Re: restarting pppd automatically
On 28/12/2020 09:34, Tixy wrote: > On Sun, 2020-12-27 at 23:56 +0000, Graham Seaman wrote: >> I'm having problems with pppd and an intermittent phone line connection. >> My external line occasionally drops out, usually briefly (I'm trying to >> get this fixed but need a workaround in the meantime). > I know this is not what you asked for, and may not work for your use > case, but how about just preventing pppd stopping in the first place? > For my system that I set up 10 years ago and is still running, the > notes I wrote at the time say this: > >Edit /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider to add a line saying "maxfail 0"; >after the 'persist' entry is a good place. This should stop pppd >from timing out when it can't connect. > > I did that so my internet connection came back up when the modem > reconnected after an outage. > That seems to work fine and is a nice simple solution. At any rate, it works when I just yank the cable out temporarily; now to leave it for a while to see if it works with the real problem too (maybe a week or two before I know). Thank you! Graham
Re: restarting pppd automatically
Hi Tomas
On 28/12/2020 09:28, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 27, 2020 at 11:56:21PM +0000, Graham Seaman wrote:
>> I'm having problems with pppd and an intermittent phone line
>
> Wow. Memories fading :-)
>
> OK, my recollection on inittab is a bit dusty, and I have little
> experience with systemd (trying to keep it that way). But I'll
> try a shot at it.
>
> The idea of inittab was to keep an eye on some processes: when
> they died, they were restarted ("respawn", in inittab parlance).
>
> This was init's job (thus inittab). Its main customers were
> the login processes. At their other end were serial lines
> attached to terminals (ah, vt220...). A user logged in at
> one of those things, the login handed off to a shell or something,
> when the user logged off the shell terminated, the calling
> login terminated and... respawn.
>
> Other things followed, typically daemons and... pppd.
>
> Then came SysV: daemons had to take care of themselves, PID
> files grew like mushrooms all over the place. It was bad
> times. The inittab was still there, mind you, but it was only
> tending to the Linux consoles (tradition perhaps :-) and to
> non-existing serial terminals. My system still has one,
> perhaps yours too.
>
> Now with systemd, we've turned full circle (unfortunately, with
> seventeen layers of complexity stacked in-between). In theory,
> systemd /should/ be able to do exactly what init used to do
> back then.
>
> Searching for "inittab systemd" via our favourite search engine
> (no, not that one with the big G) yields a couple of good
> hits. In [1] there's an example on how to translate an inittab
> entry into a systemd unit file.. In [2] you can see where the
> systemd unit files for your serial console live under Debian,
> perhaps there /is/ already something near that for pppd?
>
> Assuming you are on Buster... the list of files for package
> ppp (where pppd lives) is here [3]. No, no unit for respawn,
> alas. Only one to kick systemd's DNS service on connect and
> disconnect events (/lib/systemd/system/pppd-dns.service).
>
> Seems like you'll have to fashion one after some /lib/systemd/...tty.service.
> Perhaps there's someone around here who has done that to
> help you out. Tip: don't put it in /lib/systemd/... This
> place os for your distro. Put it somewhere in /etc/systemd/...
> that's for you, the admin. I can't provide details -- no
> experience with that.
>
> I'd try to file a bug against ppp: they should be providing
> a systemd unit file.
>
> Cheers
> - t
>
>
> [1]
> https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/475468-In-search-for-a-inittab-entry-replacement-for-systemd#7
> [2] https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#line-288
> [3] https://packages.debian.org/buster/amd64/ppp/filelist
Thanks for the explanation. I'm filing it away and if Tixy's simple
configuration solution has unexpected side-effects I'll have a go at this.
Cheers
Graham
restarting pppd automatically
I'm having problems with pppd and an intermittent phone line connection. My external line occasionally drops out, usually briefly (I'm trying to get this fixed but need a workaround in the meantime). When the line goes down, I get this sequence: Dec 27 01:35:03 snoopy pppd[22798]: No response to 4 echo-requests Dec 27 01:35:03 snoopy pppd[22798]: Serial link appears to be disconnected. Dec 27 01:35:03 snoopy pppd[22798]: Connect time 6266.2 minutes. Dec 27 01:35:03 snoopy pppd[22798]: Sent 3838785941 bytes, received 2059599934 bytes. Dec 27 01:35:03 snoopy pppd[22798]: restoring old default route to enp3s0 [xxx.xxx.xx.xxx] Dec 27 01:35:09 snoopy pppd[22798]: Connection terminated. Dec 27 01:35:09 snoopy pppd[22798]: Sent PADT Dec 27 01:35:09 snoopy pppd[22798]: Modem hangup Dec 27 01:36:14 snoopy pppd[22798]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets Dec 27 01:37:19 snoopy pppd[22798]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets Dec 27 01:38:24 snoopy pppd[22798]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets Dec 27 01:39:29 snoopy pppd[22798]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets Dec 27 01:40:34 snoopy pppd[22798]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets Dec 27 01:41:39 snoopy pppd[22798]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets Dec 27 01:42:44 snoopy pppd[22798]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets Dec 27 01:43:49 snoopy pppd[22798]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets Dec 27 01:44:54 snoopy pppd[22798]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets Dec 27 01:46:00 snoopy pppd[22798]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets Dec 27 01:46:00 snoopy pppd[22798]: Exit which I believe is what it is supposed to do, but leaves the connection dead when the phone line comes back a minute later. I want pppd to restart automatically when it goes down like this, maybe with a couple of minutes delay. According to the pppd documentation on https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Leased-Line/pppd.html section 3.2.1 I can do this by editing /etc/inittab. But I've never really relearnt how everything hangs together since the switch to systemd, and in any case want to stay as close as I can to the default debian setup (which is what I have now). Can anyone tell me what the recommended way to achieve this is now? Thanks Graham
Re: grub update and reinstallation
On 02/08/2020 04:31, Tom Dial wrote: On 8/1/20 11:09, Graham Seaman wrote: I already reinstalled grub-pc (using a rescue-usb) , that's how I got the system booting again. But I don't know if the current grub is trustable or not. My experience, now on eight machines, indicates that it should be if the installed, configured, and used versions of grub components is 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2. I could be wrong, but here it has been the case for both UEFI (and root on ZFS) and legacy boot setups, on both i386 and amd64. The only exception is one root-on-ZFS VM that was slightly broken beforehand and declines to boot for reasons I am fairly sure are unrelated to grub installation. Tom Dial2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2 OK, I have 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2 on 2 debian systems which seem to be OK. Thanks for confirming! 2.02~beta2-36 seems to be ok on a UEFI ubuntu system. Graham Graham Or get the device name from the debconf database: readlink -f $(debconf-show grub-pc 2>/dev/null | grep grub-pc/install_devices: | cut -d ':' -f2) Cheers, Sven
Re: grub update and reinstallation
On 01/08/2020 14:00, Sven Joachim wrote: > On 2020-08-01 12:23 +0100, Graham Seaman wrote: > >> On 01/08/2020 07:50, Tom Dial wrote: >>> I have a laptop that became unbootable because >>> the initial loader failed to find a symbol (grub_calloc) and balked. >>> Like the one mentioned here, it uses legacy boot. One explanation has it >>> that this happened because the MBR and the remainder of grub were not >>> both updated or were updated with slightly incompatible data. >>> >>> One fix appears to be to reinstall grub using a rescue CD or another >>> system. That worked for me. >> >> My home server sits in my loft managing comms with the outside world; >> yesterday it overheated (not a surprise) and went down. > > You should probably open the machine up and clean it. :-) The outdoor temperature was 38 centigrade; in my loft it was considerably more. The machine is spotless :-) > >> On reboot >> after cooling it came back up with the grub_calloc problem, so like >> Tom I reinstalled after which it appears to be OK. >> >> BUT because I have no idea why the original problem occurred, or why a >> reinstall fixed the problem, I have no idea if this is a permanent >> fix, or if I have a system which is liable to fail to reboot again in >> the future. Does anyone know? It's a very simple single drive system >> with legacy boot. > > In this case the error is quite unlikely to occur, I have no idea why it > happened for you in the first place. > It has happened to quite a range of users in the last week (search for 'grub calloc') - users running ubuntu, lubuntu, debian-mint, vanilla debian, that I've seen. So I assume its some upstream problem with grub. Some people seem to think the problem only shows on multi-boot-disk or raid systems, but that didn't apply in my case. >> I run it with security updates on auto, and check >> for other updates manually once a week or so. Should I change this >> pattern for a while while possible grub problems are sorted upstream? > > I would recommend to run "dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc". This should bring > up three dialogues, the last of which asks for the disk(s) to install grub > on. On your system this is most likely /dev/sda. > I already reinstalled grub-pc (using a rescue-usb) , that's how I got the system booting again. But I don't know if the current grub is trustable or not. Graham > Or get the device name from the debconf database: > > readlink -f $(debconf-show grub-pc 2>/dev/null | grep > grub-pc/install_devices: | cut -d ':' -f2) > > Cheers, >Sven >
Re: grub update and reinstallation
On 01/08/2020 07:50, Tom Dial wrote: I have a laptop that became unbootable because the initial loader failed to find a symbol (grub_calloc) and balked. Like the one mentioned here, it uses legacy boot. One explanation has it that this happened because the MBR and the remainder of grub were not both updated or were updated with slightly incompatible data. One fix appears to be to reinstall grub using a rescue CD or another system. That worked for me. My home server sits in my loft managing comms with the outside world; yesterday it overheated (not a surprise) and went down. On reboot after cooling it came back up with the grub_calloc problem, so like Tom I reinstalled after which it appears to be OK. BUT because I have no idea why the original problem occurred, or why a reinstall fixed the problem, I have no idea if this is a permanent fix, or if I have a system which is liable to fail to reboot again in the future. Does anyone know? It's a very simple single drive system with legacy boot. I run it with security updates on auto, and check for other updates manually once a week or so. Should I change this pattern for a while while possible grub problems are sorted upstream? Graham
Re: psu or firmware?
On 21/07/2020 04:35, David Wright wrote: However, this laptop, the lenovo, no longer has a functioning power regulation. The battery shows full at all times, but if the AC is interrupted, it's dead. It doesn't help that the connector (a USB-A look-alike) is loose fitting, so the laptop now has to be a static desktop, with its power cord twisted and trapped underneath in such a manner that it can't move around. It's not worth spending any money on because, after a hard life, . the touchpad doesn't click any more, . the screen is coming away from the casing at the hinge, so closing or opening it is a delicate operation, . the USB sockets are about as loose as the power one with some sticks, . I've had to strap a straightened coathook to the PSU because the cable's strain relief has broken, leaving the wires exposed and vulnerable. (It's a replacement PSU.) Wow. That puts mine to shame: I have replaced a dying fan, a dead hard drive, and a dead power adaptor so far. But apart from holes in the plastic case where the fan grid has given way it's currently all intact apart from the faulty regulator or whatever it is. Speed has been a problem - I ran gentoo on it for years but switched to debian when the hdd died, because compile times were getting too long. I suppose if push came to shove, and Vostros were common enough, you might be able get another machine to charge the battery pack for you. I'm not going to buy another dodgy antique just for that! But its not a bad idea in principle: maybe I can find something just as a recharger. My wife has a Packard bell bought on the very same day - but unfortunately her power regulator has died too. Must be a common fault, wonder if it was a particular component problem at the time (you'd think there would be more stress on the CPU Cheers Graham Cheers, David.
Re: psu or firmware?
On 18/07/2020 21:36, Stefan Monnier wrote: often for the price of a new battery you are already a large part of the way towards just getting a newer system (a raspberry pi might work for some people and be much better instead). New batteries for a Dell Vostro 1520 seem to run around $30 (according to a quick search for "battery dell vostro 1520"). If the machine is used as a kind of server then a small SBC (like an EspressoBin, or Pi) might indeed be a good option, but a new battery is not a large investment. And while old, a Core 2 Duo is still pretty competitive against those small boxes. Stefan "doing most of his work on a Thinkpad T61" So the new battery came, precharged to 75%. Left the power in for 30 minutes, stayed at 75%. Took the power out, dropped to 72% pretty quickly. Put the power back in and it stays at 72%. So the motherboard is reading the battery power ok but not charging it, although it thinks it is, and I have a motherboard fault. I do use it as a laptop not a server, mainly for browsing and text editing, and at home cos its too heavy to lug around. I can carry on using it like that just plugged into the adaptor, although the power plug is a bit loose and tends to fall out unexpectedly which may well eventually leave me with a corrupted hard drive. I either invest in some sticky tape to hold it in place or try to peer at the mother board and hope I find a popped capacitor or something I have a hope of fixing. Sticky tape it is then. Graham
Re: psu or firmware?
On 18/07/2020 21:47, Stefan Monnier wrote: New batteries for a Dell Vostro 1520 seem to run around $30 (according to a quick search for "battery dell vostro 1520"). Adding "site:co.uk" to the query seems to indicate prices are more in the £40-50 range in the UK. Most of the ones on Amazon are less than that. I've just bought one for £21.99 - a Chinese clone of the original, I imagine. I shall see if that does it or it turns out to be an onboard regulator or similar, in which case I guess I give up on it. Graham
Re: psu or firmware?
On 18/07/2020 21:42, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote: On Saturday, July 18, 2020 04:21:31 PM Graham Seaman wrote: Where did you find them? All I can find on ebay or elsewhere is AC adapters (I'm searching on 'dell vostro 1520 psu' or 'dell vostro 1520 power supply', but all the results returned are for adapters, not power supplies - even when the description says 'power supply' the photo shows an adapter). Google for Dell vostro 1520 battery Of course, don't know why I was being so dumb. Somehow I seem to have imagined my laptop was a desktop... Thanks Graham
Re: psu or firmware?
On 18/07/2020 13:47, Klaus Singvogel wrote: Graham Seaman wrote: I'm running Debian on an old Dell Vostro 1520 - old and slow, but has been working fine. Recently the PSU has stopped charging. It is genuinely empty; if I power down and then try to boot with no power cable attached the laptop is completely dead. Maybe the CMOS battery empty? Why would the CMOS battery affect the main battery? (not being sarcastic - I really don't know enough about this to know whether it would or not) Thanks Graham Try to measure the voltage, if you're eligible with this. If low and depending on price for replacement, I would give it a chance. https://www.parts-people.com/blog/2015/11/05/dell-inspiron-1520-cmos-battery-removal-installation/ Best regards, Klaus.
Re: psu or firmware?
On 18/07/2020 13:39, Dan Ritter wrote: Graham Seaman wrote: I'm running Debian on an old Dell Vostro 1520 - old and slow, but has been working fine. Recently the PSU has stopped charging. It is genuinely empty; if I power down and then try to boot with no power cable attached the laptop is completely dead. I guess it's most likely this is a hardware failure, but since I'm unlikely to find a viable replacement for the battery I'm hoping there might be some firmware or other software change that could account for it. A quick search shows lots of people selling replacement batteries from $12 to $60 US, most in the $20-25 range. Where did you find them? All I can find on ebay or elsewhere is AC adapters (I'm searching on 'dell vostro 1520 psu' or 'dell vostro 1520 power supply', but all the results returned are for adapters, not power supplies - even when the description says 'power supply' the photo shows an adapter). I'm in the UK, so looking for UK suppliers - don't know if that makes a difference. Thanks Graham A secret of many laptop batteries, including this one, is that the battery is largely a container to hold 18650 lithium battery cells, which can be purchased separately. Now, if the motherboard charging circuitry is toast, this won't work, and you should consider a new machine. -dsr-
psu or firmware?
I'm running Debian on an old Dell Vostro 1520 - old and slow, but has been working fine. Recently the PSU has stopped charging. It is genuinely empty; if I power down and then try to boot with no power cable attached the laptop is completely dead. I guess it's most likely this is a hardware failure, but since I'm unlikely to find a viable replacement for the battery I'm hoping there might be some firmware or other software change that could account for it. upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1 native-path: BAT1 vendor: Dell serial: 11 power supply: yes updated: Sat 18 Jul 2020 12:34:19 BST (39 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: charging warning-level: none energy: 0 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 37.81 Wh energy-full-design: 48.84 Wh energy-rate: 0 W voltage: 9.306 V percentage: 0% capacity: 77.4161% technology: lithium-ion icon-name: 'battery-caution-charging-symbolic' /var/log/messages says: Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 21.858825] iTCO_vendor_support: vendor-support=0 Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 21.868799] iTCO_wdt: Intel TCO WatchDog Timer Driver v1.11 Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 21.869780] iTCO_wdt: Found a ICH9M TCO device (Version=2, TCOBASE=0x0460) Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 21.869983] iTCO_wdt: initialized. heartbeat=30 sec (nowayout=0) Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 22.114275] dcdbas dcdbas: Dell Systems Management Base Driver (version 5.6.0-3.2) Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 22.227213] battery: ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT1] (battery present) Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 22.665955] intel_powerclamp: No package C-state available Is any of that helpful for working out what might be wrong? Thanks for any advice Graham
kde, localization and keyboards
I've previously used either Gnome or Enlightenment as my main environment; I just installed Debian on an old laptop and decided to give KDE a go instead. I often want to switch keyboard briefly to do a bit of text editing with non-english characters (pt, de, ru). I don't ever want to change localization away from GB English. In Gnome I could do this: switching keyboard had no effect on localization. In KDE I get randomly switch between localizations: for example, I just ran apt install, and the first half of the messages were in Portuguese, then it suddenly switched to German, with no input from me. The only localizations I get match the keyboards I've set up (though I'm not switching keyboard). I've removed all languages except British English from Settings->language->configure plasma translations. Any suggestions for how to fix this? Is there a configuration option I'm missing? Graham
Re: help with gitlab on buster
On 17/02/2020 22:41, David Wright wrote: On Mon 17 Feb 2020 at 15:27:06 (+), Graham Seaman wrote: I hadn't thought of running a VM clone of the server - might be generally useful. But the server's main jobs are as a router, firewall, dnsmasq, mail server, which is where the main problems usually are in upgrades, and I think it would be hard to duplicate the low-level comms stuff meaningfully in a VM Would it be possible to run a live stretch system (or install one) on another machine, onto which you copy the files from your server. You should be able to install a version of gitlab old enough to handle your old data. (If necessary, for stretch, read jessie.) You might not know which non-Debian files *are* necessary for gitlab to run but presumably you know which trees of files you *don't* need on this system: anything to do with the "main jobs" you mentioned, for example. I decided John Doe was right, and gitlab is really overkill for what I need and likely to lead to extra work every time there's an upgrade as well (rails based apps always seem to have been a problem for me that way). So I've extracted the git data and abandoned the gitlab part, and now I'm just using git from the command line, which is mostly what I was doing anyway. I might look at using gitweb in the future if I feel a need to get a web frontend back. Graham
Re: help with gitlab on buster
On 17/02/2020 06:30, john doe wrote: On 2/16/2020 11:45 PM, Graham Seaman wrote: Of course, though this would be easier if I was more sure where everything was. But the data's no use without the software to read it. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/raketasks/backup_restore.html Thanks - bit embarassing I didn't know that existed (I don't think there was a backup option when I first installed it). But I've done pretty much the same, but manually - rsyncing off the data files, psql_dump, etc. Don't Gitlab has some kind of forum/mailing list? Yes, it has many forums. I was just hoping someone working on the debian side might pick up on this - the debian layout seems rather different from the vanilla one(s), though maybe just because the version I had was so old. This will not help you for now but the following could be useful in the future: If you have VMs available, I would suggest you to have a clone of your production "server" and to first on this VM how the upgrade process goes. I hadn't thought of running a VM clone of the server - might be generally useful. But the server's main jobs are as a router, firewall, dnsmasq, mail server, which is where the main problems usually are in upgrades, and I think it would be hard to duplicate the low-level comms stuff meaningfully in a VM Also, Gitlab seems overkill in your situation, if you need Git, simply use the Git package and a frontend if you like. Definitely. I think I might abandon gitlab and go with something much simpler like gitweb. Ideally something I'm sure will be long-term supported. As I don't use Gitlab myself, that's all I can help you with. Kind of you to reply as a non-gitlab user! Thanks. Graham -- John Doe
Re: help with gitlab on buster
On 14/02/2020 17:39, john doe wrote: On 2/14/2020 5:42 PM, Graham Seaman wrote: I run a debian house server for firewall, routing etc. The last few years I've also run gitlab on it, which I use to manage text files I work on from an assortment of laptops/PCs; I have a lot of these files (currently around 12 Gb) and really don't want to lose them. After the initial setup I didn't do anything with the gitlab code and don't even remember what version it was. So this week, without thinking particularly about gitlab, I upgraded from stretch to buster. No complaints during the upgrade, but gitlab no longer worked (now dependent on a directory called 'embedded' which I don't have). So I followed the recommendation on https://wiki.debian.org/gitlab to update gitlab using buster-fastrack. This installed an alarmingly huge number of ruby and node dependencies, then failed informing me that I the database changes were too big to go straight from my old version to the current debian one, and that I need to transition through version 11.11.0 first. There is no debian package for this, and 11.11.0 is only available from gitlab.com as a docker install, but I'm running directly on my host. Cant' you use docker on an other host, for example, in a VM? I've tried that, but never having used docker before found I was just mystified at how to use the install to reformat the existing data, as would happen during a normal upgrade. I think this route is probably a dead end for me, I just don't have the knowledge to do it. Can anyone suggest how to get myself a working gitlab again. without losing the current data? I could live with a command-line only version, if I couldn't get the web side working again. First off, backup your data! :) Of course, though this would be easier if I was more sure where everything was. But the data's no use without the software to read it. Basically, my idea would be to find a way to follow the correct upgrade procedure. I've found that version 11.11.8 is available from fasttrack.debian.org. Not quite the one (11.11.0) the upgrade process advised to use, but maybe close enough - I can't find any older versions. This fails with two dependencies on old packages, ruby-prof, which I've now downgraded ok, and ruby-gitaly-proto, which I can't find a trace of anywhere. 'apt-cache madison ruby-gitaly' returns golang-gitaly-proto | 0.123.0+dfsg-2 | http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian buster/main Sources I don't suppose this golang version would satisfy the dependency, but it doesn't install anyway: apt install golang-gitaly-proto=0.123.0+dfsg-2 returns 'Unable to locate package golang-gitaly-proto'. So I'm stuck on this route too. Any suggestions? Although I've been using debian for ages (thanks everyone) it's very much only as an end user, and since normally upgrades 'just work' for me I get really unstuck when I run into quite basic upgrade problems. Graham -- John Doe
help with gitlab on buster
I run a debian house server for firewall, routing etc. The last few years I've also run gitlab on it, which I use to manage text files I work on from an assortment of laptops/PCs; I have a lot of these files (currently around 12 Gb) and really don't want to lose them. After the initial setup I didn't do anything with the gitlab code and don't even remember what version it was. So this week, without thinking particularly about gitlab, I upgraded from stretch to buster. No complaints during the upgrade, but gitlab no longer worked (now dependent on a directory called 'embedded' which I don't have). So I followed the recommendation on https://wiki.debian.org/gitlab to update gitlab using buster-fastrack. This installed an alarmingly huge number of ruby and node dependencies, then failed informing me that I the database changes were too big to go straight from my old version to the current debian one, and that I need to transition through version 11.11.0 first. There is no debian package for this, and 11.11.0 is only available from gitlab.com as a docker install, but I'm running directly on my host. Can anyone suggest how to get myself a working gitlab again. without losing the current data? I could live with a command-line only version, if I couldn't get the web side working again. Thanks for any advice Graham
Re: networking stopped after upgrade
This turned out to be a hardware problem after all - short in an ethernet cable. Though I don't understand how I got quite the symptoms I did, it has now all been working for a couple of days so I guess that was it. Graham On 03/11/15 15:33, Graham Seaman wrote: > On 03/11/15 15:15, Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI wrote: >> On Tue, 3 Nov 2015 12:49:44 + >> Graham Seaman <nav...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote: >> >>> For some years I've been using a debian system as my household >>> firewall/router. It's been sitting quietly working without any major >>> changes, but has suddenly stopped doing so following my last aptitude >>> update/upgrade. >> >>> Any suggestions? >> Why not use a dedicated firewall distribution, like IPCop ? > The same machine also acts as my mail server, backup manager, etc. > Because of that I'm fairly desperate to get it back up as soon as > possible (all my real mail is currently bouncing while I'm stuck on > yahoo-mail). > > There's also a more general kind of philosophical point: I started using > Linux because I hated the approach that says 'software is too complex > for normal people; if software fails, throw your device away and get a > new one'. In practice over time my understanding of it has got less, > not more - I've been completely left behind since the start of systemd, > which I suspect may have something to do with my current problems. All > the same, I still feel that with some help everything ought to be fixable. > > Graham > > >> >> Cheers, >> >> Ron.
networking stopped after upgrade
Hi For some years I've been using a debian system as my household firewall/router. It's been sitting quietly working without any major changes, but has suddenly stopped doing so following my last aptitude update/upgrade. Server eth0 is connected to my modem, and eth1 is connected to internal devices, using iptables to nat them and dnsmasq to provide internal naming. The first symptom after upgrade was that ifconfig showed that eth1 had no packets passing through (none transmitted, received or dropped), although eth0 and the external internet connection worked fine. I tried rebooting - no change. I tried restarting /etc/init.d/networking, which caused the symptoms to reverse: now eth1 works, internal traffic is fine, but absolutely nothing is happening on eth0. It's now stuck like this and I haven't been able to get eth0 to work again whatever I do. ifconfig shows eth0 is configured correctly (ip address, netmask, etc) and route shows the gateway is ok. dmesg doesn't show any obvious problems. But there are no packages moving through eth0 at all. Since I initially had this symptom with eth1, which now works, I guess hardware problems are ruled out. This is Debian 8.2, uname says 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u5 (2015-10-09) My /etc/networks/interface goes; # auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static auto eth1 iface eth1 inet static auto dsl-provider iface dsl-provider inet ppp pre-up /sbin/ifconfig eth0 up provider dsl-provider # I'd made no changes at all to any configuration files before this setup stopped working, and it had previously worked unchanged for a long time. Any suggestions? Thanks Graham
Re: networking stopped after upgrade
On 03/11/15 15:15, Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI wrote: > On Tue, 3 Nov 2015 12:49:44 + > Graham Seaman <nav...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > >> For some years I've been using a debian system as my household >> firewall/router. It's been sitting quietly working without any major >> changes, but has suddenly stopped doing so following my last aptitude >> update/upgrade. > >> Any suggestions? > Why not use a dedicated firewall distribution, like IPCop ? The same machine also acts as my mail server, backup manager, etc. Because of that I'm fairly desperate to get it back up as soon as possible (all my real mail is currently bouncing while I'm stuck on yahoo-mail). There's also a more general kind of philosophical point: I started using Linux because I hated the approach that says 'software is too complex for normal people; if software fails, throw your device away and get a new one'. In practice over time my understanding of it has got less, not more - I've been completely left behind since the start of systemd, which I suspect may have something to do with my current problems. All the same, I still feel that with some help everything ought to be fixable. Graham > > Cheers, > > Ron.
backuppc plus smbclient in jessie
Hi I have an elderly machine which has been successfully running backuppc, mainly with linux clients but including use of smb to backup Windows hosts. I recently upgraded from squeeze to wheezy and found that backuppc no longer worked correctly with smbclient: the backup terminates with no warning or error messages after copying the first few directories from a Windows C$ share; in particular it copies none of the User directories. Googling convinced me there was a problem with the 3.6 series of smbclient when used with backuppc, and I upgraded from wheezy to jessie to get the latest version of everything. I still have the same problem. I'm now running smbclient 4.1.7 and backuppc 3.3.0-2. The bug description in reports like: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/backuppc/+bug/1381494 still seem to describe my symptoms. The suggestion in that particular bug report is to downgrade smbclient to 3.5, which I'm reluctant to do as I'm using debian to minimize my maintenance, and don't actually know how to run old versions of software without creating a maze of dependency problems... Has anyone else run into this problem and found a solution other than going back to really old software versions? Thanks Graham -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/557eb24c.3080...@theseamans.net
Re: Re: dependency problem
On 0, graham gra...@theseamans.net wrote: [...] libhdf4-alt-dev: Depends: libhdf4-0-alt (= 4.2r4-6) but 4.2r4-5 is to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). [...] The first thing to do would be to try a dist-upgrade. If that still fails, see if you can apt-pin the needed package from a newer release; by the way, what release are you running currently? dist-upgrade gives me the same problem as a plain upgrade. The machine is running squeeze (2.6.30-1-amd64). I run debian on this machine because I don't want to spend any time on maintenance, and debian usually 'just works'. My experience of bringing in packages from newer releases is that the mix generally brings more maintenance issues with it in the future. Especially as I have no idea what these packages are, I don't want them messing up everything else. I'd prefer to find why they are being brought in and remove whatever depends on them, if that's practical. Cheers Graham -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
hosed etch upgrade
Hi, I had a system which had been running updates from test (ie. etch) for a while and when etch was formally released like an idiot decided I could do the final upgrade without reading the upgrade documents... Result: I rebooted before having upgraded the kernel (I'm on 2.6.8-2-686) and so udev doesn't work and I have no network access (ie. no eth0). I decided the easiest way round this would be to do a kernel upgrade, but the machine also has no floppy drive so I've been burning CDs trying to get all the necessary dependencies over as I find the ones I've missed. I've now run out of CDs so about to set off to buy some more (unfortunately nowhere near here sells debian cd sets :-( Currently I am trying to install linux-image-2.6.18-4-686, which requires a ramdisk creator, which I didn't have. As yaird has fewer nested dependencies than initramfs I went that way, but now get the error message during installation: yaird error: destination /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-4-686.new already exists (fatal) This error message persists when I remove the offending file. Does anyone have any ideas - or know if there is an easier approach to get my system back? (eg. some way to switch off udev and get my network back manually) Thanks! Graham -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: hosed etch upgrade
Given the mess I've now reached, decided the easiest thing is to do a full install of etch from scratch and restore data from backup... please ignore previous message... Graham Graham Seaman wrote: Hi, I had a system which had been running updates from test (ie. etch) for a while and when etch was formally released like an idiot decided I could do the final upgrade without reading the upgrade documents... Result: I rebooted before having upgraded the kernel (I'm on 2.6.8-2-686) and so udev doesn't work and I have no network access (ie. no eth0). I decided the easiest way round this would be to do a kernel upgrade, but the machine also has no floppy drive so I've been burning CDs trying to get all the necessary dependencies over as I find the ones I've missed. I've now run out of CDs so about to set off to buy some more (unfortunately nowhere near here sells debian cd sets :-( Currently I am trying to install linux-image-2.6.18-4-686, which requires a ramdisk creator, which I didn't have. As yaird has fewer nested dependencies than initramfs I went that way, but now get the error message during installation: yaird error: destination /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-4-686.new already exists (fatal) This error message persists when I remove the offending file. Does anyone have any ideas - or know if there is an easier approach to get my system back? (eg. some way to switch off udev and get my network back manually) Thanks! Graham -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: iceweasel and javascripts
I've had similar problems with the gentoo version ('bon echo') on dumb
sites which recognise browsers by name, instead of testing for
javascript capabilities. The fix was to install the User Agent Switcher
plugin and tell the site you're anything but what you really are (IE7
seems to be a reasonably successful choice). Of course this messes up
usage stats and possibly negates the reason for becoming 'ice weasel' in
the first place...
Graham
BartlebyScrivener wrote:
On Apr 24, 12:00 am, Mathias Brodala [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
so if something does not work
you either misconfigured your browser or the specific site just sucks.
Well, so I would have thought. But then why does Firefox 2.0.0.3 on
Windows XP have no problems rendering the site, but iceweasel 2.0.0.3
on Etch cannot seem to render it? Same settings as near as I can tell.
Thanks for any help.
bs
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software raid - no grub?
I just bought a new machine and installed the new debian on it. It has 2 drives and I wanted to run software raid on them so I was really impressed when it came up as an install option. The problem is, now I can't always boot: as far as I can work out (after about 10 attempts, so it does seem to be fairly consistent) the pattern is that on a reboot the machine fails to find the bootloader, but on a cold start following power off the machine does find the bootloader. Once booted, everything seems to be fine - except that dmesg reports a BIOS problem with pnp. Googling around tells me that the BIOS warning is probably unrelated and safe to ignore, and that there were historical problems with grub as bootloader on raid systems. Is there anything I can do about this? Or should I use LILO instead? Or could I have flaky hardware? I'm completely new to raid, so any advice in baby steps, please... :-) Thanks Graham -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: software raid - no grub?
Clive Menzies wrote: You might find the following useful: http://unthought.net/Software-RAID.HOWTO/Software-RAID.HOWTO.html http://juerd.nl/site.plp/debianraid http://rootraiddoc.alioth.debian.org/ http://deb.riseup.net/storage/software-raid/ http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2002/12/05/RAID.html?page=2 Thanks. In the end I went with some advice from the fedora forums; step 4 of http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-26912.html (explicitly installing grub on both drives) was what fixed it. Cheers Graham Regards Clive -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
usb + brother printer woes
Hi, I have a little old Pentium 2 machine I decided to set up as a print server. No usb, so I bought a Belkin pci usb card. Running on stable, but upgraded to 2.4.24 with usbcore, OHCI, and usb printer modules. Now I'm trying to use it with a Brother HL-5040 laser printer, but it just won't see it. /dev/usb/lp0 is there, but /proc/bus/usb/devices is empty (should it be?); I've installed the Brother driver and my printcap shows: lp|HL5040:\ :mx=0:\ :sd=/var/spool/lpd/HL5040:\ :sh:\ :lp=/dev/usb/lp0:\ :if=/usr/local/Brother/lpd/filterHL5040: but when I try to print all I get is waiting for lp to become ready (offline ?) I guess this means it's a usb problem but don't know how to go about diagnosing it. ( I know the printer will also work with parallel, but my parallel port is physically broken...) Any suggestions for the next step? Thanks Graham -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
recovering wrecked system (potato-unstable)
Hi, I've probably wrecked my system and will need to reformat and start over, but am hoping I'll be able to recover without. But I'm stuck - any advice appreciated (as you will see from below, I don't have much idea what I'm doing). I had an old potato system. Problem 1: I tried to upgrade X to unstable (xserver-common, xlibs etc) (yes, I know, silly move). The first result was that xdm failed to start with 'Can't open RGB_DB'. I copied rgb.txt to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/; now I have xdm, xfs, windowmaker etc all running, but a completely blank screen. All the parameters for my video chipset (ATI Rage Pro) seem to have been set correctly. $REALSTARTUP is not quoted, though the symptoms sound similar. I can still get into console mode, where everything works ok. Problem 2: I thought the problem might be due to running an old kernel (2.2.17), since xlibs installation gave me a warning 'Kernel too old for Mesa DRI'. I attempted to install the 2.4.14-1 image. Rather than booting from the hard drive, I tried to create a boot floppy. I'm unable to boot from this, getting a kernel panic: 'VFS: Cannot open root device 'hdb3' or 03:43'. However, I can still boot from my old boot floppy using hdb3. Any suggestions? Thanks Graham
silly printer problem
Hi, I have a printer problem which must be absolutely simple but have tried everything I can think - this is now desperation! I'm using magicfilter etc. My printer (a laserjet 4) works fine - except that it doesn't flush the last page of a set, so that the next thing I print gets its first page printed on top of the last page of the previous set... At first I thought it was something specific to the laserjet4, but now have the same problem with a deskjet on another machine. I guess somewhere there's a flag not being set correctly by default, but have tried everything I can think of in printcap and lpd.conf. Any suggestions? Thanks Graham
Re: do I have to use Redhat?
There are no install disks for potato yet. I also had trouble with this very problem a while back. My solution was to borrow a supported controller for installing slink and then building a new kernel and swapping the controllers back. There was really no other way. BTW, the 2.0.37-pre series supports these controllers. I suppose I should get busy and build a set of boot floppies that uses this kernel. If you do that, can you make an announcement if you can make them available? Otherwise, I guess its down to waiting for the official potato release... Thanks Graham
do I have to use Redhat?
Hi, I've been using debian for a while but am still a relative newbie. I just bought a new pc with Advansys Initio SCSI driver. The supplier asked me what OS I wanted; I asked for Linux. They told me I would have to use RedHat, since the Initio drivers (which are only supplied in binary format) have only been in the kernel from 2.2.6 on. So I have a RedHat system - but I don't like it much and would prefer to have Debian. I know how to upgrade the kernel, given a particular distribution - what I don't know is how to change the distribution given a particular kernel (I'd also like to redo the partitioning, so I really need to start everything from scratch). I can't just run through the normal Debian installation procedure since the install program (logically) can't see my hard drive. Do I have to wait for potato, or is there some way round this? Thanks Graham
newbie ppp problem
Hi, Having problems setting up ppp. I think its actually a unix problem rather than a hardware one, but this is my first try with a Linux system so may be wrong. Here's the details anyway: I have a Sysprano internal modem with Rockwell chip set (uart is labelled RCV336ACF/SF). setserial reports: /dev/ttyS1, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x02f8, Baud_base 115200, close_delay: 50, divisor 0, IRQ 3, closing_wait 3000, closing_wait2 infinite, Flags: spd_normal, skip_list, session_lockout When I start 'pon', the modem beeps as if engaged but never dials a number. 'plog' reports: abort on (NO DIALTONE) send (ATDT^M) expect (my ISPs phone no) pppd2.0 started by root, uid 0 Device ttyS1 is locked by pid 170 Exit ATDT^M^M Busy -- failed Failed (Busy) Connect script failed The process that seems to be causing the problem is: sbin/mgetty ttyS1 but I don't know why this is running, what its doing, and I can't find where its started up from. Any help appreciated! Graham -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
cirrus logic/sparklies (newbie)
Hi, I'm having problems setting up X which I think are due to my graphic card settings. I have what I thought was a pretty standard card which the drivers are there for. The card has a Cirrus CL-GD5446BV with 2 MB of ram. Superprobe identifies both ok. I used xf86config to set up the configuration file and can't see anything wrong there (as suggested I've set no clock settings). I'm using fvwm2. When I start up X I get small dots appearing round anything that moves (a window if I drag it, fish if I start xfishtank, etc). Some of the dots stay visible (this effect does occasionally appear under Win95, but only within scrollbars around windows. Otherwise there are no graphics problems at all under Win95). I're tried turning off both acceleration and bitblt, but that makes things worse: in particular, if I generate text wider than a window (eg by ls -al) the window is redrawn with multiple overlapping copies of itself. If I force a redraw most times the dots go away. Any suggestions? Thanks Graham -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
