Re: [gentoo-user] Hibernation doesn't work
On Monday 15 November 2010 07:11:14 Benyamin Dvoskin wrote: Hi , I've been trying to configure hibernation to work on my netbook , and for some reason it doesnt work when I go to hibernate , and then power up again , it starts as if from scratch what can i check ? what is the right way to configure it ? I'm trying to get the same working on mine, not had much time to look into it myself yet. Do you get any messages in your logs? -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] Hibernation doesn't work
On Monday 15 November 2010 09:27:09 J. Roeleveld wrote: On Monday 15 November 2010 07:11:14 Benyamin Dvoskin wrote: Hi , I've been trying to configure hibernation to work on my netbook , and for some reason it doesnt work when I go to hibernate , and then power up again , it starts as if from scratch what can i check ? what is the right way to configure it ? I'm trying to get the same working on mine, not had much time to look into it myself yet. Do you get any messages in your logs? -- Joost Also, the following might help: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1565700 I've only just started going through it, so not sure how usefull it really is, but it might give some pointers. -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] samba no connect from windows
On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: This samba problem (windows machines cannot connect to gentoo server) seems to have followed a recent update including samba. qlop shows: Mon Nov 1 05:10:33 2010 net-fs/samba-3.5.6 Usually I've found I might need to redo passwords with smbpasswd. This time, that is not sufficient. Did you miss this? LOG: postinst The default passdb backend has been changed to 'tdbsam' in samba 3.4! That breaks existing setups using the 'smbpasswd' backend without explicit declaration! Please use 'passdb backend = smbpasswd' if you would like to stick to the 'smbpasswd' backend or convert your smbpasswd entries using e.g. 'pdbedit -i smbpasswd -e tdbsam'. For further information make sure to read the release notes at http://samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.4.9.html and http://samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.4.0.html
Re: [gentoo-user] swap usage creeping up
On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 07:09, Iain Buchanan iai...@netspace.net.au wrote: On Tue, 2010-11-09 at 23:24 +0200, Fatih Tümen wrote: On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 08:45, Iain Buchanan iai...@netspace.net.au wrote: OK so vm.swappiness seemed to help a bit but today I notice that swap usage is up again. It's firefox: PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 14072 iain 20 0 1369m 897m 15m S 3 29.5 113:14.91 firefox I think that's 1.3Gb + 900Mb... sounds like a memory leak to me. Anyone else run firefox for 113+ hours? I'm using 3.6.9-r1. 1.3G is the grant total of Res and Swap. You need to read man top before judging not-entirely-accurate values reported by top. judging? I only said I think! sure, top has it's quirks, but it's ok for comparing against itself. 900M is resident on your main memory. '113+ hours' is not a decent information to draw conclusion from. Running firefox for 113+ hours with a single tab on a text-only website is not same as running dozens of tabs with dozens of multimedia/embedded objects. sure, but running it for 10 or 100 or 1000 hours should produce roughly the same characteristics for the same browsing behaviour if all other things are equal. A few months ago this didn't cause any issues at all, now I'm seeing high swap usage. I usually never use my 3G of physical RAM. Can you recall what significant change have you made to the system? For emerged packages you can try smth like genlop --list --date 1 month ago and then check against the versions upgraded from. Again today I see it is using about 900Mb in total, which seems quite large. vm.swappiness is set to 0. I've upgraded firefox to 3.6.12. I had to reboot, but I'll check the usual statistics next time I see it. You say swappiness is set to 0 but dont give any swap usage info. If there is any swap usage while swapiness is 0 then it would be weird and we could blame it on the kernel. I just googled mem usage firefox as I am running out of ideas. It seem like you are not the only one complaining about this. Take a look at these top results. There are some tweaking advice, see it they work for you. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Memory_Leak http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/high+memory+usage Chromium, which I have been happily using for almost a year now, has a task manager which shows mem usage of every extension and tab. If firefox has switched to multiprocessing, which was a feature plan some time ago, similar tool should likely be available for firefox as well. -- Fatih
Re: [gentoo-user] Hibernation doesn't work
On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 08:11, Benyamin Dvoskin benyamin.dvos...@gmail.com wrote: Hi , I've been trying to configure hibernation to work on my netbook , and for some reason it doesnt work when I go to hibernate , and then power up again , it starts as if from scratch what can i check ? what is the right way to configure it ? Thanks Benny Did you remember to add resume=/dev/swap partition to which you hibernated to kernel line in grub.conf? -- Fatih
Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix broken
On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 4:57 PM, Kevin O'Gorman kogor...@gmail.com wrote: Some time ago, it appears, postfix stopped working for me. I am no longer able to use it to send mail (usually to my ISP, where it gets routed). It used to work fine, and if there was an elog that I needed to follow, I missed it. Do you use SPF? If so, the recent Perl 5.12 update killed my Postfix+SPF setup. In the main.info log; warning: command /usr/bin/perl exit status 2. Haven't had time to look at it yet.
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 15/11/2010, at 3:56am, Dale wrote: ... I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I would be more concerned why defrag itself (Start Run `dfrg.msc`) isn't working. If it's refusing because there's filesystem corruption, then I would advise against using anything else! You need to be logged in as an administrator in order to run defrag. If you boot XP to safe mode then a user named Administrator will be shown amongst the logon icons, and that user has no password. Running defrag,exe at the command-line (Start Run `cmd`; `defrag,exe /?`) might give an explanation. Running `chkdsk /?`, choosing the most aggressive options and then `chkdsk c:` will cause the disk to be checked for corruption (`fsck` equivalent) at the next reboot. Obviously you should take a backup before doing this, as occasionally filesystem corruption will be *really* bad. Ideally you will disable swap / pagefile before defragmenting and enable it again afterwards. You can boot from a PE boot CD and run defrag from that, but it doesn't really seem necessary. Also check that compress files and folders is disabled http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307987. You're best to apply it to the whole drive (actually tick the box saying you DO want to compress files and folders), but when the dialog box comes up saying shall I apply that to all sub-directories tell it no. Then go back to checkbox again, disable it, then when the dialog box comes up tell it yes. That will crunch away for some time ensuring that compression is not being used at all. Because Windows XP launched a decade ago, when disks were much smaller, the option to compress files and folders is recommended in the Disk Cleanup Wizard, so this option may be set incorrectly, and it is worth checking. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Stroller wrote: On 15/11/2010, at 3:56am, Dale wrote: ... I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I would be more concerned why defrag itself (Start Run `dfrg.msc`) isn't working. If it's refusing because there's filesystem corruption, then I would advise against using anything else! You need to be logged in as an administrator in order to run defrag. If you boot XP to safe mode then a user named Administrator will be shown amongst the logon icons, and that user has no password. Running defrag,exe at the command-line (Start Run `cmd`; `defrag,exe /?`) might give an explanation. Running `chkdsk /?`, choosing the most aggressive options and then `chkdsk c:` will cause the disk to be checked for corruption (`fsck` equivalent) at the next reboot. Obviously you should take a backup before doing this, as occasionally filesystem corruption will be *really* bad. Ideally you will disable swap / pagefile before defragmenting and enable it again afterwards. You can boot from a PE boot CD and run defrag from that, but it doesn't really seem necessary. Also check that compress files and folders is disabledhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/307987. You're best to apply it to the whole drive (actually tick the box saying you DO want to compress files and folders), but when the dialog box comes up saying shall I apply that to all sub-directories tell it no. Then go back to checkbox again, disable it, then when the dialog box comes up tell it yes. That will crunch away for some time ensuring that compression is not being used at all. Because Windows XP launched a decade ago, when disks were much smaller, the option to compress files and folders is recommended in the Disk Cleanup Wizard, so this option may be set incorrectly, and it is worth checking. Stroller. I am thinking like you on the reason it is not working. It was brought to me because it was not running as fast as it used to. First thing I noticed was that AVG hasn't been updated in about 2 YEARS. I installed the newest AVG and it found hundreds of infections and said it fixed them. I never was a big believer in fixing a infection. Anyway, I got that updated and got it to scan until nothing was found. While doing that, I noticed the drive was really doing some serious searching while booting and such. It is also pretty slow to boot. The poor drive light stays on about all the time and you can hear the heads going back and forth. I wanted to run defrag just to see if it would help. I figure if AVG hasn't been updated in that long, I doubt they ran defrag either, not to mention it doesn't work. I couldn't get Defraggler to work either. Different error and I even tried a older version that wasn't beta with the same results. I then found mydefrag and gave it a try. So far, it is working on it and it seems to be doing something at least. The window makes it look like it was fragmented really bad. It looks like something that would come out of a blender after hitting frappé. If this completes, I'm going to let them try it to see if it is any better. If it is still not to their liking, they will just have to get a windoze CD and I'll reinstall from scratch. That should help. In case you can't tell, I don't claim to know a lot about windoze. People in my family just like me to work on their puters. I worked on puters until windoze 3.1 came out. I changed careers. I got tired of that pretty quick. I just thought DOS was bad. lol Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] which NIC is which?
Am 12.11.2010 23:31, schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger: Am 12.11.2010 22:12, schrieb Etaoin Shrdlu: On Fri, 12 Nov 2010 21:01:50 + Etaoin Shrdlushr...@unlimitedmail.org wrote: Also modprobe -k I obviously meant lspci -k, though probably rereading the question, it's not what he wanted. Thanks to all of you, I think I got it now! modprobe -k is non-existant here, ethtool -i ethX is what I was looking for ... Maybe a little bit late but: As a summary-tool all the info is gattered and shown by lshw. Steffen
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Monday 15 November 2010 10:32:00 Dale wrote: Stroller wrote: On 15/11/2010, at 3:56am, Dale wrote: ... snipped I am thinking like you on the reason it is not working. It was brought to me because it was not running as fast as it used to. First thing I noticed was that AVG hasn't been updated in about 2 YEARS. I installed the newest AVG and it found hundreds of infections and said it fixed them. I never was a big believer in fixing a infection. Anyway, I got that updated and got it to scan until nothing was found. Great, a MS Windows PC that hasn't been maintained in 2+ years... If there are hundreds of infections, I'd scrap the install, but then you do need the install-media for the OS and software they use. Some of them might simply be cookies, btw. I've seen virus scanners delete all the cookies just because they might be wrong. While doing that, I noticed the drive was really doing some serious searching while booting and such. It is also pretty slow to boot. The poor drive light stays on about all the time and you can hear the heads going back and forth. I wanted to run defrag just to see if it would help. I figure if AVG hasn't been updated in that long, I doubt they ran defrag either, not to mention it doesn't work. Sounds like a good guess, however, I told my parents how to do basic maintenance on their computer (including defrag), but it will still slow down over time. No idea why, but I'd check the installed programs list and uninstall anything they do NOT use. I couldn't get Defraggler to work either. Different error and I even tried a older version that wasn't beta with the same results. I then found mydefrag and gave it a try. So far, it is working on it and it seems to be doing something at least. The window makes it look like it was fragmented really bad. It looks like something that would come out of a blender after hitting frappé. My guess for the error: There is insufficient diskspace to defragment this drive Solution: Copy documents over onto an external drive Then delete the copied documents from the harddrive and then run defrag. Do NOT use move with MS Windows, I've had it fail and then had to manually figure out what was and wasn't moved yet. If this completes, I'm going to let them try it to see if it is any better. If it is still not to their liking, they will just have to get a windoze CD and I'll reinstall from scratch. That should help. To be honest, I doubt it'll be much better. In the old days, Symantec had a utility that could also optimize the registry. That generally did work, but the last time I used that was with MS Windows 98. Never did see a copy for later versions. (Ok, I admit, I didn't bother to look for it) In case you can't tell, I don't claim to know a lot about windoze. People in my family just like me to work on their puters. I worked on puters until windoze 3.1 came out. I changed careers. I got tired of that pretty quick. I just thought DOS was bad. lol I swtiched completely over to Linux in 1998 for personal use. Only use MS Windows when I have no choice (eg. using MS Windows only software/applications for work). I did the switch after MS Windows crashed and stole my email and documents one time too many. -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Monday 15 November 2010 09:46:38 J. Roeleveld wrote: I ... only use MS Windows when I have no choice (eg. using MS Windows only software/applications for work). The one use I have for it nowadays is to run IE to check how it displays my website. I found (was told of) a utility that emulates any or all versions of IE, so I can see what almost any visitor will see. That's why I haven't evicted it from my laptop yet. -- Rgds Peter. Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.
Re: [gentoo-user] which NIC is which?
Am 15.11.2010 10:39, schrieb Steffen Loos: Maybe a little bit late but: As a summary-tool all the info is gattered and shown by lshw. yep, thanks. Although it should be possible to just ask the kernel somehow, shouldn't it?
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Monday 15 November 2010 12:01:49 Peter Humphrey wrote: On Monday 15 November 2010 09:46:38 J. Roeleveld wrote: I ... only use MS Windows when I have no choice (eg. using MS Windows only software/applications for work). The one use I have for it nowadays is to run IE to check how it displays my website. I found (was told of) a utility that emulates any or all versions of IE, so I can see what almost any visitor will see. That's why I haven't evicted it from my laptop yet. Doesn't that utility run under Wine? :) I tend not to bother with other browsers, the few web sites I have are mainly for private use and the few visitors I get are me and my family :) They know better then to complain it doesn't work with IE. My standard reply is: use a decent browser ;) -- Joost PS. it helps if the userbase will actually listen ;)
Re: [gentoo-user] Hibernation doesn't work
On Mon, 2010-11-15 at 08:11 +0200, Benyamin Dvoskin wrote: Hi , I've been trying to configure hibernation to work on my netbook , and for some reason it doesnt work when I go to hibernate , and then power up again , it starts as if from scratch what can i check ? what is the right way to configure it ? what hibernate? vanilla? tuxonice? I assume disk but you could also be talking about ram... it can all be managed by (and I highly recommend) using hibernate-script. It will handle blacklisted modules, starting/stopping services, filesystems, and more! -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au One learns to itch where one can scratch. -- Ernest Bramah
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 15 November 2010 09:46, J. Roeleveld jo...@antarean.org wrote: My guess for the error: There is insufficient diskspace to defragment this drive Solution: Copy documents over onto an external drive Then delete the copied documents from the harddrive and then run defrag. It would be easier to suggest solutions if we knew what the *exact* error was when trying to run defrag.exe Insufficient disk space is often caused by a corrupt page file, which on a MSWindows machine is typically on the same partition as the OS. The solution would be to: a) Boot into safe mode (pressing F8) then disable System Restore: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial56.html b) Disable page file and reboot. Then enable it again and reboot. c) Move/delete a load of the MSWindows updates uninstall files from the C:\WINDOWS directory; first google for something like this to find out what you can mv/zip/delete and what not: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Hotfix_backup.htm c) Clean all *.tmp files, and empty directories: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/maintenance/ht/manualtempxp.htm d) Delete all Internet files from Internet Explorer. e) Install MS Security Essentials and give it a full scan. f) Then run defrag.exe. g) Reboot, then use MyDefrag to defrag the drive, using the System - Monthly defrag pattern. Precautions that would pay dividends in the longevity of your niece's WinXP would be to: Shrink the MSWindows OS partition (using gparted LiveCD) to something like 25-30G and create one more large partition. Move all personal data there and change the paths of all MSWindows applications to save their docs in the new partition instead of MyDocuments, et al. Create a new page file into the new partition and remove the old page file. When you boot into Safe Mode set up a passwd for the administrator account and change your niece's privileges to plain user. Teach her how to use the admin account to manage her MSWindows Updates and install remove programs. Viruses will not be able to install when she goes wild on the Internet without her running them as administrator. HTH. PS. Personally, I would create yet one more partition, install Ubuntu for her and give her a 10 minute induction course on using Linux ... then come back in 3 months and uninstall WinXP all together ;-) -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
You might want to run spinrite on the drive if you have/can find a copy of it. On Nov 15, 2010 4:33 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Stroller wrote: On 15/11/2010, at 3:56am, Dale wrote: ... I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I would be more concerned why defrag itself (Start Run `dfrg.msc`) isn't working. If it's refusing because there's filesystem corruption, then I would advise against using anything else! You need to be logged in as an administrator in order to run defrag. If you boot XP to safe mode then a user named Administrator will be shown amongst the logon icons, and that user has no password. Running defrag,exe at the command-line (Start Run `cmd`; `defrag,exe /?`) might give an explanation. Running `chkdsk /?`, choosing the most aggressive options and then `chkdsk c:` will cause the disk to be checked for corruption (`fsck` equivalent) at the next reboot. Obviously you should take a backup before doing this, as occasionally filesystem corruption will be *really* bad. Ideally you will disable swap / pagefile before defragmenting and enable it again afterwards. You can boot from a PE boot CD and run defrag from that, but it doesn't really seem necessary. Also check that compress files and folders is disabled http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307987. You're best to apply it to the whole drive (actually tick the box saying you DO want to compress files and folders), but when the dialog box comes up saying shall I apply that to all sub-directories tell it no. Then go back to checkbox again, disable it, then when the dialog box comes up tell it yes. That will crunch away for some time ensuring that compression is not being used at all. Because Windows XP launched a decade ago, when disks were much smaller, the option to compress files and folders is recommended in the Disk Cleanup Wizard, so this option may be set incorrectly, and it is worth checking. Stroller. I am thinking like you on the reason it is not working. It was brought to me because it was not running as fast as it used to. First thing I noticed was that AVG hasn't been updated in about 2 YEARS. I installed the newest AVG and it found hundreds of infections and said it fixed them. I never was a big believer in fixing a infection. Anyway, I got that updated and got it to scan until nothing was found. While doing that, I noticed the drive was really doing some serious searching while booting and such. It is also pretty slow to boot. The poor drive light stays on about all the time and you can hear the heads going back and forth. I wanted to run defrag just to see if it would help. I figure if AVG hasn't been updated in that long, I doubt they ran defrag either, not to mention it doesn't work. I couldn't get Defraggler to work either. Different error and I even tried a older version that wasn't beta with the same results. I then found mydefrag and gave it a try. So far, it is working on it and it seems to be doing something at least. The window makes it look like it was fragmented really bad. It looks like something that would come out of a blender after hitting frappé. If this completes, I'm going to let them try it to see if it is any better. If it is still not to their liking, they will just have to get a windoze CD and I'll reinstall from scratch. That should help. In case you can't tell, I don't claim to know a lot about windoze. People in my family just like me to work on their puters. I worked on puters until windoze 3.1 came out. I changed careers. I got tired of that pretty quick. I just thought DOS was bad. lol Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] which NIC is which?
On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 12:35:35PM +0100, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Am 15.11.2010 10:39, schrieb Steffen Loos: Maybe a little bit late but: As a summary-tool all the info is gattered and shown by lshw. yep, thanks. Although it should be possible to just ask the kernel somehow, shouldn't it? I usually do (especially from a livecd, when I want to know which drivers to enable in the kernel for a new device ;) y...@desktop ~ $ ls -l /sys/class/net/eth?/device/driver lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2010-11-15 14:38 /sys/class/net/eth1/device/driver - ../../../../bus/pci/drivers/tulip lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2010-11-15 14:38 /sys/class/net/eth2/device/driver - ../../../../bus/pci/drivers/r8169 yoyo
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 15 November 2010 13:13, Jacob Todd jaketodd...@gmail.com wrote: You might want to run spinrite on the drive if you have/can find a copy of it. Why? -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] swap usage creeping up
On Mon, 2010-11-15 at 10:41 +0200, Fatih Tümen wrote: On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 07:09, Iain Buchanan iai...@netspace.net.au wrote: sure, but running it for 10 or 100 or 1000 hours should produce roughly the same characteristics for the same browsing behaviour if all other things are equal. A few months ago this didn't cause any issues at all, now I'm seeing high swap usage. I usually never use my 3G of physical RAM. Can you recall what significant change have you made to the system? For emerged packages you can try smth like genlop --list --date 1 month ago and then check against the versions upgraded from. sure, only EVERYthing has been updated... including firefox and the kernel! Again today I see it is using about 900Mb in total, which seems quite large. vm.swappiness is set to 0. I've upgraded firefox to 3.6.12. I had to reboot, but I'll check the usual statistics next time I see it. You say swappiness is set to 0 but dont give any swap usage info. that's cause I had to reboot and swap was back to 0. If there is any swap usage while swapiness is 0 then it would be weird and we could blame it on the kernel. _any_ swap usage? right now I'm using 110Mb of swap with 1.8Gb free physical RAM and vm.swapiness is 0! $ free -m total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem: 3040 1206 1834 0 61246 -/+ buffers/cache:898 2142 Swap: 494110383 $ cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness 0 PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+ COMMAND 3192 iain 20 0 554m 204m 27m S9 6.7 26:31.94 firefox I just googled mem usage firefox as I am running out of ideas. but thanks for the suggestions anyway :) I'll keep googling! -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au Allen's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Sounds like something is wrong with te drive, and spinrite.can probably fix it. On Nov 15, 2010 9:16 AM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 November 2010 13:13, Jacob Todd jaketodd...@gmail.com wrote: You might want to run spinrite on the drive if you have/can find a copy of it. Why? -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Monday 15 November 2010 15:50:37 Jacob Todd wrote: Sounds like something is wrong with te drive, and spinrite.can probably fix it. I don't see what Spinrite can do to help with defragging a harddrive for MS Windows? I like the bit where it explains how it prevents a disk crash: It first reads the data out of a region, then exercises that region with patterns of data that SpinRite has determined are the most difficult for the drive to read and write. In this way, any weak and failing areas within the region are located and removed from use while none of the drive's original data is being stored there. Only after the region has been made absolutely safe, will the drive's original data be restored to that area. (quoted from the website for Spinrite: http://www.grc.com/sroverview.htm ) supposedly this is unique (Just hope the system doesn't freeze up or the power goes while it's doing this) How is this different from: 1) take a backup 2) check for bad sectors (badblocks) 3) restore backup This is also less risky as the data is backed up somewhere safe -- Joost On Nov 15, 2010 9:16 AM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 November 2010 13:13, Jacob Todd jaketodd...@gmail.com wrote: You might want to run spinrite on the drive if you have/can find a copy of it. Why? -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
- Original Message From: Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I ask because I don't want to install something and not know what I am installing. You know, some program with a nasty virus attached or something. I did Google and found a lot of tools but I'm not sure which one to trust. If someone here has used one before and trusts the one they used, I would be happy to hear about it. Well, the build-in version of the Defrag program is a really a shill. But that's mostly b/c Microsoft is licensing a stripped down version of a really good piece of software called Disk Keeper (http://www.diskeeper.com/). While it's not free, open source, etc. the price is worth it to keep a Windows system in check and running smoothly. Ben
Re: [gentoo-user] swap usage creeping up
Okay I am getting suspicious of tuxonice. Setting swappiness to zero does not mean kernel wont use any swap but it should not be prefering swap over ram when 2G of ram is out there either. Just out of curiosity, can you find out which app(s) being swapped ? I would give a try to gentoo-sources and see if the issue can be reproduced. On 15/11/2010, Iain Buchanan iai...@netspace.net.au wrote: On Mon, 2010-11-15 at 10:41 +0200, Fatih Tümen wrote: On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 07:09, Iain Buchanan iai...@netspace.net.au wrote: sure, but running it for 10 or 100 or 1000 hours should produce roughly the same characteristics for the same browsing behaviour if all other things are equal. A few months ago this didn't cause any issues at all, now I'm seeing high swap usage. I usually never use my 3G of physical RAM. Can you recall what significant change have you made to the system? For emerged packages you can try smth like genlop --list --date 1 month ago and then check against the versions upgraded from. sure, only EVERYthing has been updated... including firefox and the kernel! Again today I see it is using about 900Mb in total, which seems quite large. vm.swappiness is set to 0. I've upgraded firefox to 3.6.12. I had to reboot, but I'll check the usual statistics next time I see it. You say swappiness is set to 0 but dont give any swap usage info. that's cause I had to reboot and swap was back to 0. If there is any swap usage while swapiness is 0 then it would be weird and we could blame it on the kernel. _any_ swap usage? right now I'm using 110Mb of swap with 1.8Gb free physical RAM and vm.swapiness is 0! $ free -m total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem: 3040 1206 1834 0 61246 -/+ buffers/cache:898 2142 Swap: 494110383 $ cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness 0 PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+ COMMAND 3192 iain 20 0 554m 204m 27m S9 6.7 26:31.94 firefox I just googled mem usage firefox as I am running out of ideas. but thanks for the suggestions anyway :) I'll keep googling! -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au Allen's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions. -- Sent from my mobile device -- Fatih
[gentoo-user] Re: How to configure thochpad sensitivity (using hal)?
On 2010-11-14, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: Finally, if xorg-server-1.8 is around the corner to be stabilised I suggest that you unmask it and use the xorg.conf file that we all know and love. :-) Using xorg.conf with 1.7 is simple enough (it's what I do on all my other machines). That's why I don't understand why the Gentoo developers decided to use HAL by default when it seems to be widely acknowledged to be such a disaster. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! Half a mind is a at terrible thing to waste! gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 15 November 2010 14:50, Jacob Todd jaketodd...@gmail.com wrote: Sounds like something is wrong with te drive, and spinrite.can probably fix it. If the drive had badblocks it would probably launch chkdsk or bring up similar errors about a corrupt fs. As I said, without a clear and succinct error message we're stabbing in the dark as to what problem Dale's niece has with her PC ... -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Am 15.11.2010 04:56, schrieb Dale: Hi, I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I ask because I don't want to install something and not know what I am installing. You know, some program with a nasty virus attached or something. I did Google and found a lot of tools but I'm not sure which one to trust. If someone here has used one before and trusts the one they used, I would be happy to hear about it. Thanks. Dale :-) :-) Try jkdefrag [1] or its modern successor mydefrag [2]. I've worked with jkdefrag for some time. I don't know mydefrag, though. It's LGPL licensed. The GUI is a bit ugly but it has a lot of functionality and can handle cases in which the Windows defragger doesn't work. That mostly happens when the disk is nearly full. AFAIK all free and commercial defraggers use the same API that the Windows defragger provides, they just do their job more intelligent. [1] http://kessels.com/jkdefrag/ [2] http://www.mydefrag.com/ Hope this helps, Florian Philipp signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix broken
On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 1:18 AM, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Sat, 13 Nov 2010 21:57:42 -0800, Kevin O'Gorman wrote: I don't even know where to start on this. I'd start by looking at the logs, I think Postfix logs to syslog by default. The first question is is it even starting? Color me stupid. It was stopped. It started when I told it to in /etc/init.d. Now I have to wonder what stopped it. Judging from the mail that got through all of a sudden, I guess it stopped about 2 weeks ago. I'll have to watch this... Thanks. -- Kevin O'Gorman, PhD
[gentoo-user] after update ssh with shared_keys don't work
Hi people! I updated yesterday my gentoo box. And now I can't login with SSH through shared keys on my clients Server what I did all the time. When I made the world update, there was the package udev. I guess it might have something todo with this. For a short reply I would thank you. Tamer
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Apparently, though unproven, at 17:10 on Monday 15 November 2010, J. Roeleveld did opine thusly: On Monday 15 November 2010 15:50:37 Jacob Todd wrote: Sounds like something is wrong with te drive, and spinrite.can probably fix it. I don't see what Spinrite can do to help with defragging a harddrive for MS Windows? I like the bit where it explains how it prevents a disk crash: It first reads the data out of a region, then exercises that region with patterns of data that SpinRite has determined are the most difficult for the drive to read and write. In this way, any weak and failing areas within the region are located and removed from use while none of the drive's original data is being stored there. Only after the region has been made absolutely safe, will the drive's original data be restored to that area. (quoted from the website for Spinrite: http://www.grc.com/sroverview.htm ) supposedly this is unique (Just hope the system doesn't freeze up or the power goes while it's doing this) How is this different from: 1) take a backup 2) check for bad sectors (badblocks) 3) restore backup This is also less risky as the data is backed up somewhere safe spinrite claims to make the head do other things than what the drive firmware makes it do. Meaning that spinrite can extract data that the drive itself in normal conditions cannot. This reasoning is sound. Remember that a drive is an analogue device, not a digital one (only the *output data* is digital). There is some doubt as to whether spinrite can even function in this wise with modern drives though. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: How to configure thochpad sensitivity (using hal)?
Apparently, though unproven, at 17:31 on Monday 15 November 2010, Grant Edwards did opine thusly: On 2010-11-14, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: Finally, if xorg-server-1.8 is around the corner to be stabilised I suggest that you unmask it and use the xorg.conf file that we all know and love. :-) Using xorg.conf with 1.7 is simple enough (it's what I do on all my other machines). That's why I don't understand why the Gentoo developers decided to use HAL by default when it seems to be widely acknowledged to be such a disaster. The Gentoo devs made no such decision. Upstream did. Gentoo closely tracks upstream, unless upstream is completely broken. HAL might be a crock of chit, but it does not render X broken and not usable. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 11/15/2010 11:05 AM, Florian Philipp wrote: It's LGPL licensed. The GUI is a bit ugly but it has a lot of functionality and can handle cases in which the Windows defragger doesn't work. That mostly happens when the disk is nearly full. Since we're *way* off topic as it is: mydefrag isn't LGPL, just freeware, but I did notice this on the jkdefrag site: The executables are released under the GNU General Public License, and the sources are released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Is that even possible? --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] How to configure thochpad sensitivity (using hal)?
Am Sun, 14 Nov 2010 09:46:51 + schrieb Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com: [...] As Dale suggests don't waste your time on hal and its fdi files. xorg 1.8.x will be going stable soon and that does away with hal configuration. I recommend that you unmask it and see if you can control your touchpad easier using an xorg.conf and evdev. However, the synaptics driver is there for a reason ... http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/x/x11/xorg-server-1.8-upgrade-guide.xml [...] AIUI, 1.8.x is being skipped. The current stable target is xorg-server 1.9.x (see https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344827 and http://blogs.gentoo.org/scarabeus/2010/11/08/xorg-server-1-9-stabilisation/). HTH -- Marc Joliet signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
- Original Message From: Mike Edenfield kut...@kutulu.org On 11/15/2010 11:05 AM, Florian Philipp wrote: It's LGPL licensed. The GUI is a bit ugly but it has a lot of functionality and can handle cases in which the Windows defragger doesn't work. That mostly happens when the disk is nearly full. Since we're *way* off topic as it is: mydefrag isn't LGPL, just freeware, but I did notice this on the jkdefrag site: The executables are released under the GNU General Public License, and the sources are released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Is that even possible? I doubt it, but you'd have to ask FSF to know for sure. (IANAL) Ben
Re: [gentoo-user] after update ssh with shared_keys don't work
On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 05:56:18PM +0100, Tamer Higazi wrote: I updated yesterday my gentoo box. And now I can't login with SSH through shared keys on my clients Server what I did all the time. I am confused (as usually is the case when I see someone trying to describe a client/server setup): There are at least two computers involved here: A -- your desktop/laptop B -- your client's server Is this correct so far? Now, A is running Gentoo. Correct? What is B running? Are you trying to SSH from A to B, or are you trying to SSH from B to A? When you say you can't login with SSH through shared keys, does that mean you can log-in through password? When I made the world update, there was the package udev. I guess it might have something todo with this. Why would you think udev is causing the problem? Udev manages devices, I fail to see what it has to do with SSH and public key authentication. Rather than guessing by yourself, you may be better off providing the whole list of recently updated packages. You can use 'genlop' or 'qlop' for that, or you can just read /var/log/emerge.log by hand. W -- Willie W. Wong ww...@math.princeton.edu Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire et vice versa ~~~ I. Newton
Re: [gentoo-user] after update ssh with shared_keys don't work
Apparently, though unproven, at 20:55 on Monday 15 November 2010, Willie Wong did opine thusly: On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 05:56:18PM +0100, Tamer Higazi wrote: I updated yesterday my gentoo box. And now I can't login with SSH through shared keys on my clients Server what I did all the time. I am confused (as usually is the case when I see someone trying to describe a client/server setup): There are at least two computers involved here: A -- your desktop/laptop B -- your client's server Is this correct so far? The OP has not given any information at all that will help resolve this. Tamer, the answer will be in your log files. But before you do that you need to do some basic fault-finding yourself. Start by verifying that sshd is actually running on the server. If the server is the remote machine, nmap is what you need for that test. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] after update ssh with shared_keys don't work
Tamer Higazi writes: I updated yesterday my gentoo box. And now I can't login with SSH through shared keys on my clients Server what I did all the time. As Willie writes, you do not provide much information. Try ssh -v destination, this gives some debug information. Also try -vv and -vvv to get even more. When I made the world update, there was the package udev. I guess it might have something todo with this. I would be surprised. But sometimes I am. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Apparently, though unproven, at 19:43 on Monday 15 November 2010, Mike Edenfield did opine thusly: On 11/15/2010 11:05 AM, Florian Philipp wrote: It's LGPL licensed. The GUI is a bit ugly but it has a lot of functionality and can handle cases in which the Windows defragger doesn't work. That mostly happens when the disk is nearly full. Since we're *way* off topic as it is: mydefrag isn't LGPL, just freeware, but I did notice this on the jkdefrag site: The executables are released under the GNU General Public License, and the sources are released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Is that even possible? It's possible, as someone did it ... :-) It's not valid though, and it's nonsensical. If they give you binaries per GPL, then they must make the sources available. They already make the sources available per LGPL, so now they are dual-licensed. If you choose to accept them under GPL, then you may only compile and redistribute them under GPL. If you choose to accept them under LGPL, compile them and redistribute them, then other non-GPL software can link to them per the terms of the LGPL. So which is it? GPL? LGPL? Both? Sounds like someone on that project has a gigantic misunderstanding on how the licenses work. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
[gentoo-user] Fluxbox + pager : weird problem : solved
101107 Philip Webb wrote: I'm a happy user of Fluxbox Bbpager works well with it. However, I can't get it to start directly after (re-)booting, but have to do 'startx' twice, after which it appears in the slit. After a bit more experimentation, I've got Fbpager to start properly by including it in the 'startup' file where other such apps are listed. It's basically the same to use as Bbpager, so that's sufficient. I suspect the problem with Bbpager was some obscure timing delay. -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
[gentoo-user] Re: How to configure thochpad sensitivity (using hal)?
On 2010-11-15, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 17:31 on Monday 15 November 2010, Grant Edwards did opine thusly: On 2010-11-14, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: Finally, if xorg-server-1.8 is around the corner to be stabilised I suggest that you unmask it and use the xorg.conf file that we all know and love. :-) Using xorg.conf with 1.7 is simple enough (it's what I do on all my other machines). That's why I don't understand why the Gentoo developers decided to use HAL by default when it seems to be widely acknowledged to be such a disaster. The Gentoo devs made no such decision. Upstream did. Gentoo closely tracks upstream, unless upstream is completely broken. HAL might be a crock of chit, but it does not render X broken and not usable. Whether Xorg uses HAL or not is controlled by a USE flag isn't it? So upstream choses the defaults for USE flags? -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! My BIOLOGICAL ALARM at CLOCK just went off ... It gmail.comhas noiseless DOZE FUNCTION and full kitchen!!
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 19:43 on Monday 15 November 2010, Mike Edenfield did opine thusly: On 11/15/2010 11:05 AM, Florian Philipp wrote: It's LGPL licensed. The GUI is a bit ugly but it has a lot of functionality and can handle cases in which the Windows defragger doesn't work. That mostly happens when the disk is nearly full. Since we're *way* off topic as it is: mydefrag isn't LGPL, just freeware, but I did notice this on the jkdefrag site: The executables are released under the GNU General Public License, and the sources are released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Is that even possible? It's possible, as someone did it ... :-) It's not valid though, and it's nonsensical. If they give you binaries per GPL, then they must make the sources available. They already make the sources available per LGPL, so now they are dual-licensed. If you choose to accept them under GPL, then you may only compile and redistribute them under GPL. If you choose to accept them under LGPL, compile them and redistribute them, then other non-GPL software can link to them per the terms of the LGPL. So which is it? GPL? LGPL? Both? Sounds like someone on that project has a gigantic misunderstanding on how the licenses work. OK. I took a nap and it seems everyone on the list wanted to chime in. lol This is one reason I posted here. I knew I would get at least a few replies. Just picking one to reply to so not pointing at Alan here. First, the drive is not full. It has about 30% or so left. I think the virus broke something and I don't have the OS media to reinstall. If I had my way, that puter would have Linux and a root password that only I know. Second, it has not been kept up to date for sure. They are little kids, oldest is getting about old enough to understand how to maintain things tho. Third, I'm not going to go to to much trouble with this thing and trying to get it back to shiny new. If it doesn't work to their liking, I'll tell them to get a CD/DVD with the install on it or I can put Linux on it for free. Let them decide. One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. If I had the CD/DVD to install from, I would do just that. Heck, I would have done that right after I saw AVG being so out of date. I wouldn't have even turned the thing off. I would have put in the CD, pulled the plug and booted the CD and reinstalled. The program mydefragger seemed to work pretty well. It is done and I am running it again just to be sure. I'll see if it reboots any faster now. That should tell me if it helped any at all. I don't think it could hurt for sure. Thanks for the replies. Going to download one of those defraggers that someone mentioned and save it for a rainy day. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: How to configure thochpad sensitivity (using hal)?
Apparently, though unproven, at 22:51 on Monday 15 November 2010, Grant Edwards did opine thusly: On 2010-11-15, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 17:31 on Monday 15 November 2010, Grant Edwards did opine thusly: On 2010-11-14, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: Finally, if xorg-server-1.8 is around the corner to be stabilised I suggest that you unmask it and use the xorg.conf file that we all know and love. :-) Using xorg.conf with 1.7 is simple enough (it's what I do on all my other machines). That's why I don't understand why the Gentoo developers decided to use HAL by default when it seems to be widely acknowledged to be such a disaster. The Gentoo devs made no such decision. Upstream did. Gentoo closely tracks upstream, unless upstream is completely broken. HAL might be a crock of chit, but it does not render X broken and not usable. Whether Xorg uses HAL or not is controlled by a USE flag isn't it? So upstream choses the defaults for USE flags? No, upstream chooses the default config out of the box. Gentoo does what Gentoo has to do to replicate that config. Gentoo needs a very good reason to change upstream default behaviour, along the lines of extreme brokenness. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Apparently, though unproven, at 00:01 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did opine thusly: OK. I took a nap and it seems everyone on the list wanted to chime in. lol This is one reason I posted here. I knew I would get at least a few replies. Just picking one to reply to so not pointing at Alan here. First, the drive is not full. It has about 30% or so left. I think the virus broke something and I don't have the OS media to reinstall. If I had my way, that puter would have Linux and a root password that only I know. Second, it has not been kept up to date for sure. They are little kids, oldest is getting about old enough to understand how to maintain things tho. Third, I'm not going to go to to much trouble with this thing and trying to get it back to shiny new. If it doesn't work to their liking, I'll tell them to get a CD/DVD with the install on it or I can put Linux on it for free. Let them decide. One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Same here. I find this approach workable: Tell them the machine needs an OS re-install. They can pick Windows - which they will pay for Linux - it's free Either way they will lose their data. Give them that choice and let them decide for themselves. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix broken
On 11/15/2010 8:37 AM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote: Color me stupid. It was stopped. It started when I told it to in /etc/init.d. Now I have to wonder what stopped it. Judging from the mail that got through all of a sudden, I guess it stopped about 2 weeks ago. I'll have to watch this... IIRC updates of the Postfix package that could in result in data loss of queued mail will shutdown Postfix before preceding. Looks like Postfix 2.7.1 hit on Nov 4 and 2.6.7 has been in the system since June. I'd bet you ran the update, Postfix shutdown for safety, and you missed the screen output about restarting it. kashani
Re: [gentoo-user] How to exclude a directory from rsync
On Sunday 14 November 2010 22:47:02 you wrote: Am 14.11.2010 22:03, schrieb Mick: I am not sure how to exclude a directory on an ntfs partition from being accessed during rsync. The attributes do not seem to be right and it comes up with this error: === 'rsync -a -l -v --exclude /mnt/User_WinXP/System Volume Information try something like --exclude ./System Volume Information (relative paths) or even --exclude ./System\ Volume\ Information (escaping the spaces) Thanks Stefan, I'm afraid I'm still getting the same problem: rsync: opendir /mnt/User_WinXP/System Volume Information failed: Permission denied (13) Why is rsync trying to open this directory, when I thought I've asked it to exclude it? -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: How to configure thochpad sensitivity (using hal)?
Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 17:31 on Monday 15 November 2010, Grant Edwards did opine thusly: On 2010-11-14, Mickmichaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: Finally, if xorg-server-1.8 is around the corner to be stabilised I suggest that you unmask it and use the xorg.conf file that we all know and love. :-) Using xorg.conf with 1.7 is simple enough (it's what I do on all my other machines). That's why I don't understand why the Gentoo developers decided to use HAL by default when it seems to be widely acknowledged to be such a disaster. The Gentoo devs made no such decision. Upstream did. Gentoo closely tracks upstream, unless upstream is completely broken. HAL might be a crock of chit, but it does not render X broken and not usable. Actually, it rendered mine broken and not usable. If upstream walks off the edge of a cliff, does Gentoo follow upstream then? What would have been nice is if Gentoo would have at least made it something that the user has to chose to do pro-actively and not the default. If they had done that, for say six months or more, then the devs would have been able to see the disaster and left it off by default. Actually, they may could have even seen that it wasn't going to last at all and then not ever have a user using it unless they chose too and enabled it themselves. It's not like hal lasted for many years as a stable project. I generally trust the devs. I did when I let hal take over the config of X since it was the new way of doing things. You think I feel the same way now? To give you a hint, I haven't switched to polkit or whatever it is being called now. I think the reason is obvious. I don't have the same amount of trust as I did before. They followed upstream with hal and left me in a pickle. I haven't forgotten that yet and won't for a long time. I'll switch when I am reasonably sure it is safe to do so. That information will come from folks that are users tho, not devs. If a lot of users don't like it or have trouble with it, I won't switch. The key is the users this time. You, Alan, being one of them. You got more trust with me than the devs do. Why, I don't recall you guiding me off the cliff. I didn't mention the KDE4 mess on purpose. KDE didn't leave Gentoo with a option since it stopped support for it. Different situation there. Very little choices to pick from. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: How to configure thochpad sensitivity (using hal)?
Apparently, though unproven, at 00:56 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did opine thusly: Actually, it rendered mine broken and not usable. If upstream walks off the edge of a cliff, does Gentoo follow upstream then? What would have been nice is if Gentoo would have at least made it something that the user has to chose to do pro-actively and not the default. If they had done that, for say six months or more, then the devs would have been able to see the disaster and left it off by default. Actually, they may could have even seen that it wasn't going to last at all and then not ever have a user using it unless they chose too and enabled it themselves. It's not like hal lasted for many years as a stable project. Actually it did last many years as a stable project. A very very very early ubuntu was the first to start using it. That gives it about 3 to 4 years or so - a long time in the software world. In relation to the total number of Gentoo users, the number affected by HAL was small indeed. I myself had no ill-effects across several machines (other than XML-induced frustration). Your experience, though painful, was not the norm. Sometimes devs have to make hard decisions, like break a small number of user's configs. At least they gave you a flag you could use. Once it was evident that HAL was a total POS, they have another hard decision: revert to no-HAL? What will that break? How many unknown setups out there that are the opposite of Dale? What about the next version of X.org that will not support HAL? Do they arbitrarily revert the default to sans-HAL only to make it something else next verion? That may piss off a lot of users. I generally trust the devs. I did when I let hal take over the config of X since it was the new way of doing things. You think I feel the same way now? I think you are colouring the whole canvas with your own singular experience. One mis-judgement does not make a wreaked ecosystem, and shit does happen. SOmetimes in this world you're the hammer, sometimes the nail. You were the nail. I don't disagree that HAL is an utter POS. I just don't agree with your reasoning that brought you personally to that conclusion. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 00:01 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did opine thusly: OK. I took a nap and it seems everyone on the list wanted to chime in. lol This is one reason I posted here. I knew I would get at least a few replies. Just picking one to reply to so not pointing at Alan here. First, the drive is not full. It has about 30% or so left. I think the virus broke something and I don't have the OS media to reinstall. If I had my way, that puter would have Linux and a root password that only I know. Second, it has not been kept up to date for sure. They are little kids, oldest is getting about old enough to understand how to maintain things tho. Third, I'm not going to go to to much trouble with this thing and trying to get it back to shiny new. If it doesn't work to their liking, I'll tell them to get a CD/DVD with the install on it or I can put Linux on it for free. Let them decide. One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Same here. I find this approach workable: Tell them the machine needs an OS re-install. They can pick Windows - which they will pay for Linux - it's free Either way they will lose their data. Give them that choice and let them decide for themselves. I'm just adding one option. Hope it works as is. They are kids. Even if windoze won't boot, I'll put the drive in my system and copy anything important over, pictures or something. Then they are left with the options you gave. Because it is kids, they don't want to buy the OS. They will break it anyway. lol Then again, if I reinstall it, they will still break it. :/ They are kids and it is still windoze. I'm going to mention putting Linux on it tho. I can install Mandriva on it pretty quick and just not give the kids the root password. They check email, play those games on facebook and that is about it. The oldest one is getting close to the age where she can start learning to upgrade too. This is like dating, time will tell. ;-) Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] swap usage creeping up
Fatih Tümen wrote: Okay I am getting suspicious of tuxonice. Setting swappiness to zero does not mean kernel wont use any swap but it should not be prefering swap over ram when 2G of ram is out there either. Just out of curiosity, can you find out which app(s) being swapped ? I would give a try to gentoo-sources and see if the issue can be reproduced. I agree. If swappiness is set to 0, it should not use swap unless it is to prevent the system from crashing. I set mine to 30 and I have 2Gbs of ram. The only time it uses any swap at all is when I am compiling OOo or maybe, just maybe, gcc. Other than that, it is using pretty much all the ram because I have a couple hundred picture files open or something. It is rare that I use swap even with it set to 30. I can't see much of any reason it should when set at 0 except to prevent crashing. There seems to be something fishy on the OP's system. I'm not sure what but it is not working as it should. I use gentoo-sources here. 2.6.35 at the moment. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: How to configure thochpad sensitivity (using hal)?
Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 00:56 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did opine thusly: Actually, it rendered mine broken and not usable. If upstream walks off the edge of a cliff, does Gentoo follow upstream then? What would have been nice is if Gentoo would have at least made it something that the user has to chose to do pro-actively and not the default. If they had done that, for say six months or more, then the devs would have been able to see the disaster and left it off by default. Actually, they may could have even seen that it wasn't going to last at all and then not ever have a user using it unless they chose too and enabled it themselves. It's not like hal lasted for many years as a stable project. Actually it did last many years as a stable project. A very very very early ubuntu was the first to start using it. That gives it about 3 to 4 years or so - a long time in the software world. In relation to the total number of Gentoo users, the number affected by HAL was small indeed. I myself had no ill-effects across several machines (other than XML-induced frustration). Your experience, though painful, was not the norm. Sometimes devs have to make hard decisions, like break a small number of user's configs. At least they gave you a flag you could use. Once it was evident that HAL was a total POS, they have another hard decision: revert to no-HAL? What will that break? How many unknown setups out there that are the opposite of Dale? What about the next version of X.org that will not support HAL? Do they arbitrarily revert the default to sans-HAL only to make it something else next verion? That may piss off a lot of users. I generally trust the devs. I did when I let hal take over the config of X since it was the new way of doing things. You think I feel the same way now? I think you are colouring the whole canvas with your own singular experience. One mis-judgement does not make a wreaked ecosystem, and shit does happen. SOmetimes in this world you're the hammer, sometimes the nail. You were the nail. I don't disagree that HAL is an utter POS. I just don't agree with your reasoning that brought you personally to that conclusion. When it happens to me, I do take it seriously and I give it a lot of thought on future changes. After having this rig about 7 or 8 years, hal is the only reason I have ever had to pull the plug out of the wall. That is what I base my conclusion on because that is what happened to me here. Yea, it worked for a lot of people but it left me with a mess. Maybe everyone that hal worked well for still has that trust. Thing is, it didn't here. I lost a little of that trust. Some of the reasoning behind this may have a lot to do with my health situation. I don't trust Drs to much either. They are the reason I am where I am and I wish I hadn't trusted them oh so many years ago. I like to belive that people will do the right thing but it appears that depends on the situation. I just got a mess out of them both. Seems to happen a lot. What's the old saying: If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 00:01 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did opine thusly: OK. I took a nap and it seems everyone on the list wanted to chime in. lol This is one reason I posted here. I knew I would get at least a few replies. Just picking one to reply to so not pointing at Alan here. First, the drive is not full. It has about 30% or so left. I think the virus broke something and I don't have the OS media to reinstall. If I had my way, that puter would have Linux and a root password that only I know. Second, it has not been kept up to date for sure. They are little kids, oldest is getting about old enough to understand how to maintain things tho. Third, I'm not going to go to to much trouble with this thing and trying to get it back to shiny new. If it doesn't work to their liking, I'll tell them to get a CD/DVD with the install on it or I can put Linux on it for free. Let them decide. One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Same here. I find this approach workable: Tell them the machine needs an OS re-install. They can pick Windows - which they will pay for Linux - it's free Either way they will lose their data. Give them that choice and let them decide for themselves. I'm just adding one option. Hope it works as is. They are kids. Even if windoze won't boot, I'll put the drive in my system and copy anything important over, pictures or something. Then they are left with the options you gave. Because it is kids, they don't want to buy the OS. They will break it anyway. lol Then again, if I reinstall it, they will still break it. :/ They are kids and it is still windoze. I'm going to mention putting Linux on it tho. I can install Mandriva on it pretty quick and just not give the kids the root password. They check email, play those games on facebook and that is about it. The oldest one is getting close to the age where she can start learning to upgrade too. This is like dating, time will tell. ;-) Dale :-) :-) Dale, I spent my day working on my big Gentoo box that has a 980x processor with 6 cores/12 threads. I only mention this because I was running 3 copies of Windows (2 XP and 1 Win 7) all day long in VMWare Player. If your kids just want to run a basic Windows then consider going that direction. I ran a numerical program all day long crunching numbers in a VMWare instance with 4 threads (Win XP), traded live in the market using TradeStation on a 2 thread machine (Win XP) and ran NetFlix Instant Watch in a 3rd machine (Win 7) with a single thread. Not a hiccup anywhere. And remember, even though Windows breaks, AND IT DOES, I have backups of the 20GB VMWare disks so I can rollback 1 week in a matter of a few minutes if things go bad with Windows. The whole Windows installation is just a bunch of files. Restore that one directory and you're back in business. I play games in VMWare on Gentoo once in awhile. It's OK for me, probably not for my son looking for lots of 3D performance, etc. Also, I own and use SpinRite. If you want or need info get in touch off list. I like the program but it does have issues and it's not all that actively updated anymore. (From what I can tell...) Cheers, Mark I didn't have time to dig into my copy of SpinRite to reacquaint myself with that tool, but I've found it helpful. The problem is that for large modern drives its pretty slow as its testing features
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Re installation may be *correct*, but sometimes its impractical. I would 1. Pull the drive, and connect it to another fully patched, fully security updated windows box. 2. From that box run chkdsk - full virus scan - defrag 3. Reconnect the disk to the original box, and boot from the windows install disk and perform a repair. Use an installation disk that has been slipstreamed with the correct service pack. You should be able to find the media - just remember that OEM media is different to standard media. 4. Uninstall all the crap (check Run registry keys)
Re: [gentoo-user] swap usage creeping up
On Mon, 2010-11-15 at 17:43 -0600, Dale wrote: Fatih Tümen wrote: Okay I am getting suspicious of tuxonice. hm, maybe it was tuxonice, maybe it was 2.6.35, maybe it was the moon? I've just upgraded to 2.6.36 tuxonice and hence had to unmask nvidia-drivers 260.19.06. Changing windows and virtual desktops is now back to it's snappy old self... Let's hope I see some change in swap usage too. thanks, -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au If it's too good to be true, it's probably a rigged demo.
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Adam Carter wrote: One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Re installation may be *correct*, but sometimes its impractical. I would 1. Pull the drive, and connect it to another fully patched, fully security updated windows box. 2. From that box run chkdsk - full virus scan - defrag 3. Reconnect the disk to the original box, and boot from the windows install disk and perform a repair. Use an installation disk that has been slipstreamed with the correct service pack. You should be able to find the media - just remember that OEM media is different to standard media. 4. Uninstall all the crap (check Run registry keys) That's not doable here tho. This is a Linux only house. My nieces puter is the only puter in the house with windoze on it and it is just visiting. It does have NTFS so I am sort of chicken to hook it up to my Linux box. It would be just my luck that it screwed up something. I would mount it read only to save data but scared to do any writing to it. I do wish I could do what I want to with it tho. It's not a bad machine. 3.2GHz CPU with a little over a Gig of ram and about a 60Gb hard drive. It would run Linux sweetly. I did reboot that thing. It does boot and it boots a lot faster now. It appears it was fragmented pretty badly. The error messages about software that used to pop up don't pop up when it boots now either. Maybe AVG did clean out some stuff. I'm not holding my breath but maybe it will last the kids a little while at least. For a Linux list, I sure am getting a lot of good ideas on windoze. O_O Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
For a Linux list, I sure am getting a lot of good ideas on windoze. O_O I'm sure there's many people on this list that have to support relatives broken PCs ^_^ For me, i have Vista (OEM, came with the laptop) running in a VMware virtual machine for iTunes (dont get me started on that POS) and Office (still cant trust OO to do a good enough job for paying customers who use MS Office).
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 15/11/2010, at 11:36pm, Dale wrote: ... I don't have the OS media to reinstall. Because it is kids, they don't want to buy the OS. Assuming the laptop has an OEM Windows license sticker on the underside, it is not necessary to buy a new o/s disk. Any standard Microsoft XP OEM CD [1] will install using that license key. Even if the sticker says Dell or Sony on it - you only have to match up the home or professional version. I periodically hear claims that this is not the case, but I don't believe them, as I have never encountered it myself over literally dozens of installs. Also: uninstall AVG and replace it with Microsoft Security Essentials. I know, I know - you'd think that if you don't trust Microsoft to write a secure o/s in the first place, why should you trust them to write antivirus, right? But Security Essentials is really good, and will find malware that AVG misses. AVG has been going downhill for 2 or 3 years, but has got really bad in the last year and anyone with any sense (who maintains home Windows PCs regularly) has moved to Security Essentials now. http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ Stroller. [1] E.G.: http://www.techsouq.com/images/mwxphe.jpg
[gentoo-user] Re: How to configure thochpad sensitivity (using hal)?
On 2010-11-15, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: Whether Xorg uses HAL or not is controlled by a USE flag isn't it? So upstream choses the defaults for USE flags? No, upstream chooses the default config out of the box. Gentoo does what Gentoo has to do to replicate that config. OK. (To me that means that upstream does choose the defaults for USE flags, but that may just be semantics). Gentoo needs a very good reason to change upstream default behaviour, along the lines of extreme brokenness. There are those of us that might think HAL meets that criteria, but that's pretty much moot at this point. :) Looking forward to a HAL-free system... -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! Okay ... I'm going at home to write the I HATE gmail.comRUBIK's CUBE HANDBOOK FOR DEAD CAT LOVERS ...
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Stroller wrote: On 15/11/2010, at 11:36pm, Dale wrote: ... I don't have the OS media to reinstall. Because it is kids, they don't want to buy the OS. Assuming the laptop has an OEM Windows license sticker on the underside, it is not necessary to buy a new o/s disk. Any standard Microsoft XP OEM CD [1] will install using that license key. Even if the sticker says Dell or Sony on it - you only have to match up the home or professional version. I periodically hear claims that this is not the case, but I don't believe them, as I have never encountered it myself over literally dozens of installs. Also: uninstall AVG and replace it with Microsoft Security Essentials. I know, I know - you'd think that if you don't trust Microsoft to write a secure o/s in the first place, why should you trust them to write antivirus, right? But Security Essentials is really good, and will find malware that AVG misses. AVG has been going downhill for 2 or 3 years, but has got really bad in the last year and anyone with any sense (who maintains home Windows PCs regularly) has moved to Security Essentials now. http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ Stroller. [1] E.G.: http://www.techsouq.com/images/mwxphe.jpg I have read the same thing about the media and the code. I only had it to fail once and it was a home key but a pro media. I wasn't surprised when it didn't work. My ex bought it off ebay and when we contacted the seller, he went and found the key so we could use it. At least he was good about it. I'll check into security essentials tho. I would like something that once installed, it updates itself in the background with no input from the user. The kids don't know much about puters as far as maintaining them. I'm sure AVG told them several times that it was expired, out of date or something and they just closed the box and did nothing about it. Since it is a M$ thing, maybe it will update like the OS does and the kids never even know it happened. Thanks for the link and info. Oh, it's a desktop, not a laptop. Doesn't matter much but anyway. ;-) Dale :-) :-)
