[gentoo-user] Re: Xfce2 logout/shutdown delayed for 2 minutes

[Zaam Wu]

 writes:


> Manager, so I switched to the console from where I started the X 
> session (Ctrl+Shift+F1) and pressed Ctrl+C. 
Yeah, that's at least a 'feasible' way.

> I should mention that I never used or installed Emacs. Nevertheless
> I had a delay of about 1 minute before logout finished. During this 
> time one of the CPU cores had some load and memory usage increases. 
> I could watch this in the gkrellm monitors when composite was enabled.
> When composite was disabled then the X display was frozen during the
> delay.
I am not sure if Emacs causes the xfce4 session too buby to
logout/shutdown. But it might imply some X apps prevents xfce4
shutdown instantly.
> I'm sorry that I can't help you. I still don't know what caused the
> problem, but now it's gone. Maybe some update fixed it, but dunno.
>
> I'm using gentoo stable with these exceptions:
>
> xfce-extra/xfce4-composite-editor ~amd64
Not installed on my system.
> xfce-base/xfwm4 ~amd64
> xfce-base/xfce4-panel ~amd64
> xfce-base/xfce4-settings ~amd64
> xfce-base/xfce4-session ~amd64
> xfce-base/xfdesktop ~amd64
> xfce-base/xfce4-appfinder ~amd64
> xfce-base/libxfce4util ~amd64
> xfce-base/libxfce4ui ~amd64
> xfce-base/xfconf ~amd64
> xfce-base/garcon ~amd64
> xfce-base/thunar ~amd64
For all those pkgs under 'xfce-base/*', my system uses stable
version 'amd64'.

Maybe your newer version solved that 'delay' issue.
> --
> Regards
> wabe
>
>

-- 
你好！
Hello, world!

Re: [gentoo-user] Xfce2 logout/shutdown delayed for 2 minutes

[wabenbau]

 wrote:

> Manager, so I switched to the console from where I started the X 
> session (Ctrl+Shift+F1) and pressed Ctrl+C. 

Sorry. Meant Ctrl+Alt+F1.

--
Regards
wabe

Re: [gentoo-user] Print quality unreadable in Firefox

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 02/23/2016 09:43 PM, Daniel Frey wrote:
> 
> Lo and behold, it's not showing a bitmap font now:
> 
> -
> # fc-match helvetica
> n019003l.pfb: "Nimbus Sans L" "Regular"
> -
> 
> I don't know if the font mapping is correct, but I refreshed a page on
> bugs.g.o and I can print to PDF without the blocky fonts! So I don't
> really care if the font mapping is correct now. I can print again! :-)
> 

Amazing, I guess I can stop bringing a JPEG of my boarding pass to the
airport now.

Re: [gentoo-user] Xfce2 logout/shutdown delayed for 2 minutes

[wabenbau]

Zaam Wu  wrote:

> 
> I am not sure whether this is the right group to post this
> message. But the issue does happen after a Gentoo @world update.
> 
> After login into console, 'startx' will launch Xfce4
> desktop. Everything works like a charm.
> 
> A few days ago:
> 
> 1) @world update;
> 
> 2) reinstall Emacs (USE="gtkgtk3") to USE="athena Xaw3d -gtk
> -gtk3".
> 
> If I logout or shutdown through Xfce4 panel "Shutdown" or "Log
> Out", xfce "Shutdown" or "Lot Out" will be delayed for almost 2
> minutes. During this period, Xfce4 desktop stands still and do
> nothing.
> 
> When I click 'Shutdown" or "Log Out" again, an error message pops
> up:
> 
> Failed to run action "Shut Down"
> Session manager must be in idle state when requesting a
> shutdown
> 
> Interestingly, this issue usually is accompanied with Emacs daemon
> editing. If I does not lanuch Emacs daemon to edit file (no daemon
> process in the whole login session), Xfce4 shutdown or logout
> normally without delay.
> 
> Googled around and a few posts suggest 'rm
> ~/.cache/session/xfce4*'. But still does NOT solve
> my problem.
> 

I had the same problem for at least half a year. My "solution" was 
to kill the X session when I did wanna logout. I don't use a Display 
Manager, so I switched to the console from where I started the X 
session (Ctrl+Shift+F1) and pressed Ctrl+C. 

After I read your mail I did a test and logged out via the XFCE 
logout panel (didn't tried this for about 2 or 3 months). It was a 
really big surprise to me that it works without any delay.

I should mention that I never used or installed Emacs. Nevertheless
I had a delay of about 1 minute before logout finished. During this 
time one of the CPU cores had some load and memory usage increases. 
I could watch this in the gkrellm monitors when composite was enabled.
When composite was disabled then the X display was frozen during the
delay.

I'm sorry that I can't help you. I still don't know what caused the
problem, but now it's gone. Maybe some update fixed it, but dunno.

I'm using gentoo stable with these exceptions:

xfce-extra/xfce4-composite-editor ~amd64
xfce-base/xfwm4 ~amd64
xfce-base/xfce4-panel ~amd64
xfce-base/xfce4-settings ~amd64
xfce-base/xfce4-session ~amd64
xfce-base/xfdesktop ~amd64
xfce-base/xfce4-appfinder ~amd64
xfce-base/libxfce4util ~amd64
xfce-base/libxfce4ui ~amd64
xfce-base/xfconf ~amd64
xfce-base/garcon ~amd64
xfce-base/thunar ~amd64

--
Regards
wabe

Re: [gentoo-user] Print quality unreadable in Firefox

[Daniel Frey]

On 02/23/2016 12:41 PM, Thomas Doczkal wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> has someone found a solution for this? I currently have the same issue
> on a Laptop with Arch Linux whereas I don't experience this on my Gentoo
> Desktop machine.
> 
> Would be great if someone could point me in the right direction.
> 

I finally figured it out! It took me a few days.

I found out that the Helvetica font was being mapped to a bitmap font:

-
$ fc-match helvetica
helvR12-ISO8859-1.pcf.gz: "Helvetica" "Regular"
-

I was scratching my head here.

Make sure you have media-fonts/liberation-fonts installed (supposed
replacement for some MS TTF fonts):

-
# emerge -pv liberation-fonts

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild   R] media-fonts/liberation-fonts-2.00.1-r1::gentoo  USE="X
-fontforge" 0 KiB

Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 KiB
-

Then enable liberation-fonts, disable the bitmap fonts. I also rebuilt
the font cache:

# eselect fontconfig enable 60-liberation.conf
# eselect fontconfig enable 70-no-bitmaps.conf
# fc-cache -fv
-

Now my fontconfig looks like this:

-
# eselect fontconfig list
Available fontconfig .conf files (* is enabled):
  [1]   10-autohint.conf
  [2]   10-no-sub-pixel.conf
  [3]   10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf *
  [4]   10-sub-pixel-bgr.conf
  [5]   10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf
  [6]   10-sub-pixel-vbgr.conf
  [7]   10-sub-pixel-vrgb.conf
  [8]   10-unhinted.conf
  [9]   11-lcdfilter-default.conf
  [10]  11-lcdfilter-legacy.conf
  [11]  11-lcdfilter-light.conf
  [12]  20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans-mono.conf
  [13]  20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans.conf
  [14]  20-unhint-small-dejavu-serif.conf
  [15]  20-unhint-small-vera.conf *
  [16]  25-unhint-nonlatin.conf
  [17]  30-metric-aliases.conf *
  [18]  30-urw-aliases.conf *
  [19]  40-nonlatin.conf *
  [20]  42-luxi-mono.conf *
  [21]  45-latin.conf *
  [22]  49-sansserif.conf *
  [23]  50-user.conf *
  [24]  51-local.conf *
  [25]  57-dejavu-sans-mono.conf
  [26]  57-dejavu-sans.conf
  [27]  57-dejavu-serif.conf
  [28]  60-latin.conf *
  [29]  60-liberation.conf *
  [30]  65-fonts-persian.conf *
  [31]  65-khmer.conf
  [32]  65-nonlatin.conf *
  [33]  69-unifont.conf *
  [34]  70-no-bitmaps.conf *
  [35]  70-yes-bitmaps.conf
  [36]  80-delicious.conf *
  [37]  90-roboto-regular.conf
  [38]  90-synthetic.conf *
  [39]  99pdftoopvp.conf
-

Lo and behold, it's not showing a bitmap font now:

-
# fc-match helvetica
n019003l.pfb: "Nimbus Sans L" "Regular"
-

I don't know if the font mapping is correct, but I refreshed a page on
bugs.g.o and I can print to PDF without the blocky fonts! So I don't
really care if the font mapping is correct now. I can print again! :-)

Dan

[gentoo-user] Xfce2 logout/shutdown delayed for 2 minutes

[Zaam Wu]

I am not sure whether this is the right group to post this
message. But the issue does happen after a Gentoo @world update.

After login into console, 'startx' will launch Xfce4
desktop. Everything works like a charm.

A few days ago:

1) @world update;

2) reinstall Emacs (USE="gtkgtk3") to USE="athena Xaw3d -gtk
-gtk3".

If I logout or shutdown through Xfce4 panel "Shutdown" or "Log
Out", xfce "Shutdown" or "Lot Out" will be delayed for almost 2
minutes. During this period, Xfce4 desktop stands still and do
nothing.

When I click 'Shutdown" or "Log Out" again, an error message pops
up:

Failed to run action "Shut Down"
Session manager must be in idle state when requesting a
shutdown

Interestingly, this issue usually is accompanied with Emacs daemon
editing. If I does not lanuch Emacs daemon to edit file (no daemon
process in the whole login session), Xfce4 shutdown or logout
normally without delay.

Googled around and a few posts suggest 'rm
~/.cache/session/xfce4*'. But still does NOT solve
my problem.

-- 
Hello, world!

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Any thoughts on Intel Skylake SGX?

[Max R.D. Parmer]

It seems like SGX is intertwined with the Intel Management Engine,
Chapter 4 in Joanna Rutkowska's "Intel x86 considered harmful"[1] (pp.
35) goes in-depth on the potential issues with Intel ME.

That same book has some light discussion on SGX (pp. 20) but it seems
like, if you are concerned about ME eavesdropping, SGX wouldn't stop
that (at least as of October 2015).

If you are feeling paranoid but want an Intel chip, I would recommend
you choose the pre-vPro/AMT systems (sandybridge or earlier, iirc). I
tend to think Intel ME is a very real risk for some users and will
remain so until users are more empowered to dictate it's operation and
until there are good public audits of it's code, and most importantly,
the ability to disable it.

Hopefully in a couple years we will have access to good quality laptops
running on RISC-V.

[1]: http://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf
-- 
0x7D964D3361142ACF

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016, at 15:34, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Hello list
> 
> so I was about to treat myself to a new Thinkpad. After malware, backdoor
> and BIOS rootkit stories at Lenovo’s (which to my knowledge were all
> Windows-only problems) I already started looking elsewhere and even
> considered bying a used model which existed before all this modern crap
> came
> along, but always came back yet for lack of better alternatives.
> 
> Today the new Skylake lineup which I’ve been awaiting since January
> finally
> appeared in the Lenovo online shop. Conincidentally also today¹, I found
> out
> about the next thing since TPM, Secure Boot & Co: the SGX (Software Guard
> Extension) instruction set which is part of all Skylake chips².
> 
> The way I understood it is that it can be used to create private areas in
> memory that are inaccessible to any other program, even the operating
> system. Since it’s based on cryptographic signatures and Intel being the
> sole supplier of licences and signature keys, there are those who fear
> that
> Intel will – over time – gain unparalleled control over what we can and
> cannot run on our machines and that we will not be able to check what
> runs
> on our systems anymore. (Well, such fears are not really new to begin
> with).
> 
> 
> Infos are spare b/c it just hit the market a short wile ago, and I’m no
> expert by far. Thus I seek guidance. With states and corporations
> sniffing
> at our every step as they are already, can I – in your considered opinion
> –
> still buy a Skylake device with good concience?
> 
> Am I seeing things too bleak in the context of constant attacks on open
> systems which – when puzzled together – give a horrible picture of our
> future in a society that doesn’t care as long as Facebook works?
> 
> Or don’t I have to worry about it because this will only play a role in
> the
> walled gardens of contemporary commercial consuming interfaces (formerly
> known as operating systems, AKA Windows) or servers?
> 
> 
> Ew, I wanted to ask a simple question. Instead, I needed 30 minutes to
> write
> half a short story. Sorry and thanks for your time.
> 
> 
> ¹ German news article:
>   
> http://www.heise.de/security/meldung/Kritik-an-Intels-Sicherheits-Architektur-Software-Guard-Extensions-3089439.html
> ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions
> -- 
> Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
> Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any social
> network.
> 
> This message was written using only recycled electrons.
> Email had 1 attachment:
> + signature.asc
>   1k (application/pgp-signature)

[gentoo-user] [OT] Any thoughts on Intel Skylake SGX?

[Frank Steinmetzger]

Hello list

so I was about to treat myself to a new Thinkpad. After malware, backdoor
and BIOS rootkit stories at Lenovo’s (which to my knowledge were all
Windows-only problems) I already started looking elsewhere and even
considered bying a used model which existed before all this modern crap came
along, but always came back yet for lack of better alternatives.

Today the new Skylake lineup which I’ve been awaiting since January finally
appeared in the Lenovo online shop. Conincidentally also today¹, I found out
about the next thing since TPM, Secure Boot & Co: the SGX (Software Guard
Extension) instruction set which is part of all Skylake chips².

The way I understood it is that it can be used to create private areas in
memory that are inaccessible to any other program, even the operating
system. Since it’s based on cryptographic signatures and Intel being the
sole supplier of licences and signature keys, there are those who fear that
Intel will – over time – gain unparalleled control over what we can and
cannot run on our machines and that we will not be able to check what runs
on our systems anymore. (Well, such fears are not really new to begin with).


Infos are spare b/c it just hit the market a short wile ago, and I’m no
expert by far. Thus I seek guidance. With states and corporations sniffing
at our every step as they are already, can I – in your considered opinion –
still buy a Skylake device with good concience?

Am I seeing things too bleak in the context of constant attacks on open
systems which – when puzzled together – give a horrible picture of our
future in a society that doesn’t care as long as Facebook works?

Or don’t I have to worry about it because this will only play a role in the
walled gardens of contemporary commercial consuming interfaces (formerly
known as operating systems, AKA Windows) or servers?


Ew, I wanted to ask a simple question. Instead, I needed 30 minutes to write
half a short story. Sorry and thanks for your time.


¹ German news article:
  
http://www.heise.de/security/meldung/Kritik-an-Intels-Sicherheits-Architektur-Software-Guard-Extensions-3089439.html
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any social network.

This message was written using only recycled electrons.


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[gentoo-user] Re: {OT} Allow work from home?

[Kai Krakow]

Am Sat, 20 Feb 2016 11:24:56 +0100
schrieb lee :

> > It uses some very clever ideas to place files into groups and into
> > proper order - other than using file mod and access times like other
> > defrag tools do (which even make the problem worse by doing so
> > because this destroys locality of data even more).  
> 
> I've never heard of MyDefrag, I might try it out.  Does it make
> updating any faster?

Ah well, difficult question... Short answer: It uses countermeasures
against performance after updates decreasing too fast. It does this by
using a "gapped" on-disk file layout - leaving some gaps for Windows to
put temporary files. By this, files don't become a far spread as
usually during updates. But yes, it improves installation time.

Apparently it's unmaintained since a few years but it still does a good
job. It was built upon a theory by a student about how to properly
reorganize file layout on a spinning disk to stay at high performance
as best as possible.

> > But even SSDs can use _proper_ defragmentation from time to time for
> > increased lifetime and performance (this is due to how the FTL works
> > and because erase blocks are huge, I won't get into detail unless
> > someone asks). This is why mydefrag also supports flash
> > optimization. It works by moving as few files as possible while
> > coalescing free space into big chunks which in turn relaxes
> > pressure on the FTL and allows to have more free and continuous
> > erase blocks which reduces early flash chip wear. A filled SSD with
> > long usage history can certainly gain back some performance from
> > this.  
> 
> How does it improve performance?  It seems to me that, for practical
> use, almost all of the better performance with SSDs is due to reduced
> latency.  And IIUC, it doesn't matter for the latency where data is
> stored on an SSD.  If its performance degrades over time when data is
> written to it, the SSD sucks, and the manufacturer should have done a
> better job.  Why else would I buy an SSD.  If it needs to reorganise
> the data stored on it, the firmware should do that.

There are different factors which have impact on performance, not just
seek times (which, as you write, is the worst performance breaker):

  * management overhead: the OS has to do more house keeping, which
(a) introduces more IOPS (which is the only relevant limiting
factor for SSD) and (b) introduces more CPU cycles and data
structure locking within the OS routines during performing IO which
comes down to more CPU cycles spend during IO

  * erasing a block is where SSDs really suck at performance wise, plus
blocks are essentially read-only once written - that's how flash
works, a flash data block needs to be erased prior to being
rewritten - and that is (compared to the rest of its performance) a
really REALLY HUGE time factor

  * erase blocks are huge compared to common filesystem block sizes
(erase block = 1 or 2 MB vs. file system block being 4-64k usually)
which happens to result in this effect:

- OS replaces a file by writing a new, deleting the old
  (common during updates), or the user deletes files
- OS marks some blocks as free in its FS structures, it depends on
  the file size and its fragmentation if this gives you a
  continuous area of free blocks or many small blocks scattered
  across the disk: it results in free space fragmentation
- free space fragments happen to become small over time, much
  smaller then the erase block size
- if your system has TRIM/discard support it will tell the SSD
  firmware: here, I no longer use those 4k blocks
- as you already figured out: those small blocks marked as free do
  not properly align with the erase block size - so actually, you
  may end up with a lot of free space but essentially no complete
  erase block is marked as free
- this situation means: the SSD firmware cannot reclaim this free
  space to do "free block erasure" in advance so if you write
  another block of small data you may end up with the SSD going
  into a direct "read/modify/erase/write" cycle instead of just
  "read/modify/write" and deferring the erasing until later - ah
  yes, that's probably becoming slow then
- what do we learn: (a) defragment free space from time to time,
  (b) enable TRIM/discard to reclaim blocks in advance, (c) you may
  want to over-provision your SSD: just don't ever use 10-15% of
  your SSD, trim that space, and leave it there for the firmware to
  shuffle erase blocks around
- the latter point also increases life-time for obvious reasons as
  SSDs only support a limited count of write-cycles per block
- this "shuffling around" blocks is called wear-levelling: the
  firmware chooses a block candidate with the least write cycles
  for doing "read/modify/write"

So, SSDs actually do this "reorganization" as you call 

[gentoo-user] Re: {OT} Allow work from home?

[Kai Krakow]

Am Sat, 20 Feb 2016 10:48:57 +0100
schrieb lee :

> Kai Krakow  writes:
> 
> > Am Fri, 22 Jan 2016 00:52:30 +0100
> > schrieb lee :
> >
> >> Is WSUS of any use without domains?  If it is, I should take a
> >> look at it.
> >
> > You can use it with and without domains. What domains give you
> > through GPO is just automatic deployment of the needed registry
> > settings in the client.
> >
> > You can simply create a proper .reg file and deploy it to the
> > clients however you like. They will connect to WSUS and receive
> > updates you control.
> >
> > No magic here.
> 
> Sounds good :)  Does it also solve the problem of having to make
> settings for all users, like when setting up a MUA or Libreoffice?
> 
> That means settings on the same machine for all users, like setting up
> seamonkey so that when composing an email, it's in plain text rather
> than html, a particular email account every user should have and a
> number of other settings that need to be the same for all users.  For
> Libreoffice, it would be the deployment of a macro for all users and
> some making some settings.

Well... Depends on the software. Some MUAs may store their settings to
the registry, others to files. You'll have to figure out - it should
work. Microsoft uses something like that to auto-deploy Outlook
profiles to Windows domain users if an Exchange server is installed.
Thunderbird uses a combination of registry and files. You could deploy
a preconfigured Thunderbird profile to the users profile dir, then
configure the proper profile path in the registry. Firefox works the
same: Profile directory, reference to it in the registry.

I think LibreOffice would work similar to MS Office: Just deploy proper
files after figuring out its path. I once deployed OpenOffice macros
that way to Linux X11 terminal users.

-- 
Regards,
Kai

Replies to list-only preferred.

Re: [gentoo-user] Print quality unreadable in Firefox

[Thomas Doczkal]

On 02/20/2016 04:54 PM, Daniel Frey wrote:
> On 02/19/2016 02:04 PM, Dutch Ingraham wrote:
>> I had the same problem.  In my use-case, changing my print driver from
>> PCL/CUPS to Gutenprint solved the issue.
>>
>> I have the feeling this was specific to my set-up and printer, though it
>> might be worth looking at.
>>
> 
> Gutenprint doesn't support my printer, so I won't be able to try that. I
> currently use foo2zjs. I don't suspect the print driver though, as
> Firefox is the only application that has this print problem.
> 
> I did try changing the fonts in Firefox but that made no difference.
> 
> Dan
> 
Hi,

has someone found a solution for this? I currently have the same issue
on a Laptop with Arch Linux whereas I don't experience this on my Gentoo
Desktop machine.

Would be great if someone could point me in the right direction.

Many thanks.

Best regards,
Thomas



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[gentoo-user] local/user rsyslog

[Ran Shalit]

Hello,

I am trying to write to rsyslog from application.
With openlog(..., LOG_USER), it works fine and I find the log in
/var/log/user.log (it is defines in /etc/rsyslog.d/50-defaults.conf )
But we need to enable different applications to have each its own log file.
I tried to use LOG_LOCAL0 instead and configured it in
/etc/rsyslog.d/50-defaults.conf the same way as user:

local0.* action
{
  type="omfile"
 FILE="/var/log/local0.log"
 FileOwner="root"
 FileGroup="adm"

}

I then did
1. /etc/init.d/rsyslog stop
2. /etc/init.d/rsyslog start
I see no warnings or errors, and I started the application trying to
write to LOG_LOCAL0, But there is no new file created, no logs.

Is there any idea whatws wrong, or how I can achieve this multi user's logs ?

Thank you,
Ran

Re: [gentoo-user] subtitleeditor failed to compile/update

[gevisz]

2016-02-23 10:40 GMT+02:00 Neil Bothwick :
> On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 07:54:57 +0200, gevisz wrote:
>
>> During an update of my Gentoo box yesterday,
>> the subtitleeditor failed to compile.
>>
>> Then, I uninstalled it, updated the rest of the
>> system and tried to install the subtitleeditor anew.
>>
>> As a result, its compilation failed even more graciously.
>
> I don't have an answer to the build issue, but you don't need to
> uninstall a package to get a world update to complete. Either use
> --keep-going, which will carry on after a package fails, or use --exclude
> to avoid updating that package in the first place.

Thank you for the advice.

The reason for uninstalling the package (and the other 3 packages
it depends on with --depclean), updating the rest of the system and
installing it anew was that I wanted to exclude the case that this package
does not update because it needs a newer versions of all packages
it depends on, though I agree that running world update with --exclude
and then reemerging the excluded package will do (almost?) the same.

P.S. My previous world update was just a week ago.

Re: [gentoo-user] subtitleeditor failed to compile/update

[Neil Bothwick]

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 07:54:57 +0200, gevisz wrote:

> During an update of my Gentoo box yesterday,
> the subtitleeditor failed to compile.
> 
> Then, I uninstalled it, updated the rest of the
> system and tried to install the subtitleeditor anew.
> 
> As a result, its compilation failed even more graciously.

I don't have an answer to the build issue, but you don't need to
uninstall a package to get a world update to complete. Either use
--keep-going, which will carry on after a package fails, or use --exclude
to avoid updating that package in the first place.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment.


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