Re: question about storage

[shawn wilson]

2tb of usable space is not that much for mysql data. I have a 750 gig db
personally and know people that have many tb's of mysql and hadoop data.

Also, I'd go with a desktop for database stuff any day. From what I've
experienced, it goes something like this:
Fibre > iscsi > SCSI > ata > firewire > nfs > usb
I say that iscsi is faster than SCSI because I generally have 10GE iscsi and
many more disks than I can throw in a proliant. And, I don't know why but fc
just seems to work faster than anything else for db stuff.

Re: Command Line Partitioning

[Hal Vaughan]

Honestly, that's WAY more of a level of involvement than what I want to get 
into.  I've already figured out what I need to do and compared it to the size 
of the memory and the CPU and so on.

I have a general rule: the less work (and still achieving my goal), the better. 
 The fewer exceptions I need to maintain, the better.  If all goes well, I'll 
be adding systems along the way, they're going to be in remote locations, and I 
don't want to be dealing with issues of custom kernels.  I want the system to 
be as stock Debian as possible so I can get security updates and so on with 
"apt-get update && apt-get upgrade."  While I know it's not always that easy, 
I've learned that the less I customize, the less there is that is likely to go 
wrong later.

What I have found (as recommended by someone else) is sfdisk, which gives me 
the abilities of fdisk in a program intended for scripting (actually, reading 
the man page reminds me I could use input redirection for sfdisk and that might 
work for fdisk as well).  It's a simple solution and doesn't create anything 
that'll add to the work of maintaining it later.

Thank you for the suggestions, though.  They are things I'll be looking into 
with other projects.


Hal


On Feb 19, 2011, at 1:02 PM, Stephen Powell wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:49:41 -0500 (EST), Hal Vaughan wrote:
>> 
>> I have everything else worked out so it can be done in a batch mode
>> or in a program, but I'm having trouble with partitioning.
>> 
>> I've been working with cfdisk, fdisk, and parted:
>> 
>> parted: Always leaves only 512 bytes at the start and grub-install
>> doesn't seem to like that.  But it can be used in a batch mode.
>> 
>> fdisk: Doesn't seem to have a batch/script mode and I'd have to
>> calculate sizes in megabytes from cylinder info
>> 
>> cfdisk: Lets me work in whatever units I like (bytes, kbytes, mbytes,
>> and so on) but is curses based and doesn't have batch/script mode.
>> 
>> What I would like to do is to be able to use a partitioning program
>> from a batch or script mode.  Parted would be good for that, but I
>> can't seem to get it to leave more than 512 bytes at the start
>> (cfdisk left 32k -- why?  I don't know).
>> 
>> Also, it seems when I get CF disks they have an MS-DOS partition
>> table (grub kept noting that and one part of the whole process
>> didn't seem to like that).  How can I either wipe the disk without
>> a mess (tried zeroing it, parted wouldn't recognize it or write to
>> it, but fdisk had no issue with that) or write a new partition table?
>> What type of partition table should I use?  (I'm guessing bsd, which
>> was one of the options, but there wasn't a Linux option for types of
>> partition tables.)
> 
> Well, if I were in your situation I think I know what I would do.
> I would use another boot loader besides grub2, such as lilo or
> extlinux, that doesn't need to allocate sectors at the beginning
> of the disk which are supposed to be unallocated (or in the case of
> parted, are part of a partition).  Both lilo and extlinux can be
> installed in either the master boot record or a partition boot sector
> and are perfectly happy with the MS-DOS partitioning scheme.
> With extlinux you are limited to either the ext2 or ext3 filesystem
> for the /boot partition.  With lilo you can use just about anything
> for a file system.  The down side of lilo is that the boot loader
> installer has to be run any time the physical location of any
> sector in the kernel image file or the initial RAM disk image file
> changes.
> 
> I have a web page that you may find useful.  It is
> 
>   http://users.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/Kernel.htm
> 
> You may find it useful for several reasons.  First of all, it is
> very common when working with embedded systems to create a custom
> Linux kernel.  A "lean and mean" kernel is often created which contains
> only the drivers which are actually needed for that particular
> embedded system.  This saves hard disk space and memory space on
> the embedded device (but not on the system on which one actually
> compiles the kernel!)
> 
> Second, step 10, "Customize the Kernel Installation Environment",
> contains stuff which is useful even to people who use stock
> kernels.  For example, there is a section on how to switch to
> lilo from another boot loader (in this case, grub 1 from Lenny)
> and covers some little known stuff about lilo, such as how to
> make use of UUIDs in lilo, how to determine the capabilities of
> the BIOS, etc.  Third, if you are using a custom kernel built
> in the manner recommended in the write-up, and you are using
> lilo, you will probably need some extra "hook scripts" which
> don't currently ship with lilo.  This write-up provides some
> sample hook scripts which you may find useful.
> 
> Good luck with your project.
> 
> -- 
>  .''`. Stephen Powell
> : :'  :
> `. `'`
>   `-
> 
> 
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Re: question about storage

[Jim Green]

> IIRC, the OP said he's currently "storing some huge historical data to
> mysql database" on a combination of his internal laptop drive and two
> 320GB external USB drives.  Let's see, that's
>
> 320 + 320 + 250?? = 890 GB _IF_ they're full, which they probably
> aren't, and he's probably holding duplicated copies on the 320 GB drives
> for redundancy.  So 2 TB mirrored, 1 TB net, would fit his needs, easily.

sorry for the confusion. the size of data I _plan_ to use is on the
4T level so 8T is needed.. and that's why I really need a desktop right
now.

Jim


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Re: question about storage

[Jim Green]

> Just stay away from the WD Green drives, or any 512/4096 hybrid drives,
> for your sake. :)

Thanks! also lets say I am building a quad/hex core desktop box for
computing. I'd like listen to ur advice about cpu and motherboard, I am not
partial to intel but I do prefer a quiet and debian friendly box that
can hold 4x2T data can simulate things relatively fast.

Jim


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Re: question about storage

[Stan Hoeppner]

Ron Johnson put forth on 2/19/2011 6:06 PM:
> On 02/19/2011 05:29 PM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>> Jim Green put forth on 2/18/2011 10:36 PM:
>>> Hello!
>>> I have a laptop with 120G harddrive, 2x320G external harddrive,  I
>>> don't have a desktop.
>>>
>>> Now I am doing something serious storing some huge historical data to
>>> mysql database and want to have some better storage solution(I hate
>>> the two external harddrives I bought 4 years ago, need to power them
>>> on individually and connect with laptop each time I need to use data
>>> in them).
>>>
>>> I have two options
>>> 1, buy a desktop with 4x2T harddrives and use lvm on raid1, I need the
>>> redundancy of data.
>>
>> Why 4*2TB drives?  Unless this is a MythTV server that's total overkill,
>> and more than you need to spend.
> 
> Christ on a stick, dude, what part of "storing some huge historical data
> to mysql database" don't you understand?

IIRC, the OP said he's currently "storing some huge historical data to
mysql database" on a combination of his internal laptop drive and two
320GB external USB drives.  Let's see, that's

320 + 320 + 250?? = 890 GB _IF_ they're full, which they probably
aren't, and he's probably holding duplicated copies on the 320 GB drives
for redundancy.  So 2 TB mirrored, 1 TB net, would fit his needs, easily.

To put this into perspective, Walmart's entire retail point of sale
database isn't even 1 TB large.  SKU#, short description, price, for a
few hundred thousand products, is nowhere near 1 TB.  Notes I said point
of sale, not online.  The space required for their online products is
much larger, obviously, due to pictures and expanded product
descriptions, etc.  The POS database is as painfully small as they can
make it.

A Terabyte is a lot of space.  It seems many many people, Ron included,
allow their perspectives to be unduly skewed when the price of size and
speed decline so rapidly, allowing them to purchase what 10 years ago
cost $1 million dollars for $100 today.  Hit the way-back machine and
check prices on 1TB disk arrays in the year 2000--roughly $1 million a
pop.  Back then Ron would have said "Christ on a stick, dude, you'll
_never_ fill that 1TB array up!"

-- 
Stan


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Re: question about storage

[Stan Hoeppner]

Jim Green put forth on 2/19/2011 6:33 PM:

> 2T drive is not that more expensive than 1T drive also, I use mysql

In fact it's right at double when you compare apples to apples.  HDS has
the lowest cost 7.2k 1TB and 2TB drives at Newegg.  The 2TB model is
slightly more than double the price.

The system I spec'd out has $110 worth of 1TB drives.  2TB drives would
be $240, adding $130 to the total system cost.  My target was a system
under $400 total with good quality and performance, an adequate amount
of storage, storage redundancy, and including the GbE switch and cables.
 The goal being a totally manageable alternative to low performance low
cost canned NAS products.  Others read this list and might appreciate
this information as well, so I was responding with something I thought
might appeal to a wider audience as well.  Ease of use was not a
consideration, obviously.  Those who need the ease of use of a canned
NAS box aren't building DIY systems.

> database to store relatively high frequency price data and other data.
> Initially I plan to buy the WD green drives:( I guess the performance
> hit is for all >2T drives?

Only those drives using "advanced format" take the big performance hit
using default partitioner configuration.  The most notorious offender
being the WD Green series, simply because it has had the largest sales
due to its low price.  I hope for your sake you change your mind as the
headaches involved with the WD Green drives go beyond the sector
alignment issue and outweigh the price advantage by a wide margin.  Go
with an HDS, Seagate, WD Blue or Black series, anything but WD Green and
anything but advanced format.  You should prefer a 7.2k rpm drive with
native 512 byte sectors, which is exactly what I recommended with the
HDS drives.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Linux+WD20EARS

"Advanced Format" means the drive has 4096 byte physical sectors but it
lies to the host OS saying the sectors are 512 bytes.  This causes
significant performance problems as the various Linux distros and their
disk partitioners/etc don't cope properly with this kind of sector
translation being performed by the drive firmware.  Thus manual
intervention is required during partitioning to get proper performance,
and you have to know what you're doing in gparted or fdisk.

> This is nice and affordable but it doesn't provide much computing
> power for me do backtest the price data... I am considering building a
> desktop with i7-2600k core(need to wait till the motherboard for it is
> fixed).

This build is intended as an inexpensive good performance NFS/CIFS NAS
server, not an interactive desktop PC.  It is meant to solve the
external disk problem you stated in lieu of a low quality canned NAS
product or multiple USB disks with mdraid.

You can easily change the configuration to:

4 or 8GB RAM
dual or quad core CPU
4 x 2TB HDDs instead of 2 x 1TB, but with a PATA CD/DVD drive

Bumping up to 4GB ram and a dual core 3.2 GHz Athlon II is only an extra
$35.  If you think you need a quad core CPU, you're simply wasting money
and idle cycles, along with everyone else on the quad/six core bandwagon...

I'm partial to AMD platforms because they give much better performance
per dollar in the real world.  It appears you're partial to Intel.  Feel
free to substitute Intel platform parts for this build.  You'll simply
see the price tag increase with little or no increase in real world
performance.

Just stay away from the WD Green drives, or any 512/4096 hybrid drives,
for your sake. :)

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Re: Command Line Partitioning

[Hal Vaughan]

On Feb 19, 2011, at 4:07 PM, Ron Johnson wrote:

> On 02/19/2011 02:18 PM, Hal Vaughan wrote:
>> 
>> On Feb 19, 2011, at 12:41 PM, Rob Owens wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 11:49:41AM -0500, Hal Vaughan wrote:
 
 fdisk: Doesn't seem to have a batch/script mode and I'd have to calculate 
 sizes in megabytes from cylinder info
 
>>> fdisk does allow you to specify the start cylinder, then something like
>>> +1000M for the end of the partition.  "M" meaning megabytes.  It may
>>> also accept "G" for gigabytes these days, but I'm not sure -- you'd have
>>> to try it yourself.
>> 
>> I know I can specify the offset, but there's still the issue of having to 
>> calculate numbers to get that 1st cylinder -- and I can't use it from a 
>> script.  It's interactive.
>> 
> 
> If you're always using partition #1, then shouldn't the calculations always 
> be the same, and thus pre-computable?

The start, but there are cases where I might want the partition to be larger 
than in other cases, and I'd still have to figure out the start for the swap 
partition.

On that note -- I noticed that when Squeeze created the swap partition on my 
original CF card drive, it made it an extended partition and on the test copy, 
it automatically created a swap after boot that was also an extended partition. 
 Is that s.o.p.?



Hal

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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Rob Owens]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 09:10:34PM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
> On 2011-02-19 20:34 +0100, Rob Owens wrote:
> 
> > On my Squeeze system, the nouveau driver isn't working.  dmesg shows
> > this message:  
> >
> > GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon
> 
> That's bad indeed.
> 
Embarassing goof:  Apparently xserver-xorg-video-nouveau wasn't
installed on this machine.  I thought the upgrade would have taken care
of that, and I thought it was there since 'lsmod' did show nouveau
modules.  

Anyway, that explains the slight difference in symptoms between my
Squeeze installation and the various live cd's I tried.  With
xserver-xorg-video-nouveau properly installed, I do not get the "GPU
lockup" message.  I do see this in Xorg.0.log, however:

AIGLX error: dlopen of /usr/lib/dri/nouveau_dri.so failed
(/usr/lib/dri/nouveau_dri.so: cannot 
open shared object file: No such file or directory)

I googled it and it's not clear whether or not this is related to the
vertical stripes I see on my screen (with a mouse pointer and nothing
else).

I plan to file a bug, but I want to do it intelligently.  What's a
better title than "Messed up graphics on a GeForce FX 5200"?

-Rob


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Re: apt-get upgrade error- SOLVED

[Paul Cartwright]

On 02/19/2011 05:45 PM, Stephen Powell wrote:

so I should do a dist-upgrade. But I already did that to get to squeeze.
>  I thought I read the release notes&  followed along all the way to the
>  end. Of course it was midnight when I finished:)
 

You replied off-list.  I assume that was accidental, since there's
nothing of a personal or sensitive nature here.  Going back to the
list.
   

no, I did my "usual" CTRL-R to Reply, not CTRL-SHFT-L to Reply to List.
my bad..


What does your /etc/apt/sources.list file look like?  Please include it
in your next post.
   

# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
 deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
 deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian squeeze main
 deb-src http://security.us.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib 
non-free

 deb http://security.us.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
 deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
 deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ squeeze non-free


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Re: best labtop for debian

[Celejar]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:16:27 -0500
Chris Jones  wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 04:10:11PM EST, Celejar wrote:
> > On Tue, 8 Feb 2011 15:09:23 -0700
> 
> [..]
> 
> > Good to know, thanks - I've heard that before.  The keyboard is the one
> > thing about which I'm really dissatisfied with my Acer Aspire, although
> > that's not Linux specific.
> 
> Not sure which particular models, which part of the world they ship..
> etc. but Lenovo now often install lower quality keyboards on at least
> some ThinkPads, the main difference being that where the old keyboard
> had a solid metal back plate, the newer model has a thinner sheet of
> metal with rectangular cutouts every couple of inches either to help
> dissipate the heat or reduce the weight of the machine by a few grams.
> 
> As a result, the newer keyboards have considerably more flex than the
> older models.

Thanks for the heads up.

Celejar
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Reporting list spam

[David Jardine]

I recently bounced a foolish user's reply to a spam message to 
report-lists...@lists.debian.org, but then began to wonder whether 
I wasn't being just as foolish myself.

Did my action achieve anything or just make matters worse?

Cheers,
David


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Re: question about storage

[Jim Green]

>
> Why 4*2TB drives?  Unless this is a MythTV server that's total overkill,
> and more than you need to spend.  And then you have the 512/4096 sector
> size mismatch issue if you go with WD's 2TB green drives which murders
> performance.  I highly discourage use of the WD green drives.

2T drive is not that more expensive than 1T drive also, I use mysql
database to store relatively high frequency price data and other data.
Initially I plan to buy the WD green drives:( I guess the performance
hit is for all >2T drives?

>
>> 2, buy some independent storage like NAS, buy another desktop with
>> small harddrive to access the NAS, debian installed on NAS and desktop
>> of course.
>>
>> what do you think would be a better solution for me? I like the NAS
>> idea that storage is independent so I can keep the NAS even if I
>> upgrade my desktops, but the con is I need to buy separate NAS..
>
> For $370 USD + shipping you can build your own basic yet expandable
> NFS/CIFS server with fault tolerance, that will likely out perform a
> cheap off the shelf NAS box.  The figure above also includes the price
> of a quality inexpensive 5 port GbE switch and all requires cables and
> wiring.  Unless you really _need_ a huge amount of space right now and
> multi spindle performance, I'd go with two mirrored 1TB drives to keep
> costs down.  The figure above includes 2x1TB HDS drives.
>
> Here's a parts list description with the Newegg links below.
>
> Quality InWin ATX Black pedestal Server chassis
>   w/ 5 tool free 3.5" HDD bays and excellent airflow
> 450 watt PSU with 120mm fan and 4 SATA power connectors
> Gigabyte socket AM3 mobo with 4 SATA II connectors
> 2.8 GHz 45 watt single core AMD CPU
> 2 GB dual channel memory kit
> 2 x HDS Deskstar 1 TB SATA II 7.2k rpm HDDs
> DVD ROM drive
> 2 SATA cables (always have a spare in case one is bad)
> 5 port desktop gigabit switch
> 2 14 ft. Cat 5e patch cables
>
> Grand total just less than $370 USD for quality kit.
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811108237
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817822002
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128454
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103888
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134637
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145304
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200116
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156250
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812196386

This is nice and affordable but it doesn't provide much computing
power for me do backtest the price data... I am considering building a
desktop with i7-2600k core(need to wait till the motherboard for it is
fixed).

Thanks!
Jim.

>
> --
> Stan
>
>
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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Ron Johnson]

On 02/19/2011 05:32 PM, Rob Owens wrote:

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 03:28:23PM -0500, Rob Owens wrote:

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 09:10:34PM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:

There's not much hope if you intend to stay with Squeeze.  If you're not
brave enough to blindly upgrade your kernel and the whole X stack to
sid, I would recommend trying a Live CD like Knoppix 6.4 or Grml 10.12
first.  Both come with kernel 2.6.36 and a newer nouveau snapshot from
August 2010.


I tried with a squeeze live CD and got similar results.  I wasn't able
to check the logs, though, because the whole machine was locked up.  I
did manage to get a rainbow screen and a real mouse pointer.

I am downloading Knoppix 6.4.4 now.


Same results with Knoppix 6.4.4.  Rainbow striped screen, mouse pointer,
and unresponsive system.  I couldn't even ctrl-alt-f1 to get to a
terminal.



Is this a new computer?  (Had something similar happen on my wife's 
new PC.  memtest86+ showed lots of errors, and removing one of the 
DIMMs made everything work properly.)


--
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Milton Friedman


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Ron Johnson]

On 02/19/2011 05:31 PM, Brian wrote:

On Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 14:32:38 -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:


The FX5200 is 8 years old, and even then was labeled "Entry Level".

I seriously doubt that nouveau will ever support it.  . . . . .


Eh? Realiity is stacked against you. Rock solid here.



Yeah, my mistake.  Admitted it a couple of hours ago.

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Re: question about storage

[Ron Johnson]

On 02/19/2011 05:29 PM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

Jim Green put forth on 2/18/2011 10:36 PM:

Hello!
I have a laptop with 120G harddrive, 2x320G external harddrive,  I
don't have a desktop.

Now I am doing something serious storing some huge historical data to
mysql database and want to have some better storage solution(I hate
the two external harddrives I bought 4 years ago, need to power them
on individually and connect with laptop each time I need to use data
in them).

I have two options
1, buy a desktop with 4x2T harddrives and use lvm on raid1, I need the
redundancy of data.


Why 4*2TB drives?  Unless this is a MythTV server that's total overkill,
and more than you need to spend.


Christ on a stick, dude, what part of "storing some huge historical 
data to mysql database" don't you understand?


--
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Milton Friedman


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Re: Immediate Payment To You !!!

[Jamie White]

Aah, gotta love these emails. Their not even bothering to come with some 
interesting story these days.


On 19/02/2011 21:23, Orn Palsson wrote:

Please reply me now!!!

Attention !!!

Your $12m payment is slated and ready to be paid to you now, please let me know 
if you are in Europe, Asia or America so as to keep you posted with more of 
your payment details.

Thanks
Orn palsson







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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Brian]

On Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 14:32:38 -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:

> The FX5200 is 8 years old, and even then was labeled "Entry Level".
>
> I seriously doubt that nouveau will ever support it.  . . . . . 

Eh? Realiity is stacked against you. Rock solid here.


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Re: Going remote - some advice please

[Rob Owens]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 08:54:03PM +, AG wrote:
> Dear all
> 
> My wife and I are looking to go volunteering for at least the next
> six months and will be 95% off-grid.  We want to  remain connected
> to the Net and continue to have access to a computer, and Debian
> will be our system of choice.
> 
If you are going to be somewhat nearby civilization, this series of
articles might be interesting to you:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/03/not_spot_diary/


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Brian]

On Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 14:34:41 -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:

> On 02/19/2011 02:10 PM, Brian wrote:
>>
>> With NVidia the almost automatic response is to dive into the proprietry
>> driver pool. It seems to me that unless 3D is a need (used by less than
>> 5% of users) or the card is not supported well, you are going to be
>> served well by the nouveau driver.
>
> Does nouveau support vdpau (which, even on the old 8400GS,  
> *significantly* reduces CPU usage when watching video)?

I'd never come across vdpau but it only took me a few seconds to find
this post from someone associated with the development of nouveau:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2010-May/005725.html

HTH


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Rob Owens]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 03:28:23PM -0500, Rob Owens wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 09:10:34PM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
> > There's not much hope if you intend to stay with Squeeze.  If you're not
> > brave enough to blindly upgrade your kernel and the whole X stack to
> > sid, I would recommend trying a Live CD like Knoppix 6.4 or Grml 10.12
> > first.  Both come with kernel 2.6.36 and a newer nouveau snapshot from
> > August 2010.
> > 
> I tried with a squeeze live CD and got similar results.  I wasn't able
> to check the logs, though, because the whole machine was locked up.  I
> did manage to get a rainbow screen and a real mouse pointer.
> 
> I am downloading Knoppix 6.4.4 now.
> 
Same results with Knoppix 6.4.4.  Rainbow striped screen, mouse pointer,
and unresponsive system.  I couldn't even ctrl-alt-f1 to get to a
terminal.

-Rob


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Re: question about storage

[Stan Hoeppner]

Jim Green put forth on 2/18/2011 10:36 PM:
> Hello!
> I have a laptop with 120G harddrive, 2x320G external harddrive,  I
> don't have a desktop.
> 
> Now I am doing something serious storing some huge historical data to
> mysql database and want to have some better storage solution(I hate
> the two external harddrives I bought 4 years ago, need to power them
> on individually and connect with laptop each time I need to use data
> in them).
> 
> I have two options
> 1, buy a desktop with 4x2T harddrives and use lvm on raid1, I need the
> redundancy of data.

Why 4*2TB drives?  Unless this is a MythTV server that's total overkill,
and more than you need to spend.  And then you have the 512/4096 sector
size mismatch issue if you go with WD's 2TB green drives which murders
performance.  I highly discourage use of the WD green drives.

> 2, buy some independent storage like NAS, buy another desktop with
> small harddrive to access the NAS, debian installed on NAS and desktop
> of course.
> 
> what do you think would be a better solution for me? I like the NAS
> idea that storage is independent so I can keep the NAS even if I
> upgrade my desktops, but the con is I need to buy separate NAS..

For $370 USD + shipping you can build your own basic yet expandable
NFS/CIFS server with fault tolerance, that will likely out perform a
cheap off the shelf NAS box.  The figure above also includes the price
of a quality inexpensive 5 port GbE switch and all requires cables and
wiring.  Unless you really _need_ a huge amount of space right now and
multi spindle performance, I'd go with two mirrored 1TB drives to keep
costs down.  The figure above includes 2x1TB HDS drives.

Here's a parts list description with the Newegg links below.

Quality InWin ATX Black pedestal Server chassis
   w/ 5 tool free 3.5" HDD bays and excellent airflow
450 watt PSU with 120mm fan and 4 SATA power connectors
Gigabyte socket AM3 mobo with 4 SATA II connectors
2.8 GHz 45 watt single core AMD CPU
2 GB dual channel memory kit
2 x HDS Deskstar 1 TB SATA II 7.2k rpm HDDs
DVD ROM drive
2 SATA cables (always have a spare in case one is bad)
5 port desktop gigabit switch
2 14 ft. Cat 5e patch cables

Grand total just less than $370 USD for quality kit.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811108237
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817822002
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128454
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103888
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134637
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145304
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200116
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156250
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812196386

-- 
Stan


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Re: Command Line Partitioning

[Stephen Powell]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:18:49 -0500 (EST), Hal Vaughan wrote:
> On Feb 19, 2011, at 12:41 PM, Rob Owens wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 11:49:41AM -0500, Hal Vaughan wrote:
>>> 
>>> fdisk: Doesn't seem to have a batch/script mode and I'd have
>>> to calculate sizes in megabytes from cylinder info
>> 
>> fdisk does allow you to specify the start cylinder, then something like
>> +1000M for the end of the partition.  "M" meaning megabytes.  It may
>> also accept "G" for gigabytes these days, but I'm not sure -- you'd have
>> to try it yourself.
> 
> I know I can specify the offset, but there's still the issue of having to
> calculate numbers to get that 1st cylinder -- and I can't use it from a
> script.  It's interactive.
> 
> Thanks, though.

By the way, you *can* control the allocation of partitions down to the
sector level with parted, as well get the starting locations and
sizes of existing partitions (and free space) in sectors, if you want
to do so.  For example:

   parted /dev/sda unit s print free
   parted /dev/sda unit s mkpart primary ext2 100 999

etc.

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: acpi trouble

[Camaleón]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:33:05 +0100, Matteo Giani wrote:

(...)

> the only problem is, my battery seems not to generate any events (i
> checked with acpi_listen), except when plugging/unplugging from AC
> power. in particular, it doesn't generate any event when it's
> charging/discharging (even at very low levels).

Does it work when the charging/discharging events are triggered directly 
by Gnome? (e.g., if you tell the battery icon on the systray to be 
visible just on charge/discharge).
 
> since those events are created by the kernel ( i'm using a vanilla
> 2.6.32-5, the battery module is auto loaded) and since the status of the
> battery (in /sys/BAT0) is indeed updated every 30 s (or so), the
> questions are:
> 
> 1) how do i force the kernel produce those events? is there a way?
> 2) shoud i consider an upgrade of the bios? 
> 3) what about other laptops? do anybody share this problem?

I guess the events should be automatically detected by the kernel. If 
they're not, maybe something is broken (DSDT tables, ACPI BIOS...).

Do you have loaded "eeepc_laptop" module? :-?

I would also post this message into Debian eeepc devel mailing list, it's 
quite possible you can hit more replies on this matter in there:

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-eeepc-devel/

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Re: apt-get upgrade error- SOLVED

[Stephen Powell]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:39:36 -0500 (EST), Paul Cartwright wrote:
> Stephen Powell wrote:
>>
>> That's because you're doing an "upgrade" instead of a "dist-upgrade".
>> With an upgrade, apt is allowed to upgrade packages, but it is not
>> allowed to delete packages or install new ones.  Those packages are
>> being held back because installing them would require apt to either
>> install a package which is not currently installed that is a dependency
>> of the package being held back or else remove a package that conflicts
>> with the updated version of the package being held back.  When doing
>> massive updates, it is generally good practice to do an "upgrade"
>> first, then later do a "dist-upgrade".  The release notes for upgrading
>> Lenny to Squeeze, for example, specifically instruct one to do this.
> 
> so I should do a dist-upgrade. But I already did that to get to squeeze. 
> I thought I read the release notes & followed along all the way to the 
> end. Of course it was midnight when I finished:)

You replied off-list.  I assume that was accidental, since there's
nothing of a personal or sensitive nature here.  Going back to the
list.

What does your /etc/apt/sources.list file look like?  Please include it
in your next post.

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Stephen Powell]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:32:38 -0500 (EST), Ron Johnson wrote:
> 
> The FX5200 is 8 years old, and even then was labeled "Entry Level".
> 
> I seriously doubt that nouveau will ever support it.  That leaves nv 
> or nvidia-173.14.27 (which is in Sid).
> 
> Also, I recommend filing a bug against xserver-xorg-video-nv (CCing 
> d-devel) telling them why they should *not* remove it.

Debian was trying to remove nv from Squeeze before Squeeze became the
stable release.  Their attitude seemed to be that (1) it is no longer
supported upstream (i.e. by Nvidia) and (2) we have a replacement
free driver, nouveau.  It was only when I opened a bug report against
xserver-xorg-video-nouveau (that it did not work with interlaced video
modes, which my monitor requires) that they relented and allowed nv
to stay in the release.  But here is apparently yet another situation
where nv appears to be best, or in some cases the only, free driver
that works.
  
-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: Going remote - some advice please

[Christian Jaeger]

Oh, PV=photovoltaics (I was thinking "RV"), well, I've been looking
around for that too, and come to the conclusion that if you want the
solar panel to be portable, then you can't use laptops (10W+ power
usage) nor netbooks (5W+), only ARM based tablets will be feasible
(around 2W or below, so a 6W panel will be ok, also with a step down
it may be possible to directly feed power to the USB port). The Notion
Ink Adam might run Debian, and thanks to the NVidia video has the
power to play videos, but the cpu might still be too weak for video
editing, dunno; in any case you would need luck to get one soon.

But maybe you only need to work with the computer an hour per day or
less, then even a portable panel should be enough if you can set it up
to recharge a battery all day. Although I expect (and have seen
mentions) that you can't charge a laptop directly from solar in that
case (if the power supply expects more power to be available than the
panel delivers, it will not be able to run normally), so you need a
solar power set with its own battery.

Christian.


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Re: Going remote - some advice please

[Christian Jaeger]

Hi

I've seen there are rugged tablets for field work, in case you need
that level of robustness and can pay for it (probably not), for
example: 
http://www.tabletpcreview.com/default.asp?newsID=1885&review=getac+v100+rugged+tablet

3G network "dongles" seem to work *mostly* of the box with
NetworkManager nowadays, although you may still run into problems (see
my post http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2010/11/msg00750.html and
it's In-Reply-To post, latest answer from Bell was that I need to
upgrade the dongle firmware, using a Windows program, I still didn't
get around installing a Windows machine for that (and on someone
else's computer the upgrade program didn't work)). So, calculate in
enough time for issues or make sure you've got confirmation that the
particular dongle(+provider combo) works with Linux, or consider using
a phone with bluetooth/wifi/usb tethering instead (may have its own
issues).

(You'll need a power inverter (12 -> 110 or 220 V, wattage according
to power supply) for laptop charging; in my experience lead acid
batteries (solar) don't last long, so a car battery might not be
sufficient to recharge a laptop, might need to do it with the motor
on..)

Christian.


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Re: I want beep in urxvt terminal - NOT SOLVED

[Csanyi Pal]

Andrei Popescu  writes:

> On Jo, 17 feb 11, 09:16:16, Ron Johnson wrote:
>> 
>> Yes, I use nvidia, and no I won't use nouveau.
>
> You could try it out just to confirm it makes your computer beep ;)

I used nvidia driver and haven't beep, now I'm using nouveau driver and
still haven't beep. Why?

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Immediate Payment To You !!!

[Orn Palsson]

Please reply me now!!!

Attention !!!

Your $12m payment is slated and ready to be paid to you now, please let me know 
if you are in Europe, Asia or America so as to keep you posted with more of 
your payment details.

Thanks
Orn palsson




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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Paul Cartwright]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:43:23 -0500
Paul Cartwright  wrote:

   

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:11:29 + (UTC)
Camaleón   wrote:


After I posted to the list I found
http://linuxinside.blogspot.com/2008/03/debian-nvidia-drivers.html


   

from a text-based terminal ( CTRL-ALT-F1), you run:
# sgfxi -c

and it runs&  pulls in the headers for you&  installs the latest NVIDIA
driver from NVIDIA.
 


And what is sgfxi ?

   

http://smxi.org/site/about.htm#sgfxi


 What is sgfxi (simple graphics installer - s gfx i)

The primary purpose of sgfxi is to install non-free graphics drivers. It 
also supports removing non-free graphics drivers and replacing them with 
the free version. To do this it cleans out the system of any previous 
drivers, then installs the latest versions of the driver you have 
requested.


Support for Ubuntu and Arch Linux has been added to sgfxi, so now it 
should work in most areas in Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch.



--
Paul Cartwright

Re: Command Line Partitioning

[Dom]

On 19/02/11 20:18, Hal Vaughan wrote:


On Feb 19, 2011, at 12:41 PM, Rob Owens wrote:


On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 11:49:41AM -0500, Hal Vaughan wrote:


fdisk: Doesn't seem to have a batch/script mode and I'd have to calculate sizes 
in megabytes from cylinder info


fdisk does allow you to specify the start cylinder, then something like
+1000M for the end of the partition.  "M" meaning megabytes.  It may
also accept "G" for gigabytes these days, but I'm not sure -- you'd have
to try it yourself.


I know I can specify the offset, but there's still the issue of having to 
calculate numbers to get that 1st cylinder -- and I can't use it from a script. 
 It's interactive.

Thanks, though.

Have a look at sfdisk. It might be bale to do what you want. I've used 
it in the past in a script for automatic partitioning.


Dom


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Ron Johnson]

On 02/19/2011 02:59 PM, Sven Joachim wrote:

On 2011-02-19 21:32 +0100, Ron Johnson wrote:


The FX5200 is 8 years old, and even then was labeled "Entry Level".

I seriously doubt that nouveau will ever support it.


Uhm, nouveau has been supporting this card for years, the fact that it
does not work well for Rob notwithstanding.



So it does.  Still, I don't trust it's stability.

--
"The normal condition of mankind is tyranny and misery."
Milton Friedman


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Frank McCormick]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:43:23 -0500
Paul Cartwright  wrote:

> >
> > On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:11:29 + (UTC)
> > Camaleón  wrote:
> >
> >
> > After I posted to the list I found
> > http://linuxinside.blogspot.com/2008/03/debian-nvidia-drivers.html
> >
> >
> from a text-based terminal ( CTRL-ALT-F1), you run:
> # sgfxi -c
> 
> and it runs & pulls in the headers for you & installs the latest NVIDIA 
> driver from NVIDIA.


   And what is sgfxi ?

-- 
-- Frank --


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Going remote - some advice please

[AG]

Dear all

My wife and I are looking to go volunteering for at least the next six 
months and will be 95% off-grid.  We want to  remain connected to the 
Net and continue to have access to a computer, and Debian will be our 
system of choice.


We live in the UK and believe that a "dongle" will enable us to maintain 
connectivity, assuming the network provider has the appropriate 
coverage.  Has anyone any experience in this, and if so, please share 
any recommendations for setting this up properly.


Obviously, we are looking at laptops to provide the computing ability.  
But we want something that will be durable, with a decent and reliable 
battery life.  We will need some reasonable processing power and decent 
RAM for basic video editing, writing and statistical analysis.  Any 
advice on the hardware that will facilitate that would be very helpful too.


Finally, does anyone have experience of using PV to power/ recharge the 
batteries, and if so any recommendations on equipment for that?


Thanks for your ideas, recommendations and stories.

AG


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Sven Joachim]

On 2011-02-19 21:25 +0100, Brian wrote:

> On Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 21:10:34 +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
>
>> On 2011-02-19 20:34 +0100, Rob Owens wrote:
>> 
>> > I'm trying to make nouveau work.
>> 
>> There's not much hope if you intend to stay with Squeeze.  If you're not
>> brave enough to blindly upgrade your kernel and the whole X stack to
>> sid, I would recommend trying a Live CD like Knoppix 6.4 or Grml 10.12
>> first.  Both come with kernel 2.6.36 and a newer nouveau snapshot from
>> August 2010.
>
> I'm having trouble following what you are saying here.

I was suggesting that Rob try a newer kernel and X driver, since the current
ones did not quite work for him.  And using a Live CD has less impact
than upgrading large parts of the system to sid.

> lspci on my
> machine has the same the output as Rob Owens and nouveau and the FX 5200
> card are working well together. That's Squeeze and Sid.

Thanks for confirming that nouveau on FX 5200 is not broken for everyone
-- but on Rob's system it is, it seems.  Such are the problems with
hardware specific bugs, they are often unreproducible on other systems.

Sven


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Re: Command Line Partitioning

[Ron Johnson]

On 02/19/2011 02:18 PM, Hal Vaughan wrote:


On Feb 19, 2011, at 12:41 PM, Rob Owens wrote:


On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 11:49:41AM -0500, Hal Vaughan wrote:


fdisk: Doesn't seem to have a batch/script mode and I'd have to calculate sizes 
in megabytes from cylinder info


fdisk does allow you to specify the start cylinder, then something like
+1000M for the end of the partition.  "M" meaning megabytes.  It may
also accept "G" for gigabytes these days, but I'm not sure -- you'd have
to try it yourself.


I know I can specify the offset, but there's still the issue of having to 
calculate numbers to get that 1st cylinder -- and I can't use it from a script. 
 It's interactive.



If you're always using partition #1, then shouldn't the calculations 
always be the same, and thus pre-computable?


--
"The normal condition of mankind is tyranny and misery."
Milton Friedman


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Sven Joachim]

On 2011-02-19 21:32 +0100, Ron Johnson wrote:

> The FX5200 is 8 years old, and even then was labeled "Entry Level".
>
> I seriously doubt that nouveau will ever support it.

Uhm, nouveau has been supporting this card for years, the fact that it
does not work well for Rob notwithstanding.

> Also, I recommend filing a bug against xserver-xorg-video-nv (CCing
> d-devel) telling them why they should *not* remove it.

Too late, the nv driver is already gone.  Anyone who wants to revive it
may have to fix bug #383465¹ to get it past the FTP masters.

Sven


¹ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=383465


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Brian]

On Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 21:10:34 +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:

> On 2011-02-19 20:34 +0100, Rob Owens wrote:
> 
> > I'm trying to make nouveau work.
> 
> There's not much hope if you intend to stay with Squeeze.  If you're not
> brave enough to blindly upgrade your kernel and the whole X stack to
> sid, I would recommend trying a Live CD like Knoppix 6.4 or Grml 10.12
> first.  Both come with kernel 2.6.36 and a newer nouveau snapshot from
> August 2010.

I'm having trouble following what you are saying here. lspci on my
machine has the same the output as Rob Owens and nouveau and the FX 5200
card are working well together. That's Squeeze and Sid.


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Re: Command Line Partitioning

[Hal Vaughan]

On Feb 19, 2011, at 12:41 PM, Rob Owens wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 11:49:41AM -0500, Hal Vaughan wrote:
>> 
>> fdisk: Doesn't seem to have a batch/script mode and I'd have to calculate 
>> sizes in megabytes from cylinder info
>> 
> fdisk does allow you to specify the start cylinder, then something like
> +1000M for the end of the partition.  "M" meaning megabytes.  It may
> also accept "G" for gigabytes these days, but I'm not sure -- you'd have
> to try it yourself.

I know I can specify the offset, but there's still the issue of having to 
calculate numbers to get that 1st cylinder -- and I can't use it from a script. 
 It's interactive.

Thanks, though.



Hal

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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Ron Johnson]

On 02/19/2011 02:10 PM, Brian wrote:

On Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 13:23:22 -0500, Frank wrote:


Like I said, might have been an illusion - I have 3 distros on
this computer..Sid - Ubuntu Maverick and Ubunty Natty...I have
left Maverick with the Nouveau driver so we'll see. I am undecided
what to do with Natty...I mean it's already quite buggy (it's in
Alpha) so I may stick with Nouveau there as well. Sid is the
one I use 80% of the time. It would be **so* nice if Nvidia
open-sourced their Linux drivers!


With NVidia the almost automatic response is to dive into the proprietry
driver pool. It seems to me that unless 3D is a need (used by less than
5% of users) or the card is not supported well, you are going to be
served well by the nouveau driver.


Does nouveau support vdpau (which, even on the old 8400GS, 
*significantly* reduces CPU usage when watching video)?


--
"The normal condition of mankind is tyranny and misery."
Milton Friedman


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Ron Johnson]

On 02/19/2011 01:55 PM, Stephen Powell wrote:

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:34:23 -0500 (EST), Rob Owens wrote:


On my Squeeze system, the nouveau driver isn't working.  dmesg shows
this message:

GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

lspci shows my video card as this:

VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)

I do have an onboard video port that I'm not using.  Not sure if that's
messing things up or not.  Any advice?  I see several hits on Google,
but I haven't found a solution yet.

I'm trying to make nouveau work.  The proprietary nvidia driver will be
my last resort.


The nouveau driver is a work in progress, as even it's developers will
no doubt freely admit.  This is especially true for the newest chipsets.

[snip]


If you want to use a free driver, and nouveau won't work for you, your
next best option is the nv driver.  But nv won't work for the newest
chipsets.  And if that won't work, then try the vesa driver.



The FX5200 is 8 years old, and even then was labeled "Entry Level".

I seriously doubt that nouveau will ever support it.  That leaves nv 
or nvidia-173.14.27 (which is in Sid).


Also, I recommend filing a bug against xserver-xorg-video-nv (CCing 
d-devel) telling them why they should *not* remove it.


--
"The normal condition of mankind is tyranny and misery."
Milton Friedman


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Rob Owens]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 09:10:34PM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
> On 2011-02-19 20:34 +0100, Rob Owens wrote:
> 
> > On my Squeeze system, the nouveau driver isn't working.  dmesg shows
> > this message:  
> >
> > GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon
> 
> That's bad indeed.
> 
> > lspci shows my video card as this:
> >
> > VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev 
> > a1)
> >
> > I do have an onboard video port that I'm not using.  Not sure if that's
> > messing things up or not.
> 
> It shouldn't.  Does it even show up in lspci?
> 
Yes, it does show up in lspci.  It's an SiS chipset, in case that
matters.

> > Any advice?  I see several hits on Google,
> > but I haven't found a solution yet.
> >
> > I'm trying to make nouveau work.
> 
> There's not much hope if you intend to stay with Squeeze.  If you're not
> brave enough to blindly upgrade your kernel and the whole X stack to
> sid, I would recommend trying a Live CD like Knoppix 6.4 or Grml 10.12
> first.  Both come with kernel 2.6.36 and a newer nouveau snapshot from
> August 2010.
> 
I tried with a squeeze live CD and got similar results.  I wasn't able
to check the logs, though, because the whole machine was locked up.  I
did manage to get a rainbow screen and a real mouse pointer.

I am downloading Knoppix 6.4.4 now.

> > The proprietary nvidia driver will be my last resort.
> 
> IMO this is the least of the evils, at least if you insist on sticking
> with Squeeze on that machine.
> 
This is probably what I'll end up doing.  Thanks for the quick
responses, everyone.

-Rob


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Brian]

On Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 13:23:22 -0500, Frank wrote:

>Like I said, might have been an illusion - I have 3 distros on
> this computer..Sid - Ubuntu Maverick and Ubunty Natty...I have
> left Maverick with the Nouveau driver so we'll see. I am undecided
> what to do with Natty...I mean it's already quite buggy (it's in
> Alpha) so I may stick with Nouveau there as well. Sid is the
> one I use 80% of the time. It would be **so* nice if Nvidia
> open-sourced their Linux drivers!

With NVidia the almost automatic response is to dive into the proprietry
driver pool. It seems to me that unless 3D is a need (used by less than
5% of users) or the card is not supported well, you are going to be
served well by the nouveau driver.

It is also set up automatically with a Squeeze or Sid install so why
jump through the hoops of getting a proprietry driver installed unless
you have particlar obvious needs.


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Re: question about storage

[Ron Johnson]

On 02/19/2011 11:32 AM, David Christensen wrote:

On 02/18/2011 10:52 PM, Jim Green wrote:

I think I'll probably do this,
4x2T drive in desktop and use a external closure for backup(because I
am using mirroring, disk failure should be ok though). and I'll be
using soft raid to avoid hardware raid card.


Have you thought about security? If your database contains
confidential, personal, etc., information, it's easy to encrypt your
partitions with dm-crypt:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dm-crypt



encfs is a lot simpler.

--
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Milton Friedman


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Sven Joachim]

On 2011-02-19 20:34 +0100, Rob Owens wrote:

> On my Squeeze system, the nouveau driver isn't working.  dmesg shows
> this message:  
>
> GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

That's bad indeed.

> lspci shows my video card as this:
>
> VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)
>
> I do have an onboard video port that I'm not using.  Not sure if that's
> messing things up or not.

It shouldn't.  Does it even show up in lspci?

> Any advice?  I see several hits on Google,
> but I haven't found a solution yet.
>
> I'm trying to make nouveau work.

There's not much hope if you intend to stay with Squeeze.  If you're not
brave enough to blindly upgrade your kernel and the whole X stack to
sid, I would recommend trying a Live CD like Knoppix 6.4 or Grml 10.12
first.  Both come with kernel 2.6.36 and a newer nouveau snapshot from
August 2010.

> The proprietary nvidia driver will be my last resort.

IMO this is the least of the evils, at least if you insist on sticking
with Squeeze on that machine.

Sven


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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Rob Owens]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 02:55:11PM -0500, Stephen Powell wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:34:23 -0500 (EST), Rob Owens wrote:
> > 
> > On my Squeeze system, the nouveau driver isn't working.  dmesg shows
> > this message:  
> > 
> > GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon
> > 
> > lspci shows my video card as this:
> > 
> > VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev 
> > a1)
> > 
> > I do have an onboard video port that I'm not using.  Not sure if that's
> > messing things up or not.  Any advice?  I see several hits on Google,
> > but I haven't found a solution yet.
> > 
> > I'm trying to make nouveau work.  The proprietary nvidia driver will be
> > my last resort.
> 
> The nouveau driver is a work in progress, as even it's developers will
> no doubt freely admit.  This is especially true for the newest chipsets.
> I wouldn't put it past Nvidia to deliberately try to develop new chipsets
> which don't work with the nouveau driver to keep us dependent on them
> for drivers.  (I'm not accusing them of doing so.  I'm just saying that
> it wouldn't surprise me if they did.)
> 
> Do file a bug report against package xserver-xorg-video-nouveau.
> 
> If you want to use a free driver, and nouveau won't work for you, your
> next best option is the nv driver.  But nv won't work for the newest
> chipsets.  And if that won't work, then try the vesa driver.
> 
This is a fairly old card, so nv would probably work, but stage 2 is to get 
tv-out working.  I'm not sure I can do that with nv.  Anyway, I might have
bigger problems.  I noticed in Xorg.0.log the following:

(II) LoadModule: "nouveau"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module nouveau
(II) UnloadModule: "nouveau"
(EE) Failed to load module "nouveau" (module does not exist, 0)
(II) LoadModule: "nv"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module nv
(II) UnloadModule: "nv"
(EE) Failed to load module "nv" (module does not exist, 0)
(II) LoadModule: "vesa"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module vesa
(II) UnloadModule: "vesa"
(EE) Failed to load module "vesa" (module does not exist, 0)
(II) LoadModule: "fbdev"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module fbdev
(II) UnloadModule: "fbdev"
(EE) Failed to load module "fbdev" (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) No drivers available.

But 'lsmod | grep nouveau' shows this:

nouveau   314892  1 
ttm33386  1 nouveau
drm_kms_helper 18309  1 nouveau
drm   112088  3 nouveau,ttm,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit3497  1 nouveau
i2c_core   12696  5 
nouveau,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit,i2c_sis96x
button  3598  1 nouveau

-Rob


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Re: gnome menu problem

[Camaleón]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:54:34 +0100, Anton Bretterklieber wrote:

> Hi Camaleón, hi Slicky,
> 
> thank you for your reply. But I did these before with no success. Same
> behavior, same error messages.

I've only found a bug report on Ubuntu's BTS with similar sympthoms to 
the ones you are experiencing:

gnome-panel crashes (and reloads) when launching applications
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/643332

But the bug was closed with no apparent solution and no further follow-
up :-/

You could do the same and open a bug in Debian's BTS.

Greetings,

-- 
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Re: nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Stephen Powell]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:34:23 -0500 (EST), Rob Owens wrote:
> 
> On my Squeeze system, the nouveau driver isn't working.  dmesg shows
> this message:  
> 
> GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon
> 
> lspci shows my video card as this:
> 
> VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)
> 
> I do have an onboard video port that I'm not using.  Not sure if that's
> messing things up or not.  Any advice?  I see several hits on Google,
> but I haven't found a solution yet.
> 
> I'm trying to make nouveau work.  The proprietary nvidia driver will be
> my last resort.

The nouveau driver is a work in progress, as even it's developers will
no doubt freely admit.  This is especially true for the newest chipsets.
I wouldn't put it past Nvidia to deliberately try to develop new chipsets
which don't work with the nouveau driver to keep us dependent on them
for drivers.  (I'm not accusing them of doing so.  I'm just saying that
it wouldn't surprise me if they did.)

Do file a bug report against package xserver-xorg-video-nouveau.

If you want to use a free driver, and nouveau won't work for you, your
next best option is the nv driver.  But nv won't work for the newest
chipsets.  And if that won't work, then try the vesa driver.

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: USB3/xhci and hibernate/suspend to disk [SOLVED]

[Andre [debian]]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Andre [debian]  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've got a clean install of debian 6.0 squeeze, and am trying to get
> sleep/hibernate (suspend to ram/disk) to work.  I'll document what I
> have working first (to help anyone else searching for answers), and
> hopefully someone can help me past where I'm currently stuck...
>
> I'm writing this up at work, so can't quite remember all the details.
> ??? are bits I can't quite remember.
>
> I started with a new system:
>  - Gigabyte H55M-USB3 + i3-540
>  - 20TB WD20EARS (Incidentally, the drive suffers from this problem
>    [http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5357].  I did
>    disable the head parking using the wdidle3 tool provided by WD.)
>  - SATA DVD drive
>  - 2x2GB RAM
>  - generic USB keyboard, PS/2 mouse
> and performed a netinstall of Debian Squeeze 6.0.
>
> Without doing anything else, I attempted to put the system to sleep:
>        # pm-sleep
> The screen blanked off the X session to a terminal window where I see
>        [x] pm_op(): usb_dev_freeze+0x0/0x20 returns -2
>        [x] PM: Device usb3 failed to quiesce: error -2
>        [x] PM: ???
> It isn't always usb3, but some random usb port as far as I can tell.
>
> Some research led me to the xhci driver.  It does not respond well to
> suspend commands, and the easiest workaround is to add a script which
> unloads it prior to suspend and reloads it afterward:
>        /etc/pm/sleep.d/05_xhci
>
>        #!/bin/sh
>        # Fix USB3 suspend and hibernate problems
>        case $1 in
>        hibernate)
>        modprobe -r xhci
>        ;;
>        suspend)
>        modprobe -r xhci
>        ;;
>        thaw)
>        modprobe xhci
>        ;;
>        resume)
>        modprobe xhci
>        ;;
>        *) echo "USB3 fix script: wrong argument!"
>        ;;
>        esac
> Change the script to mode 755.  The errors go away and sleep works fine.
> (Reference: http://disi.unitn.it/~ferro/index.php/linux)
>
> Next, I attempted to hibernate the system:
>        # pm-hibernate
> It showed this error:
>        ata3: softreset failed (???)
> but then the machine proceeded to (as far as I can tell) swap out memory
> and shut itself down.  Powering the machine back on resulted in a normal
> boot (not a resume).
>
> It turns out I had not told the kernel about the resume partition.  This
> can be done through grub by editing /etc/defaults/grub:
>        GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="resume=UUID="
> where  is the UUID of the swap partition from /etc/fstab.
> Run update-grub:
>        # update-grub
> In my case, I have a 4GB swap partition (as created by the installer),
> and I don't remember offhand where I saw this, but I believe that there
> is enough swap space for the memory.
>
> Now pm-hibernate still shows
>        ata3: softreset failed (???)
> and the shutdown appears as it was before.  But now powering up results
> in swapping in of memory before I get:
>        [x] pm_op(): usb_dev_freeze+0x0/0x20 returns -2
>        [x] PM: Device usb3 failed to quiesce: error -2
>        [x] PM: Resume failed
> The machine hangs for a few minutes before displaying a stack trace.
> (Sorry, I don't have the details now; I can check when I get home.)
>
> /var/log/pm-suspend.log does not show anything obviously wrong (to me).
> I can post that when I get home.
>
> I don't understand why devices need to quiesce on resume.  Are drivers
> loaded first, then need to make room for the drivers that were in the
> suspended image?
>
> Does anyone have any idea why I am unable to resume from a hibernation
> state?  Or is there something wrong with the suspend to disk in the
> first place?  Is the ata3 error meaningful?

I was on the right track with the thinking that drivers are loaded at
first, but then xhci can't unload when the resume happens.

The solution was to blacklist xhci.  Edit /etc/modprobe.d/xhci.conf:
   blacklist xhci
Then update initrd.img:
   # update-initramfs -u

That's it, now suspend to ram and suspend to disk work!

Andre


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Re: apt-get upgrade error- SOLVED

[Camaleón]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:29:39 -0500, Paul Cartwright wrote:

>>> >  virtualbox has been purged from my system, but that file: # ls -l
>>> >  /var/lib/dpkg/available
>>> >  -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 25094284 Feb 19 08:00
>>> >  /var/lib/dpkg/available
>>> >  
>>> >  is rather large...
>>>  
>> Try running "dpkg --clear-avail".
>>
>>
> that did it!! no more error!!!

Good :-)

> the only other question I have is, why are all these packages being held
> back??
> # apt-get upgrade
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> The following packages have been kept back:

(...)

There are many :-O

> 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 281 not upgraded.

I can aventure why a package is "kept back" (it may have unmet 
dependencies that cannot be managed by just "apt-get upgrade" and needs 
"apt-get dist-upgrade) but being hundreds of packages in your case I 
would not try that, it can be dangerous. 

Wait until someone in the know can give you an accurate-and-safe 
advice :-)

Greetings,

-- 
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nouveau: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

[Rob Owens]

On my Squeeze system, the nouveau driver isn't working.  dmesg shows
this message:  

GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon

lspci shows my video card as this:

VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)

I do have an onboard video port that I'm not using.  Not sure if that's
messing things up or not.  Any advice?  I see several hits on Google,
but I haven't found a solution yet.

I'm trying to make nouveau work.  The proprietary nvidia driver will be
my last resort.

-Rob


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Re: apt-get upgrade error- SOLVED

[Stephen Powell]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:29:39 -0500 (EST), Paul Cartwright wrote:
> that did it!! no more error!!!
> the only other question I have is, why are all these packages being held 
> back??
> # apt-get upgrade
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> The following packages have been kept back:
>acpi-support apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2.2-common apt-cacher
>apt-file ark autopsy avahi-daemon banshee bless bluetooth bluez-audio boo
> ...

That's because you're doing an "upgrade" instead of a "dist-upgrade".
With an upgrade, apt is allowed to upgrade packages, but it is not
allowed to delete packages or install new ones.  Those packages are
being held back because installing them would require apt to either
install a package which is not currently installed that is a dependency
of the package being held back or else remove a package that conflicts
with the updated version of the package being held back.  When doing
massive updates, it is generally good practice to do an "upgrade"
first, then later do a "dist-upgrade".  The release notes for upgrading
Lenny to Squeeze, for example, specifically instruct one to do this.

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: gnome menu problem

[Anton Bretterklieber]

Hi Camaleón, hi Slicky,

thank you for your reply. But I did these before with no success. Same 
behavior, same error messages.

Anton

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Re: I want beep in urxvt terminal - SOLVED

[Joe Riel]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 23:04:34 -0600
Ron Johnson  wrote:

> On 02/17/2011 09:58 AM, Brad Rogers wrote:
> > On Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:16:16 -0600
> > Ron Johnson  wrote:
> >
> > Hello Ron,
> >
> >> Yes, I use nvidia, and no I won't use nouveau.
> >
> > Entirely your prerogative of course, but might I ask why?
> >
> 
> Performance.
> 

Just curious, what do you notice?  I don't notice
a difference, but I don't really do much that would
show up.  

An advantage for me of the noveau driver, besides restoring the
beep in an xterm, was that the console font (in a virtual terminal)
is much nicer.  I had tried various configurations of the console 
font with the nvidia driver, but it never looked good---too big and
kind of fuzzy. The console font with the nouveau driver is sharp,
reasonably small, and didn't require any configuration on my part.

I don't use the console much, but when I have to its nice to
be able to comfortably read it.


-- 
Joe Riel


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Wolodja Wentland]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 11:59 -0500, Frank McCormick wrote:
> 
> I am running Sid, and have just switched my video from Intel on-board
> to a NVIDIA based GE 5200.

I would recommend to use the DKMS [0] packages to install the
proprietary driver for nvidia cards.

Which package?
==

Depending on your chipset you need one of the following packages:

1. nvidia-kernel-dkms
2. nvidia-kernel-legacy-96xx-dkms
3. nvidia-kernel-legacy-173xx-dkms
4. nvidia-kernel-legacy-71xx-dkms (only in sid)

You can check the list of supported chipsets on the nvidia page to find
which driver supports your card.

http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/260.19.36/README/supportedchips.html
http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/195.36.24/README/supportedchips.html

Installation and Configuration
==

The installation of the dkms driver is more or less the same for each of
these pacakges.

Enable non-free sources
---

Make sure that each deb/deb-src lineends in "main contrib non-free". 
So, for example, the following line:

deb http://cdn.debian.net/debian/ squeeze main

should be changed to:

deb http://cdn.debian.net/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

Note that "contrib" is not really needed, but you might want to add it
nonetheless if you plan to install packages like "flashplugin-nonfree".

You can learn more about the "cdn" mirror at 

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianGeoMirror

Package installation


Change the "nvidia-kernel-dkms" package to the one you actually need.

# aptitude -r install linux-headers-2.6-`uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,'` 
nvidia-kernel-dkms

Configuration
--

The Xorg version in squeeze is most elegantly configured by using an
empty, or rather nonexisting, /etc/X11/xorg.conf and by using device
specific config snippets in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d. Every file whose
filename ends in ".conf" is included. So you basically do the following:

# mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d (if it does not exist)
# $EDITOR /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf

  With the following content:

  --- snip ---
  Section "Device"
Identifier "My GPU"
Driver "nvidia"
  EndSection'
  --- snip ---

Notes
=

Using the DKMS approach has the advantage that the module will be
compiled whenever you install a new kernel. I can understand that you
find the wiki page a bit confusing, but hope that you can follow my
instructions. This is the procedure we typically recommend in #d these
days.

Have a nice day

[0] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_Support
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Re: how to stop console font dimming?

[Brian]

On Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 18:22:33 +0800, jida...@jidanni.org wrote:

> Gentlemen, upon boot I see

, , , and Ladies?

>   Loading initial ramdisk
>   Loading, please wait...
> with the second line dimmer than the first.
> "No big deal", but how can I stop such dimming?
> All I know is the second line is from /usr/share/initramfs-tools/init,
> and I like GRUB_TERMINAL=console .

The font for the first line is a GRUB thing and determined by GRUB_FONT
in /etc/default/grub. The font for the second line is probably
determined by a video card font. My second line is brighter than the
first. 


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Re: apt-get upgrade error- SOLVED

[Paul Cartwright]

>  virtualbox has been purged from my system, but that file: # ls -l
>  /var/lib/dpkg/available
>  -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 25094284 Feb 19 08:00 /var/lib/dpkg/available
>  
>  is rather large...
 

Try running "dpkg --clear-avail".

   

that did it!! no more error!!!
the only other question I have is, why are all these packages being held 
back??

# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  acpi-support apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2.2-common apt-cacher
  apt-file ark autopsy avahi-daemon banshee bless bluetooth bluez-audio boo
  capplets-data cdrdao clive cmake cmake-data compiz compiz-core
  compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-gnome compiz-gtk compiz-plugins conky
  cowdancer cups-driver-gutenprint debian-keyring default-jdk default-jre
  default-jre-headless dhcp3-client dhcp3-common diff digikam-doc
  djvulibre-desktop dnsutils ecj ecj-gcj ekiga elinks elinks-data emacs
  empathy evince f-spot fbreader festival foomatic-db freemind gadmin-samba
  gcc-4.3-source gconf-editor gdebi gdebi-core gettext gnokii-common
  gnome-applets gnome-applets-data gnome-control-center gnome-icon-theme
  gnome-orca gnome-panel gnome-panel-data gnome-phone-manager
  gnome-power-manager gnome-screensaver gnome-session gnome-settings-daemon
  gnome-system-monitor gnome-utils gnotime gparted gpsd-clients grub
  gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gtkpod gxine host icedove icedove-dbg 
iceowl ink

  inkscape iptables k3b k3b-data kbattleship kdegames-dbg
  kdemultimedia-kio-plugins kmahjongg kmines koffice-data koffice-libs kpat
  kpogre krecipes krecipes-data krita krita-data kshisen ksudoku 
ktorrent lat

  ldap-account-manager libantlr-java-gcj libapache2-mod-php5 libaprutil1
  libart2.0-cil libavahi1.0-cil libbind-dev libboost-doc libcap2
  libcegui-mk2-1 libchipcard-tools libclass-accessor-perl libcompizconfig0
  libcwiid1-dev libdb-dev libdjvulibre21 libdts-dev libecj-java-gcj 
libgcj-bc

  libgconf2.0-cil libgdl-1-common libgeos-c1 libglade2.0-cil
  libglademm-2.4-1c2a libglib2.0-cil libgnome-keyring1.0-cil
  libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgnome-window-settings1 libgnome2-0 
libgnome2-common

  libgnome2-dev libgnomekbd-common libgnupg-interface-perl libgtk2-perl
  libgtk2.0-cil libgtkhtml3.16-cil libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a libgtkmm-2.4-dev
  libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libjibx-java libjpeg-progs liblog4j1.2-java-gcj
  liblua5.1-0 liblua5.1-0-dev libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil 
libmono-addins0.2-cil

  libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib1.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
  libmono-data-tds1.0-cil libmono-data-tds2.0-cil libmono-ldap2.0-cil
  libmono-security1.0-cil libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip0.84-cil
  libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil libmono-sqlite2.0-cil libmono-system-data1.0-cil
  libmono-system-data2.0-cil libmono-system-web1.0-cil
  libmono-system-web2.0-cil libmono-system1.0-cil libmono-system2.0-cil
  libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil libmono0 libmono1.0-cil libmono2.0-cil
  libnautilus-extension-dev libnautilus-extension1 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
  libnotify0.4-cil libogdi3.2 libossp-uuid-perl libpam-smbpass libpurple0
  librrd4 librrds-perl libsdl1.2-dev libsdl1.2debian libsdl1.2debian-all
  libsmbclient libsmbclient-dev libsoap-lite-perl libsox-fmt-alsa
  libsox-fmt-base libsvn1 libts-0.0-0 libwbclient0 libwebkit-dev
  libxml-libxml-perl libzlui-gtk lintian live-helper live-magic metacity
  metacity-common mono-gac mono-runtime mono-utils nautilus nautilus-data
  ntfs-3g ntp ntpdate obexfs obexftp openbios-sparc openjdk-6-jdk
  openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib php-pear php5
  php5-cgi php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-dbg php5-dev php5-gd 
php5-idn

  php5-imagick php5-imap php5-ldap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-ming
  php5-mysql php5-ps php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite 
php5-tidy

  php5-xcache php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl pidgin pidgin-data podsleuth proj
  python-vte qemu reportbug rhino rhythmbox rrdtool rsnapshot rss-glx samba
  samba-common sleuthkit smbclient sound-juicer sox subversion
  system-config-printer tangogps telepathy-gabble totem-common 
totem-gstreamer

  totem-mozilla ufraw vde2 vorbis-tools wireshark wireshark-common worker
  xfce4-clipman-plugin xfce4-goodies xfce4-notes-plugin
  xfce4-screenshooter-plugin xiphos xscreensaver-data xserver-xorg-dev
  zonecheck
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 281 not upgraded.


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Paul Cartwright]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:11:29 + (UTC)
Camaleón  wrote:


After I posted to the list I found
http://linuxinside.blogspot.com/2008/03/debian-nvidia-drivers.html

   

from a text-based terminal ( CTRL-ALT-F1), you run:
# sgfxi -c

and it runs & pulls in the headers for you & installs the latest NVIDIA 
driver from NVIDIA.





   



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Re: Xfce Power Manager popup message about HAL daemon

[Gilbert Sullivan]

On 02/19/2011 12:31 PM, Nate Bargmann wrote:

* On 2011 19 Feb 08:49 -0600, Gilbert Sullivan wrote:

Following routine updates on a few Debian testing systems yesterday
I noticed that two of the three laptops started showing an Xfce
Power Manager popup message only upon the first login following each
reboot.

Xfce power manager
HAL daemon is not running


I have seen that too, but so far only on my Sid box.  The other boxes
running XFCE4 are running Squeeze.  In fact, until the latest update I
had to restart the panel manually from a terminal.


That's very interesting. I haven't had any panel problems at all.


The power manager applet itself is working fine, and the HAL daemon
is, indeed, running. I'm guessing this is just a starting order
issue, but I think it's kind of odd.

I wasn't certain whether I should give this a few days to see if it
gets rectified / file a bug report / wade right in and correct the
problem manually.


Bug #612611 has been filed against xfce4-power-manager,
xfce4-power-manager: Does not work with DBus activated HAL

Message 15 in that report has a workaround:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=612611#15


Thank you!

I've got some reading to do. (I hurriedly tried searching there, but 
failed to find that report. I need to pull my head out and learn to 
properly use the search functions at the bug tracker. I often screw up 
my searches there for some reason.)


I was thinking that the power manager wasn't misbehaving on these 
systems (other than the popup), but it occurs to me that I have 
virtually all of its capabilities turned off. Maybe I need to do some 
testing as well as reading.




- Nate>>



Best regards,
Gilbert


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Frank]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:14:14 + (UTC)
Camaleón  wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:34:31 -0500, Frank McCormick wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:11:29 + (UTC) Camaleón wrote:
> > 
> >> > Anyone have a link to a good tutorial?
> >> 
> >> http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
> >> 
> >> 
> >   Thanks. Had a look at it, but got a little confused after reading
> > a page or two :)
> 
> Yep, is a bit fuzzy to get whole picture if you don't know what is the 
> current status of the nvidia driver for your VGA card and distribution.
> 
> All this stuff change very fast.
> 
> >> *But* if your card is a GeForce FX 5200, you may need the "legacy"
> >> version of the drivers (173.14.28).
> > 
> >   That's what I dl'ed from Nvidia.com
> 
> Then that's fine.
> 
> >> http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.28/README/index.html
> >> 
> >> Anyway, have you tried first with "nouveau"?
> > 
> >   That's the first thing I tried . Seemed to be OK, but a little on
> > the slow side compared with my on-board Intel video. But that could have
> > been an illusion.
> 
> X-)
>  
> > After I posted to the list I found
> > http://linuxinside.blogspot.com/2008/03/debian-nvidia-drivers.html
> > 
> > I used that method, which for me worked perfectly. 
> 
> Good.
> 
> > But I know understand
> > using the DebianWiki way might have been better in the long run - seems
> > simpler after a Kernel update ???
> 
> Well, yes... installing using the "Debian way" is easier but you are limited 
> to one set of drivers (the ones available in "non-free" repository, that is 
> "173.14.27").
> 
> > Thanks- I have bookmarked all the sites.
> 
> Just remember that for any kernel update it's quite possible you need 
> to update the nvidia driver in the way the link you sent it shows. 
> 


   I am hoping kernel updates are few...:)

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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Frank]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:56:51 +
Brian  wrote:

> On Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 12:34:31 -0500, Frank McCormick wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:11:29 + (UTC)
> > Camaleón  wrote:
> > > 
> > > Anyway, have you tried first with "nouveau"?
> > 
> >   That's the first thing I tried . Seemed to be OK, but a little on
> > the slow side compared with my on-board Intel video. But that could
> > have been an illusion.
> 
> 'Slow'? Doing what? I have cards with the same chipset as you and
> slowness is not an issue with nouveau for me.
> 

   Like I said, might have been an illusion - I have 3 distros on
this computer..Sid - Ubuntu Maverick and Ubunty Natty...I have
left Maverick with the Nouveau driver so we'll see. I am undecided
what to do with Natty...I mean it's already quite buggy (it's in
Alpha) so I may stick with Nouveau there as well. Sid is the
one I use 80% of the time. It would be **so* nice if Nvidia
open-sourced their Linux drivers!


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Camaleón]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:34:31 -0500, Frank McCormick wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:11:29 + (UTC) Camaleón wrote:
> 
>> > Anyone have a link to a good tutorial?
>> 
>> http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
>> 
>> 
>   Thanks. Had a look at it, but got a little confused after reading
> a page or two :)

Yep, is a bit fuzzy to get whole picture if you don't know what is the 
current status of the nvidia driver for your VGA card and distribution.

All this stuff change very fast.

>> *But* if your card is a GeForce FX 5200, you may need the "legacy"
>> version of the drivers (173.14.28).
> 
>   That's what I dl'ed from Nvidia.com

Then that's fine.

>> http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.28/README/index.html
>> 
>> Anyway, have you tried first with "nouveau"?
> 
>   That's the first thing I tried . Seemed to be OK, but a little on
> the slow side compared with my on-board Intel video. But that could have
> been an illusion.

X-)
 
> After I posted to the list I found
> http://linuxinside.blogspot.com/2008/03/debian-nvidia-drivers.html
> 
> I used that method, which for me worked perfectly. 

Good.

> But I know understand
> using the DebianWiki way might have been better in the long run - seems
> simpler after a Kernel update ???

Well, yes... installing using the "Debian way" is easier but you are limited 
to one set of drivers (the ones available in "non-free" repository, that is 
"173.14.27").

> Thanks- I have bookmarked all the sites.

Just remember that for any kernel update it's quite possible you need 
to update the nvidia driver in the way the link you sent it shows. 

Greetings,

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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Brian]

On Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 12:34:31 -0500, Frank McCormick wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:11:29 + (UTC)
> Camaleón  wrote:
> > 
> > Anyway, have you tried first with "nouveau"?
> 
>   That's the first thing I tried . Seemed to be OK, but a little on
> the slow side compared with my on-board Intel video. But that could
> have been an illusion.

'Slow'? Doing what? I have cards with the same chipset as you and
slowness is not an issue with nouveau for me.


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Re: I want beep in urxvt terminal - SOLVED

[Andrei Popescu]

On Jo, 17 feb 11, 09:16:16, Ron Johnson wrote:
> 
> Yes, I use nvidia, and no I won't use nouveau.

You could try it out just to confirm it makes your computer beep ;)

Regards,
Andrei
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Re: Command Line Partitioning

[Stephen Powell]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:49:41 -0500 (EST), Hal Vaughan wrote:
> 
> I have everything else worked out so it can be done in a batch mode
> or in a program, but I'm having trouble with partitioning.
> 
> I've been working with cfdisk, fdisk, and parted:
> 
> parted: Always leaves only 512 bytes at the start and grub-install
> doesn't seem to like that.  But it can be used in a batch mode.
> 
> fdisk: Doesn't seem to have a batch/script mode and I'd have to
> calculate sizes in megabytes from cylinder info
> 
> cfdisk: Lets me work in whatever units I like (bytes, kbytes, mbytes,
> and so on) but is curses based and doesn't have batch/script mode.
> 
> What I would like to do is to be able to use a partitioning program
> from a batch or script mode.  Parted would be good for that, but I
> can't seem to get it to leave more than 512 bytes at the start
> (cfdisk left 32k -- why?  I don't know).
> 
> Also, it seems when I get CF disks they have an MS-DOS partition
> table (grub kept noting that and one part of the whole process
> didn't seem to like that).  How can I either wipe the disk without
> a mess (tried zeroing it, parted wouldn't recognize it or write to
> it, but fdisk had no issue with that) or write a new partition table?
> What type of partition table should I use?  (I'm guessing bsd, which
> was one of the options, but there wasn't a Linux option for types of
> partition tables.)

Well, if I were in your situation I think I know what I would do.
I would use another boot loader besides grub2, such as lilo or
extlinux, that doesn't need to allocate sectors at the beginning
of the disk which are supposed to be unallocated (or in the case of
parted, are part of a partition).  Both lilo and extlinux can be
installed in either the master boot record or a partition boot sector
and are perfectly happy with the MS-DOS partitioning scheme.
With extlinux you are limited to either the ext2 or ext3 filesystem
for the /boot partition.  With lilo you can use just about anything
for a file system.  The down side of lilo is that the boot loader
installer has to be run any time the physical location of any
sector in the kernel image file or the initial RAM disk image file
changes.

I have a web page that you may find useful.  It is

   http://users.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/Kernel.htm

You may find it useful for several reasons.  First of all, it is
very common when working with embedded systems to create a custom
Linux kernel.  A "lean and mean" kernel is often created which contains
only the drivers which are actually needed for that particular
embedded system.  This saves hard disk space and memory space on
the embedded device (but not on the system on which one actually
compiles the kernel!)

Second, step 10, "Customize the Kernel Installation Environment",
contains stuff which is useful even to people who use stock
kernels.  For example, there is a section on how to switch to
lilo from another boot loader (in this case, grub 1 from Lenny)
and covers some little known stuff about lilo, such as how to
make use of UUIDs in lilo, how to determine the capabilities of
the BIOS, etc.  Third, if you are using a custom kernel built
in the manner recommended in the write-up, and you are using
lilo, you will probably need some extra "hook scripts" which
don't currently ship with lilo.  This write-up provides some
sample hook scripts which you may find useful.

Good luck with your project.
 
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[SOLVED] Re: Drupal 6 on PostgreSQL 8.3 -- Compatibility Issues?

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

In <200910121356.40435@iguanasuicide.net>, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
>Anyone?  (Only quoted text follows.)
>
>On Tuesday 06 October 2009 23:01:51 Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
>> I'm running drupal 6 on top of postgres 8.3 and apache 2 (all from Lenny),
>> at the address in my signature.  It has recently come to my attention that
>> postgres is regularly logging some messages that might be of some concern.
>> They come in two styles, one complaining about backslashes:
>> ---
>> Oct  7 02:02:24 rei postgres[20126]: [3-1] 2009-10-07 02:02:24 UTC
>> WARNING: nonstandard use of \\ in a string literal at character 25
>> Oct  7 02:02:24 rei postgres[20126]: [3-2] 2009-10-07 02:02:24 UTC HINT:
>> Use the escape string syntax for backslashes, e.g., E'\\'.
>> ---
>> and another complaining about invalid UTF-8 characters:
>> ---
>> Oct  7 00:36:31 rei postgres[18120]: [3-1] 2009-10-07 00:36:31 UTC ERROR:
>> invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xa0
>> Oct  7 00:36:31 rei postgres[18120]: [3-2] 2009-10-07 00:36:31 UTC HINT:
>> This error can also happen if the byte sequence does not match the
>> encoding expected by the
>> Oct  7 00:36:31 rei postgres[18120]: [3-3]  server, which is controlled by
>> "client_encoding".
>> ---
>> 
>> I think my postgres and drupal configurations are mutually compatible or
>> should be.

http://drupal.org/node/426008
http://mikkel.hoegh.org/blog/2010/aug/9/tip-using-postgresql-drupal-6/
http://momjian.us/main/blogs/pgblog/2010.html#August_9_2010

Postgres 8+ has an option to handle stings as Drupal 6 expects.  Postgres 9+ 
will have this option on my default.  The old Postgres 7- behavior is not 
standards-compliant and an artifact of Postgres' development.

I guess I was just a bit ahead of a solution.  There's not even a work-around 
posted on the 'Net until 1 month after my second post.
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b...@iguanasuicide.net   ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-'
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Re: gnome menu problem

[Slicky Johnson]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:26:35 + (UTC)
Camaleón  wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:37:29 +0100, Anton Bretterklieber wrote:
> 
> > after update gnome to gnome 2.30 (debian 32-bit testing, debian
> > 64-bit stable), I can't start programs in the panel. Clicking on
> > icons, panel and all icons disappear and then desktop refreshes and
> > all is in place.
> 
> (...)
> 
> Create a new user, login and check if it happens the same.
> 
> Greetings,
> 

Or move .gnome2 out of the way and log back in.. I think that's the
only one you'd need. 



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Re: Command Line Partitioning

[Rob Owens]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 11:49:41AM -0500, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> 
> fdisk: Doesn't seem to have a batch/script mode and I'd have to calculate 
> sizes in megabytes from cylinder info
> 
fdisk does allow you to specify the start cylinder, then something like
+1000M for the end of the partition.  "M" meaning megabytes.  It may
also accept "G" for gigabytes these days, but I'm not sure -- you'd have
to try it yourself.

-Rob


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Frank McCormick]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:13:29 +
Allan Wind  wrote:

> On 2011-02-19 11:59:38, Frank McCormick wrote:
> > I am running Sid, and have just switched my video from Intel on-board
> > to a NVIDIA based GE 5200.
> > 
> 
> Install the linux-headers-$version package if you want to use the 
> NVIDIA installer.

  Thanks - that's what I ended up doing. I guess I should have
done an aptitude search for linux...not kernel.



-- 
-- Frank --


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Frank McCormick]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:11:29 + (UTC)
Camaleón  wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:59:38 -0500, Frank McCormick wrote:
> 
> > I am running Sid, and have just switched my video from Intel on-board to
> > a NVIDIA based GE 5200.
> > 
> > Anyone have a link to a good tutorial?
> 
> http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
> 

  Thanks. Had a look at it, but got a little confused after reading
a page or two :)



> *But* if your card is a GeForce FX 5200, you may need the "legacy" version 
> of the drivers (173.14.28).

  That's what I dl'ed from Nvidia.com

> 
> http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.28/README/index.html
> 
> Anyway, have you tried first with "nouveau"?

  That's the first thing I tried . Seemed to be OK, but a little on
the slow side compared with my on-board Intel video. But that could
have been an illusion.

After I posted to the list I found
http://linuxinside.blogspot.com/2008/03/debian-nvidia-drivers.html

I used that method, which for me worked perfectly.
But I know understand using the DebianWiki way might have been
better in the long run - seems simpler after a Kernel update ???

Thanks- I have bookmarked all the sites.




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Re: Can't run update-initramfs

[Stephen Powell]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:46:12 -0500 (EST), Noah Duffy wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 5:53 PM, Andre [debian]  wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Noah Duffy  wrote:
>>> I was trying to install Plymouth on Debain Squeeze.  I followed the
>>> basic instructions, but the only thing I was unable to run was
>>> update-initramfs.  It just tells me that the command isn't found.  I'm
>>> a little confused.  Is there something else I need to install or do?
>>> I did have initramfs-tools installed (it came with Plymouth).
>>
>> Are you using sudo or logged in as root?  It's likely not in your path
>> if you're not root.
>>
>> Andre
>>
> 
> I disabled the root user by not setting a password.  So, I'm using
> sudo from my account.

Which means that you need to issue

   sudo update-initramfs ...

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Allan Wind]

On 2011-02-19 11:59:38, Frank McCormick wrote:
> I am running Sid, and have just switched my video from Intel on-board
> to a NVIDIA based GE 5200.
> 
> Now I am thoroughly confused about how to install NVIDIAs driver.
> I DL'ed the latest run file from Nvidia.com, now when I attempt to
> get it to install the proper module(s), it tells me I need the
> kernel source. Doing an aptitude search for kernel turns up a lot
> of nvidia-related files (including module sources and binary modules)
> but no kernel source. 
> Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Install the linux-headers-$version package if you want to use the 
NVIDIA installer.


/Allan
-- 
Allan Wind
Life Integrity, LLC



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Re: question about storage

[David Christensen]

On 02/18/2011 10:52 PM, Jim Green wrote:

I think I'll probably do this,
4x2T drive in desktop and use a external closure for backup(because I
am using mirroring, disk failure should be ok though). and I'll be
using soft raid to avoid hardware raid card.


Have you thought about security?  If your database contains 
confidential, personal, etc., information, it's easy to encrypt your 
partitions with dm-crypt:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dm-crypt


A processor with AES-NI extensions is desirable:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES-NI


Beware that Intel's newest desktop chipsets (H67 and P67) have problems 
with the SATA ports:


http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2011/01/chipset_design_flaw.php


http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/01/31/intel-identifies-chipset-design-error-implementing-solution

"The company expects to begin delivering the updated version of the 
chipset to customers in late February and expects full volume recovery 
in April"



If you can wait, I would.  If not, then the choices would seem to be 
prior-generation desktop chipsets or current workstation/ server chipsets:



http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/chipsets/index.htm?iid=desk_nav+chip


http://www.intel.com/products/server/chipsets/index.htm#s1=Workstation&s2=all&s3=all?iid=chipsets_body+workstation


> Thank you both!

You're welcome.  :-)


David


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Re: Xfce Power Manager popup message about HAL daemon

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2011 19 Feb 08:49 -0600, Gilbert Sullivan wrote:
> Following routine updates on a few Debian testing systems yesterday
> I noticed that two of the three laptops started showing an Xfce
> Power Manager popup message only upon the first login following each
> reboot.
> 
> Xfce power manager
> HAL daemon is not running

I have seen that too, but so far only on my Sid box.  The other boxes
running XFCE4 are running Squeeze.  In fact, until the latest update I
had to restart the panel manually from a terminal.

> The power manager applet itself is working fine, and the HAL daemon
> is, indeed, running. I'm guessing this is just a starting order
> issue, but I think it's kind of odd.
> 
> I wasn't certain whether I should give this a few days to see if it
> gets rectified / file a bug report / wade right in and correct the
> problem manually.

Bug #612611 has been filed against xfce4-power-manager,
xfce4-power-manager: Does not work with DBus activated HAL

Message 15 in that report has a workaround:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=612611#15

- Nate >>

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://n0nb.us/index.html


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Re: gnome menu problem

[Camaleón]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:37:29 +0100, Anton Bretterklieber wrote:

> after update gnome to gnome 2.30 (debian 32-bit testing, debian 64-bit
> stable), I can't start programs in the panel. Clicking on icons, panel
> and all icons disappear and then desktop refreshes and all is in place.

(...)

Create a new user, login and check if it happens the same.

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Re: Switching to NVIDIA

[Camaleón]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:59:38 -0500, Frank McCormick wrote:

> I am running Sid, and have just switched my video from Intel on-board to
> a NVIDIA based GE 5200.
> 
> Now I am thoroughly confused about how to install NVIDIAs driver. I
> DL'ed the latest run file from Nvidia.com, now when I attempt to get it
> to install the proper module(s), it tells me I need the kernel source.
> Doing an aptitude search for kernel turns up a lot of nvidia-related
> files (including module sources and binary modules) but no kernel
> source.
> Am I barking up the wrong tree?
> 
> Anyone have a link to a good tutorial?

http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

*But* if your card is a GeForce FX 5200, you may need the "legacy" version 
of the drivers (173.14.28).

http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.28/README/index.html

Anyway, have you tried first with "nouveau"?

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Command Line Partitioning

[Hal Vaughan]

I have a compact flash card I'm experimenting with that goes into an embedded 
system.  In the future I'll be working with more CF cards and I know I won't 
always know the size of the card ahead of time.  I'm working on a Perl program 
so I can put the CF card in and the program will partition it, copy over an 
image of Squeeze (copy files, not through dd or anything like that), make the 
needed changes to GRUB2 (which is a real PITA now that UUIDs are ubiquitous) 
and anything else that will prepare this CF card for use in the embedded system.

I have everything else worked out so it can be done in a batch mode or in a 
program, but I'm having trouble with partitioning.

I've been working with cfdisk, fdisk, and parted:

parted: Always leaves only 512 bytes at the start and grub-install doesn't seem 
to like that.  But it can be used in a batch mode.

fdisk: Doesn't seem to have a batch/script mode and I'd have to calculate sizes 
in megabytes from cylinder info

cfdisk: Lets me work in whatever units I like (bytes, kbytes, mbytes, and so 
on) but is curses based and doesn't have batch/script mode.

What I would like to do is to be able to use a partitioning program from a 
batch or script mode.  Parted would be good for that, but I can't seem to get 
it to leave more than 512 bytes at the start (cfdisk left 32k -- why?  I don't 
know).

Also, it seems when I get CF disks they have an MS-DOS partition table (grub 
kept noting that and one part of the whole process didn't seem to like that).  
How can I either wipe the disk without a mess (tried zeroing it, parted 
wouldn't recognize it or write to it, but fdisk had no issue with that) or 
write a new partition table?  What type of partition table should I use?  (I'm 
guessing bsd, which was one of the options, but there wasn't a Linux option for 
types of partition tables.)


Thanks for any help on this!



Hal

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Switching to NVIDIA

[Frank McCormick]

I am running Sid, and have just switched my video from Intel on-board
to a NVIDIA based GE 5200.

Now I am thoroughly confused about how to install NVIDIAs driver.
I DL'ed the latest run file from Nvidia.com, now when I attempt to
get it to install the proper module(s), it tells me I need the
kernel source. Doing an aptitude search for kernel turns up a lot
of nvidia-related files (including module sources and binary modules)
but no kernel source. 
Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Anyone have a link to a good tutorial?


-- 
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Re: Can't run update-initramfs

[Noah Duffy]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 5:53 PM, Andre [debian]  wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Noah Duffy  wrote:
>> I was trying to install Plymouth on Debain Squeeze.  I followed the
>> basic instructions, but the only thing I was unable to run was
>> update-initramfs.  It just tells me that the command isn't found.  I'm
>> a little confused.  Is there something else I need to install or do?
>> I did have initramfs-tools installed (it came with Plymouth).
>
> Are you using sudo or logged in as root?  It's likely not in your path
> if you're not root.
>
> Andre
>

I disabled the root user by not setting a password.  So, I'm using
sudo from my account.


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Re: how to stop console font dimming?

[Stephen Powell]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 05:22:33 -0500 (EST), jida...@jidanni.org wrote:
> 
> Gentlemen, upon boot I see
>   Loading initial ramdisk
>   Loading, please wait...
> with the second line dimmer than the first.
> "No big deal", but how can I stop such dimming?
> All I know is the second line is from /usr/share/initramfs-tools/init,
> and I like GRUB_TERMINAL=console .

Perhaps the screen isn't dimmer, it's that the lines in the characters
are thinner.  During the early stages of the boot process, the
default hardware font of the video card is being used.  At some point,
console-setup runs and changes the font based on the specifications
found in /etc/default/console-setup.  The only thing is, this occurs
later in the boot process than the point you describe above.  The other
possibility is that a KMS-active kernel video module is being loaded,
such as nouveau or i915, which switches the console into a
frame-buffer-like state.  The only thing is that it seems to me that
this process also occurs later in the boot process than what you
describe above.

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: I want beep in urxvt terminal - SOLVED

[Brad Rogers]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 23:04:34 -0600
Ron Johnson  wrote:

Hello Ron,

> On 02/17/2011 09:58 AM, Brad Rogers wrote:
> > Ron Johnson  wrote:
> >> Yes, I use nvidia, and no I won't use nouveau.
> > Entirely your prerogative of course, but might I ask why?
> Performance.
 
Ah, I see.  Should've been obvious, I suppose.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
The public wants what the public gets
Going Underground - The Jam


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Re: apt-get upgrade error

[Camaleón]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 08:05:56 -0500, Paul Cartwright wrote:

> ever since my upgrade to squeeze I am getting errors like this ( more of
> them):
> 
> warning, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 514018 package
> 'virtualbox-2.2':
>   error in Version string '2.2.4-47978_Debian_lenny': invalid character
> in revision number

(...)

> virtualbox has been purged from my system, but that file: # ls -l
> /var/lib/dpkg/available
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 25094284 Feb 19 08:00 /var/lib/dpkg/available
> 
> is rather large...

Try running "dpkg --clear-avail".

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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gnome menu problem

[Anton Bretterklieber]

Dear list,

after update gnome to gnome 2.30 (debian 32-bit testing, debian 64-bit stable), 
I can't start programs in the panel. Clicking on icons, panel and all icons 
disappear and then desktop refreshes and all is in place. Starting program in a 
terminal succeeds.
In .xsession-errors, I get:
ImportError: /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: 
g_desktop_app_info_get_filename
Initializing nautilus-gdu extension
gnome-panel: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0: undefined 
symbol: g_desktop_app_info_get_filename
gnome-panel: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0: undefined 
symbol: g_desktop_app_info_get_filename

Any idea?

Thank you
Anton
-- 
Schon gehört? GMX hat einen genialen Phishing-Filter in die
Toolbar eingebaut! http://www.gmx.net/de/go/toolbar


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Xfce Power Manager popup message about HAL daemon

[Gilbert Sullivan]

Following routine updates on a few Debian testing systems yesterday I 
noticed that two of the three laptops started showing an Xfce Power 
Manager popup message only upon the first login following each reboot.


Xfce power manager
HAL daemon is not running

The power manager applet itself is working fine, and the HAL daemon is, 
indeed, running. I'm guessing this is just a starting order issue, but I 
think it's kind of odd.


I wasn't certain whether I should give this a few days to see if it gets 
rectified / file a bug report / wade right in and correct the problem 
manually.


Since two out of three laptops (not all of them) were affected, and the 
one that wasn't affected has a different installation history (more 
recent by a year), I suspect that the issue might be kind of hard for 
anyone else to duplicate and has been caused by a particular 
installation / upgrade history. (The two affected laptops were installed 
and upgraded daily side-by-side with all of the same packages.)


I don't want to file a dumb bug report that isn't going to be applicable 
to anyone but me, and I'm kind of loathe to do a manual correction on 
the chance that my changes might bork something later on. (I've never 
had to fiddle with loading order in Debian before, but I have a vague 
idea of how to proceed and will rtfm.)


This causes absolutely no apparent functional problem whatsoever, other 
than having to close the dialog.


Systems are all straight testing, using no contrib or non-free 
repositories / packages whatsoever. (I use "testing" in my sources.list, 
and have done so for months.)


Has anyone else seen it? Have an idea as to smartest way to proceed?

Thanks,
Gilbert


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acpi trouble

[Matteo Giani]

hi,

i've an eeepc 1005HA with squeeze, working like a charm.

i know there are tools (e.g for gnome, etc) that monitor the status of 
the battery and can be configured to gently shutdown the pc when the 
battery level is low.
i simply want to do exactly the same, using acpi. a quite simple task, 
i'd say.


so i installed the package eeepc-acpi-tools (1.1.11), i added to the 
script /etc/acpi/actions/power.sh (which already handles battery* events 
as i saw in /etc/acpi/events/battery) some rows, and now the script does 
his job.


the only problem is, my battery seems not to generate any events (i 
checked with acpi_listen), except when plugging/unplugging from AC 
power. in particular, it doesn't generate any event when it's 
charging/discharging (even at very low levels).


since those events are created by the kernel ( i'm using a vanilla 
2.6.32-5, the battery module is auto loaded) and since the status of the 
battery (in /sys/BAT0) is indeed updated every 30 s (or so), the 
questions are:


1) how do i force the kernel produce those events? is there a way?
2)  shoud i consider an upgrade of the bios?
3) what about other laptops? do anybody share this problem?

have a nice day! :)

--
Matteo Giani
http://www.skylarkofspace.blogspot.com/


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Re: Console resolution

[Camaleón]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:17:15 +0100, Pier Paolo wrote:

> 2011/2/19 Camaleón

>> > Can't recall exactly... some procedure from the wiki; i think i
>> > blacklisted nouveau, and tried to install kernel-nvidia something,
>> > but substantially that won't prevent nouveau from loading and messing
>> > up console.
>>
>> Installing nvidia drivers (from debian "non-free") should automatically
>> perform the steps to disable nouveau ("nvidia-kernel-common" package
>> cares about that). If that didn't work for you, you should have filled
>> a bug report.
>>
> It seems I missed my duties lst time!
> Beg your pardon... :-)

Okay... but no until you start sending text-based e-mails >;-)
 
> But i'll have some spare time next week... expect a pair of
> install-report and maybe something!

Good!

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Re: Console resolution

[Pier Paolo]

2011/2/19 Camaleón 

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:55:55 +0100, Pier Paolo wrote:
>
> > 2011/2/19 Camaleón
> >
> >> I asked what you tried hard for "the easy way", what steps did you
> >> follow and what errors did you get.
> >>
> > Can't recall exactly... some procedure from the wiki; i think i
> > blacklisted nouveau, and tried to install kernel-nvidia something, but
> > substantially that won't prevent nouveau from loading and messing up
> > console.
>
> Installing nvidia drivers (from debian "non-free") should automatically
> perform the steps to disable nouveau ("nvidia-kernel-common" package
> cares about that). If that didn't work for you, you should have filled a
> bug report.
>
> It seems I missed my duties lst time!
Beg your pardon... :-)

But i'll have some spare time next week... expect a pair of install-report
and maybe something!

Greetings,
>
> thanks


> --
> Camaleón
>
>
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>
>

Re: Console resolution

[Camaleón]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:55:55 +0100, Pier Paolo wrote:

> 2011/2/19 Camaleón
> 
>> I asked what you tried hard for "the easy way", what steps did you
>> follow and what errors did you get.
>>
> Can't recall exactly... some procedure from the wiki; i think i
> blacklisted nouveau, and tried to install kernel-nvidia something, but
> substantially that won't prevent nouveau from loading and messing up
> console. 

Installing nvidia drivers (from debian "non-free") should automatically 
perform the steps to disable nouveau ("nvidia-kernel-common" package 
cares about that). If that didn't work for you, you should have filled a 
bug report.

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Re: how to stop console font dimming?

[Pier Paolo]

2011/2/19 

> Gentlemen, upon boot I see
>  Loading initial ramdisk
>  Loading, please wait...
> with the second line dimmer than the first.
> "No big deal", but how can I stop such dimming?
> All I know is the second line is from /usr/share/initramfs-tools/init,
> and I like GRUB_TERMINAL=console .
>
> Maybe FONTFACE=VGA in /etc/default/console-setup? I think this result in
not change kernel standard fonts... not sure. (i use terminusboldvga, and it
dim at first)

>
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Re: Console resolution

[Pier Paolo]

2011/2/19 Camaleón 

> On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:56:50 +0100, Pier Paolo wrote:
>
> > 2011/2/18 Camaleón
> >
> >> What is what you "tried hard", exactly?
> >>
> > from rescue mode chrooting to recompile kernel after a not even
> > system-base-install alternate cd netinstall. Booting from hard disk
> > resulted in complete unusable system with vt blanked out
>
> I asked what you tried hard for "the easy way", what steps did you follow
> and what errors did you get.
>
> Can't recall exactly... some procedure from the wiki; i think i blacklisted
nouveau, and tried to install kernel-nvidia something, but substantially
that won't prevent nouveau from loading and messing up console. i think
actually the problem was nouveaufb than the xorg driver itself.
But as now i'm running the modified kernel, so maybe that problem could be
already resolved for my system (discrete nvidia 8400m i think: don't have
here the hardware...)

 Greetings,
>
> Bye!


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>
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Re: about package

[Camaleón]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:17:04 +, mgc wrote:

> I find some useful packages are not included in debian sources, such
> as
> easystroke, kxmame.
> Can I request that packages to be included in the sources ? Thanks.

http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/index.en.html

Greetings,

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apt-get upgrade error

[Paul Cartwright]

ever since my upgrade to squeeze I am getting errors like this ( more of 
them):


warning, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 514018 package 
'virtualbox-2.2':
 error in Version string '2.2.4-47978_Debian_lenny': invalid character 
in revision number
warning, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 514157 package 
'virtualbox-2.0':
 error in Version string '2.0.6-39765_Debian_lenny': invalid character 
in revision number
warning, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 514268 package 
'virtualbox-2.1':
 error in Version string '2.1.4-42893_Debian_lenny': invalid character 
in revision number

Processing triggers for python-central ...

virtualbox has been purged from my system, but that file:
# ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/available
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 25094284 Feb 19 08:00 /var/lib/dpkg/available

is rather large...

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Re: firmware

[Camaleón]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:35:55 -0500, robert rue wrote:

> hello debian, could you please change the kernel device firmware
> description to like software based dsp firmware. 

(...)

You can file a wishlist bug report against the package itself or any of 
the documentation projects available (release-notes, debian-doc, wiki 
pages...).

Greetings,

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Re: how to stop console font dimming?

[jidanni]

> "RL" == Roger Leigh  writes:
RL> Try "setterm -half-bright on|off".
OK, but there on the console
# setterm -half-bright off
doesn't seem to change things. Still dim.
Where in the Debian startup scripts do they do the
setterm -half-bright on
in the first place?


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Re: how to stop console font dimming?

[Roger Leigh]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 06:22:33PM +0800, jida...@jidanni.org wrote:
> Gentlemen, upon boot I see
>   Loading initial ramdisk
>   Loading, please wait...
> with the second line dimmer than the first.
> "No big deal", but how can I stop such dimming?
> All I know is the second line is from /usr/share/initramfs-tools/init,
> and I like GRUB_TERMINAL=console .

Try "setterm -half-bright on|off".


Regards,
Roger

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Re: Gnome, the screensaver and the lock screen background

[Camaleón]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 11:32:43 -0800, tony mollica wrote:

> Here's what I found.  Simple, actually.
> 
> The background image for the gnome-screensaver lock screen appears to be
> linked to which background image theme is being used at the time.  I
> changed the background theme (from right- click,Change Desktop
> Background) and now I have the black background that I was trying for. 
> At one point, I had the lock screen background displaying the same image
> as the desktop background, but that went away, I know not why.  Go
> figure.

It does not work for me.

Regardless of the background I have selected (solid color or bitmap 
image) I get a full-black background when locking the session.

Maybe as you upgraded, and not installed from scratch, you are still 
using GDM2 instead GDM3, which is what I have.

> On to the next problem, can't make changes to the Icedove message
> filters that stay in place after an Icedove restart.

Did you read my reply on that matter?
 
> Used to be Linux kept all the configs in one place, easy to find text
> files, easy to change.  Are there out of work micro$soft engineers
> making contributions?

What it seems is that there are many impatient people >:-)

Greetings,

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Re: Console resolution

[Camaleón]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:56:50 +0100, Pier Paolo wrote:

> 2011/2/18 Camaleón
> 
>> What is what you "tried hard", exactly?
>>
> from rescue mode chrooting to recompile kernel after a not even
> system-base-install alternate cd netinstall. Booting from hard disk
> resulted in complete unusable system with vt blanked out

I asked what you tried hard for "the easy way", what steps did you follow 
and what errors did you get.

Greetings,

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how to stop console font dimming?

[jidanni]

Gentlemen, upon boot I see
  Loading initial ramdisk
  Loading, please wait...
with the second line dimmer than the first.
"No big deal", but how can I stop such dimming?
All I know is the second line is from /usr/share/initramfs-tools/init,
and I like GRUB_TERMINAL=console .


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Re: Console resolution

[Camaleón]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:49:33 -0500, Paul Cartwright wrote:

>> To make this a bit more clear, nvidia card owners can run either:
>>
>> a) KMS+nouveau
>>
> so, what is this, why would I want it?

It's another driver available for your card. It is open source and it 
uses reverse engineering techniques to provide 3D acceleration. Nvidia 
(the company) does not support it.

(...)
>> d) nv (obsolete but still available, AFAICT)
>>
> I don't know if nv is still available in squeeze, I would imagine it is,
> but I hope I never have to use it!

Why not? It used to be good enough for many of us and a couple of years 
ago, it was the only free alternative for nvidia cards. It provides only 
2D acceleration and for that reason the nuvó project was started. Nv was 
getting direct support from Nvidia (the company).

Greetings,

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Re: question about storage

[Klistvud]

Dne, 19. 02. 2011 05:36:54 je Jim Green napisal(a):

Hello!
I have a laptop with 120G harddrive, 2x320G external harddrive,  I
don't have a desktop.

Now I am doing something serious storing some huge historical data to
mysql database and want to have some better storage solution(I hate
the two external harddrives I bought 4 years ago, need to power them
on individually and connect with laptop each time I need to use data
in them).

I have two options
1, buy a desktop with 4x2T harddrives and use lvm on raid1, I need the
redundancy of data.


+1


2, buy some independent storage like NAS, buy another desktop with
small harddrive to access the NAS, debian installed on NAS and desktop
of course.



what do you think would be a better solution for me? I like the NAS
idea that storage is independent so I can keep the NAS even if I
upgrade my desktops, but the con is I need to buy separate NAS..


What makes you think that, with solution 1., storage is *not*  
independent? NAS solutions, just as USB and eSATA external enclosures,  
have several disadvantages:
1) there's generally no easy upgrade path (except perhaps in  
professional-grade equipment that only datacenters can afford);
2) being the current market fad, they all come with an overprice  
relative to their "true value" (you pay way too much per gigabyte of  
storage as opposed to plain hard drives);
3) you have to pay an additional overprice if you want sturdy, brand  
name hardware; this overprice may be so huge as to become prohibitive;
4) hard drives in external enclosures and NAS solutions are generally  
slower/smaller/inferior/last year; again, that is just the general rule  
which "can" be avoided -- by shelling for yet another additional  
overprice of course;
5) according to user reports, there is potential for compatibility woes  
(particularly with external enclosures, less so with NAS).


The fact that you presently don't own a desktop is another huge point  
in favor of getting one.


IMHO: you should get a desktop with plenty of hard drive bays, so that  
you won't be facing problems if/when your data footprint doubles or  
trebles. Perhaps you should go for 3T drives from the outset. Data tend  
to grow at amazing speeds. And a good 1000/100/10 ethernet card. With  
the addition of a cheap wireless router in your home, you'll be able to  
access your data from any point in your house, or even your backyard,  
without messing with any cables/enclosures and the like. In addition,  
you'll have a fallback machine in case your laptops goes belly up. With  
modern power-saving capabilities you can even leave the desktop running  
24/7 and install some nifty server packages, such as squid, apache, a  
full-fledged mail server, and of course mysql. Debian is just ideal for  
that.


Happy shopping!

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