date:20231105

Hi,

Max Nikulin wrote:
> Are there obstacles making implementation of proper SIGINT and
> SIGTERM signals handler prohibitively difficult? Ctrl+C is a common part of
> UI familiar to the most of users. There are should be serious reasons if it
> is necessary to teach them to touch an application specific file.

15 years after the implementation of -check_media this is an interesting
question. I dimly remember to have introduced the abort file because
Ctrl+C was too rough.
Maybe this snippet from man xorriso explains the motivation of my
past self:

  -check_media_defaults [option [option ...]] --
 ...
 abort_file=disk_path  gives the path of the file which may abort
 a scan run. Abort happens if the file exists and  its  mtime  is
 not  older  than  the  start  time of the run. Use shell command
 "touch" to trigger this.  Other than  an  aborted  program  run,
 this  will  report the tested and untested blocks and go on with
 running xorriso.

I imagined the rescue attempts to happen in xorriso dialog mode.
After aborting an attempt with sr0, one could use the same xorriso run to
make an attempt with other min_lba= , max_lba= limits or with drive sr1.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Documentation for KVM/QEMU?

2023-11-05 Thread Michael Kjörling

On 6 Nov 2023 01:58 -0500, from noloa...@gmail.com (Jeffrey Walton):
> QEMU/KVM is mostly like Virtual Box. If you know Virtual Box, then you
> have most of what you need for QEMU/KVM.

I agree. Although _some_ terminology differs, and naturally things are
organized somewhat differently in the UI, the concepts are very
similar, since they solve very similar problems. So you may need to
look around a little within the UI to find the particular setting
you're looking for, but that should be about it.

The three biggest differences I have run across (I used VirtualBox
before):

1. Storage pools for disk images. With VirtualBox, you can put a disk
image file anywhere. With KVM, they go into one of a defined set of
pools, which in turn map to file system directories. Depending on what
kind of setup you prefer, this can be anything from actually
beneficial through a non-issue to a nuisance.

2. User versus system QEMU sessions. This isn't a problem, it's just
something you'll need to keep in mind when setting up and using VMs.

3. KVM virtualized NAT networking doesn't play nice with nftables on
the host with a restrictive policy. Took me a while to find a solution
but I eventually came up with this, which has worked reliably for me:
https://michael.kjorling.se/blog/2022/linux-kvm-host-nftables-guest-networking/

And another thing to keep in mind:

4. With SPICE, clipboard sharing is ENABLED by default between the
guest and the host; and by consequence, between guests! This one
really tripped me up. Fortunately it's not too hard to disable once
you learn how; I put a recipe at
https://michael.kjorling.se/blog/2023/disable-clipboard-sharing-clipboard-integration-with-qemu-kvm-and-spice/
but the short version of that one is that on the node
domain/devices/graphics/clipboard in the VM XML definition to set the
attribute copypaste="no". That will constrain that guest's OS
clipboard functionality to within that guest.

--
Michael Kjörling  https://michael.kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

Re: How to use dmsetuup?

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:
> Are there tools other than xorriso(1) that can create a compatible checksum?
> Read the checksum?

Not yet. The data format is documented in

https://dev.lovelyhq.com/libburnia/libisofs/raw/branch/master/doc/checksums.txt
For the general concept of AAIP attributes see

https://dev.lovelyhq.com/libburnia/libisofs/raw/branch/master/doc/susp_aaip_2_0.txt
For the exact format of attributes "isofs.ca" and "isofs.cx" see

https://dev.lovelyhq.com/libburnia/libisofs/raw/branch/master/doc/susp_aaip_isofs_names.txt

The implementation of this format in another program would be some work.
It would be much easier to link with libisoburn and to use its xorriso
API. Each xorriso command can be performed by a C function call. See
in /usr/include/libisoburn/xorriso.h the functions Xorriso_option_*().
Further there is Xorriso_interpreter() which performs commands and their
parameters given as text arguments. Xorriso_execute_option() splits a text
line into commands and parameters and performs them.

The way to get the MD5s of data files is an -exec action of command -find.
The MD5s must have been loaded at -indev time. So before -indev one has to
perform -for_backup or -md5 "on":

  xorriso -for_backup -indev /dev/sr0 -find / -exec get_md5 --

yields on stdout md5sum compatible lines of all MD5 equipped data files:

  bd8d516f33262f7d8ef3bf952729e671  /my/first_file
  90ae421ded24f03d6b7ae4d5bfdd41e9  /my/second_file
  ...

For the MD5 of just one particular file let -find start at that file

  md5_line=$( xorriso -for_backup -indev /dev/sr0 \
  -find /my/second_file -exec get_md5 -- 2>/dev/null )

> My approach is *.md5 and *.sha256 sister files for each archive encrypted
> tarball file.

As we can see with xorriso's MD5s and the parity checksums of the medium,
it is always good to have own checksums (although i deem SHA256 overdone
unless protection against malicious manipulations is needed).

> implementing algorithms
> from standards is non-trivial; bugs are not uncommon.

Especially when the specs are sparse with describing the exact algorithm
and use nomenclature from the checksum community.
ECMA-337 (DVD+RW) lists four algorithms, which use three different
polynomials and a notation "RS(X,Y,Z)" which i don't know.

I once had to explore the checksum algorithms of ECMA-130 (CD-ROM)
annex A and B. Other than with DVD and BD, the CD commands of MMC let the
user supply own error correction data when a raw write mode is selected.
See the comments at the beginning of

https://dev.lovelyhq.com/libburnia/libburn/raw/branch/master/libburn/ecma130ab.c
(which i don't really understand 14 years after i wrote them down).

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Installing on Radxa Rock Pi 4B using SD-card-images

On Mon, Nov 06, 2023 at 09:32:05AM +0800, jeremy ardley wrote:
> 
> On 6/11/23 06:26, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > I think you've hit the curse of almost all ARM single board computers.
> > Almost all are small production runs / out of East Asia somewhere as
> > "prototypes"** with a board support package (BSP) that's probably just
> > the manufacturer's kernel, u-boot and dtbs.
> 
> 
> If that was all it was at, it would be livable.
> 
> But the new series of boards are coming with NPU processors and this
> necessitates using closed source driver component (some parts are open but
> not all)
> 

For future readers of the list: I had to search for the meaning of an NPU and
found this reference helpful - 
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/ai-101-gpu-vs-tpu-vs-npu/ - no further opinions 
as to the company behind it.

NPU - Neural Processing Unit - chip designed for AI use.

> As a corollary many packages have been tweaked to use the proprietary GPU
> and NPU stuff. As a consequence, in my case with a NanoPC-T6, I get on apt
> upgrade
> 
> The following packages have been kept back:
>   ffmpeg ffmpeg-doc ir-keytable libavcodec-dev libavcodec58 libavdevice-dev
> libavdevice58 libavfilter-dev
>   libavfilter7 libavformat-dev libavformat58 libavresample-dev
> libavresample4 libavutil-dev libavutil56
>   libdrm-dev libdvbv5-doc libpostproc-dev libpostproc55 libswresample-dev
> libswresample3 libswscale-dev
>   libswscale5 libv4l-0 libv4l-dev qv4l2 v4l-utils xserver-common
> xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-dev
>   xserver-xorg-legacy
> 

I'm unsure what can be done - most of those are audio/video coding programs
and camera support. It might be that the move to Wayland compositing *might*
help with the xorg - or maybe that you don't run X 

The problems continue ...

All the very best, as ever,

Andy
>

Re: Debian support for ARM SBCs (was: Installing on Radxa Rock Pi 4B using SD-card-images)

On Sun, Nov 05, 2023 at 06:39:46PM -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > The way round this is to build u-boot or reverse-enginer the settings then
> > do the same for a kernel, dtb and then debootstrap Debian yourself
> >  - that's exactly the sort of thing that folk do to get their boards 
> > "supported in Debian" - folk like vagrantc and gwolf.
> > Painful isn't in it - there's a reason why there are relatively few
> > boards supported in the SD card images list.
> 
> BTW, do you happen to know of a good resource/URL/mailinglist for that
> specific task, both to find info about supported boards (and *how* they
> are supported) but also in case I want to help add support for the
> boards I happen to have around?
> 
> 

Hi Stefan,

On IRC, there's #debian-arm on OFTC
There's the debian-arm mailing list

Probably some of the regular "State of the ARM" videos at pretty much
every Debconf (now also available on Peertube and YouTube).

It probably doesn't help that the community is small - a chat around
Steve's BBQ in Cambridge every year probably yields world expertise :(
(Sledge, unixsmurf on IRC both worked for ARM for many years, Wookey
still does).

I don't know who vagrantc (Vagrant Cascadian) works/worked for but always
a useful person.

Asking on the Debian resources above is probably as good as any.

All the very best,

Andy 

> Stefan
>

Re: Documentation for KVM/QEMU? [Re: How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm]

2023-11-05 Thread Jeffrey Walton

On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 1:36 AM Rick Thomas  wrote:
>
> Can anyone recommend good documentation on KVM/QEMU that would allow me to 
> get up to speed on it quickly?

I don't know if or where good documentation exists. Sorry about that.

QEMU/KVM is mostly like Virtual Box. If you know Virtual Box, then you
have most of what you need for QEMU/KVM.

You can create a desktop shortcut for QEMU/KVM by issuing:

cd ~/Desktop
cp -p /usr/share/applications/virt-manager.desktop
chmod +x virt-manager.desktop

Then you can easily launch the UI.

The other trick with QEMU/KVM is, the screen button shows the guest as
expected. And the button with the letter "i" shows the guest
configuration. See the red boxes highlighting the buttons at
 and .

The one problem I have encountered is related to networking. I want a
bridged connection so the VM guest gets an IP address from my DHCP
server. But the network adapter seems to be stuck in NAT mode, even
after switching to bridged mode. So the VM guest always gets a
192.168.0.0/16 address, and never gets an IP address from my DHCP
server. That means I cannot SSH to the guest because I use
172.16.0.0/12 behind my firewall to avoid address and routing problems
from my ISP's router.

Jeff

Re: how to find libreoffice is built for architecture

2023-11-05 Thread Marco M.

Am 06.11.2023 um 06:42:41 Uhr schrieb జిందం వాఐి:

> * example_ libreoffice-writer 7.6.3~rc1-2
> is not available for architectures_
> armhf, mips64el, s390x [ 1 ]
> * how to find if libreoffice-writer 7.6.3
> is available for above missing
> architectures
> 
> [ 1 ] https://packages.debian.org/experimental/libreoffice-writer

https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=libreoffice-writer=names=stable=all

It is available for those architectures (please tell us the OS you are
using).

Be aware that experimental is a special repo for builds that aren't
tested well, so use them with caution, even on sid.

For a stable operation, I recommend using Debian stable.

xorriso and SIGTERM/SIGINT handler (was: Re: How to use dmsetuup?)

2023-11-05 Thread Max Nikulin


On 05/11/2023 15:04, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

If you want to abort earlier, do not press Ctrl+C but rather do
   touch /var/opt/xorriso/do_abort_check_media


I do not have an optical drive around for last years, so feel free to 
ignore my question. Are there obstacles making implementation of proper 
SIGINT and SIGTERM signals handler prohibitively difficult? Ctrl+C is a 
common part of UI familiar to the most of users. There are should be 
serious reasons if it is necessary to teach them to touch an application 
specific file.

Re: How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm

2023-11-05 Thread జిందం వాఐి


PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice,
would there be a better VM supervisor
I could use? If so, can you point me
to a set of instructions for it?


* these are MY personal opnions from
experience [ almost decade ago ]
[ may not be correct or relevant ]
 * my laptop with amd processor [ low
end model ]
 * installation of qemu was impossible
because virtualization [ svm ] is not
enabled in BIOS, only high end models
have it enabled [ blame on bios vendors
for poor implementation, eventhough
it is enabled by amd ] [ kernel 6.7
commit [ 1 ] fixed incorrect data ]

* so do you have amd or intel?
* how much ram [ is relevant due to
recent security incidents affecting
intel [ little bit more ], amd

* virtualbox [ 2 ], but it is available
in unstable? [ 3 ] why?
 * it was working flawlessly
 * even if you have intel, installation
of debian [ minimal installation ]
+ twm is more than enough ;)

[ 1 ] 
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20231027170151.GOZTvs%2FwR%2F47ib4+qe@fat_crate.local/T/#u

[ 2 ] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation
[ 3 ] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/virtualbox

--
regards,
జిందం వాఐి [ jindam, vani ]
[matrix]_ @jindam.vani:oikei.net

Documentation for KVM/QEMU? [Re: How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm]

2023-11-05 Thread Rick Thomas

Can anyone recommend good documentation on KVM/QEMU that would allow me to get 
up to speed on it quickly?

Thanks!
Rick


On Sun, Nov 5, 2023, at 4:33 AM, Michael Kjörling wrote:
> On 5 Nov 2023 10:56 +0100, from andr...@xss.co.at (Andreas Haumer):
>>> PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice, would there be a better VM
>>> supervisor I could use?  If so, can you point me to a set of
>>> instructions for it?
>> 
>> To answer just these questions only: take a look at kvm/qemu and
>> the virt-manager GUI.
>
> Yes, definitely look at KVM/QEMU. "Better" is subjective but certainly
> one huge advantage of KVM over almost anything else is that it's
> already there in the kernel, and you pretty much just need to install
> the tools to manage it. VirtualBox, VMWare and others require adding
> third-party software, which can easily break with a kernel upgrade.
>
> -- 
> Michael Kjörling  https://michael.kjorling.se
> “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

Re: Installing on Radxa Rock Pi 4B using SD-card-images

2023-11-05 Thread jeremy ardley




On 6/11/23 06:26, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
I think you've hit the curse of almost all ARM single board computers. 
Almost all are small production runs / out of East Asia somewhere as 
"prototypes"** with a board support package (BSP) that's probably just 
the manufacturer's kernel, u-boot and dtbs.



If that was all it was at, it would be livable.

But the new series of boards are coming with NPU processors and this 
necessitates using closed source driver component (some parts are open 
but not all)


As a corollary many packages have been tweaked to use the proprietary 
GPU and NPU stuff. As a consequence, in my case with a NanoPC-T6, I get 
on apt upgrade


The following packages have been kept back:
  ffmpeg ffmpeg-doc ir-keytable libavcodec-dev libavcodec58 
libavdevice-dev libavdevice58 libavfilter-dev
  libavfilter7 libavformat-dev libavformat58 libavresample-dev 
libavresample4 libavutil-dev libavutil56
  libdrm-dev libdvbv5-doc libpostproc-dev libpostproc55 
libswresample-dev libswresample3 libswscale-dev
  libswscale5 libv4l-0 libv4l-dev qv4l2 v4l-utils xserver-common 
xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-dev

  xserver-xorg-legacy

how to find libreoffice is built for architecture

2023-11-05 Thread జిందం వాఐి


* example_ libreoffice-writer 7.6.3~rc1-2
is not available for architectures_
armhf, mips64el, s390x [ 1 ]
* how to find if libreoffice-writer 7.6.3
is available for above missing
architectures

[ 1 ] https://packages.debian.org/experimental/libreoffice-writer

--
regards,
జిందం వాఐి [ jindam, vani ]
[matrix]_ @jindam.vani:oikei.net

Re: Installing on Radxa Rock Pi 4B using SD-card-images

2023-11-05 Thread gene heskett


On 11/5/23 17:26, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Fri, Nov 03, 2023 at 12:22:36PM -0400, Daniel Gnoutcheff wrote:

The best answer is if the board has been supported for a while by
Armbian then that is probably a better choice than a less well
supported/documented manufacturer specific build of Debian.


Oh, I should clarify.  By "official Debian binaries and images" I meant
to say "pure" or "mainline" Debian as distributed from *.debian.org. Yes, a
bespoke "Debian" image from the hardware vendor is, indeed, out of the
question.  ARMbian is better, but I know and deeply trust the Debian project
and would prefer to use their releases over those from a derivative like
ARMbian.



I think you've hit the curse of almost all ARM single board computers.
Almost all are small production runs / out of East Asia somewhere as
"prototypes"** with a board support package (BSP) that's probably just
the manufacturer's kernel, u-boot and dtbs.

** Pine64, I'm looking at you: I have to buy from an EU distributor
to get longer than 30 days support.

With the caveat of almost no upstream support, Armbian will package the BSP
and do their best.

The manufacturer may have their "own" Debian remix but you're on your own
when it comes to adding "official" Debian packages.

The way round this is to build u-boot or reverse-enginer the settings then
do the same for a kernel, dtb and then debootstrap Debian yourself
  - that's exactly the sort of thing that folk do to get their boards
"supported in Debian" - folk like vagrantc and gwolf.
Painful isn't in it - there's a reason why there are relatively few
boards supported in the SD card images list.

This is one of the reasons why only some of the BananaPi variants are
supported - there's a new variant very regularly and the amount of work
needed to get a board supported can be significant. If nobody has that
board, it's going to be hard to get support, for example.
[That's also why I keep asking Gene whether he's running vanilla Debian
or not].


Thanks,
Daniel G.



Good luck with it all

Andy



Actually Armbian is not debian but arm64 ubuntu jammy ATM, however 
bookworm images are also available from the aug-31 spin.
However, video goes away at startx time in the last mint desktop full 
image for 23.8 but still works well for a slightly earlier xfce image 
brought fully up to date. Igor says probably fixed in next spin.  Other 
than that note, it just works with the usual iffy net setup for host 
file users like me.. cli versions for server stuff should just work but 
will get tested in the next week or two.


Debians bookworm for arm64 rpi's is working to run LinuxCNC on my rpi4b.
The kernel is not quite as low latency as my old 4.19 version, but still 
quick enough to do LinuxCNC perfectly.



.


Cheers, Gene Heskett.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis

Debian support for ARM SBCs (was: Installing on Radxa Rock Pi 4B using SD-card-images)

2023-11-05 Thread Stefan Monnier

> The way round this is to build u-boot or reverse-enginer the settings then
> do the same for a kernel, dtb and then debootstrap Debian yourself
>  - that's exactly the sort of thing that folk do to get their boards 
> "supported in Debian" - folk like vagrantc and gwolf.
> Painful isn't in it - there's a reason why there are relatively few
> boards supported in the SD card images list.

BTW, do you happen to know of a good resource/URL/mailinglist for that
specific task, both to find info about supported boards (and *how* they
are supported) but also in case I want to help add support for the
boards I happen to have around?


Stefan

Re: How to use dmsetuup?


On 11/5/23 14:16, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

David Christensen wrote:

Adding checksum file(s) to the contents burned to disc is an important step
that should not be omitted


I let xorriso compute and store the checksums in a non-file block range
at the end of the ISO filesystem. Each file gets an AAIP attribute which
points to an MD5 in this checksum array.
The user only has to issue the xorriso command -for_backup or -md5 "on".



Are there tools other than xorriso(1) that can create a compatible 
checksum?  Read the checksum?



My approach is *.md5 and *.sha256 sister files for each archive 
encrypted tarball file.




Thomas Schmitt wrote:

i only once in my life watched a DVD giving bad data without an SCSI
error.


Interesting.  My WAG is that there was a marginal/ ambiguous dot on disc (?).


The astonishing fact is not the damaged data chunk but the drive's failure
to recognize the damage. There are substantial parity data wrapped around
each DVD "ECC Block" which the drive may use for error detection and
possibly for correction. If i count correctly in MMC-5 Figure 26, then
32 KiB payload data get added 192 * 10 + 15 * 182 = 4650 bytes of parity
data. ECMA-337 (about DVD+RW) mentions in 13.1 two more checksums with
6 bytes per 2048 bytes of payload data.

With such much of redundancy it is highly unlikely that an alteration
stays undetected or that an error correction yields a wrong result.
Nevertheless in this special combination of medium and drive the error was
not reported or corrected by the drive but rather a wrong data chunk was
handed out.

At that occasion an MD5 recorded by xorriso indicated the error.
Comparing the read results on several drives showed that it was about a
single ECC block of 32 KiB payload.



I was thinking opto-electronics -- phototransistor and analog-to-digital 
conversion -- but you are right: the error detection and error 
correction math should be the same on all the drives and they all should 
have caught a bad bit (or combination of bad bits).  Then again, 
implementing algorithms from standards is non-trivial; bugs are not 
uncommon.  Perhaps the cause was a combination of both.  But, your 
xorriso(1) MD5 checksum added one more layer of defense and that saved 
the day.




I seem to recall a post by you that indicated *BSD lacked the features
needed for good optical drive/ media/ format support.


I have difficulties to remember ...


Can I get xorriso(1) on FreeBSD?


I don't have a FreeBSD test machine any more. So we have to rely on the
web ... xorriso seems to be available in the versions as in Sid (1.5.6)
and Buster (1.5.0):
   https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/xorriso/
GNU xorriso should compile on FreeBSD out of the box:
   https://www.gnu.org/software/xorriso/#download
Older versions available on
   https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xorriso
User experience reports are welcome.



Bingo!

2023-11-05 14:39:58 dpchrist@f3 ~
$ freebsd-version -kru ; uname -a
12.4-RELEASE-p6
12.4-RELEASE-p6
12.4-RELEASE-p6
FreeBSD f3.tracy.holgerdanske.com 12.4-RELEASE-p6 FreeBSD 
12.4-RELEASE-p6 GENERIC  amd64


2023-11-05 14:40:05 dpchrist@f3 ~
$ pkg search xorriso
xorriso-1.5.6  ISO image manipulation tool based on 
Libburnia



David

Re: Installing on Radxa Rock Pi 4B using SD-card-images

On Fri, Nov 03, 2023 at 12:22:36PM -0400, Daniel Gnoutcheff wrote:
> > The best answer is if the board has been supported for a while by
> > Armbian then that is probably a better choice than a less well
> > supported/documented manufacturer specific build of Debian.
> 
> Oh, I should clarify.  By "official Debian binaries and images" I meant
> to say "pure" or "mainline" Debian as distributed from *.debian.org. Yes, a
> bespoke "Debian" image from the hardware vendor is, indeed, out of the
> question.  ARMbian is better, but I know and deeply trust the Debian project
> and would prefer to use their releases over those from a derivative like
> ARMbian.
> 

I think you've hit the curse of almost all ARM single board computers.
Almost all are small production runs / out of East Asia somewhere as
"prototypes"** with a board support package (BSP) that's probably just
the manufacturer's kernel, u-boot and dtbs.

** Pine64, I'm looking at you: I have to buy from an EU distributor
to get longer than 30 days support.

With the caveat of almost no upstream support, Armbian will package the BSP
and do their best.

The manufacturer may have their "own" Debian remix but you're on your own
when it comes to adding "official" Debian packages.

The way round this is to build u-boot or reverse-enginer the settings then
do the same for a kernel, dtb and then debootstrap Debian yourself
 - that's exactly the sort of thing that folk do to get their boards 
"supported in Debian" - folk like vagrantc and gwolf.
Painful isn't in it - there's a reason why there are relatively few
boards supported in the SD card images list.

This is one of the reasons why only some of the BananaPi variants are
supported - there's a new variant very regularly and the amount of work
needed to get a board supported can be significant. If nobody has that
board, it's going to be hard to get support, for example.
[That's also why I keep asking Gene whether he's running vanilla Debian
or not].

> Thanks,
> Daniel G.
>

Good luck with it all

Andy

Re: How to use dmsetuup?


On 11/5/23 12:46, debian-u...@howorth.org.uk wrote:

David Christensen  wrote:

On 11/5/23 01:04, Thomas Schmitt wrote:



Lesson learnt: Never overwrite the two youngest backups.


I try to use the term "backup" to mean a data copying process whereby
older data is overwritten by newer data.

I try to use the term "archive' to mean a data copying process
whereby the copy is never modified or erased.


You're entitled to do that I suppose, but I don't suppose most other
people do. They separate the words by their meanings and purpose.
Backups are intended for use recovering information that has become
lost. Archives are places to keep information for long term storage.

So your definition of archive is correct. But your definition of backup
isn't. It's perfectly reasonable to have more than one version or age
of backup, but it's also perfectly reasonable to erase them at some
chosen age or version.

It is perfectly reasonable to discuss 'the two youngest backups', IMHO.



English is ambiguous.  "Backup" and "archive" can both be used as nouns 
and/or verbs, depending upon context.  This makes communication hard, 
especially for non-native speakers.



I agree that the primary purpose of backup (verb when performed, noun 
for the media containing one copy of the data) is for recovery (verb 
when performed, noun for the result).



I agree that a backup (singular noun for the media) can be archived 
(verb), thereby becoming an archive (singular noun for the media) in an 
archive (collective noun for all the media and singular noun for a place).



The differentiating factor is whether or not the media containing the 
copy is intended for ongoing re-use.  I re-use my backup RAID's and 
HDD's.  I cannot re-use my archive DVD-R's.



David

Re: How to use dmsetuup?

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:
> Adding checksum file(s) to the contents burned to disc is an important step
> that should not be omitted

I let xorriso compute and store the checksums in a non-file block range
at the end of the ISO filesystem. Each file gets an AAIP attribute which
points to an MD5 in this checksum array.
The user only has to issue the xorriso command -for_backup or -md5 "on".

I wrote:
> > i only once in my life watched a DVD giving bad data without an SCSI
> > error.

David Christensen wrote:
> Interesting.  My WAG is that there was a marginal/ ambiguous dot on disc (?).

The astonishing fact is not the damaged data chunk but the drive's failure
to recognize the damage. There are substantial parity data wrapped around
each DVD "ECC Block" which the drive may use for error detection and
possibly for correction. If i count correctly in MMC-5 Figure 26, then
32 KiB payload data get added 192 * 10 + 15 * 182 = 4650 bytes of parity
data. ECMA-337 (about DVD+RW) mentions in 13.1 two more checksums with
6 bytes per 2048 bytes of payload data.

With such much of redundancy it is highly unlikely that an alteration
stays undetected or that an error correction yields a wrong result.
Nevertheless in this special combination of medium and drive the error was
not reported or corrected by the drive but rather a wrong data chunk was
handed out.

At that occasion an MD5 recorded by xorriso indicated the error.
Comparing the read results on several drives showed that it was about a
single ECC block of 32 KiB payload.

> I seem to recall a post by you that indicated *BSD lacked the features
> needed for good optical drive/ media/ format support.

I have difficulties to remember ...

> Can I get xorriso(1) on FreeBSD?

I don't have a FreeBSD test machine any more. So we have to rely on the
web ... xorriso seems to be available in the versions as in Sid (1.5.6)
and Buster (1.5.0):
  https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/xorriso/
GNU xorriso should compile on FreeBSD out of the box:
  https://www.gnu.org/software/xorriso/#download
Older versions available on
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xorriso
User experience reports are welcome.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: How do I connect my new wifi router (Mi Router 4C)?

2023-11-05 Thread Martin

On Sun, Nov 05, 2023 at 06:48:47AM +, Tixy wrote:
> On Sat, 2023-11-04 at 20:08 +0100, Martin wrote:
> [...]
> > BTW putting above script into /etc/nftables.conf (at the bottom of file)
> > did not ever worked - I had always to run that file manualy as root.
> > Command 'nft list ruleset' only then showed this table.
> > I have no idea why. To me it seemed as if /etc/nftables.conf file
> > was not executed (I have rebooted many times so this file should run).
> [...]
> 
> Did you enable the nftables service? To do that, use:
> 
> # systemctl enable nftables.service
> 
> and to see status of the service
> 
> # systemctl status nftables.service

It was not enabled by default. I enabled it now.
That is great - now i know where to put script when it start working.
Unfortunately I am not there yet :(

Thank you.
Martin

Re: How do I connect my new wifi router (Mi Router 4C)?

2023-11-05 Thread Martin

On Sun, Nov 05, 2023 at 10:26:17AM +0200, Anssi Saari wrote:
> Anyways, a typical masquerade rule would specify the source network and
> an outgoing interface. For example, I have in my Linux router:
> 
> ip saddr 10.0.2.0/24 oifname "enp1s0" masquerade
> 
> so for you that would become
> 
> ip saddr 192.168.231.0/24 oifname "wlxe8de27a5ab1c" masquerade

I tried this line too, unforutately it does not work either.
I mean after executing the config file with this line it shows itself in
output of command 'nft list ruleset' but I still can not connect to
internet from my phone.

I tried many lines similar to this, none works:
ip saddr 192.168.231.3/24 ip daddr != 192.168.231.3/24 masquerade
ip saddr 192.168.231.0/24 ip daddr != 192.168.231.0/24 masquerade
ip saddr 192.168.231.0/24 oifname "wlxe8de27a5ab1c" masquerade
oifname "wlxe8de27a5ab1c" masquerade

I also noticed in output of 'nft list ruleset' that other rules there are
using capitalized letter so i try it too:
istead of   chain postrouting {
I used  chain POSTROUTING {

I also tried to put this command in table that already exist instead of
creating new one (masqrule) - instead of running my whole script I run
only one command (after reboot so there are no more changes made by me before):

nft add rule ip nat POSTROUTING oifname  wlxe8de27a5ab1c  masquerade

(note that here I used 'ip nat' table that is added autmaticaly by
docker server i guess)

Since nothing I tried does work I guess my next step should be to see
where/how those packets from phone are handled. I guess program for that
is tcpdump which I have installed. But since I am unfamiliar with this tool
I would need help from mailing list to guide me what to look for and how
to use this tool.

So please can you give me some info what command should I use with
tcpdump to see where packets from phone are going - or why they do not
go where they should?

Just a reminder - I can connect from phone to my computers web server - which
I also installed just for debugging this. The problem is I can not connect from
phone to internet (let say google.com)

Martin

Re: How to use dmsetuup?

2023-11-05 Thread debian-user

David Christensen  wrote:
> On 11/5/23 01:04, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

> > Lesson learnt: Never overwrite the two youngest backups.  
> 
> I try to use the term "backup" to mean a data copying process whereby 
> older data is overwritten by newer data.
> 
> I try to use the term "archive' to mean a data copying process
> whereby the copy is never modified or erased.

You're entitled to do that I suppose, but I don't suppose most other
people do. They separate the words by their meanings and purpose.
Backups are intended for use recovering information that has become
lost. Archives are places to keep information for long term storage.

So your definition of archive is correct. But your definition of backup
isn't. It's perfectly reasonable to have more than one version or age
of backup, but it's also perfectly reasonable to erase them at some
chosen age or version.

It is perfectly reasonable to discuss 'the two youngest backups', IMHO.

Re: How to use dmsetuup?


On 11/5/23 01:04, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

David Christensen wrote:

I have been burning archive DVD-R discs for ~14 years and storing them in a
drawer (e.g. darkness).  I checked the oldest just now and it reads okay.


That's my experience too. 



Okay.



I check by MD5 which are stored on the medium
together with the data. If a medium turns out unreadable then in nearly
all cases directly after burning.



Adding checksum file(s) to the contents burned to disc is an important 
step that should not be omitted -- checksum files are a simple and 
direct way to validate the integrity of disc contents.  Without checksum 
files, a computer with working applications is required to read and 
validate the specific file format(s).  I suspect tar(1), gzip(1) and 
ccrypt(1) do this (?), but you are lost with plain text files.




Lesson learnt: Never overwrite the two youngest backups.



I try to use the term "backup" to mean a data copying process whereby 
older data is overwritten by newer data.



I try to use the term "archive' to mean a data copying process whereby 
the copy is never modified or erased.




I have heard of CD discs disintegrating if the lacquer is scratched:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot


This never hit me. But i keep my media away from high moisture, corroding
chemicals, and abrasive substances.



I expect CD disc rot occurs when discs are accidentally scratched or 
when discs are treated badly (e.g. stored loose; not in a case).




I have heard that RW media has a shorter lifespan than R media.


Not to my experience. I have 4x CD-RW from 2002 (*), DVD+RW from 2004, and
BD-RE from 2008 which still work for backups.



Okay.



From time to time a medium
dies during writing. This seems not to be closely related to age, though.

(*) I have older 2x CD-RW, but no burner any more which would accept them.
 They can be still read.



The DVD+-RW in my primary workstation started producing intermittent 
write failures a few months ago.  This quickly progressed to consistent 
write failures and consistent read failures.  I cleaned the lens today, 
and now it reads okay.  I will find out if it writes okay the next time 
I burn a disc.




Does anyone have experience with M-Disc media?


Only by reports of libburn users which say that M-Disc works like the
other media. Their durability can hardly be evaluated, given that normal
media seem to last for more than 2 decades without much problem.



Okay.



I think the better alternative for archived data would be to make several
identical copies and to checkread them in intervals of a few years. As
soon as one of the copies shows problems, make new copies of the healthy
ones. Payload checksums on the medium give extra trust, 



The optical media could be a single point of failure.  If I remove two 
DVD-R discs from the same case this month, burn them with identical 
contents, verify the checksums, store one disc locally, store the other 
disc off-site, and verify checksums once per year in the future, I could 
find that both discs fail in the same year.



So, I both burn my monthly archive encrypted tarballs to DVD-R and I 
keep the original on RAID, which is included in my backup process.




although i only
once in my life watched a DVD giving bad data without an SCSI error.
That was reproducible with only a single drive. All others either read
the affected 32 KiB chunk correctly or threw error. Having more than one
drive helps a lot when the read quality is on the edge.



Interesting.  My WAG is that there was a marginal/ ambiguous dot on disc 
(?).




A sincere rescue effort would look like:

   xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 \
   -check_media use=outdev \
what=disc \
time_limit=7200 \
data_to="$HOME"/sr0.image \
sector_map="$HOME"/sr0.sector_map \
--

After 7200 seconds the attempt will end even if not finished.
If you want to abort earlier, do not press Ctrl+C but rather do
   touch /var/opt/xorriso/do_abort_check_media

The disc image will emerge as file "$HOME"/sr0.image .
The file "$HOME"/sr0.sector_map will record which blocks could be read
without SCSI error. If the run is repeated, then only the missing blocks
will be attempted to be read.
One may repeat with the same drive or better with different ones.
The file "$HOME"/sr0.image and "$HOME"/sr0.sector_map may be carried to
other computers to continue the rescue attempt with their drives.
If there are other partly damaged identical copies of the archive medium,
then one may use them too with the same sr0.image and sr0.sector_map
files.

If the image is an ISO 9660 filesystem made by xorriso with option
-for_backup and thus contains MD5s, then one may check the resulting
image by:

   xorriso -for_backup -indev "$HOME"/sr0.image -check_media --

Any protest would indicate that the rescue attempt was not successful.
If the direcory tree is undamaged,

Re: Anybody familiar with dd (copy)?

2023-11-05 Thread Arno Lehmann

Hello,

Am 05.11.2023 um 12:19 schrieb Schwibinger Michael:

Good morning
Thank You.

Can this help:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/39504/best-way-to-copy-all-files-ignoring-errors,,hotmail

I do not know.

...

I put in a DVD
and try to copy the data to HD

mc is saying:
Cannot copy.

Do You want to ignore the DVD?

I do not know mc, but what you describe is definitely not a full
description of an error. Probably because mc is designed to hide those.
In that case, you'd have to look at lower levels to actually see what is
going on.

I think there was a bug during burning.

One important step in solving problems is identifying the problem.

That latest statement of yours indicates that you have not yet done so.
You need to get beyond the stage of assuming, believing or thinking
something might have happened -- you need to know.

Is "dd" the best idea?

Quite surely not.

Better find out what actually is on your DVD first. I have not worked
with DVD writing for at least 10 years, and I do not intend to in the
future, but I'm sure there are tools that can tell you about sessions
and whatever you can have on the different flavours of writable DVDs.
Once you know that level is good, you'll start to look at file systems.

After that, eventually, files and copying *may* become relevant.

I would propose you just stop spending time on those topics all those
details may not be interesting to you. On the other hand, if the data is
really important, it's time to start learning about how DVD writing
actually works. A mailing list is not going to be very efficient here,
better start differently, for example here:
http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/ and follow the links and make
sure ypu actually understand those information. You probably will need a
few packs of writable DVDs because experimenting and failing can be
invaluable elements of learning.

It can actually be fun.

Cheers,

Arno

--
Arno Lehmann

IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück

[HS] Problème Mastodon

2023-11-05 Thread Yannick


Bonsoir,

Je n'ai pas trouver où poser ma question en français. Je suppute que 
nombre d'entre-vous sont sur ce réseau.


Sur Mamot les colonnes n'occupent plus la totalité de l'écran et cela 
m'énerve c'est désagréable à lire. J'ai deux choix de sources du problème:

Firefox 119
Mamot lui même

Apparemment je ne suis pas le seul à avoir ce souci ce qui fait que je 
pencherais sur Mamot


J'ai posé la question sur Mastodon mais sans résultats.
J'ai tenté d'installer d'autres styles et rien n'y fait.

Merci de votre aide.

Amitiés
--
Yannick VOYEAUD
Nul n'a droit au superflu tant que chacun n'a pas son nécessaire
(Camille JOUFFRAY 1841-1924, maire de Vienne)
http://www.voyeaud.org
Créateur CimGenWeb: http://www.francegenweb.org/cimgenweb/
Journées du Logiciel Libre: http://jdll.org
Généalogie en liberté avec Ancestris https://www.ancestris.org



OpenPGP_signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: How do I connect my new wifi router (Mi Router 4C)?

2023-11-05 Thread Max Nikulin


On 05/11/2023 13:48, Tixy wrote:

On Sat, 2023-11-04 at 20:08 +0100, Martin wrote:
[...]

BTW putting above script into /etc/nftables.conf (at the bottom of file)
did not ever worked - I had always to run that file manualy as root.
Command 'nft list ruleset' only then showed this table.
I have no idea why. To me it seemed as if /etc/nftables.conf file
was not executed (I have rebooted many times so this file should run).

[...]

Did you enable the nftables service? To do that, use:

# systemctl enable nftables.service

and to see status of the service

# systemctl status nftables.service


It should be checked first and

journalctl -b -u nftables.service

alongside with searching for any nft messages in "journalctl -b". I 
suggested earlier to read /usr/share/doc/nftables/README.Debian It 
explicitly recommends to enable the service.



2: enp3s0:  mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP 
group default qlen 1000
inet 192.168.231.3/24 brd 192.168.231.255 scope global enp3s0


I hope, your router allows to view configuration received from the DHCP 
server. Since static addresses were working (and it can be rechecked), I 
guess, gateway is not explicitly configured, so the router tries to send 
packets to 192.168.231.1. Either change the interface IP or configure 
dnsmasq to send 192.168.231.3.


To debug run wireshark or tcpdump on enp3s0 and wlxe8de27a5ab1c to check 
that packets from the phone are properly received and routed.


Warning: if you have not configured network interfaces for DHCP in 
dnsmasq then do it. Otherwise other computers connected to the upstream 
WiFi link may receive DHCP leases emitted from wlxe8de27a5ab1c.

Re: How to use dmsetuup?

2023-11-05 Thread gene heskett


On 11/5/23 05:28, David Christensen wrote:

On 11/5/23 01:47, gene heskett wrote:

On 11/5/23 01:46, David Christensen wrote:
I am worried that you are going to make a mistake and suffer a data 
disaster (partial or total).  That is why I suggested that you give 
the Asus a rest and build a backup server now.


I'm also into 3d printers, and that has made me fam with the arm64 sbc 
cards such as the bananapi-m5 which has 4 ub3 ports on a 2GHz 4 core 
cpu. Startech makes a usb3 to sata adapter that can do 500M/sec to an 
SSD. I am doing it on an rpi4b.  So I am tempted to build my own NAS 
by using all 4 of those ports to hook 4 of these 2T gigastones up as a 
4G raid10. Run it headless by an ssh login, setup amanda server on it, 
setup amanda-client on the rest, setup amanda to do any compression on 
the clients which are fast enough to do it and let the pi handle the 
actual storage, including its database which makes a recovery a matter 
to telling it which file and how old. I normally setup for 60 to 90 
days of retention. It won't be fast but it will be isolated from 
anything that fails on the rest of my net,



Wow!  I got Gene to consider my suggestion!  :-)


David


After I wrote that in the not so wee hour of the morning, I went to one 
of my bpi's and verified that amanda is in the ubuntu jammy arm64 
repo's.  I'll have to get a few more of those drives and build a box. Or 
perhaps hide the bpi in a used drive cage. But it looks doable to me.


Why? Just because I can.  I'm the same guy whose running a 1500 lb, 80+ 
yo Sheldon lathe, using LinuxCNC with an rpi3b, now an rpi4b, for 7 or 
so years. I wanted to see if it could be done and it works so well I've 
had no urge to redo it with more conventional wintel hardware like my 
other 3 machines. LinuxCNC has taught that lathe many new dance steps it 
could not do when it left Chicago in the late 1940's and corrected for 
13 thou of bed wear in front of the chuck.  Cuts threads, imperial or 
metric, even tapered threads I have invented, Anything that 2 small 
motors moving the tool in micron or better synchronized in both 
directions can do, it Just Does.


All I have to do is muster up the giddyup to do it. a 89 yo, that is 
most assuredly getting harder.


Take care & stay well everybody.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis

AW: Anybody familiar with dd (copy)?

2023-11-05 Thread Schwibinger Michael

Good morning
Thank You.

Can this help:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/39504/best-way-to-copy-all-files-ignoring-errors,,hotmail


[https://cdn.sstatic.net/Sites/apple/Img/apple-touch-i...@2.png?v=b514451ec60c]
Best way to copy all files, ignoring 
errors?
I have a partially corrupted HD that can not be repaired by Disk Utility, but 
which can be mounted read-only making the data on it accessible. I am trying to 
copy all the recoverable contents onto a
apple.stackexchange.com


I put in a DVD
and try to copy the data to HD

mc is saying:
Cannot copy.

Do You want to ignore the DVD?

I think there was a bug during burning.

Is "dd" the best idea?

Regards
Sophie



Von: Arno Lehmann 
Gesendet: Freitag, 3. November 2023 20:25
An: debian-user@lists.debian.org 
Betreff: Re: Anybody familiar with dd (copy)?

Hi,

Am 03.11.2023 um 20:37 schrieb Schwibinger Michael:
> Good evening
> I want to copy a problem-DVD to HD with DD.
> Or is there any other software which can do it in an easy way?

Is this a vide DVD or data?

> I found:
>
> dd if=/dev/sr0 of=/tmp/dvd.bin conv=noerror oflag=direct
>
> It does not work.

What does happen? If you do not give information that allows to
determine the error (if there is one) we can at best guess.

> What do I do wrong?

You forgot to describe what actually does happen. I believe that there
were quite a few instances where people explained that you have to
provide information if you want useful replies.

Cheers,

Arno

> Regards
> Sophie
>
>

--
Arno Lehmann

IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück

Re: mirror for debian 10

On Sun, Nov 05, 2023 at 04:51:22AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> I need to install Debian on a old machine (1700 Mhz Celeron).  I
> copied the installer image to USB stick and the installation appeared
> to go properly until I tried without success to find a Debian mirror
> which hosts Debian 10.
> 
> RLH
>

Hi Russell,

I have a local mirror here which includes 10. That is synched from the
country level mirror.

If the CDN isn't working for you, use http://ftp.XX.debian.org where XX
is your country so ftp.us.debian.org, for example.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy

[amaca...@debian.org]

Re: How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm

2023-11-05 Thread Michael Kjörling

On 5 Nov 2023 10:56 +0100, from andr...@xss.co.at (Andreas Haumer):
>> PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice, would there be a better VM
>> supervisor I could use?  If so, can you point me to a set of
>> instructions for it?
> 
> To answer just these questions only: take a look at kvm/qemu and
> the virt-manager GUI.

Yes, definitely look at KVM/QEMU. "Better" is subjective but certainly
one huge advantage of KVM over almost anything else is that it's
already there in the kernel, and you pretty much just need to install
the tools to manage it. VirtualBox, VMWare and others require adding
third-party software, which can easily break with a kernel upgrade.

-- 
Michael Kjörling  https://michael.kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

Re: How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm

2023-11-05 Thread Marco M.

Am 05.11.2023 um 01:04:27 Uhr schrieb Rick Thomas:

> But I can't seem to get vmware player to start up.  What am I doing
> wrong?

Start it in a terminal and look for error messages.

Re: How to use dmsetuup?


On 11/5/23 01:47, gene heskett wrote:

On 11/5/23 01:46, David Christensen wrote:
I am 
worried that you are going to make a mistake and suffer a data 
disaster (partial or total).  That is why I suggested that you give 
the Asus a rest and build a backup server now.


I'm also into 3d 
printers, and that has made me fam with the arm64 sbc cards such as the 
bananapi-m5 which has 4 ub3 ports on a 2GHz 4 core cpu. Startech makes a 
usb3 to sata adapter that can do 500M/sec to an SSD. I am doing it on an 
rpi4b.  So I am tempted to build my own NAS by using all 4 of those 
ports to hook 4 of these 2T gigastones up as a 4G raid10. Run it 
headless by an ssh login, setup amanda server on it, setup amanda-client 
on the rest, setup amanda to do any compression on the clients which are 
fast enough to do it and let the pi handle the actual storage, including 
its database which makes a recovery a matter to telling it which file 
and how old. I normally setup for 60 to 90 days of retention. It won't 
be fast but it will be isolated from anything that fails on the rest of 
my net,



Wow!  I got Gene to consider my suggestion!  :-)


David

Re: How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm

2023-11-05 Thread Andreas Haumer


Hi!

Am 05.11.23 um 10:04 schrieb Rick Thomas:
[...]


PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice, would there be a better VM supervisor I 
could use?  If so, can you point me to a set of instructions for it?



To answer just these questions only: take a look at kvm/qemu and
the virt-manager GUI.

See https://wiki.debian.org/KVM

"better" very much is a function of personal preferences
on an arbitrary scale, though... ;-)

HTH

- andreas

--
Andreas Haumer
*x Software + Systeme  | mailto:andr...@xss.co.at
Karmarschgasse 51/2/20 | https://www.xss.co.at/
A-1100 Vienna, Austria | Tel: +43-1-6060114-0


OpenPGP_signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: How to use dmsetuup?

2023-11-05 Thread gene heskett


On 11/5/23 01:46, David Christensen wrote:

On 11/4/23 21:05, gene heskett wrote:

On 11/4/23 23:15, David Christensen wrote:

On 11/4/23 17:55, gene heskett wrote:
FWIW the rw's I have and that continue to work, are Sony DVD+RW, 
well over 5 years old now. I understand there is a DVD-RW but I've 
no experience with them.  Today my objection is the size. In 
comparison to a system driving 3d printers with gcode from Cura-5.4 
that is not rolled up into subroutine loops, I have some of the more 
complex and large parts part files that will not fit on a dvd. So it 
simply impractical for me to back up to a measly 4.7Gig dvd.


That's why they invented Blu-ray:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray

 25 GB (single-layer)
 50, 66 GB (dual-layer)
 100, 128 GB (BDXL)

Shudder. Anything mechanical can be destroyed by a smoke particle 100x 
to small to be seen with a good eye. I am a CET & Electronics in 
general I understand the physics of, and in electronics the only thing 
moving is a few electrons here or there. As long as the voltage does 
not force an electron thru the oxide layer that is the capacitors 
insulation, forming a leakage path that avalanches thru the oxide film 
and essentially destroys the device, there is no physical reason that 
it will not continue to do its jobs for hundreds or thousands of 
years. It will be external environmental effects that will eventually 
reach the chip and byproducts of the humidity let in by the breach of 
the package sealing that finally destroys it.


The size of a bit that is detectable on a disk is determined by the 
wavelegth of the light reading that bit, cd's were designed with the 
IR lasers of the day, which emmit light in the 1100 nanometer range. 
Far infrared IOW. DVD's were made possible with a shorter visible 
light laser, then blue rays got that down to abut 400 nanometers. The 
next gen of those will have a uv laser  but we'll have to invent it 
first. But part of that problem is that decent optical glass for the 
lenses does not pass UV to a usable amount. Plastic lets it blast on 
thru but can we make plastic lenses that precisely for the price 
bleeding edge users will pay? IDK.



Interesting tangent.


The point I was trying to make is that  proper disaster preparedness 
involves defenses in depth.  AFAIK your data and your backups are on the 
same computer and you have no other recent backups or archives.  If 
true, then, as you already know, the computer is a single point of 
failure that could destroy both data and backups.



And, now you are touching HBA's, touching drives, and issuing root 
commands that are in direct proximity to your data and backups.  As you 
already know, human error is the most common failure mode.  I am worried 
that you are going to make a mistake and suffer a data disaster (partial 
or total).  That is why I suggested that you give the Asus a rest and 
build a backup server now.  If you then trash the Asus, recovery will be 
possible.  A duplicate set of backups is wise in case something happens 
to the primary backups (notably, human error during recovery).



David

.
Amanda is now been able the use big disk storage for a couple decades, 
separate from the computers main drive. These disks then contain 
tarball, compressed if possible, that can be read on a rebuilt machine 
with a bare metal install for recovery.  One must be fam with how it 
works, and w/o its database but it can be done. I'm also into 3d 
printers, and that has made me fam with the arm64 sbc cards such as the 
bananapi-m5 which has 4 ub3 ports on a 2GHz 4 core cpu. Startech makes a 
usb3 to sata adapter that can do 500M/sec to an SSD. I am doing it on an 
rpi4b.  So I am tempted to build my own NAS by using all 4 of those 
ports to hook 4 of these 2T gigastones up as a 4G raid10. Run it 
headless by an ssh login, setup amanda server on it, setup amanda-client 
on the rest, setup amanda to do any compression on the clients which are 
fast enough to do it and let the pi handle the actual storage, including 
its database which makes a recovery a matter to telling it which file 
and how old. I normally setup for 60 to 90 days of retention. It won't 
be fast but it will be isolated from anything that fails on the rest of 
my net,


Fast is relative, running on an older mobo in this machines original 
incarnation, it backed up itself and 4 other machines on my local net in 
30 to 45 minute sessions everynight. Using a separate drive, but that 
drive, one of two 2T seagates went off line forever at about 6 weeks 
runtime, followed 3 days later by its twin which was the boot drive in 
this machine, leading to a 22 install disaster because the installer at 
the time was or still is busted.


Buster and bullseye both worked great, bookworm has been a disaster from 
the gitgo for me. I absolutely own every byte of /home/gene, but 
something is getting in the way that didn't for buster or bullseye, and 
I have a hard time believing I am

Re: wine virtualbox ...

2023-11-05 Thread Narcis Garcia


El PLayOnLinux és un assistent amb perfils d'instal·lació per a Wine.
Inclou un perfil per a Garmin Express, la qual cosa vol dir que algú ja 
s'ha barallat abans amb les dificultats d'aquest aplicatiu, i ha 
automatitzat la recepta per a Wine mitjançant un perfil de PlayOnLinux.


Altra gent documenta les seves experiències aquí:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application=17447

Evidentment una màquina virtual amb Windows a dins no porta tant 
maldecaps, però consumeix més recursos.



El 4/11/23 a les 21:18, Jordi ha escrit:

El dv. 03 de 11 de 2023 a les 08:14 +0100, en/na Narcis Garcia va
escriure:

El PlayOnLinux ja porta un assistent per a instal·lar l'aplicació de
Garmin. Està a repositoris de Debian.




He estat mirant això del PlayOnLinux i rés, Només és un altre
instal.lador del wine, del qual en sorgeixen altres errors, prefereixo
fer-ho a ma.

De moment sembla que el wine em funciona però no és capaç d'accedir als
dispositius usb, només ho pot fer com a unitats de disc, tal i com ho
fa amb el Garmin. He pensat que en lloc d'instal.lar el virtualbox i
trobar-me diversos problemes, millor fer un usb windows live ja que no
és del meu interès sortir massa del programari natiu de Debian.

Salutacions

Jordi



--

Narcis Garcia

__
I'm using this dedicated address because personal addresses aren't 
masked enough at this mail public archive. Public archive administrator 
should remove and omit any @, dot and mailto combinations against 
automated addresses collectors.

Re: How do I connect my new wifi router (Mi Router 4C)?

2023-11-05 Thread Anssi Saari

Martin  writes:

> #!/usr/sbin/nft -f
>
> table ip masqrule {}
> flush table ip masqrule
> table ip masqrule {
>   chain postrouting {
> type nat hook postrouting priority srcnat; policy accept;
> ip saddr 192.168.231.3/24 ip daddr != 192.168.231.3/24 masquerade
>   }
> }
>
> When I execute this file with sudo unfortunately nothing changes, I can
> not connect to the internet (trying www.google.com from phone).

I might guess it's because your masquerade rule does nothing. I'm not
sure though.

Anyways, a typical masquerade rule would specify the source network and
an outgoing interface. For example, I have in my Linux router:

ip saddr 10.0.2.0/24 oifname "enp1s0" masquerade

so for you that would become

ip saddr 192.168.231.0/24 oifname "wlxe8de27a5ab1c" masquerade

How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm

2023-11-05 Thread Rick Thomas

The title says it all, I hope.  I've tried installing vmware player on my 
Bookworm according to the instructions from 
https://techviewleo.com/install-vmware-on-debian/

But I can't seem to get vmware player to start up.  What am I doing wrong?  Is 
there a better location to look for instruction?

Thanks,
Rick

PS: My motivation is that I have a young friend (he is mid 20s; I myself am mid 
70s) who wants to learn Linux, and in particular, how to set up and use virtual 
machines.  I have a Dell machine that I'm not using that would be ideal for his 
learning experiences and I would like to make it available to him.  I'm a 
Debian user for over 20 years, so I'd like to base his study on Debian because 
that's what I know best and would be best able to mentor.

PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice, would there be a better VM supervisor I 
could use?  If so, can you point me to a set of instructions for it?

Re: How to use dmsetuup?

Hi,

Gene Heskett wrote:
> > I have 3 100 disk spindles of dvd's bought years ago, that are
> > no longer recognized in any of the 4 or 5 dvd writers I have, but one box
> > of rewritables about the same age, stored n a light tight cardboard box,
> > will likely outlast me.

Unwritten write-once media can indeed get unusable when exposed to light
over a long time. But i have not heard of written DVD getting bad from
indirect light. (Direct sun light is deadly for many things.)

> > Lesson learnt, do not use optical media for long term storage unless
> > stored in tin boxes like AOL gave away billions of 20 years or more ago.

I have a little locker for my media stock. But a substantial number of
my written media are not completely protected from stray light.

David Christensen wrote:
> I have been burning archive DVD-R discs for ~14 years and storing them in a
> drawer (e.g. darkness).  I checked the oldest just now and it reads okay.

That's my experience too. I check by MD5 which are stored on the medium
together with the data. If a medium turns out unreadable then in nearly
all cases directly after burning.
Lesson learnt: Never overwrite the two youngest backups.

> I have heard of CD discs disintegrating if the lacquer is scratched:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

This never hit me. But i keep my media away from high moisture, corroding
chemicals, and abrasive substances.

> I have heard that RW media has a shorter lifespan than R media.

Not to my experience. I have 4x CD-RW from 2002 (*), DVD+RW from 2004, and
BD-RE from 2008 which still work for backups. From time to time a medium
dies during writing. This seems not to be closely related to age, though.

(*) I have older 2x CD-RW, but no burner any more which would accept them.
They can be still read.

> Does anyone have experience with M-Disc media?

Only by reports of libburn users which say that M-Disc works like the
other media. Their durability can hardly be evaluated, given that normal
media seem to last for more than 2 decades without much problem.

I think the better alternative for archived data would be to make several
identical copies and to checkread them in intervals of a few years. As
soon as one of the copies shows problems, make new copies of the healthy
ones. Payload checksums on the medium give extra trust, although i only
once in my life watched a DVD giving bad data without an SCSI error.
That was reproducible with only a single drive. All others either read
the affected 32 KiB chunk correctly or threw error. Having more than one
drive helps a lot when the read quality is on the edge.

A sincere rescue effort would look like:

  xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 \
  -check_media use=outdev \
   what=disc \
   time_limit=7200 \
   data_to="$HOME"/sr0.image \
   sector_map="$HOME"/sr0.sector_map \
   --

After 7200 seconds the attempt will end even if not finished.
If you want to abort earlier, do not press Ctrl+C but rather do
  touch /var/opt/xorriso/do_abort_check_media

The disc image will emerge as file "$HOME"/sr0.image .
The file "$HOME"/sr0.sector_map will record which blocks could be read
without SCSI error. If the run is repeated, then only the missing blocks
will be attempted to be read.
One may repeat with the same drive or better with different ones.
The file "$HOME"/sr0.image and "$HOME"/sr0.sector_map may be carried to
other computers to continue the rescue attempt with their drives.
If there are other partly damaged identical copies of the archive medium,
then one may use them too with the same sr0.image and sr0.sector_map
files.

If the image is an ISO 9660 filesystem made by xorriso with option
-for_backup and thus contains MD5s, then one may check the resulting
image by:

  xorriso -for_backup -indev "$HOME"/sr0.image -check_media --

Any protest would indicate that the rescue attempt was not successful.
If the direcory tree is undamaged, one may check the data files by

  xorriso -for_backup -indev "$HOME"/sr0.image -check_md5_r sorry / --

to get the paths of files with damaged content.

Other than with most rescue tools, the read operations of xorriso on an
optical drive will be done by direct SCSI commands, not by the Linux block
layer. This has the advantage that error messages are more specific than
just "i/o error" and that no inappropriate reading ahead will happen. Such
reading ahead causes the old TAO CD bug of Linux which gave birth to
interesting urban legends about a "fuzzy end" of data CDs.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: mirror for debian 10

2023-11-05 Thread Russell L. Harris


On Sun, Nov 05, 2023 at 08:07:06AM +0100, Marco M. wrote:

Am 05.11.2023 um 06:32:10 Uhr schrieb Russell L. Harris:


I was under the impression that Debian 12 would not work on older
machines.  Am I mistaken?


It requires a i686 cpu (Pentium Pro or newer) despite the i386 in the
packaging system due to compatibility reasons.
You Celeron 1.7 GHz will satisfy that.


I thank you for the clarification.  All I need is, if possible, to get
Debian running on the machine.  The later the release, the better.

My thanks to all of you.

RLH

Re: mirror for debian 10

2023-11-05 Thread Marco M.

Am 05.11.2023 um 06:32:10 Uhr schrieb Russell L. Harris:

> I was under the impression that Debian 12 would not work on older
> machines.  Am I mistaken?

It requires a i686 cpu (Pentium Pro or newer) despite the i386 in the
packaging system due to compatibility reasons.
You Celeron 1.7 GHz will satisfy that.

Re: How do I connect my new wifi router (Mi Router 4C)?

2023-11-05 Thread Tixy

On Sat, 2023-11-04 at 20:08 +0100, Martin wrote:
[...]
> BTW putting above script into /etc/nftables.conf (at the bottom of file)
> did not ever worked - I had always to run that file manualy as root.
> Command 'nft list ruleset' only then showed this table.
> I have no idea why. To me it seemed as if /etc/nftables.conf file
> was not executed (I have rebooted many times so this file should run).
[...]

Did you enable the nftables service? To do that, use:

# systemctl enable nftables.service

and to see status of the service

# systemctl status nftables.service

-- 
Tixy

Re: How to use dmsetuup?