Re: [gentoo-user] Laptop Overheat
On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 11:18:54PM +, Mick wrote: There may be nothing wrong with your configuration, but something wrong with the design of your laptop. Some laptops are not designed particularly well with regards to ventilation. In the summer I have a desk fan which I turn on and direct it on the side of the laptop, so that air blows above and below. The temperatures drop by more than 10-15C in a couple of minutes. Perhaps you should try something similar. -- Regards, Mick Okay, glad to hear I'm not doing something wrong. I'll try to clean it and be better about putting a wedge under it when I compile and walk away. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Laptop Overheat
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 07:37:24AM +0100, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: When I compile bigger packages on my small ThinkPad X220 I sometimes put it into the fridge ;-) This effectively cools it down rather quickly ... and I ssh in via wifi. Not to be tried at home ;-) Hahaha, I've actually considered this before but decided that I'd only end up melting my ice cream... signature.asc Description: Digital signature
[gentoo-user] Laptop Overheat
Hey guys, When I'm compiling something large and close the lid of my laptop (lid close events disabled) or leave it on the couch where it can't get proper airflow, it tends to overheat and crash. If I leave it open and on a table, everything is fine. I have a quad-core processor and MAKEOPTS=-j5. During compilation, system load is around 5 and all 4 cores are maxed out. My CPU temp is 99C or under, which is safe for this machine. dmesg shows this every few minutes whenever my machine is at max temp, which I've read is normal: [ 2092.018902] CPU0: Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 179101) [ 2092.018903] CPU2: Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 179101) [ 2092.018906] CPU3: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 227311) [ 2092.018907] CPU1: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 227311) [ 2092.018908] CPU2: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 227311) [ 2092.018916] CPU0: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 227311) [ 2092.019864] CPU0: Core temperature/speed normal [ 2092.019865] CPU2: Core temperature/speed normal [ 2092.019866] CPU1: Package temperature/speed normal [ 2092.019867] CPU3: Package temperature/speed normal [ 2092.019868] CPU2: Package temperature/speed normal [ 2092.019874] CPU0: Package temperature/speed normal [ 2099.655532] mce: [Hardware Error]: Machine check events logged At the time of crash, syslog contains a bunch of '^@^@^@^@^@^@^@...', but nothing useful. It looks like my cpu clock is being scaled, but perhaps not being scaled enough. I'm guessing the processor halts when I hit 100C. Again, when I leave it well-ventilated it never goes above 99C and everything is fine. Any ideas about where I should look? Randy signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Networkmanager on uclibc Gentoo system x86
On Tue, Jul 08, 2014 at 11:58:45PM +0100, João Jerónimo wrote: Can you tell me if there is an alternative to NetworkManager? Or else, can wpa_supplicant connect to networks that are not statically configured in config files? JJ I like wicd, but I have no idea whether it will work with uclibc. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
[gentoo-user] ntpd crashes, system set to UTC
Hey guys, I'm having some trouble with ntpd and my system clock. Every once and a while, my system time is wrong. In the past (not having time to look into it), I've just run ntp-client to correct it. Turns out that ntpd is crashing and `date` reports the UTC time, but thinks it's Eastern. This time I didn't correct the time and tried rebooting a few times. ntpd crashes within 5 minutes of boot, leading me to suspect the the time being off is what's causing ntpd to crash. Info about my system: I dual boot with windows, so my /etc/conf.d/hwclock looks like this: clock=local clock_systohc=YES clock_hctosys=YES clock_args= I also have CONFIG_RTC_HCTOSYS and CONFIG_RTC_SYSTORC set in my kernel. ntpd is in my default runlevel, ntp-client is not. My /etc/ntp.conf looks like this: server 0.gentoo.pool.ntp.org server 1.gentoo.pool.ntp.org server 2.gentoo.pool.ntp.org server 3.gentoo.pool.ntp.org driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift restrict default nomodify nopeer noquery restrict 127.0.0.1 What am I doing wrong? Where should I look for more information on the problem? Randy
[gentoo-user] Blue Fn Key Combinations not Sending Scancodes
Hey guys, I'm trying to make my blue Fn key combinations control by MPD server on the Raspberry Pi sitting on my speakers. This should be really easy with xbindkeys. I'm following this document: http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/HOWTO_Use_Multimedia_Keys The problem I have is that the Fn key combinations on my laptop aren't all sending scancodes. I understand that the Fn key itself doesn't send a scancode. I'm using Fn + Down Arrow (a blue play/pause symbol), but xev doesn't register it. Even when running showkey -s, I can't get a scancode. When I do Fn + F8 (a blue monitor symbol) I get the scancode 0xe0 0x56 0xe0 0xd6 so the key itself is working. And I can use Fn + F1 (Zz) to hibernate. So I'm thinking the kernel isn't recognizing the scancode that the keyboard is sending? Does that sound right? Is there something in the kernel that I should change? I didn't see anything that looked relevant under keyboard drivers. Randy
[gentoo-user] startx with multiple window managers
I'm looking for a better way to manage multiple WMs. I launch X with startx. I also use multiple window managers. I'm primarily on xmonad because I love tiling WMs, but I also keep xfce around for whever I developing a GUI or letting my fiancee use my machine. My procedure for starting multiple managers is this: - log in - startx - login on tty2 - edit .xinitrc (shown below) - startx -- :1 .xinitrc goes from: exec xmonad #exec startxfce4 to: #exec xmonad exec startxfce4 Then I can switch between tty7 and tty8 at will. Usually I don't start xfce at all, but for the times when I do, I'd be nice to do this without editing a file. Can I simplify this process? Is there anyone else who uses multiple WMs? How do you manage them? Randy
Re: [gentoo-user] The NVIDIA/Kernel fiasco -- is it safe to sync yet?
On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 10:45:46AM -0700, Chris Stankevitz wrote: Are regular nvidia users who run a completely stable system (with only stable nvidia-drivers and stable gentoo-sources) affected by any of this? I believe so. I run testing, but this just cleared up for me a few days ago when I went to kernel 3.10.7 (stable). I'm currently running kernel 3.10.9 and nvidia-drivers 325.15 (both testing), which works just fine. Try it and see what happens. Randy
Re: [gentoo-user] Jitsi or Other Skype Alternative
On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 08:59:07AM +0200, Jean-Christophe Bach wrote: Well, it depends on what you call a replacement: Jitsi and Ekiga can do the work as well as Skype, but not with the Skype protocol and network. But if your contacts do not care about it, it's ok. I tried Jitsi last year after the FOSDEM, but it was too much buggy. I tried again this year (after the FOSDEM again), and I think it si now usable. You can also try Ekiga which is also usable on other OS. With both of these pieces of software, the main problem when moving from Skype is to change your buddies' habits :\ Regards, JC Thanks everyone for the explanation of why jitsi isn't in the tree. That makes sense now. I'm going to try ekiga and linphone. I guess there aren't a lot of options right now. Randy
[gentoo-user] Jitsi or Other Skype Alternative
For a multitude of reasons, I'd like to get rid of skype. I've heard several people mention jitsi, but was surprised to find that it's not in the portage tree. Is jitsi being actively maintained in an overlay somewhere? Are there plans to put jitsi in the main tree? Are there other other good alternatives to skype that are supported on gentoo? What do you guys use? Randy
Re: [gentoo-user] SQL Server Advice for Small Business
On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 07:52:11AM +0200, J. Roeleveld wrote: For that, you could, in time, look into PostGIS (or similar). Interesting, I'll keep that in the back of my mind. Will the server be internet-facing? I would make sure you have a firewall and only open the port needed for the front-end. Don't update the kernel too often, keep an eye out for security fixes and apply where necessary. Keep a seperate machine/VM where you build binary packages. This will significantly reduce the time needed to upgrade the software. No, it'll be LAN only. I'll filter out external connections. There's no wireless network and no adjacent businesses, so I'm not worrying too much about security. The only thing I'll need from the outside is SSH. So your recommendation is to have a VM on the server with the same packages installed, compile things there, then move the binary package to the real server. I might set this up at some point, but I think I'll be okay with updating things in place, so long as I do it at night. That depends on your budget and requirements. For databases, RAID-10 is generally considered the best performance. Also avoid filling the disks and try to use the first half of the disk, rather then the whole. (First half is faster then 2nd half) RAID-10 in software (eg. Linux Software Raid in the kernel) outperforms the cheaper RAID-cards easily. If you have the budget, you could invest in a dedicated hardware raid card (but make sure it is 100% hardware and doesn't use the CPU for the calculations) Okay, RAID-10 sounds good. Thanks for the tip about the first half of the drives. Depends on how much you want in there. If just a simple share, then it will be simple. If you also want the MS Windows machines to authenticate against it, things get a little more complicated. Should just be a simple share, I don't think I'll need any authentication. How mission-critical will this be? For my server (which has become quite critical over the years), I currently use a self-build server with good reliable components. TYAN-mainboard (with built-in iKVM), WD-RED drives, Areca hardware raid-card. When I started running my own server, it was on a cheap no-brand mainboard with simple desktop disks connected via IDE. (yes, ancient :) ) The server will be pretty important. If all goes according to plan, every employee that uses a computer (~15) will be interacting with it throughout the day. The goal is to replace paper records. Aside from the hard drives, are there any other components that are especially important for databases? You want to try to keep the database design optimized for the usage pattern of the client-tools. Which usually means not too much normalization. That helps with reporting, not when you need to do mostly inserts. From what I've read so far, it sounded like everything should be normalized as much as possible even if there's a slight performance hit because it makes the system easier to modify and expand later. In my prototype, I have it divided into as many tables as possible, and each SELECT has mutiple joins. Is this a bad idea? How big will those documents be? Either, as already mentioned, store them as blobs, or on a (samba) share and put metadata (filepath,name,description,...) in the database. I'm expecting job orders to have at most a few images of the job site, blueprints, random things the customer/contractor emailed us, and a few scanned sheets of handwritten notes. Storing them outside the database sounds like asking for trouble. Binary blobs sounds good. Advice: 1) Backup 2) Backup 3) Did I mention backup? ;) A tip, when you decide to put the documents on a share, to ensure the backups are in sync, do the following: 1) stop access to the database 2) snapshot the fileshare (LVM helps here) 3) backup the database 4) allow access to the database again 5) backup the snapshot 6) remove the snapshot Total downtime with this should be less then 1 minute. A full backup using the Postgresql tools is really quick. Step 5 can then take as long as it takes. The environment will still be running. How often should a small database like this be backed up? Once a day? Twice a day? I'm thinking that I should backup to another machine on the network, then copy that to at least one off-side machine. Thanks for your help. Randy
[gentoo-user] SQL Server Advice for Small Business
Hey guys, I'm planning to set up an SQL server for my dad's small canvas awning business, and I've never done this before. Most of my sysadmin-type skills are self-taught. I could use some advice. My dad needs infrastructure to allow ~ 15 of his employees to schedule appointments, track order status, and analyze random things about job status and customer base. I intend to set up a PostgreSQL server and write simple graphical front ends for the employees. I'll do most of the advanced customer base analysis for him. Eventually, I want to be generating heat maps of cashflow from cities and telling him where most of his materials are being used, etc. Operating system: I feel more comfortable on gentoo than anywhere else, so I'd like to put gentoo on the server. How often should I update packages? How often should I update the kernel? Any general management advice? I'm not really familiar with all the RAID options. Which should I be using? Should it be implemented in hardware or software? I'm also planning on using samba to give everyone a shared directory, but that should be easy. Hardware: What kind of hardware should I be looking at? One of Dell's PowerEdge models? How much of the hardware will need to be enterprise grade? I believe the hard drives will be the most important, right? I installed one of NASA's servers in Antarctica once, but someone else spec'd the hardware ($6k PowerEdge) and put ubuntu on it. Table structure: I'm diving into database design and normalization rules now. I'll need to store binary files (pictures of job site, scanned documents), and am currently planning on base64 encoding them (or something similar) and storing them in the database to keep it ACID compliant. Any other random advice or good resources would be much appreciated. Randy
[gentoo-user] Stream Audio to RasPi on LAN
Hey guys, I have a nice set of speakers, but they aren't near my desk in my home office. I used to carry them back and forth when I wanted good music, but that was a pain. I currently have a RasPi running arch connected to the speakers -- I've been cat-ing audio files over ssh to mplayer, and that mostly works (no fast-forward/skip). I also tried using reverse-ssh and sshfs to mount my files on the RasPi, but that seems silly. What I really want is to be able to stream audio from my browser to the RasPi's speakers (pandora, grooveshark). I'd like to set up an audio device that maps to the RasPi. Something like /dev/dsp1, perhaps. If I could have some audio sent to the RasPi and leave mcabber's chat notifications on my laptop's speakers, that'd be fantastic. Does anyone have a setup like this? Know of any good options? Randy
Re: [gentoo-user] Stream Audio to RasPi on LAN
On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 05:31:52PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: On 29/04/2013 17:26, Randy Westlund wrote: Hey guys, I have a nice set of speakers, but they aren't near my desk in my home office. I used to carry them back and forth when I wanted good music, but that was a pain. I currently have a RasPi running arch connected to the speakers -- I've been cat-ing audio files over ssh to mplayer, and that mostly works (no fast-forward/skip). I also tried using reverse-ssh and sshfs to mount my files on the RasPi, but that seems silly. What I really want is to be able to stream audio from my browser to the RasPi's speakers (pandora, grooveshark). I'd like to set up an audio device that maps to the RasPi. Something like /dev/dsp1, perhaps. If I could have some audio sent to the RasPi and leave mcabber's chat notifications on my laptop's speakers, that'd be fantastic. Does anyone have a setup like this? Know of any good options? Randy Run OpenElec on the Pi - it's a minimalist distro running XBMC, must like an appliance. Then you can stream whatever you want to the Pi using just about every known protocol from just about every known device (phones included!) XBMC also has plugins for all manner of web-based interfaces. It's a bigger solution than you asked for, but possibly one that gives you more than you thought you'd get -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com Interesting, I hadn't heard of XBMC. I may not stick with it, but I'm going to play around with this for sure. Randy
Re: [gentoo-user] Stream Audio to RasPi on LAN
On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 06:18:42PM +0200, Michael Hampicke wrote: Am 29.04.2013 17:26, schrieb Randy Westlund: Hey guys, I have a nice set of speakers, but they aren't near my desk in my home office. I used to carry them back and forth when I wanted good music, but that was a pain. I currently have a RasPi running arch connected to the speakers -- I've been cat-ing audio files over ssh to mplayer, and that mostly works (no fast-forward/skip). I also tried using reverse-ssh and sshfs to mount my files on the RasPi, but that seems silly. What I really want is to be able to stream audio from my browser to the RasPi's speakers (pandora, grooveshark). I'd like to set up an audio device that maps to the RasPi. Something like /dev/dsp1, perhaps. If I could have some audio sent to the RasPi and leave mcabber's chat notifications on my laptop's speakers, that'd be fantastic. Does anyone have a setup like this? Know of any good options? Randy I don't know what desktop env you are running, but would PulseAudio be an option? You could send the audio from your program (browser) to the Pi but keep the chat notification on your local machine. I switch between xfce and xmonad (from startx). My only experience with pulseaudio is the weird audio thing that keeps messing up ubuntu from two years ago when I had just gotten off windows. After taking a second look, it looks promising. Thanks. Randy
[gentoo-user] What utility do you use to sync user files?
I've been using rsync to sync binary files, shell scripts, my workspace, and random user files under my home directory across multiple machines. I'm using one server as the master copy, which makes daily incremental backups of my files to a separate disk with rsync. At the moment, I have my sync script set up as a Makefile with the following targets. I run this from multiple workstations. It would be nice to use something as easy as svn, but many of my files are binary. Or something like dropbox would be great. I don't work from windows, so I don't need a cross-platform solution. What utilities do you guys use? Is there a better way to do this? It would be nice to move everything to the background, but I've already clobbered a few files by calling this in the wrong order and might move the Makefile to an interactive script to protect against that. I have to call 'make clobber' after I remove a local file to push that change to the server, and if I forgot to call 'make get' first, I have to fix it manually. ---sync makefile get: rsync -azOuvihh --progress -e ssh $(EXCLUDE) \ --delete \ $(HOST):$(SERVER_DIR) $(LOCAL_DIR) put: rsync -azOuvihh --progress -e ssh $(EXCLUDE) \ $(LOCAL_DIR) $(HOST):$(SERVER_DIR) clobber: rsync -azOuvihh --progress -e ssh $(EXCLUDE) \ --delete \ $(LOCAL_DIR) $(HOST):$(SERVER_DIR) --end--- ---backup script # if files are already there, hard link # the last lines mark it as complete and move a soft link pointer rsync -zavi --progress --delete \ --link-dest=$BACKUP_PATH/current \ $SOURCE $BACKUP_PATH/backup_part_$DATE \ mv $BACKUP_PATH/backup_part_$DATE $BACKUP_PATH/backup_$DATE \ unlink $BACKUP_PATH/current \ ln -s $BACKUP_PATH/backup_$DATE $BACKUP_PATH/current ---end- Randy
Re: [gentoo-user] What utility do you use to sync user files?
On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 10:14 PM, Dustin C. Hatch admiraln...@gmail.com wrote: On 12/2/2012 14:33, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sun, 2 Dec 2012 12:21:40 -0500, Randy Westlund wrote: What utilities do you guys use? Is there a better way to do this? It would be nice to move everything to the background, but I've already clobbered a few files by calling this in the wrong order net-misc/unison I use unison to emulate Windows's offline files feature for several subdirectories in ~, and I can say it works really well. It took me quite some time to understand all of its options, and it has some very strange behavioral quirks which are easily worked around, but I like the what I ended up with. I currently have it set up to automatically synchronize a couple of locations on my notebook with a share on my file server about every five minutes. If the server is unavailable (i.e. I am not at home), it exits silently, but will try again at the next scheduled time. In the event of file conflicts (i.e. I changed the same file on the server and on the notebook between syncs), it sends me an email listing the conflicting filenames, and I can look into it later. -- ♫Dustin Unison is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks, Neil and Dustin. Randy
Re: [gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Philip Webb purs...@ca.inter.net wrote: 121127 Randy Westlund wrote: I'm a new gentoo user coming from Ubuntu. Welcome ! I've been proving to myself that I can do everything I need with Gentoo on a secondary laptop, and after a few weeks, I think I've got it: svn repos, AVR cross compiler, multiple screens, etc. I much prefer Gentoo to Ubuntu and would like to put it on my primary laptop, but I think I should leave an Ubuntu installation on there just in case. I'd like to have Gentoo, Ubuntu and Win7 alongside each other. How feasible would it be to have Gentoo and Ubuntu share a /home partition? It's likely to cause problems after a short time, as the 2 OS's will vary in the way they handle config files pkgs wb updated at different times to different versions. Try having separate homes, but symlink most of your subdirs in Ubuntu -- since you are likely to stop using it soon -- to those in Gentoo. The subdirs to symlink wb those which contain your personal stuff -- documents, pictures, whatever -- , which won't vary with OS. -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca Thanks for all the advice. I think I'm going to have separate /home directories and symlink the important things. Given that I don't intend to use ubuntu very much, it makes the most sense. But at some point, I want to try this on a spare machine, just to see what happens. Perhaps if I run xfce on gentoo and kde on ubuntu, there would be fewer collisions.
[gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu
Hi, I'm a new gentoo user (coming from ubuntu). I've been proving to myself that I can do everything I need with gentoo on a secondary laptop, and after a few weeks, I think I've got it (svn repos, AVR cross compiler, multiple screens, etc). I much prefer gentoo to ubuntu, and would like to put it on my primary laptop. But I think I should leave an ubuntu installation on there just in case. I'd like to have gentoo, ubunu, and win7 alongside each other. How feasible would it be to have gentoo and ubuntu share a /home partition? I've never had a reason to have multiple linux installations on a single machine before, but I can't think of a reason why this wouldn't work. .bashrc might need a few more lines of code. .screenrc and .exrc would be fine. My ssh keys can be shared. What would happen to .mozilla if ubuntu and gentoo are running different versions of firefox? What other issues might I run into? Alternatively, is there a way to keep gentoo's and ubuntu's hidden files separate and link or map them to ~ at boot? Randy
