  Both of them have recently let me know that
they have been without sound for an indeterminate period of time.

This morning, I went to my wife's login and ran:

pulseaudio --kill

rm ~/.config/pulse

pulseaudio --start

And that worked.  There were some warnings about not being able to
find the cookie file, which was understandable since I had just
rm'd the configuration directory.  But pulseaudio recreated the
directory and needed files and seems to be happy.  At least I am
able to get sound from the command line, as well as from Firefox.


When I tried to do the same thing under my daughter's login,
however, I get the warnings about the cookie file and
~/.config/pulse is NOT recreated, so still no sound anywhere.  I
have checked the permissions of my daughter's  ~/.config/pulse
directory and it is 644 with her user as owner and group.  That
matches ~/.config in my home directory and my wife's.


So why does pulseaudio not create the files it needs, like it did
for me and my wife?  Is there something else that I am missing?
Any help will be appreciated.


Marc



I found out why ~/.config/pulse was not recreated under my daughter's 
login.  Her ~/home/ directory had a .pulse directory and a .pulse-cookie 
file (from an even older installation?).  Once I deleted them starting 
pulseaudio properly recreated ~/.config/pulse in my daughter's ~/home/ 
directory. Unfortunately, still no sound for her.  My wife and I are 
both getting sound under our logins.



On 07/09/2017 05:52 AM, Wellington Terumi Uemura wrote:

Have you check your system log?
What dmesg tell you?

What should I be looking for in the logs?  I did not see anything that 
looked relevant in dmesg.



On 07/09/2017 11:33 AM, Wilko Fokken wrote:

my /etc/passwd:
- - - - - - - -
pulse:x:113:121:PulseAudio daemon,,,:/var/run/pulse:/bin/false

my /etc/group:
- - - - - - - -
audio:x:29:pulse,my_userid
pulse:x:121:my_userid
pulse-access:x:122:my_userid


my pulseaudio refresh (if no sound):
- - - - - - - - - - -
pulseaudio --kill && alsamixer -c0

make sure 'pulseaudio' is loaded only once
(check with 'ps ax | grep pulseaudio')


Wilko
Usually, all three of us are logged in all the time, so pulseaudio is 
running under each of our logins:


~$ ps ax | grep pulseaudio
 3029 ?S

PulseAudio (Some users get sound, orthers do not)

[Marc Shapiro]

At some point in the past I was having sound issues which I traced to 
pulseaudio.  I uninstalled pulseaudio and everything was fine.  Then 
Firefox decided to require pulseaudio and my sound (in Firefox) went away.


I reinstalled pulseaudio and eventually got it working (I thought).  
Well, it was working for me, but not for my wife and daughter, 
apparently.  Both of them have recently let me know that they have been 
without sound for an indeterminate period of time.


This morning, I went to my wife's login and ran:

pulseaudio --kill

rm ~/.config/pulse

pulseaudio --start

And that worked.  There were some warnings about not being able to find 
the cookie file, which was understandable since I had just rm'd the 
configuration directory.  But pulseaudio recreated the directory and 
needed files and seems to be happy.  At least I am able to get sound 
from the command line, as well as from Firefox.



When I tried to do the same thing under my daughter's login, however, I 
get the warnings about the cookie file and ~/.config/pulse is NOT 
recreated, so still no sound anywhere.  I have checked the permissions 
of my daughter's  ~/.config/pulse directory and it is 644 with her user 
as owner and group.  That matches ~/.config in my home directory and my 
wife's.



So why does pulseaudio not create the files it needs, like it did for me 
and my wife?  Is there something else that I am missing? Any help will 
be appreciated.



Marc

Re: No sound in Firefox

[Marc Shapiro]

On 03/20/2017 03:16 PM, songbird wrote:

Marc Shapiro wrote:

I recently upgraded my Firefox to v52 and immediately lost all sound in
Firefox.  Apparently Firefox now requires PulseAudio, which I had
previously uninstalled due to issues which I no longer remember.  I
tried installing PulseAudio, but still no sound in Firefox.  Also, no
sound anywhere else.  I uninstalled PulseAudio and sound came back
(except for Firefox).  I reverted Firefox to v51.0.1 and I have sound
everywhere.

I would like to reinstall PulseAudio so that I can upgrade Firefox, but
I can't get it to work.  Can anyone help me get sound working with
PulseAudio?

   make sure you have everything installed that you need.


   i had to go find a missing chunk and add it when
this happened to me:

(you may not need the development stuff, but ...)


$ dpkg -l | grep pulse

ii  gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio:i386 1.10.4-1   
 i386 GStreamer plugin for PulseAudio
ii  libpulse-dev:i38610.0-1 
 i386 PulseAudio client development headers 
and libraries
ii  libpulse-mainloop-glib0:i386 10.0-1 
 i386 PulseAudio client libraries (glib 
support)
ii  libpulse0:i386   10.0-1 
 i386 PulseAudio client libraries
ii  libpulsedsp:i386 10.0-1 
 i386 PulseAudio OSS pre-load library
ii  pulseaudio   10.0-1 
 i386 PulseAudio sound server
ii  pulseaudio-utils 10.0-1 
 i386 Command line tools for the PulseAudio 
sound server


=

   hth,


   songbird

It's working, now.  Not sure what the problem was, but after purging and 
reinstalling PulseAudio I now have sound that works in the latest 
Firefox.  I still think that it would be better if this hard requirement 
did not exist, but at least it is working now.  I just hope that 
whatever the problem was (years back) that caused me to purge PulseAudio 
in the first place has been fixed and does not come back to bite me.


I think that I'll keep my copy of Firefox v51.0.1 around for a while, 
until I am sure that I don't need to revert to it.


Marc

No sound in Firefox

[Marc Shapiro]

I recently upgraded my Firefox to v52 and immediately lost all sound in 
Firefox.  Apparently Firefox now requires PulseAudio, which I had 
previously uninstalled due to issues which I no longer remember.  I 
tried installing PulseAudio, but still no sound in Firefox.  Also, no 
sound anywhere else.  I uninstalled PulseAudio and sound came back 
(except for Firefox).  I reverted Firefox to v51.0.1 and I have sound 
everywhere.


I would like to reinstall PulseAudio so that I can upgrade Firefox, but 
I can't get it to work.  Can anyone help me get sound working with 
PulseAudio?



Marc

Re: How to >>COMPLETELY<< remove an application?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 03/08/2017 02:53 PM, Jimmy Johnson wrote:

On 03/08/2017 11:34 AM, Richard Owlet wrote:

On 03/08/2017 12:32 PM, Cindy-Sue Causey wrote:

On 3/8/17, Richard Owlett  wrote:

I recently installed grml-debootstrap from a purchased DVD set of
Jessie(8.6.0). I have minimal available bandwidth so I install 
strictly

from DVDs.

I have discovered a potential bug for my specific use case and believe
I've narrowed the problem source to two specific files.

I have used script to record some of my test runs after I had 
edited the

files in question.

I wanted to record a test run duplicating the as originally installed
environment. I used Synaptic to remove the package - choosing the 
"Mark

for complete removal" option. It notified me that it would remove
configuration files which was why I chose that option.

I reinstalled grml-debootstrap from the same DVD set. I did a dry run
and got a quite different set of errors.

IIRC I've seen discussions about removing EVERYTHING related to a
package. I don't recall the details.

What is the most effective way to completely remove an application?

If all else fails, I can reinstall Debian completely to a new 
partition.

But I'd like to use this as an "educational" experience.



I use both "apt-get autoremove" and "apt-get purge" for package
removal. Purge is the one that FEELS LIKE it zaps everything,
configuration files and all, but I've never gone about it
scientifically to verify yay or nay for fact.


From "man apt-get":


+

remove
   remove is identical to install except that packages are
removed
   instead of installed. Note that removing a package leaves 
its

   configuration files on the system. If a plus sign is
appended to
   the package name (with no intervening space), the identified
   package will be installed instead of removed.

purge
   purge is identical to remove except that packages are
removed and
   purged (any configuration files are deleted too).

+

O, and I learned something new today:

+

autoremove (and the auto-remove alias since 1.1)
   autoremove is used to remove packages that were 
automatically

   installed to satisfy dependencies for other packages and
are now no
   longer needed.

+

I did not know that. I knew there was "remove" and "autoremove" but
had never pursued *why*. I started using "autoremove" after I kept
seeing apt-get proffer it for removal of packages that are no
longer dependencies for anything. So from now on... my opening
statement will be that I use "apt-get remove" and "apt-get purge".
*grin*

Do Synaptic, Aptitude, and possibly anything else of that family have
similarly close but still different flags/commands?

Cindy :)



You got me looking at man-apt get.
It reminded me that I should clean my cache between test runs from a
repeatability perspective. It might explain some warning [rather than
error] messages I've gotten. I'm doing peculiar things, why shouldn't I
get peculiar messages.


Hi Richard,

First, unless you are using something older than Jessie you can use 
apt as in #apt update or #apt purge, apt-get is no longer needed.


Second, there is a command line package named "upgrade-system" that 
uses apt and deborphan, it will update, upgrade, autoremove and check 
for orphaned packages with the one command. On a Stable system let 
'upgrade-system' have it's way, it's safe and will remove your crud, 
but on testing and Sid check what packages it's going to remove just 
like you would with any other package manager and if your not sure use 
'gtkorphan' so you can see what you're doing.


So you could #apt purge 'package name' && upgrade-system
All done.

regards,


Not having known about upgrade-system, this seemed like something that I 
should look into, so I installed it.


Since I am running a 'stable' system I let it run.  It updated the 
package lists and upgraded 10 packages.  So far, so good. Then it ran 
deborphan (I guess) and wanted to remove 170 packages.  Despite the 
suggestion that this was safe on a stable system, I perused the packages 
to be removed.  These included sysvinit*!  What!  That would have 
removed sysvinit, sysvinit-core, and sysvinit-utils.  Since I am still 
(obvously) running sysv as my init system, this would have been a BAD 
THING and NOT a Good Thing!  This would have removed my init system! 
Presumably, it would then have installed systemd.  This would also have 
been a BAD THING!  So I said 'No' to that.  It then proceeded to clear 
my apt cache archives completely.  This is something that I never do, 
and would have told it not to do if it had asked me. It did not ask, it 
simply deleted everything in /var/cache/apt/archives!


I'll be deleting that package.  I can run 'apt update' and 'apt upgrade' 
perfectly well and feel safer about what is happening on my system.


Marc

Re: HELP! Re: How to fix I/O errors? (SOLVED)

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/12/2017 06:36 PM, Bob Weber wrote:


After writing this I wonder if I am over doing this.  I just don't want to loose
data from a failing drive.  I lived through 3.5 inch floppies which seemed to
always fail.  And tape drives that were painfully slow.  Not to mention back in
the mid 70s saving Z80 programs and data to audio cassette tapes at 1200 baud!
I was so glad to get my first 8 inch floppys working.

...Bob

I, too remember the cassette tapes for saving files and programs on my 
TRS-80 Model III.  I think I still have a few of those tapes (10 minutes 
tapes for a single program) lying around.  The Radio Shack cassette 
player has long since died, however.



Marc

Re: HELP! Re: How to fix I/O errors? (SOLVED)

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/12/2017 08:30 AM, Marc Auslander wrote:

I do not use LVM over raid 1.  I think it can be made to work,
although IIRC booting from an LVM over RAID partion has caused issues.

my boot partitions are separate.  They are not under LVM.

LVM is useful when space requirements are changing over time and the
ability to add additional disks and grow logical partions is needed.
In my case, that isn't an issue.  I have only a small number of
paritions - 3 because of history but starting from scratch, I'd only
have two - root (including boot) and /home.
I started using LVM when I had a much smaller disk (40GB).  With the 
current 1TB disk, even with three accounts on the box, and expanding 
several partitions when moving to the new disk, I have still partitioned 
less than half the disk and that is less than 1/3 used. So, no, LVM is 
probably not an issue any more.


BTW, what is your third partition, and why would you not separate it now 
if starting from scratch?

I converted to mdamd raid as follows, IIRC.

Install the second disk, and parition it the way I wanted.
Create a one disk raid 1 partion in each of the new paritions.
Take down my system, boot a live system from CD, and use a reliable
copy program like rsync to copy each of the partitions contents to the
equivalent raid partition.
Run grub to set the new disk as bootable.  This is by far the
trickiest part.
Boot the new system and verify it's happy.
Repartion the now spare disk to match the new one if necessary.
You may need to zero the front of each partion with dd if=/dev/zero
to avoid mdadm error checks.
Add the partitions from that disk to the mdadm paritions and let mdadm
do its thing.


On 02/12/2017 07:08 AM, Bob Weber wrote:


I use raid 1 also for the redundancy it provides.  If I need a backup 
I just connect a disk, grow each array and add it to the array (I have 
3 arrays for /, /home and swap).  It syncs up in a couple hours 
(depending on size of the array).  If you have grub install itself on 
the added disk you have a bootable copy of your system (mdadm will 
complain about a degraded array).  I then remove the drive and place 
it in another outbuilding in case of fire.  You can even use a 
external USB disk housing for the drive to keep from shutting down the 
system.  The sync is MUCH slower ... just coma back the next day and 
you will have your backup.  You then grow each array back to the 
number of disks you had before and all is happy again.  Note that this 
single disk backup will only work with raid 1.


So, how do you do a complete restore from backup?  Boot from just the 
single backup drive and add additional drives as Marc Auslander 
describes, above?



One other question.  If using raid, how do you know when a disk is 
starting to have trouble, as mine did?  Since the whole purpose of raid 
is to keep the system up and running I wouldn't expect errors to pop up 
like I was getting.  Do you have to keep an eye on log files?  Which 
ones?  Or is there some other way that mdadm provides notification of 
errors?  I've got to admit, even though I have been using Debian for 18 
or 19 years (since Bo), log files have never been my favorite thing.  I 
generally only look at them when I have a problem and someone on this 
luist tells me what to look for and where.


Marc

Re: HELP! Re: How to fix I/O errors? (SOLVED)

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/11/2017 05:22 PM, Marc Auslander wrote:

You didn't ask for advice so take it or ignore it.

IMHO, in this day and age, there is no reason not to run raid 1.  Two
disks, identially partitioned, each parition set up as a raid 1
partition with two copies.

When a disk dies, you remove it from all the raid partitions, pop in a
new disk, partition it,  add the new partitions back into the raid
partitions and raid rebuilds the copies.

Except for taking the system down to replace the disk (assuming you
don't have a third installed as a spare) you just keep running as if
nothing has happened.

I had been considering using raid 1 and I have not yet ruled it out 
entirely.  I have never used raid and have been reading up on it over 
the past couple of weeks.  AIUI you can use LVM over raid.  Is there any 
actual advantage to this?  I was trying to determine the advantages of 
using straight raid, straight LVM, or LVM over raid.  If I decide, 
later, to use raid, how dificult is it to add to a currently running 
system (with, or without LVM)?



Marc

Re: HELP! Re: How to fix I/O errors? (SOLVED)

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/08/2017 05:32 PM, David Christensen wrote:

On 02/08/17 15:59, Marc Shapiro wrote:

So how do I lay down a low level format on [the new 1 TB] drive?


I would use the SeaTools bootable CD to fill the drive with zeroes:

On 02/03/17 23:13, David Christensen wrote:
> Sometimes you get lucky and the tool is a live CD:
>
> 
www.seagate.com/files/www-content/support-content/downloads/seatools/_shared/downloads/SeaToolsDOS223ALL.ISO



David

I didn't feel like burning a CD and it has been a long time since I had 
a box with a 3.5" floppy (although i do have one or two drives in a box 
somewhere and quite a few of the folppies, themselves, as well) so I 
just used dd to write zeros to the disk.  It took a while, but it did 
the job.  In the end, I picked yet another method for moving to the new 
disk.  As mentioned  in my first post, I am using LVM and I have unused 
space in the VG. I was debating with myself whether I wanted to continue 
to use LVM, or just use raw disk partitions.  I almost went with raw 
disk partitions before I came across 'pvmove', which does exactly what I 
needed.  So...


I partitioned the new disk with 3 physical partitions of 2GB each for 
root/boot partitions.


The 4th partition was set up for LVM and was set as a Physical Volume 
(PV) to be added to the volume group along with my old drive.


Before adding the new disk, I created a new Logical Volume (LV) and 
manually copied my home partition (one user tree at a time) to the new 
partition.  This spat out errors whenever it hit an unreadable sector 
and I redirected those errors to a file for later use.


I then added the LVM partition from the new disk to the Volume Group 
(VG) and did a 'pvmove' for each LV from the old PVto the new PV.


I included the original LV for /home, along with the newly copied LV.  I 
expected it to spit out errors and fail, but it didn't.  I could hear it 
struggle a bit when it hit the bad spots, but then it kept going.  This 
was actually a good thing.  I had the list of affected files from when I 
did the manual copy of the /home partition, so I knew what to check 
after the move.  Several of the files were videos.  Using the original 
files before copying, Xine would play up to the first I/O Error and then 
freeze, even though it continued to read the file and advance the 
timeline until the file ended.  Using the manually copied file, which 
truncated at the first error, I also only got the beginning of the video 
and then it ended.  Using the file from the original LV which I moved to 
the new disk with pvmove, however, gave better results.  There is a bit 
of flicker when it hits a sector that had been unreadable before moving, 
but it continues on so the rest of the video can be viewed.  A few of 
the other files I did delete (Libre Office document files do not survive 
well, but I have a PDF of that file if I ever need it again).


Then I just had to copy over the root/boot partitions which I did from a 
shell after booting my clonezilla CD (it came in handy after all) and 
run lilo on them to make the new disk bootable. Everything seems good, 
now.  I ran the full test from SeagateTools (st) again, today, just to 
verify that all was still good.  It was.  I now have an empty PV in my 
LVM volume group that I will need to remove before I add any new Logical 
Volumes (LVs), but I can do that any time.  Since there are no LVs on it 
nothing will attempt to read from it, or write to it.


I'll keep an eye on the disk for a while, but this should fix the 
problem.  If I ever have a failing disk again I hope that I will 
remember this method because the LVM pvmove command really did make 
moving to another disk easy.  The hard part was dealing with the 
root/boot partitions and getting the new disk bootable.


Hopefully this thread will help someone else who has a similar problem 
in the future.



Marc

Re: HELP! Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/08/2017 03:37 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 02/08/2017 03:06 PM, Ric Moore wrote:

On 02/08/2017 04:38 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 02/08/2017 01:26 PM, Ric Moore wrote:

On 02/08/2017 02:37 AM, Marc Shapiro wrote:
How it went is not well.  I tested the new drive with SeagateTools 
and
it was fine.  Then I made a clonezilla live CD and booted from 
it.  It
stopped on the first read error with a message saying to restart 
using

the rescue option.  I did that.  After 5 hours it finished without
mentioning any errors.

I tried to boot to the old disk (since it was still wired that 
way).  I
got dropped int a maintenance shell with fs errors in /dev/sda4 
which is
the physical volume for all my LVM logical volumes -- /usr, /var, 
/home

and /temp.  It says to run fsck manually.

I decided to try the new drive, so I changed the cables and 
re-booted.


Maintenance shell, again.

/ mounted clean

lvm started

/home fs has errors run fsck (at this point, I'm afraid to try it)

/var, /usr, and /tmp all say that the superblock can not be read, 
or is

invalid.  Try running

e2fsck -b 8193 
or
e2fsck -b 32768 

Which do I use?

How did trying to clone the disk nake such a mess of BOTH disks?



You cloned a mess, you got a perfect copy. I'd do a clean install to
the new drive, after formatting the entire drive. Once you boot into
that drive, mount the old drive. It should show up in 
/media/

Then copy the directories of personal stuff you want to keep to a new
location on the new drive. I use cp -raf 
 and everything, including sub-directories, file
ownership and file permissions are preserved. If a file is clunky, it
won't copy it and should proceed.

Next, if you are in your office, observe if the window is open. If
yes, throw the old drive out of it. :) Ric



Ric,


As soon as I finished my last post (above) I realized that what you
suggest is exactly what I should have done in the first place. Why I
did not realize that earlier (and save myself a lot of headaches) I do
not know.  The system is now booting to the old drive, just as it did
before.  I think it just needed a good night's sleep.  I know that I 
did.


My next steps are:

Format new drive

Install fresh on new drive

Mount and copy /home from old drive to new drive


Careful there, I would not copy any of the /home/username/dot-files 
or dot directories over, except like .mozilla and .thunderbird, so 
you don't carry over some old and crufty setting that might have been 
problematic. To spare you nightmares like this one, I use the /opt 
directory on a separate partition for all of my personal data.
So, I use /opt/ric/Documents and in my brand-new /home/ric directory 
I delete the newly created Documents directory and then link (ln -s 
/opt/ric/Documents Documents) and do the same with the other familiar 
home directories like Videos, Music, Downloads, everything except 
Desktop. If something goes ape, systemk-wise, you can do a fresh 
install of / (root) directory and leave /opt alone. I've done this 
since the old Caldera days. Nary a burp in the barrel! Ric




I don't usually go quite that far, but photos, videos, and virtual 
disks are all in /usr/local/  which I will also need to copy over.  
You say to avoid copying   except .mozilla and .thunderbird.  I have 
117 such dot-files and dot-directories.  Are you saying only to leave 
.mozilla and .thunderbird and have everything else rebuild when it is 
next used.  Admittedly, that will get rid of some cruft, but how 
should I determine if there are others that I should keep?



I tried to format the new drive using st (Seagate Tools).  It said 
that it would remove all data, which is expected, but nothing was 
removed!  It also took less than a minute.  Should I be using /dev/sda 
in the command line instead of /dev/sg0 (which is how st -l lists the 
drive)?
I just tried this with 'st -i /dev/sda' (which should give drive info) 
and it does nothing, so that doesn't work.  So how do I lay down a low 
level format on this drive?



Marc



Marc

Re: HELP! Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/08/2017 03:06 PM, Ric Moore wrote:

On 02/08/2017 04:38 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 02/08/2017 01:26 PM, Ric Moore wrote:

On 02/08/2017 02:37 AM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

How it went is not well.  I tested the new drive with SeagateTools and
it was fine.  Then I made a clonezilla live CD and booted from it.  It
stopped on the first read error with a message saying to restart using
the rescue option.  I did that.  After 5 hours it finished without
mentioning any errors.

I tried to boot to the old disk (since it was still wired that 
way).  I
got dropped int a maintenance shell with fs errors in /dev/sda4 
which is
the physical volume for all my LVM logical volumes -- /usr, /var, 
/home

and /temp.  It says to run fsck manually.

I decided to try the new drive, so I changed the cables and re-booted.

Maintenance shell, again.

/ mounted clean

lvm started

/home fs has errors run fsck (at this point, I'm afraid to try it)

/var, /usr, and /tmp all say that the superblock can not be read, 
or is

invalid.  Try running

e2fsck -b 8193 
or
e2fsck -b 32768 

Which do I use?

How did trying to clone the disk nake such a mess of BOTH disks?



You cloned a mess, you got a perfect copy. I'd do a clean install to
the new drive, after formatting the entire drive. Once you boot into
that drive, mount the old drive. It should show up in /media/
Then copy the directories of personal stuff you want to keep to a new
location on the new drive. I use cp -raf 
 and everything, including sub-directories, file
ownership and file permissions are preserved. If a file is clunky, it
won't copy it and should proceed.

Next, if you are in your office, observe if the window is open. If
yes, throw the old drive out of it. :) Ric



Ric,


As soon as I finished my last post (above) I realized that what you
suggest is exactly what I should have done in the first place. Why I
did not realize that earlier (and save myself a lot of headaches) I do
not know.  The system is now booting to the old drive, just as it did
before.  I think it just needed a good night's sleep.  I know that I 
did.


My next steps are:

Format new drive

Install fresh on new drive

Mount and copy /home from old drive to new drive


Careful there, I would not copy any of the /home/username/dot-files or 
dot directories over, except like .mozilla and .thunderbird, so you 
don't carry over some old and crufty setting that might have been 
problematic. To spare you nightmares like this one, I use the /opt 
directory on a separate partition for all of my personal data.
So, I use /opt/ric/Documents and in my brand-new /home/ric directory I 
delete the newly created Documents directory and then link (ln -s 
/opt/ric/Documents Documents) and do the same with the other familiar 
home directories like Videos, Music, Downloads, everything except 
Desktop. If something goes ape, systemk-wise, you can do a fresh 
install of / (root) directory and leave /opt alone. I've done this 
since the old Caldera days. Nary a burp in the barrel! Ric




I don't usually go quite that far, but photos, videos, and virtual disks 
are all in /usr/local/  which I will also need to copy over.  You say to 
avoid copying   except .mozilla and .thunderbird.  I have 117 such 
dot-files and dot-directories.  Are you saying only to leave .mozilla 
and .thunderbird and have everything else rebuild when it is next used.  
Admittedly, that will get rid of some cruft, but how should I determine 
if there are others that I should keep?



I tried to format the new drive using st (Seagate Tools).  It said that 
it would remove all data, which is expected, but nothing was removed!  
It also took less than a minute.  Should I be using /dev/sda in the 
command line instead of /dev/sg0 (which is how st -l lists the drive?



Marc



Marc

HELP! Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

How it went is not well.  I tested the new drive with SeagateTools and it
was fine.  Then I made a clonezilla live CD and booted from it.  It stopped
on the first read error with a message saying to restart using the rescue
option.  I did that.  After 5 hours it finished without mentioning any
errors.

I tried to boot to the old disk (since it was still wired that way).  I got
dropped int a maintenance shell with fs errors in /dev/sda4 which is the
physical volume for all my LVM logical volumes -- /usr, /var, /home and
/temp.  It says to run fsck manually.

I decided to try the new drive, so I changed the cables and re-booted.

Maintenance shell, again.

/ mounted clean

lvm started

/home fs has errors run fsck (at this point, I'm afraid to try it)

/var, /usr, and /tmp all say that the superblock can not be read, or is
invalid.  Try running

e2fsck -b 8193 
or
e2fsck -b 32768 

Which do I use?

How did trying to clone the disk nake such a mess of BOTH disks?

Any help getting a working system again will be greatly appreciated.

Marc

On Feb 6, 2017 2:37 PM, "David Christensen" <dpchr...@holgerdanske.com>
wrote:

On 02/06/17 13:15, Marc Shapiro wrote:

> I am pasting the result of smartctl -x /dev/sda below as I have no real
> clue what to do with the information, but I have a few questions first.
>
> 1) I have purchased a new, very similar, Seagate 1TB drive and I plan to
> install it and copy the whole system to the new drive.
>

It sounds like you don't have a backup of the failing 1 TB drive (?).


Do you have a file server with ~1 TB of free space?  RAID?


Run memtest86+ for 24+ hours to verify that you don't have a memory problem.


Use SeaTools to wipe the new 1 TB drive and run the short and long tests.
Stop if anything fails.



What is the best
> way to do this copy since I don't wangt to copy bad sectors?
>

I've done it with 'dd' in the past, but will use 'ddrescue' in the future.



2) Once I have verified that the new drive boots
>

I'd do a fresh install on a 16+ GB SSD (USB flash drives also work).  A
recovered system disk image is too uncertain.



and everything is running properly
>

As I understand it, the drive microcontroller calculates and stores a
checksum with every sector (block).  That's one way it knows that a block
is bad upon reading.  So, when you copy out whatever blocks you can get,
you probably won't have errors in those blocks.


But, files and directories are stored on one or more sectors.  Depending
upon your file system, fsck may or may not find the missing blocks.


When you're done, the destination disk is likely to be missing files and/or
directories.



I am hoping to reformat the old drive.  This should
> reallocate the bad sectors IIRC.  I then would like to set up a raid
> with both drives (keeping a close eye on the old drive).The
> feasibility of this, I would guess, depends on what the posted smartctl
> information tells someone who knows what to look for.
>
> 3) As I understand it, the above mentioned raid should be safe since,
> even if the old drive deteriorates further, the system can run on just
> the new drive.  Is that correct?
>

Once you've copied out whatever blocks you can get, use SeaTools to wipe
the old 1 TB drive and run short and long tests.  If all three pass, I
might be tempted to re-use the drive.


If it fails to wipe and has plaintext, destroy it with a sledge hammer.
(Wear safety glasses!)


If it wipes but fails the short or long tests, recycle it.



Here is the smafrtctl output:
>
...

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

Interesting, given that the drive failed SeaTools (short test?).



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:  ( 121)The previous self-test
> completed having
> the read element of the test failed.
>

Matches SeaTools result.



Total time to complete Offline
> data collection: (  600) seconds.
>
...

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
> Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
> ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME  FLAGSVALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE
>   1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate POSR--   117   095   006- 165391146
>   3 Spin_Up_TimePO   095   093   000-0
>   4 Start_Stop_Count-O--CK   100   100   020-406
>   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   PO--CK   072   072   036-1181
>   7 Seek_Error_Rate POSR--   087   060   030- 656506200
>   9 Power_On_Hours  -O--CK   048   048   000-46195
>  10 Spin_Retry_CountPO--C-   100   100   097-0
>  12 Power_Cycle_Count   -O--CK   10

Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/03/2017 11:13 PM, David Christensen wrote:

On 02/03/17 13:47, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 02/02/2017 10:23 PM, David Christensen wrote:


Have you downloaded and run the manufacturer diagnostic utilities for
all your drives?  What do they say?


I have now downloaded and run Seagate's tools and it does show a does
show a disk error.  Since it stops on the first error I do not know if
this is an isolated error, or a more systematic problem.

Automatic Write Reallocation Enable (AWRE) is on by default, but
Automatic Read Reallocation Enable (ARRE) is off.  If I set ARRE on and
then run the long test (which reads all sectors sequentially), will that
reallocate any bad sectors and mark them as such?  Is this a safe thing
to do?


Beware that failures have a way of escalating faster than you expect.


Do you have a good backup of the drive?


If not and the data has high value, do not power up the drive. Pack it 
properly and send it to a professional recovery service.



>> http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/
> I see download links for DOS and Windows, nothiong for Linux

It is common for Wintel-centric tools to only run on Windows. It's 
good to keep an operational Windows system drive around. Mobile docks 
make swapping drives easy.



Sometimes you get lucky and the tool is a live CD:

www.seagate.com/files/www-content/support-content/downloads/seatools/_shared/downloads/SeaToolsDOS223ALL.ISO 




> If I remember correctly, [SMART] is
> only going to be useful if it was already installed so the daemon
> could be capturing data when the problem occurred.  Is that correct,
> or am I thinking of a different package?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

SMART is built-in to the firmware of the HDD/SSD; the drive 
microcontroller does most of the work.  Using the right tools, you can 
pull SMART information out of the microcontroller and/or adjust 
tunable SMART parameters.  As the drive is failing, you especially 
want those reports.  If you post them here, people can tell you all 
kinds of interesting things about your drive.



> I have now downloaded and run Seagate's tools and it does show a does
> show a disk error.  Since it stops on the first error I do not know if
> this is an isolated error, or a more systematic problem.

Take a picture of the screen with a digital camera (or phone), and 
then type the exact screen contents into a reply.



David

I am pasting the result of smartctl -x /dev/sda below as I have no real 
clue what to do with the information, but I have a few questions first.


1) I have purchased a new, very similar, Seagate 1TB drive and I plan to 
install it and copy the whole system to the new drive. What is the best 
way to do this copy since I don't wangt to copy bad sectors?


2) Once I have verified that the new drive boots and everything is 
running properly I am hoping to reformat the old drive.  This should 
reallocate the bad sectors IIRC.  I then would like to set up a raid 
with both drives (keeping a close eye on the old drive).  The 
feasibility of this, I would guess, depends on what the posted smartctl 
information tells someone who knows what to look for.


3) As I understand it, the above mentioned raid should be safe since, 
even if the old drive deteriorates further, the system can run on just 
the new drive.  Is that correct?



Here is the smafrtctl output:


$ sudo smartctl -x /dev/sda
smartctl 6.4 2014-10-07 r4002 [x86_64-linux-3.16.0-4-amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-14, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12
Device Model: ST31000528AS
Serial Number:5VP9QSWJ
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 03e5ccb5c
Firmware Version: CC3E
User Capacity:1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
Sector Size:  512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:7200 rpm
Device is:In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4
SATA Version is:  SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
Local Time is:Mon Feb  6 12:57:05 2017 PST

==> WARNING: A firmware update for this drive may be available,
see the following Seagate web pages:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/207931en
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/213891en

SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
AAM level is: 0 (vendor specific), recommended: 254
APM feature is:   Unavailable
Rd look-ahead is: Enabled
Write cache is:   Enabled
ATA Security is:  Disabled, NOT FROZEN [SEC1]
Wt Cache Reorder: Unknown

=== 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:  ( 121)The pre

Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/02/2017 10:23 PM, David Christensen wrote:


Have you downloaded and run the manufacturer diagnostic utilities for 
all your drives?  What do they say?


I have now downloaded and run Seagate's tools and it does show a does 
show a disk error.  Since it stops on the first error I do not know if 
this is an isolated error, or a more systematic problem.


Automatic Write Reallocation Enable (AWRE) is on by default, but 
Automatic Read Reallocation Enable (ARRE) is off.  If I set ARRE on and 
then run the long test (which reads all sectors sequentially), will that 
reallocate any bad sectors and mark them as such?  Is this a safe thing 
to do?


Marc

Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/03/2017 06:50 AM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

On Thu, Feb 02, 2017 at 11:34:03PM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

Have you looked at the SMART reports?  Please paste the following command
into a root shell, run it once for each drive (replacing /dev/sdX with the
corresponding device name), and paste both the command and the output into
your reply:

# smartctl -x /dev/sdX

root:/var/log# smartctl -x /dev/sda

bash: smartctl: command not found

What package would this be in?


apt-file search smartctl

shows this is in package smartmontools (in Jessie, I assume same in
other flavours)

Also it is installed in /usr/sbin which a non-root user doesn't usually
have on their path, which implies it may have to be executed as root.
The # in the sample command line also implies that, but just in case it
wasn't obvious...

Mark

I had been trying as root (see above).  I do not have smartmontools 
currently installed.  If I remember correctly, that is only going to be 
useful if it was already installed so the daemon could be capturing data 
when the problem occurred.  Is that correct, or am I thinking of a 
different package?



Marc

Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/02/2017 10:23 PM, David Christensen wrote:

On 02/02/17 13:05, Marc Shapiro wrote:

I apologize for this being so long, but since the problem occurs
sporadically I wanted to get as much information in this post as
possible because I don't know when it will happen again.

...

What operating system are you running?  Please paste the following 
command into a root shell, run it, and then paste both the command and 
the output into your reply:


# cat /etc/debian_version; uname -a


root:/var/log# cat /etc/debian_version; uname -a
8.6
Linux quixote 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt20-1+deb8u4 
(2016-02-29) x86_64 GNU/Linux





Did you make any hardware, software, or configuration changes 
immediately prior to the initial event?

No.



What is the make and model of the disk drive(s) that are having problems?



   *-disk
 description: ATA Disk
 product: ST31000528AS
 vendor: Seagate
 physical id: 0.0.0
 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
 logical name: /dev/sda
 version: CC3E
 serial: 5VP9QSWJ
 size: 931GiB (1TB)
 capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
 configuration: ansiversion=5 logicalsectorsize=512 
sectorsize=512 signature=575f



Have you looked at the SMART reports?  Please paste the following 
command into a root shell, run it once for each drive (replacing 
/dev/sdX with the corresponding device name), and paste both the 
command and the output into your reply:


# smartctl -x /dev/sdX

root:/var/log# smartctl -x /dev/sda

bash: smartctl: command not found

What package would this be in?




Have you downloaded and run the manufacturer diagnostic utilities for 
all your drives?  What do they say?



David


p.s. here are the links for the Intel, Seagate, and Western Digital 
drive diagnostics.  If your drive(s) are another brand, please find 
their tool and reply with the URL:


http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/solid-state-drives/ssd-software/intel-ssd-toolbox.html 



http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

I see download links for DOS and Windows, nothiong for Linux


http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?DL

Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/02/2017 04:20 PM, Marc Auslander wrote:

A few observations.

Are your filesystems journaled.  They say ext3, which IIRC does
support journaling?

the flashplayer should not be able to trash the file system.

/var/log/syslog is a place to look for io errors.  If you are having
them you likely have a failing disk and need to replace it ASAP.

given the cost of disks, running raid 1 with pairs of disks is really
a good idea.  When one fails you pull it, replace it, and rebuild, all
without data loss or loss of use of the system.


Yes, the filesystems are journalled.  I will take a look at /var/log/syslog.


Marc

Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/02/2017 01:40 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 02/02/2017 01:19 PM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Feb 02, 2017 at 01:05:47PM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

I apologize for this being so long, but since the problem occurs
sporadically I wanted to get as much information in this post as
possible because I don't know when it will happen again.

If I were you, I'd take a backup ASAP and double-check whether one
of your disks is dying. Perhaps there's some hint in /var/log/messages,

It might just be a lose cable.

Proceed carefully. If at all possible don't mount your disks read/write
until yon know more.

(Perhaps boot off an external medium, CDROM or USB stick).

Regards
- -- tomás
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAliTongACgkQBcgs9XrR2ka/BwCfXGGdH/hABiXZEG/nSFMR3QRJ
rhUAn1wC8V3ZJdqbdEQzV0McASFyNiZE
=vTyi
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

I was on the system last night until close to midnight with no 
problems.  There were only 3 lines for yesterday in /var/log/messages 
and one for just after midnight. libflashplayer seems to be 
segfaulting.  Nothing then until 11:41:30 this morning, which seems to 
be when I rebooted.



Feb  1 07:35:03 quixote rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" 
swVersion="8.4.2" x-pid="1993" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com;] 
rsyslogd was HUPed
Feb  1 13:22:19 quixote kernel: [102750.350970] plugin-containe[2161]: 
segfault at 15a5ed4cb3c4 ip 7fc269bf9412 sp 7ffc8f383c68 error 
6 in libflashplayer.so[7fc269588000+107a000]

Feb  1 21:24:46 quixote kernel: [131744.689533] usblp0: removed
Feb  2 00:00:04 quixote kernel: [141077.771903] plugin-containe[4968]: 
segfault at 1ccfdd1123c4 ip 7f3b59df9412 sp 7ffc2fe526d8 error 
6 in libflashplayer.so[7f3b59788000+107a000]
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" 
swVersion="8.4.2" x-pid="2055" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com;] start
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] Initializing cgroup 
subsys cpuset
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] Initializing cgroup 
subsys cpu
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] Initializing cgroup 
subsys cpuacct
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] Linux version 
3.16.0-4-amd64 (debian-ker...@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 4.8.4 
(Debian 4.8.4-1) ) #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt20-1+deb8u4 (2016-02-29)
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] Command line: 
BOOT_IMAGE=Jessie ro root=UUID=1a16b577-6751-412e-ba89-ca0718922385
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] e820: BIOS-provided 
physical RAM map:



The previous time that I had to reboot was two days ago.  The lines in 
/var/log/messages just prior to that reboot also point to segfaults in 
libflashplayer:


Jan 30 11:59:06 quixote kernel: [134871.151137] traps: 
plugin-containe[5434] general protection ip:7fc9105543aa sp:7ffef51c4240 
error:0 in libflashplayer.so[7fc90fe88000+107a000]
Jan 30 18:19:27 quixote kernel: [157729.969257] plugin-containe[32057]: 
segfault at 1a8 ip 7f2657a2bfd9 sp 7ffe71fb7d20 error 4 in 
libflashplayer.so[7f2657388000+107a000]
Jan 30 18:24:53 quixote kernel: [158056.527557] plugin-containe[352]: 
segfault at 1a8 ip 7fa9c7f2bfd9 sp 7ffca4961bc0 error 4 in 
libflashplayer.so[7fa9c7888000+107a000]
Jan 30 18:25:53 quixote kernel: [158116.346494] plugin-containe[723]: 
segfault at 237e0f7743c4 ip 7f3d694f9412 sp 7fffba01eed8 error 6 
in libflashplayer.so[7f3d68e88000+107a000]
Jan 31 08:53:21 quixote rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" 
swVersion="8.4.2" x-pid="1993" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com;] start
Jan 31 08:53:21 quixote kernel: [0.00] Initializing cgroup 
subsys cpuset
Jan 31 08:53:21 quixote kernel: [0.00] Initializing cgroup 
subsys cpu
Jan 31 08:53:21 quixote kernel: [0.00] Initializing cgroup 
subsys cpuacct
Jan 31 08:53:21 quixote kernel: [0.00] Linux version 
3.16.0-4-amd64 (debian-ker...@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 4.8.4 
(Debian 4.8.4-1) ) #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt20-1+deb8u4 (2016-02-29)
Jan 31 08:53:21 quixote kernel: [0.00] Command line: auto 
BOOT_IMAGE=Jessie ro root=UUID=1a16b577-6751-412e-ba89-ca0718922385
Jan 31 08:53:21 quixote kernel: [0.00] e820: BIOS-provided 
physical RAM map:



According to adobe.com I currently have version 24.0.0.186 installed and 
the latest version available is 24.0.0.194.  I don't know if the update 
to 24.0.0.186 coincides with the start of my problems, or not.



Marc

Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 02/02/2017 01:19 PM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Feb 02, 2017 at 01:05:47PM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

I apologize for this being so long, but since the problem occurs
sporadically I wanted to get as much information in this post as
possible because I don't know when it will happen again.

If I were you, I'd take a backup ASAP and double-check whether one
of your disks is dying. Perhaps there's some hint in /var/log/messages,

It might just be a lose cable.

Proceed carefully. If at all possible don't mount your disks read/write
until yon know more.

(Perhaps boot off an external medium, CDROM or USB stick).

Regards
- -- tomás
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAliTongACgkQBcgs9XrR2ka/BwCfXGGdH/hABiXZEG/nSFMR3QRJ
rhUAn1wC8V3ZJdqbdEQzV0McASFyNiZE
=vTyi
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

I was on the system last night until close to midnight with no 
problems.  There were only 3 lines for yesterday in /var/log/messages 
and one for just after midnight. libflashplayer seems to be 
segfaulting.  Nothing then until 11:41:30 this morning, which seems to 
be when I rebooted.



Feb  1 07:35:03 quixote rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" 
swVersion="8.4.2" x-pid="1993" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com;] rsyslogd 
was HUPed
Feb  1 13:22:19 quixote kernel: [102750.350970] plugin-containe[2161]: 
segfault at 15a5ed4cb3c4 ip 7fc269bf9412 sp 7ffc8f383c68 error 6 
in libflashplayer.so[7fc269588000+107a000]

Feb  1 21:24:46 quixote kernel: [131744.689533] usblp0: removed
Feb  2 00:00:04 quixote kernel: [141077.771903] plugin-containe[4968]: 
segfault at 1ccfdd1123c4 ip 7f3b59df9412 sp 7ffc2fe526d8 error 6 
in libflashplayer.so[7f3b59788000+107a000]
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" 
swVersion="8.4.2" x-pid="2055" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com;] start
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] Initializing cgroup 
subsys cpuset
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] Initializing cgroup 
subsys cpu
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] Initializing cgroup 
subsys cpuacct
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] Linux version 
3.16.0-4-amd64 (debian-ker...@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 4.8.4 
(Debian 4.8.4-1) ) #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt20-1+deb8u4 (2016-02-29)
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] Command line: 
BOOT_IMAGE=Jessie ro root=UUID=1a16b577-6751-412e-ba89-ca0718922385
Feb  2 11:41:30 quixote kernel: [0.00] e820: BIOS-provided 
physical RAM map:

How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Shapiro]

I apologize for this being so long, but since the problem occurs 
sporadically I wanted to get as much information in this post as 
possible because I don't know when it will happen again.


This problem started a bout two weeks ago.  I woke up to find a black 
screen and a kernel panic.  I rebooted and was presented with many fsck 
errors that could not be handled automatically so I ran it manually, as 
directed.  I took all the defaults.  Any time that I was shown a file 
name it seemed to be a flash file in my daughters /home directory or 
otherwise related to flash. Afterwards, the only partition that I found 
anything in lost+found was /home and all of the files there were, 
indeed, showing my daughter as owner.  I shutdown and rebooted to get 
everything clean and it seemed good for a while.  Since then, however, 
every day or two things just stop working properly.  Menus cease to do 
anything, pages don't load in the browser, etc.  If I exit from X and 
work at a console, some commands (like ls) seem to work fine, others do 
not, giving me I/O error messages.  I can't even do a typescript, or 
redirect the output to a file that I could attach here, since I just get 
errors.  I can't even do a ctl-alt-del to reboot, as I get an error saying:


INIT: cannot execute "/sbin/shutdown"


I have no choice but to power down with the power button, which I really 
don't like to do.


It happened again, today, and I manually copied down the errors so I 
hope that I got it all correct.  This is what I did before shutting down:


marc@quixote:~$ mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs 
(rw,relatime,size=10240k,nr_inodes=3081484,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts 
(rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)

tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=2472496k,mode=755)
/dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (ro,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=6622700k)
/dev/mapper/vg1-home on /home type ext3 (ro,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/mapper/vg1-tmp--jessie on /tmp type ext3 (ro,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/mapper/vg1-usr--jessie on /usr type ext3 (ro,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/mapper/vg1-usrlocal on /usr/local type ext3 (ro,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/mapper/vg1-photos on /usr/local/photos type ext3 
(rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/mapper/vg1-vDisks on /usr/local/vdisks type ext3 
(rw,relatime,data=ordered)

/dev/mapper/vg1-var--jessie on /var type ext3 (ro,relatime,data=ordered)
rpc_pipefs on /run/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw,relatime)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc 
(rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=12k)
cgmfs on /run/cgmanager/fs type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=100k,mode=755)
systemd on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup 
(rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,release_agent=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/systemd-shim-cgroup-release-agent,name=systemd)
tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs 
(rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=2472496k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse 
(rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)


Note that almost all real filesystems are readonly.


I logged out and back in as root.  From /root I attempted to copy a text 
file to /usr/local/photos (which still shows as rw):



cp wheezy1.script /usr/local/photos

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda]

[] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB:

[] Read(10): 28 00 00 3e bc 68 00 00 08 00

[] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 4111464

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda]

[] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB:

[] Read(10): 28 00 00 3e bc 68 00 00 08 00

[] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 4111464

-bash /bin/cp: Input/output error


NOTE: all the empty brackets on the left actually had timestamps in 
them.  The same is true in all following cases, as well.



I then changed directory to /usr/local/photos and tried to create a new 
file with touch:



touch tempfile

[] Write(10): 2a 00 08 56 9e 0c 00 00 08 00

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda]

[] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB:

[] Read(10): 28 00 08 56 05 1c 00 00 08 00

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda]

[] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB:


Finally, I tried to unmount /home with the intention of remounting it to 
see if it would come back as rw:



umount /home

[] sd: 0:0:0:0: [sda] 

Re: hplip and use of the "driver plugin"

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/05/2016 07:06 PM, Jape Person wrote:

On 12/05/2016 06:35 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 12/03/2016 12:36 PM, Jape Person wrote:

On 12/03/2016 03:20 PM, Brian wrote:

On Sat 03 Dec 2016 at 19:20:18 +, Lisi Reisz wrote:


On Saturday 03 December 2016 18:09:50 Jape Person wrote:

Hi,

I'm replying to myself at the top of the thread because I saw --
out of the corner of my eye -- that there were two recent
additions to the thread.

Unfortunately, a) I use POP3 and download all my mail immediately
from the server, b) my neighbor's Maine Coon cat, Mr. Potay-Toes,
just visited me and ran all 28 of his toes across my keyboard.
(Yes, he's polydactyl, and about 25 pounds at that.) Somehow he
managed a permanent deletion of all the mail I had just
downloaded.

These posts were made within the past 12 hours. If the kind
people who made those posts could be troubled to re-issue them
I'd appreciate it. Or, at least be aware that I'm not ignoring
your messages. I just don't have them any more.

Best, JP


You can read them in the archives:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/11/msg00783.html

And here is another one signed by you:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/11/msg00842.html

Or the thread itself:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/11/thrd2.html#00842


Eminently sensible. as usual. Replete with information and guidance.
The advice cannot be faulted.

But has any thought been given to the cat's feelings? It must be
suffering terrible pangs of regret and remorse. I do not think we
should put it through any more humiliation than it has suffered
already after realising it had inadvertantly deleted one of my
mails.

Just don't let it get anywhere near apt cat /dev/zero > ...



The cat has expressed no remorse and, in fact, appears to be
completely satisfied with himself. When he visits he interposes
himself between me and my keyboard, countering every typing move with
a ploy for physical attention.

Interestingly enough, this interference usually results in my messages
containing fewer typos, probably because I have to be very deliberate
in my efforts.

The creature is amazingly strong and agile, qualities which may have
been enhanced by his almost continuous practice of tai cheese.

Oh well, no business shall be accomplished today.


Ah, the cat is a member of the Feline Anti-Literary Society (FALS).  Its
member interpose themselves between humans and any type of reading
matter.  My two cats (and all previous co-habitating cats) are members
in good standing.  Tehy get between myself and book, tablets, computer
screens,  etc. as well as walking across keyboards.  Shadow is a 20 lb +
cat without having any Maine Coon in him, just fat.



Shadow. An interesting name for a 20 pound felis domesticus.

:-)

He wasn't 20 pounds when he came in from the back yard following my 
daughter.  He is grey (with a little bit of white) and he was following 
(shadowing?) my daughter and her friend around the yard for weeks.



Marc

Re: hplip and use of the "driver plugin"

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/03/2016 12:36 PM, Jape Person wrote:

On 12/03/2016 03:20 PM, Brian wrote:

On Sat 03 Dec 2016 at 19:20:18 +, Lisi Reisz wrote:


On Saturday 03 December 2016 18:09:50 Jape Person wrote:

Hi,

I'm replying to myself at the top of the thread because I saw --
out of the corner of my eye -- that there were two recent
additions to the thread.

Unfortunately, a) I use POP3 and download all my mail immediately
from the server, b) my neighbor's Maine Coon cat, Mr. Potay-Toes,
just visited me and ran all 28 of his toes across my keyboard.
(Yes, he's polydactyl, and about 25 pounds at that.) Somehow he
managed a permanent deletion of all the mail I had just
downloaded.

These posts were made within the past 12 hours. If the kind
people who made those posts could be troubled to re-issue them
I'd appreciate it. Or, at least be aware that I'm not ignoring
your messages. I just don't have them any more.

Best, JP


You can read them in the archives:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/11/msg00783.html

And here is another one signed by you:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/11/msg00842.html

Or the thread itself:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/11/thrd2.html#00842


Eminently sensible. as usual. Replete with information and guidance.
The advice cannot be faulted.

But has any thought been given to the cat's feelings? It must be
suffering terrible pangs of regret and remorse. I do not think we
should put it through any more humiliation than it has suffered
already after realising it had inadvertantly deleted one of my
mails.

Just don't let it get anywhere near apt cat /dev/zero > ...



The cat has expressed no remorse and, in fact, appears to be 
completely satisfied with himself. When he visits he interposes 
himself between me and my keyboard, countering every typing move with 
a ploy for physical attention.


Interestingly enough, this interference usually results in my messages 
containing fewer typos, probably because I have to be very deliberate 
in my efforts.


The creature is amazingly strong and agile, qualities which may have 
been enhanced by his almost continuous practice of tai cheese.


Oh well, no business shall be accomplished today.

Ah, the cat is a member of the Feline Anti-Literary Society (FALS).  Its 
member interpose themselves between humans and any type of reading 
matter.  My two cats (and all previous co-habitating cats) are members 
in good standing.  Tehy get between myself and book, tablets, computer 
screens,  etc. as well as walking across keyboards.  Shadow is a 20 lb + 
cat without having any Maine Coon in him, just fat.

Re: hplip and use of the "driver plugin"

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/02/2016 04:14 PM, Jape Person wrote:

On 12/02/2016 06:25 PM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

On Saturday, December 03, 2016 12:19:09 AM Doug wrote:

On 11/30/2016 09:57 AM, do...@mail.com wrote:
Beware of HP inkjets, HP recently had to change the code so that 
people
could install ink cartridges that were not HP's and no, refilling 
the old

ones did not work. So everyone had to have a firmware update.


I heard something different lately, that HP changed the drivers (at 
least

some), to, iirc, prevent people from using ink cartridges from other
manufacturers and to prevent people from refilling and reusing their 
old ink

cartridges.

Understanding this, I've made a note to myself to carefully avoid 
accidentally
updating the drivers in my HP 4 in 1 printer.  (I haven't yet emptied 
any
cartridges, so I don't yet have first hand experience with trying to 
refill and

reuse any...)

Did I misunderstand?



I don't think you misunderstood.

https://www.wired.com/2016/09/hp-printer-drm/

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/hps-drm-sabotages-off-brand-printer-ink-cartridges-with-self-destruct-date/ 



https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/20/hp-inkjet-printers-unofficial-cartridges-software-update 



http://fossforce.com/2016/09/hp-retrofits-ink-cartridge-drm-printers/

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160920/07021035568/hp-launched-delayed-drm-time-bomb-to-disable-competing-printer-cartridges.shtml 



This stuff in addition to the driver plugin decision makes me think 
that policy wrt HP's attitude toward users of their products has 
changed over recent years.


I'm hardly an expert, but the "DRM" retrofit strikes me as a pretty 
dirty trick. And what I, at least, perceive as the slightly sneaky 
introduction of the binary blob driver plugins while maintaining the 
guise of fully open-sourced driver software could be more of the same.


In one of my more paranoid moments while considering these factors I 
actually wondered if the driver plugins could also provide HP a means 
of preventing the use of alternative inks / toner / etc. That would be 
kind of nasty, wouldn't it? When I mentioned the idea to my 
right-wing-nut conspiracy theorist friend he suggested that the driver 
plugins might provide one of them there back doors" that the gov'ment 
is always puttin' in our computers. I have to admit I'm a bit bothered 
by the need to stick libraries and firmware for which we have no 
source code on the system drive. I might not be able to figure out a 
nasty hidden ploy in the source, but the fact that no one in the Open 
Source community has access to do so gives me pause.


Yet, its certainly true that HP has provided a wider range of drivers 
for its printers and scanners than practically any other common 
provider. I'm just annoyed by what appears to me to be a slightly 
"proprietary" (in the commercial and the more alarming social sense) 
trend. Hey, HP, I bought the printer. It's mine now. Hai capito?


Eh, different strokes for different folks. But HP won't be getting 
more business from me unless I see a change in the apparent policies 
like the ones that resulted in the aforementioned behaviors.


I'm more than a little tired of corporate behavior that smacks of the 
consumer being owned by corporations.


Regards,
JP

I have an HP Photosmart 6520 wihich is now almost three years old.  I 
run HPLip, but I can't say anything about the driver plugin, as that was 
not an issue for me when I set this box up and got the printer.  I can 
say that I started out using only HP ink cartridges as HP made it clear 
that other inks and cartridges would void the warranty.  The last actual 
HP cartridge that I bought, however, was in December of 2014.  Since 
then, I have been buying my inks from colortonerexpert.com, where I can 
get a 4 pack of black and each of the three colors for only $21.99.  
That's less than the cost of a single black cartridge from HP.  When I 
put a new cartridge in, as I just did a few hours ago, the printer 
informs me that there are non HP cartridges in the printer, but it does 
not prevent me from using them.  Presumably, if I needed and wanted 
service from HP they could see that non HP inks were used, but the 
printer is three years old and out of any warranty, so, not really an 
issue for me.

Re: Jessie upgrade without systemd [was: Debian *not very good]

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/26/2016 01:02 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

Note that many things (Gnome, I'm looking at you) *require* systemd
these days: it'll be much more difficult to avoid systemd if you
want a "modern" desktop environment.
That is the exact reason that I am using Mate.  Based on Gnome 2 with no 
systemd requirements.

Re: Firefox lost restore previous session setting

[Marc Shapiro]

On 10/21/2016 08:38 PM, Gary Dale wrote:

On 21/10/16 07:23 PM, Dutch Ingraham wrote:

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 02:32:46PM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:

On 21/10/16 04:28 AM, William Satterthwaite wrote:
Thanks. The  settings button | History  has a "Restore Closed Tabs" 
option
that isn't in the History pulldown. When you first start Firefox, 
the option
reads "Restore Closed Windows". Neither actually does the same thing 
as the
"restore previous session" button used to do. I have no idea what 
criteria
Firefox uses to decide which windows/tabs to restore, but they 
aren't the

ones that were open when I closed Firefox.

There also doesn't seem to be way of customizing the menu bar to 
include the
option, or even the option in settings button | History section. The 
History

| Restore Closed Tabs is gone.

I'm using Firefox 45.4.0.

I preferred it when Firefox automatically restored your last session. I
didn't mind it when it started asking you nor even when it made you 
press a

button on the startup page. I gather from the increasing difficulty in
restoring the previous session, someone has decided that people simply
shouldn't do it.  :)
I am using FF 49.0.1, currently logged into Arch Linux.  I have an 
option
History -> Restore Previous Session. I can also go History -> 
Recently Closed

Tabs -> Restore All Tabs.

Isn't this what you are looking for, or did I miss something?


Interesting. These options weren't there earlier but have now appeared.

Unfortunately History | Restore Previous Session is always greyed out. 
The other ones are now behaving like the Settings Button | History 
except that they are both present all the time. The Restore Closed 
Windows  opens a new browser with the previous session restored - 
meaning I have to close the browser that launched it.


There is some real weirdness going on with Firefox.


I am running 49.0.2 direct from Mozilla and it seems to work as it should.

I can go to Edit>Preferences>General and select "Show my windows and 
tabs from last time" so that it always starts with my previous windows 
and tabs opened.


If I select History>Recently closed Windows>Restore all windows it opens 
all of the listed windows and leaves my current window open as well.



Marc

Re: IceWeasel (Firefox) Update?

[Marc Shapiro]

I have added:

debhttp://mozilla.debian.net/  jessie-backports firefox-release

to my sources.list and installed firefox.  Well and good.  I have 
version 47.0.1.  I assume that we will catch up with Mozilla and get 
48.0 soon.


My actual question, though, is this:  Has anything been said about when, 
or if, the Mozilla team will be doing the same for Thunderbird?  I have 
my box set up to very easily update both Firefox and Thunderbird direct 
from the Mozilla site.  One click on a bookmark and running one script 
for each of them.  If I still have to get Thunderbird manually then it 
is really not that much more effort to upgrade Firefox directly, as well.


Marc


On 08/06/2016 03:37 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Saturday 06 August 2016 23:23:22 Bob Holtzman wrote:

On Fri, Aug 05, 2016 at 12:24:43AM +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Thursday 04 August 2016 20:48:41 afamilyofbetatesters hendersonpark

wrote:

This may not even be possible, but how can I update the IceWeasel
(Firefox) from 45 (old) to the current 47? I need it on 47 to be able
to use a platform I use instead of skype :)

What version of Debian are you using?  In jessie, I did:

# aptitude install firefox

and kept my system fully updated, and I have 47.0.1.

What repo and/or mirror are you using? I can only get v45.3 even from
backports. My bank is bitching at me to udate my browser. I can d/l from
the mozilla site but I would rather get a binary from a repo.

Yes, I'm sorry.  I was misremembering.  I have this in my sources.list:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main
deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ jessie-backports firefox-release

So I must originally have done:
# aptitude install -t jessie-backports firefox

I omitted the -t jessie-backports from my original line.

But I now just do aptitude update, aptitude upgrade, and it gets upgraded
along with everything else!!

See:
http://mozilla.debian.net/

Lisi

Re: reasons to ditch LILO before upgrading to jessie?

[Marc Shapiro]

On 07/05/2016 10:10 AM, Don Armstrong wrote:

On Tue, 05 Jul 2016, Giovanni Gigante wrote:

I am preparing my system for the upgrade from wheezy to jessie.
Since ancient ages, this system has been using LILO as the bootloader,
because, long ago, it was the only bootloader that was recommended for my
setup: this machine has two SATA disks in a software RAID 1 & LVM; that is,
in /etc/lilo.conf I have:

boot=/dev/md0
root=/dev/mapper/vg00-rootlv
raid-extra-boot = mbr

My doubt is that I have read that LILO, besides being very old, is now
unmantained. However, I see that the jessie installation manual still
mentions it, so it does not seem deprecated yet. So the question is:
is there any serious reason to switch the system to GRUB before
upgrading, or can I just keep my current setup and proceed to jessie?

There's always the possibility that you'll discover a new bug with lilo
and newer kernels which no one else has seen, but that's probably fairly
unlikely.

In my experience, grub now works way more reliably than lilo ever did,
and it's worth switching. [I switched over *years* ago for precisely
this reason.] But your experience may vary.


I finally switched to Jessie (but still using SysV Init) a few months 
ago.  This box and its predecessors have uses lilo (and SysV Init) since 
Bo was a pup.  I have yet to see any real reason to switch from lilo to 
grub.  I have never had a problem with lilo and I like having a config 
that I can directly control and understand.  As Giovanni says, however, 
YMMV.


Marc

Re: Changing tty shells

[Marc Shapiro]

On 06/09/2016 10:00 AM, Levi Darrell wrote:

Hi Debian Users List,

My computer is set to boot into a tty shell. I manually enter X Server 
by issuing the startx command. Previously, I had been able to switch 
tty shells with the keystroke combination Alt + F[1-6]. After 
attempting to reconfigure they keyboard and locales to solve an 
unrelated problem, suddenly this no longer works.


I can still change shells from within X Server by using the 
combination Ctrl + Alt + F[1-6], but I don't want to have to log into 
X Server in order to be able to use all of my tty shells. What could 
have gone wrong, and where do I look to fix the problem?


Thanks,

Levi


On my box, Alt + F[1-6] does not work in the console either, but Ctrl + 
Alt + F[1-6] works fine from the console, just as it does from X.



Marc

oenococcus bacteria and health risks

Re: Grub won't install

[Marc Shapiro]

On 05/17/2016 09:13 PM, J Mo wrote:


lilo is ultra-ancient. I don't even know if it works with modern kernels.

Lilo definitely still works with current kernels.  I started out using 
lilo 17 or 18 years ago and I am still using it now under Jessie and 
kernel vmlinuz-3.16.0-4-amd64.

Re: Jessie Performance under GNOME

[Marc Shapiro]

On 05/16/2016 09:42 AM, Michael Milliman wrote:



On 05/16/2016 09:12 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

"Jessie" is not generally very responsive compared to "Wheezy", display
update and mouse tracking is very very slow.

Could it be that your wheezy install did not use Gnome-3 and that you're
now using the standard Gnome-3 desktop (which presumes existence of 3D
GPU acceleration) on a system whose graphics card either has no 3D
abilities (or whose 3D abilities are not supported by the X.org driver)?

If so, try some other desktop: Gnome classic (not sure if it relies on
3D hardware as well, tho), Mate (a derivative of Gnome-2), xfce, ...
I use the cinnamon desktop, which is also a Gnome derivative.  It 
seems to work pretty well on my
older (or maybe simply OLD) Gateway laptop, on which I have always had 
performance problems with some of the newer software (Gnome desktop 
being among them).  Cinnamon performs much better on that laptop than 
Gnome-3 does.


 Stefan




I have been using Mate for quite a while, now.  I have no complaints.

Marc

Re: Posts don't show on list

[Marc Shapiro]

On 04/27/2016 04:21 PM, Stephen Allen wrote:

On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 11:26:36PM -0700, Marc Shapiro wrote:




Yes, it came right back.  It shows as being 'Read', but it's there.


Marc

You're reading the 'All Mail' Gmail directory that's why. Copies don't
come back to one's regular inbox, but will be in the all mail directory
if my memory serves me. By default Gmail won't show them in the inbox in
their Webmail Gmail or INBOX app. Using IMAP on mutt I don't see them
either unless I enter the all mail directory.


Actually, no.

I let Gmail do my filtering and all of the list's mail gets filtered 
into a separate folder.  My posts show up there.


Marc

Re: Posts don't show on list

[Marc Shapiro]

On 04/26/2016 11:24 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 04/22/2016 06:20 AM, Nicolas George wrote:

Le quartidi 4 floréal, an CCXXIV, The Wanderer a écrit :

If the list software did this modification for _all_ messages, not just
ones from Gmail addresses, I don't see how it would break threading
It breaks it for the *senders*: they would have the message in their 
"sent"

archive with the message-id chosen by the MUA and the rest of the thread
connected to the message (in-reply-to and references) with a different
message-id.


Interesting. Do you have any evidence for the idea that it uses more
than just Message-ID? I can't prove that it doesn't, but I've never 
seen

anything that I recall to indicate that it does.
A long time ago, I experimented with in-reply-to and references in 
order to
see how gmail decided if a mail belongs in a thread, and my 
conclusion was
that it relied more on the subject field than anything else. It was a 
long

time ago.


For myself, one major reason (not the only one) is that the received
copy is often different from the sent copy - modified message headers
(e.g. by adding List-ID), added mailing-list footer, et cetera.

True. A gamil users could check to see if it is possible to obtain that
information. I suspect the misfeature belongs in gmail's web interface,
actually, and the mails are really present in the archive and accessible
through IMAP.


I use a gmail account, but I hate the web interface, so I use 
Thunderbird with IMAP.  I'm pretty sure that I get all of my posts 
back.  I'll let you know for sure when this one comes back to me.



Marc


Yes, it came right back.  It shows as being 'Read', but it's there.


Marc

Re: Posts don't show on list

[Marc Shapiro]

On 04/22/2016 06:20 AM, Nicolas George wrote:

Le quartidi 4 floréal, an CCXXIV, The Wanderer a écrit :

If the list software did this modification for _all_ messages, not just
ones from Gmail addresses, I don't see how it would break threading

It breaks it for the *senders*: they would have the message in their "sent"
archive with the message-id chosen by the MUA and the rest of the thread
connected to the message (in-reply-to and references) with a different
message-id.


Interesting. Do you have any evidence for the idea that it uses more
than just Message-ID? I can't prove that it doesn't, but I've never seen
anything that I recall to indicate that it does.

A long time ago, I experimented with in-reply-to and references in order to
see how gmail decided if a mail belongs in a thread, and my conclusion was
that it relied more on the subject field than anything else. It was a long
time ago.


For myself, one major reason (not the only one) is that the received
copy is often different from the sent copy - modified message headers
(e.g. by adding List-ID), added mailing-list footer, et cetera.

True. A gamil users could check to see if it is possible to obtain that
information. I suspect the misfeature belongs in gmail's web interface,
actually, and the mails are really present in the archive and accessible
through IMAP.


I use a gmail account, but I hate the web interface, so I use 
Thunderbird with IMAP.  I'm pretty sure that I get all of my posts 
back.  I'll let you know for sure when this one comes back to me.



Marc

Re: Firefox install

[Marc Shapiro]

On 04/14/2016 01:22 AM, Liam O'Toole wrote:

On 2016-04-14, Marc Shapiro <marcns...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 04/13/2016 12:04 PM, Liam O'Toole wrote:

On 2016-04-13, Lisi Reisz <lisi.re...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday 13 April 2016 10:30:46 arian wrote:

Hi Marc,

firefox is not in jessie-backports, but in unstable.

??

And I have installed it from Jessie backports. Also from wheezy backports.

Lisi


I take it you're using the mozilla.debian.net repositories?


That is what I am attempting to do.

Marc



My question was directed at Lisi (and arian, indirectly) and intended to
clear up the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of the firefox package.
It seems that Lisi is using mozilla.debian.net, whereas arian is not.

I followed the same instructions that you did, on mozilla.debian.net,
and installed firefox-esr from that repository. I didn't get the warning
about untrusted packages. After you have installed the keys you have to
run 'apt-get update' or 'aptitude update' again, but I think you already
mentioned that you did that.

No, actually that appears to be the step that I missed.  I did the key 
installs with aptitude then tried the firefox install.  I did not do an 
'aptitude update' in between.  I just tried that now and the warnings 
have dissapeared.


Thank you.

Marc

Re: Firefox install

[Marc Shapiro]

On 04/13/2016 11:47 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Wednesday 13 April 2016 10:30:46 arian wrote:

Hi Marc,

firefox is not in jessie-backports, but in unstable.

??

And I have installed it from Jessie backports. Also from wheezy backports.

Lisi

So, having installed the key, should I still be getting messages from 
aptitude that firefox is untrusted?  Or have I missed a step somewhere?


Marc

Re: Firefox install

[Marc Shapiro]

On 04/13/2016 12:04 PM, Liam O'Toole wrote:

On 2016-04-13, Lisi Reisz  wrote:

On Wednesday 13 April 2016 10:30:46 arian wrote:

Hi Marc,

firefox is not in jessie-backports, but in unstable.

??

And I have installed it from Jessie backports. Also from wheezy backports.

Lisi


I take it you're using the mozilla.debian.net repositories?


That is what I am attempting to do.

Marc

Re: Firefox install

[Marc Shapiro]

On 04/13/2016 02:30 AM, arian wrote:

Hi Marc,

firefox is not in jessie-backports, but in unstable. The package which you may 
find there in the future is firefox-esr, which is in testing atm. For 
desktop-installations it's IMO better to just run testing or unstable if you're 
somewhat knowledgeable. You know, they say there are three flavors of debian: 
rusty, stale and broken. Probably should add a fourth fossilized flavor ;)


I have updated my /etc/apt/sources.list file and installed both 
pkg-mozilla-archive-keyring and debian-keyring.

so you installed from mozilla repo before and you certainly had the debian repo 
- what did you have to change?


I have been installing from the tarballs provided by mozilla.

Per mozilla.debian.net, I added the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ jessie-backports firefox-release

I do not have any testing or unstable lines in /etc/apt/sources.list


Also: how did you attempt to install the keyrings? check: dpkg -l 
${packagename} - ii in front for installed
If they're not installed, obtain the keyring deb via HTTPS and install: dpkg -i 
{packagename} (HTTPS because you cannot verify keyring integrity without 
trusting the keyring in the first place, default-HTTPS does not give you the 
same guarantees as secure-apt but at least an attacker has to acquire a validly 
signed cert.)

regards, Arian


Also per mozilla.debian.net:

You can do so by installing the |pkg-mozilla-archive-keyring| package 
. 
Once installed, you can check the key with the following command 
(requires the |debian-keyring| package to be installed):

Firefox install

[Marc Shapiro]

I have been using the Firefox and Thunderbird packages from Mozilla for 
quite a while.  Now that Firefox is available directly from the Debian 
repository I am thinking of installing from there.  (I may wait until 
Thunderbird is also available, however.)


I figure that even if I am going to wait until Thunderbird is available 
from the repository, that I should get things set up and ready to go, so 
I am following the instructions on mozilla.debian.net.


I have updated my /etc/apt/sources.list file and installed both 
pkg-mozilla-archive-keyring and debian-keyring.  I have run aptitude 
update and the check of the newly installed key as suggested on 
mozilla.debian.net.  It gives the message about '1 signature not checked 
due to a missing key|| || 
as 
expected'.


But when I try to run 'aptitude install-t jessie-backports firefox' I 
get the following:

-
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  firefox
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 11 not upgraded.
Need to get 43.1 MB of archives. After unpacking 99.4 MB will be used.
WARNING: untrusted versions of the following packages will be installed!

Untrusted packages could compromise your system's security.
You should only proceed with the installation if you are certain that
this is what you want to do.

  firefox

Do you want to ignore this warning and proceed anyway?
To continue, enter "Yes"; to abort, enter "No": no
-
With the key installed, I would have thought that the package would be 
trusted.  Is there another step that I am missing, somewhere?


Marc

Re: x86_64 vs i386 now firefoxish

[Marc Shapiro]

On 03/22/2016 04:14 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:


On Tuesday 22 March 2016 18:43:54 Lisi Reisz wrote:

> > What do I put in /etc/apt/sources.list to gain access to the newer

> > one?

>

> So far as I can see, you can't, not in Wheezy. The one you have is

> the most recent available via the repo.

> http://mozilla.debian.net/

>

> You could always use Firefox, as is now recommended. For instructions

> see the hyperlink I have referenced. That will give you 45.0.1.

>

> You could presumably download iceweasel_44.0.2-1~bpo70+1_i386.deb and

> install it with dpkg -i, but why? If Debian and Mozilla have made up,

> why not just accept it and use Firefox as Debian is now telling you to

> do? It takes a bit of getting used to, but why perpetuate a quarrel

> which is over?

>

> Lisi

It went to the mozilla site and pilled 45.0.1 but it was a tar.bz2, 
which when unpacked, did not have an installer script that I could find.


It looks to be prebuilt and ready to rock & roll, but where, and with 
what utility do I install it with?


Next?

Thanks.

Cheers, Gene Heskett

--

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:

soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."

-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

Genes Web page 

For Mozilla's tarballs you don't need anything to install it, other than 
tar and bzip2.  Put the tarball wherever you like, the use the command:


tar -jxvf firefox-45.0.1.tar.bz2

this will unzip and untar everything into a directory named firefox.  
You can leave the firefox directory there, or rename it, or move it 
wherever you want to.  Inside that directory are two executable files, 
firefox and firefox-bin.  Either one of these will start firefox.  They 
are usually a few bytes different in size, but both seem to work the 
same as far as I can tell.


BTW, the URL

https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-latest=linux64=en-US

will do a download of the latest firefox, and

https://download.mozilla.org/?product=thunderbird-latest=linux64=en-US

will do the same for Thunderbird, which can be installed in the same manner.

Whether you want to install Firefox and Thunderbird this way, or not, is 
up to you.  There should be debian packages for Firefox, now.  I'm not 
sure about Thunderbird.  I have been installing them this way ever since 
the Debian/Mozilla debates began.  This way I know that I always have 
the most current version of each of these packages.


Marc

Re: Iceweasel update error on Wheezy

[Marc Shapiro]

On 03/14/2016 02:59 PM, Liam O'Toole wrote:

On 2016-03-14, Laszlo T.  wrote:

No more Iceweasel brand. The Debian can use the Firefox name. So change the
repository

deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ jessie-backports firefox-release

In the case of wheezy, that would be wheezy-backports. Also, note that
firefox-esr is available as well as firefox-release. The former is
closer to the iceweasel experience in Debian.


remove Iceweasel,

Various metapackages depend on iceweasel. It might be prudent to leave
it in place for now, depending on your circumstances.


install Firefox and you will have fresh browser,
currently v45. It works fine for me.

Using firefox-esr on jessie here. No complaints so far.

What is the difference between firefox-esr and firefox-release?  I have 
been downloading the tar file from mozilla since this whole thing 
started.  How different is what Debian now has from the Mozilla tar 
file?  Will Debian keep up with the Mozilla releases, or will they 
remain behind until the next point release.  I am perfectly happy to 
continue downloading from Mozilla if that will keep me current, and 
Debian's repo will not.


Marc

Re: Stretch installation boots to read only

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/21/2015 07:19 PM, Sven Hartge wrote:

Gary Roach  wrote:


I Just upgraded from jessie to stretch. I needed a piece of software
that wasn't available in jessie. Since then, my system boots to a
command line prompt. Since /dev/sda1 has been mounted ro, Xwindows
doesn't start. I have to log in as root, run mount -o remount,rw
/dev/sda1 /, exit from root and then run startx each time I reboot the
system. If i run mount -a, an error occurs in fstab at line 9 which
happens to be the mounting instructions for /dev/sda1. I re-wrote the
line to read /dev/sda1/  ext4  rw, noatime0   1 and commented
out the old line. The error still happens at the same place.

Without you providing the exact error nobody will be able to help you.

So please paste the complete /etc/fstab as it is without any
modifications, deletions or alterations, the output of "systemctl
--failed" without any omissions and the exact error you get after "mount
-a" without any own interpretations.

Grüße,
Sven.

I believe that there should not be any spaces in the options, so if the 
line in /etc/fstab actually reads:


/dev/sda1/  ext4  rw, noatime0   1

It should be:

/dev/sda1/  ext4  rw,noatime 0   1


Marc

Re: hplip and scanning not working on Jessie

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/06/2015 04:41 AM, Selim T. Erdoğan wrote:

On Sat, Dec 05, 2015 at 07:21:49PM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

I recently upgraded to Jessie, using sysvint-core as my init and am having
some printer problems.

I got the printer working.  CUPS was apparently uninstalled during the
upgrade.  I had noticed that some CUPS files were being removed, but it
looked like replacements for them were being installed. Anyway, I installed
CUPS, found what driver it wanted (printer-driver-hpcups) and installed it,

printer-driver-hpcups is a dependency of hplip, so I would have expected
it to be already installed.


That was before I realized that hplip had be uninstalled, as well, so 
that could explain why it was not there at the time.





No matter which tool I tried to run, with the exception of hp-check, I get
the following error:

# hp-setup
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/usr/bin/hp-setup", line 45, in 
 from base import device, utils, tui, models, module, services, os_utils
   File "/usr/share/hplip/base/device.py", line 42, in 
 import status
   File "/usr/share/hplip/base/status.py", line 59, in 
 import hpmudext
ImportError: libnetsnmp.so.15: cannot open shared object file: No such file
or directory

This is strange.  libsnmp15 was in wheezy and a dependency of hplip 3.12.
In Jessie, hplip is 3.14 and depends on libsnmp30.  You seem to have
hplip 3.14, so why it's looking for the file above is a mystery.


HPLIP-Version: HPLIP 3.14.6
HPLIP-Home: /usr/share/hplip
warning: HPLIP-Installation: Auto installation is not supported for debian
distro  8.2 version

Maybe try purging and re-installing hplip?

I just tried purging libhpmud0, which also removed libsane-hpaio, hpijs, 
hplip, printer-driver-hpcups, printer-driver-hpijs, and 
printer-driver-postscript-hp.


I then manually purged all of the additional packages removed above to 
get rid of all config files.  After that, I reinstalled hplip. No luck.  
Still getting the same results and hp-check still says that 
python-reportlab, libtool, and hpmudext are missing, but they are all 
installed and up to date:


-
|  General Dependencies |
-

 error: reportlab Python-PDF-LibOPTIONAL 
2.0 3.1.8   MISSING'reportlab needs to be installed'
 libcryptoOpenSSL-Crypto-LibREQUIRED 
-   1.0.1   OK -
 pil  Python-Image-Lib  OPTIONAL 
-   1.1.7   OK -
 pyqt4-dbus   PyQt4-DBUSREQUIRED 
4.0 4.11.2  OK -
 libjpeg  JPEG-Lib  REQUIRED 
-   -   OK -
 libpthread   POSIX-Threads-Lib REQUIRED 
-   2.19OK -
 python-dbus  Python-DBUS   REQUIRED 
0.80.0  1.2.0   OK -
 python-devel Python-SDKREQUIRED 
2.2 2.7.9   OK -
 pyqt4Python-Qt4REQUIRED 
4.0 4.11.2  OK -
 cups-devel   CUPS-SDK  REQUIRED 
-   1.7.5   OK -
 sane-devel   SANE-SDK  REQUIRED 
-   1.0.24  OK -
 libusb   USB-Lib   REQUIRED 
-   1.0 OK -
 sane Scan-Lib  REQUIRED 
-   1.0.24  OK -
 cups-image   CUPS-Image-LibREQUIRED 
-   1.7.5   OK -
 libnetsnmp-devel SNMP-Networking-SDK   REQUIRED 
5.0.9   5.7.2   OK -
 python-xml   Python-XML-LibREQUIRED 
-   2.1.0   OK -
 python-notifyDesktop-notifications OPTIONAL 
-   -   OK -


--
|  Compile Time Dependencies |
--

 gcc  gcc-Compiler  REQUIRED 
-   4.9.2   OK -
 error: libtool   Build-tools   REQUIRED 
-   -   MISSING'libtool needs to be installed'
 make GNU-Build-tools   REQUIRED 
3.0 4.0 OK -


--
|  Python Extentions |
--

 cupsext  CUPS-ExtensionREQUIRED 
-   3.14.6  OK -
 pcardext PhotoCard-Extension   REQUIRED 
-   3.14.6  OK -
error: NOT FOUND OR FAILED TO LOAD! Please reinstall HPLIP and check for 
the proper installation of hpmudext.
 error: hpmudext  IO-Extension  REQUIRED 
-   3.14.6  MISSING'Not Found or Failed to load, 
Please reinstall HPLIP'


-

Re: hplip and scanning not working on Jessie

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/06/2015 03:14 PM, Selim T. Erdoğan wrote:

On Sun, Dec 06, 2015 at 10:54:39AM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 12/06/2015 04:41 AM, Selim T. Erdoğan wrote:

On Sat, Dec 05, 2015 at 07:21:49PM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

I recently upgraded to Jessie, using sysvint-core as my init and am having
some printer problems.

I got the printer working.  CUPS was apparently uninstalled during the
upgrade.  I had noticed that some CUPS files were being removed, but it
looked like replacements for them were being installed. Anyway, I installed
CUPS, found what driver it wanted (printer-driver-hpcups) and installed it,

printer-driver-hpcups is a dependency of hplip, so I would have expected
it to be already installed.



No matter which tool I tried to run, with the exception of hp-check, I get
the following error:

# hp-setup
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/usr/bin/hp-setup", line 45, in 
 from base import device, utils, tui, models, module, services, os_utils
   File "/usr/share/hplip/base/device.py", line 42, in 
 import status
   File "/usr/share/hplip/base/status.py", line 59, in 
 import hpmudext
ImportError: libnetsnmp.so.15: cannot open shared object file: No such file
or directory

This is strange.  libsnmp15 was in wheezy and a dependency of hplip 3.12.
In Jessie, hplip is 3.14 and depends on libsnmp30.  You seem to have
hplip 3.14, so why it's looking for the file above is a mystery.

This is the version of libhpmud0 that is currently installed on my system,
even after purging and reinstalling several times.  That date seems rather
old.  Almost half a year BEFORE the Jessie release:

/var/cache/apt/archives$ ls libhp*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 170600 Nov  8  2014 libhpmud0_3.14.6-1+b2_amd64.deb

That seems to be the correct version for jessie.



Is there a newer version that I should be getting? This version says that it
requires libsnmp30, and that is what it brings in, but then it actually
seems to try to use libsnmp15. Is this a bug?  If so, how do I report it?

Apparently, this has been reported already.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=794803
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=783296

It looks like this is not due to the current version of libhpmud trying
to use old libnetsnmp15, but due to old hpmud-related files being left
around.



Googling this error, it comes up all over the place.  In multiple
distributions and years.  I saw it as early as 2009 and just about every
year since then.  I haven't had any trouble with this prior to Jessie, but
it certainly seems to have been a problem for others. Is this a problem with
dependencies in libhpmud0 not being kept up correctly?  But that doesn't
explain why it would be a problem across multiple distributions.  I'm
confused (obviously).  Any further ideas?

I found an Ubuntu bug report from mid-2014:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hplip/+bug/1245010

It looks like you can run

locate hpmudext.so
locate libhpmud.so

and after that, for each entry  resulting from these commands,

ldd  | grep netsnmp

If any snmp15 lines show up, then  might be the culprit, so you
can try removing .

(If the snmp15 error goes away, but you still have problems, you might
try reinstalling hplip and libhpmud0 again.)


This is the output that I am getting:

$ locate libhpmud.so
/usr/lib/libhpmud.so.0
/usr/lib/libhpmud.so.0.0.6
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so.0
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so.0.0.6

only the version 0.0.6 listings are actual files.  The others are soft 
links to them.  Hence, the matching results shown here:


$ ldd /usr/lib/libhpmud.so.0 | grep netsnmp
libnetsnmp.so.30 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnetsnmp.so.30 
(0x7f9950fd8000)

$ ldd /usr/lib/libhpmud.so.0.0.6 | grep netsnmp
libnetsnmp.so.30 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnetsnmp.so.30 
(0x7f8b45ad8000)

$ ldd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so | grep netsnmp
libnetsnmp.so.15 => not found
$ ldd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so.0 | grep netsnmp
libnetsnmp.so.15 => not found
$ ldd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so.0.0.6 | grep netsnmp
libnetsnmp.so.15 => not found

So, is this saying that the problem is in the 64 bit version of the 
library only, and not the in the 32 bit version?  If I delete the x86_64 
version of the file isn't that going to give me problems since I am 
running a 64 bit machine?


Marc

(SOLVED) Re: hplip and scanning not working on Jessie

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/06/2015 04:07 PM, Selim T. Erdoğan wrote:

On Sun, Dec 06, 2015 at 03:47:24PM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 12/06/2015 03:14 PM, Selim T. Erdoğan wrote:

On Sun, Dec 06, 2015 at 10:54:39AM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 12/06/2015 04:41 AM, Selim T. Erdoğan wrote:

On Sat, Dec 05, 2015 at 07:21:49PM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

I recently upgraded to Jessie, using sysvint-core as my init and am having
some printer problems.

I got the printer working.  CUPS was apparently uninstalled during the
upgrade.  I had noticed that some CUPS files were being removed, but it
looked like replacements for them were being installed. Anyway, I installed
CUPS, found what driver it wanted (printer-driver-hpcups) and installed it,

printer-driver-hpcups is a dependency of hplip, so I would have expected
it to be already installed.



No matter which tool I tried to run, with the exception of hp-check, I get
the following error:

# hp-setup
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/usr/bin/hp-setup", line 45, in 
 from base import device, utils, tui, models, module, services, os_utils
   File "/usr/share/hplip/base/device.py", line 42, in 
 import status
   File "/usr/share/hplip/base/status.py", line 59, in 
 import hpmudext
ImportError: libnetsnmp.so.15: cannot open shared object file: No such file
or directory

This is strange.  libsnmp15 was in wheezy and a dependency of hplip 3.12.
In Jessie, hplip is 3.14 and depends on libsnmp30.  You seem to have
hplip 3.14, so why it's looking for the file above is a mystery.

This is the version of libhpmud0 that is currently installed on my system,
even after purging and reinstalling several times.  That date seems rather
old.  Almost half a year BEFORE the Jessie release:

/var/cache/apt/archives$ ls libhp*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 170600 Nov  8  2014 libhpmud0_3.14.6-1+b2_amd64.deb

That seems to be the correct version for jessie.



Is there a newer version that I should be getting? This version says that it
requires libsnmp30, and that is what it brings in, but then it actually
seems to try to use libsnmp15. Is this a bug?  If so, how do I report it?

Apparently, this has been reported already.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=794803
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=783296

It looks like this is not due to the current version of libhpmud trying
to use old libnetsnmp15, but due to old hpmud-related files being left
around.



Googling this error, it comes up all over the place.  In multiple
distributions and years.  I saw it as early as 2009 and just about every
year since then.  I haven't had any trouble with this prior to Jessie, but
it certainly seems to have been a problem for others. Is this a problem with
dependencies in libhpmud0 not being kept up correctly?  But that doesn't
explain why it would be a problem across multiple distributions.  I'm
confused (obviously).  Any further ideas?

I found an Ubuntu bug report from mid-2014:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hplip/+bug/1245010

It looks like you can run

locate hpmudext.so
locate libhpmud.so

and after that, for each entry  resulting from these commands,

ldd  | grep netsnmp

If any snmp15 lines show up, then  might be the culprit, so you
can try removing .

(If the snmp15 error goes away, but you still have problems, you might
try reinstalling hplip and libhpmud0 again.)


This is the output that I am getting:

$ locate libhpmud.so
/usr/lib/libhpmud.so.0
/usr/lib/libhpmud.so.0.0.6
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so.0
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so.0.0.6

only the version 0.0.6 listings are actual files.  The others are soft links
to them.  Hence, the matching results shown here:

$ ldd /usr/lib/libhpmud.so.0 | grep netsnmp
 libnetsnmp.so.30 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnetsnmp.so.30
(0x7f9950fd8000)
$ ldd /usr/lib/libhpmud.so.0.0.6 | grep netsnmp
 libnetsnmp.so.30 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnetsnmp.so.30
(0x7f8b45ad8000)
$ ldd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so | grep netsnmp
 libnetsnmp.so.15 => not found
$ ldd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so.0 | grep netsnmp
 libnetsnmp.so.15 => not found
$ ldd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhpmud.so.0.0.6 | grep netsnmp
 libnetsnmp.so.15 => not found

So, is this saying that the problem is in the 64 bit version of the library
only, and not the in the 32 bit version?  If I delete the x86_64 version of
the file isn't that going to give me problems since I am running a 64 bit
machine?

The bug reports I found seemed to imply deleting such files fixed their
problems, and didn't mention any other problems.  The "good" file,
/usr/lib/libhpmud.so.0.0.6, should also be 64-bit, since you got it from
libhpmud0_3.14.6-1+b2_amd64.deb.  If you want to be really safe, you can
temporarily move the three "bad" files somewhere else, like your home
directory, instead of reall

Re: hplip and scanning not working on Jessie

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/06/2015 04:41 AM, Selim T. Erdoğan wrote:

On Sat, Dec 05, 2015 at 07:21:49PM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

I recently upgraded to Jessie, using sysvint-core as my init and am having
some printer problems.

I got the printer working.  CUPS was apparently uninstalled during the
upgrade.  I had noticed that some CUPS files were being removed, but it
looked like replacements for them were being installed. Anyway, I installed
CUPS, found what driver it wanted (printer-driver-hpcups) and installed it,

printer-driver-hpcups is a dependency of hplip, so I would have expected
it to be already installed.



No matter which tool I tried to run, with the exception of hp-check, I get
the following error:

# hp-setup
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/usr/bin/hp-setup", line 45, in 
 from base import device, utils, tui, models, module, services, os_utils
   File "/usr/share/hplip/base/device.py", line 42, in 
 import status
   File "/usr/share/hplip/base/status.py", line 59, in 
 import hpmudext
ImportError: libnetsnmp.so.15: cannot open shared object file: No such file
or directory

This is strange.  libsnmp15 was in wheezy and a dependency of hplip 3.12.
In Jessie, hplip is 3.14 and depends on libsnmp30.  You seem to have
hplip 3.14, so why it's looking for the file above is a mystery.


This is the version of libhpmud0 that is currently installed on my 
system, even after purging and reinstalling several times.  That date 
seems rather old.  Almost half a year BEFORE the Jessie release:


/var/cache/apt/archives$ ls libhp*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 170600 Nov  8  2014 libhpmud0_3.14.6-1+b2_amd64.deb


Is there a newer version that I should be getting? This version says 
that it requires libsnmp30, and that is what it brings in, but then it 
actually seems to try to use libsnmp15. Is this a bug?  If so, how do I 
report it?


Googling this error, it comes up all over the place.  In multiple 
distributions and years.  I saw it as early as 2009 and just about every 
year since then.  I haven't had any trouble with this prior to Jessie, 
but it certainly seems to have been a problem for others. Is this a 
problem with dependencies in libhpmud0 not being kept up correctly?  But 
that doesn't explain why it would be a problem across multiple 
distributions.  I'm confused (obviously).  Any further ideas?


Marc


HPLIP-Version: HPLIP 3.14.6
HPLIP-Home: /usr/share/hplip
warning: HPLIP-Installation: Auto installation is not supported for debian
distro  8.2 version

Maybe try purging and re-installing hplip?

hplip and scanning not working on Jessie

[Marc Shapiro]

I apologize for the length of this post, but I wanted to get all the 
info that I have available up front.


I recently upgraded to Jessie, using sysvint-core as my init and am 
having some printer problems.


I got the printer working.  CUPS was apparently uninstalled during the 
upgrade.  I had noticed that some CUPS files were being removed, but it 
looked like replacements for them were being installed. Anyway, I 
installed CUPS, found what driver it wanted (printer-driver-hpcups) and 
installed it, set the desktop to access the printer locally, and enabled 
remote printing.  I can now print from the desktop and my wife can print 
from her laptop.  Hooray!


Then I tried scanning.  Libre Office, which under Wheezy allowed me to 
import a file from the scanner, no longer lists any devices when I try 
to do so.  I noticed that libsane was installed, but sane was not.  I 
installed sane.  No difference.


I also noticed that the HP Device Manger no longer seems to work.  I 
tried running it from the command line so that I could see the errors 
produced.


No matter which tool I tried to run, with the exception of hp-check, I 
get the following error:


# hp-setup
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/hp-setup", line 45, in 
from base import device, utils, tui, models, module, services, os_utils
  File "/usr/share/hplip/base/device.py", line 42, in 
import status
  File "/usr/share/hplip/base/status.py", line 59, in 
import hpmudext
ImportError: libnetsnmp.so.15: cannot open shared object file: No such 
file or directory



According to http://hplipopensource.com/node/323 this happens when 
hpmudext.so is not in the correct place, but...


# python -V
Python 2.7.9

# locate hpmudext.so
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/hpmudext.so

# ls -l /usr/lib/ | grep python
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   32 May 12  2013 
libpyglib-2.0-python2.7.so.0 -> libpyglib-2.0-python2.7.so.0.0.0
-rw-r--r--  1 root root15288 May 12  2013 
libpyglib-2.0-python2.7.so.0.0.0

drwxr-xr-x 23 root root20480 Jun 28  2013 python2.6
drwxr-xr-x 27 root root20480 Nov 29 23:52 python2.7
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Jun 28  2013 python3
drwxr-xr-x 31 root root 4096 Aug 16  2013 python3.2
drwxr-xr-x 32 root root12288 Nov 30 00:00 python3.4

I am running Python 2.7.9 and the file IS in 
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/, so what next.  I ran hp-check and it 
listed a number of unmet dependencies.  I installed the required packages.


I still can't run any of the hp tools.

I re-ran hp-check and I get the following:

*
root@quixote:/home/marc# hp-check
Saving output in log file: /home/marc/hp-check.log

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.14.6)
Dependency/Version Check Utility ver. 15.1

Copyright (c) 2001-13 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

Note: hp-check can be run in three modes:
1. Compile-time check mode (-c or --compile): Use this mode before 
compiling the HPLIP supplied tarball (.tar.gz or .run) to determine if 
the proper dependencies are installed to successfully compile HPLIP.
2. Run-time check mode (-r or --run): Use this mode to determine if a 
distro supplied package (.deb, .rpm, etc) or an already built HPLIP 
supplied tarball has the proper dependencies installed to successfully run.
3. Both compile- and run-time check mode (-b or --both) (Default): This 
mode will check both of the above cases (both compile- and run-time 
dependencies).


Check types:
a. EXTERNALDEP - External Dependencies
b. GENERALDEP - General Dependencies (required both at compile and run 
time)

c. COMPILEDEP - Compile time Dependencies
d. [All are run-time checks]
PYEXT SCANCONF QUEUES PERMISSION

Status Types:
OK
MISSING   - Missing Dependency or Permission or Plug-in
INCOMPAT  - Incompatible dependency-version or Plugin-version

warning: debian-8.2 version is not supported. Using debian-7.5 versions 
dependencies to verify and install...


---
| SYSTEM INFO |
---

 Kernel: 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u6 
(2015-11-09) GNU/Linux

 Host: quixote
 Proc: 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u6 (2015-11-09) 
GNU/Linux

 Distribution: debian 8.2
 Bitness: 64 bit


---
| HPLIP CONFIGURATION |
---

HPLIP-Version: HPLIP 3.14.6
HPLIP-Home: /usr/share/hplip
warning: HPLIP-Installation: Auto installation is not supported for 
debian distro  8.2 version


Current contents of '/etc/hp/hplip.conf' file:
# hplip.conf.  Generated from hplip.conf.in by configure.

[hplip]
version=3.14.6

[dirs]
home=/usr/share/hplip
run=/var/run
ppd=/usr/share/ppd/hplip/HP
ppdbase=/usr/share/ppd/hplip

(SOLVED) Re: Upgrade to Jessie lost all monitor resolutions except 1024x768

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/01/2015 02:05 PM, Sven Arvidsson wrote:

On Tue, 2015-12-01 at 16:39 -0500, Felix Miata wrote:

"Now", as in Stretch and/or Sid? I searched in Jessie and failed to
discover
any available firmware-amd-graphics. Is another repo besides main and
updates
required? I booted same machine to Stretch, and neither package was
found.
And, Stretch is also using FBDEV, like OP here, and stuck in
1280x1024 on a
1680x1050 display, with libdrm-radeon1, xserver-xorg-video-ati and
xserver-xorg-video-radeon installed. ???


Sid and/or stretch, I don't recall exactly when the split was made.

The clue is in the name, nonfree ;)

The correct package in Jessie is firmware-linux-nonfree.  It apparently 
no longer pulls in anything else and has all the drivers, itself.  There 
is no firmware-amd-graphics in Jessie.  Yes.  Having nonfree in your 
sources list does help, but I do keep it there. Installing 
firmware-linux-nonfree and rebooting was the answer.


Thank you to everybody that helped on this.  Since this is solved and 
the answer wasn't found in the logs, I will pass on sending a really 
long post by including the logs.


Marc

Re: Upgrade to Jessie lost all monitor resolutions except 1024x768

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/30/2015 11:32 PM, Felix Miata wrote:

Marc Shapiro composed on 2015-11-30 23:11 (UTC-0800):


Alright.  Knowing nothing about the inner workings of X, I can at least
look through the two log files (in my previous post) and see where they
suddenly go in very different directions.
Using the numbers down the left-hand side of the logs (I don't know what
they actually are, but they seem to be ascending, so I will use them as
markers), at 32.959 in the Wheezy log and at 2271.289 in the Jessie log
they both say:
  (++) using VT number 7
a few lines below that, in the Wheezy log:
[32.974] (II) Module fbdevhw: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[32.974]compiled for 1.12.4, module version = 0.0.2
[32.974]ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 12.1
[32.975] (II) RADEON(0): TOTO SAYS fddc
[32.975] (II) RADEON(0): MMIO registers at 0xfddc: size  128KB
[32.975] (II) RADEON(0): PCI bus 1 card 0 func 0
[32.975] (II) RADEON(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen 
section
  "Default Screen Section" for depth/fbbpp 24/32
[32.975] (==) RADEON(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32
[32.975] (II) RADEON(0): Pixel depth = 24 bits stored in 4 bytes (32 bpp 
pixmaps)
[32.975] (==) RADEON(0): Default visual is TrueColor
  SKIP
[33.024] (II) RADEON(0): Detected total video RAM=1048576K, 
accessible=262144K (PCI BAR=262144K)
and in the Jessie log:
[  2271.291] (II) Module fbdevhw: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[  2271.291]compiled for 1.16.4, module version = 0.0.2
[  2271.291]ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 18.0
[  2271.291] (**) FBDEV(2): claimed PCI slot 1@0:0:0
[  2271.291] (II) FBDEV(2): using default device
[  2271.291] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for vesa
[  2271.291] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
[  2271.291] (II) UnloadModule: "radeon"
[  2271.291] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
[  2271.291] (II) UnloadModule: "modesetting"
[  2271.291] (II) FBDEV(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen 
section
  "Default Screen Section" for depth/fbbpp 16/16
[  2271.291] (==) FBDEV(0): Depth 16, (==) framebuffer bpp 16
[  2271.291] (==) FBDEV(0): RGB weight 565
[  2271.291] (==) FBDEV(0): Default visual is TrueColor
[  2271.291] (==) FBDEV(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0)
[  2271.291] (II) FBDEV(0): hardware: simple (video memory: 1536kB)
[  2271.291] (II) FBDEV(0): checking modes against framebuffer device...
[  2271.291] (II) FBDEV(0): checking modes against monitor...
[  2271.291] (--) FBDEV(0): Virtual size is 1024x768 (pitch 1024)
[  2271.291] (**) FBDEV(0):  Built-in mode "current"
[  2271.291] (==) FBDEV(0): DPI set to (96, 96)
In Wheezy, the graphics card seems to have been found and a depth of
24bpp is being used by RADEON(0) with a GB of graphics memory, while in
Jessie, Screen 0 is getting deleted and the radeon module is removed.
Instead of RADEON(0) we see FBDEV(0), instead of 24bbp, only 16bbp is
being used.  Only 1536kB of video memory is being used and the screen
size is set to "Virtual size is 1024x768 (pitch 1024)".

FBDEV doesn't ever support 1920x1080 AFAIK. Video RAM and bpp are non-issues
here. What needs to be determined is why RADEON is not being used in Jessie.
FBDEV is a grossly inferior fallback.


I don't know enough to determine what is causing these differences, let
alone how to correct the problem.  If someone else can figure out a
solution I would be most grateful.

You haven't provided everything requested. We don't know which gfxcard you
have, which 'lspci | grep VGA' would report. Your excerpts from Xorg.0.logs
don't have other info that may be required to help, such as kernel cmdline,
which could be the reason why RADEON is not used. Another possibility is that
Jessie provides firmware your ATI gfxcard requires in a separate firmware
package that is not installed, or maybe the ATI driver package didn't get
installed at all. Read through
https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo#Troubleshooting and you may not need any
more help from us.


Here is the lspci output showing the graphics card:

$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI 
Cedar PRO [Radeon HD 5450/6350]


My post prior to the one you quoted above has the entire contents of 
both logs.  After posting them, I saw where the logs diverged so 
radically and made another post with just the excerpts.


Marc

Re: Upgrade to Jessie lost all monitor resolutions except 1024x768

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/01/2015 07:03 AM, Sven Arvidsson wrote:

On Mon, 2015-11-30 at 23:11 -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

In Wheezy, the graphics card seems to have been found and a depth of
24bpp is being used by RADEON(0) with a GB of graphics memory, while
in
Jessie, Screen 0 is getting deleted and the radeon module is removed.
   
Instead of RADEON(0) we see FBDEV(0), instead of 24bbp, only 16bbp is

being used.  Only 1536kB of video memory is being used and the screen
size is set to "Virtual size is 1024x768 (pitch 1024)".

I don't know enough to determine what is causing these differences,
let
alone how to correct the problem.  If someone else can figure out a
solution I would be most grateful.

Most likely missing firmware as others have suggested, check dmesg and
grep for radeon and/or drm.

I will install  firmware-amd-graphics as soon as I get a chance 
(probably this evening) and report back.  Meanwhile, Felix says that he 
never received my post with the full logs and others seem not to have 
received them, either, by what they have posted.  For the sake of 
keeping all of the information available for the future, I will post 
them at that time, as well.  Should they be sent as attachments, or 
inline.  I sent them as attachments last time. Could that have been the 
problem?


Marc

Re: Upgrade to Jessie lost all monitor resolutions except 1024x768

[Marc Shapiro]

On 12/01/2015 04:15 AM, Chris Bannister wrote:

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 05:10:33PM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 11/30/2015 04:45 PM, Mike Kupfer wrote:

Marc Shapiro wrote:


On 11/30/2015 04:01 PM, Mike Kupfer wrote:

- Boot a Live image and see what resolution it gives you.

I can still boot into Wheezy and get 1920x1080.

I meant a Jessie Live image.

Though given that you didn't find an old xorg.conf file, the odds of the
Live image doing something different seem pretty slim.

I agree with Felix's recommendation to post information about the
graphics card and at least the Jessie X log file (having both the Jessie
and Wheezy log files would be better).

regards,
mike

I have a copy of Xorg.0.log for both Wheezy and Jessie.  How do I post them
to paste.debian.net?

Please post them to the mailing list for future info.
It's only Felix who suggests that, you've been on the list long enough
to know that logs are sent with the emails.

I have posted them to the list.  My post of Nov. 30 (yesterday) at 5:27 
PM PDT contains the full content of both log files.


Marc

Upgrade to Jessie lost all monitor resolutions except 1024x768

[Marc Shapiro]

I have been holding off on upgrading to Jessie, but I decided that it 
was time to at least try it out.


I made a copy of my current system in unused space on my disk and 
updated lilo.  After verifying that I could boot into both setups, I 
upgraded the copy to Jessie after installing sysvinit-core to avoid 
systemd.  It boots and lets me log in on multiple consoles as different 
users.  Each user can run startx and gets their own session on separate 
vts specific to the user.  This was my big question, and it seems to 
work fine.  (We'll have to see about Jessie+1, it seems.)


My problem now is screen resolution.  All I get is 1024x768.  Under 
Wheezy I get 15 different resolutions from 720x400 and 640x480 up to 
1920x1080.  Jessie says that the monitor is "Unknown" and only allows me 
to use 1024x768.  How do I get X to recognize my monitor under Jessie?


Marc

Re: Upgrade to Jessie lost all monitor resolutions except 1024x768

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/30/2015 04:01 PM, Mike Kupfer wrote:

Marc Shapiro wrote:


My problem now is screen resolution.  All I get is 1024x768.  Under
Wheezy I get 15 different resolutions from 720x400 and 640x480 up to
1920x1080.  Jessie says that the monitor is "Unknown" and only allows
me to use 1024x768.  How do I get X to recognize my monitor under
Jessie?

Here are a couple troubleshooting steps that I would try:

- Check for a legacy configuration file (e.g., /etc/X11/xorg.conf).  If
   one is present, try moving it out of the way and restarting X.

Does not exist.  That was the first thing I looked for.

- Boot a Live image and see what resolution it gives you.

I can still boot into Wheezy and get 1920x1080.

Re: Upgrade to Jessie lost all monitor resolutions except 1024x768

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/30/2015 04:45 PM, Mike Kupfer wrote:

Marc Shapiro wrote:


On 11/30/2015 04:01 PM, Mike Kupfer wrote:

- Boot a Live image and see what resolution it gives you.

I can still boot into Wheezy and get 1920x1080.

I meant a Jessie Live image.

Though given that you didn't find an old xorg.conf file, the odds of the
Live image doing something different seem pretty slim.

I agree with Felix's recommendation to post information about the
graphics card and at least the Jessie X log file (having both the Jessie
and Wheezy log files would be better).

regards,
mike
I have a copy of Xorg.0.log for both Wheezy and Jessie.  How do I post 
them to paste.debian.net?


Marc

Re: Upgrade to Jessie lost all monitor resolutions except 1024x768

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/30/2015 01:21 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:
I have been holding off on upgrading to Jessie, but I decided that it 
was time to at least try it out.


I made a copy of my current system in unused space on my disk and 
updated lilo.  After verifying that I could boot into both setups, I 
upgraded the copy to Jessie after installing sysvinit-core to avoid 
systemd.  It boots and lets me log in on multiple consoles as 
different users.  Each user can run startx and gets their own session 
on separate vts specific to the user.  This was my big question, and 
it seems to work fine.  (We'll have to see about Jessie+1, it seems.)


My problem now is screen resolution.  All I get is 1024x768. Under 
Wheezy I get 15 different resolutions from 720x400 and 640x480 up to 
1920x1080.  Jessie says that the monitor is "Unknown" and only allows 
me to use 1024x768.  How do I get X to recognize my monitor under Jessie?


Marc


I decided, since this was just a test, to install systemd-sysv (which 
should remove sysvinit-core) so that I could see if booting with systemd 
would make a difference.   But...


I can't install systemd-sysv.  I get the following:

# aptitude install systemd-sysv
No candidate version found for systemd-sysv
No candidate version found for systemd-sysv
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.

and:

# aptitude show systemd-sysv
No current or candidate version found for systemd-sysv
Package: systemd-sysv
New: yes
State: not installed
Version: 215-17+deb8u2
Priority: important
Section: admin
Maintainer: Debian systemd Maintainers 
<pkg-systemd-maintain...@lists.alioth.debian.org>

Architecture: amd64
Uncompressed Size: 78.8 k
Depends: systemd (= 215-17+deb8u2)
PreDepends: systemd
Conflicts: sysvinit-core, sysvinit-core, upstart, upstart, systemd-sysv
Replaces: sysvinit (< 2.88dsf-44~), sysvinit (< 2.88dsf-44~), 
sysvinit-core, sysvinit-core, upstart, upstart

Description: system and service manager - SysV links
 systemd is a replacement for sysvinit.  It is dependency-based and 
able to read the LSB init script headers in addition to

 parsing rcN.d links as hints.

 It also provides process supervision using cgroups and the ability to 
not only depend on other init script being started,

 but also availability of a given mount point or dbus service.

 This package provides the manual pages and links needed for systemd to 
replace sysvinit. Installing systemd-sysv will

 overwrite /sbin/init with a link to systemd.
Homepage: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd

which suggests that it exists, but nothing is installable.  Now, I would 
be happier to get this working without systemd, but shouldn't systemd be 
installable?


Marc

Re: Upgrade to Jessie lost all monitor resolutions except 1024x768

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/30/2015 02:36 PM, Ansgar Burchardt wrote:

Marc Shapiro <marcns...@gmail.com> writes:

I decided, since this was just a test, to install systemd-sysv (which
should remove sysvinit-core) so that I could see if booting with
systemd would make a difference.   But...

I can't install systemd-sysv.  I get the following:

[...]

which suggests that it exists, but nothing is installable.  Now, I
would be happier to get this working without systemd, but shouldn't
systemd be installable?

Did you maybe pin systemd-sysv to make sure it didn't get installed?
Check /etc/apt/preferences & /etc/apt/preferences.d or the output of
"apt-cache policy systemd-sysv".

If you try systemd, you might want to make sure that "sysvinit" is
installed. This should provide an entry in grub's boot menu to start
with sysvinit in case anything goes wrong; with other bootloaders one
can pass init=/lib/sysvinit/init to do so.

Though it would surprise me a bit if this affects X in Jessie.

Ansgar

Yes.  That was the reason that I could not install systemd-sysv.  I had 
forgotten having done that.  I eliminated the pin and installed 
systemd-sysv.  Then I rebooted.  Unfortunately, it did not solve the 
problem.  The monitor is still "Unknown" and only 1024x768 resolution is 
available.


Marc

Re: Problems with Gmail IMAP on Icedove

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/30/2015 03:06 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

I have been trying to set up IMAP from two different accounts on Gmail in
Icedove: 31.8.0-1~deb7u1.  I have tired changing the password in case I had
got it wrong, I have retyped everything several times, I have copied and
pasted, I have crawled up the wall, then I suddenly started to get messages
from Gmail:


Sign-in attempt prevented



Hi x,
Someone just tried to sign in to your Google Account xx...@gmail.com
from an app that doesn't meet modern security standards.

Details:
Monday, 30 November 2015 22:35 (GMT)We strongly recommend that you use a
secure app, like Gmail, to access your account. All apps made by Google
meet these security standards. Using a less secure app, on the other hand,
could leave your account vulnerable. Learn more
.

Google stopped this sign-in attempt, but you should review your recently
used devices:
-

I have spent an hour at least trying to enter the * details - and they
were fine.  Google had just decided to block me.

The purpose of the exercise wasn't to access the mail, which is only
gibberish.  The purpose is to test setting up an IMAP account in Icedove from
Gmail.

What do I do now?  Install Thunderbird?  Will it even work in Thunderbird?
Give up and tear my hair out?  Icedove isn't even mentioned on the Devices
and Activities page or I could tell it to accept it.  And Google would claim
that it is being helpful!

I can use Icedove on Wheezy to fetch email from Gmail via POP3.  G.

Lisi

I am using Thunderbird (downloaded from Mozilla) to access my Gmail 
account using IMAP.  I don't remember what I had to do to set it up.  I 
just remember googling and following posted instructions.


Marc