Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Rodolfo Medina]

Brian  writes:

> On Mon 28 Nov 2016 at 21:44:00 +, Rodolfo Medina wrote:
>
>> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose Gnome as my
>> Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free space, now I want to
>> remove all those Gnome packages that I haven't used any more but am not sure
>> what of them I may delete without perturbing the system.  How can I know?
>> More
>> in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not using and so can
>> be
>> removed?
>
> apt-get purge gnome gnome-shell
> apt-get autoremove
>
> And go from there with 'dpkg -l'.


Thanks.  But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing so will not
perturbing my system?

Rodolfo

broken shutdown on stretch

[Vincent Truchseß]

Since upgrading to stretch my system keeps hanging on shutdown with only
a cursor visible, but no output. tty0 still shows output from the
previous boot.

There is no error-message, but SysRq-Keys still work.




signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: forcefsck inconsistency

[Michael Biebl]

Am 29.11.2016 um 08:40 schrieb Pierre Frenkiel:
>   For example, how do you explain the presence in syslog of 12 times
>   the same 12 lines?

The lines you posted are not the same. They are for different mount points.


-- 
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?



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Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Rodolfo Medina]

Liam O'Toole  writes:

> On 2016-11-28, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
>> Hi all Debian users.
>>
>> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose Gnome as
>> my Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free space, now I
>> want to remove all those Gnome packages that I haven't used any more
>> but am not sure what of them I may delete without perturbing the
>> system.  How can I know?  More in general, is there a way to know what
>> packages one is not using and so can be removed?
>>
>> Thanks for any help,
>>
>> Rodolfo
>>
>>
>
> See the deborphan package. It is useful for trimming unwanted (and
> unneeded) packages from your system.


I ran `deborphan --guess-all' but it seems to me that it wants to remove some
packages that I use a lot, like, e.g., musixtex and pmx.  So it doesn't seem to
be very reliable...

Rodolfo

Re: Index of hardware test utilities available in official Debian repositories

[Richard Owlett]

On 11/28/2016 9:24 PM, Dave Thayer wrote:

On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 06:26:47AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:

I went to https://packages.debian.org/stable/ looking for test utilities.
The closest heading I found was "Utilities"
[https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/].
The only relevant entry I found there was "memtester (4.3.0-3)".
I did not find "memtest86+" which I've used many times [It was listed under
"Similar packages:" on https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/memtester].
I found nothing for testing hard disks or video subsystems .


p.d.o has a pretty good search function, this should point you in the
right direction: 


That search function is not suitable. Back in the days when a 
library's catalog was a physical set of card-files there were 
typically three "file cabinets" - one each for title, author, and 
subject cards. By analogy, p.d.o only has information from "title 
cards". I need a subject index.


Thank you.

Re: Index of hardware test utilities available in official Debian repositories

[Eduardo M KALINOWSKI]

On Ter, 29 Nov 2016, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 11/28/2016 9:24 PM, Dave Thayer wrote:

On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 06:26:47AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:

I went to https://packages.debian.org/stable/ looking for test utilities.
The closest heading I found was "Utilities"
[https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/].
The only relevant entry I found there was "memtester (4.3.0-3)".
I did not find "memtest86+" which I've used many times [It was listed under
"Similar packages:" on https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/memtester].
I found nothing for testing hard disks or video subsystems .


p.d.o has a pretty good search function, this should point you in the
right direction: 


That search function is not suitable. Back in the days when a  
library's catalog was a physical set of card-files there were  
typically three "file cabinets" - one each for title, author, and  
subject cards. By analogy, p.d.o only has information from "title  
cards". I need a subject index.


I don't think there exists exactly what you want. debtags[0] might be  
close, but I'm not sure how is the tagging status going. There might  
be packages with insufficient tags (or even none at all).


[0]https://wiki.debian.org/Debtags
--
Eduardo M KALINOWSKI
edua...@kalinowski.com.br

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Curt]

On 2016-11-29, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
>>
>> See the deborphan package. It is useful for trimming unwanted (and
>> unneeded) packages from your system.
>
> I ran `deborphan --guess-all' but it seems to me that it wants to remove some
> packages that I use a lot, like, e.g., musixtex and pmx.  So it doesn't seem 
> to
> be very reliable...

Well, it was a guess.

I think you're going to be obliged to cherry pick the software you want
to hold on to, e.g. 'apt-mark manuel pmx'.

Or I believe you can perform an 'apt-get install pmx musixtex' etc for a
similar if not identical result.

> Rodolfo
>
>


-- 
“It is enough that the arrows fit exactly in the wounds that they have made.”
Franz Kafka

Re: Index of hardware test utilities available in official Debian repositories

[Richard Owlett]

On 11/29/2016 6:06 AM, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:

On Ter, 29 Nov 2016, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 11/28/2016 9:24 PM, Dave Thayer wrote:

On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 06:26:47AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:

I went to https://packages.debian.org/stable/ looking for
test utilities.
The closest heading I found was "Utilities"
[https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/].
The only relevant entry I found there was "memtester (4.3.0-3)".
I did not find "memtest86+" which I've used many times [It
was listed under
"Similar packages:" on
https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/memtester].
I found nothing for testing hard disks or video subsystems
.


p.d.o has a pretty good search function, this should point you
in the
right direction:



That search function is not suitable. Back in the days when a
library's catalog was a physical set of card-files there were
typically three "file cabinets" - one each for title, author,
and subject cards. By analogy, p.d.o only has information from
"title cards". I need a subject index.


I don't think there exists exactly what you want. debtags[0]
might be close, but I'm not sure how is the tagging status going.
There might be packages with insufficient tags (or even none at
all).

[0]https://wiki.debian.org/Debtags


I just looked at the intro of 
https://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.html .
It appears that its goal is to solve my problem. I see a day of 
interesting reading ahead.


Thank you.

Re: forcefsck inconsistency

[Pierre Frenkiel]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2016, Michael Biebl wrote:


Am 29.11.2016 um 08:40 schrieb Pierre Frenkiel:

  For example, how do you explain the presence in syslog of 12 times
  the same 12 lines?


The lines you posted are not the same. They are for different mount points.


--
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?



 sorry, but missed what I wrote yesterday:
"some sequuences repeated 10 to 12 times", and not "somes lines"!
I thoought it would not be a good idea
to post the actual 144 lines...
cheers,
Pierre Frenkiel

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Curt]

On 2016-11-29, Curt  wrote:
> On 2016-11-29, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
>>>
>>> See the deborphan package. It is useful for trimming unwanted (and
>>> unneeded) packages from your system.
>>
>> I ran `deborphan --guess-all' but it seems to me that it wants to remove some
>> packages that I use a lot, like, e.g., musixtex and pmx.  So it doesn't seem 
>> to
>> be very reliable...
>
> Well, it was a guess.
>
> I think you're going to be obliged to cherry pick the software you want
> to hold on to, e.g. 'apt-mark manuel pmx'.
>
> Or I believe you can perform an 'apt-get install pmx musixtex' etc for a
> similar if not identical result.

Maybe an identical result actually.

>> Rodolfo
>>
>>
>
>


-- 
“It is enough that the arrows fit exactly in the wounds that they have made.”
Franz Kafka

Re: Index of hardware test utilities available in official Debian repositories

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 06:31:48AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:

[...]

> I just looked at the intro of
> https://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.html .
> It appears that its goal is to solve my problem. I see a day of
> interesting reading ahead.

In the meantime... would a full text search on the package descriptions
be a sufficient approximation for your needs? (I know: there is no
counterpart in the file cabinet analogy, except for possibly an inverted
index on the subtitle or something.

Then you could just choose the variant "Descriptions" on the "Search
package directories" part.

Regards
- -- tomás
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=A7V4
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Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[rhkramer]

On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 04:11:37 AM Rodolfo Medina wrote:
> Thanks.  But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing so will
> not perturbing my system?

From the peanut gallery--I don't think you can--I mean, very little in life is 
sure... (and, ime, computer software is low on any ordered list of sure things 
;-)

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Rodolfo Medina]

Curt  writes:

> On 2016-11-29, Curt  wrote:
>> On 2016-11-29, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:

 See the deborphan package. It is useful for trimming unwanted (and
 unneeded) packages from your system.
>>>
>>> I ran `deborphan --guess-all' but it seems to me that it wants to remove
>>> some packages that I use a lot, like, e.g., musixtex and pmx.  So it
>>> doesn't seem to be very reliable...
>>
>> Well, it was a guess.
>>
>> I think you're going to be obliged to cherry pick the software you want
>> to hold on to, e.g. 'apt-mark manuel pmx'.
>>
>> Or I believe you can perform an 'apt-get install pmx musixtex' etc for a
>> similar if not identical result.
>
> Maybe an identical result actually.


Both show that the package is already installed.  What do you mean?

Rodolfo

Re: Index of hardware test utilities available in official Debian repositories

[Verde Denim]

On 11/29/2016 7:31 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 11/29/2016 6:06 AM, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:

On Ter, 29 Nov 2016, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 11/28/2016 9:24 PM, Dave Thayer wrote:

On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 06:26:47AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:

I went to https://packages.debian.org/stable/ looking for
test utilities.
The closest heading I found was "Utilities"
[https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/].
The only relevant entry I found there was "memtester (4.3.0-3)".
I did not find "memtest86+" which I've used many times [It
was listed under
"Similar packages:" on
https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/memtester].
I found nothing for testing hard disks or video subsystems
.


p.d.o has a pretty good search function, this should point you
in the
right direction:



That search function is not suitable. Back in the days when a
library's catalog was a physical set of card-files there were
typically three "file cabinets" - one each for title, author,
and subject cards. By analogy, p.d.o only has information from
"title cards". I need a subject index.


I don't think there exists exactly what you want. debtags[0]
might be close, but I'm not sure how is the tagging status going.
There might be packages with insufficient tags (or even none at
all).

[0]https://wiki.debian.org/Debtags


I just looked at the intro of 
https://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.html .
It appears that its goal is to solve my problem. I see a day of 
interesting reading ahead.


Thank you.


I'm afraid the days of the published OS document containing the 
permutated index are long gone.


---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[rhkramer]

On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 08:02:48 AM rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 04:11:37 AM Rodolfo Medina wrote:
> > Thanks.  But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing so
> > will not perturbing my system?
> 
> From the peanut gallery--I don't think you can--I mean, very little in life
> is sure... (and, ime, computer software is low on any ordered list of sure
> things ;-)

Oh, what I meant to add is:

What I would do, is delete all of Gnome, and then see what might be missing, 
and add those things back as I find them missing.

suggested / recommended NAS boxes to run Debian?

[Daniel Pocock]

There are many home and small office NAS boxes with built-in drive
arrays and gigabit (or faster) ethernet.  Quite a few are fanless too.

The wiki already has some details about the QNAP[1] and Seagate[2]
devices that can run Debian.

If you were buying a new one this week (Christmas present perhaps?),
which would you choose and why?  Or is there anything coming in 2017 you
would prefer to wait for?

My own personal preference would be a fanless device with the
possibility of having 5 or more disk bays either internal or through an
expansion chassis.

Regards,

Daniel


1. https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/QNAP
2. https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Seagate/NAS

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Rodolfo Medina]

Rodolfo Medina  writes:

> Curt  writes:
>
>> On 2016-11-29, Curt  wrote:
>>> On 2016-11-29, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
>
> See the deborphan package. It is useful for trimming unwanted (and
> unneeded) packages from your system.

 I ran `deborphan --guess-all' but it seems to me that it wants to remove
 some packages that I use a lot, like, e.g., musixtex and pmx.  So it
 doesn't seem to be very reliable...
>>>
>>> Well, it was a guess.
>>>
>>> I think you're going to be obliged to cherry pick the software you want
>>> to hold on to, e.g. 'apt-mark manuel pmx'.
>>>
>>> Or I believe you can perform an 'apt-get install pmx musixtex' etc for a
>>> similar if not identical result.
>>
>> Maybe an identical result actually.
>
>
> Both show that the package is already installed.  What do you mean?


Mmmm...  I begin to understand...

Rodolfo

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Rodolfo Medina]

rhkra...@gmail.com writes:

> On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 08:02:48 AM rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 04:11:37 AM Rodolfo Medina wrote:
>> > Thanks.  But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing so
>> > will not perturbing my system?
>> 
>> From the peanut gallery--I don't think you can--I mean, very little in life
>> is sure... (and, ime, computer software is low on any ordered list of sure
>> things ;-)
>
> Oh, what I meant to add is:
>
> What I would do, is delete all of Gnome, and then see what might be missing, 
> and add those things back as I find them missing.


Yes, thanks, I was now thinking of the problem more in general: remove all
those packages from my system that are useless now so to free space on disk...
It seems that `apt-mark' could be useful to that purpose...

Rodolfo

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Rodolfo Medina]

Rodolfo Medina  writes:

> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose Gnome as my
> Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free space, now I want to
> remove all those Gnome packages that I haven't used any more but am not sure
> what of them I may delete without perturbing the system.  How can I know?
> More in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not using and so
> can be removed?


As far as I understand up to now, from you listers' kind replies, I could
safely remove all those packages that are at the same time marked as
automatically installed *and* orphans.  Is that the case?  If so, what tool can
give me those information?

Thanks, cheers,

Rodolfo

Re: Index of hardware test utilities available in official Debian repositories

[Lisi Reisz]

On Tuesday 29 November 2016 12:51:52 to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 06:31:48AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > I just looked at the intro of
> > https://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.html .
> > It appears that its goal is to solve my problem. I see a day of
> > interesting reading ahead.
>
> In the meantime... would a full text search on the package descriptions
> be a sufficient approximation for your needs? (I know: there is no
> counterpart in the file cabinet analogy, except for possibly an inverted
> index on the subtitle or something.
>
> Then you could just choose the variant "Descriptions" on the "Search
> package directories" part.

e.g.
https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=default§ion=all&arch=any&searchon=all&keywords=hardware+test

You could play around with the search terms, and there are other options 
besides description and package name.

Lisi
>
> Regards
> - -- tomás
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAlg9eegACgkQBcgs9XrR2kbEDQCeKEqnoi0EvRhcmc00K+wcYaAF
> f5sAn3Ltu+VVnIsn3LSnFnu1pDYE4wUj
> =A7V4
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: Index of hardware test utilities available in official Debian repositories

[Richard Owlett]

On 11/29/2016 6:51 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 06:31:48AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:

[...]


I just looked at the intro of
https://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.html .
It appears that its goal is to solve my problem. I see a day of
interesting reading ahead.


In the meantime... would a full text search on the package descriptions
be a sufficient approximation for your needs? (I know: there is no
counterpart in the file cabinet analogy, except for possibly an inverted
index on the subtitle or something.

Then you could just choose the variant "Descriptions" on the "Search
package directories" part.



If you are reffering to searches such as
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=memory+test&searchon=all&suite=stable§ion=all 
. Doesn't give good results.


That one gives equal weight to:
Package memtester
jessie (stable) (utils): Utility for testing the memory 
subsystem

Package brainparty
jessie (stable) (games): 36 puzzle games for all the family
Package libdevel-cycle-perl
jessie (stable) (perl): Perl module to detect memory cycles 
in Perl objects


;<

Re: Index of hardware test utilities available in official Debian repositories

[Richard Owlett]

On 11/29/2016 7:07 AM, Verde Denim wrote:



On 11/29/2016 7:31 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 11/29/2016 6:06 AM, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:

On Ter, 29 Nov 2016, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 11/28/2016 9:24 PM, Dave Thayer wrote:

On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 06:26:47AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:

I went to https://packages.debian.org/stable/ looking for
test utilities.
The closest heading I found was "Utilities"
[https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/].
The only relevant entry I found there was "memtester
(4.3.0-3)".
I did not find "memtest86+" which I've used many times [It
was listed under
"Similar packages:" on
https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/memtester].
I found nothing for testing hard disks or video subsystems
.


p.d.o has a pretty good search function, this should point you
in the
right direction:



That search function is not suitable. Back in the days when a
library's catalog was a physical set of card-files there were
typically three "file cabinets" - one each for title, author,
and subject cards. By analogy, p.d.o only has information from
"title cards". I need a subject index.


I don't think there exists exactly what you want. debtags[0]
might be close, but I'm not sure how is the tagging status going.
There might be packages with insufficient tags (or even none at
all).

[0]https://wiki.debian.org/Debtags


I just looked at the intro of
https://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.html .
It appears that its goal is to solve my problem. I see a day of
interesting reading ahead.

Thank you.



I'm afraid the days of the published OS document containing the
permutated index are long gone.



???
Are you saying that Debtags is not a functional/functioning system?

Re: Index of hardware test utilities available in official Debian repositories

[rhkramer]

On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 08:07:47 AM Verde Denim wrote:
> On 11/29/2016 7:31 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > I just looked at the intro of
> > https://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.html .
> > It appears that its goal is to solve my problem. I see a day of
> > interesting reading ahead.
> > 
> > Thank you.
> 
> I'm afraid the days of the published OS document containing the
> permutated index are long gone.

From this reply, I guessed that debtags was a dead project (the page referred 
to apparently orignated in 2005, iiuc).

But, I dug a little deeper and found the following, which has a copyright of 
2011-2013, and may be fairly useful.

I went to:

 https://debtags.debian.org/search/

and, for kicks, queried on "diagnostic" and got 92 hits.

The page / project appears to still allow people to add new tags, although I 
didn't try that.

Let me (us) know how you make out if you try it...

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Patrick Bartek]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2016 09:11:37 + Rodolfo Medina
 wrote:

> Brian  writes:
> 
> > On Mon 28 Nov 2016 at 21:44:00 +, Rodolfo Medina wrote:
> >
> >> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose
> >> Gnome as my Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free
> >> space, now I want to remove all those Gnome packages that I
> >> haven't used any more but am not sure what of them I may delete
> >> without perturbing the system.  How can I know? More
> >> in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not using
> >> and so can be
> >> removed?
> >
> > apt-get purge gnome gnome-shell
> > apt-get autoremove
> >
> > And go from there with 'dpkg -l'.
> 
> 
> Thanks.  But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing
> so will not perturbing my system?

A few years ago, I attempted to entirely remove GNOME from my system.
I had switched to the window manager Openbox and no longer needed GNOME
and all its parts taking up valuble hard drive space. It proved
impossible (or impractical) to do. GNOME lists OS parts among
others, lots of others, as dependencies.  Most of its utilities do the
same. GNOME is quite invasive.  So, a general "remove" or "purge"
gnome, etc. would end up removing most of the OS rendering it useless.
Even trying to uninstall its utilities and apps would result in similar
situation, a broken system

To make a long story short, I eventually ended up reinstalling the OS
without any desktop environment, terminal only, then adding X, the
window manager, etc. It was the only easy way I found to be totally
GNOMEless.

Good luck

B

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Greg Wooledge]

In the days of yore, when GNOME was just version 2 point something,
it used to be possible to rip out (most of) GNOME with a simple apt-get
remove libgnome2-common.  This would leave a few things lying around,
but not enough for most people to worry about.

I have no idea how to do the analogous operation with GNOME 3.x.

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Rodolfo Medina]

Patrick Bartek  writes:

> On Tue, 29 Nov 2016 09:11:37 + Rodolfo Medina
>  wrote:
>
>> Brian  writes:
>> 
>> > On Mon 28 Nov 2016 at 21:44:00 +, Rodolfo Medina wrote:
>> >
>> >> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose
>> >> Gnome as my Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free
>> >> space, now I want to remove all those Gnome packages that I
>> >> haven't used any more but am not sure what of them I may delete
>> >> without perturbing the system.  How can I know? More
>> >> in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not using
>> >> and so can be
>> >> removed?
>> >
>> > apt-get purge gnome gnome-shell
>> > apt-get autoremove
>> >
>> > And go from there with 'dpkg -l'.
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks.  But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing
>> so will not perturbing my system?
>
> A few years ago, I attempted to entirely remove GNOME from my system.
> I had switched to the window manager Openbox and no longer needed GNOME
> and all its parts taking up valuble hard drive space. It proved
> impossible (or impractical) to do. GNOME lists OS parts among
> others, lots of others, as dependencies.  Most of its utilities do the
> same. GNOME is quite invasive.  So, a general "remove" or "purge"
> gnome, etc. would end up removing most of the OS rendering it useless.
> Even trying to uninstall its utilities and apps would result in similar
> situation, a broken system
>
> To make a long story short, I eventually ended up reinstalling the OS
> without any desktop environment, terminal only, then adding X, the
> window manager, etc. It was the only easy way I found to be totally
> GNOMEless.


I wonder if it's possible to provide Debian a set A of packages and say:
`please install these and only these and remove all the other packages present
on the disk except the ones from which some of A depends.'  This would be
equivalent of reinstalling everything as reported by Patrick.  Do you think it
would be possible?

Rodolfo

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Darac Marjal]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 04:12:52PM +, Rodolfo Medina wrote:

Patrick Bartek  writes:


On Tue, 29 Nov 2016 09:11:37 + Rodolfo Medina
 wrote:


Brian  writes:

> On Mon 28 Nov 2016 at 21:44:00 +, Rodolfo Medina wrote:
>
>> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose
>> Gnome as my Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free
>> space, now I want to remove all those Gnome packages that I
>> haven't used any more but am not sure what of them I may delete
>> without perturbing the system.  How can I know? More
>> in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not using
>> and so can be
>> removed?
>
> apt-get purge gnome gnome-shell
> apt-get autoremove
>
> And go from there with 'dpkg -l'.


Thanks.  But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing
so will not perturbing my system?


A few years ago, I attempted to entirely remove GNOME from my system.
I had switched to the window manager Openbox and no longer needed GNOME
and all its parts taking up valuble hard drive space. It proved
impossible (or impractical) to do. GNOME lists OS parts among
others, lots of others, as dependencies.  Most of its utilities do the
same. GNOME is quite invasive.  So, a general "remove" or "purge"
gnome, etc. would end up removing most of the OS rendering it useless.
Even trying to uninstall its utilities and apps would result in similar
situation, a broken system

To make a long story short, I eventually ended up reinstalling the OS
without any desktop environment, terminal only, then adding X, the
window manager, etc. It was the only easy way I found to be totally
GNOMEless.



I wonder if it's possible to provide Debian a set A of packages and say:
`please install these and only these and remove all the other packages present
on the disk except the ones from which some of A depends.'  This would be
equivalent of reinstalling everything as reported by Patrick.  Do you think it
would be possible?


The package "equivs" seems destined for this task. equivs can create 
"trivial" debian packages which, typically, only contain dependency 
information. So you could, for example, create a package which depends 
on evolution, libreoffice and gedit. You install this new package and 
attempt to uninstall 'gnome'. apt should then, in theory, say "all these 
parts of gnome are no longer needed (because 'gnome' is being 
uninstalled) EXCEPT for evolution, libreoffice and gedit, which are 
still needed by $newpackage, so I can't uninstall those".


You just have to be careful that apt doesn't decide that "the easiest 
way to solve this is to also remove $newpackage", but you might be able 
to mark the package as essential, which SHOULD trump everything.




Rodolfo



--
For more information, please reread.

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Liam O'Toole]

On 2016-11-29, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
> Liam O'Toole  writes:
>
>> On 2016-11-28, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
>>> Hi all Debian users.
>>>
>>> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose Gnome
>>> as my Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free space,
>>> now I want to remove all those Gnome packages that I haven't used
>>> any more but am not sure what of them I may delete without
>>> perturbing the system.  How can I know?  More in general, is there a
>>> way to know what packages one is not using and so can be removed?
>>>
>>> Thanks for any help,
>>>
>>> Rodolfo
>>>
>>>
>>
>> See the deborphan package. It is useful for trimming unwanted (and
>> unneeded) packages from your system.
>
>
> I ran `deborphan --guess-all' but it seems to me that it wants to
> remove some packages that I use a lot, like, e.g., musixtex and pmx.
> So it doesn't seem to be very reliable...
>
> Rodolfo

The deborphan command identifies those packages which other packages do
not require. It doesn't "know" which packages you use. The
identification of unwanted packages among those listed by deborphan is
done by you.

-- 

Liam

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Rodolfo Medina]

Liam O'Toole  writes:

> On 2016-11-29, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
>> Liam O'Toole  writes:
>>
>>> On 2016-11-28, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
 Hi all Debian users.

 When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose Gnome
 as my Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free space,
 now I want to remove all those Gnome packages that I haven't used
 any more but am not sure what of them I may delete without
 perturbing the system.  How can I know?  More in general, is there a
 way to know what packages one is not using and so can be removed?

 Thanks for any help,

 Rodolfo


>>>
>>> See the deborphan package. It is useful for trimming unwanted (and
>>> unneeded) packages from your system.
>>
>>
>> I ran `deborphan --guess-all' but it seems to me that it wants to
>> remove some packages that I use a lot, like, e.g., musixtex and pmx.
>> So it doesn't seem to be very reliable...
>>
>> Rodolfo
>
> The deborphan command identifies those packages which other packages do
> not require. It doesn't "know" which packages you use. The
> identification of unwanted packages among those listed by deborphan is
> done by you.


Then deborphan can't be of help for my problem...

Rodolfo

Re: Index of hardware test utilities available in official Debian repositories

[Joe]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2016 06:02:09 -0600
Richard Owlett  wrote:


> That search function is not suitable. Back in the days when a 
> library's catalog was a physical set of card-files there were 
> typically three "file cabinets" - one each for title, author, and 
> subject cards. By analogy, p.d.o only has information from "title 
> cards". I need a subject index.
> 

Try 'hardware' and 'test' in the package tool search of your choice.
There's a lot of hardware-specific stuff, and some irrelevant stuff,
but it should pick up the general hardware benchmark and test tools.

The Xapian plug-in for Synaptic, if you have it, seems to work well.

-- 
Joe

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Joe]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2016 16:12:52 +
Rodolfo Medina  wrote:

> Patrick Bartek  writes:
> 
> > On Tue, 29 Nov 2016 09:11:37 + Rodolfo Medina
> >  wrote:
> >  
> >> Brian  writes:
> >>   
> >> > On Mon 28 Nov 2016 at 21:44:00 +, Rodolfo Medina wrote:
> >> >  
> >> >> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose
> >> >> Gnome as my Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To
> >> >> free space, now I want to remove all those Gnome packages that I
> >> >> haven't used any more but am not sure what of them I may delete
> >> >> without perturbing the system.  How can I know? More
> >> >> in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not
> >> >> using and so can be
> >> >> removed?  
> >> >
> >> > apt-get purge gnome gnome-shell
> >> > apt-get autoremove
> >> >
> >> > And go from there with 'dpkg -l'.  
> >> 
> >> 
> >> Thanks.  But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing
> >> so will not perturbing my system?  
> >
> > A few years ago, I attempted to entirely remove GNOME from my
> > system. I had switched to the window manager Openbox and no longer
> > needed GNOME and all its parts taking up valuble hard drive space.
> > It proved impossible (or impractical) to do. GNOME lists OS parts
> > among others, lots of others, as dependencies.  Most of its
> > utilities do the same. GNOME is quite invasive.  So, a general
> > "remove" or "purge" gnome, etc. would end up removing most of the
> > OS rendering it useless. Even trying to uninstall its utilities and
> > apps would result in similar situation, a broken system
> >
> > To make a long story short, I eventually ended up reinstalling the
> > OS without any desktop environment, terminal only, then adding X,
> > the window manager, etc. It was the only easy way I found to be
> > totally GNOMEless.  
> 
> 
> I wonder if it's possible to provide Debian a set A of packages and
> say: `please install these and only these and remove all the other
> packages present on the disk except the ones from which some of A
> depends.'  This would be equivalent of reinstalling everything as
> reported by Patrick.  Do you think it would be possible?
> 
Possible, but probably not off the shelf, or someone would have
suggested it by now.

As I said to begin my first reply, the only way to do a proper job is
to start again from scratch, with a minimal text system, no DE, then
add the GUI software of your choice, and your applications. 

And you probably want sudo, which as far as I know, is still not
installed by default.

-- 
Joe

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Brian]

On Tue 29 Nov 2016 at 09:11:37 +, Rodolfo Medina wrote:

> Brian  writes:
> 
> > On Mon 28 Nov 2016 at 21:44:00 +, Rodolfo Medina wrote:
> >
> >> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose Gnome as my
> >> Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free space, now I want to
> >> remove all those Gnome packages that I haven't used any more but am not 
> >> sure
> >> what of them I may delete without perturbing the system.  How can I know?
> >> More
> >> in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not using and so 
> >> can
> >> be
> >> removed?
> >
> > apt-get purge gnome gnome-shell
> > apt-get autoremove
> >
> > And go from there with 'dpkg -l'.
> 
> 
> Thanks.  But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing so will 
> not
> perturbing my system?

Impossible to answer because we do not know what you mean by "all those
Gnome packages that I haven't used any more". For example, is pulseaudio
a gnome package? Or dosfstools? Both are installed when GNOME is
installed.

If the technique above removes anything of value to you make a note of
it and reinstall it later to get an unperturbed system.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Search Your Neighborhood NOW oH

[Toolz C]

I know I'm sorry I've just been busy I'm in the process of finding a place
I was planning on coming by sometime today though to see my little man
On Nov 28, 2016 8:55 AM,  wrote:

>
>
> **Dear_{Tulie}**
>
> You Are Receiving This Email Because There May Be A Risk *Of Sex Offender*
> Activity
> In
> Your Aera.
>
> Here Is A Link To A Great Website Called Kids Live Safe.
>
>
> 
> The Website Show You All The Offenders That Live Nearby. You Can Do A Quick
> Search
> .
>
>
>
> It Only Takes A Few Seconds
>
> Not Only Can You See Who They Are And Where They Live, You Also Get Email
> Alerts When A
> *New Sex Offender*
> 
> Moves Close To Your Home.
>
> It Also Has A Brunch Of Tools To Help Keep Our Kids Safe.
>
> Search Your Neighborhood NOW
> 
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ASZDEFGEFRGBHNFRGTBHNJFGHN
>
>

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Brian]

On Tue 29 Nov 2016 at 17:45:39 +, Joe wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Nov 2016 16:12:52 +
> Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
> 
> > Patrick Bartek  writes:
> > 
> > > On Tue, 29 Nov 2016 09:11:37 + Rodolfo Medina
> > >  wrote:
> > >  
> > >> Brian  writes:
> > >>   
> > >> > On Mon 28 Nov 2016 at 21:44:00 +, Rodolfo Medina wrote:
> > >> >  
> > >> >> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose
> > >> >> Gnome as my Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To
> > >> >> free space, now I want to remove all those Gnome packages that I
> > >> >> haven't used any more but am not sure what of them I may delete
> > >> >> without perturbing the system.  How can I know? More
> > >> >> in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not
> > >> >> using and so can be
> > >> >> removed?  
> > >> >
> > >> > apt-get purge gnome gnome-shell
> > >> > apt-get autoremove
> > >> >
> > >> > And go from there with 'dpkg -l'.  
> > >> 
> > >> 
> > >> Thanks.  But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing
> > >> so will not perturbing my system?  
> > >
> > > A few years ago, I attempted to entirely remove GNOME from my
> > > system. I had switched to the window manager Openbox and no longer
> > > needed GNOME and all its parts taking up valuble hard drive space.
> > > It proved impossible (or impractical) to do. GNOME lists OS parts
> > > among others, lots of others, as dependencies.  Most of its
> > > utilities do the same. GNOME is quite invasive.  So, a general
> > > "remove" or "purge" gnome, etc. would end up removing most of the
> > > OS rendering it useless. Even trying to uninstall its utilities and
> > > apps would result in similar situation, a broken system
> > >
> > > To make a long story short, I eventually ended up reinstalling the
> > > OS without any desktop environment, terminal only, then adding X,
> > > the window manager, etc. It was the only easy way I found to be
> > > totally GNOMEless.  
> > 
> > 
> > I wonder if it's possible to provide Debian a set A of packages and
> > say: `please install these and only these and remove all the other
> > packages present on the disk except the ones from which some of A
> > depends.'  This would be equivalent of reinstalling everything as
> > reported by Patrick.  Do you think it would be possible?
> > 
> Possible, but probably not off the shelf, or someone would have
> suggested it by now.

Is "remove all the other packages present on the disk except the ones from 
which some of A
depends" a serious desire? That would remove the kernel.

> As I said to begin my first reply, the only way to do a proper job is
> to start again from scratch, with a minimal text system, no DE, then
> add the GUI software of your choice, and your applications. 

I agree with the sentiment and the technical simplicity here. However,
to get to the same state from a running system isn't too hard and quite
satisfying.

apt-get purge gnome gnome-*
apt-get --purge autoremove
apt-ge purge $(deborphan)

The final two commands being repeated as often as necessary.

'dpkg -l' will tell you what else you need to remove to get very close
to a d-i basic install.

Tested? Of course.

-- 
Brian.



 
> And you probably want sudo, which as far as I know, is still not
> installed by default.
> 
> -- 
> Joe
> 

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Liam O'Toole]

On 2016-11-29, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
> Liam O'Toole  writes:
>
>> On 2016-11-29, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
>>> Liam O'Toole  writes:
>>>
 On 2016-11-28, Rodolfo Medina  wrote:
> Hi all Debian users.
>
> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose Gnome
> as my Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free space,
> now I want to remove all those Gnome packages that I haven't used
> any more but am not sure what of them I may delete without
> perturbing the system.  How can I know?  More in general, is there a
> way to know what packages one is not using and so can be removed?
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
> Rodolfo
>
>

 See the deborphan package. It is useful for trimming unwanted (and
 unneeded) packages from your system.
>>>
>>>
>>> I ran `deborphan --guess-all' but it seems to me that it wants to
>>> remove some packages that I use a lot, like, e.g., musixtex and pmx.
>>> So it doesn't seem to be very reliable...
>>>
>>> Rodolfo
>>
>> The deborphan command identifies those packages which other packages do
>> not require. It doesn't "know" which packages you use. The
>> identification of unwanted packages among those listed by deborphan is
>> done by you.
>
>
> Then deborphan can't be of help for my problem...
>
> Rodolfo

You can use it to identify those GNOME packages which can be safely
removed, which I thought was the point of your original post. Running
deborphan again will reveal another layer of GNOME packages which have
become candidates for removal. You can do the whole thing interactively
by running 'orphaner -a' as root.

-- 

Liam

Re: Re: debian on lenovo carbon thinkpad 4th generation confirmation report

[iqwue Wabv]

Richard,

I didn't know that kernels > 4.1 are available as jessie-backports. Thanks.
Regards, Karol

Re: broken shutdown on stretch

[David Jardine]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 11:10:11AM +0100, Vincent Truchseß wrote:
> Since upgrading to stretch my system keeps hanging on shutdown with only
> a cursor visible, but no output. tty0 still shows output from the
> previous boot.
> 
> There is no error-message, but SysRq-Keys still work.
> 
>

Faced with that problem, I switched to using the 'poweroff' command
instead of 'halt' to shut the computer down.  Have you tried it?

David

gdm3 greeter banner question

[Malmberg, Breen]

I am attempting to display a lengthy text warning banner, in the GUI, before 
the user logs in, while also having the display-user-list=false option set.


How do I do this? When you set the display-user-list=false option it appears to 
also disable the warning banner text display area, at login.


I have also attempted to change the login background (wallpaper?), but as far 
as I can determine, no such option exists in gdm3 and the only thing you can 
change is the login logo, which is just a tiny little thing on the login screen 
and inadequate for my purposes.

I am using Debian 8 (jessie)


Please advise

Re: debian on lenovo carbon thinkpad 4th generation confirmation report

[Lisi Reisz]

On Tuesday 29 November 2016 20:36:29 iqwue Wabv wrote:
> Richard,
>
> I didn't know that kernels > 4.1 are available as jessie-backports. Thanks.
> Regards, Karol

Only 4.7.  The others appear not to be available any more.

Lisi

Re: router solutions based on Debian?

[J Mo]

Please excuse my late reply.

I am network engineer (Cisco and Juniper big routers/switches) and I 
recently did a review of about eight router-type Linux/BSD distros, all 
run under KVM on a virtual test network. I also recently started 
contributing some code to LEDE (OpenWRT). I do router-y/switch-y kinds 
of things on a daily basis.


I found that almost all of these router distros pretty much suck. The 
web UIs were not functional/practical and they often had web UIs that 
looked like they were straight out of the 90s. I'm not talking about 
minimalism -- I'm talking about bad design and poor judgement.


PFsense was overwhelmingly the best and was the only one that I had a 
positive opinion on or would otherwise consider using in a business 
environment. It's FreeBSD based.


Untangle is Debian based but it's basically for-profit garbage that has 
confused a router with an iPhone.


Endian was interesting but also locks you out of some features unless 
you buy a support contract. Might be as good as PFsense some day if they 
keep trying, but I doubt it. Also Debian based I think.


IPfire, IPcop, and Shorewall all looked like they ten years old and 
there was obvious missing functionality in the web UI. They looked more 
like weekend projects than anything professional like PFsense.


When it comes to router-web-UI distros, the only thing I could recommend 
was was PFSense. Everything else was disappointing.


That being said, a regular old Debian box would make a fine router if 
you are a command-line oriented person. There is plenty of ITX-sized and 
smaller hardware out there to meet your needs. This seems to be the way 
you were headed anyhow.


It should be noted that Ubiquiti firewall/routers are Debian based and 
drop you right into a bash shell. They are worth looking at. Their 
web-UI isn't bad either, but it doesn't have feature-parity with command 
line yet (maybe never will). I would highly recommend any network 
engineer to pick up their little $50 ERX to play with.


As several people have already mentioned PCEngines boards are awesome 
and I think they even have models that have a SFP for optical.


Good luck! Come back and share what you get and how you feel about it.



On 11/23/2016 06:54 AM, Daniel Pocock wrote:


My ISP is upgrading my connection to gigabit on Friday and I suspect my
current router may struggle with it.

My existing router runs OpenWRT but I've found the firewall and IPsec
setup is a little bit constrained in that environment and it is tempting
to move to a router running a full OS.

I've seen a lot of discussions about making DIY routers running a free
OS like Debian, FreeBSD or OpenBSD and I was tempted to go with
something like that running Shorewall, strongSwan, DHCP and DNS.  Maybe
it will also do wifi or maybe the existing router will be a bridge to wifi.

Can anybody share any comments or links about this topic?

- quiet (fanless), low-power and low cost hardware suitable for Gigabit
routing and maybe use as a NAS too.  It would also be useful to have
fibre support in the router and avoid using a media convertor.

- are there any live builds or other out-of-the-box solutions that
address this use case particularly well?

- any blogs or other articles that provide a good example of how other
people already did this?

One particular concern for me is minimizing the number of components.
I've got a media convertor and fibre transceiver already, but that has
its own plug-pack PSU and those are all extra things that can fail at
some random moment in the future.  Having a self-contained solution
without a bunch of plug-pack PSUs would hopefully be easier to support
and make less clutter.

Regards,

Daniel

It there a way to file a complaint against a package maintainer?

[J Mo]

Hello!

Is there any standard method for filing a complaint against a Debian 
package maintainer?


Unfortunately, a package that is important to me has been picked up by a 
new maintainer after the old one abandoned it.


This new maintainer has caused a lot of problems because they, 
admittedly, don't use the package themselves and don't really understand 
it. The person is a mediocre programmer and has trouble with bash 
scripts. The motives for why this person adopted this package are not clear.


The new maintainer has broken lots of things, mass-closed all old bugs 
without having resolved anything (even bugs that had recent 
comments/updates), and is generally causing a lot of grief for us users 
of the package.


Anyone have any advice?

Re: It there a way to file a complaint against a package maintainer?

[John Hasler]

lea...@debian.org

First, though, you should contact the maintainer and offer to help.
Many Debian packages are maintained by groups.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Manually installed packages (was: Uninstalling Gnome)

[Rodolfo Medina]

Rodolfo Medina  writes:

> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose Gnome as my
> Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free space, now I want to
> remove all those Gnome packages that I haven't used any more but am not sure
> what of them I may delete without perturbing the system.  How can I know?
> More in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not using and so
> can be removed?


If I run `apt-mark showmanual', a list of packages is ouput that are supposed
to have been manually installed on my system but that actually I don't at all
remember ever installing neither do I believe they truly have been nay I'm sure
they haven't...  Any people could explain that?

Thanks, Cheers

Rodolfo

Re: It there a way to file a complaint against a package maintainer?

[Ben Finney]

J Mo  writes:

> This new maintainer has caused a lot of problems because they,
> admittedly, don't use the package themselves and don't really
> understand it.

This is, I think, one of the better reasons to intervene. If there are
willing maintainers among the actual user community for a package, those
people have a somewhat stronger claim to the package maintainer role
than people who are not in the user community of that package.

> Anyone have any advice?

People will naturally care about various things in this matter. Be aware
of the natural tendency for such interactions to escalate, and continue
to instead seek dispassionate discussion of problems.

Keep calm. Always leave space for a graceful response. Seek discussion
and consensus. Be guided by what's best for the user community of that
package, the user community of Debian as a whole, and of software
freedom generally.

-- 
 \ “What's another word for Thesaurus?” —Steven Wright |
  `\   |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney

Re: Manually installed packages (was: Uninstalling Gnome)

[David Wright]

On Tue 29 Nov 2016 at 23:45:51 (+), Rodolfo Medina wrote:
> Rodolfo Medina  writes:
> 
> > When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose Gnome as my
> > Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox.  To free space, now I want to
> > remove all those Gnome packages that I haven't used any more but am not sure
> > what of them I may delete without perturbing the system.  How can I know?
> > More in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not using and 
> > so
> > can be removed?
> 
> 
> If I run `apt-mark showmanual', a list of packages is ouput that are supposed
> to have been manually installed on my system but that actually I don't at all
> remember ever installing neither do I believe they truly have been nay I'm 
> sure
> they haven't...  Any people could explain that?

apt-mark showmanual   gives you the complement of   apt-mark showauto.
The second paragraph of apt-mark's description explains what's meant
by "auto". So "manual" doesn't mean what you appear to assume it does,
that you were involved in manually selecting it for installation. It
just means "not auto".

Cheers,
David.

Re: debian on lenovo carbon thinkpad 4th generation confirmation report

[Mirko Parthey]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 10:59:35PM +, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > I didn't know that kernels > 4.1 are available as jessie-backports. Thanks.
> > Regards, Karol
> 
> Only 4.7.  The others appear not to be available any more.

Older backports are available at http://snapshot.debian.org/.

Mirko

Re: debian on lenovo carbon thinkpad 4th generation confirmation report

[Lisi Reisz]

On Wednesday 30 November 2016 00:50:04 Mirko Parthey wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 10:59:35PM +, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > > I didn't know that kernels > 4.1 are available as jessie-backports.
> > > Thanks. Regards, Karol
> >
> > Only 4.7.  The others appear not to be available any more.
>
> Older backports are available at http://snapshot.debian.org/.
>
> Mirko

Yes, sorry.  I meant not at Jessie Backports.  There are lots of ways of 
acquiring them.

Lisi

Re: Jessie upgrade without systemd [was: Debian *not very good]

[Marc Shapiro]

On 11/26/2016 01:02 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

Note that many things (Gnome, I'm looking at you) *require* systemd
these days: it'll be much more difficult to avoid systemd if you
want a "modern" desktop environment.
That is the exact reason that I am using Mate.  Based on Gnome 2 with no 
systemd requirements.

Re: Uninstalling Gnome

[Seeker]

On 11/29/2016 8:12 AM, Rodolfo Medina wrote:



I wonder if it's possible to provide Debian a set A of packages and say:
`please install these and only these and remove all the other packages present
on the disk except the ones from which some of A depends.'  This would be
equivalent of reinstalling everything as reported by Patrick.  Do you think it
would be possible?

Rodolfo



That's a good way to get into trouble. ;)

The list would typically be created on a computer that is set up the way
you want already using

dpkg --get-selections > package.txt

You can set the install state of all non-essential packages to
'deinstall' with...

dpkg --clear-selections

That's the part that could be trouble if you don't have a good list of
packages to feed back in. What is essential is not necessarily
everything you need to be able to connect to the internet and begin
re-installing things.

If you have your list of packages you can set the install state with

dpkg --set-selections < packages.txt

Synaptic has a way of creating these lists and installing from them,
don't think it cares about the install state of anything not on the
list, also never tried using Synaptic to install from a list that had
package install states other than 'install'.

The list would be in the form of

package package-state

so for example

package1 install
package2 deinstall
package3 hold
etc

Once the install states are set then you would do...

apt-get dselect-upgrade

to perform the installations and removals.

What kind of havoc that would create for aptitude if you try to use it
after doing these things, I don't know. I don't use aptitude.

You could create the list of selections on your current machine and load
it in a text editor and start deleting stuff, after saving an extra copy
somewhere so you can set the selection back the way they were if needed.

Personally I would use Synaptic to remove the stuff you don't want, then
if you still want to use aptitude later, deal with it's issues after the
fact.

Later, Seeker

Re: Manually installed packages (was: Uninstalling Gnome)

[Cindy-Sue Causey]

On 11/29/16, David Wright  wrote:
> On Tue 29 Nov 2016 at 23:45:51 (+), Rodolfo Medina wrote:
>>
>> If I run `apt-mark showmanual', a list of packages is ouput that are
>> supposed
>> to have been manually installed on my system but that actually I don't at
>> all
>> remember ever installing neither do I believe they truly have been nay I'm
>> sure
>> they haven't...  Any people could explain that?
>
> apt-mark showmanual   gives you the complement of   apt-mark showauto.
> The second paragraph of apt-mark's description explains what's meant
> by "auto". So "manual" doesn't mean what you appear to assume it does,
> that you were involved in manually selecting it for installation. It
> just means "not auto".


I just played along here by running apt-mark. I received back a LONG
list that is "fine by me", i.e. nothing to sweat over on my end,
because of how upgrading has been going lately. That "no sweat"
reaction is because David's response brought back to mind that I see
the following sometimes after running "apt-get install" for an already
up-to-date package::

+
libilmbase12 is already the newest version (2.2.0-11).
libilmbase12 set to manually installed.
+

I had to work hard to find something that wasn't on the list apt-mark
had just given me. /var/log/apt/history.log.1 was my friend there.

Everything else that I tried turned out to already be on the apt-mark
generated list. Attempts at "accidentally" installing packages already
on the apt-mark list all simply responded back with the "is already
the newest version" line.

It's tied in. libilmbase12 was NOT in my initial apt-mark showmanual
query response. It IS on that list now.

Cindy :)

-- 
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA

* runs with plastic sporks *

Is this really the way to get your name out? (was: Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo is Looking for Information Technology-related Job Opportunities World Wide)

[David Niklas]

Every so often I see something very much like this on the debian mailing
list.
I want to know, do people really get a job this way?
Is this list really intended for these kinds of emails?

Sincerely,
David

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 15:37:37 + (UTC)
debian-user-digest-requ...@lists.debian.org wrote:
> Dear Sir/Madam,
> 
> My academic and educational qualifications are now reflected in my
> email signature.
> 
> I am an entry level/junior/beginner Information Technology (IT)
> Specialist/Systems Engineer/Linux Server Administrator/Helpdesk
> Support/Computer Technician available for hire anywhere in the
> world!!! Prospective employers, businesses and companies in any part
> of the world please feel free to contact me for my curriculum
> vitae/resume.
> 
> Thank you very much!
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> 

Re: Why? -- "A Modest Proposal"

[David Niklas]

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 17:08:23 + (UTC)
debian-user-digest-requ...@lists.debian.org wrote:
> On Thursday 17 November 2016 14:41:23 Richard Owlett wrote:
> > On 11/16/2016 8:52 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:  
> > > On Wednesday 16 November 2016 14:13:49 Richard Owlett wrote:  
> > >> There exist SOC  projects to encourage/mentor
> > >> fledgling programmers.
> > >> Considering the state of documentation, esp man pages, why no SOD
> > >>  projects for potential tech writers.  
> > >
> > > There is no obvious pay-off for Google - or anyone else with
> > > money.  And it isn't fun.  
> >
> > I don't know how Google internally justifies sponsoring SOC projects.
> > I can see their PR department seeing benefits to their corporate
> > image.
> > Their personnel department may see it as a pool of potential  
> 
> I would think that both these are valid.
> 
> > recruits.
> > I know nothing of the quality of code produced by these projects,
> > nor of its monetary value. None of the SOC projects I've seen
> > mentioned in various fora have been of more than passing interest.  
> 
> Debian and LibreOffice both find Google's SOC useful.  I don't
> specifically know about other projects.
> 
> > As to "fun", one man's purgatory may be another's nirvana {or
> > points between}.  
> 
> No.   The problem here is that the overlap between highly competent
> technical people (who find tech fun) and people who love writing, and
> find writing fun, is so small.  I personally know one, and he is not a
> developer.  Developers love developing.  Writers love writing.  Neither
> regards the other as occupation as fun.
As someone who has his foot in both worlds I think you misunderstand us
both.
Developers need time to develop, writers need time to write. Both need
the motivation to do both.
So, If I want to develop I can't write and visa-versa.
It is also very worthwhile to point out that in order to do either one
must be in the correct state of mind. My coding improves 100% when I have
recently re-read the code and have planned out in my mind the future
events that will take place in the code. Same with a book. It's typically
called "The zone".

> > The intended point of my second paragraph [which obviously wasn't
> > made as nobody commented on it ;] was a sketch of how to attract
> > technically oriented high school students to tech writing.  
But the desire to do anything is a long term yearning. It does not just
pop-up as some would assume. Though i must confess that it seems that
many of the people my age seem to have only the goal of making money in
mind.

> See my paragraph above.  And then there is the educational system which
> here anyway tends to separate the techy from the arty very young.
> >  
> > > You could always make a start.  Have you?  This is, after all, open
> > > source. And the Wiki is, well, a Wiki. ;-)  
> 
> The point I was trying to make, and frequently try to make, is that in
> Open Source you have to say "This needs doing, I must do it."  It is no
> good saying "Someone else must do it."  Someone else invariably won't.
Good point.

> >
> > I don't see myself as having the technical competence to create
> > wiki content that would do more harm than good.
> >
> > I do try to contribute by asking focused questions and when
> > relevant draw on 50+ years of troubleshooting to document how I
> > came to ask a question. Several here question whether I've
> > achieved either.  

When I first started learning Linux every error or warning was horrible
and ambiguous in my mind, this came from my experiences with windowz [1].
By explaining how to cope with these errors and figure out how to trouble
shoot you could be solving an inordinate amount of time and effort, both
for the beginners and this list.
OpenSuse, my first distro, has filters built into it's syslog program to
get rid of all the excess baggage that the programs that it uses throw
out all day long. Think about how much better it would be if people knew
how to fix the problems instead of bit bucketing the messengers.

> You could - some people do - gather all that together and put it in the
> Wiki.
> 
> That in itself doesn't contribute to the pool of documentation, at
> least not directly.  The pool of knowledge, yes, but the pool of
> "documentation", no. I try to answer and help here, but could never
> actually write something technical.  But you (and others) are missing
> my point.  In all voluntary activities, you only get done what someone
> wants to do and enjoys doing.  
> 
> Besides,  many of those doing jobs are totally incompetent.  The
> publicity department (which I think is PAID) of the FSF thinks that
> Africa is a country in Europe-Asia and that it is an evening's outing
> away from the ISLAND of Great Britain.  (She didn't suggest which
> mode(s) of transport she was suggesting I should use.  I don't think
> she knew that GB is an island.  She didn't know that Africa is a
> separate continent, after all.)
> 
> We need education first, Richa

Re: Is this really the way to get your name out?

[Doug]

On 11/29/2016 03:23 PM, David Niklas wrote:

Every so often I see something very much like this on the debian mailing
list.
I want to know, do people really get a job this way?
Is this list really intended for these kinds of emails?

Sincerely,
David

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 15:37:37 + (UTC)
debian-user-digest-requ...@lists.debian.org wrote:

Dear Sir/Madam,

My academic and educational qualifications are now reflected in my
email signature.

I am an entry level/junior/beginner Information Technology (IT)
Specialist/Systems Engineer/Linux Server Administrator/Helpdesk
Support/Computer Technician available for hire anywhere in the
world!!! Prospective employers, businesses and companies in any part
of the world please feel free to contact me for my curriculum
vitae/resume.

Thank you very much!

Yours sincerely,






There is always LinkedIn, but when you're looking for a job, all avenues
are better than just a few. I wouldn't condemn him, altho I must say that
I would not have thought of this path.

--doug

Re: mdadm - two questions

[Andy Smith]

Hi Kamil,

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 01:26:55AM +0100, Kamil Jońca wrote:
> My first plan was somehow migrate to RAID10. I thought that is simply
> "raid0 over some raid1 arrays" so it should be legal to use 2*1TB +
> 2*1GB devices and then extend 2*1G => 2*1TB. But it not work that
> way. All devices in linux mdadm raid10 array must be the same, or I'm
> missing something.

In <87d1hnff79.fsf@alfa.kjonca> you said you were hoping to go from
2*1TB to 4*1TB. What's the "2*1TB + 2*1GB" you mention now?

Yes all your devices will need to be the same size. You've already
been advised of a way to go from RAID-1 to RAID-10¹, so if you
really do have a total of four 1TB drives I can't see why you can't
do that.

Your proposed solution…

> So simplest way in my case is to make second device and assign it as PV
> to VG.

…has the advantage of simplicity, and perhaps that you do not need
to reboot² (assuming hot swap insertion of new drives). But really,
if you have four identical drives that you intend to use for the
same purpose it would really be neater and perhaps more performant
to have them all in one RAID-10, wouldn't it? Data will get striped
across four devices instead of two.

If you really do need to make a separate md array and add it to your
VG, you may want to use RAID-10 on it anyway (md RAID-10 works fine
with less than four devices). It is a little bit faster than RAID-1.

The other thing you could try, if forced to use two PVs, is configure
your LVM to stripe extents across both PVs instead of just
allocating them linearly from one PV or another. That would get you
back a bit of the performance.

Cheers,
Andy

¹ Namely:

  0. Have backups in case one of the new drives encounters an error
 during step (6) below.

  1. Make a four device RAID-10 with two missing devices

  2. Copy your data from your existing RAID-1 to the new (degraded)
 RAID-10

  4. Adjust config to make new RAID-10 the real thing that's used

  5. Reboot to test it all

  6. Take a deep breath and consider that after what you're about to
 do, any kind of error on the two devices running your RAID-10
 will result in you needed to go to your backups from step
 (0).

 Kill your RAID-1 and add its devices to your RAID-10, so
 it's not degraded any more.

  7. Breathe out in relief as your data is now on a redundant array
 again.

² You don't need to reboot to go from RAID-1 to RAID-10 as already
  discussed, either, but I think I'd be a bit nervous of the machine
  not booting correctly after I had switched everything over to
  using the new (temporarily degraded) RAID-10, and so I'd want to
  test the full boot process before consigning my working RAID-1 to
  oblivion.

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting