Re: [DNG] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Latex install question
Fred asks on Fri, 11 Mar 2022 08:02:23 -0700 >> ... >> I am trying to compile a program which expects that Latex is installed. >> There are a number of Latex related packages in the repository but it is >> not apparent which is a base package. What package(s) should I install >> for more or less general usage? >> ... Try # apt-get install texlive-base texlive-latex-base There are 60+ packages that match 'texlive-*'; add others as needed. If you have sufficient disk space, you could instead run # apt-get install texlive-full That gets them all. For a progress report on this year's TeX Live builds, see my site at http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/texlive-utah/ The first pretest release came out about a week ago, and I can now install new packages from the pretest tree mirror at Utah in our TeX Live 2022 tree. --------------- - Nelson H. F. BeebeTel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of UtahFAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCBInternet e-mail: be...@math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 be...@acm.org be...@computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USAURL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - --- ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
[DNG] Devuan in the news today
Some of you may wish to look at this story on Google News today: The Best Linux Distributions Without systemd https://www.howtogeek.com/713847/the-best-linux-distributions-without-systemd/ Devuan gets a whole section of the article, which notes >> ... >> Devuan was forked from Debian in 2014. Itâs solid and stable and has a >> thriving community. >> ... --------------- - Nelson H. F. BeebeTel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of UtahFAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCBInternet e-mail: be...@math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 be...@acm.org be...@computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USAURL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - --- ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] printing in a D-Bus free system
KatolaZ writes on Thu, 15 Mar 2018 23:19:42 +:
>> my biggest frustration was not being able of finding a way to
>> implement a 2D random walk in postscript that would show a different
>> trajectory every time you open it :D (the only problem there is the
>> seed).
This is getting off the topic in the subject line, but here are some
possibly helpful comments.
The PostScript virtual machine does a good job of isolating the
program (and programmers) from the underlying hardware, so this
does not appear to be an easy task.
This is a general problem with random number generation: some
applications need random, but reproducible, sequences (e.g.,
debugging, repeatable science, ), while others would like to have
a random sequence that is different on every run (simulations,
selections, ...).
Most generators offer the possibility of setting the state,
which might be as simple as a single integer: different
states produce different sequences:
GS>1 srand 5 { rand } repeat pstack clear
1144108930
984943658
1622650073
282475249
16807
[same output, no matter how many times you run it]
GS>2 srand 5 { rand } repeat pstack clear
140734213
1969887316
1097816499
564950498
33614
[different output, because of differing starting seed]
GS>33614 srand 5 { rand } repeat pstack clear
940422544
140734213
1969887316
1097816499
564950498
[demonstrating that the output of rand is just the next value
starting from the current seed]
In normal programming languages, you may be able to generate a
likely-unique seed by combining (typically with an XOR bit operation,
which produces 0's and 1's with equal probability) data such as the
output of a high-resolution timer, process ID, user/group ID,
On many Unix-family operating systems, you can also get (almost truly)
random bytes by reading /dev/urandom or /dev/random. However, be
careful, because the latter is often implemented to block until
sufficient randomness is available in the kernel entropy pool, and
that could even take hours or days on a quiescent system. Thus,
/dev/urandom is safest, if you have it, and quite satisfactory for
getting different seeds for each simulation run.
In PostScript, I don't readily find any built-in operators that could
give a result that differs on every run, so you probably have to
inject suitable arguments for srand from outside sources. PostScript
can read data from files, so you could have a large file of seeds, and
read a new seed for each simulation.
---------------
- Nelson H. F. BeebeTel: +1 801 581 5254 -
- University of UtahFAX: +1 801 581 4148 -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCBInternet e-mail: be...@math.utah.edu -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233 be...@acm.org be...@computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USAURL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
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Re: [DNG] printing in a D-Bus free system
ibe in PDF without reduction to tiny graphical chunks, a task beyond human ability. Entry Thomas:1988:PCb is a cookbook of fancy PostScript programming. --------------- - Nelson H. F. BeebeTel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of UtahFAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCBInternet e-mail: be...@math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 be...@acm.org be...@computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USAURL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - --- ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
[DNG] upgrading from jessie to ascii
I installed Devuan about 4 months ago in our test lab, which now houses about 180 flavors of Unix-(like) systems. The starting point was the devuan_jessie_1.0.0_amd64_DVD.iso file. After reading DNG list traffic for several weeks, and seeing frequent mention of the ascii release, I followed recipes that I found in Web searches after applying these changes: % grep -v '^#' /etc/apt/sources.list | egrep -v '^ *$|deb-src' deb http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii main deb http://us.mirror.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-security main non-free deb http://us.mirror.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-updates main non-free deb http://packages.devuan.org/merged ascii main non-free I run updates frequently, and the last changes in /bin and /usr/bin are all less than 8 days old. The puzzling thing is this: % cat /etc/devuan_version jessie Do other folks who have upgraded to ascii still see that file reporting jessie? If not, then can someone suggest what I've done wrong in my upgrades? I find this about the original of the version file: % dpkg-query -S /etc/devuan_version base-files: /etc/devuan_version % dpkg-query -S base-files base-files: /usr/share/doc/base-files/changelog.gz base-files: /usr/share/base-files/staff-group-for-usr-local base-files: /usr/share/doc/base-files/copyright base-files: /usr/share/base-files/profile base-files: /usr/share/base-files/info.dir base-files: /usr/share/doc/base-files/FAQ base-files: /usr/share/base-files/dot.profile base-files: /usr/share/lintian/overrides/base-files base-files: /usr/share/base-files base-files: /usr/share/base-files/dot.bashrc base-files: /usr/share/base-files/motd base-files: /usr/share/base-files/profile.md5sums base-files: /usr/share/base-files/dot.profile.md5sums base-files: /usr/share/doc/base-files/README.FHS base-files: /usr/share/doc/base-files/README base-files: /usr/share/doc/base-files A check of my filesystem shows that some of those files were changed just a week ago. ----------- - Nelson H. F. BeebeTel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of UtahFAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCBInternet e-mail: be...@math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 be...@acm.org be...@computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USAURL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - --- ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Please provide systemd-free libreswan package
"Ismael L. Donis Garcia" asks on Fri, 17 Nov 2017 08:42:51 -0500: >> But I understand that the new versions of openrc already bring the >> possibility of functioning as an init system independently. >> >> In that case, openrc could not be used as an alternative init? The TrueOS team, which provides bleeding-edge FreeBSD 12 on a ZFS filesystem, with the Lumina desktop, has gone through a conversion of startup scripts to openrc, so if openrc were to be considered for Devuan use, there is already considerable experience, and I suspect that the TrueOS folks would be willing to offer a retrospective on how difficult the job was, why they decided to do it, and if they now regret having spent the effort. However, I would like to comment that I agree with the Devuan ideal of avoiding systemd. I just pulled down the systemd_234.orig.tar.gz source archive on a Debian 9.0 (unstable) system, unpacked it, and counted C code lines like this: % find . -name '*.[ch]' | xargs cat | wc -l 433922 There is also a single 81-line C++ source file in the tree, 20 *.py files with 20,128 lines of code, and 40 *.sh files with 2287 lines of code. If I ignore programming languages, and just ask how big the text corpus is, % find . -type f | xargs cat |wc -l 833135 Thus, systemd represents a code base of about 455,000 to 833,000 lines spread over 2201 files. The main problem that systemd tries to solve is correct ordering of startup script execution, a job that is done only at boot time. On the workstation where I'm writing this message, the system has been up for 491 days, so systemd hasn't been used much recently. I checked several *BSD, GNU/Linux, and Solaris systems, and found that the /etc/init.d or /etc/rc.d trees contain from 50 to 150 scripts, with a total of 3000 to 6500 lines of code. Conclusion: systemd is a pile-driving hammer attempting to smash a mite. This makes no sense: the original Unix philosophy was always to keep things simple, and never to complexify them. Sadly, systemd, and Apple's conversion of /etc/passwd into a binary database whose corruption prevents all logins, are examples of the failure of developers to understand the importance of simplicity. Features do not matter, if the system is so complex that its users cannot understand it, and its managers cannot fix it when it breaks. P.S. There is probably a good xkcd cartoon about complexification that someone might know; if so, please post a link to it on this list for our amusement. --------------- - Nelson H. F. BeebeTel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of UtahFAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCBInternet e-mail: be...@math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 be...@acm.org be...@computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USAURL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - --- ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
