Re: RECOMMEND: Wireless Home Router with VPN Built-In

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2016 17:46:31 -0700
Patrick Bartek  wrote:

> On Mon, 25 Apr 2016, Lars Noodén wrote:
> 
> > On 04/25/2016 05:01 AM, Patrick Bartek wrote:  
> > > Hi! all,
> > > 
> > > Toying with the idea of setting up a personal, that is,
> > > non-business, VPN for a device or two for those rare times I use
> > > public wifi. For improved security, mind you.  Want to keep it
> > > simple, but it must work outside the U.S. (I foresee a change
> > > coming.)  So, figured a new home router with the server built-in
> > > would be better than a for-charge (or free) VPN service.  (After 8
> > > years of continuous use, I'm getting nervous about my old router
> > > anyway, and want to replace it.)
> > > 
> > > What routers would you all recommend?  And why?
> > > 
> > > Thanks.
> > > 
> > > B
> > >   
> > 
> > I'd look at the list of routers that support OpenWRT or DD-WRT and
> > choose from that subset, if you want an off-the-shelf product.  
> 
> I have been considering that.  Just started looking yesterday.  Lots
> of routers out there.  That's why I asked for recommendations.  To
> narrow the field.

I bought a TP-Link Archer C5 a while ago, the main reason being that
OpenWRT is well supported on it. I've been happy with it, although I've
never used it as a VPN endpoint.

There are plenty of people with Archers on the OpenWRT forums if you
need help. If you take a look at those forums there are quite often
threads on recommendations of routers for OpenWRT with plenty of useful
information.

Petter

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Re: Changing Boot Order

[Petter Adsen]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 12:11:22 -0400
Alan McConnell  wrote:
> I am taking up a lot of message time here.  But my question is a
> very simple one: can one, after booting, and as root, change the
> BIOS so that the machine will boot from a DVD if one is present,
> or from a USB thumb device, if one is plugged in?

If your system uses UEFI and has EFI boot manager entries for CD/DVD
and USB, then you can manipulate the order with efibootmgr. Use
'efibootmgr -n' to change the boot order for the next boot only. I'm not
sure how to create a new entry for a device like a USB stick, though.

Petter

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Re: ZFS on Debian GNU/Linux

[Petter Adsen]

On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 20:22:37 -0800
David Christensen  wrote:

> On 02/28/2016 02:40 AM, Saša Janiška wrote:
>  > I'd like to use zfs, but, it's still lacks proper distro support to
>  > fiddle with it.  
> 
> I believe the crux issue is incompatible licenses between Linux (GPL) 
> and OpenZFS (CDDL):
> 
>  http://open-zfs.org/wiki/FAQ#Licensing
> 
> 
> I believe some Linux distributions have tried to offered ZFS OOTB,
> but people and organizations have cried GPL foul:
...
> Any other thoughts, comments, or suggestions for ZFS on Debian
> GNU/Linux?

You might be interested in this:

http://blog.halon.org.uk/2016/01/on-zfs-in-debian/

Petter

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Re: Verify packages?

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 26 Feb 2016 11:42:07 +0100
Hans  wrote:

> Hello list,
> 
> is there an easy way to verify installed packages against the repo?
> 
> I want to secure, that my installed files are still the same as those
> in the repo.
> 
> Can I use apt or aptitude? 

'sudo dpkg --verify' will tell you what files have been altered from
the ones installed by packages.

Petter

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Re: iceape availability

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 16:32:47 +0800
Bret Busby  wrote:

> Is there a way (a switch for the apt-get command?) to download all of
> the dependencies? I have looked at man apt-get, and, that has an
> option "download" (as opposed to install or find), but I could not
> find, from the man entry for apt-get, how to download the package and
> all of its dependencies; that is, to download the particular package,
> and, its dependency packages, so that they can be stored, and,
> installed (or, tried to be installed) on different systems as wanted.

Try 'sudo apt-get install --download-only packagename'. Any downloaded
packages should end up in /var/cache/apt/archives.

Petter

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"I'm positive."

Re: Stretch color scheme problems

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 09:22:10 -0800
Gary Roach  wrote:

> On 02/15/2016 09:59 PM, Adam Wilson wrote:
> > On Mon, 15 Feb 2016 17:39:26 -0800 Gary Roach
> >  wrote:
> >  
> >> Ever since I switch to Stretch I have been having a problem with
> >> the color scheme of various applications. I get a lot of black
> >> lettering on a black background, white on white and dark blue on
> >> black background (impossible to read). I've tried to fiddle with
> >> the colors at the kde desktop level and also at the individual
> >> application level. There doesn't seem to be a consistent pattern
> >> to the problem. Any suggestions would be sincerely appreciated.  
> > It would be useful to know your theme settings.
> >
> >  
> KDE Apperance
> 
> Workspace Theme
>  Look And Feel - Oxygen
>  Desktop Theme - Breeze Dark
>  Cursor Theme - Oxygen Red Argentina
>  Splash Screen - Oxygen
> 
> I hope this helps

Is this a problem with GTK+ applications or Qt applications? The
settings above should only apply to Qt, AFAIK. If you want to fiddle
with GTK+ themes you can use lxappearance if KDE has no options for it.

Qt can mimic your GTK+ theme, but I don't think the opposite is
possible.

Petter

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Re: AR9285 identified as AR5008

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 05:17:03 -0500
German  wrote:

> Another question. How we can say for sure that ath5k is loaded for
> AR5008? I looked in database of supported hardware for ath5k and
> couldn't find AR5008. Thanks

'lspci -k' will tell you what kernel module is loaded for each device.

Petter

-- 
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Re: How to build Debian-based wireless router

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 21:19:54 -0800
GC  wrote:

> There's a lot of great tutorials on how to build your own router
> (wired) but I can't seem to find anything that covers steps on how to
> build your own wireless router? Anyone have some advice on this topic
> or can share some articles, step-by-step tutorials, links, etc on
> this?

I would think that most people who are interested in hacking their
wireless routers gets a model that supports one of the third-party
firmwares - I bought a TP-Link Archer C5 and installed OpenWRT on it.
This has worked very well for me, but of course I don't know what your
needs are.

OpenWRT has a basic packaging system, not as nice as dpkg/APT, but it
does the job. Going this route will get you hardware that is built for
the job, while still giving you a quite flexible system.

I know that OpenWRT is available for x86, but I've never tried it. Look
around their website[1], there are tons of documentation there. If there
is one place that would have a lot of the information you would need
for building such a system from scratch, I would guess this would be it.
Since OpenWRT uses Free software and is based on Linux, you should be
able to translate a lot of it to a Debian system.

There are also many friendly and helpful people on their forum[2] who
know a *lot* about wifi, I suggest you ask there for advice.

Petter

[1] https://openwrt.org/
[2] https://forum.openwrt.org/

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Re: Looking for Linux-friendly PCI Express 2.0 x1 host bus adapter internal SATA 6 Gbps

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 4 Jan 2016 22:17:27 -0800
David Christensen  wrote:

> On 01/04/2016 09:36 PM, Brandon Vincent wrote:
> > If you want a high end card, go with LSI. If you're looking for
> > something at a consumer price point, any card from StarTech is a
> > good starting point. Most of these cards use AHCI compatible Marvell
> > chipsets and have driver support built into the kernel.
> >
> > If you have a particular question about a model, providing the model
> > number never hurts.  
> 
> My goal is to use a current SATA 3.0 (6 Gbps) SSD as the system drive
> in older computers that have SATA 2.0 (3 Gbps) ports and PCIe 2.0 x1 
> expansion slot(s).
> 
> 
> How about the StarTech PEXSAT32?
> 
>  
> http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/HDD-Controllers/SATA-Cards/2-Port-PCI-Express-SATA-6-Gbps-Controller-Card~PEXSAT32

I actually have that card in a Jessie machine, and it has worked for
about a year without problems. Currently I'm considering getting
another one, so if anyone knows whether two or more of them in the same
machine would be a problem, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

Petter

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Re: Attempt to Move Root

[Petter Adsen]

On Sun, 27 Dec 2015 10:07:13 -0500
Gene Heskett  wrote:

> I made the mistake of trying to install a wheezy derivitive on a 2T
> drive that had been prepared using GPT partitions.  The installer
> could not see them at all, so after 2 tries, I just let it go ahead
> and do its own partitioning and formatting to ext4. The system has
> actually worked well, on a drive that is said to be too big for MBR.

The max addressable size of a drive for MBR is 2TiB, AIUI.

> So I would like to be enlightened as to the real differences between
> the systems. URL's to the proponents sites would be fine.

You can take a look at this, for starters:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GPT

The first couple of sections highlights the differences between MBR and
GPT, and there are links to more information at the bottom of the page.

Petter

-- 
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Re: POP3 was: Re: command not found [SOLVED]

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2015 09:31:45 -0500
Gene Heskett  wrote:
> On Friday 18 December 2015 05:32:01 Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > Having just by implication been told by someone that only muggles,
> > lusers and/or dinosaurs use POP3, how many others of us will admit
> > to it?  (For the avoidance of doubt, I use POP3.)
> >
> > I won't admit to being a muggle or a luser (who, me?), but I am
> > often prepared to admit to being a dinosaur.  However, in this case
> > I actually don't agree with the premise.  Feel free to tell me that
> > I am deluding myself and that I am indeed a dinosaur in this as
> > well.
> >
> > I just don't, for my use, like a lot of what IMAP does.
> >
> > Lisi  
> 
> You have company Lisi, OTOH I am pretty (81 now) ancient, but I hit
> two servers with fetchmail, using pop3 to fetch.  I in fact like the
> idea/premise of IMAP, but have been repeatedly told that setting up
> the server so I can do email from any of my 5 machines, using this
> one as the server and one of the clients, is impossible.

It isn't impossible, that's what I do here. I run a local Dovecot IMAP
server, on the same machine I have cron jobs that run getmail to pull
down mail from various accounts via POP3 and hand them over to Dovecot.
Dovecot then passes them through the Sieve plugin, which filters them
into appropriate folders.

This mail is then accessed from any of my local machines via IMAP, so I
can use any client on any host and see the exact same folder-tree. If
this is what you want, then it's quite easy to set up.

>  The all
> maildir email corpus I have here apparently must be converted back to
> something resembling a mailfile, and some directories would exceed
> the reach of a 32 bit filesystem in size as they go back 13 years.

I've got Dovecot set up to use Maildir, but I can't comment on the
directory size thing.

> I was hoping that I could setup icedove to serve the kmail database
> to other machines, but have been told thats impossible.

Icedove/Thunderbird is a mail client, not an IMAP or POP3 server, so
it can't do that.

> I might also
> point out that the docs on icedove/imap are worefully inadequate for
> a user who has never dealt with it.  I'd still try it, if I could
> find a tutorial that started out with "install this list of stuff"
> then configure this "stuff" so, and that "stuff" so, giving an
> educational background reason for each.
> 
> I've not found such a tome.  And folks seem to think I'm out of my
> mind to even try.  That attitude on the part of what is supposed to
> be a helpful mailing list, is discouraging, for obvious reasons.

If you want to try setting up a Dovecot server, there are lots of good
tutorials and other docs out there. I can probably dig up links to the
pages I used for setting up my system if you're interested. The wiki at
http://wiki.dovecot.org is very helpful.

NOTE: I'm not saying this is a setup that is guaranteed to work well for
you, but I'm very happy with it.

Petter

-- 
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"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive."

Re: POP3 was: Re: command not found [SOLVED]

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2015 11:07:57 -0500
Gene Heskett <ghesk...@shentel.net> wrote:

> On Friday 18 December 2015 10:19:46 Petter Adsen wrote:
> > If you want to try setting up a Dovecot server, there are lots of
> > good tutorials and other docs out there. I can probably dig up
> > links to the pages I used for setting up my system if you're
> > interested. The wiki at http://wiki.dovecot.org is very helpful.  
> 
> ISTR I looked there, but it didn't come across as being for a rank 
> beginner who has never used an imap client before.  But I'll look
> again. What I would like to see is something I can waste some paper
> printing it out, so I can put highliter pen checkmarks on it as its
> done.

That wiki might be better if you have specific questions rather than as
an introduction. This is what I can find right now in my bookmarks:

http://www.debian-administration.org/article/275/Setting_up_an_IMAP_server_with_dovecot
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Dovecot
https://www.linode.com/docs/email/postfix/email-with-postfix-dovecot-and-mysql-on-debian-6-squeeze/

If you want to use Sieve filters:

http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve
http://pigeonhole.dovecot.org/
https://secure.gold.ac.uk/sieve-new/howto.php

You might also want to look at the ManageSieve plugin for Dovecot if
you have a client that supports it. There is an addon for Thunderbird,
and Claws comes with a plugin. If you give this a go and run into
problems, just let me know and I'm happy to share my configuration
files. AFAICR I found all that I needed to know for the basic setup in
the two or three first links.

On Fri, 18 Dec 2015 11:13:58 -0500
Gene Heskett <ghesk...@shentel.net> wrote:
> Do we have a utility that can pull that, including all sublinks so as
> to maintain the order and merge it into one printable file?

You might want to take a look at the wget man page, under the
"Recursive Retrieval Options" heading.

Petter

-- 
"I'm ionized"
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive."

Re: Scrolling problem, all apps.

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 16 Dec 2015 20:35:15 -0600
Dennis Wicks  wrote:

> Greetings;
> 
> I am running Jessie and XFCE.
> 
> I have a continuing problem with scrolling that occurs with 
> all programs/applications.
> 
> I am used to clicking in the scroll bar to move it a page, 
> more or less. Now it jumps all the way to the top or bottom 
> of the scroll area, whichever direction I am trying to go.
> 
> I can drag the indicator but it mostly overshoots where I 
> want to go and is not really usable.

Sounds a lot like this:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gtk#Legacy_scrolling_behavior

Petter

-- 
"I'm ionized"
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive."

Re: no response from listmaster

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 14 Dec 2015 13:31:06 + (UTC)
Steve Kleene  wrote:

> What I like about my existing setup is that all of my mail gets
> deposited locally on my machine.  I can read most (but no longer all)
> of the text with a simple "mail" from the command line.  This is the
> easiest way to read and archive my mails in the style I've developed
> and prefer.  If I could have gmail forwarded to an account on my
> local machine, that would work well.  If I'd have to always read it
> in a browser, I'd be less happy.  I won't take the time to research
> alternatives like this unless I can't revive the system I like.

You could use something like getmail (package getmail4):

Description-en: mail retriever with support for POP3, IMAP4 and SDPS
 getmail is intended as a simple replacement for fetchmail.
 It retrieves mail (either all messages, or only unread messages)
 from one or more POP3/IMAP4/SDPS servers for one or more email
 accounts, and reliably delivers into a qmail-style Maildir, mbox
 file or to a command (pipe delivery) like maildrop or procmail,
 specified on a per-account basis. getmail also has support for
 domain (multidrop) mailboxes.
 .
 Supported protocols:
 POP3, POP3-over-SSL, IMAP4, IMAP4-over-SSL, and SDPS mail.

Works very well for me, easy to set up. As long as your mail provider
offers one of the supported protocols (Gmail has both POP3 and IMAP) it
should do what you want.

Petter

-- 
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"I'm positive."

Re: SATA HD hotplug "Authentication is required"

[Petter Adsen]

On Sun, 29 Nov 2015 11:20:01 -0300
Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI  wrote:

> I have just added an eSATA outlet on my box; when I plug in a SATA
> disk, it is visible in gparted, its label is displayed in the Places
> column of PCManfm, but when I click on it I get an error
> "Authentication is required".
> 
> Is that udev throwing a tantrum ?
> 
> Tried mounting it from the CLI, did not work:
> 
> root@ron:/home/ron # mount /dev/sdi1
> mount: can't find /dev/sdi1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
> 
> How do I get it to mount ?

You need to specify where you want it mounted; 'mount /dev/sdi1 /mnt'
for example, or add a line to fstab.

Petter

-- 
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"I'm positive."

Re: SATA HD hotplug "Authentication is required"

[Petter Adsen]

On Sun, 29 Nov 2015 12:08:04 -0300
Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI <ren...@olgiati-in-paraguay.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 29 Nov 2015 15:34:05 +0100
> Petter Adsen <pet...@synth.no> wrote:
> 
> > > I have just added an eSATA outlet on my box; when I plug in a SATA
> > > disk, it is visible in gparted, its label is displayed in the
> > > Places column of PCManfm, but when I click on it I get an error
> > > "Authentication is required".
> > > 
> > > Is that udev throwing a tantrum ?
> > > 
> > > Tried mounting it from the CLI, did not work:
> > > 
> > > root@ron:/home/ron # mount /dev/sdi1
> > > mount: can't find /dev/sdi1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
> > > 
> > > How do I get it to mount ?
> > 
> > You need to specify where you want it mounted;
> > 'mount /dev/sdi1 /mnt' for example, or add a line to fstab.  
> 
> Thanks; I should have asked: 
> 
> How do I get it to automount (without asking for authentification) ?

Sorry. I should have expanded on that.

Add a line to fstab. See the fstab man page, or these:
https://wiki.debian.org/fstab
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fstab

If this is an external disk on a Jessie system, add 'nofail' to the
mount options (fourth field). To allow mounting/unmounting as user,
also add 'user'.

Petter

-- 
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"I'm positive."

Re: Xorg replaces TTY1

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 27 Nov 2015 18:08:51 +1300
Chris Bannister  wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 06:54:34PM +, Brian wrote:
> > For many readers (diligent or otherwise), isn't this a matter of
> > updated documentation and re-education. There are still users (an
> > example is in this thread) who believe ctrl-alt-backspace no longer
> > works in Debian. It does.  
> 
> So it does! Wonder why it didn't work for me on another machine. :(
> (I think I also vaguely remember seeing a discussion about it ...
> don't ya hate that!)

If it is not enabled, you can enable it with 'setxkbmap -option
terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp'. The man page for xorg.conf says the option
'DontZap' disallows this.

Petter

-- 
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"I'm positive."

Re: Prob activating Samba

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:59:35 -0300
Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI  wrote:

> Trying to activate Samba with chkconfig, I get:
> 
> root@ron:/home/ron # chkconfig –add smb 5
 ^

>chkconfig -a|--add [names]
  ^^

Try adding another hyphen.

Petter

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Re: smartphone forum for the technically-oriented

[Petter Adsen]

On Sat, 17 Oct 2015 16:29:31 -0500
rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

> On Sat, October 17, 2015 3:22 pm, Sven Arvidsson wrote:
> > No problem!
> > I have the first generation EeePC, which I would happily give away, but
> > I doubt you plan on visiting Sweden anytime soon? ;)  
> 
> Your offer is gracious, Sven.
> 
> However, I just found an outfit which has a few eeePC in stock, at about
> US$225; the product series is EeeBook X205, with 32Gbyte flash memory. 
> Would one of these be suitable?  I can send you the URL.

A very quick web search tells me that people have gotten Ubuntu running
on this with a little hacking, but that you need a 4.0 kernel for wifi
and sound does not work at all. There is also a page for it on the
Debian wiki, that seems to indicate you can get Jessie running:

https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/X205TA

> > Have you considered liberating a Chromebook?  
> 
> The same outfit has in stock a large number of Lenovo Chromebook N21, with
> ChomeOS and 16Gbyte solid-state drive, at US$200.  (11.8in x 8.5in versus
> 11.3in x 7.6in for the eeePC)

Well, what I can find tells me that running some sort of Linux in a
chroot should be pretty straightforward, but that is probably not what
you want. To run a full, standard Linux distribution such as Debian, you
would need to open the machine up to remove a jumper or a screw, flash
the firmware, and cross your fingers - this will also remove the
ability to boot ChromeOS. The following link sums it up:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chrubuntu/comments/3dkk9n/help_anyone_have_experience_with_the_lenovo_n21/

Even if you do all that, I can't find anything that says everything
_will_ work correctly, just that it _should_.

Petter

-- 
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"I'm positive."

Re: fstab entry for a 3.6TB drive

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2015 00:57:11 +0100
Sharon Kimble  wrote:
> Thanks Darac.
> 
> This is what I've ended up doing -
> 
> --8<---cut here---start->8---
> /dev/sdb1   /mnt/backa  ext4defaults,nofail 0 2
> --8<---cut here---end--->8---
> 
> This *does* load and works, except it doesn't appear in the devices or
> other drives section of "nautilus". How can it be done please, such that
> it is mounted, and accessible to me, on this stand-alone 64bit computer,
> please?

If you add 'x-gvfs-show' to the mount options, it should be displayed
in Nautilus. Or you can simply access the drive by navigating
to /mnt/backa.

Petter

-- 
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"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive."


pgpnK8hdKIq0Z.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Graphical tools for traffic analysis

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 13 Oct 2015 14:11:29 -0300
Daniel Bareiro  wrote:

> Hi all!
> 
> I'd like to know your experience based on these tools and what you can
> recommend me.
> 
> Specifically I would like some sort of web tool to interact with Squid
> and, moreover, have some graphical tool for graphics of bandwidth
> discriminated by protocol (POP, IMAP, HTTP, etc).

Squid I don't know about, but you might want to take a look at ntop or
ntopng.

Petter

-- 
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pgpSkvKgYOTIt.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Please tipps for Desktop ( gnome, kde, xfce, etc. ) Debian 8 jessie and some minor issues

[Petter Adsen]

On Sat, 10 Oct 2015 15:31:11 +0200
Peter Berlau  wrote:

> WIFI HP Officejet 7500   driver hp-officejet_7500_e910
> prints fine, but i can not scan...   xscanimage shows " wrong argument" 
> I did not know what this mean or
> what i should do...

Take a look here, there are some good suggestions on how to get
scanning from HP devices working:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sane#For_HP_hardware

According to the following page, scanning should work:

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/models/officejet/officejet_7500_e910.html

Petter

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"I'm positive."

Re: Broadcom 43121 wlan issue

[Petter Adsen]

On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 13:22:44 +0530
Himanshu Shekhar  wrote:

> I updated my system last night after which I was not able to use network on
> my laptop. I tried to install ethernet driver as I had it locally but could
> not make the wifi work.
> Earlier the /lib/modules folder had 3.16* directory only, now I could see
> some 4.1* alongside. Also, the driver in use was *wl* which was working
> fine, but now I couldn't install wl. The installation reports are in the
> attachments.
> The first time I installed Debian 8.1, I had the same issue, traversed
> Synaptic and installed broadcom-sta-dkms which fixed the issue.

Your 'wl' issue is a red herring, that package is a mail client for
Emacs, not a driver. broadcom-sta-dkms failed to build, if you read the
final line of output it advises you on your next course of action:

"Consult /var/lib/dkms/broadcom-sta/6.30.223.248/build/make.log for
more information."

My guess is that it has problems with the newer kernel, but without
that file it's impossible to say why it failed to build. Another guess
would be that you haven't installed the kernel headers, which are
required to build that package.

AFAICT a 4.1 kernel isn't (and shouldn't be, AIUI) in the Jessie repos,
you might be better off running a supported one.

Petter

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Re: googleearth-package (jessie)

[Petter Adsen]

On Sat, 3 Oct 2015 00:21:44 -0500
rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

> On Wed, September 30, 2015 1:08 am, Heracles wrote:
> > I just installed Google-Earth using "synaptic" in Debian8 and it worked
> > fine. It had to install a few other bits and pieces but as it did all the
> > work I was fine with it. Google-earth works without errors. Heracles
> 
> Heracles,
> 
> Would you be so kind as to outline the procedure for using synaptic to
> install the .deb package which I downloaded from the Google Earth web
> site?
> 
> I use synaptic all the time, but always with packages which are in the
> Debian repositories.  I searched and saw that some people are installing
> using "dpkg -i"; but does that take care of dependencies?
> 
> I plan to run GE on a i386 laptop, so the package which I downloaded is
> the 32-bit:
> 
>google-earth-stable_current_i386.deb

Use gdebi. That will handle dependencies.

Petter

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Re: quality keyboards

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 31 Aug 2015 02:09:23 -0500
rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

> On Sun, August 30, 2015 8:49 pm, Martin Read wrote:
> > Cherry still *are* (or at some point resumed) making mechanical
> > keyswitches with a rated life in the tens of millions, and the Internet is
> > full of mail-order vendors selling keyboards (from several different
> > manufacturers) built with those Cherry keyswitches.
> 
> How much do those things cost?  Now that a keyboard can be had for $10 or
> $15, is it better to pay $150 or even $250 for a quality keyboard, or
> replace a $15 keyboard every year or even every six months?

I while back I bought a Razer Black Widow mechanical keyboard, and it
cost about $100. They claim[1] that the switches will last up to 60
million keystrokes, and sell both silent and clicky types. It's a
really nicely built keyboard, and IMO good for typing. It also has USB
and audio pass-through.

(You need a small Python script to enable the macro keys under Linux,
as Razer themselves seem quite uninterested in supporting that.)

Is it worth the money? I can't comment on the durability, as it's not
that long ago since I bought it, but IMO it's comfortable enough that
I'll buy another one if something happens to it.

Petter

[1] http://www.razerzone.com/razer-mechanical-switches

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Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: quality keyboards

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 31 Aug 2015 09:45:03 +0200
"Gian Uberto Lauri" <sa...@eng.it>  wrote:

> Petter Adsen writes:
>  > On Mon, 31 Aug 2015 02:09:23 -0500
>  > rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
>  > > How much do those things cost?  Now that a keyboard can be had for $10 or
>  > > $15, is it better to pay $150 or even $250 for a quality keyboard, or
>  > > replace a $15 keyboard every year or even every six months?
>  > 
>  > I while back I bought a Razer Black Widow mechanical keyboard, and it
>  > cost about $100. They claim[1] that the switches will last up to 60
>  > million keystrokes, and sell both silent and clicky types. It's a
>  > really nicely built keyboard, and IMO good for typing. It also has USB
>  > and audio pass-through.
> 
> I have a Cherry keyboard under my fingers. After some years of
> continuous usage (it's my office keyboard) the original caps lost the
> marking and I got the chance to make a custom coloured key-set.
> 
> The keyboard is still the most comfortable I ever used.
> 
> I'm planning giving Razer a try, I am willing to buy a K95 with all the left
> keys - they recall me the old Sun keyboards I used as a student.
>
> The RGB version could let me emulate the colors of my custom keyset
> (black fo alphanumeric keys, blue for "shifts", green "non printable",
> yellow for cursor movement, gray for function, red for esc and 'system
> requests' and orange for insert). But this is just to make a geek happy.

I do not know if that will work under Linux, you might want to check out
how the colors-thingy is set up. The keyboard I've got is the one with
no colored lights, so I can't test it, but all the other extra features
of this keyboard are configured via Windows-only "cloud" software and
require an initialization sequence to be sent. The Python script that
is available for Linux only enables the macro keys and the Fn + media
key combinations, AFAIK.

The Windows software will also auto-update the firmware in the
keyboard, and some people have had problems with initializing the extra
keys under Linux after updating the firmware. I've never run the Windows
software, and my keyboard works fine.

The keyboard model with no lights is also quite a bit cheaper, so you
might want to do some research before you get one with lights. You
could of course ask Razer for the information necessary to enable that
functionality yourself, but they seem quite uninterested in Linux.

> The Cherry microswitches will make your fingers happy!

So will the Razer mechanical switches, they are really nice for typing.
AFAIK all the keyboards they make except the BlackWidow series use
membranes, and I have no experience with those.

All in all, there are reasons for not choosing Razer if you run Linux,
but IMO they had the most comfortable keyboards that were readily
available in local shops when I needed one, and I'm very happy with it.

Petter

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pgpTRlFTHSdlp.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: quality keyboards

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 31 Aug 2015 08:25:25 -0400
Gene Heskett  wrote:

> On Monday 31 August 2015 07:04:22 Joel Rees wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 4:09 PM,   wrote:
> > > On Sun, August 30, 2015 8:49 pm, Martin Read wrote:
> > >> Cherry still *are* (or at some point resumed) making mechanical
> > >> keyswitches with a rated life in the tens of millions, and the
> > >> Internet is full of mail-order vendors selling keyboards (from
> > >> several different manufacturers) built with those Cherry
> > >> keyswitches.
> > >
> > > How much do those things cost?  Now that a keyboard can be had for
> > > $10 or $15, is it better to pay $150 or even $250 for a quality
> > > keyboard, or replace a $15 keyboard every year or even every six
> > > months?
> > >
> > > And in our present Window$-dominated, rodent-oriented, game-addicted
> > > and generally-lliterate society, is there anyone who types more than
> > > a few dozen keystrokes a day for the purpose of intelligent
> > > conversation -- other than subscribers to a mail list such as this,
> > > and the authors of pulp fiction?  (And no, I do not consider
> > > messages transmitted by "texting" or "twitter" to be intelligent
> > > conversation.)
> >
> > Petter points out the comfort benefits. For some, however, it's not
> > just comfort.
> 
> Correct.
> 
> There is another aspect of what I call a usable keyboard. My retirement 
> hobbies include cnc'ing the usual machine shop stuff, like mills and 
> lathes.  Thats a "dirty" environment, where a cut chip of metal can fly 
> several feet, depending on method of keeping the cutting tools workspace 
> reasonably clear of these chips, which will adversely effect the smooth 
> surface of the cut if allowed to just lay there and be recut by the 
> passage of the tools next cutting edge.  So keyboards need to be both 
> protected from this debris, but also built to ignore it as much as 
> possible.  The net result is a tendency to, when keyboard shopping, to 
> stay well away from keyboards whose keycaps are molded with tapered 
> sides surrounded by a close fitting plastic molding.  I have an ACER 
> keyboard with vertical sided keys and no surrounding mask, keycaps are 
> directly on the stem of the key that if buried in this "swarf" might not 
> go down and register a keypress because there is something under the 
> keycap.  That would be the much preferable failure mode, whereas the 
> taper sided keycap, with the usual overlay mask, allows this materiel to 
> follow the key down, then wedge it down.

Have you seen the Apple keyboards? They have keys that are barely
raised from the keyboard itself, completely flat, and are AFAIK
wireless. Sandstrøm, among others, makes clones of these that are dirt
cheap. If I understand your problem correctly, they might work well for
you.

Just a thought, I have no idea how they are for actual work.

You can also get keyboards with a plastic coating that are intended for
industrial use, but I haven't seen any for some time.

Petter

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pgpuvUzIKvLAf.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: quality keyboards

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 31 Aug 2015 20:15:44 +0900
Joel Rees <joel.r...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 6:52 PM, Petter Adsen <pet...@synth.no> wrote:
> > The Windows software will also auto-update the firmware in the
> > keyboard,
> 
> Say what? Since when does a keyboard need a firmware update?
> 
> Hmm. Maybe the USB controller stuff, but still, ...

I have absolutely no idea, other than reading reports of people having
a working keyboard until the Windows software updated the firmware. The
website says:

"Razer Synapse 2.0 downloads driver and firmware updates for your Razer
devices automatically, so your products are always in optimum condition for 
winning."

Whatever that means.

> > The keyboard model with no lights is also quite a bit cheaper, so you
> > might want to do some research before you get one with lights. You
> > could of course ask Razer for the information necessary to enable that
> > functionality yourself, but they seem quite uninterested in Linux.
> 
> Can you tell what the micro-controller is? Maybe try re-programming it?

Sorry. I know naaathing. For some reason it also registers as a mouse,
just as my new Logitech mouse also thinks it's a keyboard. Before
running the Python script I mentioned earlier, some keys don't send any
events at all. AFAIK the script sends some sort of initialization
sequence that enables them.

If you can tell me how to find out in a way that doesn't involve
ripping the keyboard apart, I'd be happy to tell you.

Petter

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pgpJGeQjSlZRj.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: quality keyboards

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 31 Aug 2015 22:40:22 +0900
Joel Rees  wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 9:38 PM, Gian Uberto Lauri  wrote:
> > Joel Rees writes:
> >  >
> >  > Say what? Since when does a keyboard need a firmware update?
> >  >
> >  > Hmm. Maybe the USB controller stuff, but still, ...
> >
> > Nope. Check the item before engaging the fingers :).
> 
> Well, actually, I was responding to Petter, I think, whose keyboard
> does not have the colored lights?

No, it doesn't. But it has 5 macro keys, intended to be used in
Windows games for sending series of keystrokes. Under Linux, they
simply send normal keycodes, but I believe the Windows drivers and
software do more than that. There are also a couple of other keys that
I do not know the intended use of - maybe there is some magic that needs
firmware there.

> >  > Can you tell what the micro-controller is? Maybe try re-programming it?
> >
> > They are working on reverse-engineering the communication protocol and
> > re-programming instructions.
> 
> Do tell: Who are _they_? And do they have a website?

And if this concerns Razer keyboards, I'd also be very interested.

Petter

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pgpE9fPIVy_I0.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: What pulls in the tray of my /dev/sr1 ?

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 04 Aug 2015 09:06:15 +0200
Thomas Schmitt scdbac...@gmx.net wrote:

 Hi,
 
 Stuart Longland wrote:
  Silly question, but why does re-loading a disc take more than 197 seconds?
 
 It comes out (intentionally) after a backup run is complete
 and went well. (See man xorriso example Incremental backup
 of a few directory trees.)
 Then i'd expect it to stay out until i remove the medium.
 It may well be that i am not at the machine when the backup
 finishes.

Hi,

I apologize for mailing you off-list, especially as I can not answer
your question, but as you say in your mail yourself, there aren't many
people in the Linux world who knows about these things.

I have a BD-R drive and a few disks that I would like to use for
backups, and was wondering what your thoughts are on the safety of this
- is it a bad choice of media? What about R vs RW disks, and what file
system should I choose?

Again, I'm sorry about the off-list mail, but hope you would give me
some quick insights as one who knows these things. :)

Petter

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pgpCtNgjyGqoO.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Browser with weak ciphers in testing ?

[Petter Adsen]

On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 20:03:59 +0200
Erwan David er...@rail.eu.org wrote:

 To access some appliances/devices whose https console only knows weak
 ciphers (but on a protected network), I need a browser accepting those
 weak ciphers (less I go to each device with a serial cable to enable the
 clear connection).
 
 What are my options in testing ?

If there is nothing in the repos that will support the ciphers you
need, maybe you could use an older version of Firefox, and install it
somewhere you won't accidentally run it?

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

Just a thought.

Petter

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pgpXdC6lb3QYP.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: shutting off screen blanker forever?

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2015 14:17:13 -0400
Gene Heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com wrote:

 My atom boxes are using xfce I think.  And I have studied up on xset, and 
 tried every combo that even looks suspicious in an effort to kill the 
 screen blanker once and for all.  But I can't even do it for 10 minutes 
 in a row.
 
 So obviously the solution is not an xset command in the startup.
 
 Does anyone have a better, it even works, suggestion?

Xfce uses the built-in power manager to blank the screen, you can
adjust it in Settings - Power Manager - Display.

Petter

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Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Music Player with Lyrics Capabilities.

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 11:02:46 -0500
David Paulson david.bluefuz...@gmail.com wrote:

 I am looking for a music player that has lyrics capabilities, specifically
 be able to sync the lyrics with the song. It would also be nice if the
 lyrics changed as the song changed. Any suggestions welcome.

gmusicbrowser can grab lyrics online automatically, and then display
them for the current track. Kodi/XBMC can also do this if you enable
the right plugins.

Petter

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Re: writing to an external USB3 HD

[Petter Adsen]

On Sat, 11 Jul 2015 04:53:42 -0400
Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote:
 Further to the issue, the problem is triggered by reading from the disk. 
 I can copy files onto the disk without problems but when I issue the cmp 
 command to compare the copy to the original, I get system error messages 
 and the drive vanishes.
 
 This doesn't happen immediately. It seems to after some significant file 
 i/o. Interestingly, I've gotten i/o error messages on files that, after 
 a reboot (remote system so I can't unplug and replug the drive), compare 
 OK. This leads me to think it's not a disk problem. Also smartctl -H 
 says the disk is healthy.

This might be related to the problems with USB disks Bob Proulx
described back in April, you can find the posting here:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2015/04/msg00105.html

You could also run a selftest on the disk with smartctl to see what
that says. Check the -t option in the man page for details.

Petter

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Re: Using OpenVPN client with wicd

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 13:20:35 -0400
James P. Wallen jpwal...@comcast.net wrote:

 On 07/07/2015 08:34 AM, Petter Adsen wrote:
  https://wiki.debian.org/OpenVPN
 
  Have you seen this? It doesn't contain anything particular to
  wicd, but you could use what is there to set up a script.
 
  There are a few links at the bottom that might also be of
  help.
 
  Petter
 
 
 Thank you, Petter.
 
 I'll try following that document through to a conclusion. I 
 should always remember to look at the debian.org onlin 
 documentation first.
 
 However, the explanations seem to lean heavily toward explaining 
 how to set up a server and a client, so I have to try to pick 
 out carefully how to just do what I want to do.

I'm currently working on setting up a VPN myself, so I was just reading
that when I saw your message. It's perfect for what I want to do, but
of course it might not fit your needs. You should be able to pick out
enough from the examples given there to set up what you want, but of
course it's not a step-by-step guide.

The Arch wiki also has some useful information, you can find it at:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Openvpn

It also has a few notes on connecting to a third party provider.

 I just need to connect a client to a publicly available VPN over 
 which I have no control. It surprises me that I haven't seen a 
 simple howto for that. Surely there are lots of people who use 
 such private VPNs but who don't want to use network-manager.

Have you talked to the VPN provider, or looked at their site for hints
on configuration? Send their support team an email, maybe they have been
in that situation before.

If you would rather have control over the server, and depending on whom
you want to conceal your traffic from, you could consider paying for a
VPS, then setting up a VPN between that and your home or mobile devices.
One problem with that approach is that most VPS services come with
quite a limited amount of bandwidth per month, but depending on what
you want to do that may not be a big problem. I pay $10/month, and that
is for up to 2TB transfer. The VPS provider would of course be able to
snoop on your traffic, but that might be better than having your ISP
snoop, if you have a bad ISP and choose the right provider.

Just a thought. Good luck!

Petter

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Re: XFCE and screensavers

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 6 Jul 2015 14:06:40 -0700
Paul Zimmerman aiwa...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Just a minor annoyance. Every time I install Debian with my favored
 desktop environment, XFCE, I get a different result with the
 screensaver. Not even between different versions. I can literally
 install twice from the same install disk and get different behavior.
 Sometimes the screensaver daemon just won't start at all and it's not
 possible to use a screensaver with that install. Other times it will
 only turn off the display, not run a configured screensaver. And yet
 other times it will run the screensaver but won't accept any time
 settings. It just uses its own default from some unknown location and
 cannot be changed. Apparently this has something to do with XFCE not
 being the default desktop for Debian, and so there is a conflict with
 something else that was intended to work with KDE and/or Gnome?  Is
 there some simple way to uninstall the default whatever it is and
 fix/reinstall the XFCE screensaver?

AFAIK, Xfce does not have a screensaver as such (if you mean
animations and/or pictures and such), it just blanks and turns the
screen off. The settings are under Settings - Power Manager - Display.

If you want more functionality than that, I would try something like
xscreensaver. You might want to disable Xfce power management of the
display for that to work properly, I have never tried.

If you want a screen locker, one that works well with Xfce (provided
you use lightdm) is light-locker.

Petter

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pgpBMyCLRFHrA.pgp
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Re: Using OpenVPN client with wicd

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 07:55:26 -0400
James P. Wallen jpwal...@comcast.net wrote:

 
 
 On 07/07/2015 04:25 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
  -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1
 
  On Mon, Jul 06, 2015 at 04:23:28PM -0400, James P. Wallen
  wrote:
 
  [...]
 
  If any of you has managed to do this in conjunction with
  wicd, I'd really appreciate a pointer to information to
  help me get started. The man pages are kicking me in the
  boinloins.
 
  FWIW -- I set up OpenVPN (don't like it much[1], but had to)
  without either NetworkManager nor wicd. What's the
  functionality you expect from those? Automatic route
  setting?
 
  - - - - - - - - - [1] What do I do when I have to pierce the
  corp firewall? Just use socat on both sides, port 443 (corp
  firewalls believe in numbers), TLS encapsulated (don't know
  if they do deep packet inspection and don't want to find
  out). Yes, some consider me weird.
 
 
 Hi, Tomas! Thanks for your reply.
 
 No, my issue has nothing to do with corporate firewalls. I'm 
 retired and go to places like libraries and coffee shops and 
 hospitals where I connect to guest networks. I just use the 
 Internet-located VPN to encrypt my connection through the AP and 
 to prevent tracking by the service provider. At home I also use 
 it for the same reasons.
 
 Network-manager, as you're aware, has plugins for various types 
 of VPN software. It's easy to use, but it just seems to be 
 awfully large and, occasionally, a little trouble-prone compared 
 to wicd.
 
 I could generally just use /etc/network/interfaces and 
 associated stuff, but was looking for a fiddle-free way to make 
 my connections when I'm moving around while still enabling me to 
 use OpenVPN.
 
 As I said, just about every write-up on using OpenVPN I can find 
 tells me how to set up the server. Not what I want. All of the 
 write-ups on OpenVPN client I've found tell me a) how to use 
 OpenVPN with network-manager, or b) how to import a setup. 
 Neither of those is of any use to me. I want to see if I can 
 figure out how to use OpenVPN from the CLI or via script using a 
 certificate and password to connect to my favorite VPN out on 
 the Internet.
 
 Again, thank you for your reply.
 
 JP
 
 

https://wiki.debian.org/OpenVPN

Have you seen this? It doesn't contain anything particular to wicd, but
you could use what is there to set up a script.

There are a few links at the bottom that might also be of help.

Petter

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pgprFA1jq04KP.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: setting up vsftpd

[Petter Adsen]

On Sat, 4 Jul 2015 15:45:05 -0700
bri...@aracnet.com wrote:

 On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 13:55:36 +1000
 Alexis flexibe...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  
  bri...@aracnet.com writes:
  
   just to recap.  machine 1 :firewall. i can ftp into machine 2 
   machine 2: no firewall. i cannot ftp into machine 1
  
   i tried the iptables commands as you explained above, and still 
   get connection refused.
  
   here's the really interesting part.
  
   when logged in on machine 1. 
 ftp localhost: works ftp machine1: connection refused
  
  In my experience, connection refused can indicate that there's 
  nothing actually listening on the port to which one is trying to 
  connect. Perhaps try running netstat(8) on machine1, e.g.:
  
  $ netstat -altp
  
  to check that vsftpd is indeed listening on the relevant 
  port(s). If it's not, check vsftpd logs to see whether it produced 
  any errors or warning on startup, and check your vsftpd 
  configuration accordingly.
  
 
 well this is really screwy.
 
 i changed the vsftpd.conf file to :
 
 listen=YES
 #listen_ipv6=YES
 
 so, i commented out the listen_ipv6
 
 and now it works !  what's extremely confusing is that machine2 is
 running with listen=NO and ipv6 yes and it works just fine!

Maybe machine2 has no ip6tables rules, or rules that allow the access,
and machine1 blocks it? Or maybe only machine2 has IPv6 enabled?

 ??
 
 i then tried modifying the config file to listen =NO but leaving ipv6
 commented, and it doesn't work that way.

No, it probably doesn't listen on IPv6 by default, and now you're
telling it to not listen on IPv4 either.

I'm certainly no networking expert, so these are just guesses.

Petter

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pgp4AAitl4dws.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Light web browser for old PC

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 01 Jul 2015 07:21:56 +0100
Rodolfo Medina rodolfo.med...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi all the listers.
 
 I have an old Hyundai Notebook too slow for Gnome, in fact I
 installed openbox as Window Manager in it and am happy with it and
 think I'll be using it for good, so simple fast and essential as it
 is.  As web browser, Midori was claimed to be light, but I see almost
 no difference with Firefox.  Please any advice for a *really* light
 one, suitable for that old machine?  Or maybe the problem is actually
 the in the heavier and heavier web pages in themselves?

Maybe Dillo[1] could be an alternative if you want a graphical browser,
or there is always Lynx[2]. How light a browser you can actually use
will depend on what level of functionality you need.

[1] http://www.dillo.org/
[2] http://lynx.isc.org/

Petter

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pgpeY3p1thmaw.pgp
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Re: Slightly OT: SSD question

[Petter Adsen]

On Sun, 28 Jun 2015 20:16:58 +0300
Selim T. Erdoğan se...@alumni.cs.utexas.edu wrote:

 On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 02:40:31PM +0200, Petter Adsen wrote:
  I know this isn't Debian-specific, but I hope someone can give me
  some useful information here anyway, or point me to a better place
  to ask.
  
  My SSD is dead, and I need a new one. Samsung seems to be a
  generally recommended brand, but according to 
  
  https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/e64f638483a21105c7ce330d543fa1f1c35b5bc7/drivers/ata/libata-core.c#L4109-L4286
  
  the 850 EVO does not support queued TRIM. Is that a problem for
  everyday desktop use?
  
  The place I buy from has quite a limited amount of SSDs that fit
  what I need, the only alternatives they have are a Kingston (that I
  don't want) and a Crucial BX100 (that I know nothing about). Would
  the Crucial drive be a better choice for a Jessie install?
  
  If anyone has any real-life experience with either of those drives
  I'd be happy to hear about it.
 
 I think you're only asking about the Samsung and the Crucial, but
 since you mentioned Kingston, let me note my experience.  I have been
 using a 128GB Kinsgston SV200 S3 for ~2.5 years.  Performance is
 satisfactory: hdparm -t /dev/sda gives me ~215 MB/s.  (The laptop
 only has SATA-II.) My major complaint is that it gets pretty warm,
 and it is right under the palmrest, so using the laptop keyboard can
 get a little uncomfortable. (Not a killer for me, since I usually use
 a usb keyboard.)

Yes, well, my experience has been a bit different. I bought one 120GB
Kingston V300 in October/November and one in December, and by now they
have both died. Completely. They're not even detected by the BIOS.
Thank $DEITY for frequent backups.

I'll be ordering a new SSD today, and I think it will be the Samsung
850 EVO. The price difference between that and the Crucial is nearly
non-existent here, and it seems to have better overall performance in
the tests I have seen.

Thanks to all those who have replied, I now know a little more about
SSDs. :)

Petter

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Slightly OT: SSD question

[Petter Adsen]

I know this isn't Debian-specific, but I hope someone can give me some
useful information here anyway, or point me to a better place to ask.

My SSD is dead, and I need a new one. Samsung seems to be a generally
recommended brand, but according to 

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/e64f638483a21105c7ce330d543fa1f1c35b5bc7/drivers/ata/libata-core.c#L4109-L4286

the 850 EVO does not support queued TRIM. Is that a problem for
everyday desktop use?

The place I buy from has quite a limited amount of SSDs that fit what I
need, the only alternatives they have are a Kingston (that I don't
want) and a Crucial BX100 (that I know nothing about). Would the
Crucial drive be a better choice for a Jessie install?

If anyone has any real-life experience with either of those drives I'd
be happy to hear about it.

Petter

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Re: minidlan, GMPC and MPD

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 23 Jun 2015 18:18:56 +0200
notoneofmy notoneofmyse...@gmx.de wrote:

 On 15-06-23 6:12 PM, Proxy One wrote:
  What Debian version do you use? I writing from Wheezy box and I have
  just installed GMPC and gmpc-plugins. There is shout plugin and it can
  be activated. 
 I'm on Jessie. I spent an entire day trying to recompile it. Without
 much luck.
 
 With the earlier version I had, I was able to see a few plugins, but the
 currently installed version has none, despite running apt-get gmpc-plugins.
 
 I had similar great difficulties with mplayer. I gave up, for now on that.

I hesitate to ask this as it isn't what you are asking for, but do you
have a specific reason to stream the music the way you do?

It might be easier to just export your music collection via NFS, mount
it on your clients, and just use any old music player to play the
files.

Just a suggestion. :)

Petter

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Re: Still unable to get external monitor wotking on Debian 6 - was Re: Unable to install nVidia driver on Debian 6 LTS - was - Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 12:15:59 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:
 I note also, that I used synaptic to remove all the nvidia stuff, from
 the Debian 7 installation, and I removed the bumblebee stuff from that
 installation, and reinstalled bumblebee on that installation, and the
 Debian 7 installation also still does not detect the external monitor.

How do you determine that it doesn't detect the monitor? You can read
through /var/log/Xorg.0.log, but it's easier to just run xrandr (when
both screens are connected) and see what it detects. If xrandr is able
to detect both outputs it should just be a matter of configuration, if
not then that would suggest a problem with the driver.

At least Wheezy is a lot more up to date than Squeeze, with newer
kernel and X. I'd say your odds of getting the second screen going
there would be a lot better than with Squeeze.

Since it's working on your Ubuntu installation, can you determine which
version of the driver that has installed? The packages are usually
called nvidia-xxx, then do apt-cache policy nvidia-xxx on the one
that is installed to see the exact version. Do the same for Wheezy.

Copies of Xorg.0.log (on both Wheezy and Ubuntu) would also be helpful,
just to see what your system detects, and how they differ.

Petter

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Re: I upgraded from jessie to stretch and messed up I used the dist-upgrade command....

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 18 Jun 2015 14:11:19 +0100
Michael Fothergill michael.fotherg...@googlemail.com wrote:

 ​​Seeing an Xorg.0.log file from a normal boot would be good, plus the
 complete dmesg output.
 
 Cheers,
 Sven
 
 The ​ Xorg.0.log file is found here:
 
 http://paste.debian.net/237917/

[   453.202] (II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported.
[   453.202] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
[   453.202] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for modesetting
[   453.202] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
[   453.202] (II) Loading sub module fbdevhw

So you're still not getting modesetting. Are you sure you booted
*without* nomodeset on the kernel line?

 The dmesg file was empty.

Strange.

Petter

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Re: Dlna client and backup

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 11:22:36 +0200
Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
 Kodi/XBMC is both a server and a client, so you can use it in either
 role. I run it on a Raspberry Pi as a media center, it isn't really
 that big a drain on resources. If you only want to play music, I would
 guess several of the big players would support that, I only use
 Kodi.

A quick search with apt-cache finds this:

Package: gnome-music
Description-en: Music is the new GNOME music playing application
 Music is the new GNOME music playing application aiming at being
 a simple and elegant replacement for using Files to show the
 Music directory.
 Objectives includes listening to local and online/cloud collections,
 listen to music on attached devices, listen to music shared by friends,
 listen to audiobooks, a player for DLNA media servers, share music,
 upload music and select favorites.

I've never used it, so I can't tell you if it's any good, but according
to the description it seems like it would fit what you're looking for.

Petter

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Re: Still unable to get external monitor wotking on Debian 6 - was Re: Unable to install nVidia driver on Debian 6 LTS - was - Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 17:50:17 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:
 I have attached a copy of the file from  the Debian 6 installation.

It's not loading neither the nouveau nor the nvidia driver, is one of
them correctly installed, and is the kernel module loaded?

For Squeeze, I simply do not know. There might not *be* a driver for
your GPU available for Squeeze. From what I can find at
packages.debian.org, it doesn't look like it. v295 from backports is
most likely far too old. The packages available from nVidia's website
will most likely not work in Squeeze, either, as your kernel and X will
be too old.

It would probably be more worthwhile to try and get something close to
v331 of the nvidia driver up and running on Wheezy. It seems the
version in Wheezy is 304, with 334 in backports. I would try the
backports one, if I were you:

http://backports.debian.org/Instructions/

The package you want is called nvidia-driver.

Petter

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Re: NFS on Raspberry Pi high load

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 14:09:45 +0200
basti black.flederm...@arcor.de wrote:

 The Problem is not the speed of 3 MB/s it's the load of 12 and more.
 
 On 19.06.2015 14:03, Sven Hartge wrote:
  basti black.flederm...@arcor.de wrote:
 
  iotop show me a read speed around 3 MB/s, there is a Class 10 UHS card
  (10-15 MB/s read, 9-5 MB/s write I guess).
  More than 3MByte/s is not really achievable with a Pi-1, because the CPU
  is very weak and the Ethernet-Chip is attached via USB.
 
  Under the best conditions you may be able to transfer up to 45MBit/s,
  but a maximum transfer rate of about 35MBit/s is normal.

The load is so high because USB is very CPU-intensive. If you were to
use the on-board Ethernet, you would not see such a high load.

Petter

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Re: I upgraded from jessie to stretch and messed up I used the dist-upgrade command....

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 12:25:37 +0100
Michael Fothergill michael.fotherg...@googlemail.com wrote:

  Do you have this package installed? What does apt-cache policy
  linux-firmware-nonfree say?
 
 
 ​It says unable to locate linux-firmware-nonfree
 
 ie it's not installed I guess

That message means that apt-cache can't find that package at all. If
you have recently added non-free to sources.list you will need to run
apt-get update. After doing that, it should be available to install
via apt-get install linux-firmware-nonfree.

 ​I installed bootlogd but when I looked in /var/log there was no boot.log
 file

Did you reboot after installing bootlogd? You have to do that for it to
grab the messages.

Petter

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Re: Still unable to get external monitor wotking on Debian 6 - was Re: Unable to install nVidia driver on Debian 6 LTS - was - Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 16:23:03 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 19/06/2015, Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
  How do you determine that it doesn't detect the monitor? You can
  read through /var/log/Xorg.0.log, but it's easier to just run
  xrandr (when both screens are connected) and see what it detects.
  If xrandr is able to detect both outputs it should just be a
  matter of configuration, if not then that would suggest a problem
  with the driver.
 
  At least Wheezy is a lot more up to date than Squeeze, with newer
  kernel and X. I'd say your odds of getting the second screen going
  there would be a lot better than with Squeeze.
 
  Since it's working on your Ubuntu installation, can you determine
  which version of the driver that has installed? The packages are
  usually called nvidia-xxx, then do apt-cache policy nvidia-xxx
  on the one that is installed to see the exact version. Do the same
  for Wheezy.
 
 
 
 -Ubuntu-12-04LTS:~$ apt-cache policy nvidia-xxx
 N: Unable to locate package nvidia-xxx
 

The xxx should be replaced by the major version number you are using.
Try dpkg -l | grep nvidia to see what packages are installed, then
use apt-cache policy to determine the full version of the one that is
installed.

 From Ubuntu 12.04, as I previously mentioned having thusly added the
 nvidia 331 drivers (Ubuntu 12.04 successfully detected and provided
 use of the external monitor, both before and after the installation of
 the nvidia drivers)

So you could use the external screen with the nouveau driver? Have you
tried that with Wheezy? I don't have the time to go through this entire
thread again, I was simply under the impression that Ubuntu 12.04 with
the proprietary driver was the only combination that would see the
external screen. If that isn't the case, then we have more to work with.

 From System Settings - Additional Drivers;
 
 
 Proprietary drivers are being used...
 NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version 331)
 NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (post-release updates) (version
 331-updates) 

OK, major version 331.

  Copies of Xorg.0.log (on both Wheezy and Ubuntu) would also be
  helpful, just to see what your system detects, and how they differ.
 
 
 
 -Ubuntu-12-04LTS:~$ cat Xorg.0.log
 cat: Xorg.0.log: No such file or directory
 

If you read the top of my previous post you would have seen the
full path to that file.

Petter

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Re: Dlna client and backup

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 09:45:16 +0200
notoneofmyseeds notoneofmyse...@gmx.de wrote:

 Just two quick question I hope to get help one.
 
 I've spent now weeks putting installing Jessie and solving problems.
 It makes sense to find a good backup and restore program. Ideally, 
 something that I can use to back up the entire system to a NAS and 
 restore a broken system from the NAS. And following restoration; all 
 will be good as new. Any ideas?

I use backintime - it uses rsync to actually make the backups, so it's
easy to traverse the backup tree and restore a specific version of a
file that you want. It has frontends for Qt and GTK, and sets up cron
jobs for automated backups. YMMV, I like it.

 Also, any ideas on a functioning dlna client. I've spent weeks on 
 this...lots of servers out there but no client being developed. Most
 of the ones mentioned in wikipedia don't even exist anymore.

I'm pretty sure Kodi (used to be called XBMC) can play from DLNA
sources, although I simply export via NFS now. It's a great client
with a ton of functionality, and it can also act as a DLNA server. You
can also set up a shared MySQL database so that all metadata is shared
between several clients.

Kodi isn't in the Jessie repos, but XBMC is. If you want a newer
version, check kodi.tv.

Petter

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Re: Dlna client and backup

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 10:27:33 +0200
notoneofmy notoneofmyse...@gmx.de wrote:

 
 
 On 15-06-19 10:01 AM, Petter Adsen wrote:
   Just two quick question I hope to get help one.
   
   I've spent now weeks putting installing Jessie and solving
   problems. It makes sense to find a good backup and restore
   program. Ideally, something that I can use to back up the entire
   system to a NAS and restore a broken system from the NAS. And
   following restoration; all will be good as new. Any ideas?
  I use backintime - it uses rsync to actually make the backups, so
  it's easy to traverse the backup tree and restore a specific
  version of a file that you want. It has frontends for Qt and GTK,
  and sets up cron jobs for automated backups. YMMV, I like it.
 Thanks a lot. I will give this a try. But to be clear, would this
 backup the entire system and restore it, in the event of a crash of
 something going horribly wrong? I'm hoping it to be like the Time
 Machine for linux; is that what it does?

backintime will back up exactly what you tell it to, using hardlinks
instead of copies of files that haven't changed, so you don't store
full copies of every single file when it isn't necessary. The first
time you run it it will make copies of everything, on later runs it
will make copies of files that have changed, and use hardlinks for the
ones that haven't to save space.

By default it will exclude stuff like /proc, /sys, /run, cache
directories and so on, but you can of course edit that if you want to
add or remove something.

Time Machine is something I haven't used, so I can't compare them.
backintime will give you a directory tree where you have one directory
for each run of the backup, named by the date and time the backup was
run, and under that you get a full tree of the things you have backed
up. Makes it easy to get a certain version of a file like it was on a
specific date.

The best way to judge would be to take a look at it, and get comfortable
with the way it works. Make a few backups, and test the restore
functionality to make sure it works if you suddenly need it. If you
decide you like it, set up a schedule. Test it regularly to make sure
everything works OK.

   Also, any ideas on a functioning dlna client. I've spent weeks
   on this...lots of servers out there but no client being
   developed. Most of the ones mentioned in wikipedia don't even
   exist anymore.
  I'm pretty sure Kodi (used to be called XBMC) can play from DLNA
  sources, although I simply export via NFS now. It's a great client
  with a ton of functionality, and it can also act as a DLNA server.
  You can also set up a shared MySQL database so that all metadata is
  shared between several clients.
 Thanks also for this. I knew about XMBC and also about its rename. But
 I'm only interested in a client. I know as far as servers go, this is
 perhaps the best. And I like a lot of the new things they've done to
 it. But this is a laptop from which I want to listen to music on NAS
 while I work. XMBC is too much for this purpose.

Kodi/XBMC is both a server and a client, so you can use it in either
role. I run it on a Raspberry Pi as a media center, it isn't really
that big a drain on resources. If you only want to play music, I would
guess several of the big players would support that, I only use Kodi.

 Could you please explain more what you do now, exporting via NFS?

I have all my media on a big disk on my file server, and I export that
via NFS to the Pi. Kodi on the Pi indexes all the media and builds a
library. Simple, and at least in my experience it seems faster than
DLNA/UPNP.

Petter

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Re: I upgraded from jessie to stretch and messed up I used the dist-upgrade command....

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 10:51:43 +0100
Michael Fothergill michael.fotherg...@googlemail.com wrote:

I'm running this chip with unstable and it boots fine.
  Looks like testing and unstable are on the same X.org currently, but
  unstable is using a newer kernel.
 
  Also I see something in dmesg about kaveri firmware being loaded, which I
  believe is provided by the
  linux-firmware-nonfree package, in case you don't have this installed.

Do you have this package installed? What does apt-cache policy
linux-firmware-nonfree say?

 deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Stretch_ - Official Snapshot amd64 DVD
 Binary-1 20150518-05:37]/ stretch contrib main

You can comment this one out. Also, the lines for Jessie might as well
be removed so you don't accidentally uncomment them at some point. Keep
a backup of the whole file if you want to keep a record of them.

 ​Does the above look OK or is it a bit addled in some way?

It looks OK, I don't think your problem has anything to do with this.

If you install the package bootlogd you will get a file
called /var/log/boot.log after your next boot with all boot messages.

You might want to remove quiet from the line with
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub and run update-grub to
see messages during boot.

Also, what does cat /proc/cmdline say?

Petter

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Re: I upgraded from jessie to stretch and messed up I used the dist-upgrade command....

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 18 Jun 2015 08:44:22 +0200
Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:

 On Tue, 16 Jun 2015 23:09:31 +0100
 Michael Fothergill michael.fotherg...@googlemail.com wrote:
 
  On 16 June 2015 at 21:40, Sven Joachim svenj...@gmx.de wrote:
  
   On 2015-06-16 21:41 +0200, Bob Proulx wrote:
  
Michael Fothergill wrote:
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??)
unknown.
   
Note that it will log errors with EE at the front.  This is
where the errors start:
   
[15.104] (II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported.
  
   Was this log file generated while booting in recovery mode?
  
  
  ​You are correct.  I was booting in recovery mode as root.​
  
  
  
  
   Then it's
   expected, otherwise there is a problem.
  
[15.105] (II) Module int10: vendor=X.Org Foundation
[15.105] compiled for 1.17.1, module version = 1.0.0
[15.105] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 19.0
[15.105] (II) VESA(0): initializing int10
[15.105] (EE) VESA(0): Cannot read int vect
[15.105] (II) UnloadModule: vesa
[15.105] (II) UnloadSubModule: int10
[15.105] (II) Unloading int10
[15.105] (II) UnloadSubModule: vbe
[15.105] (II) Unloading vbe
[15.105] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable
configuration.
   
Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.  I have
many times seen and dreaded that message.
   
I can't decode the above into the root cause of the problem.
Hopefully someone else will be able to do so.  Does anyone else
on this list have any hints here?
  
   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=787144
  
   I'm afraid this bug makes the vesa driver currently unusable. :-(
  
I fear the problem is the newer Linux KMS and DRM interfaces
which obsoleted a lot of hardware.  I have been hit by that
problem myself. Whereas older kernels worked perfectly
supporting the hardware newer kernels have dropped support and
broken my systems.
  
   Please report this as bugs, the kernel is not supposed to obsolete
   hardware which people still have.
  
  
  ​I am using a Kaveri box - it is a new architecture and this could
  be a problem.​
  
  
  
  
I suggest booting one of the previous kernels and seeing if that
helps.
  
   Ahem, the Xorg.0.log file shows that Micheal was booting an old
   and unsupported 3.14 kernel, so this can already be ruled out.
  
If not then try the newest kernel available, possibly a
backports kernel.  If not then I suggest trying to boot with the
kernel command line option nomodeset and see if it improves
things.
  
   Booting in recovery mode already implies nomodeset, and the
   Xorg.0.log file shows a complaint from the radeon module that KMS
   is not supported.
  
Plus any better hints that others might supply.
  
   Seeing an Xorg.0.log file from a normal boot would be good, plus
   the complete dmesg output.
  
  
  ​If I try to do a normal boot then the OS tries to fire up Xorg and
  fails and I just get a blank screen with a cursor.
 
 Edit the line in /etc/default/grub that looks like this:
 
 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=quiet
 
 to read
 
 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=quiet text
 
 and then run update-grub (as root). The machine will now not start X
 when you reboot. Remove the text part later if you get X working,
 and want it to boot up into X.
 
  ctrl C etc does not seem to drop down a command line interface etc.
 
 Try Ctrl + Alt + F1
   ^^
That should have been F2, sorry.

Petter

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Re: Still unable to get external monitor wotking on Debian 6 - was Re: Unable to install nVidia driver on Debian 6 LTS - was - Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 18 Jun 2015 15:07:47 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 18/06/2015, Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
 
 snip
 
 
  As to your problem with bumblebee, I think Optimus support is
  something that is fairly recent, and might well have come after
  Squeeze. Maybe you will find it in backports?
 
 
 A problem is that, and, I am not sure whether I indicated this in a
 previous post with commands responses output, as the sources.list file
 content showed, I had included the backports text line, and, commented
 it out, in the sources.list file,
 
 
 # deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian squeeze-backports main
 contrib non-free 
 
 as, with that line operational  in the sources.list file, apt
 consistently returned a Not Found type error, for the backports
 path.
 
 The backports path is as cited on one of the web pages with
 instructions for installing bumblebee.
 
 I am not sure, but I think that backports for squeeze, may have been
 eliminated, as part of the LTS process.

Go to https://packages.debian.org , and you can search for packages. At
the very top of the page, you can limit your search to a particular
suite or architecture, and squeeze-backports is listed there. So it
should exist. Maybe it doesn't exist on the mirror you are redirected
to, try a few specific ones.

There are, however, no hits on bumblebee for squeeze at all, so it
won't help in this case. Maybe you could try to build it from source? At
this point that may be your only chance. If only you could do that with
the drivers...

It might also be that it is (maybe for one of the reasons I listed in
my previous mail) incompatible with Squeeze. I just don't know, sorry.

Petter

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Re: Still unable to get external monitor wotking on Debian 6 - was Re: Unable to install nVidia driver on Debian 6 LTS - was - Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:54:51 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 16/06/2015, Ric Moore wayward4...@gmail.com wrote:
  On 06/15/2015 12:39 PM, Bret Busby wrote:
 
  Get:1 http://http.debian.net/debian/ squeeze/non-free
  nvidia-kernel-dkms amd64 195.36.31-6squeeze2 [7,138 kB]
  Fetched 7,138 kB in 12s (575 kB/s)
  Selecting previously deselected package nvidia-kernel-dkms.
  (Reading database ... 152853 files and directories currently
  installed.) Unpacking nvidia-kernel-dkms (from
  .../nvidia-kernel-dkms_195.36.31-6squeeze2_amd64.deb) ...
  Setting up nvidia-kernel-dkms (195.36.31-6squeeze2) ...
  Loading new nvidia-195.36.31 DKMS files...
  First Installation: checking all kernels...
  Building only for 2.6.32-5-amd64
  Building initial module for 2.6.32-5-amd64
 
  As I said, you are installing bits of nvidia 195 driver series. It's
  right there in your frigging log. swears bluely
 
  That's for REAL OLD nvidia cards. You have a mess. Jerk it all out.
  Fire up synaptic, search on nvidia, check on what you currently have
  installed and remove it all, with great prejudice, fear and
  loathing.
 
 Okay.
 
 Done that - Mark(ed) for complete removal.
 
  Your machine is somehow sullied and the only cure with be to drag
  it all out of the pot like a screaming ?Mandrake Root at Hogwarts.
  Then, follow the advice I laboriously pointed to and figure out how
  the bumblebee scheme rocks your world.
 
  My GUESS is that it will install whatever it depends on. It is in
  the repo, if you have non-free kicked on. Just be sure to have
  everything else related to nvidia ripped out, as you have this
  hybrid from hell, that should work a treat if the technology will
  play nice. So, I would think that just apt-get install bumblebee
  will work.
 
 
 :~# apt-get install bumblebee
 Reading package lists... Done
 Building dependency tree
 Reading state information... Done
 E: Unable to locate package bumblebee
 
 
 
 :~# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
 #
 
 # deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.7 _Squeeze_ - Official amd64 CD
 Binary-1 20130223-14:06]/ squeeze main
 
 # deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.7 _Squeeze_ - Official amd64 CD
 Binary-1 20130223-14:06]/ squeeze main
 
 # deb http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main
 # deb-src http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main
 
 # deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
 # deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
 
 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
 deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
 
 deb http://http.debian.net/debian squeeze-lts main contrib non-free
 deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian squeeze-lts main contrib
 non-free
 
 
 # deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian squeeze-backports main
 contrib non-free 
 
 And Debian 6 still cannot find the external monitor.
 
 A thought - since Ubuntu 12.04 successfully installed the nvVidia
 driver 3.31, how do I find, download, and install a .deb package
 within the Ubuntu repository?

Please don't do that. You will probably open up a huge can of worms
that way. The Ubuntu packages will probably not work, or at least not
work well, on Squeeze.

The binary drivers depend on certain versions of X and the kernel, and
I strongly doubt that these will be the same between Squeeze and Ubuntu
12.04. These drivers are an excellent way to hose things if not done
correctly, so using a version that isn't intended for your OS is not
the right approach.

I wish I didn't have to say this, but: it might simply be that Squeeze
is too old to support this card if it is fairly recent. There might not
exist drivers for your GPU that will work with the versions of X and
the kernel available in Squeeze.

As to your problem with bumblebee, I think Optimus support is something
that is fairly recent, and might well have come after Squeeze. Maybe
you will find it in backports?

Petter

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Re: I upgraded from jessie to stretch and messed up I used the dist-upgrade command....

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 16 Jun 2015 23:09:31 +0100
Michael Fothergill michael.fotherg...@googlemail.com wrote:

 On 16 June 2015 at 21:40, Sven Joachim svenj...@gmx.de wrote:
 
  On 2015-06-16 21:41 +0200, Bob Proulx wrote:
 
   Michael Fothergill wrote:
   (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
  
   Note that it will log errors with EE at the front.  This is where
   the errors start:
  
   [15.104] (II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported.
 
  Was this log file generated while booting in recovery mode?
 
 
 ​You are correct.  I was booting in recovery mode as root.​
 
 
 
 
  Then it's
  expected, otherwise there is a problem.
 
   [15.105] (II) Module int10: vendor=X.Org Foundation
   [15.105] compiled for 1.17.1, module version = 1.0.0
   [15.105] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 19.0
   [15.105] (II) VESA(0): initializing int10
   [15.105] (EE) VESA(0): Cannot read int vect
   [15.105] (II) UnloadModule: vesa
   [15.105] (II) UnloadSubModule: int10
   [15.105] (II) Unloading int10
   [15.105] (II) UnloadSubModule: vbe
   [15.105] (II) Unloading vbe
   [15.105] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable
   configuration.
  
   Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.  I have
   many times seen and dreaded that message.
  
   I can't decode the above into the root cause of the problem.
   Hopefully someone else will be able to do so.  Does anyone else on
   this list have any hints here?
 
  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=787144
 
  I'm afraid this bug makes the vesa driver currently unusable. :-(
 
   I fear the problem is the newer Linux KMS and DRM interfaces which
   obsoleted a lot of hardware.  I have been hit by that problem
   myself. Whereas older kernels worked perfectly supporting the
   hardware newer kernels have dropped support and broken my systems.
 
  Please report this as bugs, the kernel is not supposed to obsolete
  hardware which people still have.
 
 
 ​I am using a Kaveri box - it is a new architecture and this could be
 a problem.​
 
 
 
 
   I suggest booting one of the previous kernels and seeing if that
   helps.
 
  Ahem, the Xorg.0.log file shows that Micheal was booting an old and
  unsupported 3.14 kernel, so this can already be ruled out.
 
   If not then try the newest kernel available, possibly a
   backports kernel.  If not then I suggest trying to boot with the
   kernel command line option nomodeset and see if it improves
   things.
 
  Booting in recovery mode already implies nomodeset, and the
  Xorg.0.log file shows a complaint from the radeon module that KMS
  is not supported.
 
   Plus any better hints that others might supply.
 
  Seeing an Xorg.0.log file from a normal boot would be good, plus the
  complete dmesg output.
 
 
 ​If I try to do a normal boot then the OS tries to fire up Xorg and
 fails and I just get a blank screen with a cursor.

Edit the line in /etc/default/grub that looks like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=quiet

to read

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=quiet text

and then run update-grub (as root). The machine will now not start X
when you reboot. Remove the text part later if you get X working,
and want it to boot up into X.

 ctrl C etc does not seem to drop down a command line interface etc.

Try Ctrl + Alt + F1 - that should drop you to a VT. If not, then do as
I described above.

Petter

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Re: CUPS set-up for the 0.01%

[Petter Adsen]

On Sat, 13 Jun 2015 22:24:21 -0700
bri...@aracnet.com wrote:

 On Sat, 13 Jun 2015 23:57:16 +0100
 Brian a...@cityscape.co.uk wrote:
 
  On Sat 13 Jun 2015 at 12:16:29 -0700, bri...@aracnet.com wrote:
  
   form cupsd.conf
   
   Listen localhost:631
   Listen /var/run/cups/cups.sock
  
  Ok.
  
   Listen 192.168.1.0/24
  
  Why? How does that square with
  

  http://localhost:631/help/ref-cupsd-conf.html?TOPIC=ReferencesQUERY=#Listen
   ?
 
 sorry, i'm not sure what you mean.
 
 doesn't 192.168.1.0/24 set it to listen for an incoming connection
 anywhere on the 192.168.1.xxx subnet, which is where my server is
 located.
 
 if i load in the above url using links it seems to automatically put
 itself in the background (?)

It would, there is an ampersand in there. If you want to pass that URL
from the command line, you have to escape it with a backslash - like this:

http://localhost:631/help/ref-cupsd-conf.html?TOPIC=References\QUERY=#Listen

Try that.

Petter

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Re: Unable to install nVidia driver on Debian 6 LTS - was - Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Sun, 14 Jun 2015 14:37:47 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:
 IIn running Synaptic, and searching on the string nvidia, to find what
 nvidia drivers are installed (as I do not know how else to find that
 information, in Debian 6), I found the following two packages
 installed;
 
 
 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
 X.Org X server -- Nouveau display driver (experimental)
 
 Version: 1:0.0.15+git20100329+7858345-5
 
 
 and
 
 
 xserver-xorg-video-nv
 X.Org X server -- NV display driver
 
 Version: 1:2.1.17-3
 
 
 So, I will try to install them, on the system with the GEForce GT750M,
 and find what happens.

Check that they support your GPU at all first, sometimes it takes a
little time for the open source drivers to implement support for the
latest models. nVidia is really bad at releasing documentation that is
needed by the nouveau developers.

Other than that, I was under the impression that you had already tried
them and had to use the proprietary drivers. You may have much better
luck with nouveau.

Petter

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Re: Unable to install nVidia driver on Debian 6 LTS - was - Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Sat, 13 Jun 2015 03:54:49 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 13/06/2015, Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:
  On 12/06/2015, Matthijs Wensveen matthijs.wensv...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
 
  On 11-6-2015 7:13, Bret Busby wrote:
  On 11/06/2015, Ric Moore wayward4...@gmail.com wrote:
  On 06/10/2015 03:45 PM, Bret Busby wrote:
  On 11/06/2015, Nick T. n...@ncktsp.com wrote:
  Oops, forgot to cc in the mailing list.
 
  - Nick
 
  On 06/10/2015 09:19 PM, Nick T. wrote:
  Install build-essential it should contain all the packages
  necessary to install the driver.
  Also you might want to install dkms if you don't want to
  reinstall the
  driver after every kernel update.
 
  - Nick
 
 
  Thank you for that.
 
  The driver installation appears to have subsequently succeeded.
 
  However, after rebooting, the system still does not see the
  external monitor (using System - Preferences - Monitors), and
  I don't think that will work. Try using nvidia-settings.
 
 
  As I had said, xwindows now no longer works on the system.
 
  What do I need to do, at the command line level, to get xwindows
  operable on the system?
 
  In the circumstances, it appears to be a congiuration or settings
  issue.
 
  Or, despite the information on the nvidia web site, perhaps the
  driver simply does not work with Debian 6.
 
  I note that the gcc version issues showed that the gcc version
  applicable to the driver, appeared to be an earlier version (4.3,
  I think) than the installed version when I installed gcc (4.4, I
  think) (but the discrepancy appeared to have been overcome in the
  procedure that I followed), indicating (I believe) that Debian 6
  should not be a version to early for thenvidia driver.
 
 
 
  It might be that you need to generate an Xorg.conf file from
  scratch. Make sure to backup any existing configuration file first
  (/etc/X11/xorg.conf). You can generate one using the nvidia-xconfig
  package:
  https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers#Configuration
  - Matthijs
 
 
 
  Hello.
 
  As previously mentioned, that wiki web page refers to only Debian 7
  and 8, and not to Debian 6, which is the applicable version.
 
  I will reboot into Debian 6 (I am currently in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS,
  which allows use of the external monitor, and which provided
  installation of an earlier (v3.3) nvidia driver), and see what I
  can find in the specified path.
 
 
 
 Okay.
 
 In running ls on /etc/X11/ , a file xorg.conf was listed, as was a
 file named xorg.conf.nvidia-xconfig-original
 
 The latter file showed no content, in running cat on it.
 
 The former file had content;
 
 
 # nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
 # nvidia-xconfig:  version 346.72
 (buildmeister@swio-display-x64-rhel04-19)  Tue May  5 18:19:38 PDT
 2015
 
 Section ServerLayout
 Identifier Layout0
 Screen  0  Screen0
 InputDeviceKeyboard0 CoreKeyboard
 InputDeviceMouse0 CorePointer
 EndSection
 
 Section Files
 EndSection
 
 Section InputDevice
 # generated from default
 Identifier Mouse0
 Driver mouse
 Option Protocol auto
 Option Device /dev/psaux
 Option Emulate3Buttons no
 Option ZAxisMapping 4 5
 EndSection
 
 Section InputDevice
 # generated from default
 Identifier Keyboard0
 Driver kbd
 EndSection
 
 Section Monitor
 Identifier Monitor0
 VendorName Unknown
 ModelName  Unknown
 HorizSync   28.0 - 33.0
 VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
 Option DPMS
 EndSection
 
 Section Device
 Identifier Device0
 Driver nvidia
 VendorName NVIDIA Corporation
 EndSection
 
 Section Screen
 Identifier Screen0
 Device Device0
 MonitorMonitor0
 DefaultDepth24
 SubSection Display
 Depth   24
 EndSubSection
 EndSection
 
 
 In thinking about it, as the creation of that file, had rendered
 xwindows inoperable, I renamed the file, with an extra extension, and
 rebooted.
 
 So, I now have xwindows operating again, on Debian 6, on this
 computer, but, the only way that I can get the external monitor to
 work, is by running one of the two Ubuntu installations; 12.04 or
 14.04. Unfortunately, they both involve GNOME3, and what I think of
 GNOME3, is not polite.
 
 So, I still can not get the external monitor to run, with Debian 6 or
 7, on this computer, with its nvidia GEForce GT750M device.

If it works under Ubuntu, have you considered copying the
(working) xorg.conf file from there and trying it in your Debian
installation?

Petter

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Re: forum help

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 10 Jun 2015 23:03:14 +0100
Lisi Reisz lisi.re...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wednesday 10 June 2015 21:46:29 bcp wrote:
  I didn't know quite where to send this.  I was trying to get onto
  the forum to get hardware help.  The problem is I recall neither my
  password nor my username, but the system still has my email
  registered so I can't submit a new registration.
 
 Have you tried?  If your email address is subscribed you should be
 getting the emails, so you may not be subscribed for some reason, or
 the email address which has been subscribed is slightly wrong.

I think the OP is talking about forums, not this list.

If this is the case, try this:

http://forums.debian.net/faq.php

(If those are the forums in question).

Also, if that turns out to not be helpful, simply register a free email
address somewehere, and sign up with that.

Petter

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Re: Change for systemd the UUID of the home partition, how to?

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 00:02:02 -0400
Ken Heard kensli...@teksavvy.com wrote:

 On 2015-06-10 13:17, Don Armstrong wrote:
  On Tue, 09 Jun 2015, Ken Heard wrote:
  After some research I found file /etc/crypttab which contains a
  list of the UUIDs for encrypted partitions, /home in my case. I
  thought it would be a simple matter of changing the relevant UUID
  to the current one. It is apparently not.
 
  Did you rebuild the initramfs at this stage? If not, you'll need to
  do that first.
 
 Yes, that needed to be done; and I did so.  Putting the relevant
 UUIDs in file /etc/crypttab, which I also did, however is not enough
 to have the boot process ask for the passkey for encrypted partitions
 and so to allow mounting of them, in my case /home and /tmp.  Systemd
 requires some other rebuilding to allow it to use the information in
 file /etc/crypttab.
 
 So, unless someone on the list knows enough about systemd to tell me 
 what to that process is and how to do it, I am reduced to two
 choices: either take the time (how long?) to learn about systemd, or
 to reinstall Jessie in the box.  If the latter, which probably will
 be quicker, it will be the third time I had to do so since mid-April
 when I first installed Jessie in this box.

Like Sven has asked, what does your /etc/fstab look like?

Petter

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Re: Nvidia vs AMD open source drivers

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 10 Jun 2015 20:02:38 +0200
Dan ganc...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 12:09 PM, Sven Arvidsson s...@whiz.se wrote:
  On Wed, 2015-06-10 at 04:45 -0400, Ric Moore wrote:
  OK, for some cases ~it works~, but not ~all~ cases. So, enough
  with the warm fuzzies, here's actual benchmark comparison.
 
  http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articleitem=nvidia_nouveau_utopicnum=1
 
  As of October last year, the nvidia supplied driver runs about 6
  times faster than Nouveau. I run 3 different 3D environment test
  server/clients. Imagine that stretched across 4 monitors via 2
  video cards and still get acceptable performance, with all of the
  bells and whistles turned on. Sweet ...and running under Linux.
 
  And here is a test run 5 days ago, between Intel, AMD and nVidia
  using only libre drivers. For a change  AMD ran the wheels off of
  nVidia with Intel slinking in the corner.
  http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articleitem=phx-open-11num=1
 
  Last benchmark, comparing video cards with native drivers on
  Linux. This time nVidia mostly ran the wheels off of AMD. Intel
  still ain't equal to either by a long shot.
  http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articleitem=amdnv-phoronix-11num=1
  http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articleitem=amdnv-phoronix-11num=2
 
  So, in summary, I've always used nvidia as it's the same money as
  AMD and Intel and is generally always faster with the nvidia
  drivers. So, while many will piffle and claim to not be a gamer,
  what about video editing? 3D Immersive education? Think you might
  want to do that at some point in your life?? I'm all about Open
  Source. But, I'm not about deliberate trashing of expensive
  hardware for the cause. Nor do I recommend it.  Be ALL that you
  can be. :) Ric
 
  As longs as you don't spend your time staring at benchmarks, the
  stuff works and it is getting better all the time. Especially when
  people spend their time actually using and supporting it.
 
  I have no trouble believing that we can use free drivers for pretty
  much anything soon. Part of the problem has been that developers are
  favouring Nvidia, instead targeting more open standards like OpenCL.
 
  Sure, there are a few cases, like dual-GPU, multi-screen GL, that's
  not supported, and might not be, but those are corner cases.
 
  If proprietary Nvidia works for you, and if that is the best choice
  for the OP, I'm glad it's an option, but we need free drivers, and
  for most users it's a very good experience.
 
 
 Thanks a lot for your answers. I can not use intel because the
 provider of our company only proposes AMD or NVIDIA for the
 workstations.

If you use an Intel CPU from recent years, you already have one.
Discrete Intel graphics cards do not exist.

 I do not need a very fancy graphic card, I need something that works.
 I will proabably buy AMD as it seems to work well with the open source
 drivers.

AMD does work very well with the open source radeon driver, at least in
my experience. It has been very stable, except for a few bugs in early
4.x kernels. Make sure you get a card that is well supported. That
probably means not buying a model that has only very recently hit the
market, but go for something that has been out a while and is known
good.

If you don't need much 3D acceleration, something as lowly as a HD5450
is still a great, stable card for desktop usage that draws little power
compared to many newer cards. Mine runs a bit hot, but that might be
because it drives two screens.

Petter

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Re: combine key to output char with xmodmap

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 00:09:00 +0200
Emanuel Berg embe8...@student.uu.se wrote:

 Sven Arvidsson s...@whiz.se writes:
 
  How can I change this line
  
  xmodmap -e 'keycode 66=0xe2' # rebind key: CAPS (66) - â
  (0xe2)
  
  so that doesn't happen on CAPS alone (66), but
  instead (and only) on M-CAPS (here, M == Alt_L)?
  
  xev tells me M/Alt_L has has keycode 64.
 
  I'm not sure that's possible with xmodmap.
  Maybe try xmacro?
 
 Good idea, but I didn't get it t work.
 
 With this in ~/keys:
 
 Delay 1
 String 0xe2

A guess:

String 0xe2

?

Petter

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Re: adding network printer

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 10 Jun 2015 12:27:12 +0200
notoneofmy notoneofmyse...@gmx.de wrote:

 On 15-06-09 8:15 PM, Sven Arvidsson wrote:
  Have you used this printer with lpd before?
 
  Everything I find on Google says it only speaks a proprietary
  protocol called bjnp.
 
  Which should be covered by the cups-backend-bjnp package.
 
  http://setdosa.blogspot.se/2009/02/setting-up-canon-pixma-mx850-on-ubuntu.html
 ...and what more, and this is very important, it did not ask me to
 select a driver. It automagically found and selected the right. I the
 link asked to select a particular driver; that wasn't an option
 presented.
 
 Now, now, if I can only scan to the machine. That will be asking too
 much, I suppose, given Canon's retrogressive moves by not opening up
 their drivers. That's OK, printing is good enough.

http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html#Z-CANON :

Lists the Pixma MX850 support as Complete with All resolutions
supported (up to 2400DPI). Flatbed, ADF simplex and Duplex supported.
over both USB and Ethernet, with the pixma backend (see the
sane-pixma manpage).

So that should work out-of-the-box. :)

Petter

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Re: Nvidia vs AMD open source drivers

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 10 Jun 2015 09:38:46 +0900
Man_Without_Clue love.cha...@gmail.com wrote:

 
 
 On Wednesday, 10 June, 2015 07:01 AM, Ric Moore wrote:
  On 06/09/2015 05:28 PM, Dan wrote:
  Hi,
  I would live to buy a workstation and install Jessie. I would like
  to use the open source drivers for the graphic card. What would you
  recommend? My choices are Nvidia or AMD.
 
  I checked the Nvidia/Debian wiki and the Nouveau drivers seems to
  work very well:
  As of jessie, the need for the proprietary drivers is pretty much
  over - nouveau now works quite well
  https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
 
  Which open source driver is better Nouveau or AMD open source
  driver?
  It ALL depends on your needs. If you want gaming, or 
  multi-card/monitor support, with all the goodies turned on, you'll 
  want the real drivers. If you are just doing email, web browsing,
  Hunt The Wumpus, and office stuff, then the open source drivers are
  just fine, unless you get flickering and tearing.
 
 
 What about Intel HD?
 What's wrong with that?

Intel is fine, in many ways, except the fact that they don't make and
sell discrete graphics cards. So, unless you buy a system with suitable
Intel graphics integrated, they're not an option. If you need more than
what your onboard graphics can give you (like more outputs) you are out
of luck. If the integrated graphics are enough for you, Intel is
generally very good.

For gaming, most people recommend nVidia with the proprietary drivers.
For other usage it's just a matter of preference. Personally, I prefer
AMD with the open-source driver (radeon), but I don't do gaming. I do,
however, use multiple screens, and unlike Ric said that combination
works wonderfully. The proprietary drivers caused stability issues for
me, although that was some time ago.

The open-source drivers can also do hardware-accelerated video
playback on most recent cards, so unless you need any specific features
of the proprietary drivers (like hardware 3D, or support for a brand
new card) the open-source drivers are fine.

There is some hardware-accelerated 3D in the open-source drivers that
is adequate for most usage, but in most cases you will get far better
performance in gaming with the proprietary ones. For desktop use, you
don't need them IMO.

Some users have had problems with installation and upgrades of the
proprietary drivers, so the open-source ones are usually the
recommended way to go unless needs dictate otherwise.

Petter

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Re: Moving server to new server with tar

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 8 Jun 2015 16:49:45 -0600
Bob Proulx b...@proulx.com wrote:

 Lisi Reisz wrote:
  Bob Proulx wrote:
   Every file.  File by file.  I liked this presentation and found it
   quite interesting.
  
   http://marc.merlins.org/perso/linux/post_2014-01-06_My-Live-Upgrading-Many-Thousands-of-Servers-ProdNG-talk-at-Linux_conf_au-2014.html
 
 That one definitely works for me at this moment.  I just tested it and
 got a page okay.  Since that is the origin I wanted to quote it.
 However the links from that page all give me 403 forbidden.  Sigh.
 
 There is a video of the presentation somewhere.  I don't have a link.
 I imagine that would be on youtube and would still be available.
 Maybe someone will find it and post a link to it.
 
   Unfortunately the original paper is now 403 forbidden.  I think
   that is likely a mistake somewhere.  But the Internet Archive
   Wayback Machine has a copy if you want to browse it.
  
   https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://marc.merlins.org/linux/talks/ProdNG-LCA2014/Paper/ProdNG.pdf
  
  I got 403 forbidden on both. :-(
 
 That second one is 403 for me now too.  The '*' means grab the newest
 version and it has updated to the 403 version.  But looking through
 the older snapshots I find the specific version is here:
 
   
 https://web.archive.org/web/20141016050915/http://marc.merlins.org/linux/talks/ProdNG-LCA2014/Paper/ProdNG.pdf
 
 That should get you the paper at least.  I also found this just now:
 
   
 https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa13/technical-sessions/presentation/merlin
 
 Bob

I got them straight from here, maybe something was temporarily down?

http://marc.merlins.org/linux/talks/ProdNG-LCA2014/html/

Petter

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Re: I upgraded from jessie to stretch and messed up I used the dist-upgrade command....

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 8 Jun 2015 16:35:16 -0600
Bob Proulx b...@proulx.com wrote:

 Michael Fothergill wrote:
  I can boot in recovery mode but if I do that as root if I run
  aptitude it doesn't download packages - I think there is no
  internet connection being made.
 
 That makes me think you are running NetworkManager.  By default it
 seems to want the desktop user to start networking.
 
 Try using the network manage command line client to start networking.
 I can't suggest a command as I am not running NetworkManager (due to
 problems such as these) and therefore don't know the command line to
 suggest.  Others may be able to help better.

nmcli(1) might be helpful. nmcli device will show network devices,
and whether or not they are connected.

Petter

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Re: Autologin to X session (Debian 8)?

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 8 Jun 2015 17:48:11 +0200
Siard shiems...@kpnplanet.nl wrote:

 Teemu Likonen:
  Nicolas George:
   Someone recently suggested to use nodm; a quick test a few days
   ago seems to indicate it still works.
  
  It works, indeed. Thanks.
 
 But how to log out with nodm??  After logging out, I get immediately
 logged back in.

Could a screenlocker be an option?

Petter

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Re: fluxbox: overriding style background color

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 08 Jun 2015 20:36:12 +0200
notoneofmy notoneofmyse...@gmx.de wrote:

 On 15-06-08 6:08 PM, Siard wrote:
  AFAIK, you can do that in the style file,
  i.e. /usr/share/fluxbox/styles/Twice.
 
  In the last line, 'background.color: grey20',
  change 'grey20' to 'black'.
 Can I do the same with xfce.
 
 I don't like the black on the top of windows.
 
 Thanks a lot!

Right click on the desktop, then:

Applications - Settings - Window Manager - Style

There you can set the style of window title-bars and other things as a
predefined style. You can also use a downloaded theme or create your
own, see xfce-look.org for downloads, and wiki.xfce.org for
instructions on how to make your own. I think most of the stuff on
xfce-look.org is for Xfce 4.10, which is what you have if you are
running Jessie.

If you want to switch the GTK+ theme or icons, click Appearance
instead of Window Manager above.

Petter

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Re: debugging / logging udev?

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 09 Jun 2015 21:09:03 +0930
Arthur Marsh arthur.ma...@internode.on.net wrote:

 I'm trying to track down what is going on with my eth0 interface not 
 coming up automatically on my amd64 machine with recent versions of
 udev 219-10 or later, see:
 
 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=787364
 
 Are there any good guides to debugging / logging udev? I'm unsure how
 to log debugging output of udev to a file.

You can use udevadm's trigger, monitor and test commands to debug, if
that helps?

Petter

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Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 8 Jun 2015 16:10:23 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 27/05/2015, Patrick Bartek nemomm...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 snip
 
 
  If it's enabled, CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE will halt X and all GUI stuff,
  and drop you to a terminal.  Once you've installed the nVidia
  driver, etc., just type startx.
 
  B
 
 
 I tried that,and got no response, so I assume that it is not enabled.
 
 How do I enable it?

setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

Petter

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Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 8 Jun 2015 16:54:09 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 08/06/2015, Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:
  On 08/06/2015, Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
  On Mon, 8 Jun 2015 16:10:23 +0800
  Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  On 27/05/2015, Patrick Bartek nemomm...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  snip
 
  
   If it's enabled, CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE will halt X and all GUI
   stuff, and drop you to a terminal.  Once you've installed the
   nVidia driver, etc., just type startx.
  
   B
  
 
  I tried that,and got no response, so I assume that it is not
  enabled.
 
  How do I enable it?
 
  setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
 
  Petter
 
 
  Thank you for that.
 
  However, whilt that apparently enabled the CTRLALTBACSPACE
 
 
 
 Plurry keyboards!
 
 Whilst that combination was apparently enabled, the effect of that
 combination keypress was to take the computer to a different state of
 xwindows, and, not to disable xwindows, so the combination keypress
 did not have the desired effect.

You need to be clearer. Did it drop you back to the display manager?
Stop that manually, like has been explained elsewhere in this thread. If
no display manager is running, and you had started X with startx or
xinit, X should be killed by that keyboard shortcut.

 Maybe nVidia is simply designed to not work with Linux...

They do have a reputation of not being very open-source friendly, but
other than that it works fine for a lot of people. I prefer AMD,
though. 

Petter

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Re: HELP- very slow download speeds

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 04 Jun 2015 16:44:53 -0700
Gary Roach garyro...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 06/03/2015 11:55 PM, Petter Adsen wrote:
  Well, it's not shut down, as I just tried it and it works fine here.
  Maybe it was down, though, and you should try again?
 
  If it still doesn't work, then check your firewall. It shouldn't give
  you any problems, as you are simply trying to establish a connection to
  port 5201 on a remote machine, but check. Enable firewall logging, if
  possible, and see if anything gets blocked. Verify that you can reach
  the webserver running on the same host.
 
  Also try with UDP (-u -b 0).
 
  Petter
 
 Well all of a sudden iperf.scottlinux.com works The send and receive 
 with TCP packets is about the same. Below is a typical example:
 
 root@xx# iperf3 -c iperf.scottlinux.com -R -V
snip
 Test Complete. Summary Results:
 [ ID] Interval   Transfer Bandwidth   Retr
 [  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  32.4 MBytes  27.2 Mbits/sec 0 sender
 [  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  32.2 MBytes  27.0 Mbits/sec  
 receiver
 CPU Utilization: local/receiver 3.8% (0.6%u/3.2%s), remote/sender 0.1% 
 (0.0%u/0.1%s)
 
 iperf Done.
 
   As you can see, I'm getting about half of the 50Mbits/sec for which I 
 contracted. But this is way better than my actual speed. I ran the same 
 test with udp packets and got:

When I tested against the same host last night I got around 40Mbps (I
also have 50Mbps), but I'm in Norway, so that doesn't seem so bad. I
tried again right now, and got ~45Mbps.

What do you mean that this is way better than your actual speed? This
_is_ the measured speed to this host :) Do you normally get lower speed
to other hosts?

Your ISP probably doesn't guarantee that you actually get 50Mbps
unless you have a business line, but most likely says speeds _up to_
50Mbps or something similar. So that would be normal.

Also try a few online speed tests, like the one at speed.io, and see
what they tell you. Your ISP might also have one.

 root@xxx# iperf3 -c iperf.scottlinux.com -R -u -V
snip
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 Test Complete. Summary Results:
 [ ID] Interval   Transfer Bandwidth   Jitter Lost/Total 
 Datagrams
 [  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.26 MBytes  1.06 Mbits/sec  0.660 ms 0/161 (0%)
 [  4] Sent 161 datagrams
 CPU Utilization: local/receiver 0.3% (0.0%u/0.3%s), remote/sender 0.1% 
 (0.0%u/0.1%s)
 
 iperf Done.
 
 Now I'm really confused. I thought UDP packets were going through at 
 full speed and TCP plackets were slow. This data says just the opposite.

Yeah, Reco just explained this to me in a different thread. For UDP you
need to specify the target bandwidth, the default is 1Mbps. Use -b 0
to set it to unlimited. For earlier versions it needs to be at the end
of the line, don't know about iperf3. See the man page for details.

Petter

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Re: HELP- very slow download speeds

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 03 Jun 2015 09:41:49 -0700
Gary Roach gary719_li...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 05/25/2015 11:16 PM, Petter Adsen wrote:
  iperf will use either TCP or UDP. :)
 
  Petter
 
 Well, I'm back
 
 I used iperf3 as follows:
  iperf3 -c iperf.scottlinux.com
 
 The program just hangs. I also tried it with the -R switch with the same 
 result. I then set up one the other computers on my internal net as a 
 server (iperf3 -s) and got the following results:
 
snip
 [ ID] Interval   Transfer Bandwidth   Retr
 [  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.02 GBytes   878 Mbits/sec 0 sender
 [  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.02 GBytes   877 Mbits/sec  
 receiver
 
 iperf Done.
 
 My local network seems to be working fine (I tried the -R switch as 
 well. Same good results). Needless to say, I'm using a 100 Mbyte/second 
 network.

Seems good.

 I am behind a verizon M1424WR rev. I router firewall that has been free 
 of any known transmission trouble before. Could the firewall be the 
 problem or has scottlinux.com shut down their iperf3 server.

Well, it's not shut down, as I just tried it and it works fine here.
Maybe it was down, though, and you should try again?

If it still doesn't work, then check your firewall. It shouldn't give
you any problems, as you are simply trying to establish a connection to
port 5201 on a remote machine, but check. Enable firewall logging, if
possible, and see if anything gets blocked. Verify that you can reach
the webserver running on the same host.

Also try with UDP (-u -b 0).

Petter

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Re: Jessie Mate - a GUI user admin tool?

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 04 Jun 2015 02:14:36 -0500
Richard Owlett rowl...@cloud85.net wrote:

 With Gnome2 under Squeeze there was a users administration tool under
 System-Administration-Users and Groups .
 
 Is there such a tool available for Mate under Jessie?

I know this isn't what you're asking for, but you could have a look at
webmin - it's not included in the repos, but webmin.com has a repo for
Debian that you can use.

It does this, and a lot of other stuff also. I find it useful for
setting up packages and services that I'm not familiar with, since you
can make the changes in the webmin UI and then see what has changed in
the config files.

They also have a package called usermin that is used for setting up
per-user stuff, although I haven't used that much.

Or, closer to what you actually wanted, you could take a look at the
package kuser. Obviously, it's intended for use with KDE, so it will
drag in some KDE/Qt libraries if you do not already have them. I
couldn't find any such tools for GTK with apt-cache right now.

Ubuntu has/had GTK tools for this, I think, maybe it's possible to grab
those and use them on Jessie? No idea what the package is called,
though.

Petter

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Re: Problems with SSD

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 2 Jun 2015 18:36:43 +0300
Selim T. Erdoğan se...@alumni.cs.utexas.edu wrote:

 On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 11:18:35AM +0200, Petter Adsen wrote:
  
  This just in:
snip
  [12675.977977] ata5: hard resetting link
  [12680.979063] ata4: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
  [12680.979080] ata4: hard resetting link
  [12685.976201] ata5: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
 
 You could try forcing the drive to a lower speed to see if taxing the 
 hardware less will avoid triggering the problem.
 
 Make a file /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf and put the single line
   options libata force=1.5G
 in it.  Reboot.  If it works, you can then try with 3.0G instead of
 1.5G.

Thanks, I will try that and see if it helps, but it seems a lot like a
hardware problem. This motherboard is getting to be a few years old,
and has been working fine up until now, it just started behaving like
this a few days ago.

I'm investigating new motherboards now, since I heavily suspect that is
going to be what I'll end up having to do.

The drives/controller are not heavily utilized when this happens, the
machine is just churning along with low load. I always have gkrellm
open, and there is never any hint that utilization has anything to do
with this.

I will try it, though.

Petter

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Re: Problems with SSD

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 13:46:55 -0400
Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote:

 On 30/05/15 02:17 AM, Petter Adsen wrote:
  On Fri, 29 May 2015 13:18:17 -0600
  Bob Proulx b...@proulx.com wrote:
 
  Jochen Spieker wrote:
  Petter Adsen:
  I'm starting to suspect that it is. Either that, or the
  controller on the motherboard, which would be even worse.
  Or just the cable (if we are not talking about a laptop). I got
  rid of similar errors in the past by replacing the SATA cable.
  If it were me I would swap cables and move to a different SATA
  port on the motherboard.  I have seen individual SATA ports fail
  with the rest of the ports okay.  I also have the advantage of
  many different sets of hardware available and so I would mix and
  match the various parts into different systems.  If the problem
  stays with the system or moves with the moved part is a good
  diagnostic aid in determining which piece of hardware or software
  is causing problems.  In this case it is 1) the kernel software 2)
  sata cable 3) sata device 4) motherboard sata controller.  At
  least one of those is the problem.  It is a mental game of
  Mastermind to determine which.
   From what I can understand of the messages above, it seems the
  error messages are coming from two different devices, ata4 and ata5
  - or am I wrong? To me, that would (unfortunately) indicate the
  controller...
 
  Petter
 
 Could potentially be a BIOS setting depending on how the BIOS numbers 
 its drives. The first 4 drives are usually set the same while the
 last 2 can be set differently. Normally the first 4 should be set to
 AHCI while the last 2 should be set to the same as the first 4.

In my case it's 6 and 2, and all are set to AHCI.

Petter

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Re: Iceweasel slow to freeze

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 09:11:49 +0200
notoneofmy notoneofmyse...@gmx.de wrote:

 Anyone here having serious issues with Iceweasel in Jessie.
 
 I went to install some addons and the computer froze. Had to restart.
 
 At other times, the browser had done same; cause the computer to
 freeze.

Are you sure it is Iceweasel that causes the freeze? Does it happen at
completely random times, or when you do something specific?

If it's random, you should try running memtest overnight.

Petter

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Re: Old Computers

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 01 Jun 2015 23:39:15 -0400
Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote:

 On 01/06/15 10:10 PM, Martin Read wrote:
  On 02/06/15 01:56, Jose Martinez wrote:
  The question is, will jessie install and run on these old systems?
  If not, can I still get a debian distro that will?  I expect that
  the processors on at least one of them will be at least i386 or
  better, so I also expect that jessie will install and run, but
  that my main problem will be with drivers for the legacy
  peripherals.
 
  https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.html.en says:
 
  However, Debian GNU/Linux jessie will not run on 486 or earlier 
  processors. Despite the architecture name i386, support for
  actual 80386 and 80486 processors (and their clones) was dropped
  with the Sarge (r3.1) and Squeeze (r6.0) releases of Debian,
  respectively. The Intel Pentium and clones, including those without
  an FPU (Floating-Point Unit or math coprocessor), are supported.
  The Intel Quark is not supported, due to hardware errata. 
 
 
 Where you will also find problems is with various distros that 
 supposedly support Pentiums but that require PAE, which is missing
 from a lot of them.
 
 Another huge issue is finding a windowing system that will be 
 lightweight enough to run in the memory older Pentium-based computers 
 are likely to support.

Look around and see if you can find a copy of fvwm 1.24r - I ran that
for years on a 386 with little RAM without any problems. Version 2 is a
little heavier, but you can compile it yourself and leave out options
you don't need, like pixmap support for the titlebars etc.

Petter

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Re: Problems with SSD

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 29 May 2015 13:18:17 -0600
Bob Proulx b...@proulx.com wrote:

 Jochen Spieker wrote:
  Petter Adsen:
   I'm starting to suspect that it is. Either that, or the
   controller on the motherboard, which would be even worse.
  
  Or just the cable (if we are not talking about a laptop). I got rid
  of similar errors in the past by replacing the SATA cable.
 
 If it were me I would swap cables and move to a different SATA port on
 the motherboard.  I have seen individual SATA ports fail with the rest
 of the ports okay.  I also have the advantage of many different sets
 of hardware available and so I would mix and match the various parts
 into different systems.  If the problem stays with the system or moves
 with the moved part is a good diagnostic aid in determining which
 piece of hardware or software is causing problems.  In this case it is
 1) the kernel software 2) sata cable 3) sata device 4) motherboard
 sata controller.  At least one of those is the problem.  It is a
 mental game of Mastermind to determine which.

From what I can understand of the messages above, it seems the
error messages are coming from two different devices, ata4 and ata5 -
or am I wrong? To me, that would (unfortunately) indicate the
controller...

Petter

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Problems with SSD

[Petter Adsen]

When I woke up this morning, one of my boxen had spewed out a ton of
errors from one of my SSDs (the root drive), remounted read-only, and
went into a kernel panic.

After rebooting everything seems fine, though. I've ran a SMART long
test, but as I found out the SMART error log is not supported on this
drive. Neither do I have the log of what happened, since / was
remounted ro.

I've included the output of smartctl --all /dev/sdc, but I can't see
anything that stands out.

Yesterday, I had another kernel panic (that seemed related to systemd),
so I suspect the (manually built) kernel to be at fault here. The RAM
in this machine is all brand new, and I ran memtest less than two weeks
ago, so that should be fine.

Can anyone look at this log and tell me if there is anything to worry
about? Which of the attributes should I look at, so that I know in the
future?

(And I did a full backup as recently as yesterday that was tested OK
at the time, so data loss is not a concern. Everything important is on
other drives anyway.)

---snip---
smartctl 6.4 2014-10-07 r4002 [x86_64-linux-3.19.0-18-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-14, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: SandForce Driven SSDs
Device Model: KINGSTON SV300S37A120G
Serial Number:snip
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0026b7 74703dbf1
Firmware Version: 525ABBF0
User Capacity:120 034 123 776 bytes [120 GB]
Sector Size:  512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:Solid State Device
Device is:In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS, ACS-2 T13/2015-D revision 3
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:Fri May 29 08:50:31 2015 CEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x02) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:  (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever 
been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection:(0) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:(0x79) SMART execute Offline immediate.
No Auto Offline data collection support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:(0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:(0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time:(   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:(  36) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:(   2) minutes.
SCT capabilities:  (0x0025) SCT Status supported.
SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME  FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE  UPDATED  
WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x0033   095   095   050Pre-fail  Always   
-   0/6132927
  5 Retired_Block_Count 0x0033   100   100   003Pre-fail  Always   
-   0
  9 Power_On_Hours_and_Msec 0x0032   096   096   000Old_age   Always   
-   4237h+54m+09.420s
 12 Power_Cycle_Count   0x0032   100   100   000Old_age   Always   
-   74
171 Program_Fail_Count  0x000a   000   000   000Old_age   Always   
-   0
172 Erase_Fail_Count0x0032   000   000   000Old_age   Always   
-   0
174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct  0x0030   000   000   000Old_age   Offline  
-   65
177 Wear_Range_Delta0x   000   000   000Old_age   Offline  
-   0
181 Program_Fail_Count  0x000a   000   000   000Old_age   Always   
-   0
182 Erase_Fail_Count0x0032   000   000   000Old_age   Always   
-   0
187 Reported_Uncorrect  0x0012   100   100   000Old_age   Always   
-   0
189 

Re: weird problem with one mail account in Thunderbird....ISP or what ?

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 29 May 2015 08:31:49 +0200
Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:

 On Thu, 28 May 2015 09:21:05 -0400
 Frank debianl...@videotron.ca wrote:
 
  On 05/28/2015 02:44 AM, Emil Payne wrote:
   On 05/27/2015 10:16 PM, Charlie wrote:
   On Wed, 27 May 2015 21:06:10 -0400 Frank sent:
  
   When I went into Thunderbird at mid-day one of my accounts with
   my ISP Videotron.ca registered a logon failure..despite the fact
   nothing had changed.
  
   I have no answer. However, with my ISP I periodically have the
   same problem. I attempt to log on with claws-mail, without
   changing anything, no update, no upgrade to the system. No
   tinkering, nothing at all and of the two accounts one gives me
   this error message:
  
  
   Charlie
  
   That's odd. I have 6 gmail and 8 yahoo accounts. Yesterday all six
   gmail accounts wanted the passwords reentered. I have thunderbird
   set to remember passwords. At first I couldn't even get anything
   to enter into the password box, although the checkbox and buttons
   worked fine. I restarted my computer and it immediately stopped,
   saying no keyboard found, even though pushing F1 continued booting
   and ENTER worked at the grub menu. Once booted in I restarted
   thunderbird and re-entered the passwords as saved. Everything
   works fine now. At the time I had put it down to intermittent
   power outages due to t-storms, but now I wonder.
  
   Emil
  
  
  The logon failure doesn't bother me as much as what the
  security department  at my ISP is claimingthat my system and
  that account have been compromised. I can't see how...but that's
  what they claim.
  
  The weird thing is if, while I am on the phone with them they change
  the password for that account, and I enter it into Thunderbird, the
  account works fine...until I close Thunderbird and re-open it. Then
  no password will be accepted by Thunderbird and we are back at
  square one. I'm guessing their system catches the IMAP logon and
  blocks it, because as we know my system is infested with malware
  and viruses.
  
  It's all very frustrating.
 
 I don't quite see why they have any reason to believe your system is
 compromised, unless there is something they aren't telling you (and
 that would be irresponsible of them, IMHO).
 
 Have you tried with another MUA to see if you get the same behaviour?
 And/or tried booting from a live disk and run Thunderbird from that?
 This could help determine if the problem is with Thunderbird itself,
 your configuration, or somewhere else.

Oh, and are you using IMAP? If so, try POP3 - or the other way around.

Petter

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Re: weird problem with one mail account in Thunderbird....ISP or what ?

[Petter Adsen]

On Thu, 28 May 2015 09:21:05 -0400
Frank debianl...@videotron.ca wrote:

 On 05/28/2015 02:44 AM, Emil Payne wrote:
  On 05/27/2015 10:16 PM, Charlie wrote:
  On Wed, 27 May 2015 21:06:10 -0400 Frank sent:
 
  When I went into Thunderbird at mid-day one of my accounts with my
  ISP Videotron.ca registered a logon failure..despite the fact
  nothing had changed.
 
  I have no answer. However, with my ISP I periodically have the same
  problem. I attempt to log on with claws-mail, without changing
  anything, no update, no upgrade to the system. No tinkering,
  nothing at all and of the two accounts one gives me this error
  message:
 
 
  Charlie
 
  That's odd. I have 6 gmail and 8 yahoo accounts. Yesterday all six
  gmail accounts wanted the passwords reentered. I have thunderbird
  set to remember passwords. At first I couldn't even get anything to
  enter into the password box, although the checkbox and buttons
  worked fine. I restarted my computer and it immediately stopped,
  saying no keyboard found, even though pushing F1 continued booting
  and ENTER worked at the grub menu. Once booted in I restarted
  thunderbird and re-entered the passwords as saved. Everything works
  fine now. At the time I had put it down to intermittent power
  outages due to t-storms, but now I wonder.
 
  Emil
 
 
 The logon failure doesn't bother me as much as what the security 
 department  at my ISP is claimingthat my system and that account
 have been compromised. I can't see how...but that's what they claim.
 
 The weird thing is if, while I am on the phone with them they change
 the password for that account, and I enter it into Thunderbird, the
 account works fine...until I close Thunderbird and re-open it. Then
 no password will be accepted by Thunderbird and we are back at square
 one. I'm guessing their system catches the IMAP logon and blocks it,
 because as we know my system is infested with malware and viruses.
 
 It's all very frustrating.

I don't quite see why they have any reason to believe your system is
compromised, unless there is something they aren't telling you (and
that would be irresponsible of them, IMHO).

Have you tried with another MUA to see if you get the same behaviour?
And/or tried booting from a live disk and run Thunderbird from that?
This could help determine if the problem is with Thunderbird itself,
your configuration, or somewhere else.

Petter

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Re: Problems with SSD

[Petter Adsen]

On Fri, 29 May 2015 11:04:09 +0200
Sven Arvidsson s...@whiz.se wrote:

 On Fri, 2015-05-29 at 09:08 +0200, Petter Adsen wrote:
  When I woke up this morning, one of my boxen had spewed out a ton of
  errors from one of my SSDs (the root drive), remounted read-only,
  and went into a kernel panic.
 
 It's probably a good idea to test with the manufacturers own
 diagnostic tool to make sure nothing is wrong with the disk.
 

I'm starting to suspect that it is. Either that, or the controller on
the motherboard, which would be even worse.

This just in:

[12490.684280] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x7f007fff SErr 0x0 action 0x6 
frozen
[12490.684296] ata4.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[12490.684312] ata4.00: cmd 61/b8:00:e8:7d:87/00:00:06:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 94208 
out
 res 40/00:01:c8:7f:d5/00:00:1d:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[12490.684320] ata4.00: status: { DRDY }
[12490.684326] ata4.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
[12490.684338] ata4.00: cmd 60/08:08:80:47:f9/00:00:0d:00:00/40 tag 1 ncq 4096 
in
[12545.656751] ata4: limiting SATA link speed to 3.0 Gbps
[12545.656758] ata4: hard resetting link
[12550.657835] ata5: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
[12550.657850] ata5: hard resetting link
[12550.853737] ata4: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
[12550.853751] ata4.00: link online but device misclassified
[12555.850872] ata4.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
[12555.850891] ata4.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
[12555.850898] ata4.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
[12555.850909] ata4: hard resetting link
[12605.826168] ata5: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
[12605.826176] ata5: hard resetting link
[12610.819329] ata4: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
[12610.819345] ata4: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps
[12610.819352] ata4: hard resetting link
[12615.820431] ata5: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
[12615.820447] ata5: hard resetting link
[12616.004368] ata4: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
[12616.004381] ata4.00: link online but device misclassified
[12625.998617] ata4.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
[12625.998637] ata4.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
[12625.998644] ata4.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
[12625.998656] ata4: hard resetting link
[12635.996892] ata4: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
[12635.996907] ata4: hard resetting link
[12645.995158] ata4: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
[12645.995174] ata4: hard resetting link
[12650.800410] ata5: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
[12650.800427] ata5: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps
[12650.800434] ata5: hard resetting link
[12655.985396] ata5: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
[12655.985409] ata5.00: link online but device misclassified
[12665.979715] ata5.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
[12665.979735] ata5.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
[12665.979742] ata5.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
[12665.979754] ata5: hard resetting link
[12675.977962] ata5: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
[12675.977977] ata5: hard resetting link
[12680.979063] ata4: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
[12680.979080] ata4: hard resetting link
[12685.976201] ata5: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)

Petter

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Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 27 May 2015 10:50:25 +0200
Nicolas George geo...@nsup.org wrote:

 L'octidi 8 prairial, an CCXXIII, Petter Adsen a écrit :
  Well, then I would expect something like sudo pkill gdm might
  work.
 
 Closing services cleanly would be better advice.
 
 systemctl stop gdm.service for systemd.
 
 service gdm stop for SysV.

You are of course absolutely correct, but I've never used Debian 6, so I
didn't know the correct way to handle services there.

BTW; is there any real difference in this case? Won't both approaches
simply send a HUP or TERM signal to the PID of gdm?

Petter

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Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 27 May 2015 16:15:36 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:
 Or, is a way available, without causing damage, that I can do
 something like go to a console (CTRLALTF1) and turn off, from
 there, the xserver, so as to enable the installation?

It depends on what display manager you are using, if it is for
example lightdm then simply kill that, and X will shut down.

Try sudo pkill lightdm.

Petter

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Re: How to boot without GUI

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 27 May 2015 16:33:01 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 27/05/2015, Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
  On Wed, 27 May 2015 16:15:36 +0800
  Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:
  Or, is a way available, without causing damage, that I can do
  something like go to a console (CTRLALTF1) and turn off, from
  there, the xserver, so as to enable the installation?
 
  It depends on what display manager you are using, if it is for
  example lightdm then simply kill that, and X will shut down.
 
  Try sudo pkill lightdm.
 
  Petter
 
 
 It is gnome.

Well, then I would expect something like sudo pkill gdm might work.
AFAICR Debian 6 uses Gnome 2, so maybe gdm2, I'm not sure.

Petter

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Re: screenshot translation 搜索？？

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 27 May 2015 16:36:15 +0800
mudongliang mudonglianga...@hotmail.com wrote:

 
 
 On 05/27/2015 03:45 PM, Petter Adsen wrote:
  On Wed, 27 May 2015 15:19:46 +0800
  mudongliang mudonglianga...@hotmail.com wrote:
 
  I have a small translation problem about Debian Chinese Edition!
  In preference - keyboard-shortcut, Screenshot is translated to
  搜索 （Chinese）,I don't know why it is translated to this word?
  mudongliang
  If you think the translation is wrong, then file a bug, or even
  better
  - submit a fix.
 
  Petter
 Peter , I do think it's a problem!
 But I do not know how to submit a fix! Even I can't find the original
 code! How can I submit a fix?

I'm not familiar with Gnome translations, but here are instructions on
how to start:

https://wiki.gnome.org/TranslationProject/ContributeTranslations

Then I would imagine it is simply a matter of grabbing the correct .po
file, edit the line you want to fix, and submit it. Someone will review
your change, and apply it if it's accepted. You just edit strings in a
data file, not actual code.

Petter

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Re: strange booting behavior

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 27 May 2015 15:50:12 +
gofloss gofloss goflos...@gmail.com wrote:

 ok, i have more data.  i am still going crazy trying to get it to
 boot.
 
 first, what does cryptopts=source= in the error message?  what
 does -r mean?
 
   Check cryptopts=source= bootarg:cat/proc/command line or
   missing modules, device:cat/proc/modules ls/dev
   -r ALERT!  /dev/disk/by-uuid/[the partition's correct uuid] does
 not exist dropping to a shell!
 
 please note that the partition DOES exist, and it opens
 perfectly with cryptsetup luksOpen.

Can you trying changing it from /dev/disk/by-uuid/...
to /dev/disk/by-id/... for example? I had a sort of similar problem
once that was solved by doing that. No idea why, but it's worth trying.

 however, all mounting fails, including mounting /dev/sda1
 (/boot, ext2, unencrypted) and mounting
 /dev/mapper/toshiba-root.  mount thinks that they don't
 exist when they do.

What exactly is the error that you get? Can you try adding -v to make
mount verbose?

Petter

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Re: Backup services and Debian

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 26 May 2015 19:26:12 -0300
Daniel Bareiro daniel-lis...@gmx.net wrote:

 Hi, Petter.
 
 On 26/05/15 19:07, Daniel Bareiro wrote:
 
  You could try Bacula. You could also use Dirvish, although it does
  not running as a service, it gives good results. It works with
  rsync and optimize disk space usage maintaining hard links to the
  files unchanged between a backup and the next.
 
 Sorry. I think I misunderstood your question. You meant to cloud
 services for backup; not services as in operating system daemons.

Yes, I should perhaps have been clearer. :) I take local backups, but I
really want a way to store backups somewhere remote.

 Well, then maybe you can try rclone [1]. I'm using it with a client of
 Germany and it works quite well.

Thanks, that could come in handy. A little like rsync, it seems? As it
can be used with Dropbox I will test it. I was actually looking more for
recommendations on the actual storage provider than for software,
unless the software is provided by the service.

Someone else suggested Amazon S3 in a private mail, and I think I
should consider that. The only real drawback is that they charge per
GB/month, so I can't just pay for a year in advance and forget about
it. Glacier would also be an alternative, but I know next to nothing
about it. Has anyone used it with Debian?

Thanks again for the suggestion.

Petter

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Re: IP performance question

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 26 May 2015 18:18:15 +0300
Reco recovery...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:42:50PM +0200, Petter Adsen wrote:
  And even worse, after starting to mess with this, browsing is
  _abysmal_. After taking a few speed tests online (speed.io etc),
  upload/download and ping times seem good, but the number of
  connections per minute are severely limited, hovering at ~700. A
  friend on the same network, just down the street and with the same
  connection gets over 1800. We are connected to the same node.
  Whether these tests are trustworthy, though, I have no idea.
 
 And that means jumbo frames bit you. Don't worry, good old iproute
 comes to the rescue.
 
 A start state of non-router host (I'm assuming that eth0 has MTU 
 1500):
 
 # ip ro l
 default via 192.168.32.1 dev eth0  metric 303
 192.168.32.0/20 dev eth0  proto kernel  scope link  src
 192.168.32.227 metric 303
 
 Needed changes:
 
 # ip ro d default
 # ip ro a default via 192.168.32.1 dev eth0 mtu 1500
 
 
 So, you keep non-standard MTU for your network, but set standard MTU
 for outside world.
 
 An example assumes that 192.168.32.0/20 is an internal network and
 192.168.32.1 is a router.
 
 The implementation I'd use is a post-up script in
 /etc/network/interfaces. I'm not that familiar with DHCP so I cannot
 comment if it's possible to advertise different MTUs on different
 routes.

Nice, I didn't know I can set MTU for each route. I will need to read
the docs for the DHCP server running on the OpenWRT router, to see if I
can set it there. I'm sure I will find some way around this now.

  I've tried to set everything back to the defaults, as I've
  documented every change I've made, but it doesn't seem to help.
  I'll try to reboot later today if I can, I have so much context up
  right now that I really don't want to lose, but I haven't made any
  permanent changes yet, so it should come up the way it was.
 
 May I suggest using etckeeper for this? The tool is invaluable if one
 needs to answer a question such as what exactly did I changed a
 couple of days ago?. The usual caveat is that using etckeeper
 requires at least casual knowledge of any RCS that's supported by
 etckeeper (I prefer git for this).

I looked at etckeeper a while back, but I'm not familiar with revision
control. It is something I could use, to keep track of changes to
translations I do. From what I understand, it seems git is what most
people use these days, so maybe that is the best one to learn? I just
need something that is simple to learn and use.

Thank you for all your help and advice, I have learned a lot and really
appreciate you taking the time.

Petter

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Re: screenshot translation 搜索？？

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 27 May 2015 15:19:46 +0800
mudongliang mudonglianga...@hotmail.com wrote:

 I have a small translation problem about Debian Chinese Edition!
 In preference - keyboard-shortcut, Screenshot is translated to
 搜索 （Chinese）,I don't know why it is translated to this word?
 mudongliang

If you think the translation is wrong, then file a bug, or even better
- submit a fix.

Petter

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Re: Systemd for dummies

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 25 May 2015 19:07:07 -0700
Gary Roach gary719_li...@verizon.net wrote:

 I upgraded to Jessie recently and lost my BackupPC setup and my
 rsyncd setup. I found that both succumbed to the change over from
 inet.d to Systemd. None of the documentation mentions anything about
 systemd setup. I found some script for rsync to write rsyincd.socket
 and rsyncd.service and put them in /lib/systemd/system directory. No
 mention was made of the soft link that had to be put in the proper 
 /etc/systemd/system subdirectory. Rsync doesn't seem to be working. 
 Further there is no documentation for setting up BackupPC for
 systemd. I am totally awash. Most of the documentation that I have
 found goes right over my head. Writers should give their
 documentation to their secretary / wife /husband to use and see what
 happens. (ugly) Is there any documentation out there that is readable
 that would give me a road map for setting up systemd. All suggestions
 will be sincerely appreciated.

It depends on what you are looking for.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd

Is quite good, I recommend it.

http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-new-configuration-files.html

Has some good stuff. It's part of a systemd for admins series, but I
couldn't find the index right now. It is more of a
tutorial/introduction, though.

Then there are of course the man pages, which I've actually found to be
quite good. See systemd.index(7) for an overview. The man pages and
these two links are the ones I usually refer to when there is
something I need to know.

Ubuntu has a page listing all the systemd equivalents of upstart
commands:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemdForUpstartUsers

There is also some stuff on the freedesktop.org site, which is where
systemd lives, but mostly just the man pages and implementation
details. I'd check these other links first.

Does any of this help you? On the Debian wiki I could unfortunately only
find things relating to The Great Debate, which aren't really all that
helpful.

Good luck, and let us know if you need more.

Petter

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Re: HELP- very slow download speeds

[Petter Adsen]

On Mon, 25 May 2015 18:53:42 -0700
Gary Roach gary719_li...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 05/24/2015 12:49 AM, Petter Adsen wrote:
  On Sun, 24 May 2015 00:27:02 -0700
  Gary Roach gary719_li...@verizon.net wrote:
 
  On 05/22/2015 01:19 PM, Bob Proulx wrote:
  Darac Marjal wrote:
  Gary Roach wrote:
  When I start a download, it starts at 50M for the first few
  seconds and then drops to 500K to 100K range.
  Finally, don't rule out the possibility that your ISP is
  throttling you. While you may be synced at 50M and may be able
  to transfer at that for short periods (and thus, the ISP can
  rightly claim that you have a 50M connection), they could
  conceivably throttle your connection in the longer term.
  I think this is quite the most likely possibility.  I have only
  anecdotal reports from friends but what I hear is that often ISPs
  allow a full speed burst but then throttle for long term steady
  state data transfer.  That matches your reported behavior exactly.
  This allows customers to run a speed test and have it report full
  speed but prevent them from getting that speed for a long download
  such as a full system upgrade or a large install ISO image
  download.  Are you sure your ISP isn't throttling you?
 
  Bob
  I wouldn't put anything past those jackasses but am still
  attempting to gather information. Would wireshark be a good tool
  to do an in depth diagnosis of the problem? I've gotten a little
  side tracked with another problem but plan to get back to this  in
  the next couple of days. Any comments will be appreciated.
  If you have shell access to a box somewhere, you can run iperf to
  get an idea of the performance of the link between you. Obviously,
  the closer to you, the better. Take a look at the --interval
  parameter, so you can see how/if performance degrades over time.
  --dualtest might also be helpful. There are probably guides out
  there on how to get the best results from it, the man page doesn't
  really do much except list all the options.
 
  There may be better ways, but this is the one I typically use.
  Wireshark would be more suited to analyze the actual traffic, if
  you suspect something may be wrong there.
 
  Petter
 
 Thanks for the tips. Don't go away. As you will find in the newest 
 listings, I have a bigger problem at the moment. I will be back to
 this one soon.

Seen and replied to :)

 Comment on speed testers. The mostly use UDP packets which will never 
 detect trashed packets. God I hate big business in this country. What 
 ever happened to the antitrust laws I grew up with.

iperf will use either TCP or UDP. :)

Petter

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Re: yaboot: How to load Debian8 netboot installation images directly from the boot: prompt?

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 26 May 2015 13:16:04 +0800
Clark Wang dearv...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 1:10 PM, Herminio Hernandez Jr 
 herminio.hernande...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  On Tue, 2015-05-26 at 10:22 +0800, Clark Wang wrote:
   I have an `iBook G4` and have `Debian 8 (Jessie)` installed on it.
   Yesterday I did something stupid (messed up `yaboot.conf` and ran
   `ybin`) and now the system cannot boot up.
  
   The old Debian 8 was installed on a single partition (`/dev/sda3`,
   `ext4`). I ever put the Debian 8 netboot installation images
   (downloaded from here) under `/boot/deb/`:
  
   /boot/deb/initrd.gz
   /boot/deb/vmlinux
   /boot/deb/yaboot
   /boot/deb/yaboot.conf
  
   So how can I boot the netboot installation images from the `boot:`
   prompt and reinstall Debian 8?
  
   I tried `boot: hd:3,/boot/deb/vmlinux root=/dev/ram read-only
   initrd=/boot/deb/initrd.gz initrd-size=300` but it did not
   work. (The screenshot taken with my phone.)
  
  
   Thanks.
  
  
  
   -clark
  
  You can use the netinst cd as a recovery cd by doing the following.
 
 
 I forgot to mention that my iBook's CD drive is broken. :)
 
 
  1. boot into the cd and at boot type recovery
 
 
 Or can I boot the netboot installation images (under /boot/deb/) from
 the Open Firmware prompt?

Can the machine boot from a USB flash drive? Or over the network? One
of these approaches might be easier for you.

Other than that, I'm afraid I can't help you - I know nothing about
yaboot.

Petter

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Re: yaboot: How to load Debian8 netboot installation images directly from the boot: prompt?

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 26 May 2015 14:17:13 +0800
clarkw clark.w...@oracle.com wrote:

 On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 2:09 PM, Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
 
  On Tue, 26 May 2015 13:16:04 +0800
  Clark Wang dearv...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 1:10 PM, Herminio Hernandez Jr 
   herminio.hernande...@gmail.com wrote:
  
On Tue, 2015-05-26 at 10:22 +0800, Clark Wang wrote:
 I have an `iBook G4` and have `Debian 8 (Jessie)` installed
 on it. Yesterday I did something stupid (messed up
 `yaboot.conf` and ran `ybin`) and now the system cannot boot
 up.

 The old Debian 8 was installed on a single partition
 (`/dev/sda3`, `ext4`). I ever put the Debian 8 netboot
 installation images (downloaded from here) under `/boot/deb/`:

 /boot/deb/initrd.gz
 /boot/deb/vmlinux
 /boot/deb/yaboot
 /boot/deb/yaboot.conf

 So how can I boot the netboot installation images from the
 `boot:` prompt and reinstall Debian 8?

 I tried `boot: hd:3,/boot/deb/vmlinux root=/dev/ram read-only
 initrd=/boot/deb/initrd.gz initrd-size=300` but it did not
 work. (The screenshot taken with my phone.)


 Thanks.



 -clark

You can use the netinst cd as a recovery cd by doing the
following.
   
  
   I forgot to mention that my iBook's CD drive is broken. :)
  
   
1. boot into the cd and at boot type recovery
   
  
   Or can I boot the netboot installation images (under /boot/deb/)
   from the Open Firmware prompt?
 
  Can the machine boot from a USB flash drive? Or over the network?
  One of these approaches might be easier for you.
 
 
 I'm trying to find out how to boot form USB. Boot from network also
 sounds good. I'll investigate how to setup a DHCP and TFTP server on
 my OS X (Yosemite) and how to boot iBook from network.

Here's a guide for Ubuntu, it might still be helpful to you if you can
use dnsmasq and (a normal) tftpd.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/Netboot

Booting from the network is rather easy, and it is a nice thing to have
set up in case you might need it in a situation like this. Both of my
desktop machines at home are set up to boot from each other in case the
root disk fails on one of them, and it is really helpful when I need to
boot from something other than the normal root disk.

Here is a guide on how to boot an iBook G4 from USB:

http://ben-collins.blogspot.no/2010/08/booting-your-ibook-g4-from-usb-stick.html

  Other than that, I'm afraid I can't help you - I know nothing about
  yaboot.
 
 
 I never know about yaboot and Open Firmware when I was using Mac OS X
 on the iBook. They're all mysterious to me. Still learning. :)

Keep going :)

Good luck,

Petter

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Re: Laptops, UEFI, Secure Boot and Debian

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 26 May 2015 16:58:05 +0800
Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 26/05/2015, Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
  On Tue, 26 May 2015 12:23:25 +0800
  Bret Busby bret.bu...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  On 26/05/2015, Stuart Longland stua...@longlandclan.yi.org wrote:
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   On 24/05/15 19:03, Petter Adsen wrote:
   If both Wheezy and Trusty are installed in legacy mode the
   bootloader should see all of them. Dependent on your needs, an
   easier way might be to just spin up a VM or three with the
   systems you use the least. KVM is a wonderful thing.
  
   Better yet, for some of these is LXC.  I run several instances of
   Debian managed by libvirt on a Gentoo host, with much less
   overheads than you get from a VM.
  
   apt-get install virt-manager bridge-utils libvirt-bin lxc
   debootstrap
  
   will probably get you started.  Use debootstrap to create the
   Debian/Ubuntu instances, creating the root filesystems in
   /var/lib/libvirt/images, then use virt-manager to set them up in
   LXC.
  
   https://wiki.debian.org/LXC
   - --
   Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)
  
   I haven't lost my mind...
 ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.
 
 
  I should probably have been more explicit, in my stating of the
  question.
 
  What I wanted to know, was, given that, in Legacy mode, with GRUB,
  both Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Debian 7, are installed on the particular
  computer, and, I can select to boot either one of those, can I
  simply also install Debian 6 LTS on that system, to have it
  concurrently installed with Debian 7, and, to be able, using GRUB,
  to select to boot into one of those operating systems (Ubuntu
  14.04 LTS, Debian 7, or, Debian 6 LTS), without any interference
  from the installations of the other operating systems?
 
  Bret, I answered that above.
 
  If both Wheezy and Trusty are installed in legacy mode the
  bootloader should see all of them.
 
  That means yes, you can.
 
  It has taken me about 18 months, to get Debian 7 installed and
  running, in the state that it now can be run, and so I want to be
  able to get Debian 6 LTS, installed and running, with a minimum
  of fuss.
 
  This should not be a problem, if you have available space on the
  drive.
 
  Petter
 
 
 Yes, you had indicated that it should work, but then, others, like
 shown in the post above, apparently indicated that to install and run
 Debian 6 LTS on a computer that already had Debian 7 installed,
 required the use of virtiual machines, and I have no experience in the
 installation, administration, and use, combination, regarding virtual
 machines.
 
 Many years ago (about 20-25, I think), I used something with a name
 like CP/CMS, or, CM/CMS (from memory), that was, I think, a multi-user
 virtual machine, running on a mainframe computer that simultaneously
 ran (although I did not use it) multi-user CICS/COBOL, but I have no
 experience other than what I had then, as a user, relating to virtual
 machines, so the suggested, apparently required, installation and
 administration and use of virtual machines, in order to install and
 use Debian 6LTS, on a computer that had Debian 7 already installed,
 appeared too complicated for me.

First off, if there is available space on the drive in your laptop (or
another partition that you can delete), installing another version of
Debian should be without problems. I have a couple of different
distributions on my desktop, and installing a new one or installing
over an already existing one has never been a problem, as long as you
set them all up to use GRUB.

Second, virtual machines these days are incredibly easy to set up and
use. Steve Litt posted a link to an introductory article on qemu/KVM
here very recently, I suggest that as a starting point. There is a tool
called Virtual Machine Manager (package: virt-manager) that I would
recommend. It is very easy to use, and uses qemu/KVM. Virtualbox from
Oracle is another alternative, though I prefer KVM.

Using a VM takes a little bit of resources, but would give you the
ability to run another distribution without having to reboot. You can
run it full-screen, so you can use the desktop just as you normally
would. For increased performance, you can set the virtual machine up to
use a partition (or logical volume) just as a regular installation,
instead of using an image file.

It is at least something to take into consideration, as you could then
have as many distributions as you want and have the resources for,
running simultaneously.

Petter

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Backup services and Debian

[Petter Adsen]

I'm still messing with trying to get a good backup routine, and I'm
(slowly) coming to the conclusion that other people are better at it
than I am, and I need a way to store data remotely anyway.

Right now, I'm testing AltDrive on an Ubuntu machine. They have a Java
client (which I'm not too happy about) that seems to work well. I've
upgraded my outgoing bandwidth to be better suited to doing backups
to a remote destination. I haven't tested the client with Debian yet,
as you can only run it on one machine with the service you can try for
free for one month.

One thing I miss is the ability to do backups of NFS-mounted file
systems. Neither do I like the dependence upon Java. Apart from that,
it seems to work quite well. It does version control, handles
encryption locally with keys I manage myself, and I can use as much
space as I need. It wouldn't cost any more than using Dropbox. There is
also a command line interface, apparently, although it seems very basic.

Does anyone here have any experience with this or similar services that
work well with Debian? Do any of them have the ability to do backups of
network file systems, so that I won't need to run the client on several
machines? This could be especially important to me soon, as I'm
considering to buy a small NAS, and I'm unlikely to find a client that
will run locally on that.

That said, I would be really, really happy if the client was open
source. Another thing that would be nice is if they have servers in
Europe, so that I wouldn't need to push the data back and forth across
the Atlantic.

I have found a lng list of backup providers on Wikipedia, but it
would take forever to research each and every one of them to find out
which ones are suited to my purpose and find other people's experiences
with them, which is why I'm asking here, in a hope to narrow it down to
just a few.

Any insights and experiences with this or equivalent services would be
much appreciated. Relevant advice, the same.

Petter

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Re: IP performance question

[Petter Adsen]

On Sun, 24 May 2015 16:01:41 +0300
Reco recovery...@gmail.com wrote:

  Hi.
 
 On Sun, 24 May 2015 13:47:48 +0200
 Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
 
  On Sun, 24 May 2015 13:26:52 +0200
  Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
   Thanks to you, I now get ~880Mbps, which is a lot better. It seems
   increasing the MTU was what had the most effect, so I won't bother
   with TCP window size.
  
  Now, this is a little odd:
  
  petter@monster:/etc$ iperf -i 1 -c fenris -r 
  
  Server listening on TCP port 5001
  TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default)
  
  
  Client connecting to fenris, TCP port 5001
  TCP window size:  280 KByte (default)
  
  [  5] local 192.168.0.105 port 49636 connected with 192.168.0.103
  port 5001 [ ID] Interval   Transfer Bandwidth
  [  5]  0.0- 1.0 sec   104 MBytes   875 Mbits/sec
  [  5]  1.0- 2.0 sec  97.8 MBytes   820 Mbits/sec
  [  5]  2.0- 3.0 sec   104 MBytes   868 Mbits/sec
  [  5]  3.0- 4.0 sec   104 MBytes   876 Mbits/sec
  [  5]  4.0- 5.0 sec   104 MBytes   876 Mbits/sec
  [  5]  5.0- 6.0 sec  83.0 MBytes   696 Mbits/sec
  [  5]  6.0- 7.0 sec   105 MBytes   879 Mbits/sec
  [  5]  7.0- 8.0 sec   104 MBytes   875 Mbits/sec
  [  5]  8.0- 9.0 sec   105 MBytes   884 Mbits/sec
  [  5]  9.0-10.0 sec   104 MBytes   877 Mbits/sec
  [  5]  0.0-10.0 sec  1016 MBytes   852 Mbits/sec
  [  4] local 192.168.0.105 port 5001 connected with 192.168.0.103
  port 34815 [  4]  0.0- 1.0 sec  98.5 MBytes   826 Mbits/sec
  [  4]  1.0- 2.0 sec  98.5 MBytes   826 Mbits/sec
  [  4]  2.0- 3.0 sec  97.4 MBytes   817 Mbits/sec
  [  4]  3.0- 4.0 sec  98.0 MBytes   822 Mbits/sec
  [  4]  4.0- 5.0 sec  98.5 MBytes   827 Mbits/sec
  [  4]  5.0- 6.0 sec  98.1 MBytes   823 Mbits/sec
  [  4]  6.0- 7.0 sec  98.6 MBytes   827 Mbits/sec
  [  4]  7.0- 8.0 sec  98.5 MBytes   826 Mbits/sec
  [  4]  8.0- 9.0 sec  98.5 MBytes   827 Mbits/sec
  [  4]  9.0-10.0 sec  98.5 MBytes   826 Mbits/sec
  [  4]  0.0-10.0 sec   984 MBytes   825 Mbits/sec
  
  I have run it many times, and the results are consistently ~50Mbps
  lower in the other direction. MTU is set to 7152 on both hosts, but
  the window size is back to the default values (212992).
 
 Hmm. A first thought is that you have a different TCP window size on
 client and a server.

Nope. Exactly the same.

 And a second thought is that you probably should check interface
 statistics with ifconfig or 'ip -s link show'. Every packet that is
 not RX or TX means trouble.

Clean. On both hosts.

And even worse, after starting to mess with this, browsing is
_abysmal_. After taking a few speed tests online (speed.io etc),
upload/download and ping times seem good, but the number of connections
per minute are severely limited, hovering at ~700. A friend on the same
network, just down the street and with the same connection gets over
1800. We are connected to the same node. Whether these tests are
trustworthy, though, I have no idea.

I've tried to set everything back to the defaults, as I've documented
every change I've made, but it doesn't seem to help. I'll try to reboot
later today if I can, I have so much context up right now that I really
don't want to lose, but I haven't made any permanent changes yet, so it
should come up the way it was.

I really don't want to lose the extra 150Mbps I gained by increasing
MTU, though, as that would have an impact on my day-to-day workflow.

Petter

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Re: IP performance question

[Petter Adsen]

On Sun, 24 May 2015 15:53:17 +0300
Reco recovery...@gmail.com wrote:

  Hi.
 
 On Sun, 24 May 2015 13:26:52 +0200
 Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
 
   On Sun, 24 May 2015 11:28:36 +0200
   Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
   
 On Sun, 24 May 2015 10:36:39 +0200
 Petter Adsen pet...@synth.no wrote:
 
  I've been trying to improve NFS performance at home, and in
  that process i ran iperf to get an overview of general
  network performance. I have two Jessie hosts connected to a
  dumb switch with Cat-5e. One host uses a Realtek RTL8169
  PCI controller, and the other has an Intel 82583V on the
  motherboard.
  
  iperf maxes out at about 725Mbps. At first I thought maybe
  the switch could be at fault, it's a really cheap one, so I
  connected both hosts to my router instead. Didn't change
  anything, and it had no significant impact on the load on
  the router. I can't try to run iperf on the router
  (OpenWRT), though, as it maxes out the CPU.
  
  Should I be getting more than 725Mbps in the real world?
 
 A quick test in my current environment shows this:
 
 [ ID] Interval   Transfer Bandwidth
 [  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.10 GBytes   941 Mbits/sec
 
 Two hosts, connected via Cisco 8-port unmanaged switch,
 Realtek 8168e on one host, Atheros Attansic L1 on another.
 
 On the other hand, the same test, Realtek 8139e on one side,
 but with lowly Marvell ARM SOC on the other side shows this:
 
 [ ID] Interval   Transfer Bandwidth
 [  3]  0.0-10.0 sec   534 MBytes   448 Mbits/sec
 
 So - you can, definitely, and yes, it depends.

That last one, would that be limited because of CPU power?
   
   That too. You cannot extract that much juice from a single-core
   ARM5. Another possibility is that Marvell is unable to design a
   good chipset even in the case it would be a matter of life and
   death :)
  
  That might be why I'm not using the Marvell adapter :) I remember
  reading somewhere that either Marvell or Realtek were bad, but I
  couldn't remember which one, so I kept using the Realtek one since I
  had obviously switched for a reason :)
 
 Both are actually. Realtek *was* good at least 5 years ago, but since
 then they managed to introduce multiple chips that are managed by the
 same r8169 kernel module. Since then it became a matter of luck.
 Either your NIC works flawlessly without any firmware (mine does), or
 you're getting all kinds of weird glitches.

The Realtek is not at all new, but I have no idea just how old, as it
was given to me by a friend. 5 years sounds about right, though. I do
have the firmware installed, haven't tried without it.

I'm slowly beginning to think about getting another NIC, but what? I've
heard good things about Intel, and the Intel in the other box is
behaving well. Are there any specific chipsets to buy or stay away
from? The one I have is a 82583V.

I haven't bought a separate NIC since the days of the DEC 21140 :)

 Try the same test but use UDP instead of TCP.

Only gives me 1.03Mbits/sec :)
   
   iperf(1) says that by default UDP is capped on 1Mbit. Use -b
   option on client side to set desired bandwidth to 1024m like this:
   
   iperf -c server -u -b 1024M
   
   Note that -b should be the last option. Gives me 812 Mbits/sec
   with the default UDP buffer settings.
  
  Didn't notice that. I get 808, so close to what you get.
 
 Good. The only thing is left to do is to apply that 'udp' flag to NFS
 clients, and you're set. Just don't mix it with 'async' flag, as Bad
 Things ™ can happen if you do so (see nfs(5) for the gory details).

Yes, I always use 'sync' anyways - performance isn't _that_
important, data integrity is :)

   net.core.rmem_max = 4194304
   net.core.wmem_max = 1048576
  
  OK, I've set them on both sides, but it doesn't change the results,
  no matter what values I give iperf with -w.
 
 Now that's weird. I picked those sysctl values from one of NFS
 performance tuning guides. Maybe I misunderstood something.

I'll do a little more searching online, I need to better understand
what I'm messing with in any case. I seriously dislike setting
parameters I don't understand. In my bookcase is a copy of Computer
Networks by Tanenbaum, I guess that's my next stop.

   Of course, for this to work it would require to increase MTU on
   every host between your two, so that's kind of a last resort
   measure.
  
  Well, both hosts are connected to the same switch (or right now, to
  the router, but I could easily put them back on the switch if that
  matters). One of the hosts would not accept a value larger than
  7152, but it did have quite an effect: I now get up to 880Mbps :)
 
 Consider yourself lucky as MTU experiments on server hardware usually
 lead to a long trip to a datacenter :)

I'd be hard pressed to call any of this server hardware or a
datacenter