Re: [gentoo-user] How to Fix Extraoardinarily Loud Alsa?

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 2016-11-01 14:55, schrieb Hunter Jozwiak:


I finally got the base install of Gentoo done, but I've come across a
really interesting probleing. After installing Alsa and enabling its
daemon, I had copied the asound.conf from the distro I was using on to
the system. Unfortunately, this give the side effect that ALSA is



The sound levels are not stored in the asound.conf. Aside this, ALSA 
comes per default with muted volumes, so that you don't blow your ears 
when powering your loud speakers the first time on.

Re: [gentoo-user] stop an emerge (compilation), halt the PC, boot and continue the emerge

[Marc Stürmer]

Zitat von Hogren :


But, when I boot up again the PC and I «emerge --resume», it restart the
compilation process.

Is there a way to not restart the compilation process ?


Take a look at Tux on Ice, this should do the trick for you.

Re: [gentoo-user] Fileserver with Raid + Crypto + BtrFS

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 11.11.2015 um 18:09 schrieb Ralf:


Besides that I would have to live-migrate the Raid10 as I don't have any
spare hdd to cache the data. So I would have to degrade my Raid10.
Is it possible to create a degraded Btrfs?


You can create your shiny, new Btrfs on one device only first and then 
add more devices later as needed of course.

Re: [gentoo-user] bcachefs

[Marc Stürmer]

Zitat von James :


Hello,
Anyone tested/ deployed bcachefs on gentoo yet?


Phorononix already ran some benchmarks on it. As to be expected,  
there's of course much work left to do.


http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article=bcache-fs-linux=1

Re: [gentoo-user] DNS server packages

[Marc Stürmer]

Zitat von "J. Roeleveld" :


As it is related to this thread, which server would people recommend when the
DNS records are to be found in a database?


I'd recommend PowerDNS, which has also an ebuild in the official  
portage tree since ages.


It has several, mature web frontends and deploying DNSSEC with it is  
really, really easy, literally just two commands and then you go:


$ pdnssec secure-zone powerdnssec.org
$ pdnssec rectify-zone powerdnssec.org

After that you just need to publish your DS records to your registrar - done.

Compare that to BIND - much, much easier.

Re: [gentoo-user] Calculating dependencies...: Any way to make it faster?

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 24.01.2015 um 05:20 schrieb meino.cra...@gmx.de:


Is there any way to make it faster or (in other words): Are there
different ways to Calculating dependencies... and have only chossen
the slowest one...?

What can I do to spped it up?


Portage is written in Python, normally running on CPython. While CPython 
is the standard, it isn't the fastest way to run Python.


You could try switching over to PyPy, which uses a JIT-compiler that 
CPython doesn't have. This should get quite a big performance boost, if 
portage is being able to run under PyPy, that is.


Alternatively you could try a portage replacement like Paludis, which is 
being written completely in C++.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Get off my lawn?

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 22.01.2015 um 19:06 schrieb Tom H:


Sure. My point was that anyone can claim that systemd is (un)popular
in the embedded space.


I don't know if it is popular; in embedded systems though the last thing 
you need are fast moving targets IMHO, you want to use proven, reliable 
tools.


If systemd is reliable or not, this depends on your decision, but it is 
a fast moving target.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Get off my lawn?

[Marc Stürmer]

Zitat von Tom H tomh0...@gmail.com:


Lennart claims that the embedded world loves systemd. I suspect that,
as in other corners of the Linux world, there are lovers and haters of
systemd.


Embedded systems also quite often means low on resources, CPU power,  
memory, space.


If you are using hard space constrained systems, the sheer size of  
systemd in the file system can be a valid reason not to use it at all.


So it does depend on the type of embedded system you are looking at.

Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs fails to balance

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 19.01.2015 um 09:32 schrieb Bill Kenworthy:


Can someone suggest what is causing a balance on this raid 1, 3 disk
volume to successfully complete but leave the data unevenly distributed?
  Content is mostly VM images.

sdc and sdd are 2TB WD greens, and sda is a 2TB WD red.


Question: was /dev/sda a smaller HDD before the 2 TB WD red?

If your sda was around 250 GB before you changed it with 2 TB, did you 
just issue a btrfs balance after that? If so, Btrfs just configured 
itself for 2*2 TB + 1*250 GB, that's why.


The proper Btrfs way if replacing a smaller hdd for a bigger one in Raid 
1 is to issue btrfs filesystem resize to make it use all of the 
available space.


This would be one possible explanation for the behaviour of your array.

Re: [gentoo-user] Get off my lawn?

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 17.01.2015 um 00:25 schrieb Paul B. Henson:


http://www.linuxvoice.com/interview-lennart-poettering/

So it seems the reason (in Lennart Poettering's imagination at least)
that Gentoo hasn't embraced systemd as our default init system is
because we're all old and conservative? Not like those young Arch Linux


He should just move on and accept the fact that not everybody likes his 
new, shiney toys.

Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs fails to balance

[Marc Stürmer]

Zitat von Bill Kenworthy bi...@iinet.net.au:


Can someone suggest what is causing a balance on this raid 1, 3 disk
volume to successfully complete but leave the data unevenly distributed?
 Content is mostly VM images.


On which kernel version are you?

Re: [gentoo-user] NSA SELinux kernel support

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 01.01.2015 um 18:01 schrieb Alexander Kapshuk:


I was wondering if there was any harm in disabling the NSA SELinux
support in my gentoo-sources based kernel.


It depends on your usage case (desktop or server) and grade of personal 
paranoia.


I know a few administrators how think that enabling SELinux or similar 
stuff (e.g. like AppArmor) should be today mandatory if installing 
servers on the internet.


Then again your mileage may vary.

Re: [gentoo-user] samba and window 7 NTFS

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 06.12.2014 um 00:16 schrieb Mick:


Same opinoin here. The in-kernel driver is only good for reading files and
directories. If anything else is needed use ntfs3g.


This is right, ntfs-3g is a safe way of accessing NTFS from Linux.


Actually, while there is a NTFS-kernel driver, this driver is mostly 
stable only for reading files, but not writing files.


If you need to use NTFS on a regular basis under Linux, you want to use 
the FUSE ntfs-3g. It is far more advanced and far more stable than the 
kernel driver.

Re: [gentoo-user] hibernation

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 04.12.2014 um 17:30 schrieb Michael Vetter:


Yes, thats what I want to achive.


The sad thing about hibernation is, that it has always kinda been some 
kind of lackluster in the kernel and quite disappointing. It is a kind 
of area which does not get much love in the kernel for at least over one 
decade.


he number of computers it does not work is bigger than the number of 
computers it does work on correctly.


At least last time I tried it it was quite like that. Hibernation is 
disabled by default on Ubuntu 14.04, because it is so unreliable and 
broken.


In fact, there are three different kind of implementations around namely:

a) the thing in the main line kernel, which seems to work quite subpar, 
which is being used by the utility swsusp,

b) something in the user space being called uswsusp,
c) and an alternative implementation for the kernel being named Tux on 
Ice.


Many do consider Tux on Ice the most reliable way to get hibernation up 
and running on Linux, unfortunately development seems to be stalled 
since always about one year and it is not part of the main line kernel.


So if you want to get this working reliable, good luck. You'll need it.

Re: [gentoo-user] hibernation

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 03.12.2014 um 11:32 schrieb Michael Vetter:


However when I close my notebook's lid (I configured xfce4-power-manager
to switch into hibernation in this case) it shuts down, but when i press
the start button, it just does a normal restart.


Do you want to configure

a) simply hibernation, which means that the RAM is still powered by your 
battery and just the rest of the computer is being switched off (CPU, 
HDDs and so on)


or

b) suspend to disk, which means that the whole content of the RAM is 
being written on your HDD and after that your computer is being shut 
down entirely?

Re: [gentoo-user] virus/malware scanner for linux

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 02.12.2014 um 06:24 schrieb Joseph:


I know there are some command line virus/malware scanners for Linux?
It has been long time ago since I run any of them, that I forgot their
names :-/


There's Maldet, Linux Malware Detect.

https://www.rfxn.com/projects/linux-malware-detect/

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Debian forked, because of systemd brouhaha

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 01.12.2014 um 09:22 schrieb Pandu Poluan:


Actually, that's my point by saying offer: Rather than letting them
build eudev from scratch, let's work together on the eudev we have,
promote it to something distro-neutral, then let Gentoo and Devuan
(and whatever other distros) derive from that 'upstream'


Eudev is an already established opensource project with a working 
infrastructure and development team.


It's got a leader, it's got an IRC channel, an open git repository for 
development and even a home page.


So if they want to work with the already established team, I am sure 
they are welcome to add their man power to it.


The building blocks are all there in place, they just need to come over 
and start working together.


Also I do think that veteran unix admins do know how OSS development 
does work and how not; so if they fork Eudev instead of working together 
I presume they have their reasons for it.

Re: [gentoo-user] Debian forked, because of systemd brouhaha

[Marc Stürmer]

Am , schrieb Bill Kenworthy:


I read Veteran Unix Admins collective as a category that old style
admin types fall into - the background being that systemd is 
essentially

the old guard, do things based on experience and good practice vs the
new guard whose use case is throw away vm's that are not expected to
hang around, we don't care amateurs.  I am a native English speaker,
maybe that's why you missed it?


Yes, it is a category and no, I didn't miss that point.

The point though is that the way this fork was being announced is quite 
simple the worst way to do it. The announcement was not signed by any 
name and just made by someone named Majordomo Debianfork. Not that's 
why I do call a bad way to start such a project and building trust.


Then they are already asking for donations. Yes, of course such a 
project has the need for donations, true.


But would you spend someone money where you've got no clue whom you are 
giving it? I won't.


So until they are going to publish a list of names about who's behind 
this project I for myself am just going to think about it as a more or 
less nice reminder to the Debian community about that a nother fork with 
the implicit goal to eliminate Systemd would quite quickly gain much 
momentum and speed. The goal of such a prank? To make the people think 
about it and change their opinion that this would not happen.


Well, we are for sure going to see sooner or later, what's the real deal 
about Devuan.

Re: [gentoo-user] Debian forked, because of systemd brouhaha

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 30.11.2014 um 12:44 schrieb Philip Webb:


A rather shrewd analysis ; the name 'Devuan' adds to my suspicions.


Well, the people behind it claim to be mostly from Italy and this should 
be pronounced like DevOne.


People so far who have published their names do include:

- Franco Lanza (who fixed a misconfiguration at the nginx setup of 
devuan.org he claimed) and
- Teodoro Santoni, who claimed to be a junior-jack-of-all-trades in the 
original VUA group, going to be a maintainer of whatever is going to be 
needed.


Source: 
https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/thread/20141127.212941.f55acc3a.en.html#20141127.212941.f55acc3a


This still leaves quite in the dark who's the initiator behind it, which 
kind of leadership there's at the moment - or is there none?


And, of course, the possible other people being involved so far.

Re: [gentoo-user] Debian forked, because of systemd brouhaha

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 30.11.2014 um 17:39 schrieb Daniel Frey:

 systemd most certainly is monolithic as well as modular. You can't run

journald without systemd and you most certainly can't replace journald
with a third party binary.


IMHO this type of discussion leads to nowhere. Of course you can view it 
like that or the other way around and both sides will be always right, 
and if saying it's monolithic, well, so is X11 which is also not quite 
unixy to speak of. But it is accepted.


Even if you view systemd as modular as possible, it will not solve the 
other problems for you, if you've got them with that kind of software, 
and for most people that's Lennart Poettering, his track record of 
software, his ego and GNOME attitude (my way or the high way). YMMV.

Re: [gentoo-user] Debian forked, because of systemd brouhaha

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 29.11.2014 um 11:11 schrieb Pandu Poluan:


What do you think, people? Shouldn't we offer them our eudev project to
assist?


Since Eudev has always been opensource under the GPLv2, like udev too, 
there's no need to /offer/ it.


If they choose to use it, they can use it, no offer/questions necessary. 
Simple.

Re: [gentoo-user] The future of linux, and Gentoo specifically now

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 27.11.2014 um 16:22 schrieb Canek Peláez Valdés:


And Sabayon uses systemd, of course.


Holy moly... never noticed that this happened.

Re: [gentoo-user] The future of linux, and Gentoo specifically now

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 26.11.2014 um 21:39 schrieb Walter Dnes:


   I've been running ICEWM for over 4 years, and blackbox for a few years
before that.  What desktop interface change? :)


Switching to ratpoison or i3wm, of course. :

Re: [gentoo-user] The future of linux, and Gentoo specifically now

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 25.11.2014 um 18:44 schrieb Gevisz:


It usually took me from 10 to 20 minutes to download my daily updates
in Ubuntu. For big packages - about 40 minutes or even more.


That's the time saving aspect


lol :)


Not lol, it is like I told you. Binary distributions are a big, big 
time saver compared to a rolling update source based meta distribution 
like Gentoo.


Another reason why many stick with Distros like e.g. Debian, SuSE or 
Ubuntu is:


* you got a standardized environment/system.

That's also a very big requirement if using it in a corporate 
environment, if not the most important one.


I am not saying that this is not doable with Gentoo, but to achieve it 
with Gentoo you've got to implement quite some things. For Debian e.g. 
it comes free out of the box.

Re: [gentoo-user] The future of linux, and Gentoo specifically now

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 21.11.2014 um 18:36 schrieb Philip Webb:


Adoption of Systemd by other major distros sb good for Gentoo.
Disgruntled Debians, Fedoras, Archies (IIRC they've also adopted it)
will have a choice of giving in or moving to Slackware or Gentoo.


Well, Gentoo is for sure quite a different beast compared to Fedora, 
Debian or Ubuntu.


I don't think so, that many people are going to switch to Gentoo just 
because of Systemd, because of the differences between Gentoo and e.g. 
Debian.


All other major distros are: binary distributed (timesaver!), have a 
steady release cycle (contrary to Gentoo's rolling upgrade) and each 
version has a documented feature set.


Especially in server environments many people don't want to compile 
their stuff on production environment and have a rolling upgrade 
distribution. And especially in server environments there seems to be 
the biggest resistance against systemd.


So naturally they would look for something that has a steady release 
cycle and is binary distributed, without systemd.


E.g. Slackware or FreeBSD does fit that niche.

Re: [gentoo-user] The future of linux, and Gentoo specifically now

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 24.11.2014 um 19:25 schrieb Gevisz:


I switched from Ubuntu 10.04 to Gentoo just because it forced closing
window button x to the upper-left corner of the window in Unity of
Ubuntu 12.04 while I used to look for it in the upper-right corner. :)

So, I see no reason that those that hate systemd would not do the same.


I also did for my own server.

But the real strength and home of Debian on a server is in the corporate 
environment, and in a CE you are facing other challenges, namely:


* long term support (meaning for a few years),
* stable releases with a more or less stable and predictable release cycle,
* steady stream of security updates as long as the release is being 
supported.


Which also explains why in that field so many people are so heavily 
against SystemD, because it is still:


* quite a young software project, which needs more time to mature in 
their eyes,
* still a fast moving target, with adding more features over features 
with every new release,
* maybe also the philosophical aspect that it violates one of the 
primary paradigms of UNIX: do one thing only and do that well,
* and it forces them to learn a new way to configure their system, if 
they would use it.



I disagree: the downloading all that crap also takes a lot of time.


Downloading binaries takes of course some time, yes. But downloading 
e.g. the source code of Chromium compared to the binary of Chromium does 
take a multiply longer. And after the download of the binary you just 
need to unpack it and are ready to run it, on Gentoo you need to compile 
it.


So binaries are by every mean faster to download and run than 
downloading the source, compiling it and then running it on a server. 
Even downloading the biggest archives and installing (without 
configuration) is normally done in under one minute. That's the time 
saving aspect, and you got no broken ebuilds. Of course you got another 
can of worms that may be bug you instead.


And if you don't like the example of Chromium, then take MySQL e.g. 
instead.


People in a CE rarely have the time to deal with the added complicity of 
Gentoo compared to binary based distributions, and therefore Gentoo just 
don't fit for most of them.


The thing is: compiling your own binaries on a production server is 
something many people won't like, because it takes power from the other 
processes away for that time.


And having a fully fledged C/C++ compiler running on your server is a 
security hole, if you are paranoid enough.


Of course you could setup just a compiling server for all of your other 
servers, but this takes time and adds complexity.



Steady release cycle is also not so good.


It depends on your case.

All the major BSDs, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, have had a steady 
release cycle - a new release every half year - for almost two decades 
now and they are content with that.

Re: [gentoo-user] The future of linux, and Gentoo specifically now

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 21.11.2014 um 08:17 schrieb Paige Thompson:


I just read an article that says systemd is taking over linux and linux
is not linux anymore:
http://blog.lusis.org/blog/2014/11/20/systemd-redux/

I kinda have to agree which is partially why I'm not using it. Will
Gentoo have any plans of forcing its users to move to systemd or will I
always (such as its always roughly been) have the option of using init
and openrc as it is now? I personally have no reasons currently to


You've been on this list for surely long enough to know, that systemd 
will always be optional for Gentoo users with Openrc not going away too 
soon as the default.

Re: [gentoo-user] bloated by gcc

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 28.09.2014 10:44, schrieb Jorge Almeida:


I'm having a somewhat disgusting issue on my Gentoo: binaries are
unaccountably large.


Really? Who cares. Storage is so cheap nowadays, that that kind of 
bloat simply doesn't matter on normal deskop computers anymore.


Embedded systems though are a different cup of coffee.

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linus Torvalds on systemd

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 17.09.2014 20:36, schrieb Volker Armin Hemmann:


Now you use this to advertise for systemd?

Systemd fanbois are becoming more and more desperate.


Gentoo is still all about choice, right? And we still have that choice. 
If you dislike Systemd, then just don't use it. Period.


Contrary to many other distributions, like Debian or Arch Linux, we 
still have that kind of choice.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: ECC-ram, it is worth it.

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 26.07.2014 20:23, schrieb Volker Armin Hemmann:


but you will care when your kernel writes the next file right over the
partition boundary.


That's why I do have backups of all my relevant data on an external 
storage medium.

Re: [gentoo-user] Demise of Truecrypt - surprised I haven't seen t his discussed here yet?

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 01.06.2014 14:31, schrieb Tanstaafl:


Wow, I've been mostly offline for a few days, and this morning when
playing catch up on the news, learned that Truecrypt, one of my all time
favorite apps, is no more.


Well, considering the fact that Linux comes with its own bunch of 
encrytion possibilities on its own, the demise of TrueCrypt on Linux is 
neglectable.


Some people in Switzerland want to take over development, for further 
information take a look at www.truecrypt.ch.


And then there's tc-play, a free implementation of TrueCrypt based on 
dm-crypt (https://github.com/bwalex/tc-play), which allows reading and 
creating TrueCrypt volumes on your own. It just lacks a good GUI so far.


Cryptsetup since 1.6 supports reading the TrueCrypt on disk format.

And zuluCrypt is a frontend to cryptsetup and tcplay, which acts as a 
GUI for those.


So no loss at all if TrueCrypt would really cease to exist.

Re: [gentoo-user] Demise of Truecrypt - surprised I haven't seen t his discussed here yet?

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 03.06.2014 12:00, schrieb Tanstaafl:


So no loss at all if TrueCrypt would really cease to exist.


Which totally misses the point of *how* it happened.


How it happened is strange and you can make many theories about it.

The more interesting question about it for sure is: why did many people 
trust such an anonymous development team at all?

Re: [gentoo-user] Systemd upower

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 03.06.2014 22:14, schrieb Alan McKinnon:

This whole systemd thing looks awfully like the switch from a hosts file
to DNS so many years ago.


Not really. What many people bothers about systemd is that it is getting 
more and more


a) a hard dependancy for software projects, e.g. like GNOME, although 
there's no such thing like systemd e.g. on FreeBSD, (MATE instead tries 
to be init system agnostic), making it harder to port


and

b) that systemd seems to be on a track to reinvent the wheel or so more 
and more.


They are really working on their own DHCP server and client at the 
moment, also their own NTP client. Some people coined the term 
Lennartware for it, because it's from Lennart Poettering, like also 
pulseaudio and avahi.


Some people are already joking that it wants to become the next Emacs.

Even Linus Torvalds himself ranted about the attitude of systemd's 
developers at the beginning of May this year.

Re: [gentoo-user] about to give up on systemd and gnome

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 23.05.2014 21:50, schrieb cov...@ccs.covici.com:


I am open to suggestions here, and I have a log segment I can put
somewhere to illustrage the oh no problem, but I am getting tired of
the mess and if I can find something which works with orca I will do
that instead.


Gentoo is all about havinge the freedom of choice, Larry the cow said.

If GNOME and systemd is not going to work for you at all, you can still 
switch back to OpenRC and e.g. try the MATE desktop environment instead, 
which is init-system agnostic and does not depend on systemd. It works 
fine with and without it.

Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs and sparse VM image files

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 19.05.2014 13:01, schrieb Neil Bothwick:


The page you linked to does not actually state that. There are plenty of
hints and sideways references but little concrete information about what
is safe with the current release - hence my question.


Oh it does, just take a look at that section:

-
Files with a lot of random writes can become heavily fragmented (1+ 
extents) causing trashing on HDDs and excessive multi-second spikes of 
CPU load on systems with an SSD or large amount a RAM.


* On servers and workstations this affects databases and virtual
 ^^^
machine images.
^^^

* The nodatacow mount option may be of use here, with associated gotchas.
-

So they still do not recommend putting virtual machine images on a Btrfs 
(if you want it in productional use, that is).

Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs and sparse VM image files

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 18.05.2014 14:28, schrieb Neil Bothwick:


I'm confused about the desirability of keeping VM image files, usually
space qcow files, on a btrfs volume. I have read the advice about using
chattr +C on the subvolume, but are there any other gotchas? The btrfs
wiki says in one place that using sparse file on btrfs is not a good
idea, but is that still the case. There is conflicting information out
there, does anyone here have any hard experience?


Just take a look at the official Gotchas Page of BTRFS, which can be 
found here:


https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Gotchas

Putting virtual image files on Btrfs is something that the developers 
still do not recommend at all, and that's with reason!


If you really do want to put them up a COW filesystem, you should try 
ZFS on Linux instead, otherwise go with XFS or ext4 - in that kind of 
order.


Frankly said, Btrfs in my humble opinion is just not ready for prime 
time yet and will not be for a couple of year and if you really do want 
a COW filesystem now, you should take a look at ZFS instead.

Re: [gentoo-user] Local Mail with Procmail and Thunderbird (or similar)

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 28.03.2014 11:40, schrieb wraeth:


My question is: does anyone know how I can configure either Procmail
to deliver messages in a format Thunderbird will understand; or how I
can configure Thunderbird to be a little bit more maildir compliant?


Well, why don't you just install a local instance of Dovecot and point 
your local Thunderbird to that? That would work.

[gentoo-user] Pointers on how to speed up the boot process with systemd

[Marc Stürmer]

Greetings fellow Gentooistas,

I am looking for input on how to speed up my boot process with systemd 
on Gentoo.


First of one word to systemd: Gentoo is about choice, and I choose to 
take a deeper look into systemd out of curiosity, so please respect that 
and don't turn it into another kind of OpenRC vs. systemd debate. 
Thanks in advance.


Having said that, now to my setup: I am running the vanilla kernel 
3.13.6 with only the necessary drivers builtin to the kernel, almost 
nothing as module.


Features I don't need are disabled.

Readahead-Services are disabled. Since my root partition is XFS, fsckd 
is disabled.


systemd-analyze says:

Startup finished in 584542y 2w 2d 20h 1min 35.953s (loader) + 1.477s 
(kernel) + 15.966s (userspace) = 17.444s


Blame says:

 1min 7.815s systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
  4.900s NetworkManager.service
  3.214s systemd-logind.service
  2.585s lightdm.service
  2.373s systemd-vconsole-setup.service
  1.506s systemd-update-utmp.service
   919ms upower.service
   697ms polkit.service
   387ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
   381ms systemd-sysctl.service
   374ms tmp.mount
   359ms udisks2.service
   334ms kmod-static-nodes.service
   333ms user@0.service
   332ms systemd-user-sessions.service
   299ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
   288ms sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount
   287ms systemd-remount-fs.service
   228ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
   178ms systemd-random-seed.service
   117ms systemd-fsck-root.service
   103ms systemd-journal-flush.service
71ms wpa_supplicant.service
65ms accounts-daemon.service
51ms user@1000.service
35ms systemd-udevd.service
22ms alsa-restore.service

Critical Chain says:

The time after the unit is active or started is printed after the @ 
character.

The time the unit takes to start is printed after the + character.

graphical.target @15.965s
└─multi-user.target @15.965s
  └─NetworkManager.service @11.065s +4.900s
└─basic.target @11.065s
  └─timers.target @11.064s
└─systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer @11.043s
  └─sysinit.target @4.264s
└─systemd-vconsole-setup.service @1.891s +2.373s
  └─systemd-journald.socket @1.572s
└─-.mount @1.571s
  └─system.slice @1.947s
└─-.slice @1.947s

Boot disk is a normal HDD SATA.

GDM-Replacement is lightdm.

So i wonder what could I do to speedup the boot process any further?

Thanks in advance.

Re: [gentoo-user] Pointers on how to speed up the boot process with systemd

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 09.03.2014 18:39, schrieb Canek Peláez Valdés:


Something is wrong here; unless you are booting a 386 machine, there
is no way it should take a minute and a half to boot. And even with a
386 I would be suspicious.


No, actually it is an Intel i5-4670K with 8 GB of RAM.


Something is seriously wrong with  systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service; why
it takes 1:07 minutes to run? Do you have /tmp as a tmpfs?


Yes, at least according to mount, it is.

mount | grep tmpfs
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs 
(rw,relatime,size=238864k,nr_inodes=59716,mode=755)

tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,mode=755)
tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw)


By the way my actual blame does tell:

systemd-analyze blame
  6.087s NetworkManager.service
  5.310s alsa-restore.service
  4.226s systemd-logind.service
  3.660s lightdm.service
  2.581s systemd-vconsole-setup.service
   688ms polkit.service
   479ms systemd-user-sessions.service
   413ms kmod-static-nodes.service
   381ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
   358ms user@0.service
   352ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
   274ms tmp.mount
   265ms systemd-journal-flush.service
   246ms systemd-sysctl.service
   235ms systemd-random-seed.service
   205ms upower.service
   205ms udisks2.service
   197ms systemd-udevd.service
   195ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
   183ms systemd-fsck-root.service
   163ms systemd-remount-fs.service
   126ms systemd-update-utmp.service
   125ms sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount
53ms wpa_supplicant.service
50ms user@1000.service
50ms accounts-daemon.service

Actual systemd-analyze:

Startup finished in 584542y 2w 2d 20h 1min 42.032s (loader) + 1.540s 
(kernel) + 11.028s (userspace) = 12.569s


Actual critical chain:

graphical.target @11.028s
└─multi-user.target @11.028s
  └─NetworkManager.service @4.940s +6.087s
└─basic.target @4.939s
  └─timers.target @4.721s
└─systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer @4.721s
  └─sysinit.target @4.489s
└─systemd-vconsole-setup.service @1.907s +2.581s
  └─systemd-journald.socket @1.660s
└─-.mount @1.660s
  └─system.slice @2.030s
└─-.slice @2.030s


Could you run systemd-analyze critical-chain systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service?


Sure, here it is:

└─systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer @4.721s
  └─sysinit.target @4.489s
└─systemd-vconsole-setup.service @1.907s +2.581s
  └─systemd-journald.socket @1.660s
└─-.mount @1.660s
  └─system.slice @2.030s
└─-.slice @2.030s



In your critical-chain systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service was not included
(only systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer). From blame, I think that's the
obvious offender. Again, do you have /tmp as a tmpfs? What do you have
in /etc/tmpfiles.d?


/etc/tmpfiles.d is empty.


Notice that systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service takes almost no time; here
it's its critical chain:


Yes, I see, so makes me wonder.

BTW, my fstab:

/dev/sda1   /boot   ext2noauto,noatime 0 0
/dev/sda2   /   xfs  noatime,nodiratime 0 0


Thanks.

Re: [gentoo-user] Pointers on how to speed up the boot process with systemd

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 09.03.2014 18:56, schrieb Canek Peláez Valdés:

 OK, this is actually normal. Do you realize that it's completely

different from the first one you posted?


Yes, I do though I still wonder what changed, but I do not complain.


Getting less than 12 seconds will be difficult, specially on a
rotating hard drive. Maybe when gnome-session (if you use GNOME)


Good. Well, I am not using GNOME 3.X at all, since this peace of sh*t is 
just an unusable mess for me. I am using MATE and I am quite content 
with it.


Thanks again.

Re: [gentoo-user] Terminals not closing after exit anymore

[Marc Stürmer]

Zitat von Peter Weilbacher newss...@weilbacher.org:

Don't have Mate, but I can otherwise confirm this behavior: xfce  
terminal works, gnome-terminal does weird things.


One more thing that happens to me is that apparently gnome-terminal  
does not notify console apps of new window size. For me this happens  
to Alpine. (The only reason why I didn't simply switch to xfce  
terminal is that there I cannot switch off the scrollbar with  
parameters.)


Well I've found one possibility for that strange behaviour could be  
the proprietary Nvidia driver. There's already some bug open in the  
Gentoo Bugtracker.


Downgraded from 331 to 319, but it did not really change at all, so  
still diggin'!

Re: [gentoo-user] Terminals not closing after exit anymore

[Marc Stürmer]

Zitat von Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com:


I have found this one to be the most stable driver.

x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-304.116


I am going to give it a shot when I am back home on my own computer.

Re: [gentoo-user] Terminals not closing after exit anymore

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 25.11.2013 15:15, schrieb Randy Barlow:


Did you find out what was causing this issue? I've been experiencing it
as well in my Gnome 2 system (gnome-terminal). I haven't put much
effort into figuring out what is happening, but I'm curious now that I
know it has affected someone else as well.


Not yet, e.g. Xfce Terminal 0.6.X works as I want it, version 0.4.8 does 
not. Mate Terminal also does not. Still diggin'!

[gentoo-user] Terminals not closing after exit anymore

[Marc Stürmer]

Greetings,

I've got a strange behaviour since a couple of weeks.

When working under X11 in a terminal and I type exit in the shell, the 
terminal does not close itself anymore.


Already changed the shell - no change at all.

Also does Ctrl+Z not work anymore, to bring the process running in the 
foreground into the background.


When trying Ctrl+Z on the text console it is the same.

Since I am somewhat confused about that kind of behaviour and where to 
fix it - any ideas to get it back working properly?


Thanks in advance.

Re: [gentoo-user] Terminals not closing after exit anymore

[Marc Stürmer]

If you can see -- for example -- ^E when pressing CTRL-E,
then the control codes are received by the shell/terminal,
therefore keyboard related things are not to blame.


Well yes this works.


If so check the shell init files for remapping the keycodes.
Maybe revdep rebuild will show a library, which is used by
the shell was updated but the shell was not rebuild.
Or something like that.


Ok, looking after that, thanks for the input.

[gentoo-user] Btrfs: how to fix slow sequential write performance?

[Marc Stürmer]

Greetings fellow Gentooistas,

at the moment I am doing some testing and evaluating of Btrfs on my own 
system. Why? Just because I can and I am curious about it.


Because I am doing that for evaluation purpose please don't give advise 
like go ZFS or something like that, thank you.


Kernel is 3.10.7, the file system is on one hard drive only (SATA).

And here comes my question: sequential write access seems to be slow as 
hell, actually something around like 10 Mbyte/s according to dd's output.


The same HDD performed under ext4 with around 90 Mbyte/s.

Command is something like: dd if=/dev/zero of=file.img bs=1G count=150

Nothing else is running at the time of writing, no scrub/balance on the 
file system or other process eating up much cpu time.


Mount option is relatime only. So is this a well known issue only with 
this kernel or generally with this file system at the moment?


Are there any possible fixes to squeeze better performance out of it or 
is this unlikely to happen so that I should better take that into 
account of my evaluation and maybe dump it then?


Thanks in advance.

Re: [gentoo-user] ZFS

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 17.09.2013 09:20, schrieb Grant:


Performance doesn't seem to be one of ZFS's strong points.  Is it
considered suitable for a high-performance server?


A high performance server for what?

But you've already given yourself the answer: if high performance is 
what you are aiming for it depends on your performance needs and 
probably ZFS on Linux is not got to meet those - yet. It is still evolving.


Of course benchmarks are static, real world usage is another cup of coffee.


Besides performance, are there any drawbacks to ZFS compared to ext4?


Well it only comes as kernel module at the moment. Some people dislike 
that.

Re: [gentoo-user] Deficient Gnome Window Frames

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 06.09.2013 21:47, schrieb Paul Hartman:

On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 2:28 PM, gevisz gev...@gmail.com wrote:

But I have not found MATE in portage...


I see there is a mate overlay available in layman


layman -a mate

GNOME 2.X is been dead since a few years. They went to develop that ugly 
beast they call GNOME 3.


MATE is the proven and working fork of GNOME 2.X. If you want GNOME 2.X, 
then you should take a look at it indeed.

Re: [gentoo-user] RAID 1 install guide?

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 05.09.2013 05:04, schrieb James:

Do you want to use a software raid of hardware raid?


File system that is best for a Raid 1 workstation?


Well, of course only file systems being supported by the rescue system 
of your hosting provider.



File system that is best for a Raid 1
(casual usage) web server ?


Personally I'd go for a software raid and ext4. If you want snapshots, 
put LVM into that, too.


Here's some documentation how to create a software raid in Linux:

https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup

Re: Integrated ZFS for Gentoo - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Optional /usr merge in Gentoo

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 02.09.2013 10:47, schrieb Joerg Schilling:


Solaris is dynamic from the beginning:


Well in my point of view it boils down to that: someone wants to use ZFS 
on Linux. Fine. This means you've got to be a good citizen and obey its 
license, of course.


It is for those legal reasons that ZFS is not included into the Linux 
kernel mainline source tree. It is also for those reasons you got to 
compile it as a module.


So somebody wants it being static into his kernel, modules being 
disabled on his machine because of security concerns. Unless he is going 
to do that stuff himself this is unlikely to ever happen.


So it boils down to those possible solutions:

a) writing that stuff himself (unlikely to happen),
b) just using the module and going to be happy (also unlikely to happen 
as it seems),
c) choosing another, native file system like Btrfs (which is still yet 
not production ready as a fast moving target) or going with something 
like XFS or Ext4 (and LVM),


or the most natural choice then, which is

d) choosing an operating system, which supports ZFS out of the box like 
FreeBSD and forget about all the rest of the problems.


I would go for d and forget about all of the rest of the problems. 
FreeBSD has been around long enough, and is stable and mature enough for 
most anything you can throw at and it is a nice, clean, well structured 
system anyway.


There's also Gentoo/FreeBSD around, but personally I would use the 
native ports system instead.

Re: [gentoo-user] Jitsi or Other Skype Alternative

[Marc Stürmer]

Well... Nowadays RAM is so cheap that this is really no issue. Most recent 
Computers ship at last with 4 GB so what the Heck. 

That aside, jitsi runs on Java and the Java vm is not really leightweight 
either. 



the the.gu...@mail.ru schrieb:

 My granny never had these problems, using Skype on her PC.
I can assure you that skype consumes tremendous amount of ram.

Re: [gentoo-user] Jitsi or Other Skype Alternative

[Marc Stürmer]

No IT simply means that you are overwxaggerating the RAM usage and its
importance a Lot. Most gentoo Users are Used to Compile their own Binaries.
A Task which Uses quite some time, horse Power and RAM. Which means that
the average computer running gentoo also should have enough Power to Run
Skype.

So once more again: RAM usage is no issue, Because most Computers Nowadays
have Got much more than needed anyway.

And on running instance of firefox probably Uses much more RAM After
running some time than Skype does anyway.

There are issues, in you are being concerned e.g. About your privacy. But
that is a Very Different kind of issue Indeed.
Am 23.08.2013 12:50 schrieb the the.gu...@mail.ru:

 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 On 08/23/13 14:39, Marc Stürmer wrote:
  Well... Nowadays RAM is so cheap that this is really no issue.
  Most recent Computers ship at last with 4 GB so what the Heck.

 Does that mean that I should buy hardware to match
 software requirements?
 - --
 Stop talking and start compiling.
 Linux user #557897
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
 Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux)
 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJSFz5xAAoJEK64IL1uI2hamssH/23LTCtcDoTc/OXYp/ghSFcg
 uw1CXuSt8Zx94D1Hda+cDbRCn12FR93QHjHKN0AgvfH+0lItC071WUVk+bJWuq/2
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 =tB4t
 -END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: [gentoo-user] Jitsi or Other Skype Alternative

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 23.08.2013 15:21, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' I think your keyboard is broken. Your Shift key is 
doing odd things and typing CAPS when you obviously didn't intend
More like of my virtual keyboard on my smartphone, anyways... nice to be 
back on my real keyboard once more again. Yeah.

Re: [gentoo-user] Jitsi or Other Skype Alternative

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 23.08.2013 12:50, schrieb the:

Does that mean that I should buy hardware to match software requirements?


Do you really want to tell me that you are still working on a Pentium 
133 with maybe 64 MB of RAM?


I mean it has always been like that: people buy indeed hardware to match 
software requirements, e.g. to play better games or to watch Youtube 
videos in High Definition.


Of course no one is going to force you to do so, so if you are happy 
with less power you need less, of course.


The point for Skype, last time I am going to repeat that, is that it 
works out of the box for the normal user and the large user base. You 
need no bachelor in computer sciences to set it up and get it running, 
even your proverbial grandma in mind is able to do that.


And that's what 99% of Skype frankly care about at all: that it works 
that way. They don't really care about nerdy themes like bugs, privacy 
concerns, backdoors, whatever - it works for them good enough, cheap and 
reliable and that's what's counts at all.


So if you really want a piece of software to replace Skype, it depends 
on your goals: just for talking over the internet you can take a 
VoIP-program like Ekiga and so on. But if you want to replace Skype with 
something better, you first need to recognize why it got so popular in 
first place and make something even better for its user base. Or - 
another way - just buy the company behind it.


And in modern times like ours I personally and frankly think that 
telling OMFG Skype uses so much RAM is not really something most 
people care about anymore at all. I mean, even really cheap computers 
you can buy today, have at last around 4 GB of RAM, being a multitude of 
RAM being necessary to run Skype smoothly.


And because most Gentoo users are being used to compile their own stuff 
(until they use Sabayon), their computers are normally being far from 
underpowered.


Of course, if you do care about it - don't use it, it is that simple. 
But don't expect the rest of it to share your point of view and do it 
likewise.


For normal users it is like: all software sucks and they tend to use 
that piece of software which sucks less for them. If their favorite 
piece of software starts to suck more, then they are going to another 
piece of software, but not before.

Re: [gentoo-user] Jitsi or Other Skype Alternative

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 20.08.2013 17:12, schrieb Randy Westlund:

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.


Well, there's always been something being called a Skype killer over the 
last few years, but no program really killed it.


Even now no program is going to really kill Skype.

And why not? Because most users just want a program that works right out 
of the box for them without problems and Skype is just that. It went 
great lengths to achieve this goal.

Re: [gentoo-user] Jitsi or Other Skype Alternative

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 22.08.2013 17:58, schrieb hasufell:


You probably missed those hundreds of bugs we devs and also users were
faced with, including linkage against non-existing sonames, random
crashes and breakage when the binary is stripped.

So this is somewhat wrong information. It's like saying windows works
right out of the box without problems.


I am not arguing from the admin site of Skype; I am arguing from the 
user side.


You can install Skype almost whereever you want, behind a NAT-Router, 
Firewall, whatever, it just works. That's why it is so popular.


Try the same with Ekiga and you got probably tons of troubles.

Re: [gentoo-user] Jitsi or Other Skype Alternative

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 22.08.2013 18:08, schrieb hasufell:


I was arguing from both sides. It is buggy, crashes a lot, consumes a
lot of ressources and is able to slow down your whole desktop, mess with
audio settings and whatnot.


Well, your opinion. In my opinion the ease of use out of the box for the 
end user is Skype's biggest selling point why it got so popular and no 
competitor has reached that yet.

Re: [gentoo-user] Moving from old udev to eudev

[Marc Stürmer]

Why is was forked you ask? Because of the predictable Name stuff and some
People disliked the attitude of the udev programmer which was either my
way or the high way. aside choice is always Good to have so in the end IT
was bound to happen sooner or later and is a Good thing to have.

Re: [gentoo-user] Moving from old udev to eudev

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 01.08.2013 18:28, schrieb Tanstaafl:

I have an older server that I have been putting off this update,
debating on whether to update to the regular udev, or to eudev.

I've googled until my fingers are blue, but cannot for the life of me
find any explicit instructions for *how* to switch from udev to eudev.


Well I also upgraded recently my system to udev 200.

I still have got though the old interface names. This turned out pretty 
easy to achieve.


Just boot your kernel with the following parameter:

net.ifnames=0

(tell LILO/GRUB to do so)

and you won't get any of those predictable network interface names AND 
running udev 200, it will still use your old established interface names.

Re: [gentoo-user] Moving from old udev to eudev

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 01.08.2013 19:16, schrieb Marc Stürmer:


net.ifnames=0


Worked like a charm to me.

Forgot to mention the more thorough documentation though, so here it is:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/PredictableNetworkInterfaceNames/

http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Udev/upgrade

You should read at last the latter from the official wiki.

Re: [gentoo-user] ntp-daemons

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 03.04.2013 01:36, schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger:


I always used net-misc/ntp for syncing time.

Now I found net-misc/chrony and set it up  looks good so far.

Any opinions and experiences on the various ways of getting THE TIME?


Just two different hammers for the same nail. Another alternative is 
OpenNTPD btw, http://www.openntpd.org/

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 14.03.2013 09:15, schrieb Dale:


I was wondering.  Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to
compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros?  Maybe Gentoo compared
to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such?


Running Gentoo is not a choice about raw _speed_. I mean, even if you 
claim that your binaries are running 2-3% faster than e.g. on Debian, 
this is something really negligable on a production system.


I mean, you may gain a small percentage of running speed, but on the 
other hand you get the need to have a compiler installed on your system, 
which could be quite a security hole, and having binaries produced by 
yourself.


If you are not that lucky to have your own binary package building host 
for Gentoo that's something, that you don't want to have on heavy duty 
production systems, like e.g. database hosts. Compiler runs on such 
systems are a big nono to me.


So running Gentoo is about another thing - _choice_ and _flexibility_. 
It fits that hole quite nicely if you need package switches enabled most 
binary based distributions don't have enabled. Otherwise running those 
distributions is the way to go.


Of course, if you like to tinker with your system to shape it the way 
you like it, Gentoo is a good choice.

Re: [gentoo-user] gnome 3.6 ... and related thoughts

[Marc Stürmer]

Am 28.12.2012 01:02, schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger:


I *liked* the old way ... is there any explanation why removing this
improves things? How is it supposed to work now?


That's the sane question to ask, unfortunately you won't get a real 
answer from the GNOME developers themselves. They are still happy for 
mistreating the desktop as a tablet and to continue alienating their 
loyal user base with that shitty piece of crap they call GNOME 3.X, 
praising themselves still that every remove of a beloved feature is a 
mile stone in terms of usability and not facing the reality.


Also knowing better than the user himself what bells and whistles he 
needs to configure his computer and not has also a long tradition in GNOME.


It is really no wonder, that quite some major distributions ditched 
GNOME 3.X vanilla either for their own homegrown stuff or MATE/Cinnamon. 
So it is really no wonder either, that GNOME 3.X ruined it for a large 
part of their former user base and they switched to other desktop 
environments.

Re: [gentoo-user] Good/better/best filesystem for large, static video library?

[Marc Stürmer]

2012/12/25 Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com:

Upgrading an external USB2 drive at home this Christmas morning to
 1TB for more video storage space. One large partition, non-raid, files
 are around 1GB. The drive holds only static video files that get
 written once and don't change or get erased. No MythTV stuff or
 anything like that.

This disk reside on my main desktop machine and gets backed up
 every couple of days to another USB2 drive (FAT formatted
 unfortunately) which attaches to the TV.

Well in your usage case ext3 is still well suited enough.

Ext4 though is the superior filesystem, since it is more advanced in
technical terms. Maximum file system size in ext3 is around 16
Terabyte, something not so far ahead now even more in homes. Ext4 has
the maximum file system size of 1024 Petabyte.

ext4 also uses extents, which ext3 has not - meaning file system
checks are able to run faster. Erasing big files on ext4 works
therefore faster than on ext3. It also tends to fragment less than
ext3.

ext4 has persistent preallocation when writing large files, meaning
space is being guaranteed and most probably contiguous.

tl;dr: ext3 should be well suited enough for your computer, but if you
can reformat your hard disk drive, using ext4 will not hurt either and
you gain some faster speed.