Re: [gentoo-user] MySQL MariaDB - is it time?
2012/3/2 Matthew Finkel matthew.fin...@gmail.com: It's definitely an interesting dilemma, but one that was expected to happen eventually. Lucky Gentoo doesn't have to worry about release cycles. MariaDB is in portage so, in theory, it shouldn't be too difficult for any of us to make the switch. Seeing how successful is Oracle managing a free software community (OpenSolaris, OpenOffice.org, Harmony) I made the switch yesterday with zero issues: keyworded =dev-db/mariadb-5.2 (make sure you install the same minor version as you have with MySQL). emerge -aC mysql emerge mariabd And that's it. Greetings, -- Jorge Martínez López jorg...@gmail.com http://www.jorgeml.net Google Talk / XMPP: jorg...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Pay for a hardened VM image
On 2012-03-03 7:26 PM, Michael Orlitzky mich...@orlitzky.com wrote: On 03/03/2012 03:21 PM, Tanstaafl wrote: No one has a template they can use to simply clone me a ready to go hardened VM? Or interested in earning a little money? It's probably the Microsoft Hyper-V part that's scaring people away. Ahh... good point... What are peoples opinions of ESXi? The guys I'm considering using are perfect for everything else, but they only have experience with Microsoft Hyper-V and ESXi. I don't think they have *any* experience with Xen on Linux, but I dunno about XenServer (I'll find out)... On 2012-03-03 10:55 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Mar 4, 2012 8:13 AM, Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike) klond...@gentoo.org mailto:klond...@gentoo.org wrote: El 04/03/12 01:26, Michael Orlitzky escribió: Or maybe he should just ask on gentoo-hardened where many other users including paid ones roam. Or gentoo-server. After all, Hyper-V is currently aimed for server environs, so the server guys should have better ideas. (disclosure: I'm a server guy, but unfortunately have no experience at all with Hyper-V; my infrastructure runs exclusively on Xen) Hi Pandu, At first I thought you meant Xen proper, but as I was googling about Xen/XenServer+Gentoo I stumbled on this blog post of yours from about 7 months ago: http://pepoluan.posterous.com/finally-gentoo-pv-on-xenserver-without-initrd So - are you using Xen? Or Citrix's XenServer? Do you have any experience running virtualized Microsoft Servers on Xen (or XenServer)? If so, would you be interested in some contract work (if so, please contact me directly)... Thanks for the replies everyone...
[gentoo-user] cairo-1.10.2 fails to emerge --missing file
Hi. In my last update, the system wanted to emerge x11-libs/cairo-1.10.2-r2, but the file EGL/egl.h is missing. Now that file used to be provided by media-libs/mesa, but it seems the file is no longer there. I am running gentoo unstable 64-bit. Any ideas as to how to solve this problem? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. -- Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: How do you spend it? John Covici cov...@ccs.covici.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: bind-9.8.1_p1 recompilation failed...
Jarry mr.ja...@gmail.com wrote: On 01-Mar-12 21:29, walt wrote: On 03/01/2012 09:55 AM, Jarry wrote: What could be the problem? I remember just yesterday I updated bind from 9.7.4_p1 to 9.8.1_p1, but today recompilation simply failed... I'm getting exactly the same error, so I'd say the ebuild is broken. You might be right. After resyncing portage today bind does not want to be re-emerged (yet I did it just to be sure it works). Short check revealed that -static-libs% has been removed from use-flags... OT: recently I noticed many times that a certain use-flag has been activated for application, but removed a after a few days. Not a big problem for small applications, but might be quite annoying if I have to recompile gcc two times in two days, for all of my servers. Seems to me like insufficient testing and this should never happen in case of stable releases.../OT Jarry In bind 9.9.0 I am getting undefined access to main, so things seem to be getting much worse. -- Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: How do you spend it? John Covici cov...@ccs.covici.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Pay for a hardened VM image
On 2012-03-03 10:55 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Mar 4, 2012 8:13 AM, Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike) klond...@gentoo.org mailto:klond...@gentoo.org wrote: El 04/03/12 01:26, Michael Orlitzky escribió: It's probably the Microsoft Hyper-V part that's scaring people away. Or maybe he should just ask on gentoo-hardened where many other users including paid ones roam. Or gentoo-server. Hmmm... I used to be subscribed, but I seem to recall unsubscribing because it seemed essentially dead... But I'll go sub again and post there... Thanks...
Re: [gentoo-user] cairo-1.10.2 fails to emerge --missing file
On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 8:30 AM, cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote: Hi. In my last update, the system wanted to emerge x11-libs/cairo-1.10.2-r2, but the file EGL/egl.h is missing. Now that file used to be provided by media-libs/mesa, but it seems the file is no longer there. I am running gentoo unstable 64-bit. Any ideas as to how to solve this problem? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. I guess it's called 'testing' for a reason? File a bug report. - Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: bind-9.8.1_p1 recompilation failed...
On Sun, 04 Mar 2012 11:34:54 -0500 cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote: Jarry mr.ja...@gmail.com wrote: On 01-Mar-12 21:29, walt wrote: On 03/01/2012 09:55 AM, Jarry wrote: What could be the problem? I remember just yesterday I updated bind from 9.7.4_p1 to 9.8.1_p1, but today recompilation simply failed... I'm getting exactly the same error, so I'd say the ebuild is broken. You might be right. After resyncing portage today bind does not want to be re-emerged (yet I did it just to be sure it works). Short check revealed that -static-libs% has been removed from use-flags... OT: recently I noticed many times that a certain use-flag has been activated for application, but removed a after a few days. Not a big problem for small applications, but might be quite annoying if I have to recompile gcc two times in two days, for all of my servers. Seems to me like insufficient testing and this should never happen in case of stable releases.../OT Jarry In bind 9.9.0 I am getting undefined access to main, so things seem to be getting much worse. Can you fill a bug report to bugs.gentoo.org about it or lookup existing one with your problem? Build problems are usually easies to resolve. -- Sergei signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Pay for a hardened VM image
On Mar 4, 2012 11:17 PM, Tanstaafl tansta...@libertytrek.org wrote: What are peoples opinions of ESXi? The guys I'm considering using are perfect for everything else, but they only have experience with Microsoft Hyper-V and ESXi. I don't think they have *any* experience with Xen on Linux, but I dunno about XenServer (I'll find out)... ESXi is good enough. It's a 'jack of all trades', runs everything Good Enough™, but gets expensive in the long run. Plus, its hypervisor is heavier than Hyper-V and Xen/XenServer, although not by much. XenServer runs Linux guests extremely well; ever since 2.6.38 IIRC, all paravirtual knobs are part of the kernel. This enables the highest performance possible for a guest Linux VM. Windows performance is acceptable; the PV drivers help a lot. It's not perfect, but still acceptable by all measurements. Hyper-V is still struggling to make Linux VMs run well; requisite drivers for running Linux in paravirtual mode just recently got pulled into Linus's tree. IMO, it won't be ready for production Linux VMs until 2013, or late 2012 at the earliest. One 'trick' when making VMs under VMware: the VMXnet subsystem, although at first sounds like it will be a boost to performance (paravirtual device), is not really stable; I've heard lots of grief. Just provide a bog-standard emulated e1000 for the guest VMs. On 2012-03-03 10:55 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Mar 4, 2012 8:13 AM, Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike) klond...@gentoo.org mailto:klond...@gentoo.org wrote: El 04/03/12 01:26, Michael Orlitzky escribió: Or maybe he should just ask on gentoo-hardened where many other users including paid ones roam. Or gentoo-server. After all, Hyper-V is currently aimed for server environs, so the server guys should have better ideas. (disclosure: I'm a server guy, but unfortunately have no experience at all with Hyper-V; my infrastructure runs exclusively on Xen) Hi Pandu, At first I thought you meant Xen proper, but as I was googling about Xen/XenServer+Gentoo I stumbled on this blog post of yours from about 7 months ago: http://pepoluan.posterous.com/finally-gentoo-pv-on-xenserver-without-initrd So - are you using Xen? Or Citrix's XenServer? Well, both *are* based on the exact same Xen hypervisor. The differences between pure Xen and XenServer: Citrix provided a CentOS-based dom0 that's guaranteed to Just Works™, and Citrix also provides mature management tools (Windows-based) that will greatly ease the management of your VMs and pools. Plus, one gets premium-level support from Citrix. That last bit of difference was the key deciding factor of my BoD. FYI, Citrix XenServer Standard Edition is 100% gratis, so you can take it out for a spin first. Upgrading from the Standard Edition to the non-gratis Enterprise Edition or Platinum Edition is a simple matter of importing a License Server VM (image freely downloadable from Citrix) and putting the license file in that License Server. Do you have any experience running virtualized Microsoft Servers on Xen (or XenServer)? I've successfully deployed the following OSes on XenServer for production: Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Gentoo Linux Hardened, Ubuntu Server, and Debian stable The dev boxen also ran rPath Linux (part of OpenFiler), Windows XP SP3, Windows 7, and FreeBSD. If so, would you be interested in some contract work (if so, please contact me directly)... Well, I'd like to help, but currently I'm transitioning to a new employer, and there's a fuckload of things and know-hows that I have to 'transfer' to my successors in the next two weeks :-\ Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] screen locker
[snip] I've been using xautolock for years and years. What's good about it is you can have any 'locker' you want. For now, I'm using feh in slideshow mode. For another, you can specify another program as a 'killer' such as a suspend or hibernate script. However, for a traditional ss, I have been using xlock forever - many more modes than xscreensaver, and just a simple binary to worry about. Terry I think I'm going with xautolock and either vlock or xlockmore. It looks like there isn't an init.d script for xautolock. What is the best way to run it automatically in Gentoo? Is there a keyboard shortcut to trigger xautolock? - Grant Grant, I run it among the startup scripts of my window manager. You could also put it ~/.xinitrc, but I don't think you can start it before your X server is up and running. If your wm has a keyboard shortcut config, it would be simple to bind it to a key, as well. HTH. Terry Thanks, I finally rebooted my laptop and putting xautolock in the XFCE4 session settings works great. - Grant
[gentoo-user] Re: Awesome WM, io.popen() attempt to index io nil value
anyone? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:17 PM, trevor donahue donahue.tre...@gmail.comwrote: http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#5.7 the doc also found on other resources scripts using IO not io, that still aint working... On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:14 PM, trevor donahue donahue.tre...@gmail.comwrote: Hi folks, is anyone of you using awesome wm? I've been struggling with a little bit of a problem lately, wanted to create a widget that retrieves gmail data using curl. The problem encountered is the function io.popen() that returns nil [attempt to index io nil value] (as having an error in lua) even though not doing anything special, tested also with ls -l and other trivial bash commands... Can somebody help me resolve the problem? -- Thanks, Donahue Trevor -- Thanks, Donahue Trevor
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Awesome WM, io.popen() attempt to index io nil value
I use AwesomeWM, but I haven't messed with the Lua side of things. You might try in #awesome on Freenode. On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 2:13 PM, trevor donahue donahue.tre...@gmail.com wrote: anyone? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:17 PM, trevor donahue donahue.tre...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#5.7 the doc also found on other resources scripts using IO not io, that still aint working... On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:14 PM, trevor donahue donahue.tre...@gmail.com wrote: Hi folks, is anyone of you using awesome wm? I've been struggling with a little bit of a problem lately, wanted to create a widget that retrieves gmail data using curl. The problem encountered is the function io.popen() that returns nil [attempt to index io nil value] (as having an error in lua) even though not doing anything special, tested also with ls -l and other trivial bash commands... Can somebody help me resolve the problem? -- Thanks, Donahue Trevor -- Thanks, Donahue Trevor -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Awesome WM, io.popen() attempt to index io nil value
Er. #awesome on OFTC apparently has more users. On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: I use AwesomeWM, but I haven't messed with the Lua side of things. You might try in #awesome on Freenode. On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 2:13 PM, trevor donahue donahue.tre...@gmail.com wrote: anyone? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:17 PM, trevor donahue donahue.tre...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#5.7 the doc also found on other resources scripts using IO not io, that still aint working... On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:14 PM, trevor donahue donahue.tre...@gmail.com wrote: Hi folks, is anyone of you using awesome wm? I've been struggling with a little bit of a problem lately, wanted to create a widget that retrieves gmail data using curl. The problem encountered is the function io.popen() that returns nil [attempt to index io nil value] (as having an error in lua) even though not doing anything special, tested also with ls -l and other trivial bash commands... Can somebody help me resolve the problem? -- Thanks, Donahue Trevor -- Thanks, Donahue Trevor -- :wq -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
[snip] I enabled some more kernel options under USB Network Adapters and it's working now. The install is about done but there were a few peculiarities: 1. fdisk won't let me specify a start block before 2048 even though I deleted all partitions. That's normal. It's a long story, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 expects the first partition to start at sector 2048. You can force a lower number by toggling DOS compatibility; this should let you start the first partition as low as sector 63. HOWEVER, make sure that all partitions begin at multiples of 8 (e.g., 64, 72, 80, and so on); this will save you a lot of grief if it happens that the hard disk you're using has 4KiB-sectors. [1] Got it, I'll just stick with 2048. 2. grub-install reported something like: fd0 hd0 hd1 where hd1 was the USB key. Should I fix this to remove the USB key from grub? I see no problem. The lower number is still the internal hard disk, so grub shouldn't have any trouble booting. Sounds good. 3. Portage complains about duplicate repositories. I think it has to do with the fact that I ran emerge --sync without downloading and extracting an initial snapshot. Try 'rm -rf /usr/portage', download (or copy) portage-latest tarball, and extract it into a re-created /usr/portage I tried that but I get the same message: WARNING: One of more repositories have been ignored due to duplicate profiles/repo_name entires: /, gentoo, /usr/local/portage overrides /usr/portage All profiles/repo_name entries must be unique in order to avoid having duplicates ignored. Set PORTAGE_REPO_DUPLICATE_WARN=0 in /etc/make.conf if you would like to disable this warning. - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
[snip] I enabled some more kernel options under USB Network Adapters and it's working now. The install is about done but there were a few peculiarities: 1. fdisk won't let me specify a start block before 2048 even though I deleted all partitions. That's normal. It's a long story, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 expects the first partition to start at sector 2048. You can force a lower number by toggling DOS compatibility; this should let you start the first partition as low as sector 63. HOWEVER, make sure that all partitions begin at multiples of 8 (e.g., 64, 72, 80, and so on); this will save you a lot of grief if it happens that the hard disk you're using has 4KiB-sectors. [1] Got it, I'll just stick with 2048. 2. grub-install reported something like: fd0 hd0 hd1 where hd1 was the USB key. Should I fix this to remove the USB key from grub? I see no problem. The lower number is still the internal hard disk, so grub shouldn't have any trouble booting. Sounds good. 3. Portage complains about duplicate repositories. I think it has to do with the fact that I ran emerge --sync without downloading and extracting an initial snapshot. Try 'rm -rf /usr/portage', download (or copy) portage-latest tarball, and extract it into a re-created /usr/portage I tried that but I get the same message: WARNING: One of more repositories have been ignored due to duplicate profiles/repo_name entires: /, gentoo, /usr/local/portage overrides /usr/portage All profiles/repo_name entries must be unique in order to avoid having duplicates ignored. Set PORTAGE_REPO_DUPLICATE_WARN=0 in /etc/make.conf if you would like to disable this warning. - Grant Just figured it out. I had a duplicate tree in /usr/local/portage which I just deleted. I had to re-set my profile with eselect. Please let me know if there's anything else I might have to re-do. - Grant
[gentoo-user] Photo management programs
So I take a lot of pictures. A *lot* of pictures. Sometimes around 500/month, sometimes twice that if I manage to get out more. I've got a large number of 'DCIM' directories from different cameras, different camera models, etc, going back ten years. Sometimes in JPG, sometimes RAW, sometimes both. And I've never really managed them well. Does anyone have any photo management tool they like? I've got bits of Qt and Gtk installed already, and while I'd prefer to avoid pulling in a full desktop environment, I might--if the tool is good enough. It would have to: * Handle RAW (via libraw or dcraw is fine), JPEG, PNG[1] and TIFF[1] content and metadata * Index by metadata, including things like the recording camera's serial number[2] * Not be destructive, or ambiguous about being destructive, on image import. I tried using Amarok to organize my music, which is in similar disarray, and I was never sure if it was being destructive about the source files/folders. So I made copies. Which ultimately added to the disarray. [1] My postprocessing occasionally winds up in lossless formats like these. [2] My fiancee and I have the same model camera, and occasionally need to share memory cards, so I'd like to be able to use serial number to distinguish whose is whose. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
[snip] HOWEVER, make sure that all partitions begin at multiples of 8 (e.g., 64, 72, 80, and so on); this will save you a lot of grief if it happens that the hard disk you're using has 4KiB-sectors. [1] snip the rest From what I recall of looking at that toy's specs, it's running on an SSD, so it becomes even more important, performance-wise, to have things aligned properly so any one write doesn't cause two full erase blocks to be cycled. The 1MB alignment is, if I recall, a balance Microsoft struck as the midpoint between multiple hardware vendors to work well on any of them... raid arrays, SSDs, advanced format hard drives with 4k sectors on-disk, etc. Just to confirm, starting at block 2048 is OK? - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
Grant writes: Just to confirm, starting at block 2048 is OK? Yes, if it's divisible by 8, it's okay. That's because 512 * 8 = 4096, so every 8th 512-byte block starts on a 4096 block boundary. Now I have a related question: My new seagate Barracuda Green 2TB ST2000DL003-9VT166 drive has 4096 bytes per sector, but uses something that is called SmartAlign(TM) [*]. Seagate says that there are no performance impacts even when the partitions are misaligned. This would be good, because I completely forgot about this when creating partitions, and I would like to keep it as it is now. Has anyone heard about this? Can I trust Seagate that what they say is correct? [*] www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/de.../mb6101_smartalign_technology_faq.pdf Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Photo management programs
Michael Mol wrote: So I take a lot of pictures. A *lot* of pictures. Sometimes around 500/month, sometimes twice that if I manage to get out more. I've got a large number of 'DCIM' directories from different cameras, different camera models, etc, going back ten years. Sometimes in JPG, sometimes RAW, sometimes both. And I've never really managed them well. Does anyone have any photo management tool they like? I've got bits of Qt and Gtk installed already, and while I'd prefer to avoid pulling in a full desktop environment, I might--if the tool is good enough. It would have to: * Handle RAW (via libraw or dcraw is fine), JPEG, PNG[1] and TIFF[1] content and metadata * Index by metadata, including things like the recording camera's serial number[2] * Not be destructive, or ambiguous about being destructive, on image import. I tried using Amarok to organize my music, which is in similar disarray, and I was never sure if it was being destructive about the source files/folders. So I made copies. Which ultimately added to the disarray. [1] My postprocessing occasionally winds up in lossless formats like these. [2] My fiancee and I have the same model camera, and occasionally need to share memory cards, so I'd like to be able to use serial number to distinguish whose is whose. As someone who also takes a LOT of pictures at times, I don't use software, I just use directories. Mine starts out like this: Camera directory Year subject matter image That works for me. I used to not have the year but that ends up with a LOT of pictures in a directory. Example of mine as it goes to a actual image: Camera-pics/2012/New Years/2012-01-05-8.JPG I have been using gtkam to download my pics for years. Thing is, it has a bug up its butt and wants to crash at random times, usually when changing the directories. Anyway, it always crashes before I am done and lets just say it gets on my freaking nerves. So, I tried digikam. Well, my camera has multiple directories and for some reason it doesn't show them all and then duplicates other images to boot. I may have 2 or 3 copies of the same picture. I have yet to figure out why that is and google, now startpage, has not helped me either. Maybe I am searching for the wrong thing? If you want software to help manage your images, I'd try digikam. If it works for you and your camera, it should do fine. If you want to go my route, try gtkam and hope like heck it doesn't crash for you too. Right now, both of those get on my nerves for different reasons. Hope that helps and is clearer than mud. Maybe someone will come along with a better plan for us both too. lol Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
[gentoo-user] xdm doesn't try to start (Gentoo issue)
I have two hardware-identical laptops exhibiting different behavior WRT xdm. xdm doesn't try to start automatically on one of the laptops but does on the other. On the one that does not start xdm, I get this on startup: # rc-update -s | grep xdm xdm | default # /etc/init.d/xdm status * status: stopped # /etc/init.d/xdm start and xdm/lightdm starts just fine. What could be the problem? It works perfectly on the other laptop. - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
[snip] 1. fdisk won't let me specify a start block before 2048 even though I deleted all partitions. That's normal. It's a long story, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 expects the first partition to start at sector 2048. You can force a lower number by toggling DOS compatibility; this should let you start the first partition as low as sector 63. HOWEVER, make sure that all partitions begin at multiples of 8 (e.g., 64, 72, 80, and so on); this will save you a lot of grief if it happens that the hard disk you're using has 4KiB-sectors. I just looked up the start block for my other systems and they're all on 63. Is performance impacted on all of these systems since they aren't started on 64? - Grant
[gentoo-user] Backlight problems
On my just-released Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook, I can control the backlight with 'xbacklight -set 0' and 'xbacklight -set 100'. Any other values cause the screen to blink and flash. The keyboard backlight shortcuts don't work unless I map them to xbacklight 0 and 100. Also xbacklight doesn't work at all if I'm unplugged from AC. I've tried acpi_osi=Linux and acpi_backlight=vendor in grub.conf. acpi_osi doesn't seem to make any difference and xbacklight doesn't work at all without acpi_backlight. Do I just need to wait for a newer kernel? - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 1:09 PM, Grant emailgr...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] 1. fdisk won't let me specify a start block before 2048 even though I deleted all partitions. That's normal. It's a long story, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 expects the first partition to start at sector 2048. You can force a lower number by toggling DOS compatibility; this should let you start the first partition as low as sector 63. HOWEVER, make sure that all partitions begin at multiples of 8 (e.g., 64, 72, 80, and so on); this will save you a lot of grief if it happens that the hard disk you're using has 4KiB-sectors. I just looked up the start block for my other systems and they're all on 63. Is performance impacted on all of these systems since they aren't started on 64? - Grant The performance is only impacted if the sector size is something other than 512 bytes. The newer 4K sector size used by some higher density drives requires that you start partitions on a sector boundary or they will perform badly. There isn't an actually performance need to actually start on 2048 but the fdisk-type developer folks are doing that to be more compatible with newer Windows installations. HTH, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
[snip] 1. fdisk won't let me specify a start block before 2048 even though I deleted all partitions. That's normal. It's a long story, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 expects the first partition to start at sector 2048. You can force a lower number by toggling DOS compatibility; this should let you start the first partition as low as sector 63. HOWEVER, make sure that all partitions begin at multiples of 8 (e.g., 64, 72, 80, and so on); this will save you a lot of grief if it happens that the hard disk you're using has 4KiB-sectors. I just looked up the start block for my other systems and they're all on 63. Is performance impacted on all of these systems since they aren't started on 64? - Grant The performance is only impacted if the sector size is something other than 512 bytes. The newer 4K sector size used by some higher density drives requires that you start partitions on a sector boundary or they will perform badly. There isn't an actually performance need to actually start on 2048 but the fdisk-type developer folks are doing that to be more compatible with newer Windows installations. All my drives says this from fdisk: Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes So it doesn't matter where the first partition starts? - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
On Sun, 4 Mar 2012 13:56:23 -0800 Grant emailgr...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] 1. fdisk won't let me specify a start block before 2048 even though I deleted all partitions. That's normal. It's a long story, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 expects the first partition to start at sector 2048. You can force a lower number by toggling DOS compatibility; this should let you start the first partition as low as sector 63. HOWEVER, make sure that all partitions begin at multiples of 8 (e.g., 64, 72, 80, and so on); this will save you a lot of grief if it happens that the hard disk you're using has 4KiB-sectors. I just looked up the start block for my other systems and they're all on 63. Is performance impacted on all of these systems since they aren't started on 64? - Grant The performance is only impacted if the sector size is something other than 512 bytes. The newer 4K sector size used by some higher density drives requires that you start partitions on a sector boundary or they will perform badly. There isn't an actually performance need to actually start on 2048 but the fdisk-type developer folks are doing that to be more compatible with newer Windows installations. All my drives says this from fdisk: Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes So it doesn't matter where the first partition starts? Correct. Those drives are all the same style as you've been using for years. If partitions start at 63, that's just an msdos convention. For reasons I've never understood, Windows liked to reserve the first 32k for some purpose or other. -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] cairo-1.10.2 fails to emerge --missing file
Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 8:30 AM, cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote: Hi. In my last update, the system wanted to emerge x11-libs/cairo-1.10.2-r2, but the file EGL/egl.h is missing. Now that file used to be provided by media-libs/mesa, but it seems the file is no longer there. I am running gentoo unstable 64-bit. Any ideas as to how to solve this problem? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. I guess it's called 'testing' for a reason? File a bug report. I may do that, downgrading mesa fix it and I discovered that the version of mesa which portage installed as an update was masked -- I wonder why it did that at all. -- Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: How do you spend it? John Covici cov...@ccs.covici.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
[snip] 1. fdisk won't let me specify a start block before 2048 even though I deleted all partitions. That's normal. It's a long story, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 expects the first partition to start at sector 2048. You can force a lower number by toggling DOS compatibility; this should let you start the first partition as low as sector 63. HOWEVER, make sure that all partitions begin at multiples of 8 (e.g., 64, 72, 80, and so on); this will save you a lot of grief if it happens that the hard disk you're using has 4KiB-sectors. I just looked up the start block for my other systems and they're all on 63. Is performance impacted on all of these systems since they aren't started on 64? - Grant The performance is only impacted if the sector size is something other than 512 bytes. The newer 4K sector size used by some higher density drives requires that you start partitions on a sector boundary or they will perform badly. There isn't an actually performance need to actually start on 2048 but the fdisk-type developer folks are doing that to be more compatible with newer Windows installations. All my drives says this from fdisk: Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes So it doesn't matter where the first partition starts? Correct. Those drives are all the same style as you've been using for years. If partitions start at 63, that's just an msdos convention. For reasons I've never understood, Windows liked to reserve the first 32k for some purpose or other. So fdisk used to enforce a block 63 start point and now it enforces a 2048 start point? fdisk is the one doing this? - Grant
[gentoo-user] Re: xdm doesn't try to start (Gentoo issue)
On 03/04/2012 01:02 PM, Grant wrote: I have two hardware-identical laptops exhibiting different behavior WRT xdm. xdm doesn't try to start automatically on one of the laptops but does on the other. On the one that does not start xdm, I get this on startup: # rc-update -s | grep xdm xdm | default # /etc/init.d/xdm status * status: stopped # /etc/init.d/xdm start and xdm/lightdm starts just fine. What could be the problem? It works perfectly on the other laptop. There is a switch in /etc/rc.conf called rc_logger. Maybe turning it on will give you some useful info.
[gentoo-user] Re: Backlight problems
On 03/04/2012 01:16 PM, Grant wrote: On my just-released Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook, I can control the backlight with 'xbacklight -set 0' and 'xbacklight -set 100'. Any other values cause the screen to blink and flash. The keyboard backlight shortcuts don't work unless I map them to xbacklight 0 and 100. Also xbacklight doesn't work at all if I'm unplugged from AC. I've tried acpi_osi=Linux and acpi_backlight=vendor in grub.conf. acpi_osi doesn't seem to make any difference and xbacklight doesn't work at all without acpi_backlight. Do I just need to wait for a newer kernel? Does the gentoo install CD or a rescue CD give you any way to test the same backlight functions? If the backlight works correctly when running such a CD then listing the loaded kernel modules might give you a clue.
Re: [gentoo-user] xdm doesn't try to start (Gentoo issue)
Grant writes: I have two hardware-identical laptops exhibiting different behavior WRT xdm. xdm doesn't try to start automatically on one of the laptops but does on the other. On the one that does not start xdm, I get this on startup: # rc-update -s | grep xdm xdm | default # /etc/init.d/xdm status * status: stopped # /etc/init.d/xdm start and xdm/lightdm starts just fine. What could be the problem? It works perfectly on the other laptop. Is there any error in /var/log/Xorg.0.log, before you start xdm manually? Watch during boot which services are being started after xdm, maybe xdm depends on something that is not available yet. You could add the needed service to the depend() function in /etc/init.d/xdm in this case. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Backlight problems
On my just-released Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook, I can control the backlight with 'xbacklight -set 0' and 'xbacklight -set 100'. Any other values cause the screen to blink and flash. The keyboard backlight shortcuts don't work unless I map them to xbacklight 0 and 100. Also xbacklight doesn't work at all if I'm unplugged from AC. I've tried acpi_osi=Linux and acpi_backlight=vendor in grub.conf. acpi_osi doesn't seem to make any difference and xbacklight doesn't work at all without acpi_backlight. Do I just need to wait for a newer kernel? Does the gentoo install CD or a rescue CD give you any way to test the same backlight functions? If the backlight works correctly when running such a CD then listing the loaded kernel modules might give you a clue. That's a fine idea. The latest Gentoo minimal CD wouldn't boot this laptop so I used Kubuntu to install and I should do something like that for testing the backlight. Is there a consensus on which LiveCD is kept really up-to-date and works well across a lot of different hardware? - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Pay for a hardened VM image
El 04/03/12 17:35, Tanstaafl escribió: Hmmm... I used to be subscribed, but I seem to recall unsubscribing because it seemed essentially dead... We tend to be shy and not very active since we have many things to focus on, but this also means posts hardly go by unread, so please don't confuse lack of activity to death, the fact an alien is not moving doesn't means he is dead and won't jump on your back as soon as you stop looking ;) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
On Mar 5, 2012 3:37 AM, Alex Schuster wo...@wonkology.org wrote: Grant writes: Just to confirm, starting at block 2048 is OK? Yes, if it's divisible by 8, it's okay. That's because 512 * 8 = 4096, so every 8th 512-byte block starts on a 4096 block boundary. Now I have a related question: My new seagate Barracuda Green 2TB ST2000DL003-9VT166 drive has 4096 bytes per sector, but uses something that is called SmartAlign(TM) [*]. Seagate says that there are no performance impacts even when the partitions are misaligned. This would be good, because I completely forgot about this when creating partitions, and I would like to keep it as it is now. Has anyone heard about this? Can I trust Seagate that what they say is correct? [*] www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/de.../mb6101_smartalign_technology_faq.pdf Wonko Your URL got munged there, I can't download the pdf. Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
On Mar 5, 2012 3:15 AM, Grant emailgr...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] HOWEVER, make sure that all partitions begin at multiples of 8 (e.g., 64, 72, 80, and so on); this will save you a lot of grief if it happens that the hard disk you're using has 4KiB-sectors. [1] snip the rest From what I recall of looking at that toy's specs, it's running on an SSD, so it becomes even more important, performance-wise, to have things aligned properly so any one write doesn't cause two full erase blocks to be cycled. The 1MB alignment is, if I recall, a balance Microsoft struck as the midpoint between multiple hardware vendors to work well on any of them... raid arrays, SSDs, advanced format hard drives with 4k sectors on-disk, etc. Just to confirm, starting at block 2048 is OK? No problem. You'll just be shortchanged of almost 1MiB. Nothing to lose sleep over, IMO. The most important thing is to make sure that *all* partitions begin on sectors divisible by 8. So, if you're going to set up multiple partitions, eyeball their start sectors carefully. Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
On Mar 5, 2012 4:59 AM, Grant emailgr...@gmail.com wrote: All my drives says this from fdisk: Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes So it doesn't matter where the first partition starts? Older BIOSes don't understand that hard disks now can have 4KiB sectors, so some of the advanced format hard disks report a sector size of 512B. But behind the scenes, the hard disk maps the logical sector to a subsector of the physical sector. The only sure fire way to find out if your hard disk uses 4KiB sectors is to open your computer and eyeball the hard disk. All 4KiB hard disks that I know of have statements on their surface that tell me so. Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
On Mar 5, 2012 5:10 AM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: Correct. Those drives are all the same style as you've been using for years. If partitions start at 63, that's just an msdos convention. For reasons I've never understood, Windows liked to reserve the first 32k for some purpose or other. Partitions start at sector 63 because traditionally that's the first sector of the second cylinder. If the partition starts at a lower sector, then the metadata of the filesystem might get split between two cylinders, causing a performance impact due to drive head repositioning (older -- like, *really old* drives -- have slow and inaccurate actuators; repositioning heads takes time because after moving the heads, the location needs some fine tuning by reading some calibration data embedded in every cylinder). Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
On Mar 5, 2012 5:39 AM, Grant emailgr...@gmail.com wrote: So fdisk used to enforce a block 63 start point and now it enforces a 2048 start point? fdisk is the one doing this? - Grant Yes. Like I posted before (and explained in the article I linked), if you turn off the compatibility mode, you can push it down to 63. Not recommended, though. Not only will you lose compatibility with Windows, but also you'll only gain slightly less than 1MiB. And who knows in the future something absofuckinlutely requires the first partition to begin at sector 2048. So, IMO, disabling the DOS compatibility gives one too small a gain that's worth the (possible) headache in the future. Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] Photo management programs
On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: So I take a lot of pictures. A *lot* of pictures. Sometimes around 500/month, sometimes twice that if I manage to get out more. I've got a large number of 'DCIM' directories from different cameras, different camera models, etc, going back ten years. Sometimes in JPG, sometimes RAW, sometimes both. And I've never really managed them well. Does anyone have any photo management tool they like? I've got bits of Qt and Gtk installed already, and while I'd prefer to avoid pulling in a full desktop environment, I might--if the tool is good enough. It would have to: * Handle RAW (via libraw or dcraw is fine), JPEG, PNG[1] and TIFF[1] content and metadata * Index by metadata, including things like the recording camera's serial number[2] * Not be destructive, or ambiguous about being destructive, on image import. I tried using Amarok to organize my music, which is in similar disarray, and I was never sure if it was being destructive about the source files/folders. So I made copies. Which ultimately added to the disarray. I think Digikam can do all of it and more. :) Not sure how much of KDE it will require... Check out the features list at: http://www.digikam.org/drupal/features
Re: [gentoo-user] Photo management programs
Dale wrote: As someone who also takes a LOT of pictures at times, I don't use software, I just use directories. Mine starts out like this: Camera directory Year subject matter image That works for me. I used to not have the year but that ends up with a LOT of pictures in a directory. Example of mine as it goes to a actual image: Camera-pics/2012/New Years/2012-01-05-8.JPG I have been using gtkam to download my pics for years. Thing is, it has a bug up its butt and wants to crash at random times, usually when changing the directories. Anyway, it always crashes before I am done and lets just say it gets on my freaking nerves. So, I tried digikam. Well, my camera has multiple directories and for some reason it doesn't show them all and then duplicates other images to boot. I may have 2 or 3 copies of the same picture. I have yet to figure out why that is and google, now startpage, has not helped me either. Maybe I am searching for the wrong thing? If you want software to help manage your images, I'd try digikam. If it works for you and your camera, it should do fine. If you want to go my route, try gtkam and hope like heck it doesn't crash for you too. Right now, both of those get on my nerves for different reasons. Hope that helps and is clearer than mud. Maybe someone will come along with a better plan for us both too. lol Dale :-) :-) I wanted to add some testing results. I mentioned I used gtkam and it was bad to crash. Well, I experimented a bit and found out this. If I disable the gimp USE flag, gtkam doesn't seem to crash. I tested for longer than it usually lasts so it may crash again but it lasted through a lot of clicking without crashing. It is a good sign at least. By the way, gtkam crashed with a segmentation fault. I have debug turned on but it doesn't seem to help much. I may report this to the gtkam folks if it is not to much trouble. This has been going on long enough. BTW, I don't use gtkam within GIMP anyway. I only use GIMP after I have downloaded my pics. At least if you go this way, you have a possible way to get it to not crash. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
