Re: [DNG] Welcome to wiki.devuan.org!

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2022 at 08:41:22PM -0500, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> Greetings all!
> 
> Did that get your attention? Good . . . :D
> 
> The wiki has been languishing in the doldrums for some time in a rather
> unusable state but it could become a reality if some Wiki Whisperers would
> step up to make it happen.
> 
> If anyone here has experience with Foswiki or other wikis, this is your
> moment to shine!

I gather that upgrading the Foswiki software has effectively disabled it.
Foswiki is vastly complicated.

So.  What is the simplest available free Wiki software?

Desiderata:
* Separation between wiki software and content (so upgrades don't disable it)
* registration of users, with the ability for administrators to approve or ban 
them.
* roll back mistakes and delete spam
* handle mathematical notation insamuch as the the browser can.
* Unicode

And it would be nice to be able to make it distributed. Though that's probably 
not required as long as it remains low-volumt.

-- hendrik

> 
> Once it is in a usable state, we will need a team of contributors to begin
> populating pages with content sourced from the forum, mailing lists, IRC,
> personal experience etc.
> 
> Devuan users . . . the ball is squarely in your court. Will Devuan have a
> wiki? It's up to YOU, !
> 
> Discussion here and on dev1galaxy.org and #devuan-wiki.
> 
> Now . . . . just where are those Wiki Whisperers . . .   :D
> 
> For the love of Devuan . . . just DO IT!
> 
> golinux
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Re: [DNG] meta: list

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Sep 01, 2022 at 11:30:43AM +1000, onefang wrote:
> 
> The problem with PTRs is that I run several domains from the one IP
> address, and PTR can only point to one of those.  It costs money to get
> more IPs, my pension is barely coping with the recent cost of living
> increases.

If IP's are expensive, would it help to switch to IPv6?

-- hendrik

kk
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Re: [DNG] Another problem you won't have without Systemd (or separate oomd)

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2022 at 05:31:58PM +0200, Didier Kryn wrote:
> Le 20/08/2022 à 10:20, Martin Steigerwald a écrit :
> > oomd may make sense in certain cloud based workloads, maybe, just maybe.
> > However… on a desktop? You are frigging kidding me, aren't you?
> 
>     Well, it can happen to anybody to write an application which leaks
> memory. The oom killer is automatically launched by the kernel when memory
> pressure is too high, and it is a necessity. The problem here is with
> systemd's oom killer, and/or with Gnome.

Just wondering ... Is there a way to tell the oom killer which processes to 
preferentially kill?  And which ones are worth keeping around?

It would have to be done ahead of time, of course, because once memory is so 
overextended that the oom killer is needed, it's often futile to try to enter 
commands.

Is there a way to keep the response on the system console (on my machine that's 
the ctl-alt-F1 session) up so I can choose which errant process to kill and 
pre-empt oom's choice?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Wifi dropping ramdomly

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2022 at 06:26:20AM -0500, Jim Murphy via Dng wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> My wifi connection drops randomly. It can sometimes run for days.
> Other times it may drop within hours of a reboot. There seems to be
> no pattern to when.

This is likely not your problem, but I've found that wifi shuts down on one of 
the older and slower local wifi frequencies whenever my microwave oven is in 
use.

-- hendrik

> Initially rebooting seemed to be the only way to
> get the network back. Under xfce4 disabling the wifi and/or network,
> then re-enabling them had no effect. After many google searches
> I finally found at:
> 
> https://askubuntu.com/questions/26054/how-to-restart-wifi-interface-without-rebooting-it-drops-connection
> 
> I now have the alias(zsh):
> 
> alias reload_network_module='sudo modprobe -r iwldvm && sudo modprobe
> iwldvm'
> 
> to re-enable the wifi. So far this has restored the network connection
> without having to reboot. Strange as it may seem, the wifi  connection
> has stopped dropping as frequently since reloading the iwldvm module
> this way.?? FWIW
> 
> /etc/os-release:
> PRETTY_NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux 4 (chimaera)"
> NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux"
> VERSION_ID="4"
> VERSION="4 (chimaera)"
> VERSION_CODENAME="chimaera"
> ID=devuan
> ID_LIKE=debian
> HOME_URL="https://www.devuan.org/;
> SUPPORT_URL="https://devuan.org/os/community;
> BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.devuan.org/;
> 
> /etc/debian_version:
> 11.1
> 
> Computer:  ThinkPad X230
> 
> *-pci:1
>  description: PCI bridge
>  product: 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2
>  vendor: Intel Corporation
>  physical id: 1c.1
>  bus info: pci@:00:1c.1
>  version: c4
>  width: 32 bits
>  clock: 33MHz
>  capabilities: pci normal_decode bus_master cap_list
>  configuration: driver=pcieport
>  resources: irq:17 memory:f1c0-f1cf
>*-network
> description: Wireless interface
> product: Centrino Advanced-N 6205 [Taylor Peak]
> vendor: Intel Corporation
> physical id: 0
> bus info: pci@:03:00.0
> logical name: wlan0
> version: 34
> serial:  "redacted"
> width: 64 bits
> clock: 33MHz
> capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
> configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi
> driverversion=5.10.0-10-amd64 firmware=18.168.6.1 6000g2a-6.ucode
> ip=192.168.0.102 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
> resources: irq:29 memory:f1c0-f1c01fff
> 
>  % ls /lib/modules/**/iwldvm.ko
> /lib/modules/5.10.0-10-amd64/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/intel/iwlwifi/dvm/iwldvm.ko
> /lib/modules/5.10.0-9-amd64/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/intel/iwlwifi/dvm/iwldvm.ko
> 
> Not sure if this is a hardware or software or firmware issue. No other
> devices/systems are having this issue on the same wifi network.
> 
> If anyone has any advice it would be appreciated. Since I have a
> workaround it is just an annoyance.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jim Murphy

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[DNG] connman missing from system menu

[Hendrik Boom]

connman is missing from the system menu of my 32-bit laptop running chimaera.
I have installed:
connman-gtkverion 1.1.1+git20180626.b72c6ab-2
connmanversion 1.36-2.2
connman-uiversion 0-20150623-1
The menu item is absent from the system menus in lxqt, and in xfce.
What am I missing?

History:
I upgraded from beowulf *without* first replacing wicd.
So I initially had no cnonectivity after the upgrade.
I instaled the connman packages by downlading them on another machine, 
transferring them cia USB stick, and installing on the laptop by using dpkg.

(Another computer, where I installed connman before I upgraded to chimara, 
works fine, even though it has only the package connman installed, without 
connman-ui or connman-gtk or any of the other connman-related package.  It has 
the "Connman UI Setup" menu item in teh "Internet" submenu when running LXQt.

What am I missing?  Why isn't there a menu item for connman in the system menu 
tree for either xfce or lxqt?

Shouldn't connman contain the menu item?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Be prepared for the fall of systemd

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2022 at 05:19:18PM +0200, Didier Kryn wrote:
> Le 04/08/2022 à 00:36, Bruce Perens via Dng a écrit :
> > The fundamental OS concept is "Everything's an API" rather than
> > everything's a file.
> > APIs rather than libraries and linking.
> 
>  etc...
> 
>     It seems to me that "everything is a file" could do it yet: the kernel
> implements such an API though /proc, with netlink for asynchronous
> signalling. A filesystem equivalent to /proc for user space, plus inotify
> capability would just do it. And keep it simple stupid. I may be missing
> something but I like to stick to simple concepts.

Like in Inferno?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Init respawns - was: Be prepared for the fall of systemd

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2022 at 04:06:18AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
...
> 
> When I write Free Software, I'm one of those "meh, good enough" guys, 
> although I'd
> phrase it "Awww Riiight, good enough!". The reason is that perfectionists 
> never
> finish.

Might this be why we're using linux instead of Hurd?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] decode usenet messages -- solved

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, May 09, 2022 at 07:41:43AM +0200, gy...@ergoarte.ch wrote:
> 
> On Sun, May 08, 2022 at 06:57:51PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > 
> > What I want now, however, is to see the contents of usenet messages
> > that have already been downloaded -- years ago.  In other words, I'd
> > like to use the facilities that are already baked into every decent
> > usenet reader to process a message that's already on my hard drive.
> > (for example, one I've downloaded way back in 2004).  But I don't want
> > the everything else that makes that part of a huge, full-function
> > usenet eader.
> > 
> > But all the readers I've investigated seem willing to handle only
> > messages they download themselves or have stored within their own
> > on-disk data structures.  There seems to be no mechanism for taking a
> > usenet message obtained from elsewhere.
> > 
> 
> What you want is a (local) usenet server. Usenet is like e-mail with a
> clear division of labour between server and client.
> I can't advise about which server to use, it's been a long time I used
> one.

I finally found what I wanted.  It turns out that it is the ancient uudecode 
command, found in the sharutils package.

duckduckgo foud it for me, in the webpage https://kb.iu.edu/d/acup

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Unable to access pool in repository

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2022 at 11:11:04PM +1000, onefang wrote:
> On 2022-07-16 08:21:13, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > I tried installing sharutils using aptitude, and was unable to.
> > aptitude told me:
> > Temporary failure resolving 'deb.devuan.org'
> > and later:
> > E: Failed to fetch
> >
> > http://deb.devuan.org/merged/pool/DEBIAN/main/s/sharutils/sharutils_4.15.2
> >-5_amd64.deb: Temporary failure resolving 'deb.devuan.org'
> > 
> > In the browser, I had no problem at all reaching http://deb.devuan.org
> > but http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ did not contain pool:
> > 
> > Index of /merged
> > 
> > NameLast modified  Size  
> > Parent Directory -   
> > dists/  2022-05-14 11:06-   
> > 
> > What gives?
> 
> Your first problem might just be whatever name server you use, it might
> have been having problems when you tried aptitude, but not when you tried
> a browser.  I recently switched to using unbound for the first time, and
> I get that several times a day now.
> 
> deb.devuan.org is a DNS round robin, it'll hand out a different IP from
> our collection of package mirrors.  So the first thing you should do when
> telling us about problems with it is which IP you got out of it at the
> time.

Unfortunately, neither aptitude nor firefox told me the IP number they
  were using.
Maybe it would be useful if aptitude would do that on this kind of error.

-- hendrik
> 
> Also note the /DEBIAN/ part, most package mirrors rewrite URLs like that
> to point to Debians package mirrors.  So there might be some URL
> rewriting and redirection going on.
> 
> If you can tell me which IP it was, then I can investigate further.

What I did do when it happened was to use the browser
to go to debian's package pool, download the same verion of the same package,
and install it directly using dpkg.

I figured uudecode (the command I was looking for) wouldn't need to be changed 
for devuan.  And it wasn't in a tangle of dependencies, so in this instance, it 
worked.

-- hendrik

> 
> I wrote apt-panopticon to monitor and test lots of things about our
> package mirrors, useful for the first place to look.  Though I admit it's
> still a little buggy.
> 
> https://sledjhamr.org/apt-panopticon/results/Report-web.html
> http://veritas.devuan.org/apt-panopticon/results/Report-web.html
> https://borta.devuan.dev/apt-panopticon/results/Report-web.html
> 
> -- 
> A big old stinking pile of genius that no one wants
> coz there are too many silver coated monkeys in the world.
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[DNG] Unable to access pool in repository

[Hendrik Boom]

I tried installing sharutils using aptitude, and was unable to.
aptitude told me:
Temporary failure resolving 'deb.devuan.org'
and later:
E: Failed to fetch
   
http://deb.devuan.org/merged/pool/DEBIAN/main/s/sharutils/sharutils_4.15.2
   -5_amd64.deb: Temporary failure resolving 'deb.devuan.org'

In the browser, I had no problem at all reaching http://deb.devuan.org
but http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ did not contain pool:

Index of /merged

NameLast modified  Size  
Parent Directory -   
dists/  2022-05-14 11:06-   

What gives?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] moving to a new system

[Hendrik Boom]

On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 09:05:39AM -0500, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> Greetings
> 
> Hoping that I'm not asking too many questions.
> 
> (moving from debian testing to devuan testing (daedalus)
> the old system is under 5.17.xx and the new one is on 5.18
> if that makes for differences)
> 
> (I've learnt the hard way that just winging things means a LOT more
> work and even a greater chance for issues.)
> 
> My existing system has been a work in progress for over 10 years. So
> I've gotten things
> set up quite the way that I like them so things change slowly but in
> that there are also
> less 'terror' moments when everything has gone 'goofy'.
> 
> Is there any way to move over things like settings (and all the other
> pamphernania) for browsers and libreoffice and the like?
> 
> I was thinking of doing things by using scp from the old system to the new one

The last time I moved to a new system, I used a veru simple wy of copying over 
the old files -- I removed the hard drives from the old system and installed 
then in the new system.  Why waste physical drives?

Fortunately, the two sets of hardware were very compatible.

This might not work for you.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] install on a raid 1 array

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2022 at 05:03:23PM +0100, Marjorie Roome via Dng wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> On Wed, 2022-06-22 at 16:26 -0500, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 4, 2022 at 3:03 PM Simon  wrote:
> > > 
> > > o1bigtenor via Dng  wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I have not ever installed like this so first the configuration.
> > > > 
> > > > Ryzen 7 3800X
> > > > Asus TUF Gaming X570-Pro   mobo
> > > > 64 GB ram
> > > > 2 - 1 TB M2 drives
> > > > 2 - 1 TB SSDs
> > > > 
> > > > I want to set the system up so that the drives are 2 sets of
> > > > Raid-1 with
> > > > (proposed)
> > > > set 1
> > > > /efi, /boot, /, /usr, /usr/local, /var, swap
> > > > set 2
> > > > /home
> > > > 
> > > > How do I set up the raid arrays?
> > > > Are they set up first and then the system is installed?
> > > > Or do I set up what I want on one of each of the sets and the
> > > > copy
> > > > that setup to the second (of the set) and make it raid after
> > > > system
> > > > install?
> > > > 
> > > > I can't seem to find anything done within the last 2 years
> > > > talking about this.
> > > > Don't see where it should be difficult but then - - - well I've
> > > > thought that before() and had a boat load of male bovine
> > > > excrement
> > > > to wade through!
> > > > (So I'm asking before doing to forestall issues - - - I hope!)
> > > 
> > > Others have given good information. Unless things have changed
> > > since I last did an install (couple of years I think), you can just
> > > go into manual disk partitioning and do it from there.
> > > Unfortunately, to do an optimum install means getting the
> > > calculator out as the defaults are sub-optimal …
> > > 
> > > AFAIK, all disks these days are 4k sectors, or for SSD, probably
> > > bigger. Ideally you want your partitions aligned to these
> > > boundaries. So for example, leave sectors (unix 512 byte sectors)
> > > 0-63 unused, and start your first partition at sector 64. If you
> > > know that your SSD uses (say) 64k blocks internally, then leave
> > > sectors 0-127 unused and start the first partition at sector 128.
> > > From memory the partitioning tool in the installer doesn’t do this
> > > alignment unless you manually calculate all your partition start &
> > > end blocks.
> > > Everything will work fine if things are not aligned, but
> > > performance will be sub-optimal in some situations.
> > 
> > 
> > OK - - - finally have a working system - - - -lots of joys - - -
> > first
> > a dead psu then
> > a cabling issue (the usb3.0 front panel connector on the mobo has a
> > specific
> > installation orientation) and then the mob said there was room for 8
> > SATA drives
> > and 2 M2 drives - - - well when you use the M2 slots you lose a SATA
> > drive for
> > each - - - lots of joys and time wasted - - - if only these gotchas
> > were easier to find!!!
> > 
> > Now I come to the install.
> > 
> > First attempt
> > set up 2 raid 1s
> > except now I can't partition the drives
> > second attempt
> > set up 2 drives with some spacer partitions (4.0 MB each) and some 8
> > partitions
> > set up 2 drives with same spacer partitions and a large /home
> > partition
> > then wanted to make 2 raid arrays
> > - - - - except I'm only allowed to use 2 partitions  - - - -  one
> > from
> > each member
> >    of the array.
> >    (There was also complaining that there were 2 /root partitions
> > before I tried to
> >     create the array.)
> > 
> > Neither of these options is what I want.
> > (This is only some couple hours down the drain - - - argh)
> > 
> > So - - - how do I achieve 2 raid 1 arrays?
> > #1 has partitions for /efi, /boot, /root/, swap, /tmp, /var, /usr,
> > /usr/local
> >    with a spacer of 4.0 MB between (and before the first and after
> > each)
> > #2 has a partition for /home
> >    with a spacer of 4.0 MB between (and before the first and after)
> > 
> > The destructions that I have been able to find are - - - - well - - -
> > -
> > they're mostly talking about using LVM - - - - which I have not ever
> > used.
> > 
> > So - - - please - - - - what do I do besides abandon my idea?
> > 
> > (There must be some kind of mystery step someplace - - - 
> > and I can't find it)
> > 
> OK, this is based on what I've done myself.
> 
> In the past I created multiple RAID1 partitions on the same disc pair
> for /, /home and swap. So /dev/md0 was /, /dev/md1 was /home and
> /dev/md2 was swap.
> 
> More recently I changed this to 3 LVM2 partitions in a single LVM2
> physical partition/logical volume. 
> 
> In principle the logical partition could span a number of physical
> partitions on one or more disk.
> 
> I assume that you've created two RAID1 arrays on 2 pair of disks. 
> Lets say they are named /dev/md0 and /dev/md1.
> 
> Then let dev/md1 be for /home. Just create a partition on /dev/md1 for
> /home.
> 
> On the other, dev/md0 you want to put the rest of your partitions. 
> I find the number of separate partitions you want to create somewhat
> excessive but I would 

Re: [DNG] install on a raid 1 array

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Jun 02, 2022 at 09:26:21AM +1000, onefang wrote:
> On 2022-06-01 19:07:24, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 01, 2022 at 05:16:05PM -0500, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 4:57 PM tito via Dng  wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Wed, 1 Jun 2022 16:34:21 -0500
> > > > o1bigtenor via Dng  wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Greetings
> > > > >
> > > > > When the parts get here I'm going to be installing Devuan testing on
> > > > > the system.
> > > > >
> > > > > I have not ever installed like this so first the configuration.
> > > > >
> > > > > Ryzen 7 3800X
> > > > > Asus TUF Gaming X570-Pro   mobo
> > > > > 64 GB ram
> > > > > 2 - 1 TB M2 drives
> > > > > 2 - 1 TB SSDs
> > > > >
> > > > > I want to set the system up so that the drives are 2 sets of Raid-1 
> > > > > with
> > > > > (proposed)
> > > > > set 1
> > > > > /efi, /boot, /, /usr, /usr/local, /var, swap
> 
> From memory /efi has to be read by the BIOS / UEFI, and has to be a FAT
> partition.  It later gets mounted to /boot/efi.
> 
> > > > > set 2
> > > > > /home
> > > > >
> > > > > How do I set up the raid arrays?
> > > >
> > > > They could be easily setup during installation process in the disk 
> > > > partitioning step if I recall
> > > > it correctly. See 
> > > > https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/SoftwareRaidRoot
> > > > for more info (just the first part).
> > > 
> > > Interesting - - - that wiki is current as of 2012.
> > > That's why I wasn't trusting the information - - - - the newest stuff
> > > I could find was
> > > some 3 or 4 years old and I've found that newer stuff has different
> > > gotchas than
> > > the older versions.
> > > 
> > > The assumption is that LLVM is used on top of the array. (from the wiki)
> > > Is that necessary?
> > > (I've never used LLVM to date!)
> > > 
> > > My idea was to partition the disks just like normal after the array was 
> > > built.
> > > Is that possible?
> > 
> > Yes, it is possible.  I use LVM over RAID on my system because it offers 
> > more flexibility if I have to repartition.
> > 
> > In fact, I have two separate RAID 1's -- one for partitions that are 
> > divided up the traditional way, and the other for partitions that are done 
> > with LVM.
> > 
> > /boot is on the traditionally divided RAID.  Back when I set it up, if 
> > /boot was on a RAID it had to be a RAID of the old format, not the new.  I 
> > don't know if that still applies.
> > 
> > And, LVM is the Logical Vomume Manager.  LLVM is the Low Level Virtual 
> > Machine, used by some compilers (such as clang) in generating object code.
> > 
> > -- hendrik
> 
> Note that you can use mdadm, or LVM on top of mdadm.  I stick with mdadm
> RAID on my server coz I don't need the extra flexibility, and it's less
> complex.

mdadm is what I use for my RAIDs too,

One has LVM on it; the other a normal partition.

And I have another tiny partition on each disk, outside the RAID, in which i 
have a file whose name is the same as the label I've taped to the physical 
drive.
This saves a lot of confusion when one of my physical drives is failing and I 
have to figure out which physical rive it is.

-- hendrik

> 
> -- 
> A big old stinking pile of genius that no one wants
> coz there are too many silver coated monkeys in the world.
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Re: [DNG] install on a raid 1 array

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Jun 01, 2022 at 05:16:05PM -0500, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 4:57 PM tito via Dng  wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 1 Jun 2022 16:34:21 -0500
> > o1bigtenor via Dng  wrote:
> >
> > > Greetings
> > >
> > > When the parts get here I'm going to be installing Devuan testing on
> > > the system.
> > >
> > > I have not ever installed like this so first the configuration.
> > >
> > > Ryzen 7 3800X
> > > Asus TUF Gaming X570-Pro   mobo
> > > 64 GB ram
> > > 2 - 1 TB M2 drives
> > > 2 - 1 TB SSDs
> > >
> > > I want to set the system up so that the drives are 2 sets of Raid-1 with
> > > (proposed)
> > > set 1
> > > /efi, /boot, /, /usr, /usr/local, /var, swap
> > > set 2
> > > /home
> > >
> > > How do I set up the raid arrays?
> >
> > They could be easily setup during installation process in the disk 
> > partitioning step if I recall
> > it correctly. See https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/SoftwareRaidRoot
> > for more info (just the first part).
> 
> Interesting - - - that wiki is current as of 2012.
> That's why I wasn't trusting the information - - - - the newest stuff
> I could find was
> some 3 or 4 years old and I've found that newer stuff has different
> gotchas than
> the older versions.
> 
> The assumption is that LLVM is used on top of the array. (from the wiki)
> Is that necessary?
> (I've never used LLVM to date!)
> 
> My idea was to partition the disks just like normal after the array was built.
> Is that possible?

Yes, it is possible.  I use LVM over RAID on my system because it offers more 
flexibility if I have to repartition.

In fact, I have two separate RAID 1's -- one for partitions that are divided up 
the traditional way, and the other for partitions that are done with LVM.

/boot is on the traditionally divided RAID.  Back when I set it up, if /boot 
was on a RAID it had to be a RAID of the old format, not the new.  I don't know 
if that still applies.

And, LVM is the Logical Vomume Manager.  LLVM is the Low Level Virtual Machine, 
used by some compilers (such as clang) in generating object code.

-- hendrik
> 
> TIA
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[DNG] decode usenet messages

[Hendrik Boom]

I currently use pan to read usenet.  It works fine.

Presumably it, and almost every decent newsreader, has components that
* obtain a message from usenet
* display it in various ways, including handling text, embedded images, and so 
forth.
* other things too

What I want now, however, is to see the contents of usenet messages that have 
already been downloaded -- years ago.  In other words, I'd like to use the 
facilities that are already baked into every decent usenet reader to process a 
message that's already on my hard drive.  (for example, one I've downloaded way 
back in 2004).  But I don't want the everything else that makes that part of a 
huge, full-function usenet eader.

But all the readers I've investigated seem willing to handle only messages they 
download themselves or have stored within their own on-disk data structures.  
There seems to be no mechanism for taking a usenet message obtained from 
elsewhere.

I'm just trying to see messages I've already got, so I can decide whether they 
are worth keeping.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] trouble with rdiff-backup

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 08:00:21PM +0200, Florian Zieboll via Dng wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Apr 2022 13:17:38 -0400
> Hendrik Boom  wrote:
> 
> > OSError: [Errno 30] Read-only file system
> >
> > Is anyone else having problems like these?  Is rdiff-backup busted?
> > Or is my new backup drive or my USB interface busted?
> 
> 
> No issues with my rdiff-backup (chimaera) here: I just moved it to
> another location yesterday (a newly formatted ext4 partition on a SATA
> drive; the backup script was run before and after the move) and created
> a second backup on an also newly ext4-formatted LUKS-Partition on a USB
> attached external disk.
> 
> Did your backup drive really go (permanently?) 'read only', or have you
> been able to write to it by other means? 

I have managed to do *another* backup on the same disk.  I mv'd the existing 
backup out of the way, and repeated the backup.  This time no problems, and the 
disk didn't g read-only.
I did plug the drive into a different USB port.
So it appears driff-backup seems to have worked, but I'm etting suspicious abut 
that USB port.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] trouble with rdiff-backup

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 12:11:37PM -0500, Hector Gonzalez Jaime via Dng wrote:
> 
> On 4/24/22 12:17, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > Suddenly it cannot write on a file system.  Presumably the backup drive?  
> > The one it has already filled with 215831712 iK blocks and has abother 
> > 1608278664 available?
> > 
> > Then more complaints about banned unicode characters, and then another 
> > similar backtrace ending with
> > 
> > OSError: [Errno 30] Read-only file system
> > 
> > Is anyone else having problems like these?  Is rdiff-backup busted?  Or is 
> > my new backup drive or my USB interface busted?
> 
> This might mean your system detected a format problem with your backup disk, 
> have you tried to remount it?  Check your kernel log,
> if there is such a problem it would remount the disk read only.  You can 
> verify with the mount command and no arguments.
> If that is the case, you should umount the disk, and run fsck on it before 
> trying to mount the disk again.

Some kind of success:  I mv'd the backup directory that backup-rdiff created 
out of the way, and repeated the backup, with a few extras to, before and 
after, show what files /dev/sd* existed and/or mounted.

This time it all seems to have worked, except for a few odd messages:

Warning: modification time of 
b'/usbackup/backup-by-rdiff/april/farhome--hendrik/dn/dosgames/Truelove/rdiff-backup.tmp.234919'
 isbefore 1970
Warning: modification time of 
b'/usbackup/backup-by-rdiff/april/farhome--hendrik/dn/dosgames/Truelove/rdiff-backup.tmp.234920'
 isbefore 1970
Warning: modification time of 
b'/usbackup/backup-by-rdiff/april/farhome--hendrik/dn/dosgames/Truelove/rdiff-backup.tmp.234921'
 isbefore 1970
Warning: modification time of 
b'/usbackup/backup-by-rdiff/april/farhome--hendrik/dn/dosgames/Truelove/rdiff-backup.tmp.234922'
 isbefore 1970

The files it's trying to back up seem to be dated in 1916 or 1919. Suspicious, 
but not likely a backup failure.  Maybe I should change their dates to 
something valid, like early in 1970?

-- hendrik
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[DNG] trouble with rdiff-backup

[Hendrik Boom]

I've experienced trouble using rdiff-backup when backing up a file tree onto a 
new backup drive.

The backup drive (initially something like vfat) was reformatted by creating an 
ext4 file system on its first and only partition.

Subsequently asking rdiff-backup to back up /farhome/hendrik onto 
/usbackup/backup-by-rdiff/april/farhome--hendrik (creating the necessary 
directories first; abd usbackup is where the new backup drive's one partition 
is mounted)

I get error messages.

FIRST:

A lot of complaints that it has trouble reading an ACL because th utf-8 codec 
cannot encode character \udsf1.
So where could it get thes character from?
The file it's complaining about is 
/usbackup/backup-by-rdiff/april/farhome--hendrik/amiga/susehendrik/amiga/foo/emulation/shared/dir/system/locale/catalogs/espa�ol
This is clearly a file on the backup disk, which is a new disk.  So wouldn't it 
have to have put this character there itself?

There are a lot of error message like this.  Now I don't use access control 
lists, as far as I know, so where are they coming from?  Perhaps I should tell 
it not to back up ACL's?

SECOND:




Eventually it gets around to delivering a python error message:

Exception '[Errno 30] Read-only file system' raised of class '':
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 395, in 
error_check_Main
Main(arglist)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 417, in Main
take_action(rps)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 353, in 
take_action
Backup(rps[0], rps[1])
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 442, in 
Backup
backup.Mirror(rpin, rpout)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/backup.py", line 39, in 
Mirror
DestS.patch(dest_rpath, source_diffiter)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/backup.py", line 269, in 
patch
ITR(diff.index, diff)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/rorpiter.py", line 313, in 
__call__
last_branch.fast_process(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/backup.py", line 587, in 
fast_process
if self.patch_to_temp(mirror_rp, diff_rorp, tf):
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/backup.py", line 612, in 
patch_to_temp
result = self.patch_snapshot_to_temp(diff_rorp, new)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/backup.py", line 659, in 
patch_snapshot_to_temp
(diff_rorp, new))
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/robust.py", line 35, in 
check_common_error
return function(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 148, in copy
return copy_reg_file(rpin, rpout, compress)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 181, in 
copy_reg_file
return rpout.write_from_fileobj(rpin.open("rb"), compress=compress)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 1475, in 
write_from_fileobj
copyfileobj(fp, outfp)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 90, in 
copyfileobj
outputfp.write(inbuf)

Suddenly it cannot write on a file system.  Presumably the backup drive?  The 
one it has already filled with 215831712 iK blocks and has abother 1608278664 
available?

Then more complaints about banned unicode characters, and then another similar 
backtrace ending with

OSError: [Errno 30] Read-only file system

Is anyone else having problems like these?  Is rdiff-backup busted?  Or is my 
new backup drive or my USB interface busted?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] mouse driver question

[Hendrik Boom]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2022 at 12:19:45PM -0700, Fred wrote:

> The mouse is a Sun three button mouse without the scroll wheel.  I
> frequently use a program that makes extensive use of the middle button and
> the pc mouse scroll wheel is hateful.

I would like a mouse with a middle button *and* a scroll wheel.
So there's no ambiguity as to which I am using.
I've never seen one.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] browsers

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 06:43:09PM -0500, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> Greetings
> 
> Firefox is quite ticking me off.
> It has this penchant for NOT remembering the previous session even
> when the click box has been 'enabled'.

Firefox aways remebers my last session.
I'm using firefox-est in chimaera.

-- hendrik

> 
> I am quite uncomfortable with ms googly's desire to know everything
> about me but maybe I would use chromium IF I can stop the trackers. In
> FF I use ublockorigin and privacy badger.
> 
> Someone who is using chromium - - - - is it possible to harden chromium?
> 
> Please - - - I'm quite frustrated with Firefox.
> 
> (I've also got Vivaldi, Opera and Falkon available.
> Find that all the other browsers except firefox-esr expect one to
> update almost daily - - - sorry I find that that kind of behavior is
> usually a waste of my time!)
> 
> TIA
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Re: [DNG] Fake RAID

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Mar 09, 2022 at 07:18:13PM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> Le 09/03/2022 à 17:12, d...@d404.nl a écrit :
> > On 09-03-2022 16:55, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 09, 2022 at 02:42:07PM +0100, aitor wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Did you read the following guide?
> > > > 
> > > > https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/SataRaid
> > > Interesting note.
> > > 
> > > What is a "fake RAID"?  Is it a RAID or not?
> > > 
> > > -- hendrik
> > > 
> > A real RAID controller has hardware and software on board and often a
> > battery backup. A "fake" RAID does have some hardware but no software or
> > better some software but depends on a Windows driver for the RAID
> > functions. Same trick as with Win modems and printers.
> 
> 
>     I have worked with Dell Poweredge servers around 15 y ago. These had
> PERC hardware RAIDs able to completely do the whole job without any help
> from the OS. The configured RAID devices were seen by the kernel as
> individual disks. After a few years working like this I configured the PERC
> so as to show every disk individually (therefore no RAID), and managed
> software RAIDs using mdadm. md RAIDS, not dm RAIDS. dm stands for
> device-mapper, which also means Logical Volume Manager. On the contrary of
> what is said in the Debian document, I found LVM (dm RAIDs) not much more
> usefull than md and overly complex. On the other hand, mdadm also is not a
> piece of cake but I can find my way with it and I have developped a graphics
> monitoring tool for it, actually a little web server displaying the status
> of all the host's md RAIDs.

That looks useful.
I already have a web server.
Is it possible to easily configure this thing so it provides content to an 
existing web server?

-- hendrik
> 
>     What I mean is that there is probably the possibility to configure the
> PERC as no-RAID and build a software RAID on Linux, if this is manageable
> for your Win10.
> 
> --     Didier
> 
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[DNG] Fake RAID

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Mar 09, 2022 at 02:42:07PM +0100, aitor wrote:

> 
> Did you read the following guide?
> 
> https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/SataRaid

Interesting note.

What is a "fake RAID"?  Is it a RAID or not?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Another reason for why I use Devuan

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 05:41:59PM -0800, Syeed Ali wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Feb 2022 15:25:05 -1000
> Joel Roth via Dng  wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 05:55:49PM -0700, Keith Christian via Dng
> > wrote:
> > > This describes the machine ID:
> > > 
> > > https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/machine-id.html
> > 
> > So a creation of the freedesktop folks. 
> 
> 
> I like this quote:
> 
> > It should be considered "confidential", and must not be exposed in
> > untrusted environments,
> > ...

Just checked.  On my pure devuan system,
there is no /etc/machine-id filre,
but there is a /var/lib/dbus/machine-id

Should I worry?
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Re: [DNG] Another reason for why I use Devuan

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 03:03:54PM +0100, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cloud-init/+bug/1958377/
> comments/13
> 
> as in Systemd does not configure the network if the machine has no 
> machine-id.

What is a machine ID?

-- hendrik
> 
> You cannot make this up, or can you?
> 
> Thanks,
> -- 
> Martin
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[DNG] SOLVED: Menu of applications vanished from lxqt

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 06:32:33AM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 06:23:40AM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:

> > 
> > I'm going to use the guest account and see if the same happens there.
> 
> I log into the guest account.
> Everything is OK.
> There is a menu of applications in lxqt.
> 
> So the problem isn't system-wide; there must be something in my personal 
> setup.
> Perhaps something wrong with a dotfile?

Yes, that was the problem.

In file ~/.config/lxqt/panel.conf, the line
plugins=desktopswitch, quicklaunch, taskbar, tray, statusnotifier, mount, 
volume, clock, showdesktop
should have been
plugins=mainmenu, desktopswitch, quicklaunch, taskbar, tray, 
statusnotifier, mount, volume, clock, showdesktop

Discovered by comparing ~/.config/lxqt/panel.conf with 
~guest/.config/lxqt/panel.conf

It was very useful having a guest account.

I wonder how this file got changed a few days ago.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Menu of applications vanished from lxqt

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 06:23:40AM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 07, 2022 at 10:11:32PM +0100, aitor wrote:
> > Hi Hendrik,
> > 
> > On 7/2/22 19:38, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > > I believe this started when I did a routine security upgrade,
> > > and installed a program to convert markdown files to asciidoc format.
> 
> Whoops!  Checked apt history.  Did that security upgrade, do not seem to hav 
> installed the convertor.
> locate does not find the converter, even after I updatedb.
> 
> I must have merely investigated what I would have to do.
> 
> > 
> > You can try moving out converter's .desktop file from
> > /usr/share/applications or /usr/local/share/applications to  know whether
> > the origin of the issue is in the installed program, causing the launcher
> > to freeze.
> 
> And I cannot find a .desktop file for the converter, either.
> 
> In any case, the converter would have been installed using
> gem install kramdown-ascidoc
> so it wouldn't show up on the apt log even if I had installed it.
> 
> > On the other hand, if I am not mistaken lxqt uses the openbox
> > window manager, and I assume you aren't starting a window manager session
> > instead of the desktop environment.
> 
> Interactive aptitude tells me that openbox is not installed.
> 
> So I must be using something else.
> 
> I'm going to use the guest account and see if the same happens there.

I log into the guest account.
Everything is OK.
There is a menu of applications in lxqt.

So the problem isn't system-wide; there must be something in my personal setup.
Perhaps something wrong with a dotfile?

-- hendrik

> 
> -- hendrik
> 
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > Aitor.
> > 
> > 
> 
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Re: [DNG] Menu of applications vanished from lxqt

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Feb 07, 2022 at 10:11:32PM +0100, aitor wrote:
> Hi Hendrik,
> 
> On 7/2/22 19:38, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > I believe this started when I did a routine security upgrade,
> > and installed a program to convert markdown files to asciidoc format.

Whoops!  Checked apt history.  Did that security upgrade, do not seem to hav 
installed the convertor.
locate does not find the converter, even after I updatedb.

I must have merely investigated what I would have to do.

> 
> You can try moving out converter's .desktop file from
> /usr/share/applications or /usr/local/share/applications to  know whether
> the origin of the issue is in the installed program, causing the launcher
> to freeze.

And I cannot find a .desktop file for the converter, either.

In any case, the converter would have been installed using
gem install kramdown-ascidoc
so it wouldn't show up on the apt log even if I had installed it.

> On the other hand, if I am not mistaken lxqt uses the openbox
> window manager, and I assume you aren't starting a window manager session
> instead of the desktop environment.

Interactive aptitude tells me that openbox is not installed.

So I must be using something else.

I'm going to use the guest account and see if the same happens there.

-- hendrik

> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Aitor.
> 
> 

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[DNG] Menu of applications vanished from lxqt

[Hendrik Boom]

Normally, lzqt has an icon baar (which I think they call a panel)
It contains icons 1, 2, 3, 4 for the available workspaces, and
a few more little squares with icons for a ile manager, a qterminal, and a(I 
think) an editor.

But in fromt of those icons, it normally has another little square.
Clicking on that square puts up a menu with sibmenuse for various
classes of applications.

Starting a day or two ago that little square has been missing.

This means that excpet for the applications I just mentioned, I cannot start 
any applications from lxqt.

(Yes there's a workaround -- I can start anything I know the filename of from 
the command line in a qterminal.  But that's not the way a desktop is really 
supposed to work.)

And I can still log out -- if I use control-alt-F1, log in as root, and killall 
lxqt-session.

I believe this started when I did a routine security upgrade,
and installed a program to convert markdown files to asciidoc format.

Does anyone else have this problem?

Anyone know how I can get my menu of applications back?

-- hendrik

P.S.  over the last year I occasionally would lose this menu, but it always 
came back when I powered down, rebooted, and logged in again.

Not this time.
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Re: [DNG] What is your take on finit?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Feb 01, 2022 at 09:50:31AM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> Le 31/01/2022 à 19:16, Steve Litt a écrit :
> > >      Writing a self-daemonizing daemon in C was a routine when I was
> > > still active, though I understand it could be more difficult in shell.
> > But more difficult in Python. I try to stay away from C if Python does
> > the job. I think Python3 plus its standard libraries are more secure
> > than C code written by the error prone Steve Litt.
> 
>     Let me generalize: "I think Python3 plus its standard libraries are more
> secure than C code written by an error prone human being." (~:
> 
>     Actually I don't know Python, but I think I can trust you because I
> consider C/C++ amongst the most insecure languages. But this is one of my
> favourite themes...

Not surprising.  In many ways, C is Algol 68 without type-safety, array bounds 
checking, or garbage-collection.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] software question

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 08:29:01AM -0500, Ken Dibble wrote:
> On 1/25/22 12:53 PM, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 05:43:44AM -0600, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 3:02 AM Olaf Meeuwissen via Dng
> > >  wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Hendrik Boom  writes:
> > > > 
> > > > > On Sun, Jan 23, 2022 at 07:29:27PM +0100, Florian Zieboll via Dng 
> > > > > wrote:
> > > > > > On January 21, 2022 7:15:06 PM GMT+01:00, o1bigtenor via Dng 
> > > > > >  wrote:
> > > > > > > Greetings
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > For a non-profit - - - this is not bulk email for sales - - - - 
> > > > > > > bulk
> > > > > > > email for connection.
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > Is there a linux program (foss hopefully) that will allow me to 
> > > > > > > do this?
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > (Sending regualr emails to a group of people (from 15 to 50 
> > > > > > > recipients).)
> > > > > > With LibreOffice you can send personalized bulk mail. IIRC it was
> > > > > > quite annoying to set up, but once done, it worked.
> > > > > I just use /etc/aliases
> > > > That was my first reaction too ;-)
> > > OK - - -  I'm not a programmer in any shape way or form.
> > > My guess would be when using /etc/aliases - - - - that's some
> > > form of bash programming? using awk or ?
> > > 
> > > Please advise? (purdy (sic) please.
> > It's a list ot aliases.
> > 
> > mom : al...@homeowners.ca
> > 
> > tells that mail for mom is to be sent to al...@homowners.ca
> > 
> > anglers: j...@fish.ca, al...@poisson.ca
> > 
> > tells it that mail for anglers is to be sent to j...@fish.ca and also to 
> > al...@poisson.ca
> > 
> > And that's about all there is to it.  entries in a line of destinations can 
> > refer to other alias lines, but there's a onstraint as to which has to come 
> > first.
> > 
> > Try it out.  Just edit an /etc/aliases into existence, and you'll likely 
> > find it works if your system handles its own email.
> > 
> > -- hendrik
> > 
> > > I just use the tools in the computering universe so far - - - have
> > > barely begun anything any deeper. (Starting with hardware - - -
> > > putting together stuff for control and now starting for sensors.)
> > > 
> > > TIA
> > > ___
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> > > Dng@lists.dyne.org
> > > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
> > ___
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> 
> And, if you are like me and occasionally neglect to rtfm,
> 
> don't forget to run newaliases every time you change /etc/aliases.
> 
> Per man 8 newaliases.

I have a reminder in a comment in /etc/aliases

-- hendrik

> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Ken
> 
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Re: [DNG] software question

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 05:43:44AM -0600, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 3:02 AM Olaf Meeuwissen via Dng
>  wrote:
> >
> >
> > Hendrik Boom  writes:
> >
> > > On Sun, Jan 23, 2022 at 07:29:27PM +0100, Florian Zieboll via Dng wrote:
> > >> On January 21, 2022 7:15:06 PM GMT+01:00, o1bigtenor via Dng 
> > >>  wrote:
> > >> > Greetings
> > >> >
> > >> > For a non-profit - - - this is not bulk email for sales - - - - bulk
> > >> > email for connection.
> > >> >
> > >> > Is there a linux program (foss hopefully) that will allow me to do 
> > >> > this?
> > >> >
> > >> > (Sending regualr emails to a group of people (from 15 to 50 
> > >> > recipients).)
> > >>
> > >> With LibreOffice you can send personalized bulk mail. IIRC it was
> > >> quite annoying to set up, but once done, it worked.
> > >
> > > I just use /etc/aliases
> >
> > That was my first reaction too ;-)
> 
> OK - - -  I'm not a programmer in any shape way or form.
> My guess would be when using /etc/aliases - - - - that's some
> form of bash programming? using awk or ?
> 
> Please advise? (purdy (sic) please.

It's a list ot aliases.

mom : al...@homeowners.ca

tells that mail for mom is to be sent to al...@homowners.ca

anglers: j...@fish.ca, al...@poisson.ca

tells it that mail for anglers is to be sent to j...@fish.ca and also to 
al...@poisson.ca

And that's about all there is to it.  entries in a line of destinations can 
refer to other alias lines, but there's a onstraint as to which has to come 
first.

Try it out.  Just edit an /etc/aliases into existence, and you'll likely find 
it works if your system handles its own email.

-- hendrik

> 
> I just use the tools in the computering universe so far - - - have
> barely begun anything any deeper. (Starting with hardware - - -
> putting together stuff for control and now starting for sensors.)
> 
> TIA
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Re: [DNG] software question

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sun, Jan 23, 2022 at 07:29:27PM +0100, Florian Zieboll via Dng wrote:
> On January 21, 2022 7:15:06 PM GMT+01:00, o1bigtenor via Dng 
>  wrote:
> > Greetings
> > 
> > For a non-profit - - - this is not bulk email for sales - - - - bulk
> > email for connection.
> > 
> > Is there a linux program (foss hopefully) that will allow me to do this?
> > 
> > (Sending regualr emails to a group of people (from 15 to 50 recipients).)
> > 
> > TIA
> 
> 
> With LibreOffice you can send personalized bulk mail. IIRC it was quite 
> annoying to set up, but once done, it worked.
> 

I just use /etc/aliases

-- hendrik

> 
> -- 
> 
> [message sent otg]
> 
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Re: [DNG] Early Days at Bell Labs

[Hendrik Boom]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 02:46:39PM +1100, terryc wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 13:25:50 -0500
> Hendrik Boom  wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 06:40:13PM +0100, Antony Stone wrote:
> > > On Thursday 20 January 2022 at 17:24:46, Peter Duffy wrote:
> > >   
> > > > On Sun, 2022-01-16 at 04:12 -0500, Steve Litt wrote:  
> > > > > Hi all,
> > > > > 
> > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECCr_KFl41E  
> > > >
> > > > Thanks for the link to that - brilliant talk. I've always thought
> > > > that Brian Kernighan himself was the great communicator in the
> > > > UNIX group - I wonder whether "The C Programming Language" and
> > > > "The Unix Programming Environment" would have happened without
> > > > his obvious ability to take abstruse and difficult material and
> > > > make it accessible.
> > > > 
> > > > If I had one incredibly tiny nit to pick, it would be that he
> > > > didn't mention GNU (it appeared once in the slide showing Linus'
> > > > original email). Without GNU, it's reasonable to suppose that
> > > > linux wouldn't have happened.  
> > > 
> > > I disagree with "it's reasonable to suppose that".
> > > 
> > > Linus Torvalds was building a system for himself, partly (I
> > > believe) because he liked Unix but couldn't afford a Unix system of
> > > his own, and therefore he was of course going to build it using as
> > > much free (of charge) software as he could.
> > > 
> > > That meant GNU.
> > > 
> > > I think the Unix philosophy and design principles are beautiful,
> > > and formed the basis of an amazingly efficient system, but some of
> > > those principles are embodied in Linux and some are embodied in GNU
> > > (for example, devices as files, and pipes, in the first; and tools
> > > such as tr, cut, grep in the second), so these days we can't really
> > > separate the two - Linux is nothing without GNU (although the
> > > reverse is not true).  
> > 
> > And don't forget Minix, the system he used while developing his
> > kernel.
> 
> Didn't Linus start what became Linux because Minix was only 286 capable
> and was not going to be upgraded and Linux wanted something that
> would run on 386 cpus.
> 
> I think there was also a licensing issue involved in modifying Minix.

As far as I know, minix came from Andrew Tannenbaum at the Free University
of Amsterdam.and maybe also from the students in an OS course.

I don't know the details, but it was at one point sold commercially, although 
its main purpose was for teaching.

Whatever the licence then, it seems to have ended up with a sufficiently
free licence for Intel to put a copy of it in the management engine in
their CPUs for the last decade or so *without informing Tannenbaum*.
Tannenbaum was miffed; he said the licence allowed this, but he would
have liked to have been informed.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Early Days at Bell Labs

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 06:40:13PM +0100, Antony Stone wrote:
> On Thursday 20 January 2022 at 17:24:46, Peter Duffy wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 2022-01-16 at 04:12 -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > > 
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECCr_KFl41E
> >
> > Thanks for the link to that - brilliant talk. I've always thought that
> > Brian Kernighan himself was the great communicator in the UNIX group - I
> > wonder whether "The C Programming Language" and "The Unix Programming
> > Environment" would have happened without his obvious ability to take
> > abstruse and difficult material and make it accessible.
> > 
> > If I had one incredibly tiny nit to pick, it would be that he didn't
> > mention GNU (it appeared once in the slide showing Linus' original
> > email). Without GNU, it's reasonable to suppose that linux wouldn't have
> > happened.
> 
> I disagree with "it's reasonable to suppose that".
> 
> Linus Torvalds was building a system for himself, partly (I believe) because 
> he liked Unix but couldn't afford a Unix system of his own, and therefore he 
> was of course going to build it using as much free (of charge) software as he 
> could.
> 
> That meant GNU.
> 
> I think the Unix philosophy and design principles are beautiful, and formed 
> the basis of an amazingly efficient system, but some of those principles are 
> embodied in Linux and some are embodied in GNU (for example, devices as 
> files, 
> and pipes, in the first; and tools such as tr, cut, grep in the second), so 
> these days we can't really separate the two - Linux is nothing without GNU 
> (although the reverse is not true).

And don't forget Minix, the system he used while developing his kernel.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] The Daedalus desktop needs some love

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 07:03:27AM -0600, o1bigtenor wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 6:33 AM Hendrik Boom  wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 02:08:12PM -0700, Bob Proulx via Dng wrote:
> > > goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> > > > Lars Noodén wrote:
> > > > > What quality of display(s) and color calibration are required?
> > > >
> > > > In all the years I have been doing this, that question has never 
> > > > entered my
> > > > mind and I have no idea how to even begin answering it. I do "eye" art 
> > > > not
> > > > "machine" art. I can perceive even one increment change in a hex.
> > > >
> > > > Problem is . . . no one can know exactly what color another person is
> > > > seeing. Add to that the vagaries of the monitor and . . .
> > > >
> > > > I don't know if a screenshot would capture the hex or what's showing on 
> > > > your
> > > > monitor but maybe you could give it a try for the chimaera desktop and 
> > > > let
> > > > us have a look.
> > >
> > > I just want to comment that I have two identical model displays side
> > > by side in a dual monitor configuration on my desktop.  Both are
> > > identical as far as any model vendor and number are concerned.  Yet
> > > side by side it is pretty obvious to me that they have a difference in
> > > color tone between them.  They are definitely not the same even though
> > > by specification they will be the same.
> > >
> > > The first order difference in my two monitors I think is that the
> > > backlight is not identical between them.  One shows a slightly warmer
> > > color hue to the backlight from the other.  I think that swamps other
> > > effects causing differences in my "matched pair".
> > >
> > > None of this really has any effect on how nice a color theme looks on
> > > the displays though.  That's an art project more than a science project.
> > >
> > > Bob
> >
> > It's nice if the desktop colours look good on a perfectly calibrated 
> > monitor.
> > But what's more important for it to look good on the variety of monitors
> > regular users use.
> > So we should test the imagery on the ordinary, everyday laptops and
> > monitors we have at home and work.
> > And it's important the the colours work even if one is colourblind.
> > I'd suggest viewing it converted to greyscale as a first try at testing
> > this, bt a friend of mine who is colourblind tells me it's far more
> > complicated than this.
> >
> AIUI there are not only different forms of color blindedness but also
> different levels. Putting that all together means a very large amount
> of complexity.
> 
> Likely an easy path to avoid most difficulties - - - use only strong
> primary colors - - - does that solve the possible issues - - - nope
> but those that are color blind have learned to cope with those specific
> issues (I'm thinking of red like in stop lights).

I'm not colourblind, but I have noticed there's a standard arrangement of
colours on a set of traffic lights, with the red on the bottom.
Also (this is a little harder to see) the different lights have
different shapes.
Around here, for example, the red light is octagonal, like a stop sign.

The best I know is to use a grey scale.
But we'd want a grey scale to be what appears on the screen, not a
colour gamut that might not match what some colour-blind person sees.

My friend's colour blindness is not just that some primaries don't work;
it seems to be a complicated interaction between primaries.

I don't understand it either.

-- hendrik

> 
> HTH
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Re: [DNG] Website "motto"?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 10:21:18AM +0100, Antonio Rendina via Dng wrote:
> 
> But returning to the point, I would not reduce a distribution project to its
> init. I think that a motto should focus on the consequences:
> * more customizable
> * more universal
> * you can change every part without impacting the others

The problem with systemd is not that it's an init system.
The problem is that it's a replacement for everything else.

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] Website "motto"?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 11:10:36AM +1100, terryc wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 18:19:38 +0100 (CET)
> Karl Hammar  wrote:
> 
> > Hendrik:
> > > On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 08:49:41PM -0600, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> > >  
> > > > On 2022-01-18 16:33, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:  
> > > > > 
> > > > > Maybe something like "init freedom - - - your first step . . .
> > > > > "  
> > > > Like this? https://transfer.sh/cTgmNi/if-rev2.png  
> > > 
> > > Interesting.  The "if" in italics and off-centre makes the
> > > image dynamic.  At first I thought it a design error; then
> > > I realised it works very well.  
> > 
> > What is that "if" about, ohh, it is an acronym...
> > 
> > Unfortunately it looks like this insurance company's logotype:
> >  https://www.if.se/
> > so, I'd say we cannot use it (it really make me wounder why the 
> > authorities allows thoose names).
> 
> That insurance company's logo is a serif font and the logo has other
> elements so it wouldn't be confused. 
> 
> My 2c is they would only have any logo protection if it was a registered 
> trademark. but there is still the
> point that 'if' is a common english expression.
and the name of a science-fiction magazine (now defunct??)

> 
> Also, DNS registration
> in one domain does not preclude registration in any other domain,
> unless whomever holds 'if.se' has already registered all the if.*
> variations.
> 
>  
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Re: [DNG] The Daedalus desktop needs some love

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 02:08:12PM -0700, Bob Proulx via Dng wrote:
> goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> > Lars Noodén wrote:
> > > What quality of display(s) and color calibration are required?
> > 
> > In all the years I have been doing this, that question has never entered my
> > mind and I have no idea how to even begin answering it. I do "eye" art not
> > "machine" art. I can perceive even one increment change in a hex.
> > 
> > Problem is . . . no one can know exactly what color another person is
> > seeing. Add to that the vagaries of the monitor and . . .
> > 
> > I don't know if a screenshot would capture the hex or what's showing on your
> > monitor but maybe you could give it a try for the chimaera desktop and let
> > us have a look.
> 
> I just want to comment that I have two identical model displays side
> by side in a dual monitor configuration on my desktop.  Both are
> identical as far as any model vendor and number are concerned.  Yet
> side by side it is pretty obvious to me that they have a difference in
> color tone between them.  They are definitely not the same even though
> by specification they will be the same.
> 
> The first order difference in my two monitors I think is that the
> backlight is not identical between them.  One shows a slightly warmer
> color hue to the backlight from the other.  I think that swamps other
> effects causing differences in my "matched pair".
> 
> None of this really has any effect on how nice a color theme looks on
> the displays though.  That's an art project more than a science project.
> 
> Bob

It's nice if the desktop colours look good on a perfectly calibrated monitor.
But what's more important for it to look good on the variety of monitors
regular users use.
So we should test the imagery on the ordinary, everyday laptops and
monitors we have at home and work.
And it's important the the colours work even if one is colourblind.
I'd suggest viewing it converted to greyscale as a first try at testing
this, bt a friend of mine who is colourblind tells me it's far more
complicated than this. 

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] Website "motto"?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 01:36:43AM +1100, Andrew McGlashan via Dng wrote:
> 
> 
> On 20/1/22 1:03 am, Antony Stone wrote:
> > On Wednesday 19 January 2022 at 15:02:00, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > 
> >> On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 10:59:35PM -0600, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> >>>> Like this? https://transfer.sh/cTgmNi/if-rev2.png
> >>>
> >>> Or this might be even better https://transfer.sh/CeUT0r/if-rev3.png
> >>
> >> I do not see a difference between rev 2 and rev 3.
> > 
> > "take"
> 
> Yeah, I never noticed the "hidden" text around the circle either.

Now I see it.
Maybe we need more contrast?

-- hendrik

> 
> A.
> 
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Re: [DNG] Website "motto"?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 03:09:00PM +0100, Antony Stone wrote:
> On Wednesday 19 January 2022 at 15:07:25, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> 
> > > > On 2022-01-18 16:33, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> > > >> Maybe something like "init freedom - - - your first step . . .  "
> > > > 
> > > > Like this? https://transfer.sh/cTgmNi/if-rev2.png
> > > > 
> > > > Will need to be discussed at our weekly …
> > 
> > What I thought of was
> >   "Take your first step"
> > A little more dynamic.
> 
> Hence https://transfer.sh/CeUT0r/if-rev3.png :)

When I look at that image, I don't see "take" anywhere.

-- hendrik

> 
> Antony.
> 
> -- 
> Software development can be quick, high quality, or low cost.
> 
> The customer gets to pick any two out of three.
> 
>Please reply to the list;
>  please *don't* CC me.
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Re: [DNG] Website "motto"?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 10:18:47PM -0500, Curtis Maurand via Dng wrote:
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> > On Jan 18, 2022, at 9:49 PM, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> > 
> > On 2022-01-18 16:33, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> >> Maybe something like "init freedom - - - your first step . . .  "
> > 
> > Like this? https://transfer.sh/cTgmNi/if-rev2.png
> > 
> > Will need to be discussed at our weekly …
> 
> “Your first step matters”

What I thought of was
  "Take your first step"
A little more dynamic.

-- hendrik
> 
> just my 2 pennies 
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Re: [DNG] Website "motto"?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 10:59:35PM -0600, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> On 2022-01-18 20:49, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> > On 2022-01-18 16:33, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> > > 
> > > Maybe something like "init freedom - - - your first step . . .  "
> > > 
> > 
> > Like this? https://transfer.sh/cTgmNi/if-rev2.png
> > 
> > Will need to be discussed at our weekly dev meet.
> > 
> > golinux
> 
> Or this might be even better https://transfer.sh/CeUT0r/if-rev3.png

I do not see a difference between rev 2 and rev 3.

-- hendrik

> 
> golinux
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Re: [DNG] Website "motto"?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 08:49:41PM -0600, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> On 2022-01-18 16:33, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> > 
> > Maybe something like "init freedom - - - your first step . . .  "
> > 
> 
> Like this? https://transfer.sh/cTgmNi/if-rev2.png

Interesting.  The "if" in italics and off-centre makes the
image dynamic.  At first I thought it a design error; then
I realised it works very well.

-- hendrik

> 
> Will need to be discussed at our weekly dev meet.
> 
> golinux
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Re: [DNG] Genuine, legitimate Early Days at Bell Labs - Youtube, the systemd of video: Was: Early Days at Bell Labs - Youtube, the systemd of video

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 01:11:52AM +, Tim Wallace via Dng wrote:
>  Pretty good talk.  Reminds me of the other time I heard Brian (in person) at 
> Purdue in 1977-78 or so.  He opened with two quotes, "The operating system 
> comes between the user and the hardware" which got a laugh because although 
> it was from a standard operating system textbook, he didn't mean it that way. 
>  The second was "TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach" (TSO was an 
> early IBM operating system).

Interesting how a small outfir place like the University of Michigan
could do a better job (MTS) of time-sharing on IBM hardware than IBM
could.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] bash / quote weirdness

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 12:45:09PM -0500, . via Dng wrote:

> 
> The shell receives a series of tokens, and tries to interpret the first one
> as a command.  In the double-quoted attempt above, it gets two tokens before
> the first pipe | ---
> 
>     1) "cat -n"
> 
>     2) /etc/fstab
> 
> Of course, the system has no command named "cat -n".  (And only a chaotic
> evil person would use a space in a command's name.) Something like
>     "cat"  "-n"  /etc/fstab

Maybe to keep anyone from executing a potentially danterous command by mistake?

-- hendrik

> would work fine, the shell now sees three tokens (and the double quotes are
> completely unnecessary here), and the first is recognized as a command
> that's on the executable path.
> 
> The same goes for "cat /etc/fstab" or "cat fstab", they're both just text
> strings that happen to include a space character.
> 
> 
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Re: [DNG] [OT] bash / quote weirdness

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 06:38:56PM +, Simon wrote:
> Steve Litt  wrote:
> 
> > This is one reason why, in shellscripts, you
> > need to quote almost all variables: So they act correctly with the
> > space laden filenames that windows dwoobydogs just love to create.
> 
> Not just Windows users. I regularly use spaces in file names.
> 
> There’s an argument that computers should be tools, not slavemasters.
> I’m sure you’ll remember going back a few decades how interacting with 
> computers meant that the human had to learn how to deal with the computer’s 
> way of doing things. So, for example, typically when writing a document you 
> had an edit mode from which you couldn’t print, and a print mode (menu) from 
> which you couldn’t edit - you could not simply write you document and when 
> ready just tell the computer to print it.
> 
> I recall a lot of resistance when Apple brought out the Mac and suddenly 
> programmers had to learn how to write programs that did what the user wanted 
> - when the user wanted.

Sounds good.  But for the first two years the Mac was out, programmers couldn't 
use it to write programs.  To program it you had to use a much moe expensive 
machine, and Apple Lisa.

Not what I, a potential user, wanter.

After two years, somewone marketed a Pascal interpreter -- not even a compiler.

-- hendrik

>So, for example, open an editor, write your document, and whenever you want - 
>hit Cmd-P (or choose Print from the File menu) and it gets printed, right 
>there from inside your “edit mode”.

> And now most people stuff like that for granted. rings have shifted from the 
> user doing the work to make the computer side easy to the user expecting the 
> computer side to do the work - after all, isn’t the purpose of computer to do 
> “stuff” for us ?
> 
> Similarly with file names. Once upon a time the human had to adapt to what 
> the computer supported - such as fitting your entire file name into 8 
> characters. Now the computer (mostly) supports what is natural for a human - 
> and that includes using spaces in their writing. 
> After_all_it_does_seem_a_bit_un-natural_not_being_allowed_to_use_spaces_in_your_writing_-_it_would_make_a_hard_to_read_book_!
> 
> 
> 
> Another OT anecdote. This talk of spaces and quoting reminds me of an issue I 
> had to deal with a couple of work hats ago. I had some users who would 
> struggle sometimes to log into their terminals on the SCO OpenServer system. 
> When I watched them carefully, I’d see them mistyping either their username 
> or password, so for example assume their username is “username”, they might 
> mistype it thus : “usermname” rather than “usermname”. 
> Because it looked OK on the screen, it was hard to persuade them that what 
> the system saw them type was “usermname” and not the “username” 
> they could clearly see on the screen.
> 
> 
> Simon
> 
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Re: [DNG] [OT] bash / quote weirdness

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 05:45:08PM -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> On the other hand...
> 
> ===
> [slitt@mydesk ~]$ cat -n /etc/fstab | cut -b 1-20 |  head -n5
>  1UUID=730eaf92
>  2UUID=41abb5fd
>  3UUID=96cfdfb3
>  4UUID=6F66-BF7
>  5tmpfs /tmp tm
> [slitt@mydesk ~]$ "cat -n" /etc/fstab | cut -b 1-20 |  head -n5
> bash: cat -n: command not found
> [slitt@mydesk ~]$ "cat -n /etc/fstab" | cut -b 1-20 |  head -n5
> bash: cat -n /etc/fstab: No such file or directory
> [slitt@mydesk ~]$

So if it has parameters it's a command, and if it diesn't it's just
a file or directory?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Group for /usr/local (was Re: merged /usr breakage)

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sat, Jan 08, 2022 at 09:21:29AM +0900, Olaf Meeuwissen via Dng wrote:
> Hi Ken, Hendrik,
...
...
> >> My chimaera system says
> >>
> >> hendrik@midwinter:~$ ls /usr/local -l
> >> total 36
> >> drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jun  1  2021 bin
> >> drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jul  9  2018 etc
> >> drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jul  9  2018 games
> >> drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jul  9  2018 include
> >> drwxrwsr-x  4 rootstaff 4096 Oct  5 08:27 lib
> >> lrwxrwxrwx  1 rootstaff9 Jul  9  2018 man -> share/man
> >> drwxr-sr-x 10 hendrik staff 4096 Jun  1  2021 racket
> >> drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jul  9  2018 sbin
> >> drwxrwsr-x  9 rootstaff 4096 Oct  5 08:21 share
> >> drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jul  9  2018 src
> >>
> >> so it looks as if 'staff' is still alive.
> >> I certainly didn't set up a 'staff' account myself.
> 
> Hendrik, did you upgrade this system from beowulf (or earlier)?  If so,
> that's where the staff group was created.

Yes.  All the way from either ascii or jessie.

-- hendrik

...
...

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Re: [DNG] merged /usr breakage

[Hendrik Boom]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 05:48:08PM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> Le 07/01/2022 à 12:13, Olaf Meeuwissen a écrit :
> > > Concerning installation in /usr/local:
> > > --
> > > 
> > >     My first investigations indicate that there is provision in
> > > Freedesktop.org to put icons and launchers under $HOME/.local, but
> > > nothing for /usr/local. Therefore the installation of an application
> > > in /usr/local could include executable, config files and manpages, but
> > > the icon and the launcher would be per user.
> > >     Seems /usr/local is honoured by the base system (default PATH and
> > > default man search path) but is "deprecated" by Freedesktop.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Concerning installation in user's space:
> > > 
> > > 
> > >     As written above, Freedesktop enables icons, launchers and
> > > applications menu in ~/.local . Man will look also by default search
> > > ~/man if it exists, but, to my knowledge, there is no default user
> > > directory for executables; it is therefore up to the user to create
> > > this directory and specify it when installing, which makes
> > > uninstallation problematic.
> > > 
> > >     In this case, the installer might force the use of ~/bin and ~/man
> > > and create them if they don't exist.
> > If I were you I would make the installation locations configurable, at
> > least at build time with an option to override at install time.
> > 
> > Don't know if you have any experience with building GNU software from
> > source but the ./configure command has options to set a whole pile of
> > locations:
> > 
> > - bindir
> > - libdir
> > - mandir
> > - ...
> > 
> > by default these locations are below a configurable prefixdir that
> > defaults to /usr/local so you get to install below
> > 
> > - /usr/local/bin
> > - /usr/local/lib
> > - /usr/local/man
> > -/usr/local/...
> > 
> > If the user runs ./configure --prefix=$HOME then everything will end up
> > below $HOME. If that user also added --mandir=/usr/local/man then only
> > the manual pages would end up there, everything else still goes below
> > $HOME.
> > 
> > Often the resulting Makefile allows specifying a staging location, a
> > destdir, so you can easily bundle the installed result, in a Debian
> > package for example;-). Setting destdir to /tmp/test, would install
> > that $HOME configured build in
> > 
> > -/tmp/test/$HOME/bin
> > -/tmp/test/$HOME/lib
> > - /tmp/test/usr/local/man
> > -/tmp/test/$HOME/...
> > 
> > but at run-time still use the location without the /tmp/test prefix.
> > 
> > Long story short, don't try to decide the final locations but make them
> > configurable and let the builder decide. Just organize the locations
> > using things like bindir, libdir, etc and make your code use whatever
> > was configured at build time.
> > 
> > I realize that autoconf may be less popular than it once was (cmake is
> > gaining popularity, it seems) but its documentation has a section on the
> > various installation locations it supports. Perhaps that can serve as a
> > guide for picking the places you need.
> > 
> > https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.70/autoconf.html#Installation-Directory-Variables
> 
>     First I won't use GNU autotools they're very complicated and they make
> Makefiles unreadable and, in this case, it's a hammer to kill a fly.
> 
>     Install can be user-configurable, this is easy, but the package provides
> the way to uninstall and, for the uninstall to work, the install must be
> hardcoded because the source of the package cannot remember what the user
> has done at install time.

So the installer can create the appropriate uninstall script, based on 
the parameters the user has provided. 

Then the uninstall script will have the user's own locations hardcoded 
into it.

-- hendrik.

> 
>     Therefore there must be some standard locations where to put files. I
> could provide three options: /usr, /usr/local and $HOME. Then, the uninstall
> could find its way automatically, but, in the case /usr/local, it would be
> up to every user to create symlinks to icon and launcher, and in the case of
> $HOME, the directories bin and man would be created automatically.
> 
> --     Didier
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [DNG] merged /usr breakage

[Hendrik Boom]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 11:44:59AM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> Le 07/01/2022 à 10:18, Didier Kryn a écrit :
> > Le 06/01/2022 à 22:00, Bob Proulx via Dng a écrit :
> > > Didier Kryn wrote:
> > > > Hendrik Boom a ecrit :
> > > > > > > software that isn't properly packaged as a .deb, but 
> > > > > > > instead has an "installer" that needs to be run as root.
> > > Immediately I think of all of those script "installers" that 
> > > request the user do this and similar to install their software as 
> > > root this way.
> > > 
> > >  wget -O- http:/example.com/foo.sh | bash
> > > 
> > > How many projects do this?  Hundreds?  Thousands?
> > > 
> > > In real life I have encountered many CAD/EDA tool vendors with 
> > > installation scripts that casually make system modifications not 
> > > knowing what they do.  I try to keep those contained.

If I recall correctly, the manufacturer-supplied printer driver for the 
Brother HL 3170CDW laser printer does this.

> > > 
> > > In real life I have encountered sysadmins who have casually 
> > > modified modules, python in this case but it could have been 
> > > other, in /usr/lib outside of the package manager or any 
> > > tracking.  Then later normal machine upgrades were broken because 
> > > newer modules were broken by upgrading older ones.  If those had 
> > > been made into /usr/local instead it would have been both visible 
> > > and would not have been broken by normal system upgrades.
> > > 
> > > Being more than twice burned I am extremely shy now...
> > > 
> > > > > >  If the installer must be run as root, it is precisely 
> > > > > > because it needs to install software in /usr.
> > > Or into /usr/local which now requires root.  Back in the better 
> > > days of Debian it used to be possible for a user of group staff 
> > > to install into /usr/local without full superuser access.  But 
> > > that's gone from the installation now.
> > > 
> > >  https://bugs.debian.org/484841#62
> > > 
> > > Since that has been removed in favor of using full root for 
> > > everything it removes a useful safety net layer.  For example 
> > > this statement.
> > > 
> > >  Russ Allbery writes in comment #77 in favor of using full 
> > > root  instead of a more limited group staff.
> > > 
> > >  I would prefer to drop the writeability of /usr/local by 
> > > staff  personally.  I don't think it serves much useful 
> > > purpose these days  given the existence of tools like sudo, 
> > > and where it does, I think we  can work out a transition plan 
> > > that will make it relatively easy for  sites to recreate the 
> > > concept.
> > > 
> > > And the vote went against it.  So it's gone now.  It's root only. 
> > > Sigh.  On my systems I recreate the group staff concept and 
> > > implementation.  Because I do find it useful.

My chimaera system says

hendrik@midwinter:~$ ls /usr/local -l
total 36
drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jun  1  2021 bin
drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jul  9  2018 etc
drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jul  9  2018 games
drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jul  9  2018 include
drwxrwsr-x  4 rootstaff 4096 Oct  5 08:27 lib
lrwxrwxrwx  1 rootstaff9 Jul  9  2018 man -> share/man
drwxr-sr-x 10 hendrik staff 4096 Jun  1  2021 racket
drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jul  9  2018 sbin
drwxrwsr-x  9 rootstaff 4096 Oct  5 08:21 share
drwxrwsr-x  2 rootstaff 4096 Jul  9  2018 src

so it looks as if 'staff' is still alive.
I certainly didn't set up a 'staff' account myself.

...
...

> 
> 
> Concerning installation in /usr/local: 
> --
> 
>     My first investigations indicate that there is provision in 
> Freedesktop.org to put icons and launchers under $HOME/.local, but 
> nothing for /usr/local. Therefore the installation of an application 
> in /usr/local could include executable, config files and manpages, 
> but the icon and the launcher would be per user.     Seems /usr/local 
> is honoured by the base system (default PATH and default man search 
> path) but is "deprecated" by Freedesktop.
> 
> 
> Concerning installation in user's space: 
> 
> 
>     As written above, Freedesktop enables icons, launchers and 
> applications menu in ~/.local . Man will look also by default search 
> ~/man if it exists, but, to my knowledge, 

Re: [DNG] merged /usr breakage

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Jan 06, 2022 at 02:00:57PM -0700, Bob Proulx via Dng wrote:
> 
> > > > If the installer must be run as root, it is precisely because it 
> > > > needs
> > > > to install software in /usr.
> 
> Or into /usr/local which now requires root.  Back in the better days
> of Debian it used to be possible for a user of group staff to install
> into /usr/local without full superuser access.  But that's gone from
> the installation now.
> 
> https://bugs.debian.org/484841#62

Or even 

chown -R someresponsibleuser /usr/local

?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] merged /usr breakage

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2022 at 09:54:20PM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> Le 05/01/2022 à 16:11, Hendrik Boom a écrit :
> > On Wed, Jan 05, 2022 at 12:08:18AM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> > > Le 04/01/2022 à 23:38, Hendrik Boom a écrit :
> > > > On Tue, Jan 04, 2022 at 05:09:58PM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> > > > > There is no utility in splitting the OS in several partitions.
> > > > Might it make sense to have /usr mounted readonly except when upgradng
> > > > or installing paackages?
> > > > 
> > >      What could you fear which makes you want to keep /usr readonly.
> > software that isn't properly packaged as a .deb, but instead has an
> > "installer" that needs to be run as root.
> 
>     If the installer must be run as root, it is precisely because it needs
> to install software in /usr. You have an alternative: either mount /usr
> readwrite and install it, or keep /usr readonly and not install it. Keeping
> /usr readonly and trying to install the software has no chance to work.


Such software should be installing to /opt, but might not.

> 
>     I have written such a software, called hopman. This discussion suggests
> me that I should provide the option to install it in a user's directory,
> without the need to be root, rather than install it system-wide.
> 
> > software that is properly packaged, but has components that run as root
> > but do stuff with /usr outside my expectations.
> 
>     Do you mean a package from a Debian repository which would install a
> trojan horse in /usr?

Packages from other sources that are built for Debian but aren't part of Debian.

-- hendrik

> 
> --     Didier
> 
> 
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Re: [DNG] Printer trouble again. -- solved

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sat, Jan 01, 2022 at 03:07:44PM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> I installed CUPS a part of the standard istall long ago.
> I had no trouble configuring it back the to talk sweet to me printer.
> Worked fine.  Bu tnow it doesn't.
> 
> The printer seems to hae changed its IP number.
> Now I can tell it explicitly what IP numder to use by entering stuff in its 
> physical control panel.  So all I should have to do is to set its IP number 
> to 
> whatever CUPS (now unsuccessfuly) uses to talk to it. 
> 
> What I don't know is how to get CUPS to tell me what IP number it currently 
> thinks 
> belongs to the printer.
> 
> There should be some simple way of asking CUPS to tell me this.
> 
> -- hendrik

As I mentioned esewhere, the problem wasn't that CUPS had the wrong IP number.
And I thought I'd have to delete CUPS knowledge of my printer before starting 
over with its cofiguration. 
But I could find no way to tell CUPS to remove a printer (and it seems to know 
several that no longer exist.)


However, I just went to http port 631 on localhost and told it to add a printer.
Worked like a charm.  Don't know what it did with the old printer description.
Presumably it *is* possiblt to have two identical printers with different 
options.

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] merged /usr breakage

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2022 at 12:08:18AM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> Le 04/01/2022 à 23:38, Hendrik Boom a écrit :
> > On Tue, Jan 04, 2022 at 05:09:58PM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> > > There is no utility in splitting the OS in several partitions.
> > Might it make sense to have /usr mounted readonly except when upgradng
> > or installing paackages?
> > 
>     What could you fear which makes you want to keep /usr readonly.

software that isn't properly packaged as a .deb, but instead has an 
"installer" that needs to be run as root. 

software that is properly packaged, but has components that run as root 
but do stuff with /usr outside my expectations.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] merged /usr breakage

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2022 at 05:09:58PM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> There is no utility in splitting the OS in several partitions.

Might it make sense to have /usr mounted readonly except when upgradng 
or installing paackages?

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] Printer trouble again. (slight progress)

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Jan 03, 2022 at 06:52:17PM +0100, k...@aspodata.se wrote:
> Hendrik:
> ...
> > DeviceURI 
> > dnssd://Brother%20HL-3170CDW%20series._ipp._tcp.local/?uuid=e3248000-80ce-11db-8000-30055c5516df
> 
>  From what I can see:
> https://www.brother-usa.com/products/hl3170cdw
> 
> that printer supports BR-script which is a postscript clone.
> Why not set it to BR-script mode on the front panel, run plain old
> lpr and be done with it. And tell your programs to always output
> postscript.

lpr is what I use to print.  And it ends up going through CUPS.  At least, it 
did last time I successfully printed.

It turns out that there are several packages that provide lpr.  CUPS is one of 
them.  Presumably it provided an lpr that passes everything through CUPS.

I had anther machine where I did not use CUPS an spent quite a while figuring 
out how to find, install, and configure the 'plain old lpr'.  Abd that involved 
getting a print driver from the manufacturer.  Of course, they provided an 
'installer' which had to be run as root and changed an plastered whatever it 
wanted around the file system (something I don't appreciate).

I no longer know how I accomplished that.  But when I installed Devuan jessie 
on 
my new computer a few years ago, it came with CUPS and just worked.

-- hendrik

> 
> Regards,
> /Karl Hammar
> 
> 
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Re: [DNG] Printer trouble again. (slight progress)

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Jan 03, 2022 at 12:10:01PM +0100, Florian Zieboll via Dng wrote:
> 
> Hallo Hendrick,
> 
> just another possibility: If there's no intermediate print server,
> grepping your local '/etc/cups/printers.conf' for 'DeviceURI' will
> reveal the printer's IP address resp. its hostname as well.

DeviceURI 
dnssd://Brother%20HL-3170CDW%20series._ipp._tcp.local/?uuid=e3248000-80ce-11db-8000-30055c5516df

There's no I number in sight.  I'm guessing that when I upgraded to chimaera, 
CUPS 
decided to use dnssd instead of an IP number, and updated its printers.conf file
accordingly.  Could it ne that my printer doesn't do dnsdd?

I think I'll have to remove the printer from CUPS entirely and add it back 
again.
Maybe even purge and re-install CUPS if necessary.

-- hendrik
O
> 
> Libre Grüße,
> Florian
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[DNG] Priter trouble again.

[Hendrik Boom]

I installed CUPS a part of the standard istall long ago.
I had no trouble configuring it back the to talk sweet to me printer.
Worked fine.  Bu tnow it doesn't.

The printer seems to hae changed its IP number.
Now I can tell it explicitly what IP numder to use by entering stuff in its 
physical control panel.  So all I should have to do is to set its IP number to 
whatever CUPS (now unsuccessfuly) uses to talk to it. 

What I don't know is how to get CUPS to tell me what IP number it currently 
thinks 
belongs to the printer.

There should be some simple way of asking CUPS to tell me this.

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] Lead or follow? this decade’s dilemma for GNU/Linux based ICT industry

[Hendrik Boom]

This is eloquent and profound enough that it needs to be somewhere where people 
are likely to run into it if they are investigating Devuan.

Preferably with links to the five other documents you list for background 
information.

-- hendrik

On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 07:14:28PM +0100, Jaromil wrote:
> Dear DNG'ers
> 
> this summer I wrote a small critical post about what I believe to be a
> dilemma for anyone using GNU/Linux at scale for mission critical
> operations.
> 
> I'm curious about your opinions here and if it can spawn an interesting
> thread, there is so little discussion about these topics online and I
> guess this is a good place for it given the experience gathered in this
> community.
> 
> The article is pasted below and a link to it is provided for those who
> prefer the web with links and animated gifs.
> 
>  Lead or follow? this decade’s dilemma for GNU/Linux based ICT industry
> 
>   Online version with links and gifs:
>   
> https://medium.com/think-do-tank/lead-or-follow-the-dilemma-of-ict-industry-for-the-coming-decade-4f83ee1851bc
> 
>I’m writing this post prompted by the disclosure of yet another bug on
>systemd, this time a “nasty security bug” as journalists at ZDNet defined
>it that has been granting all this time local privilege escalation through
>an excessive memory allocation.
> 
> Nasty Linux systemd security bug revealed | ZDNet
> 
>   Systemd, the Linux system and service manager that has largely replaced init
>   as the master Linux startup and control…
> 
>This is very bad news for people running most GNU/Linux desktop or server
>installations with multi-user environments: it means that for the past 5
>years or so their systems may have been compromised, with a few
>exceptions.
> 
>But this post goes beyond these obvious considerations: I argue this is
>just the tip of an iceberg passing almost unnoticed.
> 
>  I’ll share some reasoning about the present and future challenges that
>  are defining a turning point for most of us using and developing
>  GNU/Linux based systems.
> 
> Context
> 
>  The major event I like to focus is not a bug, but the landmark
>  acquisition of RedHat by IBM for 36 whopping billions of dollars just 2
>  years ago.
> 
>This event shall not go unobserved when debating about the future of
>GNU/Linux. It is plausible to think that the enterprise strategy of
>companies dealing with GNU/Linux technologies will evolve well beyond the
>business on certifications, and make bold steps into more aggressive
>exploitation of their huge “market”, something once was a community and
>has lost that status.
> 
>Even the temporal context has a major role in this equation as this is all
>happening during the troubled beginning of a decade marked by pandemic: we
>are witnessing a boost in usage of ICT infrastructure due to COVID with
>growing investments from both public and private sectors into this market.
> 
> Strategy
> 
>  The big and ever-growing conglomerate of the IBM/Linux armada aims to
>  seize the market with renewed dependencies.
> 
>The strategy to form and consolidate dependencies around the needs of
>clients makes sense for an oligopoly that wants to keep its dominant
>position. For a big technology provider today the business of support and
>certifications is marginal when compared to the opportunity to lead
>research, standardization and the pace of innovation according to own
>interests.
> 
>The one who can lead standards can also confine risks where he may please,
>and accelerate testing of own developments no matter how experimental. For
>example systemd builds a lot of dependencies with new untested software
>whose risk is delegated to… anyone using Linux.
> 
>This is precisely what is happening as the big-tech industry establishes
>new core standards for its sector— systemd being a too-big-to-fail example
>— it offloads the risk of innovating strategies on user communities and
>small clients.
> 
>  Right after a successful trial on communities, the big-tech industry is
>  now turning small clients into guinea-pigs to externalize risks attached
>  to innovation strategies.
> 
>This is evident through the strategic changes applied by this new RedHat,
>now lead by IBM, as we come to another landmark event for the ICT
>industry: the so called “death of CentOS”.
> 
> CentOS Is Dead, Long Live CentOS
> 
>   On Tuesday, December 8th, Red Hat and CentOS announced the end of CentOS 8. 
> To
>   be specific, CentOS 8 will reach end of…
> 
>The end of life of RHEL 8 and CentOS 8 has been announced, to be
>substituted by new “stream” releases that have de-facto buried CentOS
>original mission as a stable distribution and resurrected it as the new
>guinea-pig to join 

[DNG] RGBling

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2021 at 01:55:34PM +1000, onefang wrote:
> 
> I skimped on the graphics card, coz gamers made everyone put RGBling on
> everything, so I had to back up one model to get one without RGBling.  I
> wish I could have done the same for the RAM, AND gotten ECC, but alas
> neither was available.  The RGBling on the RAM can ONLY be controlled
> from Windows, and doesn't remember it's settings after reboot. I can
> disable RGBling on motherboard from BIOS and case from a switch.   This
> desktop sits on the floor, but projects RGBling onto my high ceiling. 
> Pffft

What is RGBling?

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] new firefox-esr buggy?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 08:03:25PM +0100, Harald Arnesen wrote:
> Hendrik Boom [18/12/2021 19.22]:
> 
> > On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 10:11:11PM +0100, Harald Arnesen via Dng wrote:
> > > 
> > > Another thing, try to turn off "smooth scrolling" (why would anyone want
> > > that?).
> > 
> > How do you do that?  It's the one thing that makes firefox a pain to use 
> > over a LAN.
> > (well, I guess animations in general do that)
> 
> Uncheck 'Settings -> General -> Browsing -> Use smooth scrolling'

Except that it was called Preferences rather then Settings, it worked!
I've looked for such an option before, but failed to find it.

-- hendrik

> -- 
> Hilsen Harald
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Re: [DNG] new firefox-esr buggy?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 10:11:11PM +0100, Harald Arnesen via Dng wrote:
> 
> Another thing, try to turn off "smooth scrolling" (why would anyone want
> that?).

How do you do that?  It's the one thing that makes firefox a pain to use over a 
LAN.
(well, I guess animations in general do that)

-- hendrik

> -- 
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Re: [DNG] Viewing file content (was Re: system administration of non-systemd distros and releases)

[Hendrik Boom]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 09:23:05PM -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
> Olaf Meeuwissen said on Fri, 26 Nov 2021 18:40:37 +0900
> 
> >Hi,
> >
> >Steve Litt writes:
> >
> >> What could possibly be easier than vim /var/log/messages, or
> >> vi /var/log/messages, or emacs /var/log/messages, or
> >> nano /var/log/messages? And notice with the old way, you have a
> >> choice, rather than having to look at log output with the vendor's
> >> proprietary tool.  
> >
> >Maybe I'm peculiar but I always find it absolutely, totally
> >jaw-dropping when people use text *editors* to *look* at file content.
> > Makes my toes curl up and blood curdle.
> 
> You're right. Use less or some other *viewer*.

For things like log output, which must be kept unchanged, a read-only 
viewer would suffice.  Or a read-only editor.  Editors sometimes have 
texual search mechanisms that are better than viewers.  And if you use 
one editor a *lot*, its commands are muscle memory.

For things tat you primarily want to read, but rarely fix a typo or 
such, you can open a text editor in read-only mode, protecting you from 
inadvertent edits.

-- hendrik

> 
> SteveT
> 
> Steve Litt 
> Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
> Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques
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[DNG] What not to back up

[Hendrik Boom]

I'm setting up a new backup script that will do it all piecemeal so 
that if a part of it fails, it can be retried without having to start 
*everythng* over from scratch.

Which top-level filesystems should *not* be backed up.

To start with, I presumably shouldn't back up

/proc
/tmp
/dev (cause I'm using some version of *udev)
/mnt

and I certainly should back up /var, /usr. /root, /bin, 
/boot, /etc, /home, /lib, /lib64, /sbin

But what about

/run
/srv
/sys
?

What are those even used for?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Devuan with usr merge?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 07:42:18PM +0100, al3xu5 via Dng wrote:
> 
> My suspected is that the (totally unecessary) usr-merge decision made by
> Debian will force (almost) all its derivatives to adapt even if they
> despite. 
> 
> This is because maintaining a derived distribution rejecting usr-merge
> would become too complex and onerous...

Possibly as difficult as changing the entire OS *to* usr-merge.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Some RAID1's inaccessible after upgrade to beowulf from ascii

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 09:00:39PM +0100, tito via Dng wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Nov 2021 18:37:24 -0500
> Hendrik Boom  wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Nov 09, 2021 at 02:56:59PM -0500, Hendrik Boom via Dng wrote:
> > > I upgraded my server to beowulf.
> > > 
> > > After rebooting, all home directories except root's are no longer
> > > accessible.
> > > 
> > > They are all on an LVM on software RAID.
> > > 
> > > The problem seems to be that two of my three RAID1 systems are not
> > > starting up properly.  What can I do about it?
> > > 
> > 
> > After following suggestions from the replies I got here, I determined 
> > that one of my three physical disk drives was not being reognised by the 
> > operating system.
> > 
> > Took the cover off the machine.
> > 
> > Looked in with a penlight and tured the machine off.
> > 
> > Wiggled and pushed on some SATA cables and power-supply cables.
> > 
> > Rebooted.
> > 
> > All three drives came up properly.  The RAIDs assembled properly.
> > 
> > All except /dev/md0.  It's a defective RAID necause the disk drive 
> > containing its second copy died a long time ago.  I should move its data 
> > off it onto one of the other RAIDs sometime.
> > 
> > Now there remains the question:
> > 
> > Why didn't /dev/md1 and /dev/md2 assemble properly as defective 
> > RAID1s when their second copies were gone?  Isn't that the whole point 
> > of a RAID1?
> > 
> > /dev/md0 had no such problem.
> > 
> > -- hendrik
> 
> Hi,
> I once had similar problems with disk randomly vanishing at reboot
> and arrays not coming up correctly. I tried all possible solutions:
> swapping disks, cables, controllers, motherboards, hd cages with
> no result. In the end I discovered that the old 500w psu was not able
> to power all 10 hd drives when they were spinning up all at the same time
> at boot or when one array was rebuilding and I did heavy io on another 
> array. Changing the psu to a newer 1000w one solved the issue magically.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> Ciao,
> Tito 

It seems that oe of the SATA data cables wasn't plugged in all the way.  
If there's no physical data connection it won't matter muc if the power 
supply is adequate.

What puzzles me is that md1 and md2 could not proceed as refective 
RAID1's, where md0, which has lacked its second drive for month, was 
assembled as a defective, but active, raid.

-- hendrik

>  
> > > 
> > > 
> > > hendrik@april:/$ cat /proc/mdstat
> > > Personalities : [raid1] [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid6] [raid5]
> > > [raid4] [raid10]
> > > md1 : inactive sda2[3](S)
> > >   2391296000 blocks super 1.2
> > > 
> > > md2 : inactive sda3[0](S)
> > >   1048512 blocks
> > > 
> > > md0 : active raid1 sdf4[1]
> > >   706337792 blocks [2/1] [_U]
> > > 
> > > unused devices: 
> > > hendrik@april:/$
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > hendrik@april:/$ cat /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
> > > DEVICE partitions
> > > ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2
> > > UUID=4dc189ba:e7a12d38:e6262cdf:db1beda2
> > > ARRAY /dev/md1 metadata=1.2 name=april:1
> > > UUID=c328565c:16dce536:f16da6e2:db603645
> > > ARRAY /dev/md2 UUID=5d63f486:183fd2ea:c2a3a88f:cb2b61de
> > > MAILADDR root
> > > hendrik@april:/$
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > The standard recommendation seems to be to replace lines
> > > in /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf by lines prouced by mdadm --examine --scan:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > april:~# mdadm --examine --scan
> > > ARRAY /dev/md/1  metadata=1.2 UUID=c328565c:16dce536:f16da6e2:db603645
> > > name=april:1
> > > ARRAY /dev/md2 UUID=5d63f486:183fd2ea:c2a3a88f:cb2b61de
> > > ARRAY /dev/md0 UUID=4dc189ba:e7a12d38:e6262cdf:db1beda2
> > > april:~#
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > But this replacement involves changing a line that dies work (md0),
> > > not changing one that did not (md2),
> > > and changing another one that did not work (md1).
> > > 
> > > Since --examine's suggested changes seem uncorrelated
> > > with the active/inactive record, I have little faith in
> > > this alleged fix without first gaining more understanding.
> > > 
> > > -- hendrik
> > 
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Re: [DNG] Some RAID1's inaccessible after upgrade to beowulf from ascii

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Nov 09, 2021 at 02:56:59PM -0500, Hendrik Boom via Dng wrote:
> I upgraded my server to beowulf.
> 
> After rebooting, all home directories except root's are no longer
> accessible.
> 
> They are all on an LVM on software RAID.
> 
> The problem seems to be that two of my three RAID1 systems are not
> starting up properly.  What can I do about it?
> 

After following suggestions from the replies I got here, I determined 
that one of my three physical disk drives was not being reognised by the 
operating system.

Took the cover off the machine.

Looked in with a penlight and tured the machine off.

Wiggled and pushed on some SATA cables and power-supply cables.

Rebooted.

All three drives came up properly.  The RAIDs assembled properly.

All except /dev/md0.  It's a defective RAID necause the disk drive 
containing its second copy died a long time ago.  I should move its data 
off it onto one of the other RAIDs sometime.

Now there remains the question:

Why didn't /dev/md1 and /dev/md2 assemble properly as defective 
RAID1s when their second copies were gone?  Isn't that the whole point 
of a RAID1?

/dev/md0 had no such problem.

-- hendrik

> 
> 
> hendrik@april:/$ cat /proc/mdstat
> Personalities : [raid1] [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid6] [raid5]
> [raid4] [raid10]
> md1 : inactive sda2[3](S)
>   2391296000 blocks super 1.2
> 
> md2 : inactive sda3[0](S)
>   1048512 blocks
> 
> md0 : active raid1 sdf4[1]
>   706337792 blocks [2/1] [_U]
> 
> unused devices: 
> hendrik@april:/$
> 
> 
> 
> hendrik@april:/$ cat /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
> DEVICE partitions
> ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2
> UUID=4dc189ba:e7a12d38:e6262cdf:db1beda2
> ARRAY /dev/md1 metadata=1.2 name=april:1
> UUID=c328565c:16dce536:f16da6e2:db603645
> ARRAY /dev/md2 UUID=5d63f486:183fd2ea:c2a3a88f:cb2b61de
> MAILADDR root
> hendrik@april:/$
> 
> 
> 
> The standard recommendation seems to be to replace lines
> in /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf by lines prouced by mdadm --examine --scan:
> 
> 
> 
> april:~# mdadm --examine --scan
> ARRAY /dev/md/1  metadata=1.2 UUID=c328565c:16dce536:f16da6e2:db603645
> name=april:1
> ARRAY /dev/md2 UUID=5d63f486:183fd2ea:c2a3a88f:cb2b61de
> ARRAY /dev/md0 UUID=4dc189ba:e7a12d38:e6262cdf:db1beda2
> april:~#
> 
> 
> 
> But this replacement involves changing a line that dies work (md0),
> not changing one that did not (md2),
> and changing another one that did not work (md1).
> 
> Since --examine's suggested changes seem uncorrelated
> with the active/inactive record, I have little faith in
> this alleged fix without first gaining more understanding.
> 
> -- hendrik

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[DNG] Some RAID1's inaccessible after upgrade to beowulf from ascii

[Hendrik Boom via Dng]

I upgraded my server to beowulf.

After rebooting, all home directories except root's are no longer
accessible.

They are all on an LVM on software RAID.

The problem seems to be that two of my three RAID1 systems are not
starting up properly.  What can I do about it?



hendrik@april:/$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1] [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid6] [raid5]
[raid4] [raid10]
md1 : inactive sda2[3](S)
  2391296000 blocks super 1.2

md2 : inactive sda3[0](S)
  1048512 blocks

md0 : active raid1 sdf4[1]
  706337792 blocks [2/1] [_U]

unused devices: 
hendrik@april:/$



hendrik@april:/$ cat /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
DEVICE partitions
ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2
UUID=4dc189ba:e7a12d38:e6262cdf:db1beda2
ARRAY /dev/md1 metadata=1.2 name=april:1
UUID=c328565c:16dce536:f16da6e2:db603645
ARRAY /dev/md2 UUID=5d63f486:183fd2ea:c2a3a88f:cb2b61de
MAILADDR root
hendrik@april:/$



The standard recommendation seems to be to replace lines
in /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf by lines prouced by mdadm --examine --scan:



april:~# mdadm --examine --scan
ARRAY /dev/md/1  metadata=1.2 UUID=c328565c:16dce536:f16da6e2:db603645
name=april:1
ARRAY /dev/md2 UUID=5d63f486:183fd2ea:c2a3a88f:cb2b61de
ARRAY /dev/md0 UUID=4dc189ba:e7a12d38:e6262cdf:db1beda2
april:~#



But this replacement involves changing a line that dies work (md0),
not changing one that did not (md2),
and changing another one that did not work (md1).

Since --examine's suggested changes seem uncorrelated
with the active/inactive record, I have little faith in
this alleged fix without first gaining more understanding.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] mutt and html

[Hendrik Boom]

Thanks for all the advice.

On Sat, Oct 30, 2021 at 04:13:31PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> Until upgraded from ascii to beowulf, HTML messages were tolerable.
> Either they were obvious crap, in which case I just deeted them,
> or they seemed like they were worth viewing, in which case they were 
> usually html attachments, and I could seen the list of attachments by 
> typeing v and selecting the html version -- in which case it would 
> open for me in the chromium browser.
> 
> This stopped working after the upgrade to beowulf.
> 
> I did manage to reconfigure, telling it to use firefox-esr, but that 
> didn't help much.  I connect to my server, the machine on which I run 
> mutt, using ssh -X.  
> So firefox on the server detects I already have a firefox browser 
> on my laptop and proceeds to give the job of browsing the message to 
> my laptop.
> Makes sense, except that my laptop has no way to access the 
> /tmp/mutt/somethingorother.html on the server. 
> 
> And I have not been able to get mutt to call chromium at all.
> 
> Any ideas?

By tring things that were suggested, and trying to make sense of the 
documentation slightly more informed than random, I managed to get 
firefox to display html contents from the server where the files are.

~/.muttrc:

set mailcap_path="~/.mailcap"
auto_view text/html
bind pager Q exit
subscribe racket-us...@googlegroups.com

~/.mailcap:

#text/html ; chromium %s
text/html ; firefox-esr -no-remote %s ; copiousoutput

Unfortunately it now prefers the .html version to the plaintext version.
I presume I need an alternative_order line.

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] mutt and html

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Nov 02, 2021 at 03:50:07PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 30, 2021 at 04:13:31PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > Until upgraded from ascii to beowulf, HTML messages were tolerable.
> > Either they were obvious crap, in which case I just deeted them,
> > or they seemed like they were worth viewing, in which case they were 
> > usually html attachments, and I could seen the list of attachments by 
> > typeing v and selecting the html version -- in which case it would 
> > open for me in the chromium browser.
> > 
> > This stopped working after the upgrade to beowulf.
> > 
> > I did manage to reconfigure, telling it to use firefox-esr, but that 
> > didn't help much.  I connect to my server, the machine on which I run 
> > mutt, using ssh -X.  
> > So firefox on the server detects I already have a firefox browser 
> > on my laptop and proceeds to give the job of browsing the message to 
> > my laptop.
> > Makes sense, except that my laptop has no way to access the 
> > /tmp/mutt/somethingorother.html on the server. 
> > 
> > And I have not been able to get mutt to call chromium at all.
> > 
> > Any ideas?
> > 
> > -- hendrik
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> > Dng@lists.dyne.org
> > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
> 
> As far as I can tell, it's not seeing the information in my ~/.mailcao file.

Correction: it's really called ~/.mailcap, not ~/.mailcao

> When I put in an entry like
> 
> text/html ; echo foo
> 
> it still displays the html content of a an attachment as if it were 
> ordinatry plain text attachment, so i get to see all the html tags.
> 
> -- hendrik
> 
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Re: [DNG] mutt and html

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sat, Oct 30, 2021 at 04:13:31PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> Until upgraded from ascii to beowulf, HTML messages were tolerable.
> Either they were obvious crap, in which case I just deeted them,
> or they seemed like they were worth viewing, in which case they were 
> usually html attachments, and I could seen the list of attachments by 
> typeing v and selecting the html version -- in which case it would 
> open for me in the chromium browser.
> 
> This stopped working after the upgrade to beowulf.
> 
> I did manage to reconfigure, telling it to use firefox-esr, but that 
> didn't help much.  I connect to my server, the machine on which I run 
> mutt, using ssh -X.  
> So firefox on the server detects I already have a firefox browser 
> on my laptop and proceeds to give the job of browsing the message to 
> my laptop.
> Makes sense, except that my laptop has no way to access the 
> /tmp/mutt/somethingorother.html on the server. 
> 
> And I have not been able to get mutt to call chromium at all.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> -- hendrik
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As far as I can tell, it's not seeing the information in my ~/.mailcao file.
When I put in an entry like

text/html ; echo foo

it still displays the html content of a an attachment as if it were 
ordinatry plain text attachment, so i get to see all the html tags.

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] rdiff-backup compatibility

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Nov 01, 2021 at 11:41:58AM +, Mark Hindley wrote:
> This is documented in Debian's Bullseye Release Notes and referenced from
> Devuan's Chimaera Release Notes.
> 
> Mark

The need to upgrade server and client in lockstep is indeed documented 
in the Bullseye release notes.  I ahve done that.

What is not mentioned is whether the backup archive format has changed 
incompatibly.
  
That's what I was asking.

-- hendrik
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[DNG] Long-term archiving versus medium fallibility

[Hendrik Boom]

These days an increasing amount of my personal information, bookd, 
mementos, family photos, and work data are being kept on digital media.  
And those are vulnerable.

It's well-known that to archive files long-term (say, ten years or more) 
it is necessary to keep multiple copies, preferably on different media.

So this is what I'd like to do with my critical files.

Yet these files are also working files, are kept online, and 
legitinately need to be modified from time to time.

So I keep backups.  Currently I use rdiff-backup, which does have the
ablity to keep older as well as newer versions of files on the same 
backup drive.  And I keep multple backups.

(This might even help somewhat against ransomware attacks)

--

Now storage media deteriorate over time.
It is necessary to read and transfer data from old media to new from 
time to time.  Yes, I know that.  My present method is to keep 
everything on my server, and make regular backups.

(OK, my backuos aren't all *that* regular, but I try)

Now the master copy is the working file system of my server.
And even in the absence of ransomware, there are occasional disk 
failures.

Yes, I use a RAID so any detected disk failures don't cause immediate 
data loss.  (it also has the side effect of letting me continue running 
apparently unaffected from the time a disk has failed until I manage to 
replace it.

And I also use the ext4 file system against unexpected shutdowns.  Yes, 
I journal everything, not just metadata.  So after a crash, or 
unexpected power outage, the file system is easy to restore to a 
consistent state.

Now for further protection against data failure, I'd like to introduce 
checksumming.  This is available with btrfs and zfs (or is it xfs?  I 
forget which is which).

But ... all of this relies on valid RAM.

Copying files to or from backup, updating files, all of it is done by 
copying into RAM and then copying it from RAM.  In the presence of 
faulty RAM, even a backup copy could be seriously damaged.

And this is worse with the newer b-tree file systems, which are 
constantly copying data. - even data which hasn't changed.  A single 
update will read a large block of data from disk, make the changes, and 
write it back.  The entire block is this written back, complete with 
changes, bit-failures from RAM problems, and a new check-sum to validate 
the bad bits.

I'm told the maintainers of thse file-systems laugh at you if you're not 
using ECC memory.

---

Now I'm wondering how to introduce chack-summing to protect against this 
kind of data loss despite occasionally (but rarely) filing memory.

* I could run memory checks frequently to catch failing memory.  But the 
circumstances in ordinary operation differ from the circumstances of the 
memory check program, and faulty memory might fail to be detected.

* I could install ECC memory.  But that has become difficlt to get, and 
some processors on the mass market won't even handle it properly.

* I could hope the ext4 developers will add checksums to the ext4 file 
system, possibly renaming it to ext5.

* Or I could try doing my own checksuming.  Perhaps checksumming 
everythin in the file system and catching files whose checksums have 
changed without a new modification date.  This could be done at backup 
time, flaggin such discrepancies for manual attention.  (note: need to 
check the checksum on the backup, too).

---

Anyone have other ideas?

-- hendrik 




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[DNG] rdiff-backup compatibility

[Hendrik Boom]

rdiff-bckup has changed its communication protocol between versions 1 
and 2, so it is necessary to have compatible versions of rdiff-backup at 
both ends of an rdiff-backup over a network, and a version 2 
beowulf backport is available for rdiff for those who need to bridge 
rdiff-backup between older and newer systems.

I have used the backport to achieve this network-protocol compatibility.
What I would like to know:

Has the file format for the rdiff-backup metadata changed between 
versions 1 and 2 in any incompatible way?

I'm having trouble with backing up using version 2 to a version 1 backup 
directory.  I am wondering whether this is becuse of an incompatibility 
between the backup file formats, or because the backup has become 
corrupt by other means.

I would expect rdiff-backup to detect old backup formats and deal with 
them, but then, I would have expected rdiff-backup to deal with old 
networking protocols as well.

-- hendrik 

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[DNG] mutt and html

[Hendrik Boom]

Until upgraded from ascii to beowulf, HTML messages were tolerable.
Either they were obvious crap, in which case I just deeted them,
or they seemed like they were worth viewing, in which case they were 
usually html attachments, and I could seen the list of attachments by 
typeing v and selecting the html version -- in which case it would 
open for me in the chromium browser.

This stopped working after the upgrade to beowulf.

I did manage to reconfigure, telling it to use firefox-esr, but that 
didn't help much.  I connect to my server, the machine on which I run 
mutt, using ssh -X.  
So firefox on the server detects I already have a firefox browser 
on my laptop and proceeds to give the job of browsing the message to 
my laptop.
Makes sense, except that my laptop has no way to access the 
/tmp/mutt/somethingorother.html on the server. 

And I have not been able to get mutt to call chromium at all.

Any ideas?

-- hendrik
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[DNG] rdiff-backup connection dropped

[Hendrik Boom]

I had a long-running rdiff-backup backing one machine up onto 
another.  But it failed because its network connection broke.

If I were to restart it, it would start by undoing everything it had 
already done, and start doing again what it had already done.

Is there any way to get rdiff-backup to resume fom where it left 
off?

(I suspect not)

-- hendrik



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Re: [DNG] white band on top of lxqt screen -- SOLVED

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 06:58:15PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> A few days ago (possibly related to the upgrade to chimaera) when I log 
> into lxqt a white band has appeared at the top of the screen.
> It looks exactly like the band at the bottom, except the one at the botom 
> carries icons and stuff, and the one on top carries nothing.
> 
> How do I go about getting rid of this superfluous bar?  I cannot place any 
> part of a window there, and I lavve limited vertical space on the screen.

Turns out menu-clicking on the bar itself provides a menu in which you can 
configure the 
bar to go elsewhere or even to go away.

Discovered this by clicking on it by mistake.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Is it dead yet? -- SOLVED

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 10:38:08AM -0700, spiralofhope wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 12:15:13 -0400
> Hendrik Boom via Dng  wrote:
> 
> > Machine works fine now, running devuan ascii.
> 
> That's good news.
> 
> I guess memory can "wear out", but hopefully the memory wasn't damaged
> by some fault in the motherboard or power.  I hope your new memory is
> safe.

I hope so too.

It seems to be working well enough for a seamless upgrade from ascii to 
beowulf, anyway. While continuing to receive email and the website 
remaining up.  I guess I'll see how seamless it really was when I reboot. 

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] Chimaera install: only low resolution video

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 02:19:09PM -0400, Haines Brown wrote:
...
...
> 
> Sorry I thought I has said that I had no graphics card. I'm assuing 
> that installing a graphic card is unlikely to get a resolution other 
> than the deefault vga.

On some machines I've had, the motherboard starts up checking whether 
there's a graphics card and if so it uses it *instead* of the built-in 
one.  When that happened I had no ability to use both graphics channels 
to, for example, use two monitor.

I don't know if your motherboard works like this.

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] Is it dead yet? -- SOLVED

[Hendrik Boom via Dng]

Not dead, but just injured.
Replaced two 312M RAM cards with one faster 2G RAM card.
Old RAM defective; tech told me that its speed was actually mismatched to
the rest of the system, slowing it down.  Of course "defective" was the
crucial issue, not speed.
Machine works fine now, running devuan ascii.

Next plan: upgrade to current chaemera in stages

Thank you for all the testing suggestions.  They really helped narrow down
the problem.  Not mention moral support.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Is it dead yet?

[Hendrik Boom via Dng]

Chimaera didn't help, though the symptoms changed.
I booted from the chimaera live desktop, and it started looking hopeful,
but before much was running it had a kernel panic -- attempt to kill init.
Yes, I checked the checksum on the download.
And when I used chimaera to boot another computer (a Purism laptop) it
worked flawlessly.

I'm once more suspecting hardware.
Next stop -- memtest.

And memtest shows an enormous number of memory failures.  Which makes me
suspect something systemic, not just a bit here or there.

I'll have to replace the RAM, I guess.  Or find out what memory bus is
failing.

-- hendrik

On Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 11:26 AM tempforever  wrote:

> Download links are available on the devuan download page
> https://www.devuan.org/get-devuan
>
> choose a mirror (for example, mirror.leaseweb.com/devuan/) then navigate
> to the devuan_chimaera/ directory where you will hopefully find a
> desktop-live/ directory which should contain
> devuan_chimaera_4.0.0_[amd64|i386]_desktop-live.iso along with the
> shasums files.  If you prefer not to use http(s), there are ftp mirrors
> and torrent on that same download page.
>
> Hendrik Boom via Dng wrote:
> > Then I'd have to figure out how to get a new kernel into it while it
> crashes during bootup, > which it now does quite consistently. > > If I had
> made recent
> changes (such as upgrades) I'd consider a kernel problem more likely. >
> But it has been running for months with only occasional problems, and
> now I get problems > every time I boot.  Since I haven't done an upgrade
> at all yet this month, I'll suspect hardware. > > Still, I will try,
> say, a chimaera live CD if I can find one.  Where are the Devuan live
> CD's? > I seem to remember that they were called something other than
> "devuan". > (Yes, I'm aware that the live CD will likely be a USB stick)
> > > -- hendrik > > On Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 7:47 AM Boian Bonev
> mailto:bbo...@ipacct.com>> wrote: >
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Re: [DNG] Is it dead yet?

[Hendrik Boom via Dng]

Then I'd have to figure out how to get a new kernel into it while it
crashes during bootup,
which it now does quite consistently.

If I had made recent changes (such as upgrades) I'd consider a kernel
problem more likely.
But it has been running for months with only occasional problems, and now I
get problems
every time I boot.  Since I haven't done an upgrade at all yet this month,
I'll suspect hardware.

Still, I will try, say, a chimaera live CD if I can find one.  Where are
the Devuan live CD's?
I seem to remember that they were called something other than "devuan".
(Yes, I'm aware that the live CD will likely be a USB stick)

-- hendrik

On Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 7:47 AM Boian Bonev  wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA512
>
> Hi Hendrik,
>
> It is clearly saying that is a soft lockup, if it was a hardware problem it
> would say hard lockup isn't it? 
>
> That problem really does not indicate a hardware problem, most probably a
> bug
> in the kernel; it can also show when a kernel driver is waiting for e.g.
> hard
> drive that is slow to respond. Try upgrading to a more recent kernel (e.g.
> 5.10.x or 5.14.x) - maybe the problem is already fixed there? It may also
> be a
> temporary condition - a very rare edge case that made the kernel lockup,
> then a
> reboot will help to clean the state...
>
> With best regards,
> b.
>
> On Mon, 2021-10-25 at 20:28 -0400, Hendrik Boom via Dng wrote:
> > I think I may have a clue to the mysterious stoppages of my server.
> > I ssh'd into it today and got the following.  It is time to give up on
> this
> > machine and replace it?
> >
> > -- hendrik
> >
> >
> > hendrik@april:~$ su -
> > Password:
> > april:~# ps | grep lighttpd
> > ^C^C
> > Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:15:48 ...
> >  kernel:[ 5700.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
> 22s!
> > [ps:9184]
> >
> > Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:16:16 ...
> >  kernel:[ 5728.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
> 22s!
> > [ps:9184]
> >
> > Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:16:52 ...
> >  kernel:[ 5764.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
> 23s!
> > [ps:9184]
> >
> >
> > Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:17:20 ...
> >  kernel:[ 5792.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
> 22s!
> > [ps:9184]
> >
> > Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:17:56 ...
> >  kernel:[ 5828.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
> 22s!
> > [ps:9184]
> >
> > Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:18:24 ...
> >  kernel:[ 5856.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
> 22s!
> > [ps:9184]
> >
> > Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:18:56 ...
> >  kernel:[ 5888.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
> 22s!
> > [ps:9184]
> >
> > Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:19:24 ...
> >  kernel:[ 5916.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
> 22s!
> > [ps:9184]
> >
> > Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:20:00 ...
> >  kernel:[ 5952.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
> 22s!
> > [ps:9184]
> >
> > Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:20:28 ...
> >  kernel:[ 5980.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
> 22s!
> > [ps:9184]
> >
>
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
>
> iQIzBAEBCgAdFiEEumC8IPN+WURNbSUAE2VyCRPS8i0FAmF36qsACgkQE2VyCRPS
> 8i13tA//Yc6FzSg/wMjAm1am11kLHIzp31y0v+59ZGuXtHu7h1gatrYrnRAUwnRM
> MlaSFkiLO0HWr03db/6GaI0IJsWUWg9hNHuWlbBiQ0fZifCU8zjLLA2nU947t25d
> gBFshWFVqwZJ6rEBguZFZpg9AlGe/Ppslc//ONs2C3abvLzfVn/owWbH5Mx8+O6u
> raqVYutH7D/qD04I3JNyPQsWURjpVxES579cI1uqG+9wZ6L946YDChH6s4B8an+u
> QXLZZyPm4wLapSYuxjM4Es5UmtzN9QY59UtavTnrAPqNtudyuNBPtSfzHtycQsa8
> H0BgxYp2IQxwFQMzAaFTehpQ/eUTqt4DEta40LLK2GZkKs21259RTXTE8LM1Aqrn
> T+WsBO5yg+UoxW/mzyipk7nUwzFYA1xUjYvVKyZEXsIyufrxPCvFCuPmV28XiVPu
> q0x0hfp7/7vxN8khMBIOeWROM6cEC8CV9wPgVhj4Y7vmHJou7tokB/XD4ugvf5U6
> Ym5c+WQjXiDXVUoYMqLZNs75N5UV3AREq52mr8aPpu6FxCUDjKEywxSBpjuQu7Ch
> 6u5B6BxfWw8i/nXb0lAVEYpCp0xHQcqZvVBidEnle2QQ0djV0vNaNUS6vBbsa8F2
> cJSIyWcmHDRkdCv1mj7ot1OpuxUmvBFbsl1sAaFWUCfwVMqqGSE=
> =Bbpj
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-
>
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[DNG] Is it dead yet?

[Hendrik Boom via Dng]

I think I may have a clue to the mysterious stoppages of my server.
I ssh'd into it today and got the following.  It is time to give up on this
machine and replace it?

-- hendrik


hendrik@april:~$ su -
Password:
april:~# ps | grep lighttpd
^C^C
Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:15:48 ...
 kernel:[ 5700.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
22s! [ps:9184]

Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:16:16 ...
 kernel:[ 5728.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
22s! [ps:9184]

Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:16:52 ...
 kernel:[ 5764.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
23s! [ps:9184]


Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:17:20 ...
 kernel:[ 5792.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
22s! [ps:9184]

Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:17:56 ...
 kernel:[ 5828.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
22s! [ps:9184]

Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:18:24 ...
 kernel:[ 5856.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
22s! [ps:9184]

Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:18:56 ...
 kernel:[ 5888.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
22s! [ps:9184]

Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:19:24 ...
 kernel:[ 5916.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
22s! [ps:9184]

Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:20:00 ...
 kernel:[ 5952.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
22s! [ps:9184]

Message from syslogd@april at Oct 25 20:20:28 ...
 kernel:[ 5980.156005] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for
22s! [ps:9184]
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[DNG] etckeeper

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 06:52:05PM +0900, Olaf Meeuwissen via Dng wrote:
> Hi Steve,
> 
> Steve Litt writes:
> 
> > After that, take a backup of the new system including /etc and
> > $HOME, then restore *strategic* config files from /etc/ and ~ and
> > ~/.config. By strategic, I mean configs that you hand-crafted.
> > Sometimes it's better to copy your hand-crafting into current
> > package-installed config files. I find this especially true of Dovecot.
> 
> I keep track of /etc with etckeeper which puts that directory under git
> version control.  That means I can always track back changes to package
> updates or me mucking around there and see exactly what changed.  That
> can be very helpful if an `apt upgrade` broke stuff, more so because I
> track "testing" ;-)

Sounds like etckeeper should be the first thing installed during Devuan
installation, before any packages at all are configured, so as to track changed 
that are 
made during installation. 

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Er, Not that way ? .Re: Announcing Devuan 4.0: Chimaera!

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 02:23:28PM +0200, maxime freepote via Dng wrote:
> I had to use the conflict resolutioni tool of aptitude after an "apt-get
> full-upgrade". Python was the main cause of this behaviour but also external
> packages from non-standard repositories. Except this, all of the upgrade went
> well, from a devuan that also runs since ascii.

I once had problems like this with a low-level display-related package.  
Two packages turned out to contain the same file, and so only one could 
remain.  I thought it was a packageing problem (such packages should not 
be in one repository, but it turned out that a previous upgrade (done a 
year or more ago) hadn't completed properly, and so I still had (and was 
presumably using) a package from multiple releases ago.  I had to delete 
it using dpkg.  apt and aptitude kept failing because of the undeclared 
conflict.

-- hendrik

> 
> Thanks a lot!
> 
> Maxime
> 
> package sources.
> On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 07:56:47AM -0400, . via Dng wrote:
> > On 10/17/21 07:48, terryc wrote:
> > > > I'm sorry to report that I tried a dist-upgrade from devuan beowulf
> > > > with KDE on an older machine.  The result was a system with a
> > > > nonfunctional window manager and messed-up display resolution, and no
> > > > working Ethernet connection (and no wifi hardware).
> > > AFAIK, that isn't the way you are  supposed to do it.
> > >
> > > Under beowulf; I did
> > >   sudo apt-get update
> > >   sudo apt-get upgrade
> > >   sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
> > > reboot
> >
> > Hmmm.  I edited /etc/apt/sources.lst to use chimaera debs first, under
> > beowulf, then did the above sequence.
> >
> > > Edit /etc/apt/sources.list to change beowulf to chimaera
> > > I actually copy and date the deb lines and edit version to chimaera and
> > > comment out the beowulf lines so there is a history record.
> > >
> > > Them with chimaera in the /etc/apt/sources.list
> > >   sudo apt-get update
> > >   sudo apt-get upgrade
> > >   sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
> > > reboot and repeat;
> > >   sudo apt-get update
> > >   sudo apt-get upgrade
> > >   sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
> > > rebbot.
> >
> > Well, it can't hurt to try another update/upgrade cycle; I had a konsole
> > open during the last reboot and it was restored, so I can do command-line
> > things (and what else could I possibly need :-) If that doesn't fix things
> > up then it's nuke-and-repave time.
> >
> > -bobmon
> >
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Re: [DNG] Er, Not that way ? .Re: Announcing Devuan 4.0: Chimaera!

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 07:56:47AM -0400, . via Dng wrote:
> On 10/17/21 07:48, terryc wrote:
> > > I'm sorry to report that I tried a dist-upgrade from devuan beowulf
> > > with KDE on an older machine.  The result was a system with a
> > > nonfunctional window manager and messed-up display resolution, and no
> > > working Ethernet connection (and no wifi hardware).
> > AFAIK, that isn't the way you are  supposed to do it.
> > 
> > Under beowulf; I did
> >   sudo apt-get update
> >   sudo apt-get upgrade
> >   sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
> > reboot
> 
> Hmmm.  I edited /etc/apt/sources.lst to use chimaera debs first, under
> beowulf, then did the above sequence.
> 
> > Edit /etc/apt/sources.list to change beowulf to chimaera
> > I actually copy and date the deb lines and edit version to chimaera and
> > comment out the beowulf lines so there is a history record.
> > 
> > Them with chimaera in the /etc/apt/sources.list
> >   sudo apt-get update
> >   sudo apt-get upgrade
> >   sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
> > reboot and repeat;
> >   sudo apt-get update
> >   sudo apt-get upgrade
> >   sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
> > rebbot.
> 
> Well, it can't hurt to try another update/upgrade cycle; I had a konsole
> open during the last reboot and it was restored, so I can do command-line
> things (and what else could I possibly need :-) If that doesn't fix things
> up then it's nuke-and-repave time.

I've learned it's useful to repeat upgrades and dist-upgrandes and an 
occasinoal aptitude until nothing happens AND there are no errors reported.

I don't know why just repeating this should help; somehow, even with no 
reported errors that I can see, the job often isn't done.  Almost as if 
the various apt-* commands don't do a complete job of analysing 
dependencies and opportunities.

-- hendrik

> 
> -bobmon
> 
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[DNG] white band on top of lxqt screen

[Hendrik Boom]

A few days ago (possibly related to the upgrade to chimaera) when I log 
into lxqt a white band has appeared at the top of the screen.
It looks exactly like the band at the bottom, except the one at the botom 
carries icons and stuff, and the one on top carries nothing.

How do I go about getting rid of this superfluous bar?  I cannot place any 
part of a window there, and I lavve limited vertical space on the screen.

-- hendrik

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[DNG] Warning about Wicd in Chimaera

[Hendrik Boom]

There's no wicd in Chimaera.
If you need it to access the internet, you must replace it with another 
network manager *before* you upgrade to chimaera, otherwise you'll not be 
able to access the internet to download the replacement network manager 
after.

-- hendrik

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[DNG] Zoom in chromium has no video after I upgraded to chimaera

[Hendrik Boom]

I upgraded my laptop to chimaera yesterday.
It appears to work normally, and the upgrade was uneventful.

However, when using zoom in chromium, I receive no video.

Audio works fine.

However, not video.

The panels where I usually see other people, including the main panel, 
are just black rectangles.

Anyone else have this problem?

This is not a zoom app I have installed on my system.
This is the one that gets loaded into my browser when I try to join a 
zoom meeting.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] npm and nodejs -- version skew?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Oct 04, 2021 at 02:25:44PM +, g4sra wrote:
> Hi Hendrik,
> 
> Are you interested in authoring some sort of game in Ink ?
> Because if you are I would be interested to hear what you are up to.

Mostly not writing a game, but trying out various game-writing engines 
to see what works and what doesn't.  An informal language-comparison 
study.

And about the version skew:

Simplest might be to look at another of the available tools before 
struggling with this one.  Of course, I'm due for an upgrade to chimaera 
soon, so if I am doomed to struggle anyway, I might as well do it with 
newer packages.

-- hendrik
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[DNG] npm and nodejs -- version skew?

[Hendrik Boom]

While setting up to run the game editor inky ( 
https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/ ) I  ran into what seems to be a version 
skew.

I used aptitude to install Devuan beowulf's versions of npm and nodejs.
When I got to one stage of the imky startup I got messages
I have appended below.

From the looks of things, npm is complaining it cannot work with node 
Node.js v10.24.0 and it wants me to "upgrade" to an *older* version! 
(namely, 4, 6, 7, 8, or 9 instead of 10..)

Is this a known problem?  Is this really a version skew between two of 
beowulf's own packages?

Somewhat hard to believe.  Is upgrading everything to chimaera likely to 
help?

-- hendrik

The messages:

hendrik@midwinter:~/dv/fun/ink/inky$ ./INSTALL_AND_RUN.command  
 
npm WARN npm npm does not support Node.js v10.24.0
npm WARN npm You should probably upgrade to a newer version of node as we
npm WARN npm can't make any promises that npm will work with this version.
npm WARN npm Supported releases of Node.js are the latest release of 4, 6, 
7, 8, 9.
  
npm WARN npm You can find the latest version at https://nodejs.org/
npm WARN read-shrinkwrap This version of npm is compatible with 
lockfileVersion@1, but package-lock.json was generated for 
lockfileVersion@2. I'll try to do my best with it!
npm WARN notice [SECURITY] ws has the following vulnerability: 1 moderate. 
Go here for more details: 
https://www.npmjs.com/advisories?search=ws=7.4.5 - Run `npm i 
npm@latest -g` to upgrade your npm version, and then `npm audit` to get 
more info.
npm WARN notice [SECURITY] minimist has the following vulnerability: 1 low. 
Go here for more details: 
https://www.npmjs.com/advisories?search=minimist=0.0.10 - Run `npm 
i npm@latest -g` to upgrade your npm version, and then `npm audit` to get 
more info.
npm WARN notice [SECURITY] electron has the following vulnerability: 1 
moderate. Go here for more details: 
https://www.npmjs.com/advisories?search=electron=4.2.12 - Run `npm 
i npm@latest -g` to upgrade your npm version, and then `npm audit` to get 
more info.
npm WARN tar write after end
npm WARN notice [SECURITY] trim-newlines has the following vulnerability: 1 
high. Go here for more details: 
https://www.npmjs.com/advisories?search=trim-newlines=1.0.0 - Run 
`npm i npm@latest -g` to upgrade your npm version, and then `npm audit` to 
get more info.
npm WARN notice [SECURITY] minimist has the following vulnerability: 1 low. 
Go here for more details: 
https://www.npmjs.com/advisories?search=minimist=0.0.8 - Run `npm i 
npm@latest -g` to upgrade your npm version, and then `npm audit` to get 
more info.
npm WARN notice [SECURITY] marked has the following vulnerability: 1 
moderate. Go here for more details: 
https://www.npmjs.com/advisories?search=marked=0.3.19 - Run `npm i 
npm@latest -g` to upgrade your npm version, and then `npm audit` to get 
more info.
npm WARN notice [SECURITY] lodash has the following vulnerability: 1 high. 
Go here for more details: 
https://www.npmjs.com/advisories?search=lodash=4.17.21 - Run `npm i 
npm@latest -g` to upgrade your npm version, and then `npm audit` to get 
more info.
npm WARN notice [SECURITY] diff has the following vulnerability: 1 high. Go 
here for more details: 
https://www.npmjs.com/advisories?search=diff=3.3.1 - Run `npm i 
npm@latest -g` to upgrade your npm version, and then `npm audit` to get 
more info.
npm ERR! cb() never called!

npm ERR! This is an error with npm itself. Please report this error at:
npm ERR! 

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! /home/hendrik/.npm/_logs/2021-10-04T13_12_04_234Z-debug.log
hendrik@midwinter:~/dv/fun/ink/inky$
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[DNG] connman, wicd, and dbus.

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 08:07:06PM -0400, tempforever wrote:
> 
> Removing dbus also seems to have removed network-manager, and I have
> lost wifi connection.  Was able to get on wired with ifconfig, route
> (and editing /etc/resolv.conf) -- too lazy to use iwconfig.  But this
> may need mentioning in the documentation.  Is there a simple alternative
> to network-manager that doesn't depend on dbus?

Anyone know whether connman or wicd work without dbus?

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] Review of documentation needed

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 04:16:26PM +, g4sra via Dng wrote:
> <--snip-->
> > Net question: how to get a '/' in a file name instead of having it
> > interpreted as a separator in a path.
> > 
> 
> > I needed it once long ago when using a file system that had been built
> > on another OS.
> > 
> 
> > I resorted to using a hexadecimal editor on the raw disk to get rid of
> > the thing.
> Been there, done that.
> Now my time is worth more than the effort to go down that road.
> 
> I opt to live dangerously..(shove an '-r' in there too if you feel like it)
> 
> $ rm -i .* *
> 
> this way you can delete illegitimate entries without hacking the filesystem.
>

I've done that to files I didn't want with some very strange unicode in 
their names.  
But it's not a solution if you actually want to see the contents of the 
file.

-- hendrik

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Re: [DNG] Review of documentation needed

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 10:49:30AM +0300, Eric Pozharski wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 09:08:16AM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 19, 2021 at 10:31:19PM -0500, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> > > On 2021-09-16 22:30, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> 
> *SKIP*
> > The command for finding the correct display driver:
> >   root@devuan:~# apt-cache search xserver-xorg-video-.* | pager
> > Shouldn't the '*' be quoted in some manner so that the apt-cache
> > command gets to interpret it instead of the shell:
> 
> No, it might not.  It's bashism (zsh has special option to let filename
> generation fail, and it's unset by default;  while bash)
> 
> % bash
> bash-5.1$ echo abc*
> abc*

So if there's no file matching the pattern, bash leaves the pattern as is
without replacing it with nothing?

Interesting.  I'll have to think twice before I use * in a file name in 
a shell command. 

At least
rm abc*
will still remove a file actually called abc*

Net question:  how to get a '/' in a file name instead of having it 
interpreted as a separator in a path.
I needed it once long ago when using a file system that had been built 
on another OS.
I resorted to using a hexadecimal editor on the raw disk to get rid of 
the thing.

-- hendrik

> 
> It's risky indeed, but it's hard to imagine files with
> 'xserver-xorg-video-.' prefix just laying around (these days).
> 
> p.s.  Ok then.  Done with get-off-my-lawn mode this time.
> 
> *CUT*
> -- 
> Torvalds' goal for Linux is very simple: World Domination
> Stallman's goal for GNU is even simpler: Freedom
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Re: [DNG] Review of documentation needed

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sun, Sep 19, 2021 at 10:31:19PM -0500, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> On 2021-09-16 22:30, goli...@devuan.org wrote:
> > 
> > You can find the docs that need reviewing here:
> > https://www.devuan.org/os/documentation/dev1fanboy/
> > 
> > All releases
> > 
> > General information
> > Installing Devuan

In the install guide, under installation images, it refers to devuan.org:
  "From mirrors listed on devuan.org that may be closer to you"
But that's now where the mirrors are listed;
  they are on https://www.devuan.org/get-devuan
It says to download the SHA256SUMS from the release archive.
  * They aren't actually in the place pointed to; rather refer the reader to 
the 
"same directory you downloaded the release from"  
  * The SHA256SUMS for chimaera aren't there yet, though the ones for older 
releases are.

In the actual 'Installing Devuan" section:
  * Step 10: What if there's no space at all on disk?
  * Step 15: Are deb,devuan.org and pkgmaster.devuan.org current?
 What about the long list of mirrors previously mentioned?
  * Step 18:In my experience, installing the packages I've selected takes a lot 
of time, not 'little' time.
  * Step 20: occurs twice.

> > Full disk encryption
> > Network configuration
> > Devuan without D-Bus
> > D-Bus free software

Surprised to see gentoo listed as a file manager instead of as a distro.  But 
it 
  seems to be correct.
Isn't slim also a dislpay manager?  Does it need d-bus?
Isn't xchat a IRC clint?  Does it need d-bus?
 
> > Minimal xorg install

The command for finding the correct display driver:
  root@devuan:~# apt-cache search xserver-xorg-video-.* | pager
Shouldn't the '*' be quoted in some manner so that the apt-cache command gets 
to 
interpret it instead of the shell:

same for input drivers:
  root@devuan:~# apt-cache search xserver-xorg-input-.* | pager

> > Minimal XFCE install
> > 
> 
> I just realized that several of those documents are already updated for
> Chimaera. Duh . . . Here's the new list:
> 
> General information (will need to be updated to Chimaera at the least)
> Devuan without D-Bus (is this still possible?)
> D-Bus free 
software (quite possibly out of date)
> Minimal xorg install
> Minimal XFCE install
> 
> Anything no longer useful/relevant will be removed.
> 
> Thanks for your feedback!
> 
> golinux
> 
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Re: [DNG] License for the DNG created software guide --> Proposal: DNG Verbatim Libre License

[Hendrik Boom]

On Fri, Sep 03, 2021 at 10:33:31AM +0200, al3xu5 wrote:
> Thu, 2 Sep 2021 21:50:10 +0200 - tito :
> 
> > On Thu, 2 Sep 2021 14:26:52 -0400
> > Steve Litt  wrote:
> > 
> > > Hi everyone,
> > > 
> > > A discussion on this list about a month ago spawned several documents
> > > about programming best practices, which I have been calling the "DNG
> > > Software Guide", even though it's absolutely not sponsored or even
> > > approved by Devuan.
> > > 
> > > With the latest version at
> > > http://troubleshooters.com/linux/presentations/golug_software_guide_20210901.tgz
> > > , it's mature enough to get a license and Git distribution. This email
> > > is about the license.
> > > 
> > > If this were software, I'd probably vote for an extremely permissive
> > > license like the license of Expat (
> > > https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Expat ). However, this is
> > > documentation, and I'm a little afraid that people with insufficient
> > > knowledge, or with political agendas, will water it down with bullshit.
> > > Only skilled people can modify source code, but any fool can modify
> > > documentation.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Agree.
> 
> 

Isn't there already a creative commons license like this?

-- hendrik

> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > This are the Ten Commandments of software writing, have you ever heard
> > of somebody who wants to change the Ten Commandments?
> > 
> > Jokes aside there is no license whatsoever that will save your work
> > from idiots because there are so many and because they will in due time
> > find various and subtle ways to subvert and corrupt your work that you
> > cannot even imagine now.
> > 
> > The only helpful license is the one that forbids any modification,
> > or subordinately permits modifications only under your supervision
> > or under the supervision of a person appointed by you
> > (unless by error you appoint one of the aforementioned idiots. That
> > would be a pity!).
> 
> 
> Indeed. 
> 
> I think it can be treated as the reference documentation that accompanies
> a software. Which is modified along with the software releases.
> 
> Or like the publication of an article or a book or a technical text. Which
> the author can later readjust or modify by publishing a later revision.
> 
> And, in that specific case of the "DNG Software Guide", it is a text that
> contains personal views, knowledge and experiences of the author(s).
> 
> 
> So, we want to make the "DNG Software Guide" available (and any subsequent
> revisions modified by the same author(s)), also allowing its
> redistribution, but without the content being altered by others.
> 
> Basically, it seems to me that a verbatim license is needed.
> For example: 
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Verbatim-Copying-License.html
> 
> 
> But nothing prevents us from using a different verbatim license, perhaps
> more articulated and specific ...
> 
> Maybe even a specially created verbatim license!
> 
> I suggest sometihing like: 
> 
> ~~~
> 
> DNG Verbatim Libre License
> Version 1.0, 1 September 2021
> 
> Copyright  2021  DNG
> 
> 
> This License document is released under the following terms and conditions
> of the DNG Verbatim Libre License itself.
> 
> TERMS AND CONDITIONS
> 
> Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire work are permitted
> worldwide except for commercial purposes, without royalty, in any medium,
> ensuring content source full availability and exclusive use of completely
> open and patent-free formats when using any digital medium, provided this
> notice is preserved. Any strictly personal use is not subject to any
> limitation.
> 
> ADDENDUM
> 
> To apply this License to your works, insert a verbatim copy of the License 
> itself with it, and also add to it the following copyright and license
> notices:
> 
>   Copyright
>   Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire work is permitted under
>   the terms and conditions of the DNG Verbatim Libre License License,
>   Version 1.0.
> 
> End of DNG Verbatim Libre License text.
> 
> ~~~
> 
> 
> If this is a (good) idea that can be pursued, I think it would be
> interesting and important to discuss it, establish the exact wording of
> the license (name, copyright holder, clauses etc.) ... and use it in the
> case in question (and in all other cases where a verbatim license is
> needed)! 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > I understand that this form of licensing is not propitious to encourage
> > progress. 
> > 
> > OTOH often I ask myself: Progress? what progress?
> 
> Exactly: progress is not good in itself...
> 
> 
> > This are my pessimistic 2 cents.
> 
> Pessimistic? I would say realistic. 
> 
> 
> Regards
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> al3xu5
> 
> -- 
> Say NO to copyright, patents, trademarks and industrial design
> restrictions!
> 
> 
> Public GPG/PGP key: 8FC2 3121 2803 86E9 F7D8  B624 DA50 835B 2624 A36B



> 

Re: [DNG] Information request re: wayland

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Sep 02, 2021 at 02:16:58PM -0500, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> Greetings
> 
> My long time mentor in things Linux (described himself as a fossil) is no
> longer with us. (He suggested that I strongly consider using Devuan which I
> now have on one system.)
> He was of the opinion that Wayland - - - whatever its exact function, was
> really not worth running.
> Yet it is being touted as the X11 replacement and is now supposedly capable
> of handling both multi-gpu and multi-monitor setups.

If I recall correctly from way back in the early 90's on actual Unix 
systems, X already had a mechanism for handling multiple monitors.
Has that fallen from X becuse of decades of bit-rot?

Don't know about multiple GPUs sending to a single monitor, though.

-- hendrik
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Re: [DNG] manpages

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 09:05:36AM -0400, . via Dng wrote:
> > Looking for the gcc..g++ suite manpages, expected to find them in 'gcc-doc' 
> > but it's missing.
> > Anybody point me in the right direction ?
> 
> I found the answer in
> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/523079/what-packages-the-man-pages-for-gcc-on-debian-10-buster-testing
> 
> 
> Basically, add the "contrib" and "non-free" repositories to your deb
> sources, then install "gcc-doc".

So are man pages not considered free nowadays?

-- hendrik
> 
> -- 
> -Robert Montante, Ph.D.
>  Department of Mathematical and Digital Sciences
>  Bloomsburg Universitymontcs.bloomu.edu/~bobmon/ 
>  Bloomsburg, PA  17815prof.montante AT gmail DOT com
>  phone: 570-389-4624bobmon AT bloomu DOT edu
> --
> Proud to be a MAD Scientist!
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Re: [DNG] random sudden stops

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 09:16:06PM -0400, william moss via Dng wrote:
> On 8/25/21 8:10 PM, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > For the past few months my home server (running an ascii installation 
> > physically moved from another computer) has been suddenly stopping all 
> > processing about once a month. apparently at random.  It seems to stop 
> > instantly, leaving power on and becoming completely responsive to ping,
> > existing ssh connexions and use of the physical keyboard.
> > 
> > The system log, after a reboot, shows nothing unusual except of course 
> > that there are no log entries for a shut-down.
> > 
> > Can anyone provide ideas about tracking this down?
> > 
> > It could of course be a random rare intermittent hardware error.
> > 
> > -- hendrik
> > ___
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> > Dng@lists.dyne.org
> > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
> > 
> I had the same problem on a work station running ASCII. Since I could
> access the system from another machine on the LAN and even log in, I
> guessed that it was Xorg. Killing X Via a remote login cleared the
> problem. With the use of sar and other tools, I determined it was the
> video card and/or NVIDIA's drivers (kernel modules). Switched back to
> the system board's video (AMD) and the problem went away.

Not running X on this machine.  Just have the usual text consoles on 
cntl-alt-F1 through F6.

Don't have a separate video card either.

When the machine stops I cannot access it by network.  Even existing 
connexions stop working.  Being ext4 with full journalling, the file 
system is safe.

If it's video drivers, maybe upgrading to beowulf will clear it out?  Who 
knows?  It's probably time to do that anyway.

There is, I su[[ose, a slight chance that the specific installation of 
ascii I had on the hard drive I moved from another machine isn't quite 
compatible with the hardware I have now.  But they're both AMd64 
processors of comparable vintage.

-- hendrik

> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> -- 
> William (Bill) Moss
> billm...@acm.org
> NY (USA)
> Those who will not reason, are bigots,
> those who cannot, are fools,
> and those who dare not, are slaves.
> Lord Byron
> 
> Justice will not be served until those who are
> unaffected are as outraged as those who are.
> Benjamin Franklin
> 
> When the people fear the government there is
> tyranny, when the government fears the people
> there is liberty.
> John Basil Barnhill
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[DNG] random sudden stops

[Hendrik Boom]

For the past few months my home server (running an ascii installation 
physically moved from another computer) has been suddenly stopping all 
processing about once a month. apparently at random.  It seems to stop 
instantly, leaving power on and becoming completely responsive to ping,
existing ssh connexions and use of the physical keyboard.

The system log, after a reboot, shows nothing unusual except of course 
that there are no log entries for a shut-down.

Can anyone provide ideas about tracking this down?

It could of course be a random rare intermittent hardware error.

-- hendrik
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