Re: [gentoo-user] Simplest NTP client for standalone system?

[Dale]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 3:25 PM, Dale  wrote:
>> Rich Freeman wrote:
>>> If there were some kind of trade-off I'd see the argument, but the
>>> worst case here is just that they may or may not need it.  For
>>> something with some benefit and almost no drawback that seems like a
>>> wrong reason to avoid LVM.
>>>
>> Sure, it may help a very tiny percentage of people but I suspect it will
>> be tiny.  Mostly, for the same reasons I pointed out in another reply on
>> this thread.
>>
> IMO the important question isn't how many it helps, but how many it hurts.
>
> If it helps a tiny number, and it hurts none, then it is a worthwhile default.
>

That wasn't the point tho.  I'm sure a init thingy helps some small
number of people but it also hurts some because they have to add one
more layer that can fail.  I've had init thingys fail on me several
times with different distros.  If one is not going to use LVM properly,
why install it by default and risk a upgrade causing a problem and the
lose of data?   I use LVM here.  I have two 3TBs drives for my /home
directory.  Before that, I didn't use LVM.  Those of us who knows what
it is and uses it are not that large a percentage of people. 

The point is, one shouldn't add LVM to a system when the user will never
use it or worse yet, even know what it is or what it is for.  It just
adds one more thing that can cause problems. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Simplest NTP client for standalone system?

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 3:25 PM, Dale  wrote:
> Rich Freeman wrote:
>>
>> If there were some kind of trade-off I'd see the argument, but the
>> worst case here is just that they may or may not need it.  For
>> something with some benefit and almost no drawback that seems like a
>> wrong reason to avoid LVM.
>>
>
> Sure, it may help a very tiny percentage of people but I suspect it will
> be tiny.  Mostly, for the same reasons I pointed out in another reply on
> this thread.
>

IMO the important question isn't how many it helps, but how many it hurts.

If it helps a tiny number, and it hurts none, then it is a worthwhile default.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] Simplest NTP client for standalone system?

[Dale]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 9:41 AM, Dale  wrote:
>> The problem is,  if the hard drives fills up, most won't know that they
>> can use LVM to expand it by adding a new drive.  Since they don't know
>> what LVM is, they don't know about the option they have and won't use it
>> since they don't know it exists.
> Honestly, I'm not sure how many of these users will be installing
> Ubuntu in the first place.
>
> However, if they do use LVM and they end up asking somebody
> knowledgeable for help, that person will be very happy to find that
> the system has LVM installed.
>
> If there were some kind of trade-off I'd see the argument, but the
> worst case here is just that they may or may not need it.  For
> something with some benefit and almost no drawback that seems like a
> wrong reason to avoid LVM.
>

Even I've installed Ubuntu and friends for others in the past and it has
LVM on it.  Thing is, the person that actually uses the computer doesn't
even know it exists.  They also wouldn't know how to install Linux, of
any flavor, or windoze either for that matter.   Far to many only know
how to push the button on the front to turn it on. 

Sure, it may help a very tiny percentage of people but I suspect it will
be tiny.  Mostly, for the same reasons I pointed out in another reply on
this thread. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Simplest NTP client for standalone system?

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 9:41 AM, Dale  wrote:
>
> The problem is,  if the hard drives fills up, most won't know that they
> can use LVM to expand it by adding a new drive.  Since they don't know
> what LVM is, they don't know about the option they have and won't use it
> since they don't know it exists.

Honestly, I'm not sure how many of these users will be installing
Ubuntu in the first place.

However, if they do use LVM and they end up asking somebody
knowledgeable for help, that person will be very happy to find that
the system has LVM installed.

If there were some kind of trade-off I'd see the argument, but the
worst case here is just that they may or may not need it.  For
something with some benefit and almost no drawback that seems like a
wrong reason to avoid LVM.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] Simplest NTP client for standalone system?

[Dale]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 6:13 PM, Alan McKinnon  
> wrote:
>> But I'm not talking about it for users like you and I.
>> I've said over and over in this thread about regular users and you seem
>> to be missing that part; it's the entirety of everything I'm saying
>> here. I didn't say LVM shouldn't be available, I said that installers
>> shouldn't put it up front and centre in the user's face claiming that
>> it's awesome.
>>
>> Your average user has no idea what volume management even is and are
>> completely lost when it comes up. They just have no mental image of what
>> it even could be and a tool that is not understood and not used is not
>> worth installing.
>>
> And yet most Ubuntu users who have no idea what volume management are
> running just fine with it all the same, and at some point if they ever
> need to move things around it will make life that much easier for
> them.
>
> The fact that they've had no issues running this as their default
> configuration demonstrates that it isn't unsuitable for "regular
> users."  I'm well aware of the argument you're making.  I simply
> disagree with it, as apparently do the maintainers of Ubuntu and the
> businessmen making money off of it.  Decisions on a
> commercially-backed distro generally don't come down to the whim of
> one person, at least not if they actually cause problems.
>
> As far as symlinks go - they're a royal pain in the rear as they force
> you to micromanage what ends up on which disk, and then when your
> convoluted rat's nest of symlinks starts to become a problem it
> becomes that much harder to fix it.  Symlinks and mountpoints used to
> be the only tool in the toolbox, and to this day half of your OS is in
> /usr and half isn't as a result.  :)
>
> Volume management is a best practice, and it is right for Ubuntu to
> make it a default for those who don't understand the pros and
> virtually non-existant cons.
>

The problem is,  if the hard drives fills up, most won't know that they
can use LVM to expand it by adding a new drive.  Since they don't know
what LVM is, they don't know about the option they have and won't use it
since they don't know it exists.  Using LVM isn't the complete answer. 
Knowing what it is and what it does is what completes the answer to the
problem.  If the user doesn't know what LVM is, then they will be in the
same situation as they would be if it wasn't used at all.  So, using LVM
or not, they are no better off in reality. 

Most people have no idea what goes on inside their computer.  All they
know is, clicking that Firefox/Chrome/Seamonkey/etc icon opens a web
browser and makes Facebook/email/etc work.  Sad but some of my own
family/friends are like that. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: Easiest way to block domains?

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2017-08-31 08:47, Walter Dnes wrote:

> > The "couple" was meant literally, i.e. typically 2 years until it
> > breaks.  I don't know for sure if it is the flash or something else.
> > It's not a bad brand - I have had many different brands, nothing
> > lasts much more than that.  And I don't abuse them - in fact I
> > pamper them :-)
> 
> I've been using my SpeedTouch 546 ADSL router/modem ever since I
> switched to my current ISP at the end of November 2007.  It's 3 months
> to the 10th anniversary.  How is your local power system?  I keep all
> my gear (computer/monitor/modem) behind a UPS for a couple of
> reasons...

The electrical installation here is definitely substandard, and this is
one of the things I suspect.  However ...

> 1) To protect my gear against power surges/spikes/drops
> 2) To protect against the rare occurence when power goes off for 1 or 2
> seconds

I do the same.  Or at least I did until last week, when the UPS died
after more than a decade of perfect service.  (Here, the outages are
longer than 2 seconds; it's not often, but is very annoying when it
happens, with the UPS square wave beeps.)

-- 
Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet,
if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup.
Do obvious transformation on domain to reply privately _only_ on Usenet.

[gentoo-user] BINPKG_COMPRESS portage variable

[Francesco Turco]

Hello.

I just set BINPKG_COMPRESS="xz" in /etc/portage/make.conf in order to
compress binary packages with the xz algorithm. It seems to work, but
binary packages filenames still end with .tbz2 instead of .txz. How can
I change that?

Example:

# file /var/portage/packages/media-sound/pulseaudio-10.0.tbz2 
/var/portage/packages/media-sound/pulseaudio-10.0.tbz2: XZ compressed
data

I'm using sys-apps/portage-2.3.8.

Thanks.

-- 
https://www.fturco.net/

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Easiest way to block domains?

[Walter Dnes]

On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 04:45:34PM -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote
> On 2017-08-30 18:28, R0b0t1 wrote:
> 
> > >> Also: how long is the replacement going to last?  Anything with
> > >> flash as the main storage will be back at the recycling station
> > >> (ideally) within a couple of years.  This includes all the
> > >> consumer routers I've ever had, including the beloved blue Linksys.
> 
> > Flash storage lasts far longer than that in practice. How often do you
> > upgrade a router?
> 
> The "couple" was meant literally, i.e. typically 2 years until it
> breaks.  I don't know for sure if it is the flash or something else.
> It's not a bad brand - I have had many different brands, nothing lasts
> much more than that.  And I don't abuse them - in fact I pamper them :-)

  I've been using my SpeedTouch 546 ADSL router/modem ever since I
switched to my current ISP at the end of November 2007.  It's 3 months
to the 10th anniversary.  How is your local power system?  I keep all my
gear (computer/monitor/modem) behind a UPS for a couple of reasons...
1) To protect my gear against power surges/spikes/drops
2) To protect against the rare occurence when power goes off for 1 or 2
seconds

  I'm currently on 7 megabits down / 1 megabit up.  I live alone, and
7/1 easily handles 1080p video (e.g. Youtube).  The router/modem can
handle 10/1 and 15/1, which my ISP also offers.  To get 15/10, I need a
newer modem.  I have a SmartRG 505N waiting for when the ST546 dies...
or I decide I need more upload speed.

-- 
Walter Dnes 
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] Why isn't this SDcard mounting?

[Stroller]

> On 29 Aug 2017, at 14:53, Stroller  wrote:
> ...
> Instead of mounting the SDcard, it's mounting the loopback device.
> 
> A card, as /dev/sdb, was previously zeroed over and repartitioned a couple of 
> days ago. I bet if I reboot the system it'll be recognised. How do I get it 
> to be recognised now?

At some point yesterday, making no progress with `udisksctl` (I think that 
mounted the loopback device, too, despite claiming to have succeeded in 
mounting /dev/sdb1 as described in my email of 10:20pm 29-8-2017), I just 
wanted to use the SDcard and rebooted the system.

As expected, when I put the card back in, everything worked perfectly.

My belief is that this is related to zeroing out or recreating the partition 
table.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] strange behaviour in quite special case

[Andrew Savchenko]

Hi,

On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 18:27:22 -0300 Francisco Ares wrote:
> Hi, All.
> 
> This is a rather special case, so I don't expect much, but who knows?
> 
> I've built a Gentoo x86-64 system for an embedded application.
> 
> Just after a lot of updates, which I am unable to track, it stopped working
> as usual.
> 
> There is the development system, fully loaded of a lot of packages used for
> development, and the production system, that don't need all of those.
> 
> There is a line in both systems in /etc/iniitab responsible for auto-login
> the production system user and the programs we need running (in its
> ".bash_profile" and ".xinitrc"):
> 
> c6:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -a production-user 38400 tty6 linux
> 
> The development system starts a WindowMaker session, and the production
> system starts a program that controls the rest of the hardware of this
> embedded system, with an X11 graphical interface.  That runs normally when
> simulated at the development system.
> 
> The development system runs smoothly.  The production system, after
> removing the files from undesirable packages and creating a squashfs image
> of the ripped-off root partition behaves strangely at boot:
> 
> It shows the initialization messages as expected, but when the auto-login
> and the controller program start should take place, it completely stalls up
> to I plug a USB keyboard and issue some times some of the key combinations
> to change to a text console and back to X11 (Ctrl-Alt-F1 and Ctrl-Alt-F6);
>  only then the things resume as expected.
> 
> As you might suspect, there is no keyboard for the production system ;-) .
> 
> As a matter of fact, I don't know where the stall take place, as when I try
> to switch to a text console to see the logs, it switches back to X11 and
> starts our program.  By the way, the logs just show that the events
> occurred at latter times than expected.
> 
> Although the squashfs is read-only, some main directories are arranged in a
> way that, using tmpfs mounts and unionfs with the read-only directory to
> the read-write tmpfs directory to that main directory provide a way of
> creating temporary files that has been working for a few years now.
> 
> For instance, in "/etc/fstab":
> 
> tmpfs   /.etc.rwtmpfs   defaults,mode=755
> 0 0
> union   /etcunionfs
> default_permissions,allow_other,use_ino,nonempty,suid,cow,dirs=/.
> etc.rw=rw:/.etc.ro=ro  0 0
> 
> And there is a "/.etc.ro" with a copy of all files present in regular
> "/etc" , a "/.etc.rw" directory to be mounted tmpfs, and the original
> "/etc" directory, that needs to be there at boot, even before mounting all
> this.
> 
> Does anyone have a clue?

Try to dissect your problem. Start with removing squashfs and all
tmpfs/unionfs manipulations. Create the same image, but on "normal"
writable file system and see how it goes. It may be fs-related bug,
may be you removed too many files and some "undesired" packages are
actually mandatory.

If you have some form on snapshots of your changes, you can try to
bisect them in a git bisect way.

Another approach is to run X server (or any other app suspected as
a troublemaker) under strace (or attach strace to a running process)
and see what is going on. You will have a lot of low level
information and extensive filtering will be required; strace is
capable of that, but you will need to dig into its documentation.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko


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Re: [gentoo-user] app-eselect dependencies

[Andrew Savchenko]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 19:02:14 +0200 Helmut Jarausch wrote:
> Hi
> 
> some package (sci-libs/gsl) needs app-eselect/eselect-cblas
> 
> Trying to emerge app-eselect/eselect-cblas portage says
> app-eselect/eselect-cblas" is blocking sci-libs/scalapack-2.0.2-r1,  
> sci-libs/gotoblas2-1.13-r1
> 
> but in eselect-cblas-0.1.ebuild there are no such dependencies listed.
> Where are these blocking messages coming from.

Could you please post the full error message?

OT: gotoblas2 is quite old, use openblas instead, it has better
optimizations, especially for modern CPUs.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko


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[gentoo-user] Re: systemD?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 30/08/17 23:39, mad.scientist.at.la...@tutanota.com wrote:
I do not want to start a whole systemd storm, glad i was offline for 
that.  however, in my case i'd really like to avoid systemd.  can i 
setup with out systemd, or do i need to remove and patch later.


As others mentioned, openrc is the default. If you just do a default 
install, you won't be using systemd.


However, make sure that you don't intend to use something that requires 
systemd. Like Gnome, for example. You then will need to convert to 
systemd rather than having started out with it.

Re: [gentoo-user] Simplest NTP client for standalone system?

[Walter Dnes]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 12:14:54AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote
> On 30/08/2017 13:25, Walter Dnes wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 09:49:58AM -0700, Rich Freeman wrote
> >> On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 8:32 AM, Alan McKinnon  
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Another example is LVM. You or I might really need it (debatable now we
> >>> have ZFS) but the average user has no concept of what it might be, or
> >>> care. So why do Ubuntu installers shove it in your face as something
> >>> really cool that you should really really use? Because the author of the
> >>> installer thinks it's really cool, that's why.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Maybe.
> >>
> >> Or maybe because when that computer's hard drive starts getting full
> >> and you add a new hard drive, if you're using lvm with a few commands
> >> you can make your /home expand across both drives, while with straight
> >> partitions that is a lot more work.
> > 
> >   1) I don't recall having added a hard drive for many years.
> > 
> >   2) How difficult is it to symlink directories?
> 
> Oh that part is easy. One command, ln, with the option -s.
> 
> Now go and get your grandma to do it, and come tell us what happened.

  Now go and get your grandma to find and buy the right type of internal
drive for her computer (i.e. with the right type of connector), install
it into the drive bay, and adjust /etc/fstab accordingly, and come tell
us what happened.

-- 
Walter Dnes 
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications