[gentoo-user] Re: qtcore 5 missing the lrelease binary?

[walt]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2016 21:42:37 +0100
Neil Bothwick <n...@digimed.co.uk> wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Jul 2016 13:35:26 -0700, walt wrote:
> 
> > I just installed qt5 for the first time because the latest
> > virtualbox requires it.  Now virtualbox 5.1.0 won't build because
> > it can't find /usr/lib64/qt5/bin/lrelease, which (I think) should
> > be in the qtcore package.  
> 
> % qfile /usr/lib64/qt5/bin/lrelease
> dev-qt/linguist-tools (/usr/lib64/qt5/bin/lrelease)

Instant help from Alan and Neil, two foreigners from the other side of
the planet.  Thanks, guys :)  I'll let you know next week when I finish
rebuilding the machine with every permutation of useflags I can think
of.

[gentoo-user] qtcore 5 missing the lrelease binary?

[walt]

I just installed qt5 for the first time because the latest virtualbox
requires it.  Now virtualbox 5.1.0 won't build because it can't
find /usr/lib64/qt5/bin/lrelease, which (I think) should be in the
qtcore package.

I copied lrelease from qtcore-4, which worked around that problem but
now vbox fails to build because of an undefined GL variable, so I've
got other (useflag?) problems to solve, but meanwhile I'd be grateful
for any hints.

Thanks.

[gentoo-user] Re: wpa_supplicant troubles with newly installed gentoo

[walt]

On Mon, 30 May 2016 17:34:14 -0500
Jackson Darule  wrote:

> > On May 30, 2016, at 16:38, Mick  wrote:
> > 
> > On Monday 30 May 2016 14:09:27 Jackson Darule wrote:  
> >> Hello. I’ve newly installed gentoo, and my wireless hasn’t been
> >> working. I’ve tried to google and use the wiki to find the answer,
> >> but was unable to. If people require more information from my
> >> system, feel free to ask. I’ve been trying to manually configure
> >> the file for it to work. I’m using WPA2 personal security on my
> >> wifi. --- /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
> >> 
> >> update_config=1
> >> ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel
> >> 
> >> network={
> >>ssid=“myssid”
> >>#psk=“mypsk”
> >>psk=(the longer form of the psk generated by the terminal
> >> command to find this) proto=WPA  
> > 
> > Change this to:
> > 
> > proto=RSN
> >   
> >>key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
> >>group=CCMP TKIP
> >>pairwise=CCMP TKIP  
> > 
> > You probably do not need TKIP
> >   
> >> }
> >> 
> >> running the command “wpa_supplicant -B -Dnl80211 -iwlp3s0
> >> -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf" gives the output
> >> 
> >> Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
> >> ctrl_iface exists and seems to be in use - cannot override it
> >> Delete ‘/var/run/wpa_supplicant/wlp3s0’ manually if it is not used
> >> anymore Failed to initialize control interface
> >> ‘DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel’. You may have another
> >> wpa_supplicant process already running or the file was left by an
> >> unclean termination of wpa_supplicant in which case you will need
> >> to manually remove this file before starting wpa_supplicant again.
> >> 
> >> nl80211: deinst ifname=wlp3s0 disabled_11b_rates=0
> >> 
> >> 
> >> I wanted to ask before manually
> >> deleting /var/run/wpa_supplicant/wlp3s0 in case this could do
> >> anything to damage my new system. Is the next step to
> >> delete /var/run/wpa_supplicant/wlp3s0, or is there another step
> >> which I should take in order to connect with my wifi.
> >> 
> >> Thanks.  
> > 
> > Do you have a /etc/init.d/net.wlp3s0 symlink to /etc/init.d/net and
> > have you configured /etc/conf.d/net to include the necessary for
> > your wireless interface?
> > 
> > What do you get when you run '/etc/init.d/net.wlp3s0 start'?
> > 
> > -- 
> > Regards,
> > Mick  
> 
> I changed the listed options, getting rid of TKIP, and switching to
> RSN. I have /etc/init.d/net.wlp3s0 symlinked to /etc/init.d/net.
> Below is the configuration of /etc/conf.d/net.
> 
> ——
> modules_wlp3s0=“wpa_supplicant”
> wpa_supplicant_wlp3s0=“-Dnl80211”
> config_wlp3s0=“dhcp”
> ——
> 
> Below is the output of the command /etc/init.d/net.wlp3s0 start
> —
> net.wlp3s0|bringing up interface wlp3s0
> net.wlp3s0|starting wpa_supplicant on wlp3s0 …
> net.wlp3s0|successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
> net.wlp3s0|ctrl_iface exists and seems to be in use - cannot
> override it net.wlp3s0|Delete
> ‘/var/run/wpa_supplicant/wlp3s0’ manually if it is not used anymore

I'd say delete that file.  It should be recreated every time you start
your network.

IIRC I created my /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf by
running /usr/bin/wpa_gui, which is part of the wpa_supplicant package.

My .conf file is simpler than yours:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel

network={
ssid="foo"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk="bar"
}

[gentoo-user] Re: Heads up perl-5.24 and virtual/

[walt]

On Sun, 29 May 2016 12:33:55 +0200
Alan McKinnon  wrote:

> > There's been another thread a week ago which mentioned a
> > sys-devel/make-4.2 bug and the recommendation was to emerge perl
> > with MAKEOPTS=-j1.  Did you try this?  
> 
> It's not perl failing to build, it's portage claiming it can't find a
> clean upgrade path to offer. The merge doesn't start as the dep graph
> resolution never completes, so MAKEOPTS isn't even in the picture yet.

I found that --with-bdeps=y fixed some problems.

[gentoo-user] Surviving perl-5.24.0

[walt]

I spent most of today updating from perl-5.22 to perl-5.24 because so
many packages failed to install.  I ran perl-cleaner about a hundred
times and tried emerge -ac in between, which always failed because it
falsely accused me of not doing emerge -auND.

Finally I got through the perl update and noticed a message saying
'emerge -auND --with-bdeps=y is the ultimate way to update...' so I
added the '--with-bdeps=y' and another twenty perl-related packages got
rebuilt after I thought I was done.

Now I'm really done, I think, but I'm afraid to reboot this machine.

[gentoo-user] Re: getting blank screen when trying to start gdm

[walt]

On Sun, 15 May 2016 21:03:19 -0400
cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> Answers in line.
> 
> walt <w41...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 15 May 2016 15:43:51 -0400
> > cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> >   
> > > Hi.  Since about the end of March, I have been unable to use
> > > gnome and even gdm.  I am using the gnome overlay and I am using
> > > unstable gentoo and nvidia drivers.  I  get a blank screen when I
> > > start gdm, orca just comes up, but there is nothing on the screen.
> > > 
> > > I am using version  355.11-r4 of the nvidia drivers, if I use any
> > > later version I get modeset errors  and sometimes system
> > > crashes.  I waited a while because I thought that if some
> > > packages got upgraded that would fix the problem, since things
> > > used to work, but its still dead as a doornail, so any
> > > suggestions would be appreciated.  
> > 
> > Well, I'll go through my usual checklist while you wait for a
> > helpful reply :)
> > 
> > If you use startx instead of gdm do you still see nothing?  

> startx did not work, it tried to do startx  on the wrong console.

You could try this (depending on which console you're using):

startx -- tty01  (when I try tty02 I get 'no screens defined' error)

I have the mate overlay installed and most of it works extremely well,
but I see little quirks here and there that I don't see when I run mate
on other distros that I test with virtualbox, so I'm not surprised that
you might see bigger quirks with the gnome overlay.

Maybe a 'layman' expert can tell you more.


Maybe someone else

[gentoo-user] Re: getting blank screen when trying to start gdm

[walt]

On Sun, 15 May 2016 15:43:51 -0400
cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> Hi.  Since about the end of March, I have been unable to use gnome and
> even gdm.  I am using the gnome overlay and I am using unstable gentoo
> and nvidia drivers.  I  get a blank screen when I start gdm, orca just
> comes up, but there is nothing on the screen.
> 
> I am using version  355.11-r4 of the nvidia drivers, if I use any
> later version I get modeset errors  and sometimes system crashes.  I
> waited a while because I thought that if some packages got upgraded
> that would fix the problem, since things used to work, but its still
> dead as a doornail, so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Well, I'll go through my usual checklist while you wait for a helpful
reply :)

If you use startx instead of gdm do you still see nothing?

What happens when you use an older kernel with older nvidia drivers?

Are you using gnome from regular portage while waiting for the
overlay to start working again?  If yes, is it working normally?

Are you using gcc4 or gcc5, and is the entire system built with the
same compiler?

[gentoo-user] vbox guest additions 5.0.20

[walt]

Well, I finally have the vboxvideo driver working, mostly, but I'm
confused by some inconsistencies.

There was/is the problem of 'unknown symbols' for drm and ttm support
in the linux guest kernel.  I fixed the symbol errors by enabling the
'ATI Radeon' driver in the guest kernel, but now the vboxvideo module
refuses to load with 'Exec format error'.

In spite of everything the guest video function is working normally
either way, i.e. with vboxvideo (and the symbol errors), or with the
drm and ttm kernel modules loaded (with no errors) but I can't use all
of those modules at the same time.

Except in my arch linux guest, where all of the modules load together
and work just fine.

See why I'm confused?

[gentoo-user] Re: Failed to emerge dev-qt/qtwebkit-5.6.0

[walt]

On Tue, 26 Apr 2016 18:50:41 -0500
Dale  wrote:

> Dale wrote:
> > Howdy,
> >
> > Doing some updates and ran into this.  Anyone else having this
> > problem? I can post more info if needed but thought this would get
> > it off to a start. 
> >
> >
> >
> > <<< SNIP >>>
> >
> > Anyone else running into this?  Anything obvious sticking out?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Dale
> >
> > :-)  :-) 
> >
> >  
> 
> 
> I synced again and was hoping I either caught the tree in the middle
> of some change over with the last sync or whatever it is would have a
> fix by now.  Well, still the same error as before. 

I'm still on my gcc-5 vs gcc-4 bandwagon.  And what's that thingy that
stands for 'thread too long, didn't read'?

[gentoo-user] Re: LibreOffice problem importing file

[walt]

On Sat, 16 Apr 2016 16:57:45 -0400
Philip Webb  wrote:

> I've run into a problem opening a M$ Office spreadsheet using
> LibreOffice. I've put the original file up at
>  http://chass.utoronto.ca/~purslow/test/ttc-rider-85-15.xlsx
> It should show a table of ridership figures for the Toronto transit
> system.
> 
> When I tried to open it using LO 5.1.0.3 on my Gentoo system,
> the window froze (Fluxbox 1.3.7-r2) & I had to kill it via Htop.
> However, when I tried it with LO 4.4.3.2 on Mint (another partition),
> it opened correctly & I could save it as .ods & .csv : these are at
>  http://chass.utoronto.ca/~purslow/test/ttc-rider-85-15.ods
>  http://chass.utoronto.ca/~purslow/test/ttc-rider-85-15.csv
> However again, when I tried to open these version with my Gentoo LO,
> the .ods froze the window, while the .csv opened with garbage in  1
> cell. I've updated LO twice to 5.1.1.3 & 5.1.2.2 , but the same
> happens.
> 
> Can others please test my files with their own Gentoo versions of LO ?
> If they have a problem too, I'll file a bug with LO ;
> if not, can anyone suggest what is causing the problem with my
> version ?

LO 5.0.5.2 open the file okay for me, but I can't easily test the
higher versions at the moment.  Have you tried running localc from an
xterm window to look for error messages?  Anything interesting in dmesg
or the Xorg logs?

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE and the new plasma 5 thing

[walt]

On Tue, 12 Apr 2016 22:50:46 +0200
Alan McKinnon  wrote:

> On 12/04/2016 22:46, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:

> >> Unfortunately I can't attach a screenshot as proof - both remove
> >> their own window to do the capture :-)  
> > 
> > import -window root screenshot.png
> >   
> 
> Hey that's neat! Attached...

Along the left edge of the screen you have a bunch of widgets for CPU,
disk, and network activity.  What kde/plasma stuff are you using to do
that, and does it all depend on ~arch packages?  Will it still work
tomorrow?  :p

[gentoo-user] Fastest way to get an upstream kernel bug fixed?

[walt]

I've done the easy part already:  I git-bisected the guilty commit.

I don't remember how to file a credible kernel bug report upstream so I
hope to coax a gentoo dev into filing one for me :)

[gentoo-user] Re: Need some help with switching KDE setup from i915 to radeon graphics

[walt]

On Sat, 5 Mar 2016 00:10:23 +0100
Frank Steinmetzger  wrote:

> Hello Fellows,
> 
> My PC had been running on Intel graphics for 1½ years. Finally, I got
> myself an AMD R7 370 today and installed it (together with a second
> set of 16 Gigs of RAM ^^).
> 
> I could use some help getting it working properly. Here is what I did:
> yesterday I enabled VIDEO_CARDS=radeon in make.conf and rebuilt world
> with --changed-use. I also reconfigured the kernel to build the Intel
> driver as a module and to include the radeon module.
> 
> After installing the card, at first I only had a black screen and
> found out (thanks to #gentoo) that I needed a firmware blob. Once
> that was installed, I had a KMS-enabled VT on my AMD-connected
> monitor. Yay.
> 
> Now I'm stuck with a malfunctioning X (or more specifically, KDE, as
> it seems). I can run AwesomeWM just fine. But when I try to start
> KDE, I see the first of those fading-in progress icons and then the
> screen goes black.
> 
> I created a test account to have a clean setup of KDE. This starts KDE
> partially, only up to a desktop with an empty panel. There is no mouse
> cursor to move around and no reaction to shortcuts such as Alt+F2.
> 
> What else could I have missed in my migration from Intel to AMD?
> eselect opengl only shows the xorg-x11 option. I had to comment out a
> modeline which I set manually in xorg.conf.
> 
> See attached:
> - /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/gfx.conf
> - /var/log/Xorg.0.log from running startx with .xinitrc containing
> startkde. You can see those three blocks of modelines at the end. At
> around or just before this point the screen goes dark.

Random things to try while waiting for better ideas to try:

startx -- -logverbose 10

In your .xinitrc try /etc/X11/Sessions/ if kde
supplies such a script.

Have you tried using kdm instead of startx?  (Even thinking about that
raises my blood pressure :)

Are you using anything from kde-plasma? (Just running 'eix plasma'
makes my blood pressure even higher.  The number of permutations
involved makes me glad I use xfce4, which is already way too complex
for my taste.  How xfce4 behaves depends a lot on whether its
compositing feature is on or off.  Does kde allow you to tweak stuff
like that?  Of course it does, but not if Xorg dies before you can do
the tweaking.  (Reaching for blood-pressure pills now...)

[gentoo-user] SSLv2 is back today (gone tomorrow?)

[walt]

I notice that openssl-1.0.2g-r2 restores SSLv2 as a temporary fix
for the breakage caused by r1 yesterday.

My machines are working just fine without SSLv2 so I'm going to skip
the update to r2 and keep r1 while waiting for a permanent fix.  I'm
not a security expert, so I'd like to hear opinions from people who are.

Should people who have already installed r1 and are not having any
problems just stay with r1 for now?  Or not.

[gentoo-user] openssl upgrade may miss some needed rebuilds

[walt]

Today's upgrade of openssl to 1.0.2g-r1 may cause some necessary
rebuilds to fail due to missing symbol errors.

Example:  libcurl was broken and caused the rebuilds of virtualbox and
git to fail until I forced a rebuild of curl.  Any installed package
that is actually linked against openssl will be affected by this,
notably curl or wget, which may prevent portage from fetching source
files.

I suggest using quickpkg to back up openssl before the upgrade in case
you need to recover urgently in the middle of the update.

[gentoo-user] Problem with gcc5 and VirtualBox

[walt]

I routinely use a virtual gentoo ~amd64 machine in VirtualBox for
debugging software problems and yesterday I found one after switching
from gcc-4.9.3 to gcc-5.3.0 (in the gentoo guest).

After emerging mesa-11.1.2-r1 I noticed that a game wouldn't start, and
after several hours of debugging I tracked it down to gcc5.

To demonstrate the bug, in an xterm window type "glxinfo":

# glxinfo 
name of display: :0.0
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
X Error of failed request:  GLXBadContext
  Major opcode of failed request:  153 (GLX)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  6 (X_GLXIsDirect)
  Serial number of failed request:  48
  Current serial number in output stream:  47

I could 'fix' the bug by replacing just that one file (swrast_dri.so)
with a copy compiled with gcc-4.9.3.  I'm surprised it worked, but it
did.

I tried building mesa using gcc5 on a real ~amd64 machine and did *not*
see the same problem, FWIW, but though I'd mention it here.

BTW I tried building the vbox guest additions with gcc5 as a test but
that didn't fix the problem.  I don't have a real machine that's built
entirely with gcc5 so I can't test that idea yet, and that won't be any
time soon.  I'm sticking to gcc4 for the foreseeable future while you
guys do more testing :)

[gentoo-user] Re: Attic (cvs) -> ???(git)

[walt]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 13:07:34 + (UTC)
James <wirel...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

> walt  gmail.com> writes:

> >  Could I trouble you for an example of how you use wget?

> Sure,
> 
> I do it file by file; here is one of the 'files' (patches) I pulled
> down for 'showconsole' now also deprecated:
> 
> wget
> http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/app-admin/showconsole/files/1.07-no-TIOCGDEV.patch

> If I know a package is going to be removed, I just emerge it and then
> copy everything to /usr/local/portage//  prior to removal.
> 
> Hit me up with any other questions..

Have you noticed that you can find lots of stuff with 'apropos' that
doesn't actually have a 'man' page?  Here's an example:

# apropos gnutls_x509_crt_export
gnutls_x509_crt_export (3)  - API function
gnutls_x509_crt_export2 (3)  - API function

# man gnutls_x509_crt_export
No manual entry for gnutls_x509_crt_export

Thanks to you and Mike for your examples :)

[gentoo-user] Re: Attic (cvs) -> ???(git)

[walt]

On Mon, 22 Feb 2016 19:49:22 + (UTC)
James  wrote:

> So using wget to fetch {package/files} from the gentoo attic was/is a
> reliable exercise to build things removed from the tree, into one's
> /usr/local/portage tree. It still works

Hi James.  I need a version of net-libs/gnutls from before the switch
to git.  Could I trouble you for an example of how you use wget?  So
far my googling hasn't even revealed the URL of the attic :-/

Thanks for any hints.

[gentoo-user] portage-utils-0.61 Bug or feature?

[walt]

After today's update from 0.60 to 0.61 I noticed that the behavior of
qlop changed.  Until today the command 'qlop -l' lists every package
in /var/log/emerge.log in chronological order.

Today 'qlop -l' lists nothing unless you supply an argument, e.g.
'qlop -l mesa', which lists every package with the string mesa in the
name.

Is this change deliberate?  (If so, I vote against it :)

[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo and texlive

[walt]

On Sun, 7 Feb 2016 17:51:42 -0600
Canek Peláez Valdés  wrote:

Welcome back!  Did you finish all your trabajo with your PhD and
tenure, etc?

[gentoo-user] Re: VirtualBox 5.0.14

[walt]

On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 15:59:21 +
Peter Humphrey  wrote:

> Hello list,
> 
> Since VirtualBox was upgraded from 4.3.32 to 5.0.14 recently, I've
> been getting a little transient notice panel on my KDE4 screen saying
> something like "the virtualbox kernel service is... [not running]".

I've seen similar messages when the guest is running an older version
of virtualbox guest additions.  Is your XP guest still running 4.3.32?
 
> My WinXP guest runs happily in its virtual box, but the Atlas BOINC
> client, which downloads a VirtualBox client to operate in, reports
> communication failure.

I'm wondering if the problem is only with BOINC.  Do you still see the
pop-up notice if you don't even try to run BOINC?

BTW, have you tried this:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Installing_BOINC_on_Gentoo

I haven't, but I tried downloading the generic linux BOINC installer
and of course it wanted a gtk library I've never heard of.

[gentoo-user] Re: emerge: The following pkgs are causing rebuilds

[walt]

On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:54:13 -0500
Harry Putnam  wrote:

> emerge output:
>   The following pkgs are causing rebuilds:
>   [list of pkgs]
> 
> I suspect this ground has been covered in depth but finding a good
> discussion of what it means is a different story. So, is this bad
> news?

No, it's good news.

> Or something that needs my attention...?

Most of the time the rebuilds will be handled by portage without user
input.  (Portage is old enough to be smart most of the time.)

What do I mean by "most of the time"?

I can't remember the last time I needed to intervene when I saw the
message "The following pkgs are causing rebuilds"

Why can't I remember the last time I typed the words "I can't
remember"? 

> Maybe someone can point me at some documentation about this.

Sorry, I can't.  But I can still remember how to post a question to
gentoo.user.

[gentoo-user] Re: Gcc 5.3

[walt]

On Thu, 24 Dec 2015 10:18:27 -0500
Alan Grimes  wrote:

> Hey, thanks for putting out gcc 5.3...
> 
> Unfortunately, it fails to bootstrap on my machine. I am getting
> differences between the stage 2 and stage 3 compilers and it's
> dying... =(

I'm waiting for 5.3.1 before I even try to install it on my main
desktop machine.  But I've installed it in a virtual gentoo ~amd64
machine, so I know that the failure you are seeing was introduced when
the 'jit' useflag was added to the gcc ebuild.

You can work around the failure by installing 5.3.0 with the -jit
useflag (which should succeed) and *then* switch to 5.3.0 using
gcc-config before re-installing 5.3.0 with +jit.

David mentioned that he succeeded by using gcc-4.9 but I had to use the
workaround I described above.

[gentoo-user] Re: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org

[walt]

On Thu, 10 Dec 2015 07:31:11 +
Mick <michaelkintz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday 10 Dec 2015 06:51:45 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On 10/12/2015 02:08, walt wrote:  

> > > Sounds like it's still grumpy Scotsman day.
> > > 
> > > This is a test email to discover if you really have a gmail
> > > account, and, if so, how often you check it for new email.
> > > 
> > > I'll be happy to explain the origin of "grumpy Scotsman" if this
> > > test succeeds.  
> > 
> > Hello walt,
> > 
> > Yes it's me and this is a valid account, it's in constant use.  
> 
> OK, this must be a good 2FA then?  ;-)

I thought I was sending an email to Alan but I was wrong.  I apologize
to Alan and to all gentoo users.

But, seriously, why do we keep making the same errers?

[gentoo-user] Re: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org

[walt]

On Tue, 8 Dec 2015 19:00:20 +0200
Alan McKinnon  wrote:

> Allow me to translate the Google-speak:
> 
> "less secure mail app" really means "a really shitty auth method that
> isn't our (Google's) auth method". So click the (rather well-hidden)
> button in Gmail's interface and go back to the really shitty auth
> method we all used just fine for 10+ years already.

Sounds like it's still grumpy Scotsman day.

This is a test email to discover if you really have a gmail account,
and, if so, how often you check it for new email.

I'll be happy to explain the origin of "grumpy Scotsman" if this test
succeeds.

-- 
Visualize a clever sig from Neil here

[gentoo-user] Some precautions when updating from firefox-38 to firefox-42

[walt]

My trouble started with my update from firefox-39 to firefox-40 back
in  August 2015.  At first the update seemed absolutely benign and I
noticed nothing bad happening.

Slowly but surely firefox has been driving me crazy by doing little
things that are merely annoying.  Today firefox did something so
outrageous that finally I had to stop and fix the problem.

The big change AFAICT was the switch from sqlite to json for storing
data in your ~/.mozilla directory.  Today I noticed that dozens of
files in my ~/.mozilla directory had identical date and time stamps
from back in August, all apparently written by firefox-39.

The problem is that firefox-42 still reads *some* of those old files for
backward compatibility, but apparently not all of them.

Anyway, one obvious thing to do is start with a fresh ~/.mozilla
directory when you use firefox-42.  Or at least make a complete copy
of your existing ~/.mozilla so you can start over when you have
trouble. 

I recommend that you *not* use the profile editor from firefox-42 to
edit any old firefox profiles you may have.  You run the risk of
damaging or deleting your old profiles by doing this.  This is *not*
equivalent to backing up your ~/.mozilla directory.  Others have
already learned the hard way, including moi.

[gentoo-user] Re: emerging squid indefinitely

[walt]

On Wed, 25 Nov 2015 18:53:50 +0200
Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 25/11/2015 13:30, lee wrote:
> > walt <w41...@gmail.com> writes:
> >   
> >> On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 23:39:01 +0100
> >> lee <l...@yagibdah.de> wrote:
> >>  
> >>>
> >>> ...  
> >>

> >>
> >> Any unusual network activity?  (DNS lookups that shouldn't be
> >> happening, etc.)   
> > 
> > There's nothing suspicious in the firewall log and no unexpected DNS
> > queries.  
> 
> Ignore DNS, it has absolutely nothing to do with creating a group. A
> common human trait in dealing with problems with unknown causes is to
> start investigating all manner of weird and entirely unrelated things.

And Happy Thanksgiving to you, grouchy old fart living somewhere south
of the equator where no one celebrates Thanksgiving :)

IIRC I learned about DNS queries causing delays directly from you.

Well, maybe it was some other old fart on this list.

[gentoo-user] Re: emerging squid indefinitely

[walt]

On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 23:39:01 +0100
lee  wrote:

>
> ...

 
> Well, ok, the file is still locked.
> 
> 'group-' looks like a backup, and 'group.lock' contains 10563, which
> is the pid of groupadd.  I'd think that's ok.
> 
> So what all does it take to create a system group?  I suppose I could
> kill groupadd and the emerging might go on, though I wonder what the
> problem might be and if something else besides making an entry to
> /etc/group needs to be done.  What might require an indefinite delay
> here?

Any unusual network activity?  (DNS lookups that shouldn't be
happening, etc.) 

[gentoo-user] Re: This is what I get for trying...

[walt]

On Thu, 19 Nov 2015 10:17:03 -0500
Alan Grimes  wrote:

> Naturally, the instructions on the gentoo wiki FAIL

More people will read what you write if you give us a hint in the
subject line about why you are writing to us.

[gentoo-user] Re: firefox profile uses 100% CPU

[walt]

On Sun, 15 Nov 2015 19:15:34 +0100 (CET)
Peter Weilbacher <newss...@weilbacher.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 12 Nov 2015, walt wrote:
> 
> > I had a bad problem with the firefox profile manager about a year
> > ago and I decided that the devs at mozilla are not maintaining that
> > code any more, so I stopped using the profile manager.  
> 
> What made you decide that? Are you a manager at Mozilla?
> 
> > Firefox/mozilla is a very old project with limited resources.  
> 
> Yes, as a multi-million dollar company they are severely limited...

The limited resources:  skilled programmers who are available and
willing to work for the mozilla foundation.

> > The current developers are working full speed on security updates,
> > which is good, but there is a lot of bitrot in their huge
> > codebase.  
> 
> Huh? What do you call "bitrot" and what indication for that do you
> see?

Bugs that remain unfixed for years (literally).  Years ago I filed
several bug reports at bugzilla.mozilla.org.  Most of them were
confirmed by bug testers as real bugs, but most were never fixed by the
developers.

Then I got busy with other software projects (like gentoo) and stopped
filing bugs at mozilla.  The gentoo bugs I report actually get fixed
most of the time and I've learned a lot from the follow-up comments.

[gentoo-user] Re: All sorts of digest verification failures

[walt]

On Sun, 15 Nov 2015 19:05:26 + (UTC)
Martin Vaeth  wrote:

> Neil Bothwick  wrote:
> >
> > I deleted the busybox directory from the tree then ran emerge
> > --sync. The error is still there  
> 
> You have the same files that I have.
> Unfortunately, only now I actually did:
> 
> $ grep busybox- Manifest
> EBUILD busybox-.ebuild 8580 [...]
> 
> ???
> I have the same wrong size recorded in the Manifest!
> No idea why portage didn't yell at me - there seems
> to be another bug involved...

I did the same thing today (15 Nov) and it succeeded.

However, I ran the ebuild command on a non-broken ebuild.  Try
repeating the same command on busybox 1.23.x or 1.24.x

I hope the gentoo devs will fix this bug before you have a chance to
test my advice :)

[gentoo-user] Re: firefox profile uses 100% CPU

[walt]

On Wed, 11 Nov 2015 17:38:45 -0700
the...@sys-concept.com wrote:

> When I start one of my firefox profile (even in "-save-mode") it uses
> 100% CPU and is not responding.
> 
> Any way to fix it?

I had a bad problem with the firefox profile manager about a year ago
and I decided that the devs at mozilla are not maintaining that code
any more, so I stopped using the profile manager.

Firefox/mozilla is a very old project with limited resources.  The
current developers are working full speed on security updates, which is
good, but there is a lot of bitrot in their huge codebase.

I think you will continue to have intermittent (maybe even rare)
problems if you continue to use firefox profiles.  (If you use the
profile manager to delete the bad profile you may wind up deleting all
of your profiles, which is exactly what happened to me.)

(You should keep a backup of your ~/.mozilla directory if you continue
to use firefox profiles.)

[gentoo-user] Re: problem which makes gnome unusable

[walt]

On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 17:26:43 -0500
cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> walt <w41...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:45:43 -0500
> > cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> >   
> > > Hi.  I am having a very bad problem which makes gnome unusable --
> > > once I get into the virtual console where the xserver is
> > > displaying gnome, console 12 in my case, I can never get out of
> > > that console -- control-alt-f1 or anything does not work.  If I
> > > try to ssh in from somewhere else, I cannot stop gdm because the
> > > x server will not stop -- even kill -9 will not stop it and I
> > > have to reboot the system.  
> > 
> > The part about kill -9 failing is exactly the problem I had with the
> > 3.18.x kernel series a while ago.  I know this problem must be
> > hardware specific because some distros are still shipping 3.18
> > kernels as the default, and I'll bet others in this mailing list
> > are using it without problems too.  I had some scary problems with
> > that kernel version that were very difficult to diagnose until I
> > just rebooted with an older kernel and the scary problems
> > vanished.  The 4.2 series seems okay so far on my VMs. (Even my
> > gentoo VMs had some minor problems with 3.18.x)  
> 
> I am using 4.1.9 from gentoo sources -- do I need to downgrade maybe
> the server and nvidia-drivers?

I think downgrading xorg and a video driver sounds more complicated
than trying a different kernel, but you're in a better position to know
that than I am.  Depends on how many packages you changed just before
you noticed the problem.  If you've been running kernel 4.1.9 for a
while with no problems, and you just recently upgraded xorg/nvidia,
then maybe that would be the simpler thing to try.

If you still have some older kernels available, I personally would
reboot with one of those and see if the nvidia driver will compile with
that version. (You may need to reinstall/reconfigure the older kernel
sources if you've already removed them.)  A big PITA either way :(

[gentoo-user] Re: problem which makes gnome unusable

[walt]

On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:45:43 -0500
cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> Hi.  I am having a very bad problem which makes gnome unusable --
> once I get into the virtual console where the xserver is displaying
> gnome, console 12 in my case, I can never get out of that console --
> control-alt-f1 or anything does not work.  If I try to ssh in from
> somewhere else, I cannot stop gdm because the x server will not stop
> -- even kill -9 will not stop it and I have to reboot the system.

The part about kill -9 failing is exactly the problem I had with the
3.18.x kernel series a while ago.  I know this problem must be hardware
specific because some distros are still shipping 3.18 kernels as the
default, and I'll bet others in this mailing list are using it without
problems too.  I had some scary problems with that kernel version
that were very difficult to diagnose until I just rebooted with an
older kernel and the scary problems vanished.  The 4.2 series seems
okay so far on my VMs. (Even my gentoo VMs had some minor problems with
3.18.x)

[gentoo-user] Technical imap mail question

[walt]

My ISP recently started offering imap email service in addition to
the pop3/smtp servers they've always had, so I decided to try it.

I was surprised to see that they recommend using a different smtp
server name when setting up my mail client, and they even offer the
option of using port 587 instead of 465 if I prefer it.

Why would I use a different smtp server if I'm now using imap?  I use
smtp to send mail, and imap to read it, right?  Why not use the same
smtp server in either case?

(The different server names actually resolve to the same IP address, so
the distinction seems to be more theoretical than real, but the theory
is what puzzles me.)

Thanks.

[gentoo-user] Re: fail to install new package

[walt]

On Tue, 6 Oct 2015 13:31:54 +0300
Ran Shalit  wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I am trying to install wine on gentoo but I encounter strange things.
> 
> I do :
> emerge -va wine
> 
> =
> ..
> 
> >=virtual/libudev-215-r1 abi_x86_32  
> Would you like to add these changes to your config files? [Yes/No] Y
> Autounmask changes successfully written.
> * IMPORTANT: 8 config files in '/etc/portage' need updating.
> * See the CONFIGURATION FILES section of the emerge
> * man page to learn how to update config files.
> !!! All ebuilds that could satisfy
> ">=sys-libs/zlib-1.2.8-r1:=[abi_x86_32(-)?,abi_x86_64(-)?,abi_x86_x32(-)?,abi_mips_n32(-)?,abi_mips_n64(-)?,abi_mips_o32(-)?,abi_ppc_32(-)?,abi_ppc_64(-)?,abi_s390_32(-)?,abi_s390_64(-)?]"
>   
> have been masked.
> !!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your
> request:
> - sys-libs/zlib-1.2.8-r1::gentoo (masked by: )
> (dependency required by "media-libs/lcms-2.6-r1::gentoo" [ebuild])
> (dependency required by
> "app-emulation/wine-::gentoo[abi_x86_32,lcms]" [ebuild])
> (dependency required by "wine" [argument])
> For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge
> man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.
> gentoo ~ #
> 
> ==
> 
> So I than installed zlib with:
> 
> 
> echo "sys-libs/zlib **" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
> &
> emerge -va zlib
> 
> 
> ===
> 
> These are the packages that would be merged, in order:
> 
> Calculating dependencies... done!
> [ebuild R ] sys-libs/zlib-1.2.8-r1::gentoo USE="minizip -static-libs"
> ABI_X86="(64) -32 (-x32)" 0 KiB
> 
> Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 KiB
> 
> Would you like to merge these packages? [Yes/No] Y
> 
> >>> Verifying ebuild manifests  
> 
> >>> Emerging (1 of 1) sys-libs/zlib-1.2.8-r1::gentoo  
> * zlib-1.2.8.tar.gz SHA256 SHA512 WHIRLPOOL size ;-) ... [ ok ]
> >>> Unpacking source...  
> 
> ...
> --- replaced sym /lib64/libz.so.1
> --- replaced dir /lib64
> >>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
> >>> Original instance of package unmerged safely.
> >>> sys-libs/zlib-1.2.8-r1 merged.
> >>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
> >>> Auto-cleaning packages...  
> 
> >>> No outdated packages were found on your system.  
> 
> * GNU info directory index is up-to-date.
> 
> * IMPORTANT: 8 config files in '/etc' need updating.
> * See the CONFIGURATION FILES section of the emerge
> * man page to learn how to update config files.
> 
> * IMPORTANT: 12 news items need reading for repository 'gentoo'.
> * Use eselect news read to view new items.
> 
> 
> 
> It seems to install OK, without errors, but on doing again
> 
> 
> emerge -va wine
> I get the same failures and still complians about zlib.
> I am doing it all as root.
> 
> 
> Does anyone have any idea ?
> 
> Regards,
> Ran

I'd suggest dealing with the files in /etc that need updating and
reading the 12 news items and making any changes you'll find the gentoo
devs have suggested there.  Your system may have some significant
problems and doing those things first could fix the problem you're
having with wine.

[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone using kernel 4.1.8 in a virtualbox guest machine? [SOLVED]

[walt]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2015 17:56:53 -0700
walt <w41...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 20:59:01 -0400
> Alec Ten Harmsel <a...@alectenharmsel.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Oct 04, 2015 at 05:47:37PM -0700, walt wrote:

> > > I updated the kernel in my gentoo virtualbox guest machine to
> > > 4.1.8 and got a kernel panic after rebooting the guest.
> > > 
> > > Anyway, I rebooted the guest machine with vmlinuz.old (3.18.21)
> > > and then updated the guest to vanilla-sources-4.2.3 with no
> > > problems.
> > > 
> > > (I omit several hours of confused
> > > reconfiguring/recompiling/rebooting because you really don't want
> > > to hear about them.)
> > > 
> > > So, what is different or strange about kernel 4.1.8?  Anyone have
> > > any problems with it on real hardware, or in other virtual
> > > environments like qemu, vmware, xen, etc?
 

> > I am running 4.1.8 on all my machines without any problems. Without
> > seeing the stack trace and/or other output from the kernel panic, I
> > would have no idea how to figure out what the problem was. I am also
> > not a kernel wizard, so I probably wouldn't be much help anyways.
 
> Okay, thanks.  Just by chance, Fedora (which I also run in vbox)
> updated to kernel 4.1.8 today and I had no trouble with it, so I'll
> use their kernel config file in my gentoo guest machine to compile
> 4.1.8 and see if that fixes the panic.  Experiments are fun :)

Using the Fedora kernel config file to build vanilla-sources-4.1.8 on
gentoo fixes the kernel panic.  Apparently the upstream kernel devs
changed the way 'make silentoldconfig' works so that it removes some
important config options that virtualbox needs.  Whatever they changed
in the 4.2.x kernels fixed the problem.

[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone using kernel 4.1.8 in a virtualbox guest machine?

[walt]

On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 20:59:01 -0400
Alec Ten Harmsel <a...@alectenharmsel.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 04, 2015 at 05:47:37PM -0700, walt wrote:
> > (I'm asking this question only because I'm curious about the
> > problem I'm about to describe.  I've already worked around it.)
> > 
> > I updated the kernel in my gentoo virtualbox guest machine to 4.1.8
> > and got a kernel panic after rebooting the guest.  (The panic was
> > in the guest machine, not the host machine.  Has anyone noticed how
> > ambiguous our English language is?)
> > 
> > Anyway, I rebooted the guest machine with vmlinuz.old (3.18.21) and
> > then updated the guest to vanilla-sources-4.2.3 with no problems.
> > 
> > (I omit several hours of confused
> > reconfiguring/recompiling/rebooting because you really don't want
> > to hear about them.)
> > 
> > So, what is different or strange about kernel 4.1.8?  Anyone have
> > any problems with it on real hardware, or in other virtual
> > environments like qemu, vmware, xen, etc?
> >   

> I am running 4.1.8 on all my machines without any problems. Without
> seeing the stack trace and/or other output from the kernel panic, I
> would have no idea how to figure out what the problem was. I am also
> not a kernel wizard, so I probably wouldn't be much help anyways.

Okay, thanks.  Just by chance, Fedora (which I also run in vbox)
updated to kernel 4.1.8 today and I had no trouble with it, so I'll use
their kernel config file in my gentoo guest machine to compile 4.1.8
and see if that fixes the panic.  Experiments are fun :)

[gentoo-user] Anyone using kernel 4.1.8 in a virtualbox guest machine?

[walt]

(I'm asking this question only because I'm curious about the problem I'm
about to describe.  I've already worked around it.)

I updated the kernel in my gentoo virtualbox guest machine to 4.1.8 and
got a kernel panic after rebooting the guest.  (The panic was in the
guest machine, not the host machine.  Has anyone noticed how ambiguous
our English language is?)

Anyway, I rebooted the guest machine with vmlinuz.old (3.18.21) and
then updated the guest to vanilla-sources-4.2.3 with no problems.

(I omit several hours of confused reconfiguring/recompiling/rebooting
because you really don't want to hear about them.)

So, what is different or strange about kernel 4.1.8?  Anyone have any
problems with it on real hardware, or in other virtual environments
like qemu, vmware, xen, etc?

[gentoo-user] Re: Experiences with gtk3-nocsd?

[walt]

On Tue, 29 Sep 2015 16:09:00 + (UTC)
Grant Edwards  wrote:

> On 2015-09-29, Grant Edwards  wrote:
> 
> > I'm sick and tired of the Gnome "CSD" nonsense which appears to be a
> > concerted effort to break gtk+ apps on all desktops other than very
> > specific configurations of Gnome desktops.  To the Gnome developer's
> > credit, they seem to have been quite successful in that effort.  

+1

> The app that's causing all the pain is evince (if I could abandon
> acroread, I wouldn't need elevety-hundred packages built with 32-bit
> support).

+1

>  I just found atril, which is more-or-less a fork of evince
> sans all all the gtk3/Gnome CSD BS.  For now, I think I'll just ditch
> evince.

+1

> 
> Now if only there was "print current view" option in atril
> 

When I click on the "File" drop-down menu (top-left corner of the atril
window) and choose the "Print" item, I get a pop-up dialog widget that
lets me configure a bunch of settings before the document is sent to
the printer.  Included in those settings is "Print current page" (as
opposed to "Print all", or I can type in the page numbers to print).

I get exactly the same pop-up "Print" widget whether I'm printing from
atril, web browser, libreoffice,  or this email client (claws).

I've been seeing the same print widget for so many years I stopped
wondering which package installs it, but it's not part of any app that
lets me print things.  I think it's part of the gnome/mate/xfce/lxde
family of desktops because I use all of those and the printer widget is
always the same.  Must be a gtk thing because all of those desktops
install the same gtk infrastructure.

Can anyone else enlighten us on the printer widget I'm describing?

[gentoo-user] Re: bash-completion 2: gentoo completion files installed wrong?

[walt]

On Tue, 29 Sep 2015 17:50:08 +0200
Frank Steinmetzger  wrote:

> Hello fellows
> 
> I’m trying to teach my bash to complete again. Ever since the upgrade
> from v1 to v2 a year ago, I’ve been missing out on it in parts. I had
> some time today, so I dug and found out that the central bash
> completion script that sits
> at /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion looks in ./completions.
> Eselect bashcomp looks in that same directory. However, there are a
> number of files in ./ which neither eselect nor bashcomp find. Most
> notably, many of Gentoo’s own completions such as eselect are located
> there:
> 
> /usr/share/bash-completion $ ls completions | wc -l
> 729
> /usr/share/bash-completion $ eselect bashcomp list | tail -n 1
>   [729] zramctl *
> /usr/share/bash-completion $ ls
> bash_completion calibre-debug completions ebook-convert ebook-meta
> ebuild epkginfo eselect flaggie glsa-check java-config layman metagen
> pygmentize rc-service repoman tmux udisksctl browser-config
> calibre-server dbus-send ebook-device ebook-polish ekeyword epm euse
> gcc-config helpers kmod lrf2lrs pip quilt rc-status revdep-rebuild
> tree webapp-config calibre calibre-smtp distcc-config ebook-edit
> ebook-viewer emerge equery fetch-ebook-metadata genlop hg latexmk
> lrfviewer portageq rc rc-update splat udevadm youtube-dl
> 
> Is this a bug? Or a misconfiguration? Thanks for any hint.

(I'm running ~amd64).  When I try the first two commands you list above
I get similar results (776 vs 729).  The output of your third command
looks wrong:

It seems that 'ls' is not listing the contents of /usr/share/bash-completion
but instead is showing you a long list of possible bash-completions.  Am
I understanding your question/problem correctly?

Does 'ls -l' show you something different?

[gentoo-user] [OT] Canek's youtube channel

[walt]

A few days ago, one of Neil's replies in this list (gentoo-user)
reminded me that Canek disappeared some time ago after being very
active for quite a long time.

Just today (24 Sept) I suddenly remembered Neil's comment and I
decided to ask if anyone here had heard from Canek off-list.

But no.  I decided that asking someone to google it for me is too easy.
I'm all grown up now:  I'll google it for myself:

https://www.youtube.com/user/canekpelaez

Here's the strange part: notice that yesterday (23 Sept) he 'liked' a
video introduction to gnome 3.18 -- after years of posting nothing to
his youtube channel that even remotely relates to computing.

Why did he post that link yesterday, and why did I decide today to
google for canek?  I have no idea, but the timing is, um , interesting.

Canek, are you still lurking here?  Please come back to us :)

[gentoo-user] Re: Quick check on net-print/hplip-3.14.10

[walt]

On Wed, 16 Sep 2015 22:22:32 +0100
Mick  wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> I just noticed that the driver for my old printer no longer shows up
> in cups, on one of my PCs.  Comparison with other PCs shows that this
> one does *not* have the hpijs USE set.
> 
> Could someone who also does not have hpijs set in their hplip tell me
> if the HP DeskJet 930C selection is missing, when they load up the
> GUI via https://127.0.0.1:631 and then try to modify a printer?
> 
> Until this week there wasn't a problem with this PC so I am not sure
> what changed ...
> 
> I've set it up with DeskJet 932c for now without USE=hpijs and it
> seems to work, so I am in two minds if I need hpijs or if I need to
> use the 930c driver anyway.

Sometime in the past few days hpijs came to my attention in a way that
escapes me at the moment, but I remember being puzzled by it.  What is
also puzzling is that hpijs doesn't show up here in the output of eix:

Installed versions:  2.0.4^t(06:49:33 AM 08/28/2015)(X acl dbus java
pam python ssl systemd threads -debug -kerberos -lprng-compat -selinux
-static-libs -usb -xinetd -zeroconf ABI_MIPS="-n32 -n64 -o32"
ABI_PPC="-32 -64" ABI_S390="-32 -64" ABI_X86="32 64 -x32"
ELIBC="-FreeBSD" LINGUAS="-ca -cs -de -es -fr -it -ja -pt_BR -ru"
PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7") Homepage:http://www.cups.org/
Description: The Common Unix Printing System

When I run ufed, though, I do see an hpijs useflag described, because
it's listed in /usr/portage/profiles/use.local.desc (dated today).
Here is a good use for the new git-based portage tree (which I'm not
using yet, BTW):

https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/

I just spent 10 minutes searching through the commits related to cups
and I can't find anything about hpijs, but I know there's something
strange going on with that useflag.

[gentoo-user] systemd very slow to compile?

[walt]

My very old and slow ~amd64 machine took 3 hours and 45-minutes to
compile systemd-226 today.  I was curious to know why it was taking so
long to finish, so I used 'top' to see what was happening.

Turns out that two instances of 'sh' were each using 15-30% of CPU for
a total of 30-60% (the machine has two CPUs).  cc1 never even showed up
in 'top' although the compiler was obviously compiling code because the
build did eventually finish.

I tried the same on a faster 4-core machine and I could see much the
same thing happening during the systemd build.

Can anyone else reproduce what I'm seeing?  Is this 'normal'?

[gentoo-user] Re: Flaky USB 3.0 -- typo-fix

[walt]

On Mon, 7 Sep 2015 21:23:51 +0200
Håkon Alstadheim  wrote:

> > General note about the commands and switches below: Most have been
> > found by trial and error, and the setup used may be utterly WRONG.

> Corrected: My gcc-version is x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-4.9.3

> > # uname -a
> > Linux gentoo 4.0.9-gentoo #1 SMP Tue Sep 1 01:10:52 CEST 2015 x86_64

I went through some similar pain about a year ago with intermittent and
hard-to-reproduce usb3 errors.  I've snipped so much because I don't
know enough to comment on your details, but I did learn one thing
during my struggle:  the xhci driver is under heavy development, and
bugs are being added and fixed almost every day. 

Based on my experience, I think that trying different versions of the
kernel (maybe even vanilla-kernel?) would give you more useful info
than switching compiler/use flags, etc.

  Sarah Sharp was xhci maintainer during my troubles,
and I was sad to learn that she resigned because of Linus's foul and
abusive (and unrepentant) behavior towards other kernel devs.

[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone running a hardened profile?

[walt]

On Mon, 7 Sep 2015 14:27:38 -0400
Michael Orlitzky  wrote:

> On 09/07/2015 01:10 PM, waben...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Michael Orlitzky  wrote:
> > 
> > I don't think so (but maybe I'm wrong). You have to compile your
> > entire system with a hardened toolchain to get full hardened
> > support (SSP and maybe some other things). I think, to go back to a
> > "normal state", you have to recompile everything again with a non
> > hardened toolchain. 
> 
> GCC 4.8 already defaults to -fstack-protector, but you do need to
> recompile to get -fstack-protector-all and you're right that you would
> need to recompile again to make it go away. The full SSP is considered
> safe though, and only slows things down a bit.

Full SSP is something I want and I'll gladly suffer the speed penalty
to get it.  Can I just add -fstack-protector-all to my CFLAGS in
make.conf?   Or is it more complicated than that?

Hmm.  Quoting from the gcc man page:

  -fstack-protector-strong
Like -fstack-protector but includes additional functions to
be protected --- those that have local array definitions, or
have references to local frame addresses.

 NOTE: In Gentoo GCC 4.9.0 and later versions this option is
  enabled by default for C, C++, ObjC, ObjC++, if neither
 -fno-stack-protector, -nostdlib, -ffreestanding,
 -fstack-protector, -fstack-protector-strong or
 -fstack-protector-all are found.   <=  are found *where*?

English is my native tongue and I confess I can't make any sense of
that advice.

The words 'enabled' and 'are found' don't tell me what I need to *do*
to wind up with full/strong SSP in my compiled code.  Does gcc add the
appropriate SSP flags without my intervention when building my sources,
or do I need to invoke those flags myself, e.g. by adding them to CFLAGS
as I asked above?

  Communicating is hard to do:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Up_Is_Hard_to_Do

[gentoo-user] Anyone running a hardened profile?

[walt]

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hardened_Gentoo

That wiki page is very seductive.  It makes me want to drop everything
and select a hardened profile and re-emerge everything from scratch.

But I have a feeling I'd soon be in big trouble if I did.  Is this
something that only gentoo devs should be messing with, or is this
a project that a typical gentoo end-user might hope to accomplish
without frequent suicidal thoughts?

[gentoo-user] Re: Portage is proposing an ncurses update and I don't understand what it means

[walt]

On Wed, 2 Sep 2015 15:34:43 +0200
Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 02/09/2015 15:04, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Wed, 2 Sep 2015 05:24:33 -0700, walt wrote:
> >   
> >> If the devs can't explain slots to their
> >> users then they don't understand it themselves.  (Hm.  That phrase
> >> sounds familiar.  Where did I get that?)  
> > 
> > I think it is an Einstein quote that says something like "if you
> > can't explain it in simple terms, you don't understand it". He was
> > probably having a pop at Niels Bohr and quantum theory at the time.
> > 
> > Bohr said something like "if thinking about quantum theory doesn't
> > give you a headache, you don't understand it".
> > 
> >   
> 
> And Feynmann said something along the lines of "Anyone who claims to
> understand quantum mechanics, doesn't".
> 
> Back to subslots and not replying to Neil directly: They aren't that
> hard to grasp, they look like this:
> 
> cat/pkg/pkg-1.2:3/4
> 
> The SLOT is 3 and the subslot is 4. As usual, different versions of
> the same package in different SLOTs can co-exist. Subslots are a
> different matter, and it's an unfortunate choice of name, as they are
> *not* a subset of a SLOT. Look at ncurses:
> 
> [I] sys-libs/ncurses
>  Available versions:
>  (0)5.9-r3 (~)5.9-r4 5.9-r5(0/5) (~)6.0-r1(0/6)
>  (5)5.9-r99(5/5) (~)5.9-r101(5/5) (~)6.0(5/6)
> 
> There's 2 SLOTs (0 and 5), and both have versions of subslot 5 and 6.
> Subslots are most useful for things like api/abi versions where
> upstream breaks these but don't increment the major version, this is
> why we had endless issues in the past where emerge world broke stuff
> horribly and it only got fixed much later when we could run
> revdep-rebuild. Nowadays we have better tools, if the subslot changes
> for a consumed library, then all consuming packages need to be
> rebuilt.
> 
> Describing and defining subslots is not hard, neither are the
> operators. The problem with subslots is the usual one - you have to
> deal with real life, and in real life upstreams sometimes do peculiar
> things to their code that doesn't exactly match the effect of a
> subslot operation.
> 
> Or put another way: subslot docs describe the effect you should end up
> with, it's not always the same thing as what you *do* end up with.
> Finding that out means testing every possible circumstances and seeing
> the results, but there's an infinite variety of those.

I just updated my virtualbox ~amd64 guest and all went well when I ran
emerge ncurses:5/5, so I'm encouraged but not fearless about doing the
same on my real machine.  I'm going to be quickpkged to the max before
I try it.

BTW, emerge world on the vbox guest did not offer to touch ncurses in
any way.  I had to do it manually as I just said.  

Leveraging Neil's quote:  thinking about slots (and their misnamed
subslots) gives me a 4-dimensional headache.

Anyway, thanks for the helpful explanation.

[gentoo-user] Re: Portage is proposing an ncurses update and I don't understand what it means

[walt]

On Wed, 02 Sep 2015 10:53:00 -0500
Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote:

> walt wrote:
> > Thanks also to wabe and Fernando for your replies. Just for the
> > record I did the update this morning, which completed without
> > errors. qlop shows that both updates completed, but eix shows that
> > I now have only ncurses-5.9-r5 installed. (This is apparently the
> > desired result, but I'm only guessing what the desired result
> > really is.) I think every portage tool should announce very clearly
> > whether a package is slotted/subslotted, and exactly which slot and
> > subslot the package belongs in. The subject of slots is way too
> > confusing to withhold such information. If the devs can't explain
> > slots to their users then they don't understand it themselves. (Hm.
> > That phrase sounds familiar. Where did I get that?)   
> 
> 
> I did this the other day, after skipping it several times while it got
> sorted out, and I have this now.
> 
> [IP-] [  ] sys-libs/ncurses-5.9-r5:0/5
> [IP-] [  ] sys-libs/ncurses-5.9-r99:5/5
>  
> 
> Now, which of us is somewhat off the mark here?  :/ 

Both of us have been off the mark so many times I can't count that
high :p   I'm going to come back tomorrow when I'm more awake and
re-read this entire thread because every reply so far is full of good
info and advice.

I'm assuming you did that ncurses update on some flavor of gentoo
"unstable"?  (I know what a daredevil you are.)

Just for laughs, what does your "qlop -l ncurses" tell you about what
date you did the ncurses-5.9 update?

[gentoo-user] Re: a few blockers I can't figure out

[walt]

On Tue, 1 Sep 2015 01:51:51 +0200 (CEST)
Jeremi Piotrowski  wrote:

> On Mon, 31 Aug 2015, cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > Just to let you know, most of the python entries were mandated by
> > portage, certainly the systemd one.
> > emerge --info
> > Portage 2.2.20.1 (python 2.7.10-final-0,
> > default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/gnome, gcc-4.9.3, glibc-2.21-r1,
> > 3.16.3-gentoo x86_64)  
> 
> I think this is your problem right here: you don't have the systemd
> profile selected. You're trying to splice together the use settings
> needed to get this to work when all of them are already gathered in
> the right profile. 
> 
> Remove most of the use settings you were forced to make because of
> systemd related issues, change your profile to
> 
> default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/gnome/systemd 
> 
> and emerge -uDUva @world. 
> 
> This should remove most (if not all) of the blockers caused by
> conflicting use flags you currently have set.

Thank you.  I've been running systemd for months and this is the first
time I've heard about systemd profiles.  I'm not using either gnome or
kde, so should I use default/linux/amd64/13.0/systemd, which doesn't
seem to care if I'm running a desktop machine or a headless server?

[gentoo-user] Re: Portage is proposing an ncurses update and I don't understand what it means

[walt]

On Wed, 2 Sep 2015 07:51:41 +0100
Neil Bothwick <n...@digimed.co.uk> wrote:

> On Tue, 1 Sep 2015 18:06:05 -0700, walt wrote:
> 
> > Calculating dependencies... done!
> > [ebuild U  ] sys-libs/ncurses-5.9-r5 [5.9-r3]
> > [ebuild  NS] sys-libs/ncurses-5.9-r99 [5.9-r3] USE="cxx gpm
> > unicode -ada -static-libs -tinfo" ABI_X86="32 (64) (-x32)" 
> > 
> > Is this going to install two different (slotted) versions of
> > ncurses-5.9 on my stable machine?
> > 
> > If not, then this proposed update must be an experiment or a hack
> > or a workaround of some kind.  On my *stable* machine!  
> 
> It's a workaround, not an experiment as it's been tested for over a
> week. It's to get round an issue with subslots and some ebuilds not
> handling changes as expected (I won't say incorrectly as there seems
> to be some dispute over exactly what is defined in the PMS).AIUI the
> second ebuild simply depends on the first, so that all the ebuilds
> requiring ncurses work properly.
> 
> See https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=558952 for more
> information, probably more than you want to read.

Thanks also to wabe and Fernando for your replies.  Just for the record
I did the update this morning, which completed without errors.

qlop shows that both updates completed, but eix shows that I now have
only  ncurses-5.9-r5 installed.  (This is apparently the desired
result, but I'm only guessing what the desired result really is.)

I think every portage tool should announce very clearly whether a
package is slotted/subslotted, and exactly which slot and subslot the
package belongs in.  The subject of slots is way too confusing to
withhold such information.  If the devs can't explain slots to their
users then they don't understand it themselves.  (Hm.  That phrase
sounds familiar.  Where did I get that?)

[gentoo-user] Portage is proposing an ncurses update and I don't understand what it means

[walt]

This is on my one amd64 (stable) machine, so the following proposed
update should be safe and Just Work(TM), right?

Maybe it will, but there is no way I'm going to let this upgrade happen
tonight when I'm tired from fighting all day with the so-called 'stable'
computers at work:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild U  ] sys-libs/ncurses-5.9-r5 [5.9-r3]
[ebuild  NS] sys-libs/ncurses-5.9-r99 [5.9-r3] USE="cxx gpm unicode
-ada -static-libs -tinfo" ABI_X86="32 (64) (-x32)" 

Is this going to install two different (slotted) versions of ncurses-5.9
on my stable machine?

If not, then this proposed update must be an experiment or a hack or a
workaround of some kind.  On my *stable* machine!

Can you tell I'm in a bad mood and a bit paranoid at the moment?  I'm
going to bed and will update the stable machine again in the morning.
Hrmph!

[gentoo-user] What is the correct version of ncurses on ~amd64 now?

[walt]

I ask this strange question because this (badly broken) machine once
again flipped between 6.0 and 6.0-r1 after rsyncing this morning.

First, it emerged 6.0, which turned out to be almost catastrophic
because the qmerge phase of the emerge failed (although it claimed
success afterwards) and deleted the entire /usr/share/terminfo
subdirectory.  That was fun, but I won't bore you with the details.
(The ncurses-6.0 files in /lib64 are dated August 28, BTW.)

Right now emerge tries to install ncurses-6.0-r1 but the 32-bit part of
the build fails because emerge never ran make in the work/cross/progs
directory, and so the 32-bit tools didn't get compiled.

I hacked around this by running make in that directory manually, which
allowed the ebuild install and ebuild package phases to succeed.

Now I have an ncurses-6.0-r1 binary package available but I'm too scared
to install it because I might need to kill myself afterwards :/

Any suggestions before I take the plunge?  Is ncurses-6.0-r1 the right
version as of today, Aug 31?

Thanks.

[gentoo-user] Re: What is the correct version of ncurses on ~amd64 now?

[walt]

On Tue, 1 Sep 2015 00:13:25 +0200
Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 31/08/2015 23:13, walt wrote:

> > Right now emerge tries to install ncurses-6.0-r1 but the 32-bit
> > part of the build fails because emerge never ran make in the
> > work/cross/progs directory, and so the 32-bit tools didn't get
> > compiled.
> > 
> > I hacked around this by running make in that directory manually,
> > which allowed the ebuild install and ebuild package phases to
> > succeed.

 
> This machine was entirely unaffected by all the recent ncurses issues:
> 
> [I] sys-libs/ncurses
>  Available versions:
>  (0)5.9-r3 (~)5.9-r4 5.9-r5(0/5) (~)6.0-r1(0/6)
>  (5)5.9-r99(5/5) (~)5.9-r101(5/5) (~)6.0(5/6)
>{ada +cxx debug doc gpm minimal profile static-libs test
> threads tinfo trace unicode ABI_MIPS="n32 n64 o32" ABI_PPC="32 64"
> ABI_S390="32 64" ABI_X86="32 64 x32"}
>  Installed versions:  6.0-r1(12:52:29 30/08/2015)(cxx gpm threads
> unicode -ada -debug -doc -minimal -profile -static-libs -test -tinfo
> -trace ABI_MIPS="-n32 -n64 -o32" ABI_PPC="-32 -64" ABI_S390="-32 -64"
> ABI_X86="32 64 -x32")
>  Homepage:https://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/
> http://dickey.his.com/ncurses/
>  Description: console display library
> 
> So 6.0-r1 works completely relaible on at least one Gentoo machine in
> this world :-)

  I installed my ugly-hack binary package of
6.0-r1 and it seemed to install okay.  The first thing I tried was to
emerge 6.0-r1 the normal way and this time it succeeded :)

Apparently my known-broken install of 6.0 was preventing proper cross
building of the 32-bit files, maybe because the 32-bit part of 6.0 was
what was actually broken.

By way of reckless experiment I will now reboot this machine for the
first time since I rsynced 12 long, nail-biting hours ago...

[gentoo-user] Re: What is the correct version of ncurses on ~amd64 now?

[walt]

On Mon, 31 Aug 2015 20:33:42 -0400
Fernando Rodriguez <frodriguez.develo...@outlook.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, September 01, 2015 12:13:25 AM Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On 31/08/2015 23:13, walt wrote:  
> > > I ask this strange question because this (badly broken) machine
> > > once again flipped between 6.0 and 6.0-r1 after rsyncing this
> > > morning.
> > > 
> > > First, it emerged 6.0, which turned out to be almost catastrophic
> > > because the qmerge phase of the emerge failed (although it claimed
> > > success afterwards) and deleted the entire /usr/share/terminfo
> > > subdirectory.  That was fun, but I won't bore you with the
> > > details. (The ncurses-6.0 files in /lib64 are dated August 28,
> > > BTW.)
> > > 
> > > Right now emerge tries to install ncurses-6.0-r1 but the 32-bit
> > > part of the build fails because emerge never ran make in the
> > > work/cross/progs directory, and so the 32-bit tools didn't get
> > > compiled.
> > > 
> > > I hacked around this by running make in that directory manually,
> > > which allowed the ebuild install and ebuild package phases to
> > > succeed.
> > > 
> > > Now I have an ncurses-6.0-r1 binary package available but I'm too
> > > scared to install it because I might need to kill myself
> > > afterwards :/
> > > 
> > > Any suggestions before I take the plunge?  Is ncurses-6.0-r1 the
> > > right version as of today, Aug 31?
> > > 
> > > Thanks.
> > > 
> > > 
> > >   
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > This machine was entirely unaffected by all the recent ncurses
> > issues:
> > 
> > [I] sys-libs/ncurses
> >  Available versions:
> >  (0)5.9-r3 (~)5.9-r4 5.9-r5(0/5) (~)6.0-r1(0/6)
> >  (5)5.9-r99(5/5) (~)5.9-r101(5/5) (~)6.0(5/6)
> >{ada +cxx debug doc gpm minimal profile static-libs test
> > threads tinfo trace unicode ABI_MIPS="n32 n64 o32" ABI_PPC="32 64"
> > ABI_S390="32 64" ABI_X86="32 64 x32"}
> >  Installed versions:  6.0-r1(12:52:29 30/08/2015)(cxx gpm
> > threads unicode -ada -debug -doc -minimal -profile -static-libs
> > -test -tinfo -trace ABI_MIPS="-n32 -n64 -o32" ABI_PPC="-32 -64"
> > ABI_S390="-32 -64" ABI_X86="32 64 -x32")
> >  Homepage:https://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/
> > http://dickey.his.com/ncurses/
> >  Description: console display library
> > 
> > So 6.0-r1 works completely relaible on at least one Gentoo machine
> > in this world :-)  
> 
> Hmm, I keyworded ncurses and this is what portage wants to do:
> 
> [ebuild  r  U ~] sys-libs/ncurses-6.0-r1:0/6::gentoo
> [5.9-r5:0/5::fernan] USE="cxx doc gpm tinfo unicode -ada -debug
> -minimal -profile -static-libs {- test%} -threads% -trace"
> ABI_X86="32 (64) -x32" 3,059 KiB [ebuild U ~]
> sys-libs/ncurses-5.9-r101:5::gentoo [5.9-r99:5::gentoo] USE="gpm
> tinfo unicode (-ada%) (-cxx%*) (-static-libs%)" ABI_X86="32 (64) -
> x32" 0 KiB [ebuild  rR   ~] sys-devel/gdb-7.10::gentoo  USE="client
> expat python server zlib -lzma -multitarget -nls {-test} -vanilla"
> PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python2_7 -python3_3 -python3_4"
> PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_4 -python3_3" 0 KiB [ebuild  rR
> ] app-misc/screen-4.3.1::gentoo  USE="pam -debug -multiuser - nethack
> -selinux" 0 KiB [ebuild  rR] app-emulation/wine-1.6.2::gentoo
> USE="X alsa cups custom- cflags fontconfig gecko jpeg lcms ldap mp3
> ncurses openal opengl perl png prelink pulseaudio run-exes samba ssl
> threads truetype udisks v4l xcomposite xinerama xml -capi -dos
> -gphoto2 -gsm -gstreamer -mono -nls -odbc -opencl - osmesa -oss
> -realtime -scanner -selinux {-test}" ABI_X86="32 64 -x32"
> LINGUAS="-ar -bg -ca -cs -da -de -el -en -en_US -eo -es -fa -fi -fr
> -he -hi -hr -hu -it -ja -ko -lt -ml -nb_NO -nl -or -pa -pl -pt_BR
> -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -sk - sl -sr_RS@cyrillic -sr_RS@latin -sv -te -th
> -tr -uk -wa -zh_CN -zh_TW" 0 KiB
> 
> 
> That looks dangerous to me because the first build will upgrade my
> 5.9 installation to 6.0 and the second will reinstall 5.9. 

That's exactly what happened to me last week and it was a disaster.
Don't allow that to happen.  After hours of frustration I finally
got 6.0-r1 installed and everything Just Works again, but 6.0 was
another disaster.  Do whatever you need to do to avoid 6.0.

> So what happens in between when I have no 5.9 installed but
> eve

[gentoo-user] ncurses: reductio ad absurdum

[walt]

I avoided yesterday's downgrade from ncurses-6.0 to ncurses-5.9-r4
because it was obviously(?) a mistake.

This morning I just upgraded(?) ncurses-6.0 to ncurses-6.0-r1 and
immediately after doing that, portage wants to downgrade(?) from
6.0-r1 back to 6.0.

This comedy of errors would be funny if it weren't emblematic of the
larger and very scary problem we all face in real life:  computers now
dominate every aspect of everything we do and what is expected of us by
our employers, friends, family, and our government.  (I refer to the
government here in the US.  Your government may vary.)

Note that /usr/portage/sys-libs/ncurses/Changelog was last updated on
April 6, several months ago.

Rhetorical question:  what is the purpose of a Changelog?  Or any log,
anywhere, like the captain's log on an oil tanker, for example, or an
airliner, or in the IT department of the bank where your life savings
are stored.  Who last rebooted that server, and why?

Who last updated ncurses, and why?  Yes, I looked at the ebuild, which
cites a bug report, which may or may not serve as the log I'm asking
for, but doesn't this all seem too complicated to work smoothly for
years without frequent fsck-ups?

Now I have to go to work and face exactly the same fsck-ups there that
I face when I update my gentoo machines, and that puts me in a bad mood.

[gentoo-user] Re: ncurses: reductio ad absurdum

[walt]

On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 15:29:20 -0400
Rich Freeman ri...@gentoo.org wrote:

 I used to think git looked really complicated until I sat through a
 one hour talk that focused mostly on the data model.  Once you
 understand the data model, you understand everything.  That doesn't
 take a lot of time.

Does that talk happen to be available on youtube or some equivalent?

I'm a git fanboi in spite of its failings.  I've been using git since
Linus and Larry McVoy divorced (amicably, claims Linus) over where
the kernel source repo would reside.  That amicable divorce spawned the
development of git in the first place (says Linus).

I'm no expert on git, but 'git bisect' has allowed me to file countless
(for countless = than the number of cc's of vino in my glass)  bug
reports over the years.

I see that all the gentooers who replied to my post have been lingering
in this mailing list for years.  (You are Old Farts, by my definition.)

All gentoo Old Farts are here because we are gentoo addicts and not one
of us could abandon gentoo even if we wanted to.  Including me.

[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone using xfce4 with compositing turned off?

[walt]

On Wed, 26 Aug 2015 09:36:59 +0100
Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wednesday 26 Aug 2015 04:47:24 waben...@gmail.com wrote:  
  walt w41...@gmail.com wrote:
   
   Then I generated an xorg.conf in the old way using 'Xorg
   -configure'. That file didn't work right either.
   
   Then I finally realized that the generated xorg.conf had, in the
   Section Device section, this line:
   
   Driverradeon
 
 This is the correct driver.
 
   
   But that's not what we want.  To use the open-source ati driver I
   changed that line to read:
   
   Driverati
 
 This is what I recall it used to be, but now it is radeon.  

I just tried an experiment.  I started my xfce4 session twice, once
with Driver radeon:

(II) LoadModule: radeon
[  4055.387] (II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/radeon_drv.so
[  4055.387] (II) Module radeon: vendor=X.Org Foundation
[  4055.387]compiled for 1.17.2, module version = 7.5.0
[  4055.387]Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[  4055.387]ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 19.0


and again with Driver ati:

(II) LoadModule: ati
[  .981] (II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/ati_drv.so
[  .981] (II) Module ati: vendor=X.Org Foundation
[  .981]compiled for 1.17.2, module version = 7.5.0
[  .981]Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[  .981]ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 19.0

I grant you that tonight I don't see any difference in behavior between
the two Drivers, but I did yesterday.  But that was 24 hours ago when
the moon was in a different phase and my evil computer spirits were in
a bad mood, apparently.

As I said, I find this whole subject so confusing that I can't explain
anything about it, even to myself.

To answer wabe's question, lspci -k shows 

00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
[AMD/ATI] BeaverCreek [Radeon HD 6530D] Subsystem: Lenovo BeaverCreek
[Radeon HD 6530D] Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon

[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone using xfce4 with compositing turned off?

[walt]

On Tue, 25 Aug 2015 21:10:28 +0200
waben...@gmail.com wrote:

Kernel driver in use: radeon

gigabytes snipped for readability

Hi wabe.  This whole radeon thing is so confusing I thought I'd mention
one more very confusing detail that I had to fix before I got the open-
source ati/radeon driver to work correctly:

First I tried starting my X session with no xorg.conf file at all.
That didn't work but of course I can't remember now what went wrong.
(That was already more than 24 hours ago :)

Then I generated an xorg.conf in the old way using 'Xorg -configure'.
That file didn't work right either.

Then I finally realized that the generated xorg.conf had, in the
Section Device section, this line:

Driver  radeon

But that's not what we want.  To use the open-source ati driver I
changed that line to read:

Driver  ati

And that's when everything finally started to work perfectly.

One more thing that confused me:  the xf86-video-ati package doesn't
install any kernel modules.  It installs only these two files:

/usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/radeon_drv.so
/usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/ati_drv.so

but to use those files you need that Driver ati line in xorg.conf.
sigh

[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone using xfce4 with compositing turned off? [FIXED]

[walt]

On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 20:08:55 -0400
Fernando Rodriguez frodriguez.develo...@outlook.com wrote:

 On Sunday, August 23, 2015 2:25:47 PM walt wrote:
  On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 05:53:37 +0200
  bitlord bitlord0...@gmail.com wrote:

   On Sat, 2015-08-22 at 19:08 -0700, walt wrote:  

I forgot about xf86-video-ati until you mentioned it, so I just
emerged
it and (I think) made all the changes needed to reconfigure
Xorg to use
it instead of fglrx.

Maybe I'm just too tired right now to think straight, but the
error messages I see in Xorg.log tell me that my video chip is
not supported.  

   For radeon (free driver) you need to configure more than Xorg,
   check wiki article about radeon driver [1], It needs in kernel
   support, also most cards especially newer (=r600) need
   proprietary firmware.
   
   
   [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon   
  
  An excellent wiki page, thanks.  It tells me that my video chip
  should be supported so I'll go back and follow all the steps this
  time.  I'd like to avoid the proprietary ati driver if I can.  
 
 I had nothing but trouble with the free driver with a kabini APU.
 Hibernate would give a black screen on resume. The Dim screen after
 an inactive period (whatever it's called) would dim it further until
 the backlight turns off everytime the period elapses. And a lot of
 programs like the adobe flash plugin and other players, and games
 would show video that I may have watched even days before but it's
 still on video memory when started.

Ironically, the free driver works better than the proprietary driver on
this (desktop) machine.  The high CPU usage with xfwm4 is fixed and all
other video-related functions (like playing video files) work as well
as they did before.

Power-saving features like the ones used by your kabini introduce a
huge amount of complexity -- I'm amazed that anyone ever got the free
driver to work with those chips.  The only way I got it to work on this
machine was to ignore all those dozens of optional steps in the wiki
and use the simplest possible configuration -- still so complex that I
gave up last night in frustration.  This morning brought me better luck.

 The only problem I've had with the proprietary driver (which may be
 realted to your problem) is that if you use a premptive kernel it
 causes a LOT of errors to be written to the syslog which makes the
 desktop very unresponsive. That's because it calls functions that
 should not be called with preemption enabled. If that's your problem
 you'll see errors on the syslog and I posted a patch that disables
 preemption before calling those functions. It's on a VLC bug (cause
 at first I tought it was a VLC related) and I recently noticed that I
 still get the errors if I switch between X sessions with CTRL-ALT-Fx
 so it's incomplete but it makes things much better. I will update it
 and post it on the right bug when I get around it.

The reason I use mpv instead of VLC is that the video performance is
better on this machine.  Now that I'm using a different driver I'll
give VLC another try.

BTW thanks for submitting the bug fixes.

[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone using xfce4 with compositing turned off?

[walt]

On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 05:53:37 +0200
bitlord bitlord0...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sat, 2015-08-22 at 19:08 -0700, walt wrote:

  I forgot about xf86-video-ati until you mentioned it, so I just
  emerged
  it and (I think) made all the changes needed to reconfigure Xorg to
  use
  it instead of fglrx.
  
  Maybe I'm just too tired right now to think straight, but the error
  messages I see in Xorg.log tell me that my video chip is not
  supported.

 For radeon (free driver) you need to configure more than Xorg, check
 wiki article about radeon driver [1], It needs in kernel support, also
 most cards especially newer (=r600) need proprietary firmware.
 
 
 [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon 

An excellent wiki page, thanks.  It tells me that my video chip should
be supported so I'll go back and follow all the steps this time.  I'd
like to avoid the proprietary ati driver if I can.

[gentoo-user] Re: 69.99 != 69.99

[walt]

On Sat, 22 Aug 2015 16:57:41 +0200
hw h...@gartencenter-vaehning.de wrote:

 It is a recipe for disaster when you tell 
 your computer to print something but it prints something else instead.

The Android Stagefright exploit is a real-life example of exactly such a
disaster.

The arithmetic comparison in Stagefright was written in C, not perl,
and compared integers instead of floats, but the underlying fault is
the same in each case:  programming languages today assume that human
programmers think like machines.

Until that fundamental flaw is eliminated from all programming
languages, the problem will not go away.  That won't happen in my
lifetime, or yours.

And that is why I'm pouring another glass of wine and going to bed :)

[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone using xfce4 with compositing turned off?

[walt]

On Sat, 22 Aug 2015 04:08:41 +0200
waben...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm using XFCE as DE and xfwm4 as WM. Since I bought a new GPU (Radeon
 R7 250), I don't use compositing any more because it causes tearing
 when I watch videos in fullscreen with 3840x2160. With this GPU I
 also had some random freezes when compositing was enabled. 
 
 Beside this, performance is very good, regardless compositing is
 enabled or disabled. Scrolling text or moving windows around is a bit
 faster and smoother with compositing enabled, especially when other
 windows are in the foreground.
 
 With my old GPU (Radeon HD4550) I always had compositing enabled. 
 Everything was smoother and I saw absolutely no glitches, but
 performance was also good with compositing disabled, just not quite
 as smooth as with

I forgot about xf86-video-ati until you mentioned it, so I just emerged
it and (I think) made all the changes needed to reconfigure Xorg to use
it instead of fglrx.

Maybe I'm just too tired right now to think straight, but the error
messages I see in Xorg.log tell me that my video chip is not supported.

But, in the process of switching to xf86-video-ati and then back again
to fglrx I noticed this error message from xfwm4:

Error opening /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory

Correct, I have no /dev/dri directory.  Do you have one?

[gentoo-user] Anyone using xfce4 with compositing turned off?

[walt]

I'm seeing horrible performance from the xfce window manager (xfwm4) on
my main, everyday machine, but not on an older backup machine or on any
of the linux virtual machines I run on virtualbox.

The symptoms:  moving a window with the mouse is so slow as to be
painful, and the CPU usage (on one of four CPUs) jumps to 100% almost
immediately (xfwm4 is the culprit, see below).

If I open an xterm and run (for example) /usr/bin/marco --replace,
this sluggish behavior returns to normal immediately.

After wasting hours on google I finally noticed that I had compiled
x11-wm/xfwm4 with the xcomposite useflag disabled, so I enabled it and
re-emerged xfwm4.

Now I can get decent performance from xfwm4, but only if first I turn on
compositing by running xfwm4-tweaks-settings.  (No, not by running the
puny and feeble xfwm4-settings app:  I need to invoke a tweak to make
xfce4 an acceptable Desktop Environment on my main desktop machine.

official rant mode
I remember going through this same frustration with gnome3, which was
(and is) unusable without installing the gnome-tweak-tool package and
using it to customize settings that I still don't understand.

(That's why I finally gave up on gnome3, and I may yet give up on xfce4
and go back to mate.)

Note that I'm not turning off official rant mode yet, but I should
mention that this machine is ~amd64 with ati-drivers-15.7 and vanilla
kernel 3.14.51.  (Same problem with gentoo-sources-3.18.19, BTW.)

[gentoo-user] Re: [~amd64] Keyboard stops working several times/day

[walt]

On Tue, 18 Aug 2015 20:38:10 +0200
Heiko Baums li...@baums-on-web.de wrote:

 Am 18.08.2015 um 04:04 schrieb walt:
  I see the keyboard problem in mate and xfce4 (the only ones I use
  now).  I've wondered about the same things but I don't know how to
  debug those possible scenarios.  
 
 And which terminal emulator are you using?

I've seen the keyboard halting problem using xterm and gnome-terminal
(running under mate, not gnome, but it seems to work normally).

 
  At the moment I'm waiting for my new keyboard to arrive from amazon,
  hoping to pin the blame on flakey hardware instead of flakey
  software.  
 
 Somehow I doubt that it's the keyboard. I rather guess it's either a
 wrong configuration of or a bug in the desktop environment, the
 terminal emulator and/or systemd/udev.

I plugged in my new keyboard two hours ago.  So far no problems but
that doesn't mean much yet.  I used the old keyboard for about ten
hours this morning and it stopped only once, about eight hours ago.

If the new keyboard works correctly for the rest of this week I'll be
convinced it was hardware :)

[gentoo-user] Re: !!!!

[walt]

On Tue, 18 Aug 2015 18:03:31 -0700
John Campbell jdc@cox.net wrote:

 I haven't really been following this closely but I haven't seen any 
 suggestion to use emerge -1 --quiet=y smart-live-rebuild  to remove 
 the offending curses output.  Hopefully emerge doesn't check/use
 curses unless it's producing actual output.

A very obscure hint, and I like it :)  I have no trouble emerging
packages (at the moment) so I emerged app-portage/smart-live-rebuild,
which dragged in eselect-package-manager as a dependency.

'eselect package-manager list' shows only portage as installed, even
though I now also have porthole and smart-live-rebuild installed too.

Do you see something different?

[gentoo-user] Re: [WAS: keyboard stops working] Recent kernels block the loading of non-GPL kernel modules

[walt]

On Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:49:16 -0500
Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote:

 walt wrote:
  entire post severely snipped for brevity
 
  On Mon, 17 Aug 2015 00:53:37 -0500
  Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote:
   
  walt wrote:
  Linus and friends have been marking lots of existing
  kernel symbols with the SYMBOL_EXPORT_GPL macro, which was
  designed to block the loading of any kernel module not
  explicitly licensed as GPL software.  
 
  The only module I have
  is Nvidia but that is one thing that doesn't work at times.
  Sometimes, it doesn't want to boot all the way.  It doesn't even
  get through the kernel loading everything up at times.   
  The Nvidia module is causing your problem then, because Nvidia
  supplies their binary blob under their own proprietary license.
 
  I'm using an elderly version of x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers on an
  elderly machine, but when I run 'modinfo -l nvidia' I see 'NVIDIA'
  as the response.  If the response isn't 'GPL' then the affected
  kernels will refuse to load the module at boot time.
 
  The kernel devs have provided a workaround for the problem, however:
 
  You (or a gentoo dev) need to edit the source code for the problem
  kernel by changing the SYMBOL_EXPORT_GPL to SYMBOL_EXPORT.
 
  That macro appears maybe hundreds of places in the kernel sources,
  and has been there for years now, but only one or two of those
  source files needs to be patched, depending on which of those
  exported symbols is needed by your particular binary driver (e.g.
  nvidia-drivers or ati-drivers).
 
  This whole GPL/module thing is far from new.  What's new is that the
  kernel devs are slowly adding more kernel symbols to their black
  list.
 
  I think the idea is to turn up the pressure very slowly on companies
  like Nividia and ATI to discourage them from providing proprietary
  drivers while not driving them out of the linux market completely.
 
  Every year linux is getting stronger and the devs can afford to be
  pushier with wealthy corporations who need more linux customers.
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 I think there is two issues but you are addressing one of them it
 seems.  The other issue happens when the kernel panics and it reboots
 itself.  It doesn't complete the boot process.  The one you describe
 could be it tho.  On that one, I don't have a GUI.  Since I use my
 puter a lot, I usually just reboot to a known working kernel and deal
 with it later. 
 
 While I think I get the idea of what the kernel devs are doing.  I
 also think they should let the users send the message.  The users can
 start buying ATI or other video hardware and at some point, they will
 either get their ducks in a row or lose sales.  In the meantime, the
 users decide what software they want to use. 
 
 I did some searching based on the config option you gave and I'm
 unable to find a way to override this myself.  It doesn't seem to be
 a setting I can put in make.conf or package.use etc either.  If this
 is the case, I may wish Nvidia would switch to open source but it
 sort of rubs me the wrong way that someone else is making the
 decision and me having no way to exercise my decision to use it
 anyway.   I don't care if Nvidia doesn't show its code as long as it
 works and it isn't spying on me or blowing up my house here. 
 
 If you have any info on how to override this, I'd be glad to see it. 
 Just a link or something would help. 

This is a bug for ati-drivers, but nvidia-drivers has exactly the same
problem to solve.  Comments 7, 8, 9 sum it up pretty well:

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=548118

[gentoo-user] Re: !!!!

[walt]

On Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:52:53 -0400
Alan Grimes alonz...@verizon.net wrote:

 Like a stupid dumbfuck, I tried to update my machine today
 
 tortoise ~ # revdep-rebuild
 /bin/bash: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot
 open shared object file: No such file or directory
 tortoise ~ # ufed
 sh: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot open
 shared object file: No such file or directory
 sh: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot open
 shared object file: No such file or directory
 sh: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot open
 shared object file: No such file or directory
 sh: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot open
 shared object file: No such file or directory
 sh: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot open
 shared object file: No such file or directory
 sh: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot open
 shared object file: No such file or directory
 
 Couldn't determine EPREFIX and PORTDIR from Portage
 INIT failed--call queue aborted.
 tortoise ~ #
 
 
 
 GOOD JOB, PENGUINS!!!
 I won't even be able to reboot my machine!!!

In addition to the suggestions already made by other posters, it's good
to keep busybox in mind.  Depending on how you boot your machine, there
is usually a way you can pass 'init=/bin/bb' to the kernel at boot time.

You can do wonderful stuff with busybox when you're in a bind.

[gentoo-user] Re: [~amd64] Keyboard stops working several times/day

[walt]

On Mon, 17 Aug 2015 18:51:34 +0200
Heiko Baums li...@baums-on-web.de wrote:

 Am 16.08.2015 um 18:45 schrieb walt:
  I've been seeing this keyboard problem for the past few weeks:
  after running some command from a bash prompt (haven't tried zsh
  yet) the keyboard stops working.  Almost like somebody unplugged
  the keyboard from its usb port (except that the LED on the keyboard
  stays lit so I know the power is still on).  
 
 I don't have this issue, but I guess you're using a terminal emulator
 in a desktop environment.
 
 Which terminal emulator and which desktop environment are you using?
 Maybe the problem is just that the terminal emulator takes the control
 over the keyboard or the desktop environment gives the keyboard
 controls to the terminal emulator.

I see the keyboard problem in mate and xfce4 (the only ones I use
now).  I've wondered about the same things but I don't know how to
debug those possible scenarios.

At the moment I'm waiting for my new keyboard to arrive from amazon,
hoping to pin the blame on flakey hardware instead of flakey software.

[gentoo-user] Re: [WAS: keyboard stops working] Recent kernels block the loading of non-GPL kernel modules

[walt]

entire post severely snipped for brevity

On Mon, 17 Aug 2015 00:53:37 -0500
Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote:

  walt wrote:  
  Linus and friends have been marking lots of existing
  kernel symbols with the SYMBOL_EXPORT_GPL macro, which was
  designed to block the loading of any kernel module not explicitly
  licensed as GPL software.
 
 The only module I have
 is Nvidia but that is one thing that doesn't work at times.
 Sometimes, it doesn't want to boot all the way.  It doesn't even get
 through the kernel loading everything up at times. 

The Nvidia module is causing your problem then, because Nvidia supplies
their binary blob under their own proprietary license.

I'm using an elderly version of x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers on an
elderly machine, but when I run 'modinfo -l nvidia' I see 'NVIDIA' as
the response.  If the response isn't 'GPL' then the affected kernels
will refuse to load the module at boot time.

The kernel devs have provided a workaround for the problem, however:

You (or a gentoo dev) need to edit the source code for the problem
kernel by changing the SYMBOL_EXPORT_GPL to SYMBOL_EXPORT.

That macro appears maybe hundreds of places in the kernel sources, and
has been there for years now, but only one or two of those source files
needs to be patched, depending on which of those exported symbols is
needed by your particular binary driver (e.g. nvidia-drivers or
ati-drivers).

This whole GPL/module thing is far from new.  What's new is that the
kernel devs are slowly adding more kernel symbols to their black list.

I think the idea is to turn up the pressure very slowly on companies
like Nividia and ATI to discourage them from providing proprietary
drivers while not driving them out of the linux market completely.

Every year linux is getting stronger and the devs can afford to be
pushier with wealthy corporations who need more linux customers.

[gentoo-user] Re: [~amd64] Keyboard stops working several times/day

[walt]

On Mon, 17 Aug 2015 23:21:54 +0200
Marc Joliet mar...@gmx.de wrote:

 I don't think you mention precisely which (type of) keyboard you use
 within this thread (please forgive me if I overlooked it). Does it
 happen to be a Logitech Unifying Receiver model? 

No I didn't mention which keyboard.  I tend to forget about wireless
devices because I don't have any.  This keyboard has a cable that plugs
directly into a usb port.  You're probably too young to remember
cables :)

[gentoo-user] [~amd64] Keyboard stops working several times/day

[walt]

I've been seeing this keyboard problem for the past few weeks:  after
running some command from a bash prompt (haven't tried zsh yet) the
keyboard stops working.  Almost like somebody unplugged the keyboard
from its usb port (except that the LED on the keyboard stays lit so I
know the power is still on).

There are no error messages in journalctl or in /var/log/Xorg.0.log

I don't know how to change to a console without using a ctrl-alt-Fn
keystroke from the keyboard (anyone know if it's possible?).

When I unplug the keyboard from the usb port I can see the kernel
recognize the unplug event, which makes me think that it's not a
kernel/usb bug or a broken wire in the keyboard cable.

When I re-plug the keyboard into a usb port the keyboard immediately
starts working normally again until the next time I happen to trigger
the problem by running some black-magical command from a command
prompt.  There is no particular command that causes it--it can be any
arbitrary command AFAICT.

Just one weird example:  I can be typing a URL in a web browser window
when a bash command finishes running in a terminal window and the
keyboard stops working in the middle of my typing :(

Any debugging suggestions would be most welcome.

[gentoo-user] [far OT] Source of spectacular (free) desktop wallpapers

[walt]

They have a photo contest every year and the photos just keep getting
better and better:

http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/photo-contest-2015/gallery/winners-outdoor-scenes/4

That particular photo is one of a dozen or so I downloaded, and I love
them all so much that I switched back to xfce4 (yet again) because it
has a built-in automatic wallpaper slide-show function (like kde) and I
have it set to 10 minutes rotation time :)

You need to enjoy the simple pleasures while banging your head against
your expensive computer terminal...

[gentoo-user] Re: [~amd64] Keyboard stops working several times/day

[walt]

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 19:27:41 -0400
Michel Catudal mcatu...@comcast.net wrote:

  But yes, kernel 3.18.19 still has my same keyboard halting problem,
  so I'm back to 3.14.50 until the ati-drivers package is patched.
  I'm sure gentoo-sources-3.18.20 will be available almost
  immediately and I'm not going through that hell again.
 
 
   
 I am running Kernel 4.0.5 with no problem with the keyboards.

Okay, thanks, that's good to know.

I'm aware that I'm mixing posts about video drivers in the same thread
(that I started) about keyboard problems, but that's no accident:  both
topics involve kernel device drivers *and* differences between kernel
versions.  I think the two apparently different problems are related.

snipped for brevity

 Someone seemed to have backport the debian bug
 into it as my logitech keyboard didn't work.

Yes, I wonder if some of the problems I'm having are caused by the
patches to gentoo-sources and/or ati-drivers that were committed by our
gentoo devs, or are my problems coming from upstream?  I have no idea.

 After I enabled the HID
 special support for Logitech, both mouse and keyboard now work
 perfectly.

Heh.  I just ordered a replacement Logitech USB keyboard from
amazon.com.  I picked the Logitech because it was from a company
(Logitech) whose name I recognize, as opposed to the other keyboards
that amazon offers under its own brand.

If my new Logitech keyboard fails to work correctly I will try enabling
the special HID support in whatever kernel(s) I'm using at the moment.
(Three days from now...who knows?)

[gentoo-user] Re: [~amd64] Keyboard stops working several times/day

[walt]

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 16:34:08 -0500
Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote:

 walt wrote:
  Affirmative, and thereby hangs yet another woeful tale. I've been
  running the gentoo-sources-3.14.xx series forever because I wearied
  of spending so many hours debugging unstable kernels. This morning I
  decided to take a giant leap forward all the way to 3.18.19 (BTW
  3.18.20 is already on kernel.org) because, surely, I wouldn't need
  to debug a kernel as old as that, right? Wrong. Linus and friends
  have been marking lots of existing kernel symbols with the
  SYMBOL_EXPORT_GPL macro, which was designed to block the loading of
  any kernel module not explicitly licensed as GPL software. (see
  output of modinfo) x11-drivers/ati-drivers installs a proprietary
  binary blob (as does nvidia-drivers) so the linker refused even to
  link the kernel module into a .ko file, nevermind the kernel
  actually loading the module at runtime. The remedy for ati-drivers
  is well-hidden in a comment in a gentoo bug report that I found at
  oh-dark-hundred hours this morning. Only two hours later I got the
  module installed and loaded :) But yes, kernel 3.18.19 still has my
  same keyboard halting problem, so I'm back to 3.14.50 until the
  ati-drivers package is patched. I'm sure gentoo-sources-3.18.20
  will be available almost immediately and I'm not going through that
  hell again.   
 
 
 Interesting info.  I haven't been able to get new kernels to work
 either.  I wonder if this is why.  o_O

I've skimmed some of your threads involving initrd (maybe raid?) but I
don't participate in them because I don't use either initrd or raid so
I have nothing to offer.

If your problems are caused by non-loading kernel modules, though, it
should be easy to find out by running modinfo -l on each kernel module.

Here is the cause of my problem this morning:

#modinfo -l /lib/modules/3.18.19-gentoo/video/fglrx.ko 
Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY

BTW, I post-edited a typo I made in the text you quoted:  I typed
SYMBOL_EXPORT_GNU when I really meant SYMBOL_EXPORT_GPL.  I could have
typed SYMBOL_EXPORT_RMS because I conflate the three into one synonym :)

[gentoo-user] Re: [~amd64] Keyboard stops working several times/day

[walt]

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:58:27 +0200
Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 16/08/2015 18:45, walt wrote:
  I've been seeing this keyboard problem for the past few weeks:
  after running some command from a bash prompt (haven't tried zsh
  yet) the keyboard stops working.  Almost like somebody unplugged
  the keyboard from its usb port (except that the LED on the keyboard
  stays lit so I know the power is still on).
  
  There are no error messages in journalctl or in /var/log/Xorg.0.log
  
  I don't know how to change to a console without using a ctrl-alt-Fn
  keystroke from the keyboard (anyone know if it's possible?).
  
  When I unplug the keyboard from the usb port I can see the kernel
  recognize the unplug event, which makes me think that it's not a
  kernel/usb bug or a broken wire in the keyboard cable.
  
  When I re-plug the keyboard into a usb port the keyboard immediately
  starts working normally again until the next time I happen to
  trigger the problem by running some black-magical command from a
  command prompt.  There is no particular command that causes it--it
  can be any arbitrary command AFAICT.
  
  Just one weird example:  I can be typing a URL in a web browser
  window when a bash command finishes running in a terminal window
  and the keyboard stops working in the middle of my typing :(
  
  Any debugging suggestions would be most welcome.  
 
 
 First step (more to half the problem space than anything else):
 
 Does the same happen if you use another keyboard?

I agree with your assessment -- and I will buy another usb keyboard
tomorrow because I'm using the only one I have and this machine has no
ps/2 ports.  Never thought I'd miss the ps/2 ports til now :)

[gentoo-user] Re: [~amd64] Keyboard stops working several times/day

[walt]

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 21:48:04 +0200
Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 16/08/2015 21:42, walt wrote:
  On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:58:27 +0200
  Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote:

  On 16/08/2015 18:45, walt wrote:  
  I've been seeing this keyboard problem for the past few weeks:
  after running some command from a bash prompt (haven't tried zsh
  yet) the keyboard stops working.  Almost like somebody unplugged
  the keyboard from its usb port (except that the LED on the
  keyboard stays lit so I know the power is still on).
 
  There are no error messages in journalctl or
  in /var/log/Xorg.0.log
 
  I don't know how to change to a console without using a
  ctrl-alt-Fn keystroke from the keyboard (anyone know if it's
  possible?).
 
  When I unplug the keyboard from the usb port I can see the kernel
  recognize the unplug event, which makes me think that it's not a
  kernel/usb bug or a broken wire in the keyboard cable.
 
  When I re-plug the keyboard into a usb port the keyboard
  immediately starts working normally again until the next time I
  happen to trigger the problem by running some black-magical
  command from a command prompt.  There is no particular command
  that causes it--it can be any arbitrary command AFAICT.
 
  Just one weird example:  I can be typing a URL in a web browser
  window when a bash command finishes running in a terminal window
  and the keyboard stops working in the middle of my typing :(
 
  Any debugging suggestions would be most welcome.
 
 
  First step (more to half the problem space than anything else):
 
  Does the same happen if you use another keyboard?  
  
  I agree with your assessment -- and I will buy another usb keyboard
  tomorrow because I'm using the only one I have and this machine has
  no ps/2 ports.  Never thought I'd miss the ps/2 ports til now :)  
 
 I kind of assumed you'd have lots of spare keyboards lying around and
 had already done the test :-)

I do have spares, all ps/2 :-(

 I recall something similar happening to me,
 perhaps a year ago or longer. I tried to debug it and gave up, then
 one day it was no longer happening. I assumed it was a fixed kernel
 bug then promptly forgot all about it.
 
 While you are waiting on a new keyboard, do you have the same bug on
 different kernels?

Affirmative, and thereby hangs yet another woeful tale.  I've been
running the gentoo-sources-3.14.xx series forever because I wearied of
spending so many hours debugging unstable kernels.

This morning I decided to take a giant leap forward all the way to
3.18.19 (BTW 3.18.20 is already on kernel.org) because, surely, I
wouldn't need to debug a kernel as old as that, right?

Wrong.  Linus and friends have been marking lots of existing kernel
symbols with the SYMBOL_EXPORT_GNU macro, which was designed to block
the loading of any kernel module not explicitly licensed as GNU
software.  (see output of modinfo)

x11-drivers/ati-drivers installs a proprietary binary blob (as does
nvidia-drivers) so the linker refused even to link the kernel module
into a .ko file, nevermind the kernel actually loading the module at
runtime.

The remedy for ati-drivers is well-hidden in a comment in a gentoo bug
report that I found at oh-dark-hundred hours this morning.  Only two
hours later I got the module installed and loaded :)

But yes, kernel 3.18.19 still has my same keyboard halting problem, so
I'm back to 3.14.50 until the ati-drivers package is patched.  I'm sure
gentoo-sources-3.18.20 will be available almost immediately and I'm not
going through that hell again.

[gentoo-user] Re: minimal installation CD iso is where?,

[walt]

On Fri, 7 Aug 2015 19:41:27 -0400
Rich Freeman ri...@gentoo.org wrote:

 The next
 big change is likely to be virtualizing openrc so that it can be
 uninstalled, and possibly not including it in the stage3, but that
 hasn't really even been seriously discussed.  (Virtualizing it seems
 almost certain to happen (IMHO) once the blockers are fixed,

I just noticed that net-misc/netifrc installs two systemd service files,
which puzzled me.  Is this in preparation for virtualizing openrc?

[gentoo-user] Re: why --noclear not set on tty1 in default /etc/inittab?

[walt]

On Sat, 8 Aug 2015 15:21:07 -0400
Poison BL. poiso...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Poison BL. poiso...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  So it was prompted by a perceived security issue, but I would
  happily sit down with any of the DPOs involved in that to hear just
  how that little bandaid fixes any of the real security issues
  involved ;)
 
  --
  Joshua M. Murphy
 
 
 Actually, now I recall what the actual issue is/was that prompted it.
 While there's no reasonable security issue from the information left
 over by the startup script output, the change was (if I recall from
 reading about it back then) addressing the data left on screen after
 a user session, which very much would fall under the scope of the
 data protection officers mentioned above. When launched from init, as
 agetty is, there's no sensible way to track whether it's being
 launched the first time after boot, or relaunched after the end of a
 previous session, hence the terminal clear by default.

That's why I added this file (can't remember where I got the idea):

cat ~/.bash_logout
clear

I suppose some equivalent mechanism could be added for every
possible shell, which would be a headache for someone :)

[gentoo-user] Re: minimal installation CD iso is where?,

[walt]

On Thu, 6 Aug 2015 22:00:35 +0100
Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote:

  What sort of improvements do you get? libreoffice here takes about
  1h30 to build, give or take 10 mins or so. Doesn't seem worth the
  extra hassle of ccache for an hour and a half.  
 
 It varies, but it can more than halve the time taken. Well worth the
 minute or two it took to set it up to happen automatically.

You appear to be building claws-mail from git (as do I), which seems in
theory a good use of ccache.  Am I understanding this correctly?  I've
never used ccache before, but with your helpful config info I'm about
to try it. 

[gentoo-user] Re: systemd-224 Look out for new networking behavior [FIXED]

[walt]

On Wed, 05 Aug 2015 23:00:36 +0200
J. Roeleveld jo...@antarean.org wrote:

 the following page should be required 
 study for everyone starting with programming. (It's for PHP, but
 should work for ALL languages):
 http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/why-youre-a-bad-php-programmer--net-18384

Excellent article, thanks, and interesting website.  I've been looking
for a good javascript tutorial and I see they offer several of them.

[gentoo-user] Re: systemd-224 Look out for new networking behavior [FIXED]

[walt]

On Tue, 04 Aug 2015 08:19:37 +0200
Franz Fellner alpine.art...@gmail.com wrote:

 Fernando Rodriguez wrote:
  On Monday, August 03, 2015 6:41:22 PM walt wrote:
   That line declares *hostname as a constant and then the statement
   below proceeds to assign a value to the 'constant'.  I wonder how
   many hours of frustration have been suffered by student
   programmers while trying to understand the logic behind that.
  
  Because it's not a constant, it's a pointer-to-constant :)
 Both of you are right, you can read the declaration in both ways:
 hostname is of type pointer to const char.
 *hostname is of type const char.
 
 But in this case it is not *hostname, that get's a value assigned,
 it's simply hostname. If you do not set hostname to NULL it stays
 uninitialised, which means its value is what the actual memory is set
 to - quite undefined. Correct initialization is really important and
 should be done consequently so it gets an automatism ;) (would avoid
 issues like this)
 
  
  const char *hostname; /* pointer to constant char */
  char *const hostname; /* constant pointer to char */
  const char *const hostname; /* constant pointer to constant char */
  
  Is that confusing enough?

confusing++

Thank you both for being patient enough to teach the ineducable :)

Let me give you one more example of syntax that I find unreasonable,
and then I'll ask my *real* question, about which I hope you will have
opinions.

Okay, the statement I referred to above uses this notation:

 if (!link-network-hostname)  this notation makes sense to me
 r = sd_dhcp_lease_get_hostname(lease, hostname); this doesn't

In this context does 'hostname' mean a-pointer-to-a-pointer-to-the-
charstring we actually need?

Doesn't this code seem needlessly complicated?

okay, screed over, thanks for listening

Somewhere I read that there was really only *one* java program ever
written, and every subsequent java program was written by cut-and-paste
from the first one.

Is that how professional developers learn the art of programming?

I really would like to hear your opinions on that question because I
feel it's an important topic.

Thanks guys.

[gentoo-user] Re: crossdev runtime version

[walt]

On Tue, 04 Aug 2015 18:40:49 +0200
Cor Legemaat c...@cor.za.net wrote:

 Hi:
 
 I want to install a mingw64 compiler with =dev-util/mingw64-runtime-
 4.0.1, tried with the cmd:
  crossdev --lenv 'CFLAGS=-march=generic -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe 
  CXXFLAGS=-march=generic -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe' --ex-gdb -t 
  x86_64-w64-mingw32 --ov-output /usr/local/portage-crossdev --l
  4.0.1 --k 4.0.1 -P '-v'
 but cross-x86_64-w64-mingw32/mingw64-runtime-3.2.0-r1 get installed.
 
 What am I doing wrong?

I notice you are using a version of Evolution that is not available
yet in gentoo.  Are you using gentoo package overlays, or installing
packages from non-gentoo source repositories?  (I see /usr/local in
your message :)

Sometimes these little details can give important clues.

[gentoo-user] Re: systemd-224 Look out for new networking behavior [FIXED]

[walt]

On Mon, 3 Aug 2015 14:23:18 -0400
Mike Gilbert flop...@gentoo.org wrote:

 On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 11:16 AM, walt w41...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Sun, 2 Aug 2015 08:03:11 -0700
  walt w41...@gmail.com wrote:

  Oops, journalctl tells me that systemd-networkd is segfaulting
  repeatedly during boot.  I'm reverting back to systemd-222-r1 until
  this gets sorted out.
 
 Fixed in systemd-224-r1. Next time file a bug; I don't always read
 this list.

Thanks Mike.  The fix is amazingly simple but looking at the patch
makes me realize how little I understand the c language after years
of reading c code but not writing any :/

const char *hostname = NULL;  (upstream apparently forgot the = NULL)

That line declares *hostname as a constant and then the statement below
proceeds to assign a value to the 'constant'.  I wonder how many hours
of frustration have been suffered by student programmers while trying to
understand the logic behind that.

coughing from the dust on my 40-year-old Kernighan and Ritchie I see
that they didn't include the 'const' keyword at all.  That was a later
change introduced by some ANSI committee, bless them.

sigh I truly don't understand how any working code get written.

Anyway, thanks again for the fix :)

[gentoo-user] Re: systemd-224 Look out for new networking behavior

[walt]

On Sun, 2 Aug 2015 08:03:11 -0700
walt w41...@gmail.com wrote:

 I've been running systemd for a long time without needing to enable
 the dhcpcd service at boot time.  Starting with systemd-224 that is no
 longer true. 

Oops, journalctl tells me that systemd-networkd is segfaulting
repeatedly during boot.  I'm reverting back to systemd-222-r1 until
this gets sorted out.

[gentoo-user] systemd-224 Look out for new networking behavior

[walt]

I've been running systemd for a long time without needing to enable
the dhcpcd service at boot time.  Starting with systemd-224 that is no
longer true.  Today I had to enable dhcpcd.service specifically or the
network interface didn't get an ip address during boot.

Seems like this might be especially important for those of you who need
to update remote machines.  

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Very recent change in behavior of gmail imap/smtp servers [SOLVED (for the third time, maybe fourth ;) ]

[walt]

On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 18:34:25 -0700
walt w41...@gmail.com wrote:

 Google has just introduced a 120-second delay before allowing login to
 their email servers.  Just in the last day or two, literally.

Yet again, I think(hope/pray) I've solved this mysterious change in
behavior:

For years I've configured my email clients (thunderbird, and recently
claws-mail) to use imap.gmail.com as the mail server.

Finally I 'googled' (using DuckDuckGo) for how to configure imap access
to gmail servers, and discovered that google is now recommending the
server name imap.googlemail.com instead of imap.gmail.com.

I made the appropriate changes in configuration for claws-mail and
thunderbird, and I think(hope/pray) that the problem is fixed. In my
preliminary trials it seems to be fixed.

The mail server did ask me (once) after changing the server name, to
reconfirm my password, so something did really change.  I'm not
making this stuff up, I promise.

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Very recent change in behavior of gmail imap/smtp servers [SOLVED]

[walt]

On 07/24/2015 01:46 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
 On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 16:27:33 -0700, walt wrote:
 
 Anyway, claws-mail (for normal behavior) apparently *requires* me to
 switch email accounts from a drop-down menu (Configuration::Change-
 current-account) before trying to read or send email.
 
 Are you saying that MessageReceiveGet from all accounts doesn't do what
 it says? I normally only use one account for reading so wouldn't have
 noticed this.

Hm.  I've never done that til now so I don't know what to expect, but I just 
tried it while sniffing for internet traffic and saw absolutely zero.

So I suppose the answer is yes, it doesn't do what it says.

However, after being confused for days about this whole subject I'm beginning 
to suspect that both of my hypotheses are correct:  claws-mail does indeed 
require me to change email accounts from the drop-down menu for proper 
operation, *and* google is paranoid enough to change behavior every time I 
access their email servers using a different client.

To wit:  claws-mail induced the long latency for my ISP's mail server unless I 
first switched to that account using the menu.  I can reproduce this behavior 
consistently.

But:  gmail changes from zero-latency to long-latency in a (weasel words) 
fairly consistent way every time I switch mail clients, including when I use 
their own (carefully-targeted-ad-plagued-https-everywhere-browser-based) email 
solution.

The gmail latency returns to zero after a period of time that I haven't pinned 
down yet through experiment, but is roughly 24 hours.

I really sorta expected the google police to knock on my door after I tried to 
log in to my gmail account from a Windows 10 instance running in virtualbox.  
But they only sent an email telling they had protected my account by denying my 
login attempt.  Very lenient, I think.

 

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Very recent change in behavior of gmail imap/smtp servers [SOLVED]

[walt]

On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 21:49:50 +0100
Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thursday 23 Jul 2015 06:47:07 Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
  On 23/07/2015 05:49 πμ, walt wrote:
   Nope.  Wrong.  I just changed my resolv.conf back to the IP
   address of the router that ATT forced me to upgrade to and the
   delay is *gone*.
   
   The delay I was seeing was apparently caused by something very
   local to me, and suddenly vanished after two days.
   
   The interwebz is a scary place :(
  
  A friend of mine had a problem where half the time he tried to
  browse to a URL, he would end up on a porn site. I thought it was
  some Windows malware. But when booting from a USB stick with
  SysRescueCd on it, even ping google.com would ping a porn site at
  first.
  
  His modem/router combo device was infected with something that
  hijacked the DNS setting. He was using a DSL-Modem/router from 2003.
  
  It *is* a scary place.
 
 Walt's previous test indicates that his ISP's DNS repeaters were
 congested, or under DoS attack.  Setting temporarily a higher level
 peer could prove the point.  Some top level DNS resolvers shared here
 (from a previous post in this list):
 
 http://www.circleid.com/posts/20110407_top_public_dns_resolvers_compared/

The most interesting thing I've learned from this thread is that a
whole bunch of other people are just as paranoid as I am.  I just
assumed that google had done something to produce this problem, but
now I know what really caused it:

I recently switched from thunderbird to claws-mail, mostly as an
experiment because I'm not sure how committed mozilla.org is to
maintaining thunderbird.

I really like claws-mail in general, but this google problem was
actually caused by some very dysfunctional behavior in claws-mail.
(I've been building from the latest git sources, so I gotta expect
some buggy behavior...)

Anyway, claws-mail (for normal behavior) apparently *requires* me to
switch email accounts from a drop-down menu (Configuration::Change-
current-account) before trying to read or send email.

If I fail to change the email account then claws-mail produces these
very long and variable delays.  I have no idea what it's doing while it
waits, but it does connect eventually.

Curiously, I don't see the same problem with nntp servers, just email
servers (smtp and imap, I haven't tried pop3).

[gentoo-user] Re: [~amd64] Does the EGL useflag break mesa-progs-8.2.0?

[walt]

On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 18:04:00 +0200 (CEST)
Jeremi Piotrowski jeremi.piotrow...@gmail.com wrote:

  On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 01:53:50PM -0700, walt wrote:
   Just try emerging mesa-progs-8.2.0 with the EGL useflag set.
   
 
 Works fine here, compiles cleanly. This really requires atleast an 
 'emerge --info' to be able to tell more, but build logs may also be 
 necessary.

Interesting.  Maybe you could add some helpful ideas to this existing
bug report:  https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=555186


Alpine?  I used Alpine a few years ago, but I thought UW had stopped
development on it for lack of users of it.  If ya can't use it on an
iPhone these days the students won't use it...

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Very recent change in behavior of gmail imap/smtp servers

[walt]

On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 20:10:15 -0700
walt w41...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 21:45:23 -0500
 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  walt wrote:
   On Wed, 22 Jul 2015 02:11:48 + (UTC)
   Grant Edwards grant.b.edwa...@gmail.com wrote:
  
   Google has just introduced a 120-second delay before allowing
   login to their email servers.  Just in the last day or two,
   literally.  
   I'm not seeing that with either of my gmail accounts.  Same login
   times as always (1-2 seconds) on both IMAP and SMTP servers.
   That info amazes me, but gives me even more evidence for a
   conspiracy theory :)  My ISP (att.com) may be responsible for this
   new delay.
  
   att is involved with the ongoing net-neutrality battles here in
   the US with netflix et alia, so why not add yet another
   fuzz-factor to the mix.
  
   I hope my email still works when I wake up tomorrow morning...
  
  
  
  
  
  Makes me wonder.  Sometimes when I go to facebook, it doesn't come
  up on first or second try.  I've seen that with other sites as well.
  Hm. When I get a error, it is instant.  It seems to be so
  instant that it doesn't even have time to do a DNS lookup much less
  hit the website. 
  
  By the way, I use ATT too. DSL after many years of dial-up. 
 
 I just tried entering the number of the beast ;)  8.8.8.8
 into /etc/resolv.conf and that reduced my waiting time from 120
 seconds to 30 seconds (actual measurement by stopwatch).

Nope.  Wrong.  I just changed my resolv.conf back to the IP address of
the router that ATT forced me to upgrade to and the delay is *gone*.

The delay I was seeing was apparently caused by something very local to
me, and suddenly vanished after two days.

The interwebz is a scary place :(

[gentoo-user] [OT] Very recent change in behavior of gmail imap/smtp servers

[walt]

Very soon after being invited to open a gmail account, I discovered
that google offers non-web-browser access to their free (as in beer)
email servers.

This puzzled me (still does) because it seems to violate google's basic
business model, which is based on advertising revenue.  (I never see an
advertisement when sending/reading email via smtp/imap, obviously.)

Google has just introduced a 120-second delay before allowing login to
their email servers.  Just in the last day or two, literally.

I can understand the delay for sending email (spammers) but why the
same delay for reading email?

(My conspiracy theory has been suppressed to allow room for your own
conspiracy theory ;)

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Very recent change in behavior of gmail imap/smtp servers

[walt]

On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 21:45:23 -0500
Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote:

 walt wrote:
  On Wed, 22 Jul 2015 02:11:48 + (UTC)
  Grant Edwards grant.b.edwa...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Google has just introduced a 120-second delay before allowing
  login to their email servers.  Just in the last day or two,
  literally.  
  I'm not seeing that with either of my gmail accounts.  Same login
  times as always (1-2 seconds) on both IMAP and SMTP servers.
  That info amazes me, but gives me even more evidence for a
  conspiracy theory :)  My ISP (att.com) may be responsible for this
  new delay.
 
  att is involved with the ongoing net-neutrality battles here in the
  US with netflix et alia, so why not add yet another fuzz-factor to
  the mix.
 
  I hope my email still works when I wake up tomorrow morning...
 
 
 
 
 
 Makes me wonder.  Sometimes when I go to facebook, it doesn't come up
 on first or second try.  I've seen that with other sites as well.
 Hm. When I get a error, it is instant.  It seems to be so instant
 that it doesn't even have time to do a DNS lookup much less hit the
 website. 
 
 By the way, I use ATT too. DSL after many years of dial-up. 

I just tried entering the number of the beast ;)  8.8.8.8
into /etc/resolv.conf and that reduced my waiting time from 120
seconds to 30 seconds (actual measurement by stopwatch).

I'm done playing now until morning...

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Very recent change in behavior of gmail imap/smtp servers

[walt]

On Wed, 22 Jul 2015 02:11:48 + (UTC)
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwa...@gmail.com wrote:

  Google has just introduced a 120-second delay before allowing login
  to their email servers.  Just in the last day or two, literally.  
 
 I'm not seeing that with either of my gmail accounts.  Same login
 times as always (1-2 seconds) on both IMAP and SMTP servers.

That info amazes me, but gives me even more evidence for a conspiracy
theory :)  My ISP (att.com) may be responsible for this new delay.

att is involved with the ongoing net-neutrality battles here in the US
with netflix et alia, so why not add yet another fuzz-factor to the mix.

I hope my email still works when I wake up tomorrow morning...

[gentoo-user] Re: Catastrophic bug in the firefox 'ProfileManager' function

[walt]

On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 08:53:42 +0100
Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tuesday 21 Jul 2015 02:40:54 Dale wrote:

   This wouldn't help with some of the things you lost but it will
   with your passwords at least.  For passwords, this will help and
   you can use it somewhere else as well since it is portable, sort
   of.
   
   https://lastpass.com/
snipped for brevity

First, thanks to everyone who replied to this thread.  As usual in this
group, I learned something from every reply.

I've actually been using lastpass for about two years, so I lost a lot
less than I would have otherwise.   I had another scary moment, though,
when I couldn't remember my lastpass master password.

After about twenty guesses I remembered that I just recently changed my
lastpass password exactly because of the 'possible' data breach at
lastpass (the security issues Mick mentions below).

I asked lastpass to email me my password hint, which I made vague on
purpose so bad guys would have trouble using it -- and that meant I had
trouble using it too :)  But after another ten guesses I finally got
the new password right.  Whew...


 A better, as in more secure, solution should involve local encryption
 and IMHO local air-gapped storage.  A USB key will do nicely and you
 can have a second USB key stored in your brother's premises, for
 disaster recovery scenarios. This is because cloud storage:
 
  a) creates a honey pot which attracts attacks[1] and 
  b) most of cloud storage is in the US.
 
 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LastPass#Security_issues

[gentoo-user] Catastrophic bug in the firefox 'ProfileManager' function

[walt]

I suspect most people don't even know firefox has a ProfileManager, but
I'm here to warn you not to use it.  It just cost me years of bookmarks
and saved passwords.

For testing purposes I invoked firefox-bin with the -ProfileManager
flag (don't do this, it's broken!) and created a fresh firefox profile
with the name temp as I've been doing for years.

I ran the temp profile while doing my testing, quit firefox and then
re-invoked firefox with the -ProfileManager flag and used it to delete
the temp profile because I didn't need it any more.

Unfortunately, deleting temp also deleted the default profile I've
been using for years, which had all of my bookmarks and saved passwords
and maybe other stuff I haven't even thought about yet.

I'm copying an old firefox profile from another machine that's four
years out of date.  Maybe I can rescue an ort here or there.

What a fscking disaster.

Lesson learned:  if you need to start firefox with a fresh profile,
just move your ~/.mozilla directory out of the way and let firefox
create a new one from scratch.

[gentoo-user] Re: yubikeys

[walt]

On Sun, 19 Jul 2015 23:01:14 +0200
Stefan G. Weichinger li...@xunil.at wrote:

 Am 2015-07-19 um 08:31 schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger:
 
  Thanks. Ok, didn't yet know about that piv-tool, will build it later
  this day and try it.
  
  The instructions there seem to be simply taken from the yubico
  website:
  
  https://developers.yubico.com/yubico-piv-tool/SSH_with_PIV_and_PKCS11.html  
 
 tldr: works

Congratulations.  Yubikeys don't look trivial to set up.  I forgot to
mention that Noah (the guy from the podcast) mentioned that he has two
yubikeys, set up identically, in case he loses one of them.  Seems that
losing the only one you have would be like losing your wallet with all
your credit cards inside.  A nightmare.

[gentoo-user] Re: yubikeys

[walt]

On Sat, 18 Jul 2015 12:21:39 +0200
Stefan G. Weichinger li...@xunil.at wrote:

 
 Does anyone (aside from Diego, as I know from his blog) use Yubico
 Yubikeys with Gentoo?
 
 I am especially interested in getting it to work within Gnome, to
 authenticate ssh-sessions (using the smartcard feature of the Yubikey
 NEO).
 
 There are X howtos out there ... telling me to add udev-rules, disable
 gnome-keyring, run keychain ... etc etc
 

What an amazing coincidence.  I just listened to a podcast about an hour
ago where the process was explained in detail (even mentioning the NEO
model and smartcard in particular).  Weird.

I'm curious to know if this link actually gives you what you asked for:

http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/85062/ssh-authentication-with-yubikey-las-373/

You can either watch (or listen to) the podcast, or scroll down the page
about one-third to see written instructions.  (Instructions based on
ubuntu, not gentoo, but I'm sure you can translate :)

[gentoo-user] Re: In the fear of getting hacked (WLAN setup)

[walt]

On Sat, 18 Jul 2015 05:34:53 +0200
meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote:

 Hi,
 
 in order to connect my ASUS Memp Pad 7 ME176CX to the internet I need
 a working WLAN (my DSL router/modem is of the copper area - no
 Wifi/WLAN). The hardware (an USB dongle) is already there...it needs
 only be configured and setup.
 
 The problem I (possibly needless) see is: While I am tinkering and
 testing the configuration I may setup an open Wifi access point
 without noticing it in first glance and
 BANG! get hacked ... in the worst case: unrecognized...

I heard this on a podcast about security from someone (Steve Gibson)
who knows a lot about the subject.  He suggested using all those old
home routers (you have sitting around collecting dust) in a new way.

Apparently we can't trust any individual black-box home router to be
secure any more, but maybe we can combine them to make hackers work
harder:

The idea is to chain all those home routers in series (instead of using
them as the manufacturers intended) and then, as the last step, to plug
your (new) wireless router into the end of the chain of old routers.

I have no idea if this idea is good or bad, I'm just passing it along.

[gentoo-user] Don't disable 'introspection'

[walt]

I don't understand 'introspection' enough to know why we need it, but
apparently we do, so don't use the -introspection useflag like I did.

The trouble I introduced a few weeks ago when I disabled introspection
was subtle enough that I didn't realize until yesterday that I even had
a problem.

Portage had been doing mildly insane things that other people were not
seeing, so as a test I removed the -introspection useflag and spent the
entire day rebuilding packages.  My portage problem appears to be
fixed.  I hope.

If anyone can splain what introspection does I'd be grateful.