ntfs-3g - mount defaults
Hi all, presently, default mount options for ntfs-3g are: ... gid=46,umask=007 ... This has (common user) usability consequences: 1) it disables silent option 2) it activates default_permissions option See http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-manual/ When a user attempts to copy files from ext filesystem to NTFS mounted with this option, he is very likely to be greeted with a huge ammount of ntfs-3g error messages as the silent behavior is suppressed. When user then searches for the problem, most solutions navigate him to create and configure .NTFS-3G/UserMapper. Getting that file right is several levels beyond getting /etc/fstab right manually for a casual user... I would suggest both gid and umask options be removed for desktop releases. User mapping is of limited use for basic dual-boot filesharing and requires extensive maintenance for correct operation. Also, the preferred way to create UserMapper is from within Windows which is by no means intuitive. Hopefully, I am not duplicating this. Regards, Milan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: sound from multiple apps
Le jeudi 12 juin 2008 à 17:40 +1000, Luke Yelavich a écrit : snip I'm just a little appalled at the state of audio support on Linux (I believe this issue is not Ubuntu only); I was trying to have a conversation on the google chat (from within the browser) and since the chat has audio alerts, mplayer refused to play audio (while the chat is open). Just a little example of broken audio support. I do not know the cause, nor the solution to the problem, I wonder how ubuntu is trying to become mainstream and have mysterious issues, such as this. What does Google Chat use? Flash? Java? It appears to use Java. So this may be a bug in a JRE. If you are using Ubuntu and GNOME, then its likely that whatever you are using is grabbing the sound device, and PulseAudio, the sound server for the Ubuntu desktop is unable to access the device, since whatever you are using in Firefox has exclusive use of the device. Its hard to say more without knowing what browser technology google chat uses. If you could tell me what it uses, then I will be able to more quickly help you work out a solution, or a workaround. Gezim, I guess you should open a bug against the package gij, and we'll be able to investigate more there. You've run into a very particular bug, and in Ubuntu the sound system is not so bad as you may think for desktop uses - actually it rocks, it's just that Java support may not be very well integrated to the rest of the system. Thanks for reporting anyway. Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Weird downstream Power Manager changes?
Le mardi 03 juin 2008 à 08:06 -0700, Dylan McCall a écrit : Aha! Sorry about the double post. Just realized that the minimum is idle time + 1 minute, which probably makes sense somewhere. (Except for the 1 minute part?!). Still, the fact that this basic setting of timers needed research to figure out suggests a need for some reorganizing. Firstly, idle time should be set in gnome-power-preferences, not just gnome-screensaver-preferences, if it has such a widespread impact. Furthermore, I think it is problematic that the idle time cannot be set differently for when on battery as opposed to when on AC power, again because of its tie to screensaver time. Perhaps this would make more sense if idle did not automatically trigger the screensaver, instead with another timer to handle that. I'm sure I read a proposal by somebody working on this in GNOME - but I cannot find where. The chances are you'll land in 2.24 with all those settings on the same preferences tab. I can't check it though, but maybe you'll be able to locate this document. Regards -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Incomplete with no response 30 days
Le dimanche 25 mai 2008 à 18:33 +1000, Sarah Hobbs a écrit : snip There seems to be an attitude of screw the developers, we are the mighty bug squad, and can do what we like here. The contrary can be true as well, but that's absolutely not the point here. ;-) But really, isn't the job of the bug squad to get bugs into a good state of triage, so they can be dealt with by the developers? Does it not make sense, therefore, to listen to what the developers want the bug squad to do to the bugs, in a general sense, and then for the bug squad to go away and deal with the specifics? I don't think the bug squad should have the right to say we will make the rules, everyone else must follow them, as, while there are many bug squad people (yes, developers are still bug squad too), the bug squad does not put real bugs (ie, not invalid, etc) in a final state, so someone always has to come after them, and touch the bugs afterwards. This is not the case for developers. I don't see the need here to oppose bug triager and developers here - yes, developers are members of the bug squad too, and the only aim of all these groups is to make Ubuntu work right. For this we need rule the best cooperation between all classes of contributors. And bug triagers are a really diverse group, from which you cannot expect to master every Ubuntu trick. The bug squad is not here to serve developers, but precisely to get needed information so that bugs are made useful to them. Developers also should make the life of bug triagers easier since their own work depends on the bug squad efficiency. As Henrik Nilsen Omma summed it up [1], there's just a need to find better conventions in order to make special bugs (sync requests...) conform to the general convention. No need to hurt anyone here: developers could simply use Confirmed instead of Incomplete when waiting for more information that *they will get by themselves*, and not from any user; Triaged and In progress are still here for more advanced states. And surely assigning bugs when somebody is taking care of a bug, even if no work is going on would help, since other developers that may want to work on the bug will know what kind of special tricks are involved. Hope we can find a common rule 1: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-bugsquad/2008-May/000854.html -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu beyond GTK apps?
Le vendredi 16 mai 2008 à 11:26 +0200, Thomas Novin a écrit : On Fri, 2008-05-16 at 03:02 -0600, Conrad Knauer wrote: Wouldn't it be interesting to take that a step further and have Ubuntu represent the best Linux apps (e.g. K3B?), regardless of widget dependency? If QGtkStyle (or such) could seamlessly integrate them visually, I don't see why (beyond LiveCD size restrictions) that this wouldn't be a good idea... That would be amazing. I think a pretty long list can be easily made of KDE-apps that are better than their Gnome equivalents. - Amarok Rhythmbox - Konsole Gnome Terminal - Kate Gedit - Kdenlive ??? Dear, just switch to KDE, you'll have a nice desktop environment that will suit your applications. ;-) Seriously, using some specialized Qt programs that have no good equivalent in GNOME is very important (Rosegarden, Scribus, KDenlive...), but for standard tools this would make no sense. Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Strip incompatible characters from Windows partitions!
Le vendredi 16 mai 2008 à 00:06 -0400, Scott Kitterman a écrit : On Thursday 15 May 2008 21:31, Evan wrote: On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 9:14 PM, Scott Kitterman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd say that if there's a bug it's in Windows. I could see a wishlist bug against Ubuntu to provide a way to check for this/suggest changes to avoid problematic filenames, but there is nothing inherently defective with the current behavior. Scott K I agree that there is no inherent problem with the Ubuntu code, and it should really be up to Windows to support more characters. However I can think of several situations where this could cause considerable problems for the end user. We should at the very least provide a warning that Naming a file on this partition with any of the following characters will prevent Windows from opening it. Are you sure you want to continue? Evan Personally I'm against such hand holding. If any such feature is provided, I think it should be off by default. I happen to have some legacy FAT32 and NTFS partitions for various reasons, but the odds that they will ever be read from Windows are very low. I don't think Ubuntu's design should be predicated on the idea that it's an adjunct to using Windows. Sorry for your legacies, but IMHO partitions with a Microfost-ish filesystem are meant to be used with Windows, and if you want to use the full possibilities Unix offers you, just use Unix filesystems. The default should be to be fully Windows-compliant - and you may add an option in /etc/fstab disabling character stripping. Why the hell would you use a Windows filesystem in a Linux-only environment?! I can only think of cases when Windows will have to access one day or another the filesystem: USB keys, external HD, Windows partitions on dual boot... Samba does not provide Windows with invalid characters when sharing files, and Linux must do the same with filesystems. Hope Ubuntu is more modest than you appear to see it. Serve the user, not the ideal technology you dream of in which every character is supported in filenames. When you're working on documents, being able to read it in a conference from your USB key is much more important than being allowed to keep a '?' in its filename, isn't it? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu boot speed fall in Hardy
Le mercredi 14 mai 2008 à 18:10 -0400, Phillip Susi a écrit : Mackenzie Morgan wrote: On Mon, 2008-05-12 at 02:17 +0200, Vincenzo Ciancia wrote: Il giorno dom, 11/05/2008 alle 17.32 -0400, Mackenzie Morgan ha scritto: On Sun, 2008-05-11 at 10:40 +0200, Vincenzo Ciancia wrote I wish I could configure what it considers low. You can: just launch gconf-editor and take a look at apps/gnome-power-manager/thresholds. It claims it hibernates when 2 minutes remain. It lies. Sounds like you need to replace your worn out battery pack then. Or just increase it to 5 minutes and see if that buys you enough time. Normally, gnome-power-manager should detect the real time left, and not only what the batteries claim. But if you never let the battery go until 0% without trying to stop the machine, I cannot see a way for g-p-m to calibrate that, since when your computer will shut down in the middle of the hibernation process, g-p-m has already been stopped. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: 1. Unabel to unmount/eject CD/DVD ? (( ``-_-?? ) -- Fernando)
Le mercredi 14 mai 2008 à 21:03 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas a écrit : That's a much better explanation than the error message. So you're right, it's not a bug: it's two bugs. One is that the error message is unhelpful, and the other is that the CD should be ejectable if the only programs that were using it aren't running any more. About the latter, see bug 91239: Cannot unmount volume: show which application(s) still use the drive [1]. This is a bitesize work that could be worth a bounty for somebody motivated. Cheers 1: http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-mount/+bug/81239 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Bug madness: High frequency of load/unload cycles
Le mardi 13 mai 2008 à 11:22 +0200, Oliver Grawert a écrit : hi, Am Montag, den 12.05.2008, 23:14 +0200 schrieb Milan Bouchet-Valat: I'd like to raise the developers' awareness about bug 59695 [1]: High frequency of load/unload cycles on some hard disks may shorten lifetime please see this article: http://lwn.net/Articles/257426/ it is not aything ubuntu specific but a hardware vendor setting, note as well that the relatime mount option is the default with hardys 2.6.24 kernel. If you think it's been solved with the relatime option in Hardy, then please go there and explain it to the subscribers, and set the bug to Invalid. Don't let people talk again and again about these issues. But AFAIK the problem is still here, and some users are returning to Windows because they say then their Hard Cycle Count is not rising so quickly - whether this can be Ubuntu's fault or just a result a kind of bug in Windows, I cannot tell. Anyway, if it is real that on Windows heads don't park, and on Linux they do, so no matter of the cause, we should at least provide an easy workaround. Can you claim there is nothing in this bug but nonsensical fear from users? I'm not taking side here, I can be sure of anything. What I know is that we should tell them if something has to be done, will be done, and why. Thanks for you work -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: firefox and bad ssl certificates
Le vendredi 09 mai 2008 à 17:02 -0400, Phillip Susi a écrit : Martin Pitt wrote: I don't consider it a new feature, but a better UI. Firefox has always complained about invalid certificates, but until version 2 it was just the well-known 'SSL yadayada cannot be verified mumblemumble click here to shut me up' popup dialog, and really everyone just clicked this away, right? Security click-through dialogs should be abolished, since they achieve nothing and are really just an excuse for the software provider: I know it is unsafe, and cannot give you something better. Of course you can't know either, but at least I can make it your problem now. Now you get at least a proper error message page. I don't doubt that the text can be improved, and make more concise/clear, etc., but the UI is much better IMHO. I could not disagree with this more strongly. You can't go around applying nerf padding to everything to protect against the possibility of someone running head first into the wall. When you try to protect people from themselves, and that protection has a negative impact on them, you aren't doing them any favors. I don't like the fact that my car won't let me ( or my passenger ) choose to fiddle with the gps while the wheels are turning, and I don't like this change to firefox. An invalid cert is something that MIGHT be cause for concern, but often is not, so a notification is quite sufficient to let the user decide if it is ok to proceed or not. Making them jump through hoops of fire to be SURE they want to proceed is a bad idea. Notifications are never read, especially by users that are not passionate by computers - they're exactly like there was no message at all, only they annoy users: click OK and then see if there's a problem is what OS have used people to for many years. And after that the lock in the adress bar still seems to confirm you're on a secure website. Now improving the existing message to be more informative and educate the user as to what is going on is something I'm all for, but you should not assume the user has no clue and must be locked up to protect him from himself. IMHO it's not mainly about educating the user, but to force servers to use correct certificates. When freedesktop.org will understand every person that goes to their bugtracker gets to the new Firefox warning, I guess they will change their certificate. ;-) (just an example) To continue your metaphor, it's primarily intended to force GPS vendors to provide hands-free models so that then you can drive without this kind of concern. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: The new firefox start page looks a bit tricky when searching google
Le samedi 10 mai 2008 à 16:01 +0200, Vincenzo Ciancia a écrit : And, to get back on the issue, perhaps the page could just be made local. Why do we need a special Ubuntu homepage anyway? The first thing I do when creating an account is changing my homepage to google.com. This practice mades me think of Internet Explorer defaulting to msn.com - well, much less ugly since our page is not full of ads and is using a real search engine. Wouldn't it be better to provide a page with help and informations about Ubuntu and some links like: Set your homepage to google.com/to yahoo.com/to a custom page ? We should keep in mind that people install an OS not to think about this OS but to work or surf; let's not be intrusive but help them to find easily what they want. What do you think? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Suggestion to make remote recovery easier
Le mercredi 07 mai 2008 à 03:44 +, Justin M. Wray a écrit : Another idea would be to not only tunnel SSH but also VNC. Allowing the newbie to watch the helper do something at times might be the goal, and will make help facilitate learning. In addition the issue might be with a GTK/GUI app, and VNC would be the fastest approch. If you limit your goal in this spec to general help (as opposed to recovery from an unusable system), then you can do it in a nice and easy way with Telepathy. The newbie only has to select his technical friend while they chat on Empathy, and say Give this contact control on my desktop. Then if a console is needed the geek will start it by itself (gnome-terminal). The drawback here is that in case X does not start anymore, this would not work. But for the most common case of a new Linux user asking how can I do that, this is perfect since you can see what the friend is doing, and possibily learn. And this is nicer because you don't give total control on the computer to a friend who may install what he wants (even if you trust him, this possibility may refrain you from remote help). A word about openssh-server: Please don't disable password connexions by default, it is your script that will have to do so. The defaults now are sane and quick to use. Many people are behind firewalls and can install a SSH server without fear of terrible attacks on their LANs. Only when the user is known to be a newbie not controlling the SSH server we should secure it the most. Very nice idea anyway! -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Four crashes, no apport actions
Le mercredi 07 mai 2008 à 14:36 +0200, Stéphane Graber a écrit : Apport is only used during development, it's turned off in final release. Why is it disabled? I find it very useful to debug for advanced users instead of getting gdb traces. Is there a way to manually activate it? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Four crashes, no apport actions
Le mercredi 07 mai 2008 à 18:00 +0200, Martin Pitt a écrit : Hi, Milan Bouchet-Valat [2008-05-07 17:41 +0200]: Why is it disabled? Because (1) we have our hands full with fixing the development release and want to concentrate on it (2) we should already know about the top crashers in stable releases, and the ones which just occur randomly or very seldomly are not a good target for stable updates anyway (3) we want to avoid people filing bugs and dozens of duplicates in vain (4) automatic bug reports are always a potential privacy issue, which is more concerning for stable users. I find it very useful to debug for advanced users instead of getting gdb traces. Is there a way to manually activate it? Sure, you can turn it on in /etc/default/apport. OK, thanks for the info, I had not managed to understand why apport did sometimes start and sometimes not. But it's definitely a great tool when debugging. And I guess this can help when triagin bugs: we can simply tell the user to activate apport for the time he gets an automatic trace. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Pulseaudio/Jack in Ubuntu Hardy
Please don't take my remarks so badly! I did not said I was smarter than every audio packager in Ubuntu, nor did I said this was absolutely required for Ubuntu to be something usable and that else I'd immediately go to Windows. Believe it if you want: I'm not even personally interested in getting Ardour working out of the box since I don't use it. And I'm okay to configure jackd myself for use with Rosegarden (which AFAIK needs jack) - actually on my computer it requires no configuration but the defaults. I perfectly agree with you that as soon as you want to make your computer something quite serious you need to configure things. But what you managed until now not to answer to is: would basic defaults making jackd output to PulseAudio hurt anybody? Sure it would be slow, it would not be serious at all, but would it allow people that can stand that use JACK then? Others, as you said, will configure it. I'm not asking you to implement it, I'm just looking for a possible theoretical solution. As a user I guess I can help by telling developers what users may like to see. Have a good day -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Pulseaudio/Jack in Ubuntu Hardy
Le vendredi 25 avril 2008 à 19:45 +0200, Gonz Hauser a écrit : My opinion is that it should be possible to provide a _default_ configuration where jackd connects to pulseaudio (this is what module-jack-source is for, right?). Let me repeat my two concerns: 1. Ardour in Ubuntu Hardy doesn't work out of the box 2. It is not possible to use mplayer and ardour at the same time I believe it is possible manually fix this up but I have still the opinion that it should be possible to provide a simple default configuration. So please convince me that I'm wrong (and it isn't possible to have a working ardour on a notebook) or tell me how this can be resolved. You put so much hard work into ardour/jack/pulseaudio that it should not fail because of a small configuration mistake. Thanks for your work/ideas/help, I've been through both bugs and to me, as an occasional jack user, it seems that the best would be that jackd defaults to the pulseaudio output. Users that have better hardware and do more advanced stuff are able to tweak what they need. The current situation is bad for everybody: noobs have to configure jackd, but advanced users configure it anyway. What I don't understand is: - whether the -n 3 option would work for every standard card or if some absolutely require -n 2 - whether going though pulseaudio is really an issue concerning performance (I mean, only for base users) Since ardour requires jackd, the latter should configure itself automatically so that ardour can start it flawlessly. But maybe this is a little trickier that it seems - at least this was why pulseaudio was introduced in Hardy. Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: merging keyboard keyboard shortcuts capplets
Le vendredi 25 avril 2008 à 16:23 +1000, Jared Moore a écrit : Around a month ago I uploaded a patch to GNOME bugzilla to merge the keyboard shortcuts capplet (gnome-keybinding-properties) into the keyboard capplet (gnome-keyboard-properties) [1]. This was discussed on the gnomecc-list [2], but there was fairly limited interest from the gnome-control-center developers. This is a good idea, but what Matthias Clasen says [2] about adding mouse gestures to a broader Shortcuts applet is not stupid either. Though I can agree he's maybe not as comprehensive as he could be... ;-) I'm wondering if there is any interest in adopting this patch in Ubuntu. Clearly there is a lot of work left to be done on the patch, but I'd prefer not to spend working time on it if there isn't any interest. In particular I'm looking for developer interest, i.e. from whoever would be in a position to eventually commit this to Ubuntu. I believe that with some work this patch can be redone in a way that will minimise the size of the patch (and therefore not cause horrible breakage if/when there are upstream changes). Note that reducing the number of items in System-Preferences is the 4th highest idea on Ubuntu brainstorm [3], and there are numerous related Launchpad bugs / wiki pages / blog posts / etc. [4][5], probably more if you dig deep enough... I don't think it is reasonable to fork upstream GNOME since this will lead to quite a few problems when they change their applets. Imagine for example they create a Mouse gestures tab in the Shortcuts applet. Where will it go in Ubuntu? But maybe you can propose them to help merging applets that they'd like to see merged. Bluetooth preferences could go to Removable devices for example, and I'm sure there are plenty of ideas in that way. Hope this helps - anyway IMHO your goal is right (TM) [1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78102 [2] Thread beginning at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnomecc-list/2008-March/msg00018.html [3] http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/most_popular_ever/ [4] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MenusRevisited2 [5] http://architectfantasy.com/?p=25 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Hardy abnormal disk use on battery
Le jeudi 24 avril 2008 à 21:45 +0200, Jan Claeys wrote: Op zondag 20-04-2008 om 20:35 uur [tijdzone +0200], schreef Milan Bouchet-Valat: I noticed that on Hardy, when (and only when) my laptop is on battery, the hard disk makes a sound every second or so, and never stops, even when no application is running but the desktop. atop reports this is pdflush that is writing something to the disk, but I could not identify why. What is strange is that as soon as I plug the power cable, the sound stop (rather illogical, sin't it?). Before reporting a bug I'd like to know if anyone sees this behavior - just unplug the cable and listen! Just a guess: check your logfiles if anything starts spewing error or warning messages when you are on battery? Nothing there either. I've opened a bug report here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/221967 Thanks anyway! -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Hardy abnormal disk use on battery
Hi all! I noticed that on Hardy, when (and only when) my laptop is on battery, the hard disk makes a sound every second or so, and never stops, even when no application is running but the desktop. atop reports this is pdflush that is writing something to the disk, but I could not identify why. What is strange is that as soon as I plug the power cable, the sound stop (rather illogical, sin't it?). Before reporting a bug I'd like to know if anyone sees this behavior - just unplug the cable and listen! -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Hardy abnormal disk use on battery
Le dimanche 20 avril 2008 à 15:11 -0500, Jerone Young wrote: Hmm..this is a guess...I have a feeling this is the new indexing search (tracker) feature at work (which I personally hate.. but it's a feature somebody is using). In your task bar you should see a magnifying glass (usually orange on the inside). In right click on it to find prefrences. You see a check box to diable or enable preferences. No, I forgot to mention I already checked it occurred even when trackerd was killed. Actually, it is smarter than you would expect and does not bother you when on battery - very nice tool IMHO. ;-) -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Hardy abnormal disk use on battery
Le dimanche 20 avril 2008 à 23:11 +0200, Przemysław Kulczycki wrote: Do you have laptop mode enabled? My guess is that it might be the (in)famous bug 59695. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/59695 No, it's a fresh install without any tweak. But my guess would rather be that the bug I experience may accidentally solve the cycle count issue (bug 59695) since the heads can never park because of the disk activity. This is juyst an idea but may be worth checking. If no confirmation from others comes, though, I'll simply file a bug and investigate. I thought many people could experience the same, since it should not be related to hardware, but for now it's not really the case! Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Evolution spam filter not working?
Has anybody managed to get the bogofilter plugin for Evolution work in Hardy? For me, Evolution reports that learning spams works fine, everything is present (plugin and binaries), spamassasin is disabled, junk filtering is enabled, but spams don't get caught. I wonder about this because I did never have it working in precedent versions either, and I don't know if this is worth a bug. Maybe just clearing my user configuration would solve it - upgrading is often cause of trouble. Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Unneeded System Tools menu
In Hardy, all applications that don't really manage system-wide or user settings were moved from System-Preferences and -Administration to Applications-System Tools. This is a good idea as a general rule since previously both configuration menus were bloated by numerous tools. But in the default install, adding a System Tools menu in Applications in not user-friendly. The two only tools that appear there are hwtest-gtk and gnome-system-monitor: these are not likely to be used by the base user; furthermore, their use is very different from that of most applications, i.e. editing documents, and so on. So I suggest we choose either to put g-s-m and back to System-Administration, or we hide its icon, adding elsewhere a way to start it (a keyboard shortcut?), and the sme for hwtest-gtk. We may consider short-term and long-term solutions to this, because the current situation is IMHO not very good. This was already raised in this bug (with one duplicate): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-system-monitor/+bug/205190 Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Unneeded System Tools menu
Sebastien Bacher wrote: We will likely move some other things back there if we continue to use the category. The comments there are interesting though. Why do you think it's an issue? Do you find confusing to have the category unmasked and containing only one item if you install vmware for example? This would be less of a problem for me, since as Timo said, users that install such programs are likely not to be afraid by system stuff. Mackenzie Morgan wrote: I think the confusion is in the naming. We have a System menu and a System... submenu now. The suggestion that it be renamed to simply Tools makes sense to me. The expression System is not the only, nor the main problem: adding a submenu when you only have 7 of them is a major change in Applications. For now, this menu is very nice and only contains productive apps, not tools. In a day-to-day use, users won't need this system tools, however you may name them - I like the idea of separating clearly these categories of programs. And Tools already exists, if you don't go this way: it's called Accessories. If you agree we should do something, here is short list of options: - the easiest may be to move g-s-m to Accessories and hwtest to Administration - another more complex approach could be to create a submenu in Administration called System Tools or something like that, so it would not annoy us when we want to work and not administrate the system. This would work on a long-term outlook, since we can completely remove the System Tools menu from Applications. [- Almost out of topic: we could hide hwtest-gtk and instead use gnome-device-manager with a button to start hwtest, like we used to do. This tool would be useful (no way of getting hardware infos ATM) and could go to Administration.] The constant moving of items between the menus is IMHO the result of the fact that we don't really know what do to with them: no perfect scheme has been found so far. Hope we may find the right one. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: gnome-panel and Fitt's law?
Le lundi 31 mars 2008 à 10:32 -0700, Dylan McCall a écrit : My panel is at the top of the screen. Perhaps this changes weirdly depending on orientation? Mine is a the top too. I am using Metacity, with compositing turned on. Possibly a Compiz issue? This has always been a compiz issue. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [Policykit] No possibilty to unlock the save option in Gedit while
(``-_-´´) -- Fernando a écrit : On Monday 24 March 2008 15:01:07 Milan Bouchet-Valat wrote: Here we can just agree, but nobody codes directly into gedit. Cheers But isn't this a problem with PolicyKit and not Gedit? AFAIK PolicyKit already allows to do this, gedit just needs to use it to get the adequate rights. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [Policykit] No possibilty to unlock the save option in Gedit while
thibaut bethune a écrit : I think that : either the save button should not be active (at less) either the user should have the possibilty to give the password to be able to save the file (that would be perfect to me) This is a good idea, but ubuntu-devel-discuss is IMHO not the best place to talk about that. Please report a bug (wishlist) on http://bugzilla.gnome.org to the gedit product: they'll see what they can do. Here we can just agree, but nobody codes directly into gedit. Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Bug and discussion about ubuntu menu
Greg K Nicholson a écrit : On Sat, 2008-03-15 at 11:19 +0100, Milan Bouchet-Valat wrote: Ouattara Oumar Aziz (alias wattazoum) wrote: You'd call it My Diary because you are creating it for yourself. The user doesn't label the Preferences menu for themself—the label is applied by the computer. “My” is only ever used to mean “your” on toys for three-year-olds*, much like how when talking to a small child one refers to things using the name *they* should use to refer to them (for example calling yourself “Mummy” or “Daddy” instead of “me”). Small children aren't clever enough to understand pronouns. (* Windows XP—I know.) Speaking for the user—using “my” as if they'd written it—is disingenuous and/or talks down to the user, so it should be avoided. I like your way of presenting this language habit. ;-) If we could pull in the the user's actual name in a way that's compatible with a wide variety of cultures, I'd suggest using something like “Preferences for Greg”. That may do the trick, as it's already used by the home folder on the desktop. Or we ca say User Preferences, with this Administration will appear much clearer. If that's not possible, just “Preferences” will do—the word “preference” tends to imply *personal* preference anyway. I thought so, but it looks like people don't make the difference between preferences (personal) and administration (ugly system and hardware stuff). The fact is that we are now turning round. Anyway, we should make clear whther we need a deeper refactoring, in which case the Preferences/Administration issue will disappear. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Bug and discussion about ubuntu menu
Ouattara Oumar Aziz (alias wattazoum) wrote: Anyway, do we validate Preferences to Your Preferences ? I'd say My preferences, as Remco argued few mails before: Those are different things. Those tool tips are like a teacher directly speaking to you. But the text in programs is about the data. Think about a program that let's you create a diary. You'd call it My Diary because you are creating it for yourself. You're not creating one for the computer. However, the tool-tips and suggestions would address you as you. That's the computer helping you by talking to you. I approve of his classification, but this will require much work from upstream, and from Ubuntu to merge distro-specific tools into GNOME ones, like it was done for Appearance. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: libc borked (and I stop testing)
Vincenzo Ciancia a écrit : A possible idea to improve the situation is to have a regression tag, and to mark high priority all regressions. Say what you want, but this is *exactly* the behaviour that one would expect from any software distributor: things works, you break it, I tell you as soon as I discover it, you fix it as soon as possible because the bug is in the change you just made, so your change has to be fixed. If you let the regression there for three years, you'll have hysterical raisins when you put your hands back on that code. +1 Would somebody that can set up new rules for Bug Squad, QA, Bug Control and so on teams add the tag regression in the list of tags to use, and shift policy so that every regression is marked as High priority? This would at least help to sum up what should really be fixed, because often these bugs are forgotten. Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Bug and discussion about ubuntu menu
I read what you explained in the bug report, and here are a few remarks. Clarifying the confusion around Preferences Administration is IMHO a good idea, since every base user seems to have problems with it. Naming them User Preferences and System Administration can be nice since it's not too hard to change. Though, notice that the parent menu is already named System, so let's not end up with jokes like Start - Stop in Windows. If in System you have System Administration and User Preferences, this means that User Preferences is not a system setting, and thus should not be there in the menu. This can look like a detail, but IMHO it's important that we think of consistency. These strings are also very long, and may not look nice. Maybe you could simply rename them to User Preferences and Administration, the latter makes it quite clear that we're dealing with hard configuration. Here I don't have a real solution, just some advice. ;-) Please also take care of not doing this change alone - you're aware of that since you asked the list. This should be discussed with GNOME, since they have the same issue. Moreover, PolicyKit is going to add many changes in this domain, and maybe the distinction system-wide/user-only will disappear soon. This will be a real problem while we are migrating, and I'm glad you're caring about this now. Maybe the best solution would be a single Control Center, which already exists. So please see this in a long-term outlook, changes are likely to happen in the newt months. About renaming the configuration items to emphasize (Set and Modify)/(Manage, System, Global), please don't do this! I just managed to remove every piece of unneeded text there, and these expressions are really useless: if the menu description is clear enough, you know what you want to do, and you're just looking for the domain (printing, screen...) you want to configure. Everything else is bloating the menu - and will ask much work that cannot be unified in one package. And a detail: why do you make a so large list of packages to be affected? gnome-menu should be (almost) the only one. Just some (long) thoughts - good luck, it's not an easy issue -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Bug and discussion about ubuntu menu
Ouattara Oumar Aziz (alias wattazoum) wrote : Milan Bouchet-Valat wrote: I read what you explained in the bug report, and here are a few remarks. Clarifying the confusion around Preferences Administration is IMHO a good idea, since every base user seems to have problems with it. Naming them User Preferences and System Administration can be nice since it's not too hard to change. Though, notice that the parent menu is already named System, so let's not end up with jokes like Start - Stop in Windows. If in System you have System Administration and User Preferences, this means that User Preferences is not a system setting, and thus should not be there in the menu. This can look like a detail, but IMHO it's important that we think of consistency. These strings are also very long, and may not look nice. Maybe you could simply rename them to User Preferences and Administration, the latter makes it quite clear that we're dealing with hard configuration. Here I don't have a real solution, just some advice. ;-) I thought about renaming Preferences to My Preferences because User preferences might be a very long label for some language. Good idea - this should not raise any issues and would help much. This is quite like My Yahoo or other services, people will understand that at the first glance. Just propose it to upstream GNOME. Please also take care of not doing this change alone - you're aware of that since you asked the list. This should be discussed with GNOME, since they have the same issue. Moreover, PolicyKit is going to add many changes in this domain, and maybe the distinction system-wide/user-only will disappear soon. This will be a real problem while we are migrating, and I'm glad you're caring about this now. Maybe the best solution would be a single Control Center, which already exists. So please see this in a long-term outlook, changes are likely to happen in the newt months. This is indeed true. I remember the Gnome Control Center were introduced to replace those two menu sets in feisty then removed after a few days. I think the reason was that a lot of people found that it was slower to access a menu item this way. I was a supporter of an option so that advanced users can use menus, but this idea was not very popular. It's true that the default UI should suit every need we can imagine, but meanwhile, both needs seem difficult to satisfy. A more professional solution would be to merge the configurations GUIs and use policy kit to hide System Wide tasks. But this takes time. I am really wondering if we shouldn't study this solution. Have a single GUI for Printing but hide some options using policy kit ... I'll think more clearly about this and I shall write here :-) I'm not sure we'll be able to hide all system tasks and merge all tools. There are some that only deal with system settings (log viewer, software tools...) and others with the desktop (menu prefs, energy, preferred programs...); others are distro-specific system tools and thus cannot be merged (easily) with GNOME prefs. We can try to make them the less numerous possible, though. Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Bug and discussion about ubuntu menu
Ouattara Oumar Aziz (alias wattazoum) a écrit : I like the proposal. Moving from System | - Preferences ` - Administration to Configuration | - Your Preferences ` - System Administration Is every one okay with this one ? To me it's seems clearer: *Configuration* is more generic and correct regarding the sub menu items than *System* ( which seems more linked to the system Administration than to the User Desktop configuration ). You forget one detail: System is not only for configuration, else this menu would not exist. It has definitely been carefully chosen. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: System Presence Integration Idea
Chris Warburton wrote: Hi thanks for the input. I realise that such a proposal is quite open ended, thus I tried to split it into relatively clear steps to go through to try and prevent both blue sky designing and worrying about issues that end up not appearing in the implementation. I think stage 1, the discussion, should be a quite technical discussion, ie. throw some ideas into the aether and decide which of those is possible. My own train of thought was about having Telepathy running as a central, standard system to use for presence. Presence would cover general key:value type data, ie. Location:Home, Status:Busy, Activity:On The Phone, etc. (those are just examples). There may need to be an agreed upon standard for the naming here, if multiple programs and desktop environments are going to use it. IMHO what you need is a central daemon that only performs a few actions and communicated via D-BUS. You just have to set a D-BUS protocol so that programs can set/get the state: Telepathy can set it, but also retreive it when starting - this way the daemon can test some system parameters and decide of a certain state automatically depending on the network, on the battery... Maybe gnome-session could be the place to do so. And network settings has a profile management that you could integrate. Just ideas... Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
False default font Times in OpenOffice.org
Almost a year ago, I reported an issue [1] that appeared in OO.o Witer in Feisty: the default font is set to Times, which does not exist and actually acts as an alias for the former default Nimbus Roman No 9 L (this does not affect users that upgraded from Edgy and older). The problem is, people believe this font exists, but they cannot choose it from the fonts list when they want to use it. This is misleading and does not help to become familiar with Ubuntu's own and good fonts. This was introduced by a patch: openoffice.org (2.2.0-0ubuntu1) feisty * Use Times/Helvetica as the default font for writer documents (calc and impress still pick up the DejaVu screen font). by Matthias Klose (who does great work apart from that) on Thu, 29 Mar 2007. Debian does not use it, nor AFAIK does Fedora. I could not get more explanation of the rationale of this decision. OO.o automatically chooses the right font according to what is installed, so there's no need for hardcoding an alias. Substitution is only needed for e.g. Times New Roman, and can be nicely used with the Liberation Fonts, but it is not needed for the default font. So I raise this point here hoping that some developers can explain/debate on this better (Matthias, more information?) since a bug report is not ideal for that. Cheers 1: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+bug/105906 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Strange Firefox problem
Christian Csar a écrit : So far the only problem with Firefox 3 in hardy, is that it seems to have substantial problems visiting Google, but not other websites I have noticed. This also only happens if I go by URL rather than IP address from ping. What is also strange is that it is intermittent within firefox. Google quite simply is not loading after more than 5 minutes, but going to the 64.233.169.104 gets there nearly instantaneously. Konqueror gets to google nearly instantaneously. I imagine that if this problem affected others that they would have filed some sort of bug report by now, so it may be specific to me. My only guess is that Firefox has a google ip hard coded somewhere, which does not make too much sense. about:config searching for google does not turn up anything that seems too strange. Christian IPv6 issue maybe? Just a guess, but a while ago a v6 DNS lookup was performed and since no response was got, a delay was introduced. It may be good to investigate in this direction... Just my two cents -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Hardy Alpha-4 synaptic error
Richard Mancusi wrote: Okay, I did another clean install and can repeat the problem. On a test system I always set a root password and allow root logon. Yes, I know that isn't a great idea, but it comes in handy on a test system. As soon as I set a root password in System/Administration/Users and Groups the root user Home directory moved from /root to /home/root. I guess it's a matter of opinion as to whether this is a bug. Ubuntu and common sense tells you to not set a root password. But if you are going to allow it, it should work correctly. I leave that to the developers. Agreed, setting a root password is a common Unix feature that should remain possible to do with a simple 'sudo passwd' or optionally using the Users admin tool. This should always work, regardless of what policy we'd like to promote about the root account: here it is simply a bug. Please open a bug report on users-admin. Anyway, forbidding to set a root password should be done in a smarter way if we wanted to do so. Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Spelling library consolidation
Since we talk about it, two questions about hunspell in Hardy: 1) The specification [1] about removing duplicate dictionnaries suggest we make OpenOffice.org use myspell in order to avoid the need for unspell. A comment states that hunspell is an improvement of myspell, dropped by OO.o in the 2.x series. So is this true that we are willing to loose the new features of hunspell when the contrary should be done (i.e. dropping aspell and myspell)? Note Mozilla products also use hunspell. 2) When searching for what hunspell dicts are available, I can only find these in our package list, in both Gutsy and Hardy: hunspell-de-at - Austrian (German) dictionary for hunspell hunspell-de-ch - Swiss (German) dictionary for hunspell hunspell-de-de - German dictionary for hunspell hunspell-uz - The Uzbek dictionary for Hunspell Am I missing something, or aren't there any other languages we support for now? The OO.o wiki [2] lists many more available Hunspell dictionaries, many of which were recently updated. In French for example, current OO.o orthograph checker is quite poor, but a new dictionary will be provided with 2.4, which will solve almost all of our problems. I guess this can be the case for several languages. So is Hardy be going to provide more Hunspell languages, and is this hard work to package? Cheers [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ConsolidateSpellingLibs [2] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: gThumb
Kevin Fries wrote: This argument has raged before. Has anyone thought of maybe a compromise... Something much better than GThumb (not hard) but not based on Mono. Maybe something like Blue Marine? http://bluemarine.tidalwave.it/ Just a thought. They already package a DEB file and it is about 30M, not sure how big the other packages are. Is Java really better than Mono? Not speaking of needs to stabilize this development version... -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Deprecating slocate for desktop users?
Jan Claeyswrote: Op vrijdag 04-01-2008 om 04:33 uur [tijdzone -0500], schreef Bryan Quigley: Is there any possibility of have locate use the tracker database? Tracker databases are currently per-user, so I don't think that would be useful. Maybe if there ever exists a concept of a system database next to the user database in Tracker...? The problem is, Tracker only indexes home folders, not the whole filesystem. And Tracker uses a complex indexing with keywords that is not needed for locate. Merging the per-user databases would be a mess, so forget it... By the way, exluding home directories from the updatedb path could be nice: we don't need to index user folders because Tracker is doing that, and this would avoid much work for updatedb. Still, rlocate seems to be a nice improvement (combined or not with the latter feature): it's a locate implementation that uses a kernel module to store a list of modified/moved files and folders, and once a day (or when you want) this list is read and the database is updated via a diff. Looks more advanced than mlocate, isn't it? http://rlocate.sourceforge.net/ Just a few ideas -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Easy Add/Remove Porgrams for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?
Kevin Fries a écrit : snip Modern Nix based systems have a wonderful tool called SUDO that makes getting around this issue extremely easy. If you want someone to be able to admin your box, add them to the admin group on any Ubuntu based system. Then they have sudo access to any root command. If you want to allow non-root users to be able to install software, that is easy also: - Create a group call swinstall - In your /etc/sudoers file add the following line: %swinstall ALL = /usr/bin/update-manager - Add any user you wish to have software install access to the swinstall group. Hope this helps I should add that in Hardy we should have an even nicer system called PolicyKit that will allow you to set many fine-tuned permissions, like user x is allowed to install packages from the standard repositories, but not to uninstall any package and not do administrate anything else, etc. So this will be nice to avoid the ugly (from my point of view) hacks to install packages in ~. Our current way of managing packages is very robust and much more secure, if we don't want to end up like Windows. Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Deprecating slocate for desktop users?
Timo Jyrinki a écrit : snip So still, I argue that slocate should be _at least_ moved to cron.weekly, with the additional steps I'd hope for too: 1. move to cron.monthly instead of cron.weekly 2. switch from slocate to mlocate 3. remove mlocate/slocate dependency from Ubuntu default desktop installation (leave it on server installations) That seems just common sense, but last time (not the first) I rose this issue here, people preferred to keep Ubuntu geek-compliant. The argument is (mainly) that it's an almost standard Unix tool, and that sometimes normal users need help from admins that expect the tool to be here. Though, I think the best is not to install it, because if it's installed and not enabled/up-to-date it may be confusing. But when you type 'locate', our nice apt tells you to install package XXX, which will be done in a few seconds, and a few minutes for updatedb to run (once for all if you regularly administer this machine). One day this wil change.. ;-) Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Fwd: Mono (Re: New Programs for Hardy?)
Kevin Fries wrote: I will even help you with one more I would like to see... Scribus. My mother uses this along with Inkscape for her scrap-booking (definitely not a geeky endeavor), and with a few tweaks to the descriptions, could be a very popular addition. I second that, but this adds a Qt dependency. But there are better places to trim than mono. I personally would like to see more mono apps included by default to encourage Wintel developers to extend their product to the Linux desktop. That would be a win for everybody but Microsoft, but that does not disappoint me so much. I guess you've read paranoid scenarios like this one: http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/mono I'd rather hope that Mono stays an exception in the FLOSS world, only using it for IT that want to convert Windows software or that develop corporation-specific apps. Encouraging the use of Mono in GNOME and default Desktops is IMHO very dangerous until we have got certitudes about patents. Windows developers should better change their practices and philosophy. Though, I agree F-Spot is one of our killer apps, and that GThumb is not as user-friendly as we may expect. May we hope it evolves? It may be worth to care about it, since it has many nice features, and only lacks a few (UI for the most part, and Conduit will come). Cheers, Milan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Password-protect grub interactive commands
OK, just forget the GRUB password idea, I've understood how it can become a complete mess. Sorry for the idea... But what about that? unggnu wrote: snip I like the way Ubuntu handles root that always sudo is needed so why we don't make it with Recovery mode too? Just don't autologin root like root has a password. Why not let the user login in with his user and then use sudo to gain root access or set the user password for root and disable the account? With this no grub password/lock is needed but there is still basic security. If you are afraid if people forget their password why not make a little program on Live CD which can make that for you? Everyone can boot a CD and reset their password but only if they have bios/boot access like every private person. I really second this idea, doing that and locking GRUB for any modification of kernel parameters except recovery mode would be a real security improvement. We should not let Windows XP overdo Linux here. And anyway, there is the LiveCD if really needed. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Password-protect grub interactive commands
The issue for now is clear: you can't let your, say, laptop to anybody for an hour or even less without risking ha may easily get root access and maybe change your password or modify your system. It can simply be used to read confidential files, like personal mail, not like military secret but just private. Ubuntu is almost inviting you to do this by simply rebooting and choosing Recovery, without any restriction (you need to know ho to use the very basics of console). OTOH, inserting a LiveCD is almost as simple, and we can't prevent it. Still, it's more complex to do. 1) The person must have the CD here by hand, it may take time to get it 2) He must browse the system disks to find the data ha wants, use a chroot to change passwords (much more complex, only quite advanced users can do that) 3) This is a slightly different pace, since the attacker must use an external software/disc to do that, as opposed to the included Recovery mode. Using a CD is clearly choosing to attack the computer. Anyway, you have to secure your BIOS if you want a reasonably secured computer. But locking GRUB would help the user to go this way if he wants to. Now what are the drawbacks of asking for a password in GRUB? The only I can see is if you've lost your root/admin user password, or you have to work on a system in which you don't have any password though you have the authorization/request to administrate it. In this case, I think requiring the admin to use a LiveCD in not abusive. All in all, I'd rather suggest to activate password-locked GRUB, but I understand this question is hard to decide. Does anybody see other agruments on both sides? Cheers. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Checking /usr/local/ before upgrading
(Please don't kill me for intervening in this thread. :-) ) Vincenzo Ciancia a écrit : I expected anything out of this thread, but people defending the idea that keeping /usr/local/lib in the library path during system upgrades is a good idea. I can accept to have problems *after* the upgrade, but not to be left with an unusable system just because I had stuff in /usr/local and that's my fault. Maybe there's no reason to fight over that, but I think this can be a good idea. Are there any drawbacks of temporarily removing /usr/lib from lib path before upgrading? In any case, this can help to make the process work as expected by the developers. I had recently such an experience with old GNUnet libs in /usr/local that blocked it; not a big deal, but disabling them would have allowed my update to go flawlessly. Many may be frightened by apt inconsistency errors. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: UI for backports usage
There's obviously a need for a new infrastructure/UI. Since GDebi and apt-url are to be disabled in future versions (which I approve of), we should find a way to allow the user to select trusted repositories and easily install software from there, either on a replace-alla-installed-packages basis or on a ponctual one. Maybe apt-url could be modified only to accept trusted repos. Else, we would need a new graphical tool, or new features in Add/Remove applications. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Untrusted software and security click-through warnings
I completely agree with Ian: let's just get rid of GDebi Co. installed by default, thus requiring the users to copy/paste commands to a console. This is IMHO the best warning we can provide, and daring/being able to start a console and do this is already a check of the user will and capacity at the same time. Now, as Alexander says, we must provide easy ways to install missing packages that are approved by Ubuntu. Else we will only be boring users when they install a normal system. We need a list of all reasonably needed packages to make a standard Desktop run (encrypted DVDs, drivers, backports...) and of known trustable repositories. What I like in Ubuntu, it's that constantly new outlooks emerge to create completely new designs that will be fit to the Desktop for a long time. With upstart it was great; today, we are concerned about what we will become when Ubuntu is the first OS used in the word. That's what we need to think of, and that's no joke! ;-) -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Bug: blurry menu icons with most of gnome-themes
Sebastien Bacher wrote: As mentioned on the bug already that's not an Ubuntu specific issue and should be worked upstream. There is no easy workaround known at the moment but if you know one you are welcome to describe it on the bug You know I'm not the kind of guy to damn Ubuntu because of the many bugs that are still open now, but I'm going to end thinking you really don't care. :-) This is in my last mail: I found an easy workaround (see the report too): using 24x24 icons in themes such as Clearlooks restores the normal appearance of all icons. I could not find any drawback. Which was cleary detailed here (two weeks ago): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-themes/+bug/141227/comments/21 I quote my comment: I tried a dirty hack: adding gtk-icon-sizes = panel-menu=24,24 to /usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtk-2.0/gtkrc. And now all my Clearlooks icons are perfect in the menus. Should we only fix the erroneous themes (they are in gnome-themes)? Please, could somebody have a look to confirm this? Now it's quite late but this fix is *essential*. If there are drawbacks (and I could find none), they can hardly be worse than now. Cheers -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Bug: blurry menu icons with most of gnome-themes
I'd like to raise your awareness about bug 141227 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-themes/+bug/141227) which deals with a major issue in Gutsy. Many menu icons appear blurry when you choose a theme other than Human. I believe this is impacting all Ubuntu Destkops. This is involving pretty standard applications like Baobab, Preferred applications and even About GNOME. It makes any custom theme unusable (i.e. ugly), thus restricting Ubuntu to one only theme. There are bugs open upstream (see the report), but nobody seems to act there. This is a matter of 22x22 icons not being installed by applications (Human is using 24x24). I found an easy workaround (see the report too): using 24x24 icons in themes such as Clearlooks restores the normal appearance of all icons. I could not find any drawback. Is everybody here experiencing the same? Does any developer want to tackle the ugliest bug I have found in Gutsy? Maybe it can be fixed with a few tweaks. Thanks - and sorry for talking about bugs in the list, but it seems that in some cases we are allowed to, and we should -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
And how about using ReiserFS by default, or any other journaled filesystem that doesn't require fsck to run regularly? I'm using reiser3, and I hadn't noticed that fsck was run by default on startup until a friend of mine installed Ubuntu with standard settings (i.e. with ext3). From Wikipedia: ReiserFS is the default file system on the Slackware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware, Xandros http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xandros, Yoper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YOPER, Linspire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linspire, GoboLinux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoboLinux, Kurumin Linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurumin_Linux, FTOSX and Libranet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libranet Linux distributions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution. ReiserFS was the default file system in Novell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise until Novell decided to move to ext3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3 on October 12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_12, 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006^ for future releases. Why did Novell went back to ext3? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Apturl (security) issues and inclusion in Gutsy
Vincenzo Ciancia a écrit : Adding a way for people to provide user-friendly apt sources without having to upload screenshots on how to add sources in system/administration/sources (whatever it is called in english) does not change the overall security model of ubuntu and apt, which is, if you have the root password, you can do whatever you like to your system, and if you add an apt source and its gpg key using the root password, you are authorizing other people to do whatever they want to your system. The new point is that you can easily add repositories even when you don't know a minimum how apt is working. And once you've added repositories, even pepople willing to help you (by providing new software) can impact in a bad way your desktop, and users will blame Ubuntu for that. Expect to get many non-Ubuntu bugs form users that don't know they are using bleeding-edge software from custom repositories. At least, the first time you add a repository using apt-url, it should warn you in a flashy way wat you're doing, and neeed to to really read the warning. And then, before adding a repository, it should print : - the number of packages the repository provides and - the list of installed or main packages that may be replaced automatically. Using for example two dialogs, you would need to click twice on 'Next' to install it, this would be a minimum protection. Even more: at any time, the user should be able to easily revert to a pure Ubuntu desktop by disabling the custom repositories and removing their packages. I still agree that this feature may lead ubuntu into Windows-like behavior, with unknown programs starting now and then, and an unstable system. We should think twice about it, and wait for apt-url to be really mature (at least, for it to implement all needed security features). -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: update-db cron job: solving a long-standing issue
Mark Schouten said: I prefer this too. I also think it is good to think about newbies, but is it really necessary to ignore more advanced users just because they know what they're looking for? I know I would be annoyed if locate was missing on my server. We're not talking about servers but only Desktop versions. Of course, on servers admin should need it. Note I'm not hating locate by principle, but because it makes sometime computers hang without explanation. If we could use a more comprehensive way of indexing files, like Tracker does (ie when you do'nt work), this could be OK. Comparison with Tracker is not accurate because of this feature. rlocate seems to be resource-intensive too, because it needs a complete rescanning every 10 starts or so. IMHO, a workaround with find and dpkg is not so bad for occasional usages, and 'apt-get install slocate' is easy for anybody using the command-line. Colin Watson said: Can we not come up with a way to generate the locate database from tracker instead? Beagle does this for system-wide documentation, AFAIK. So this is possible, only taking care of the filenames. (But Beagle was eating CPU doing this too, though it is not necessary.) The dependencies point should be investigated more, but AFAIK gnome-utils (ie gnome-search-tool) doesn't depend on locate. Is it able to use find ? Anyway, I've opened a bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/slocate/+bug/140493 We should use it when we have found a common position. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
update-db cron job: solving a long-standing issue
The slocate cron.daily job has long been an issue, making users ask why their computers were not responding or simply working hard without any explanation. This little 'bug' is giving a really bad impression to new users, making Ubuntu look 'Windows-like' (the worst for us), that is to say unstable and strange. Having a look to Launchpad bug tracker, you can see that at least 5 open bugs refer to this problem, some proposing patches to make the issue less annoying. Those are: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/slocate/+bug/134692 (with a committed patch, about using ionice to lessen the io usage of updatedb) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/slocate/+bug/13671* (duplicate*, reporting ionice issues making previous patch almost unefficient) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/slocate/+bug/133638 (about telling the user that the system is indexing files) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cron/+bug/27918 (about laptop batteries issues) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/slocate/+bug/41742 (about a laptop not wanting to suspend when updatedb has automatically started) And partly those, because bugs with slocate affect out-of-the-box users that don't really need it: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/slocate/+bug/113312 (about encrypted partition being indexed without notice from a newbie user) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/slocate/+bug/74029 (about /mnt default indexation issues) This bug should really be rapidly considered and solves by choosing a clear policy for Ubuntu. If we really want to keep the locate command working out-of-the-box in Ubuntu, we should find out ways of making updatedb run : 1) with low io and CPU priority 2) only when the user is not using his computer and 3) when not on battery - (just like Tracker will be doing by default in Gutsy). Or we can consider using rlocate (http://rlocate.sourceforge.net/), which is a synchronized replacement for locate, keeping track of the filesystem updates when they are done. We can also think (and this is my opinion ;-) ) that the locate command is only used by advanced users that now how to install slocate in two minutes, and thus that we don't need to install it by default. Newbies don't use locate in a terminal, but Tracker in GNOME. And we should remember that users are likely to use new background processes with Tracker or Beagle, that may even be installed by default. So the less are running, the better the system will work. Replacements like find can be used when necessary (eg for occasional remote help), though they are less efficient. I'd like to get your comments about this point, in order to fix it in the next release, before new users consider that their Ubuntu system is doing jobs without their consent and in an irrational way. Thanks for reading... :-) Milan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Don't install irrelevant character set fonts
Hi ! If you give a look at your OpenOffice.org Writer fonts list, you will notice that it starts with 40 fonts whose names begin with ae_. These fonts are designed for Arabic, Japanese, etc. character sets, and thus aren't really interesting for others charsets. They all look quite the same, and they double the size of the list, impeding the user who is searching for a nice font for him (there are much, but at the end of the list). There are other fonts in the list that are designed for specific languages (ttf-* packages). Since Ubuntu has a nice localisation management, I suggest we add the fonts to the language-pack-* packages' Recommends, and not to ubuntu-desktop's. We still need to be able to print Unicode characters: this can be done using FreeFonts and DejaVu. Then, most of fonts should be installed following what the user requests. Any occidental language support should install Latin fonts, and Chinese chinese fonts... The only common fonts should be 2 or 3 large Unicode support fonts. When a user wants to use a language, (s)he installs the language support and gets the fonts. Maybe the Language support tool could use a column more, Font support only, to avoid installing all translations. This way, you can select easily nice and relevant fonts, and we may install more oringinal fonts. Am I saying something stupid here ? ;-) Do you think this is worth a spec ? Milan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Allowing passwordless login via GDM
Done : http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=414862 Milan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Allowing passwordless login via GDM
Hey, you guys have a geek way of thinking I didn't expected to encounter on an Ubuntu mailing list ! I'm not talking about five-year-old children's ability to type in a password, nor of the need of their parents to control them. I'm talking of making life easier to users who want to use this feature. Let's them bring up their child as they want to ! For you, typing a password each time you log in isn't an issue. But I believe using the console is not neither. For a normal end-user, this is boring. Coming from Windows or OS X, it's, before people have got to their desktop, a bad point for Ubuntu. Moreover, this feature won't bring down security at all: you still need to enter your password to use gksudo, or ssh... This is only an old Unix-geek reflex putting down Windows about its lacks. But this is not a lack, even Windows has many! Linux power is that you can enable almost all features you want/need, while they are not dangerous. You said users that want to log in without password must have to search a little to set it up. This is what I've done at home. But this is not possible for most of the people, those who need passwordless connexions! I know this feature will be coded, if not now, within 5 years, because this is really needed. The question is, do we want to discourage people from switching to Linux, and do we want Ubuntu to be the best distribution for home end-users? I can't believe that this position is the one of the majority of the team. This way, nothing would have been done at all on Ubuntu (compared to Debian, which I love, for example). Amicably, Milan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Allowing passwordless login via GDM
I'm not tying to make a troll in any way, and I'm sorry if this subject is fulling the list with useless arguments. And I don't think neither that we should compare Linux to Windows: what I propose is really far from ActiveX, and I will castigate anyone intending to create this for Linux. But you're mistaking on my proposal. I just ask to allow *GDM* to skip password check, just like it *currently does* with autologin. First, this is just an extension of autologin system, so if my idea is dangerous, we have to remove automated connexion feature from GDM immediately. Second, you can't connect to a passwordless account via ssh, vnc or others because it's disabled by default. As Jan Claeys said, PermitEmptyPasswords setting for sshd is no by default, and this is a good thing. Third, I don't ask to use passwordless accounts, which are currently to only way to connect without typing anything, and which are weak œconerning security. With my proposal, your argument is no valid at all, since the account is using a password, and more, a *good* password, since the user hasn't to type it every minute. Think that many users want to use a simple, short, and maybe easy to remember/find (firstname, account name...) because they have to type it often. And I don't speak of empty passwords you are encouraged to set manually. wattazoum, your criticism is really far from reality, because in addition of all this, openssh server is not installed be default, portmap doesn't allow WAN computers to connect to port 22, nor any other port. You currently have to hack the config files to enable it. I would like this topic to be constructive, not only a sterile argument. But it seems nobody is taking seriously the problem and its implications. Again, I'm sorry if this is taking space in the mailing list with no interest at all. But I'm surprised of the reaction. Milan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Allowing passwordless login via GDM
Hi all! On home computers, people often want to log in without password at all. This should be possible, and easy to configure. The problem is, you need a password to connect using ssh, to have sudo rights, to protect others from setting a new password... I suggest to allow to log in without typing any password, but only via GDM (just like Autologin does automatically). Users enter a password when creating their account, and it's used when necessary (see up). But GDM config panel allows to choose a passwordless login for some users (like we choose showed users on face browser). Together with the https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnifiedLoginUnlock spec, this will make Ubuntu usable for home users. Currently, I have to hack /etc/pam.d and /etc/shadow to allow my parents to login without password: this is a real lack compared to Windows ! What do you think ? Milan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Allowing passwordless login via GDM
Martin wrote: This should not be necessary at all. gdm's configuration program already offers the option of automatic login (which should stay off by default, of course). If this does not work, can you please file a bug against gdm? This is working fine. But it was thinking of a home computer with several accounts (typically 2-5), some without passwords (what do you have to hide to your family ?). Windows deals with this type of accounts since XP, and we still require users to have a password, although it can be boring when you don't really need to protect your data. I think this kind of use is a main target for Ubuntu, and using no password at all should be proposed to the user when he creates an account. Milan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
