Re: [DNG] Beowulf Beta is here!
goli...@devuan.org writes: > Dear dev1ers, > > The Devuan 3 Beowulf Beta release is now ready for review. [...] > In solidarity, > > The Devuan Devs Great news. Thanks a lot. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] The real reason I like Linux
Steve Litt writes: [...] > FreeDesktop.Org doesn't like me doing 90 minutes of programming > (and actually Lego(R) block assembly). Their preferred method goes > something like this: > > * Use Gnome. > * Find Gnome software that solves your problem: > - Ask your LUG > - Ask on stackoverflow > - Read every page on FreeDesktop.Org > - Spend a day doing web searches > * Test the found softwares for suitability > - If it fails a requirement, ask around for a fix > - Experiment, experiment, experiment > * Install the necessary softwares > - Adjust your workflow to comply with the softwares > - Weave yourself through and around all the software > requirements An incorrigible optimist, I presume. With Freedoorstop, if Gnome doesn't handle it out of the box, it's not an issue 'legitmate' users ought to be dealing with :->. SCNR. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
[DNG] Solving simple problems in amazingly complicated ways
- the sole purpose of this text is for the amusement of people who ever
had to find a (preferably simple) solution for a complicated problem -
Problem I had to deal with since yesterday: Some Debian 10 system (use
of systemd mandated) installation I've created was to be captured by a
certain image capturing tool running on Windows. As it turned out to be,
this capturing tool has no support for Linux swap partitions and thus,
tries to capture them by doing a sector-by-sectory copy of random junk
which won't ever be of any use again.
Proposed solution: Turn that into an ext4 filesystem, record the UUID,
run a script at boot to convert it back to a swap partition. This could
have been solved by suitable manipulation of /etc/rcS-symlinks but the
mere thought of something as unsophisticated at that would cause systemd
developers to start spinning until the reach escape velocity, never to
be seen again - and who could possibly want that.
So, "we" have to create a systemd unit file to accomplish this by
defining suitable dependencies. It looks like this:
In a section named [Unit], "we declare"
Requires=local-fs.target
This means local-fs.target ("mount local filesystems") has to be started
before us and we don't want to run if it fails. "We then declare"
After=local-fs.target
which means "we don't want to run until local filesystems have actually
been mounted". Then, "We declare"
Before=basic.target
"basic system initialization" ("ready to start servers") shall not be
considered complete until our task is done. Lastly, "we declare"
DefaultDependencies=no
ie, despite we're a service (as determined by the exension of our file
--- pray tell me where this concept came from?) we do want to run
before basic.target and not after it.
Now, we have to switch sections as [Unit] starts to become
boring. Hence, in [Install], we declare
WantedBy=basic.target
Brazenly, we claim basic system initialization "wants us", hence, we
will be started, but if we fail, system boot will continue.
After this (and some other things) were put into a service file in a
suitable location (/etc/systemd/system), it only takes a
systemctl enable name.service
to make it active on boot (by creating some symlinks, mind
you)
- helpfully, if any directives were misspelled or put into the
wrong section, the systemctl call will log a warning message to syslog
(exclusively) and succeed nevertheless -
and - amazingly - systemd can now figure out the required boot ordering
all on its own.
How very soffissicated.
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Re: [DNG] FF now defaults to DNS-over-HTTPS for US
Steve Litt writes:
> goli...@devuan.org wrote:
>
>> Just great! So how can we keep off this cloudflare thing?
>>
>> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/25/mozilla_turns_on_dns_over_https_by_default_for_usa/
>
> "Another relevant question is whether further centralisation [SIC] of
> the internet is, inherently, a bad thing."
This is a wrong question based on a false dichotomy in this article. It
assumes users will always have to use some recursive resolver operated
by some third party, hence, they can only chose between
a) use the servers you got assigned in some environment "which may
include public WiFi" ("Run your life!")
b) use some "trusted DoH provider" (trusted by some other US company to
be good enough for its users, that is)
IOW, that uses will always have to provide a complete history of all
their "web movement" to someone.
But this is not the case. There's nothing which stops users from running
their own, fully capable resolver locally[*] (or somewhere on a local
network) and thus, not make a comprehensive browsing history available
to any third party.
And DoH prevents that. That Google (AFAIK) invented this is certainly
just coincidence.
[*] Except systemd-resolvd, of course, at that's (reportedly) a stub
resolver to replace another stub resolver :->.
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Re: [DNG] systemd breaking linuxcnc ...
Dimitris via Dng writes: > On 1/28/20 6:46 PM, Rainer Weikusat via Dng wrote: >> run ntpdate from > > i've witnessed cases in the past where ntpd wasn't time-syncing > correctly, and ntpdate saved the date/time. > so, IMHO, there's nothing wrong with ntpdate. There's nothing wrong with ntpdate provided there's nothing wrong with having the wallclock make arbitrary backwards or forward jumps in unpredictable intervals, IOW, if the only user is a human who doesn't really care, everything's fine. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] systemd breaking linuxcnc ...
"Dr. Nikolaus Klepp" writes: > Just for your amusement: systemd breaks linuxcnc on RPi4 - who's not > into machining will most likely not see the fun part of it, but anyway > :) > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDKaFJmB254 Not particularly funny --- the systemd timesync service is a C reimplementatio of "run ntpdate from cron" (actually, all of systemd is a C reimplementation of something else :->) and suffers from the deficiencies inherent in this approach, in particular, turning the wallclock clock into a poor man's PRNG because some people are passionately convinced that non-local time is a misfeature, anyway. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] OT: Fedora in Debian
goli...@devuan.org writes: > Greetings all. Let's start the new year with something from the > Debian forums that might make you shake your head and chuckle. Poor > newbie on Windoze hasn't a clue just how funny his last para is: > > "The problems? The resulting bootable drive isn't booting in UEFI. It > can still boot though with a caveat... The boot option is labelled > "Linpus Lite". > Isn't it weird for other distro's name to come up? A fedora-based > distro no less. As of now, I'm thoroughly confused :?" A harbinger of things to come. Considering how the threat to package elogind for Debian worked out, Fedora-with-sub-par-branding is where the road obviously leads to :->. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Sort-of one-off thanks message
Bernard Rosset via Dng writes: > Thank you for those precious steps on how to swap a kernel version in > an ISO! [...] Something I should have mentioned as well: The installation kernel needs (at least) support for initramfs/initrd, the RAM block device and devtmpfs compiled in order to boot the installation system. The (non-expert) install option is also very helpful here because it suppresses the stack backtrace which gets normally printed in case of a kernel panic which means the actual error message (at the beginning of the output) remains visible (instead of the generic "cannot mount root filesystem" at the end of it). ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
[DNG] Sort-of one-off thanks message
After spending the time since 2016 with waiting how things will turn out, a dying disk and certain recent Debian moves prompted me to stop using this system (after 21 years) and migrate to the current, stable Devuan instead[*]. Thank you for keeping the system I had been using all these years available. [*] This was mostly painless except that I had to update the kernel in the installation image in order to get support for my (fairly new) Intel NIC. In case anyone cares: The basic procedure for this is really straight-forward: Copy the contents of the .iso to some directory, copy the vmlinuz of your choice over the linux file in that directory, unpack the contents of Devuan initrd.gz into another directory[**], replace the lib/modules/ directory of the result with the modules directory of the new kernel, pack this up into a replacement initrd.gz [***] in the first new directory, recreate a bootable ISO-image from that []. Obviously, the after installation is complete, a new kernel needs to be added to the install system, too. Assuming the iso directory is called iso and the other ir, the commands are (mostly from memory) [**] cd ir; gunzip <../iso/initrd.gz | cpio -iv [***] find . | cpio -H newc -ov | gzip -9v >../iso/initrd.gz [] cd ..; genisoimage -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -r -o img iso; isohybrid img The updated image will then be in the img file. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
