Re: [DNG] Lightweight media/video player

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 25 Jan 2016 18:22:34 -
"dev1fanboy" <devuanfan...@startmail.com> wrote:

> One of the better ones for the purpose of keeping pulse and dbus out
> is xine (xine-ui). As far as a media player.. I think it's best to
> have one thing for music and another for video. A good music player
> is cmus which uses ncurses and has playlist support, does not use any
> crappy extra libs, no dbus or pulse. 

Litt dons a tin-foil hat...

I'm thinking that a "music player" is really an assembly of two things:

1) A file to speaker sound converter
2) A playlist handler

Many fine file to speaker sound converters exist. I like mplayer
because it's so controllable from the outside via a fifo. You must use
a different converter for midi files (timidity or whatever).

A playlist handler is a programming 101 assignment enabling you to load
playlists and navigate within them, and while you're at it go backward
and forward in your current song.

I made my own playlist handler out of UMENU, Ruby, and lots of
shellscript type stuff, and I use it regularly. It's nowhere near
perfect, but if you're willing to use Vim to make/maintain your
playlists, it works very well. My system is semi-described in these two
URLs:

http://troubleshooters.com/lpm/200801/200801.htm

http://troubleshooters.com/lpm/200802/200802.htm

My point is this: If a music player has anything but the most
rudimentary dependencies, those dependencies promote either "pretty",
or stuff outside the core competency of a music player.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Bad UEFI: was Systemd at work: rm -rf EFI

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 02 Feb 2016 20:07:33 +
Rainer Weikusat <rainerweiku...@virginmedia.com> wrote:

> There are really only two options:
> 
[snip]
> 
> 2. Mount r/w and expect people messing around with the fs as superuser
>to know what they're doing.

Chefs know what they're doing, but they still have fire extinguishers
with which to put out any fires. When the downside is severe enough,
safety measures are called for regardless of the skill of the operator.
 
SteveT

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[DNG] Wifi device names: was systemd is haunting me

[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 30 Jan 2016 19:26:48 -0500
Haines Brown <hai...@histomat.net> wrote:

> I have been running Debian Sid on a laptop with a purged systemd for
> quite a few months. Maybe when I now ran # aptitude update or
> safe-upgrade for the first time after several months since the Sid
> installation systemd-udevd seems to have switched my wireless
> interface from wlan0 to wlp3s0.

I hereby donate the following shellscript to the public domain:


#!/bin/sh
if test "$#" == "0"; then
  lineno="1"
else
  lineno=$1
fi

ip link | \
  cut -d ' ' -f2 | \
  grep ^w | \
  sed -e "s/:\s*$//" | \
  head -n $lineno | \
  tail -n 1



After naming the preceding shellscript get_wifi_dev.sh, I ran it an ip
command diagnostic and get_wifi_dev.sh, and here is what happened:



[slitt@mydesk ~]$ ip link | cut -d ' ' -f1-3 | grep "^\S"
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP>
2: enp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP>
3: wlp0s18f2u5: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST>
[slitt@mydesk ~]$ mydev=`get_wifi_dev.sh`
[slitt@mydesk ~]$ echo $mydev
wlp0s18f2u5
[slitt@mydesk ~]$


If you suspect you have more than one wifi device, you can specify
which one with a numeric argument to get_wifi_dev.sh, where 1 gets you
the first wifi device reported by ip link, 2 gets the second, and so
on. If your argument is greater than the number of wifi devices, it
just reports the last one reported by ip link.

So regardless of how crazy your wifi device naming gets, you can put
your device's name in a simple and memorable environment variable.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] systemd is haunting me

[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 30 Jan 2016 19:26:48 -0500
Haines Brown <hai...@histomat.net> wrote:

> I have been running Debian Sid on a laptop with a purged systemd for
> quite a few months. Maybe when I now ran # aptitude update or
> safe-upgrade for the first time after

[snip]

> Systemd is not on the system, so where did systemd-logind come from?
> How can I block it and recover a usable virtual desktop for user?

I'm not a package manager whisperer so I can't answer your question.
But what would happen if you simply backed up the laptop's data and
installed a clean Devuan on it? I'd imagine Devuan would be much more
capable of remaining systemd-free than would any Debian, especially Sid.

If your reason for Sid is you need new apps, you might consider a
rolling release like Funtoo, Gentoo, Void, Spark (sans-systemd Arch),
Manjaro-OpenRC and the like. I'm running Void right now, and check out
my apps:

==
[slitt@mydesk ~]$ uname -a
Linux mydesk 4.3.3_2 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Dec 23 07:55:09 UTC 2015 x86_64
GNU/Linux
[slitt@mydesk ~]$ firefox -v
Mozilla Firefox 43.0.4
[slitt@mydesk ~]$
======

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Change netman into another name.

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 03 Feb 2016 09:54:53 +0100
aitor_czr <aitor_...@gnuinos.org> wrote:

> On 02/03/2016 08:30 AM, Mitt Green <mitt_gr...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I don't think it should contain Devuan word in it,
> > as long as people from other communities
> > will probably use it too.  
> 
> +1
> 
> Aitor.

That was my first thought too, and I almost wrote it.

But then I started to think: If it were called nm-devuan, that would
certainly let people know that Devuan is more than just a few
malcontents playing whack-a-mole with Debian and Freedesktop.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Change netman into another name.

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 3 Feb 2016 11:48:43 +0100
Edward Bartolo <edb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> It nice to learn from trolls that my little "pitbull", netman, is a
> thorn deeply in their side. But, let us discuss the new name, so that
> users would find it more readily while searching the internet. Yes,
> trolls do not like this move which shows it is a good move.
> 
> What about: "nm-pitbull" in honour of the trolls? :D
> 
> 
> Thanks to all Trolls.
> Your feedback is much appreciated. :D

What trolls? I haven't seen a troll in this thread.

SteveT

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[DNG] The first FreeDesktop bicycle accessory

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

Here's the first bicycle accessory created by Red Hat and FreeDesktop:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1824466735/airsupplytm-the-worlds-first-air-pump-in-your-bicy

Right now it's just an integrated (very integrated) bicycle pump. But
from rumors I hear, in the future it will take over the gear shifting
and braking functions, and later the all-wheel-drive functionality on a
bicycle. Soon, with the FreeDesktop pump fully integrated, you'll have
a reverse gear on your bicycle: We've needed a reverse gear for years.
The old system really needs replacement.

Its detractors say that it will take five hours to change a tire with
this system, but if they'd research the FreeDesktop integrated pump
they'd see that the FreeDesktop pump's glass detector will find and
brush away all glass and nails so you'll never get a flat).

I've heard some people want to keep on using their regular hand pumps
or CO2 devices. Those people:

* are afraid of change.
* are neckbeards.
* want to tell bicycle designers how to do their jobs but won't
  contribute.
* are whingers.
* just don't understand the benefits of an integrated pump.
* are too lazy to learn something new.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] A heads up about xfce's future

[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 27 Feb 2016 21:03:05 -1000
Joel Roth <jo...@pobox.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 02:32:45AM +, hellekin wrote:
> > On 02/27/2016 03:28 AM, Simon Wise wrote:  
> > > 
> > > something as minimal as possible, like above, seems a very good
> > > option.  
> > 
> > I dream of a core Devuan that is modular so that the Desktop
> > Environment is a *blend* that you layer on top of core.  That way,
> > you can have a choice of DEs that users can prepare for their own
> > pleasure.  
> 
> For people like my dad who simply need to reach their
> applications, something like icewm is enough. 

I'm exactly like your dad, except I demand quick hotkey access to
Dmenu, the greatest UI level productivity tool ever invented. You
should add it to your dad's IceWM: IceWM enables you to run arbitrary
commands with a hotkey.

> They don't
> have the interest or aptitude to master a complex desktop
> environment with twitchy GUIs in the style of Apple's recent
> offerings.  

I hear you. I don't want my computer making helpful suggestions like a
snooty restaurant waiter. I want my computer to show me the choices,
shut up, and I'll pick one. And if I can't find it, I'll go to the
command line and figure it out. Or make it myself out of Python or bash.

> 
> > The question of the default DE comes next: Devuan should be shipped
> > with a default DE.  So far we've been focusing on XFCE, for reasons
> > unknown to me (normally I use a tiled WM without DE).  
> 
> I, too, have found grace (or at least sufficient
> convenience) in tiled WMs :) 

I'd suggest a default tiled and a default floating low level wm. I've
met few people who are agnostic about tile vs float.

> 
> I agree that if Xfce floats enough boats, and can be
> integrated okay, why not? 

I'll tell you why Xfce is a loser in the long run...

I used Xfce for years. It's very nice. But it occasionally screws up
when you least expect it. It doesn't bestow a feeling of confidence, to
the extent that I wouldn't put it on laptops I was using for
presentations.

Xfce was a great substitute for Gnome2 after Gnome2 was kidnapped, but
the only Gnome2 feature it had that LXDE didn't was nested shortcut
drawers, and when I discovered Dmenu, my need for nested shortcut
drawers vanished.

Also, Xfce is fairly resource intensive. No problem on a modern
computer, but on that old 2GB RAM box you're keeping around, or on a
6GB computer with a couple VMs running, Xfce can slow things down.

Xfce is OK for the time being, but long term I think it might be a
problem.

> 
> Alternatively, having a minimal window manager as default,
> possibly with a menu choice to upgrade to a fancier DE, seems
> like a way to convey that the various DEs are *user
> interfaces* rather than representing the OS itself.
> 
> That goes with another radical idea: having people login at
> the console and type 'startx'. 

That's what I do. It was the inability of booting to CLI that drove me
away from Ubuntu in 2013. But there again, some people like to boot CLI
and then startx, while other people will storm the Bastille if you take
away their direct boot to GUI.

One other thing. Unless one starts X with "startx && exit" or
something like that, people you don't want getting to the CLI can get
there with Ctrl+alt+F1:



> That way, when later there is
> some problem, you can ask the person to type some commands
> in the console, and they know at least to type something at
> a prompt and conclude with the Enter key. They can also
> understand that X is a layer on top of the base OS. 

You can accomplish that by having them Ctrl+Alt+F2 and logging in.

> 
> These concepts seems quite alien to many users. I think that
> even this minimal exposure to the command line could
> stimulate curiosity about what the terminal can be used to
> accomplish. At the minimum, people will know it is
> there.

Yes, but there are whole industries fighting to keep that from
happening.

> 
> Maybe I am missing something about the motivations behind
> and the benefits of a graphical login screen, but it seems
> like the main value is allowing people to run their computer
> without ever seeing the command prompt.  I think it would be
> of more value for people to encounter the command prompt,
> even if briefly. 

I do too. When I got into computers in the 1980's, CLI was all we had.
Secretaries used it. Paralegals used it. Lawyers used it. Hobbiests used
it. Any person of average intelligence learned how to use it, and used
it quite effectively.

But then, to fill their pocketbooks, Gates and Jobs convinced the world
that only geniuses could use CLI, and all of a sudden you were a
neckbeard if you used CLI. Then Redhat jumped on the bandwagon.

[snip]

> It would be great cooperation 

Re: [DNG] A heads up about xfce's future

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 17:03:10 +0100
Edward Bartolo <edb...@gmail.com> wrote:

 
> If Devuan fails to package XFCE it will be a blow for me as window
> managers are not suitable for my eyesight. 

I don't think anyone suggested removing XFCE from Devuan. That would be
a grave error. I think they were just talking about what to crown as
the default window manager.

> They take ages to configure
> - something that I cannot do when fonts are too small to read without
> damaging eye fatigue.
> 
> I found window managers' default font sizes terribly small that often
> resulted into burning eyes after a few minutes of reading. This means,
> they are out of question for me.

I've had this problem too, with Windowmaker and Fvwm. Catch 22: If only
I could read the screen, I could configure the fonts to be larger. If
only I could configure the fonts to be larger, I could read the screen.

There's a special place in hell for people who assume everyone has
their precise visual acuity. 9point lightgray font on darkgray
backgrounds. 8 point on a transparent background.

I know what you mean.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] A heads up about xfce's future

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 08:22:20 -0500
Hendrik Boom <hend...@topoi.pooq.com> wrote:

> I like icewm, too, and will be trying the others you mention just in 
> case I'm missing something I'm not yet aware of.
> 
> I tried lxde and didn't like it -- somehow the mouse became just 
> slightly jerky and slightly unresponsive.  


LXDE (and maybe Openbox too) is *famous* for having a slow mouse. I'm
talking about on bare metal: Not sure about VM. All other things being
equal, if you switch to another window manager, the mouse is much
faster. By faster I mean 1cm of mouse travel on the mousepad produces
twice as much travel of the pointer on the screen as it did with LXDE.

The cure I've found is:

1) Use a mousepad.
2) Clean your mousepad frequently.
3) Use a Blue Trace mouse
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Blackweb-BlueTrace-Weighted-Mouse-Red/44459955

The cure is ABSOLUTELY NOT accelleration: That leads to golf game
mousing.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Speaking of Window Managers

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 21:06:37 +0100
Edward Bartolo <edb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> What about JWM? Is it of good enough quality? I am trying it now, and
> looks it may be a replacement candidate for XFCE.
> 
> Edward

JWM is good, especially when hooked up with Dmenu. But the JWM I've
tried out is aesthetically ugly. That don't cross my eyes none, but
there are a heck of a lot of prospective Devuan users who might
compromise on pretty, but they'd never accept ugly. This pretty much
rules out JWM and fvwm unless we *seriously* configure them.

Also, JWM isn't used much, so JWM help is hard to find.

SteveT

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[DNG] Speaking of Window Managers

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

Here's info on dmenu:

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

http://linux.die.net/man/1/dmenu

http://troubleshooters.com/lpm/201406/201406.htm#use_faster_tools_dmenu

Just for fun, I'd like some opinions. If a Window Manager were
integrated with Dmenu (which is trivially easy usually), what hotkeys
would you recommend, given that keys can be alt, ctrl, shift, alt-ctrl,
alt-shift, ctrl-shift, and even alt-ctrl-shift?

Hotkey to bring up Dmenu?

Hotkey to bring up window list sorted by workspace?

Hotkey to bring up window manager menu?

Hotkey to toggle laptop mousepad on and off?

Hotkey to close a window (Alt+F4 sucks in my opinion)

Thanks,

SteveT

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[DNG] A Philosophy: was Runlevels:

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 22 Feb 2016 14:49:20 +
Simon Hobson <li...@thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:

> In my experience, sometimes
> you just have to accept that some edge cases don't work very well -
> but it's better to have to fudge around those than to make the entire
> world suboptimal to cater for them.

Read the preceding sentence. Isn't that the philosophy we sans-systemd
people live by every day?

Apparently systemd works, from what I read. Apparently it works for
everybody, from the dumbest of the dumb to the smartest of the smart,
in all use reasonable use cases. But at what cost?

Every edge case has its own little connector within systemd. There is
layer upon layer upon layer of airbags and safety shutoffs and
auto-configurators within systemd. Instead of merely providing a way to
read the root partition in order to get to /etc, /bin and /sbin,
systemd provides a jungle-like initramfs and actually interacts with it
over and over again.

When we sans-systemd people find a use case that doesn't work out of
the box, the solution is usually a couple shellscripts away: Those
shellscripts being simple because our systems are simple. When the
systemd crowd finds something that doesn't work (admittedly, this is a
rarer occurrence), they must be doing something wrong.

I like automatic. I like "just works". But not when it buries the
mechanism in a Rube Goldberg machine of official workarounds. Or, in
the words of a very observant person:

=
sometimes you just have to accept that some edge cases don't work very
well - but it's better to have to fudge around those than to make the
entire world suboptimal to cater for them.
=====

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Apparently Jessie has runit

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 21:20:26 -1000
Joel Roth <jo...@pobox.com> wrote:

> Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 20:23:10 +
> > Rainer Weikusat <rainerweiku...@virginmedia.com> wrote:
> >   
> > > Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> writes:  
> > > > People aren't completely alone on run scripts: I can give them
> > > > any run scripts I'm using. Also, Runit run scripts are
> > > > *nothing* like sysvinit or OpenRC init scripts:

[snip exact definition of "init scripts"]
  
> > 
> > The actual files to which the S- and K-links point are the "init
> > scripts" to which I refer. So perhaps I used the wrong name for
> > them. Anyway, they're usually an unholy mess, usually over 40
> > lines, I think I remember seeing some go over 100.  
> 
> Hi Steve,
> 
> How complicated is it to port such scripts to runit? Exim4's
> init.d script is 275 lines.
> 
> Joel

Hi Joel,

According to http://smarden.org/runit/runscripts.html#exim , Runit's
run script for Exim should be:

=
#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/local/sbin/exim -bdf -q30m
=

Because the preceding doesn't contain "exec 2>&1", I would guess that
Exim does its own logging and doesn't need Runit to provide a log for
the Exim daemon.

Beyond that, I don't have the knowledge to answer your question in a
responsive manner.

So instead, let me answer a question you didn't ask...

It's often easier, quicker, and better engineering to build a Runit run
script with knowledge of the app being used as a daemon, a little
engineering, and a little trial and error.

Here's pseudocode for the typical Runit run script that runs as root,
doesn't need GUI capabilities, and needs no environment variables:

=
#!/bin/sh
exec 2>&1
exec /path/to/daemon --run_in_forground other_arguments
=

The "exec 2>&1" is necessary to log both stdout and stderr, so
if there's no logging you can delete it.

The process to be run must run in the foreground (unless you do some
runit kludges), must be exec'ed, and there can be no assumptions about
paths or environment variables, so all files must have full paths.

You can pretty much deduce the daemon's actual command line syntax by
looking at the 275 (or whatever) line sysvinit or OpenRC init script.
Precede that command with the word "exec ", and if by default the
command backgrounds itself, include the command line option to make it
keep itself in the foreground, and you're pretty much set.

To test it, open a new level of bash, make yourself root, delete all
environment variables, delete all paths, and then run the runscript and
see whether it does the job. If not, find out what's missing and put it
in.

If the daemon needs some environment variables set, just do this for
each one:

# export mykey=myvalue

If you need it to run as a user other than root, follow this sequence,
as root:

# sv down mydaemon

Insert " /usr/bin/chpst -udesired_user_id " immediately after the
"exec" on the line that executes the daemon.

# cd /etc/sv/mydaemon
# chown -R desired_user_id.desired_user_id supervise

# sv up mydaemon

Note that if mydaemon reads and writes files, those files might be user
root such that the user desired_user_id cannot access them. In that
case, properly chown those files.

Note that your commands might be a little different, ESPECIALLY the
directory /etc/sv, which is a Voidism. Nevertheless, adding a new
daemon is incredibly easy.

Runit isn't for everyone. It doesn't have the 30 years of
institutionalized support like sysvinit, and it doesn't have a million
dollars a year in corporate salary support like systemd, so there will
be some amount of fairly low level user responsibility. Nevertheless,
my experience with Void Linux tells me that it's quite easy for a
package to provide the necessary run script, and in Void, about 90% of
such run scripts work perfectly, without my modification. And for the
other 10%, the fixes are obvious.

SteveT

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[DNG] The Stone Truth: was Debian is endorsed by Microsoft

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 12:32:01 +
KatolaZ <kato...@freaknet.org> wrote:

> The real support to GNU/Linux and
> Debian has come from silent hackers.

The preceding sentence is the Stone Truth, and should be inscribed in
an image visible to all who use Linux for more than as a ticket to a
salary.

And before anyone comments, there's nothing wrong with having an
employer and garnering a weekly paycheck based on your Linux skills.
I'm just saying that those who use Linux at home, or in the business
they own, either in addition to or instead of using Linux for the
benefit of their employer, are much more likely to understand and live
by KatolaZ' sentence.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Does dunst require dbus?

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 11:03:18 +0100
Didier Kryn <k...@in2p3.fr> wrote:


>  I installed roxterm and rox-filer. Both are just nice behaving. 
> roxterm doesn't seem to differ in apearence, configurability or 
> behaviour, from xfce4-terminal or gnome-terminal.

I too have used rox-filer (but not yet rox-session), and found it the
kind of thing that you could learn to like. I learned of its existence
thanks to Simon's roxterm recommendation, and I'm using rox-filer every
once in a while, and starting to like it more.

> 
>  rox-filer is nice looking, but it needs some configuration. Here 
> are the two waek points I noticed
> 
>  - there is absolutely no application defined by default for any 
> file type; you must define them all - this is a miss in the packaging.

With Void Linux some of the filetypes are predefined, but a lot aren't.

>  - there isn't a menu of possible applications for a given file 
> type. I like to be able to open an image with either a simple viewer
> or with Gimp to edit it.

Those menus are a double-edged sword. You maneuver thru the whole
thing, don't find the executable you really want, and then have to
furthergui to install an unlisted app.

> 
>  And here are some features I like:
> 
>  - If you left-click with the shift key pressed, you always open
> the file with the application you have defined for raw text. This
> allows to edit an html file instead of browsing it.

Nice! Thanks for that tip!

> 
>  - files are open on single click (double click in Thunar),
> though this is a personal preference.

I wouldn't want that for Thunar, but somehow, in rox I like it :-)

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Debian is endorsed by Microsoft

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 12:08:19 +
Simon Hobson <li...@thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:

> reading this list is like being at an evangelical meeting of some
> hardcore cult - and that *IS* very off-putting to a large number of
> people.

Both clauses of the preceding partial sentence are absolutely true. And
it goes without saying that I am a minor priest in this cult.

Here's the thing though: If you say in public that you don't use
systemd, that's offputting to 1/3 of the Linux population. A very vocal
and judgmental 1/3. If you actively participate in any plan to provide
an alternative to systemd, you've now offput 2/3 of the Linux
population, and are going to get your name constantly dragged through
the mud.

So the Devuan project has already offput 2/3 of the Linux population.
And although I cannot provide any backup for this opinion, it's my
opinion that most fans of corporate Linux are in the 2/3 we already
offput, and very few real fans of corporate Linux remain in the 1/3 not
yet offput.

So there are few left in our membership and prospective membership who
would be offput by anti-Microsoft assertions.

Meanwhile, the fact that we're Linux at all skews us to have long ago
blown off the Microsoft fans, and makes it likely that a sizeable
portion of us have very anti-Microsoft opinions, especially those who
have been in Linux long enough to remember the Halloween Documents,
Microsoft's Halloween Code, Microsoft execs Mundie and Allchin's whines
to congress to make GPL illegal, and Microsoft's generous license fees
paid to Linux patent troll SCO, which enabled SCO to randomly sue Linux
users for several more years.

Bottom line, we long ago blew off most of those who would have found
our, or at least my, way of phrasing things offputting.

We all hope there will come a time when Devuan becomes a plurality
force in the world of Linux. Such an eventuality is no less probable
than was Linux's takeover of everything but the desktop, if that
probability were predicted in the 1990's. And if you look at Linux
promotion in the 1990's, it was very cultish within, and very
offputting to fans of corporate computing or even those who believed
technology choice to be a meritocracy.

And when Devuan becomes such a plurality, having won the war for the
hearts and minds of those having strong believes concerning software
choice and modularity, we'll tone down our rhetoric to become more
inclusive of meritocracy believers and all but the most hard-core
corporatists. But it's too early for that now: Right now our job is to
inspire strong beliefs leading to strong development, testing,
documentation and advocacy, and an absolute and constitutional
rejection of systemd.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Debian is endorsed by Microsoft

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 14:41:40 +
Simon Hobson <li...@thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:

> dev1fanboy <devuanfan...@startmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > So for having our own values we are a "hardcore cult", how dare we
> > voice our opinions or stand up for our values (like anyone else in
> > the free software community, btw). Better yet, let's go back to
> > debian because otherwise we're elitists.
> 
> That's not what I said - and if it reads that way then I failed
> articulate my opinion well (wouldn't be the first time).
> 
> This is just the latest. There have been a few subjects that have
> come up where the undertone from some participants has been fairly
> solidly along the lines of "if it comes from X then it has to be bad"
> as though it's not possible for X to do anything other than totally
> bad, and do it for malicious reasons. When you get into that state of
> mind, then reasoned discussion is suppressed, and that doesn't
> promote a friendly atmosphere.

In the preceding paragraph, Simon has almost exactly described my
writings on this list, and on Debian-user earlier. It's my personal
belief that if it comes from Redhat, and perhaps other entities such
as FreeDesktop, it's almost certain to be both bad and malicious. I
can't prove this, because I've never been in a top level strategy
meeting for either Redhat or Freedesktop. I doubt anyone on this list
can prove my belief false, because they haven't been in every single
high level strategy meeting plus all back channel communications for
these entities.

What I *can* do is make a very plausible showing for Red Hat's motive,
means and opportunity to damage Linux for their own benefit. Motive,
means and opportunity don't prove guilt, but they go a long way to show
likelihood. And they go a long way in legitimizing the accusation, and
elevating the accuser from irrational conspiracy theorist to a
legitimate questioner of truth. Which to me inspires reasoned
discussion rather than suppressing it.

Let's briefly discuss "reasoned discussion". It's my belief that
"reasoned discussion" means different things in different venues. On
the Devuan list, reasoned discussion requires not only technology, but
also examination of motivation. The reason is simple: If we didn't
consider motivation, we'd always be aiming to be able to depoetterize
*today's* Linux, we'd always be chasing the tail of the latest
systemd architectural conquest, and we'd never output a usable product.

Once we consider motivation, we're better able to guess where Linux
will be in six months, and aim for that spot rather than today's spot.
We're much more likely to hit the target when we consider motivation.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Apparently Jessie has runit

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 21:34:31 -1000
Joel Roth <jo...@pobox.com> wrote:

> Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 21:20:26 -1000
> > Joel Roth <jo...@pobox.com> wrote:  
> > > 
> > > Hi Steve,
> > > 
> > > How complicated is it to port such scripts to runit? Exim4's
> > > init.d script is 275 lines.
> > > 
> > > Joel  
> > 
> > Hi Joel,
> > 
> > According to http://smarden.org/runit/runscripts.html#exim , Runit's
> > run script for Exim should be:
> > 
> > =
> > #!/bin/sh
> > exec /usr/local/sbin/exim -bdf -q30m
> > =  
>  
> > Because the preceding doesn't contain "exec 2>&1", I would guess
> > that Exim does its own logging and doesn't need Runit to provide a
> > log for the Exim daemon.
> >   
> Thanks. Yes I eventually stumbled on this. And as you say,
> it is possible to drill down through the init script to 
> get just a few essential lines and environment settings.
> 
> I guess the biggest problem is that I have 78 working init
> scripts, so it would be a gradual process to switch over to
> runit. I guess if I can start runit under sysvinit, I could
> move services one by one.

Exactly! I forgot to mention this, but you can use runit either as a
PID1 init to replace sysvinit, or as a daemontools-like process
supervisor that gets called from sysvinit's PID1. Instructions for
doing the latter are here:

http://smarden.org/runit/useinit.html

Joel, you were on the Debian-user list in the bad old days, so you
remember me saying that I always used djb's daemontools *in addition
to* sysvinit, and in fact regularly migrated S31_myservice type service
instantiation to daemontools for two reasons:

1) MUCH easier to understand what the heck is going on
2) Respawning

My point is that, even if one has no intention of ever using Runit as
PID1, a sysvinit/Runit hybrid is a very nice thing.

And of course, if you *do* intend to switch over to a full Runit init,
once you have all 78 or your services runitized, making the cutover is
a matter of making sure your /etc/runit/1 2 files are ready to
start early one-shot processes, and file 3 is ready to cleanly shut
down the computer. Then you just change the init= in your bootloader
from the sysvinit executable to the runit executable.

> 
> Like you, I don't expect to run heavy-weight GUI
> environment, so I think a lot of fat could be cut away. Just
> that it's also running code ;-)
> 
> I hope I can find time to fiddle with this.

Start by using Runit as a process supervisor started by sysvinit. I
predict you'll love it.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Does dunst require dbus?

[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 14:52:39 +1100
Simon Wise <simonzw...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 22/01/16 02:57, Didier Kryn wrote:

> > This "recommends" feature has become a kind of bin for packages the
> > maintainers would like desperately to "require" for obscure
> > reasons, but they fail to find a valid one.  
> 
> But some more polite packages do use it properly ... for things that
> are not actually dependencies, but that you probably want, and may
> well miss, if you use the package in an average kind of way. It is
> worth a quick look during the apt-get process.

I think it depends on the user. The user who would most likely use
Ubuntu, for instance, has little knowledge of package management and
would probably prefer every possible dependency package for every
possible feature be installed.

But for Devuan, and pre 2014 Debian, I'd imagine the average user
would rather the package manager be more conservative in installing
dependencies.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Does dunst require dbus?

[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 14:47:59 +1100
Simon Wise <simonzw...@gmail.com> wrote:


> The  second advantage for me (since I use colours to indicate some
> tasks) is the profile/theme configuration is easier to deal with and
> file based.

Yes! After the last time I did an rm -rf on my laptop, only to discover
it was in an ssh session to my main computer where I didn't want to
delete anything, I always use different color terminals for ssh
sessions and for root sessions. Roxterm's file based "profiles" make it
trivial to have as many of those as you want. Priceless!

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] lilo development has ended

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 19 Jan 2016 07:26:57 -1000
Joel Roth <jo...@pobox.com> wrote:

> Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Tue, 19 Jan 2016 17:20:10 +0100
> > Adam Borowski <kilob...@angband.pl> wrote:
> >   
> > > On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 11:02:17AM -0500, Steve Litt wrote:  
> > > > Grub is the systemd of bootloaders. It's all about pretty
> > > > colors, nice images, and hiding the fact that processes are
> > > > being instantiated.
> > > 
> > > Grub is complex, but that's caused by what it tries to do (read
> > > the kernel image from real filesystems instead of a blockmap like
> > > lilo). It doesn't go beyond its scope, unlike systemd.  
> > 
> > The preceding paragraph was much more true of Grub1 than its
> > gargantuan spawn, Grub2.
> > 
> > Grub1 read filesystems just fine. Grub2 has prioritized all sorts of
> > pretty, and the simplicity of Grub1 has been lost.  
> 
> The grub developers wrote that they began grub2 due
> to limitations and maintenance problems with grub1.

The preceding sentence is almost exactly my point. The systemd
developers wrote that they began systemd due to the limitations and
maintenance problems with sysvinit. 

No doubt in my mind that at some point sysvinit must go on the
scrapheap of history, and I wouldn't argue that old Grub must go there
too. But the replacement ought not to be worse than the old clunker
it's replacing.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] lilo development has ended

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:04:25 +0100
richard lucassen <mailingli...@lucassen.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 19 Jan 2016 14:44:59 -
> "dev1fanboy" <devuanfan...@startmail.com> wrote:

> > So I assume lilo has stopped development altogether from the last
> > release, and we can look forward to only having the more complex
> > grub2.   
> 
> Unless you use a small ext2 boot partition for your kernels. And for
> raid: if you create an md device for /boot/ with --metadata=0.90 then
> lilo will still work.

That ext2 must be on a smaller than 2TB disk, unless you want to throw
away some of the disk's capacity. For a desktop, this is no problem: Do
what I do and have / on a little MBR formatted SSD, with /home and /var
and other stuff that actually writes often on a large, UEFI formatted
disk.

For laptops it's a little harder because you can't (AFAIK) boot modern
windows with an MBR disk, and you must have a functional Windows to
maintain your ability to access warranty parts replacement.

With old laptops, I just jettison the Windows and mbr format the disk;
heck, I have no warranty anyway.


SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Apparently Jessie has runit

[Steve Litt]

People aren't completely alone on run scripts: I can give them any run
scripts I'm using. Also, Runit run scripts are *nothing* like sysvinit
or OpenRC init scripts: Most are five lines or less, few are over 10
lines.

SteveT

On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 14:31:45 -
"dev1fanboy" <devuanfan...@startmail.com> wrote:

> Yes devuan has it, I was thinking about trying it but I think people
> are on their own for init scripts with runit. 
> 
> On Wednesday, January 20, 2016 2:31 PM, Steve Litt
> <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > Apparently Debian Jessie (and therefore I'd assume Devuan Jessie)
> > has the Runit init system as an option:
> > 
> > https://packages.debian.org/es/jessie/runit
> > 
> > Obviously, Devuan Jessie should default to sysvinit: There's enough
> > other work to do.
> > 
> > That being said, anyone who wants to get familiar with a more
> > powerful (than sysvinit and systemd) init system might want to
> > experiment with runit in an experimental VM. I use runit on a daily
> > basis, and the longer I use it the more sense it makes.
> > 
> > And with Runit, creating your own daemon is nothing more than
> > writing a program that keeps looping. No backgrounding necessary
> > (or desired).
> > 
> > Have fun experimenting.
> > 
> > SteveT
> > 
> > Steve Litt
> > January 2016 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
> > http://www.troubleshooters.com/28
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Re: [DNG] Apparently Jessie has runit

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 21:00:12 +
Simon Hobson <li...@thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:

> Rainer Weikusat <rainerweiku...@virginmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> > The commands which are actually executed via these S- and K-links
> > come from individual packages and ultimatively contain whatever the
> > people responsible for that considered sensible. Which is usually a
> > pretty arbitrary assortment of more or less useless code which
> > accumulated over ca 20 years in the course of "whatever, the
> > easiest way to make the problem go away is hack some more code into
> > the init script".  
> 
> My impression from occasionally having to debug some startup issue is
> that the scripts I see aren't all that bad. I can't speak for other
> distros as most of my systems are Debian, but they mostly seem to be :
> - Some headers to tell utilities what runlevels the service should
> run at, and dependencies.
> - A ". include" to pull in some standard functions - makes sense, no
> point everyone building their own wheel.
> - Check for, and if found, load a config file -
> eg /etc/default/${service}
> - Start/Stop/whatever the service

This is what I meant. Headers, includes, and
then /stop/start/restart/whatever sections. Not easy to trace what's
going on. Now consider the ./run script for my new reminder_check
daemon, which I wrote in Python:

==
#!/bin/sh
cd /d/at/python/littcron
export TERM=xterm
export XAUTHORITY=/home/slitt/.Xauthority
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp/1000-runtime-dir
export DISPLAY=:0.0

exec /usr/bin/chpst
-uslitt /d/at/python/reminder_check/reminder_check.py
==

That's it. The four export lines enable the daemon to pop up GUI
(Python tkinter) windows, and are not necessary otherwise. The final
line runs reminder_check.py as user slitt. If I were logging this
daemon, I'd need a line to redirect reminder_check.py's stdout and
stderr together, and then in the log directory under this one I'd need
a 3 line run script that's the same for almost all log files.

My reminder_check service also executes a ./finish script when it
finishes, so if it crashes I'm made aware. The ./finish script follows:

==
#!/bin/sh
export TERM=xterm
export XAUTHORITY=/home/slitt/.Xauthority
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp/1000-runtime-dir
export DISPLAY=:0.0

cat finishmessage.txt | /usr/bin/python3 /d/bats/warnform.py &
==

In the preceding, warnform.py is a generic very loud and visible
warning window producer that enunciates whatever comes into its stdin
or the file in its argument. You could just as easly use the following
command:

roxterm -e 'dialog --msgbox "Reminder checker crashed" 10 30'

But I made my own GUI form out of Python.

[snip]

> Very likely. Except that with systemd it's going to have a lot
> obfuscated in C.

Just in case I wasn't clear enough: Although I don't like sysvinit and
OpenRC, my problems with them pale in comparison to my problems with
the everything-welded-together, no-user-serviceable-parts-inside
architecture of systemd.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Apparently Jessie has runit

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 20:23:10 +
Rainer Weikusat <rainerweiku...@virginmedia.com> wrote:

> Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> writes:
> > People aren't completely alone on run scripts: I can give them any
> > run scripts I'm using. Also, Runit run scripts are *nothing* like
> > sysvinit or OpenRC init scripts:  
> 
> There is no such thing as a "sysvinit init script". The way the
> sysvinit program is usually employed on Linux is such that it's
> instructed to run the command /etc/init.d/rc with the run-level


> The commands which are actually executed via these S- and K-links come
> from individual packages and ultimatively contain whatever the people
> responsible for that considered sensible. 

The actual files to which the S- and K-links point are the "init
scripts" to which I refer. So perhaps I used the wrong name for them.
Anyway, they're usually an unholy mess, usually over 40 lines, I think
I remember seeing some go over 100.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] "Common knowledge?"-question

[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 21:34:28 +
Rainer Weikusat <rainerweiku...@virginmedia.com> wrote:

> Can the effect of the following C function
> 
> static void print_start(char const *name, char const *what)
> {
> char *buf, *p;
> unsigned name_len, what_len, total;
> 
> name_len = strlen(name);
> what_len = strlen(what);
> total = name_len + what_len + 3;
> 
> p = buf = alloca(total);
> memcpy(p, name, name_len);
> p += name_len;
> *p++ = ' ';
> memcpy(p, what, what_len);
> p += what_len;
> *p++ = ':';
> *p = ' ';
> 
> *buf &= ~0x20;
> 
> Write(2, buf, total);
> }
> 
> be considered obvious or should it rather get an explanation?

Hi Rainer,

Others have pointed out potential coding problems, but I'm just going
to answer your question about need for comments. In my opinion, the
preceding function is short enough to document itself *if and only if*
the function gets a much more descriptive name. Descriptive of what it
does and how it's used.

print_start() means nothing to me. Is "start" a noun (the start of the
record) or a verb (start the printing). And the print isn't to a
printer, it's to stdout, so a better word would be "output". But even
those aren't sufficient: This thing is concatenating two strings,
adding punctuation, and capitalizing the first character. Why are all
these things necessary? If the function name can address that, perhaps
it can be self documenting.

Otherwise, there's no shame in putting a few lines of comments above
the function, and personally I'd put an inline comment on that *buf &=
~0x20; trick. Or you could make a macro called upcase_first_letter()
that does that. That makes it self-documenting, and yet because it's a
macro it compiles as if it were inline.

SteveT

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[DNG] Self documenting code

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

Rainer's question brings up the concept of self-documenting code.
Here's an essay I wrote on the subject almost 2 decades ago:

http://troubleshooters.com/tpromag/199908/index.htm

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Does dunst require dbus?

[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 23 Jan 2016 20:10:31 +0100
Florian Zieboll <f.zieb...@web.de> wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 00:09:23 -0500
> Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> 
> > different color terminals for
> > ssh sessions  
> 
> I had played a bit with the tiling and highly (GUI) configurable
> "Terminator" but was bounced back to xterm very quickly due to its
> footprint and wrote the following secremote.sh script. 

:-)

If it's many colors and a tiny footprint are desired, what I've done is
compiled Suckless Tools' st terminal with many different color
combinations, each with the name 'zz' plus the first letter of the
foreground color plus the first letter of the background color.

Suckless Tools terminals are very low footprint, but they also lack
features necessary for certain tasks. IIRC you'd never use one for a
login terminal, and IIRC they can't be told to run a certain script
(like xterm -e). But they often suffice, and you can easily compile
them to have the exact font size you like.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] lilo development has ended

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 19 Jan 2016 14:44:59 -
"dev1fanboy" <devuanfan...@startmail.com> wrote:

> https://lilo.alioth.debian.org/
> 
> The author has updated their site to say:
> 
> "NOTE: I will finish development of LILO at December 2015 because of
> some limitations (e.g. with BTFS, GPT, RAID). If someone want to
> develop this nice software further, please let me know ..."
> 
> So I assume lilo has stopped development altogether from the last
> release, and we can look forward to only having the more complex
> grub2. 

This sucks.


SteveT

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Re: [DNG] lilo development has ended

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 19 Jan 2016 15:48:40 -
"dev1fanboy" <devuanfan...@startmail.com> wrote:

> Hopefully something will happen with it, personally I'd use grub but
> it does some fancy stuff I'm not a fan of.

Grub is the systemd of bootloaders. It's all about pretty colors, nice
images, and hiding the fact that processes are being instantiated.

What's so sad is that grub 1 was wonderful. One file, everything was
easy and obvious. Grub2 has different but similar executables, and you
go traipsing all over a tree of numbered files to change every little
thing, or else unauthorizedly change the already compiled version and
hope nothing overrides it.

SteveT

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[DNG] Beware

[Steve Litt]

Beware:

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3023447/security/linux-zero-day-affects-most-androids-millions-of-linux-pcs.html

SteveT

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[DNG] Apparently Jessie has runit

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

Apparently Debian Jessie (and therefore I'd assume Devuan Jessie) has
the Runit init system as an option:

https://packages.debian.org/es/jessie/runit

Obviously, Devuan Jessie should default to sysvinit: There's enough
other work to do.

That being said, anyone who wants to get familiar with a more powerful
(than sysvinit and systemd) init system might want to experiment with
runit in an experimental VM. I use runit on a daily basis, and the
longer I use it the more sense it makes.

And with Runit, creating your own daemon is nothing more than writing a
program that keeps looping. No backgrounding necessary (or desired).

Have fun experimenting.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] lilo development has ended

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 19 Jan 2016 17:20:10 +0100
Adam Borowski <kilob...@angband.pl> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 11:02:17AM -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
> > Grub is the systemd of bootloaders. It's all about pretty colors,
> > nice images, and hiding the fact that processes are being
> > instantiated.  
> 
> Grub is complex, but that's caused by what it tries to do (read the
> kernel image from real filesystems instead of a blockmap like lilo).
> It doesn't go beyond its scope, unlike systemd.

The preceding paragraph was much more true of Grub1 than its gargantuan
spawn, Grub2.

Grub1 read filesystems just fine. Grub2 has prioritized all sorts of
pretty, and the simplicity of Grub1 has been lost.

SteveT

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[DNG] Systemd best practices

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

Looking at the Debian-user mailing list, I saw a question that I
could have answered, if I were allowed to post to Debian-user:

=
By the way: whether there is a documentation describing best practices
and "use cases" for systemd?
=

The answer, of course, is that the best practice is to convert to
Devuan.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Avoid 'git commit -m ...' every time code is tested after editing.

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 15 Feb 2016 14:00:46 +
KatolaZ <kato...@freaknet.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 01:05:25PM +, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
> > Edward Bartolo <edb...@gmail.com> writes:  
> > > I need to avoid having to "git commit -m ..." every time I
> > > add/modify code. I need to 'git buildpackage' without committing
> > > changes. The reason is to make sure new code works before
> > > committing.  
> > 
> > In my opinion, that's an unfortunate way to use a SCM because it's
> > than not used as a change management system but more like a release
> > tracking system. I usually commit every somewhat self-contained
> > unit of work, eg, every new function or signficant change to an
> > existing function without even knowing if the code compiles, let
> > alone works (this requires private branches if more than one person
> > works on a codebase). This means I get a detailed and commented
> > history of all changes I made which makes it easy to determine why
> > something was changed/ written in a particular way and also means
> > that I can always throw the current working files away (instead of
> > trying to reconstruct them after an ill-advised change, be it some
> > idea which just didn't work out or accidentally damaging a file)
> > without losing a lot of work.  
> 
> +1 
> 
> Try to use git for what it was conceived: revision management. And a
> revision is not a release. The strategy suggested by Rainer,
> i.e. maintaining personal branches where every consistent set of
> changes is fixed into a commit, is usually the easiest way out. 
> 
> Commit often. Branch whenever needed needed. Merge when it
> works. Release when "perfect" (the last one should be really
> considered with a pinch of salt :P).

When a version is a release, don't you just give it a tag?

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Avoid 'git commit -m ...' every time code is tested after editing.

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 10:06:35 +
KatolaZ <kato...@freaknet.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 09:35:55PM -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> [cut]
> 
> > > 
> > > Commit often. Branch whenever needed needed. Merge when it
> > > works. Release when "perfect" (the last one should be really
> > > considered with a pinch of salt :P).  
> > 
> > When a version is a release, don't you just give it a tag?
> >   
> 
> Yes Steve. My point was that git is made to maintain the history of a
> project, and to help you avoiding disasters, or containing their
> impact. git is useful only if you commit fairly often, otherwise it is
> better to use a backup system, rather than a revision control
> system...
> 
> So, there is no point into committing "only working stuff", because
> this is the best way to mess things up and/or to lose hours of
> precious work. 

I didn't understand the context of the question before, but now that I
do, it makes perfect sense. Also, besides tagging releases, can't you
also tag working versions, like "works22143", so anyone can git clone
something that works? Or...

> As it has been suggested by several others, whenever
> you need to have the master branch to always be "working", it's far
> better to do development in other branches, committing there as
> frequently as needed (i.e., even if things don't work), and then
> merging to the master when the development branch "works".

Where would you suggest I find out more about the practicalities of
git? I use it for my own stuff quite a bit, but don't know how to do
branches and all that.

Thanks,

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Lead BusyBox developer on sysvinit

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 17 Feb 2016 21:56:49 +
Rainer Weikusat <rainerweiku...@virginmedia.com> wrote:

> Mitt Green <mitt_gr...@yahoo.com> writes:
> > In case you haven't read this,
> > Denys Vlasenko tells about
> > his experiences with sysvinit.
> > There he refers to daemontools
> > and runit as superior to the traditional
> > init.
> >
> > https://busybox.net/~vda/init_vs_runsv.html  
> 
> Wrt "Do you trust this code" --- I've surely fixed more bugs in
> busybox while I was still using it than I ever had to fix in init.

He's not talking about busybox at all. He's talking about Runit,
completely different software by a completely different programmer.
Perhaps he used busybox as PID1 instead of using the PID1 that ships
with Runit, but truth be told, he could have just as easily pid1'd with
sysvinit, or Suckless Init, or even Rich Felker's init.

The crux of his article is stated more succinctly by Rich Felker
himself:

http://ewontfix.com/14/

I agree 100% with https://busybox.net/~vda/init_vs_runsv.html, although
we all agree that right now it would be silly for Devuan to init with
anything but sysvinit.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Lead BusyBox developer on sysvinit

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 16:15:55 +0100
Didier Kryn <k...@in2p3.fr> wrote:

>  Hence the argument already exposed by several persons on this
> list, in particular Laurent: let's pid1 do *only* what no other
> program can do.


NOTE: My response is based on *my* reading and interpretation of
Laurent's emails here and on the supervision list and a few to me
personally. It's very possible I've misread or misinterpreted...


U sure that was Laurent who said "let pid do *only* what no other
program can do"? Laurent prioritizes PID1 being able to *respawn* the
process supervisor, which from my understanding means that PID1 must
*contain* the process supervisor. Laurent has opined that the
architectures of Runit, http://ewontfix.com/14/ and Suckless Init +
daemontools-encore + LittKit or Suckless Init + s6
+ LittKit all suffer from the inability for PID1 to respawn the process
supervisor, and if I'm not mistaken the PID1 used by s6 (when s6 is
used as a whole init) contains the supervisor.

From Laurent's point of view, if the supervisor (runsvdir or
svscanboot or whatever) dies or is killed AND all the gettys
also die, one loses all control of the computer and must
hardware reboot, and that's a bad thing.

My opinion is that although this is indeed a bad thing, I'm
willing to risk it to get the breathtaking simplicity of Rich
Felker's vision in http://ewontfix.com/14/.
 
SteveT

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[DNG] Are you still paranoid if you turned out to be right?

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

For those of you who remember the most unpopular stuff I said on
Debian-User, the stuff I said about Red Hat, the stuff people called me
a conspiracy theorist for: Am I still paranoid if it turned out I was
right?

See the following URL and quote:

www.infoworld.com/article/3032647/open-source-tools/face-it-theres-no-money-in-open-source.html

=
As then-Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens once told me: 

"Red Hat's model works because of the complexity of the technology we
work with. An operating platform has a lot of moving parts, and
customers are willing to pay to be insulated from that complexity. I
don't think you can take one finite element - like Apache - and make a
business out of it [using our model]. You need product complexity."
=

Signed, sealed, delivered, they're busted!

Ever wonder why the powers that be hate Devuan so much? Follow the
money.

I know that all of us have thought, on our darker days, that we can't
forever remove the poetterizations Red Hat keeps paying millions to
insert into strategic parts of Linux. But maybe, just maybe, the Red
Hat tycoons are beginning to wonder whether they can forever fight
Devuan and the other sans-systemd distros who can keep depoetterizing
for free.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Wifi device names: was systemd is haunting me

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 11 Feb 2016 12:10:23 +1300
Daniel Reurich <dan...@centurion.net.nz> wrote:

> > How 'legal' do you want this to be? My work contract has a clause
> > which states that even if I dream of code/ something else which
> > might be useful, the rights rest with my employer.   
> 
> That's insane and surely it's legally unenforceable, and certainly if
> they don't pay you for the time spent dreaming code
> 
> D:


Hi Daniel,

You'd be hugely surprised at how literally some states in the US
interpret contracts. I live in (anti-employee) Florida, and a friend of
mine here in Florida was advised by his lawyer to not work for Linux for
the next 6 months because his former employer had a 6 month
anti-compete on any Linux work. His lawyer said he'd likely lose the
case if he did Linux and his old employer sued.

Meanwhile, in California, that kind of non-compete is illegal.

This often becomes a problem in Free Software, as former employers
covet Free Software rights on software written by their employees on
the employee's own time and with the employee's own computer.

This is the reason a lot of Free Software authors assign all rights to
the FSF. I don't do that because I've been self-employed since 1982.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Dng Digest, Vol 18, Issue 42

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2016 22:02:13 +
David Harrison <da...@olansa.co.uk> wrote:

> On 16/03/2016 21:30, dng-requ...@lists.dyne.org wrote:
> > WARNING: Regardless of David's intent, which I assume is benign, the
> > preceding paragraph is solicitation to commit felony copyright
> > infringement. Nobody should email proprietary software to others,
> > without a written OK from the copyright holder. This kind of request
> > should never be made on any kind of mailing list.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > SteveT  
> 
> With respect, Steve, what on earth do you mean? I asked if someone
> would mail me *their own* replacement stub program that they use *in
> place* of a proprietary executable. So yes, my intent is benign and
> is not counter to any copyright.
> 
> David

If the replacement stub is licensed as Free Software, you're right and
I apologize for misunderstanding the situation.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Is Devuan Jessie secure enough?

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2016 18:09:03 +0100
Edward Bartolo <edb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> As I am slowly converting my installation into Devuan, I would like to
> ask what others use to access their bank accounts, to pay bills only
> and other money related activities.
> 
> Until now I have used Debian Wheezy. Is DEVUAN secure enough for
> financial transactions? If Devuan has adequate security I can start
> using it to pay my bills online and to make my occasional purchase
> online.
> 
> Edward

One man's opinion: *NO* computer is secure enough for an individual's
banking or investments.

I've never made a bank account or investment account available via the
web in my life. People used to laugh at me and call me a greybeard.
Then Heartbleed happened, and they pretty much shut up after that.

As far as paying bills online using your credit card number, I think
good personal hygiene like always making sure it's https and not
clicking on links from unknown senders makes more of a difference than
the exact distro you're using.

SteveT

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[DNG] Where to get beta?

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

I went to devuan.org to download the ISO for the beta, couldn't find
it, went to the Download Zone (http://files.devuan.org/) and couldn't
find anything pertaining to the Beta. I went to git.devuan.org, and
couldn't find it.

Where can I download Devuan's beta?

I have a suggestion: I know that the website is being redesigned as we
speak, but IMHO, right now, today, links should be placed at the very
top of the current https://devuan.org website showing how to join the
mailing list, how to join the IRC channel(s), and how to download the
beta and the latest alpha (4, isn't it?).

SteveT

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[DNG] Networking, dependencies, restarting

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

Right now, on the debian-user mailing list, they're wringing their
hands about restarting the network and how Debian apparently gets it
wrong, I guess because of stuff like you need a link before assigning
an IP, you need an IP before doing DNS, you need DNS before NFS,
Samba, Apache and who knows what else. And I think they're also having
problems with recognizing the right network device names, which of
course was solved on this mailing list a couple months ago.

LOL.

First of all, it's ironic that if I had credible information on startup
ordering, and if I used systemd, I could *easily* get all this to
happen. Systemd's Unit files with targets and the like are straight up
built for this exact multiple ordering thing.

Similarly, I could get this to happen on Runit or S6, with generic
dependencies. It appears that the Debian Devs are doing their systemd
with a sysvinit accent. Worst of both worlds.

OK, I'll stop with my gleeful "I told you so" taunt, and get to my
real message...

In my personal opinion, you can't make a distro for every use case, for
ever event. And the more you try to get those last couple percent to
work, the bigger and messier the system becomes.

I think the best way to get that last couple percent is with
documentation and shellscripts. This works because generally speaking,
the people with use cases that break the normal distro methods are
informed enough to read docs and modify shellscripts. So for instance,
on a machine that just assigns a static IP address and gateway, you
might use a shellscript something like this:

===
#!/bin/sh
hostname -F /etc/hostname
ip link set dev lo up
ip link set dev $eth down
ip addr add 192.168.100.88/24 dev $eth
ip link set dev $eth up
ip route add default via 192.168.100.96

if ping -c1 192.168.100.96; then
   start_nfs.sh
   start_samba.sh
   start_apache.sh
   start_smtp_server.sh
fi
===

In the preceding, the value of $eth would have already been determined
by the device name finding shellscript described a few months ago on
this mailing list. The ping -c1 192.168.100.96 is how you prove you
have network connectivity. In reality, that and all the start_*.sh
scripts would have probably been scripts that left evidence of their
starting or failure somewhere.

A slightly more sophisticated version of the preceding script would
probably start up the network and everything needing it. And when it
comes time to stop the network, it could be something like this:

==
stop_smtp_server.sh
stop_apache.sh
stop_samba.sh
stop_nfs.sh
if dependent_services_really_stopped.sh; then
ip link set dev $eth down
==

A restart is just a stop and subsequent start.

Here's my point: For 98% of all users, starting and stopping via
sysvinit, you know, what we and Debian have right now, works just fine.
But for those edge cases, rather than building ever more IF statements
into ever huger init scripts, why not document a few skeleton
shellscripts that can be custom modified to do *exactly* what's needed
in the (presumably sophisticated) user's case?

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Making sense of C pointer syntax.

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 30 Mar 2016 08:23:16 -0300
Emiliano Marini <emilianomarin...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Edward, the only time the compiler allocates memory for data
> automatically is when using strings literals (as stated by Rainer
> previously)
> 
> char *p = "Hola mundo."

Also when you have a struct as a local variable:

struct my_cool_struct mystruct;

Like the char pointer, it comes off the stack, not the heap it would
come off if you used malloc().

Actually, any local variable allocates memory off the stack. Consider:

int number_of_people;

The preceding allocates sizeof(int) bytes, for number_of_people, off
the stack.

SteveT

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[DNG] suspend and hybernate

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

What's the difference between suspend and hybernate?

How can I achieve each condition from the command prompt?

If I achieve each condition from the command prompt, how do I "wake up"
the computer when I'm ready to use it again?

Thanks,

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] suspend

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 12 Apr 2016 18:12:21 + (UTC)
Go Linux <goli...@yahoo.com> wrote:


> 
> There is a good reason that I have had Rainer's posts filtered
> directly to delete for many months. 

Me too.

>  So none of this kerfuffle
> reached my inbox.  

Nor my inbox

> Others can of course do the same so Rainer can
> rant in a cone of silence.

That would be my recommendation. As a matter of fact, I wrote about it
once:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/init/killfile.htm

If a tree falls in the forest, but no living thing was within hearing
distance, did it really make a sound?

If a troll trolls on a list, but everybody's got him piped
to /dev/null, did he really troll?

There's a certain beauty in that philosophy.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] ...and when trolling went too far

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 6 Apr 2016 15:20:11 +0100
KatolaZ <kato...@freaknet.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 06, 2016 at 02:11:28PM +, Trond Arild Ydersbond wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Rainer Weikusat <rainerweiku...@virginmedia.com>:
> >   
> > >Every propaganda lie is useful to someone. But the invalid
> > >reasoning (or rather, complete lack of reasoning) remains invalid
> > >nevertheless. Mr P certainly earns enough money to have his own
> > >staff of Wikipedia cleaners so let them worry about that. End of
> > >this story.  
> > 
> > 
> > So you think public interest is best served by leaving information
> > cleanup after stupid vandalism to the Poettering squad. I don't.  
> 
> What would you suggest as an alternative, that you or me go there and
> do the clean-up instead? 

I'll state this clearly: I'm not the person who put up the fake page.
I've never written anything false to a Wikipedia page.

That being said, I thought it was kind of funny and relatively harmless.

After seeing the extreme revulsion several people had to the fake
page, I'll make sure to continue never to write anything false on a
Wikipedia page (Poettering doesn't work for NSA, and he's not nearly as
handsome as the donkey).

SteveT

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[DNG] LOL, Policykit

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/01/msg00209.html

Oh those merry pranksters at FreeDesktop.Org!

I guess they've never heard of groups and permissions. And when you say
"sudo" to a guy from FreeDesktop.org, he says "gesundheit".

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Where to get beta?

[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2016 15:01:57 +
hellekin <helle...@dyne.org> wrote:

> On 03/17/2016 07:56 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> > 
> > Where can I download Devuan's beta?
> >  
> 
> In the near future, as Mitt suggested ;o),
> from https://devuan.org/ and https://files.devuan.org/.
> For now, in Centurion_dan's pocket :)
> 
> Tip: for anything related to the Web, please report issues to
> https://git.devuan.org/devuan-editors/devuan-www/issues.
> 
> > IMHO, right now, today, links should be placed at the very
> > top of the current https://devuan.org website
> >  
> 
> Won't gonna happen.  Current devuan.org and future devuan.org are
> completely different.  We're working towards beta, and that's
> happening soon, so the current site is frozen (actually it's not, but
> we don't really have time to ride both horses.)

OK. I suggest that prominent links to download, mailing list and IRC be
placed at the top of the FUTURE devuan.org.

> 
> How to join the mailing-list: isn't a link to
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng enough?

It would be, if prominent. But it was the 13th out of 18 similar looking
links distributed throughout a 1000 word document. When someone is
going to a Free Software website, most want to immediately ask one of
these questions:

* What's going on here?
* How do I communicate with the community?
* How do I download various versions?
* How do I donate?

In my opinion, links to the answers of those four questions should go
at the top of the home page, displayed prominently, so that a
prospective user doesn't say to himself tl;dr and move on.

> 
> How to join the IRC channels: what else than telling they're on
> freenode and linking to them?

Again, in the middle of a 1000 line document.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Packaging Vdev

[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2016 19:05:20 +0100
aitor_czr <aitor_...@gnuinos.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> By default, PSTAT (a dependency of VDEV) is installed in
> "/usr/local", just as VDEV.
> 
> As Daniel Raurich explained in another thread:
> 
> [...] the "/usr/local" directory is for non-packaged local stuff [...]
> 
> So, should i change this configuration for those packages, or should
> i skip debhelper's "dh_usrlocal" script adding:
> 
> binary:
>  dh binary --before dh_usrlocal
>  dh binary --after dh_usrlocal
> 
> to debian/rules?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Aitor.

This is pure opinion: Get a second opinion:

My understanding is that /usr/local is the base of the tree used for
software *not* installed by the distro's package manager. When I
compile my own dmenu or lyx, it goes under the /usr/local directory,
with all executables going in /usr/local/bin.

My understanding is that the distro's package manager never puts
anything in the /usr/local tree. If the thing is an executable, it goes
in /usr/bin. Libraries go in /usr/lib. Header files go in /usr/include.
Fonts and themes and other stuff like that goes in /usr/share.

If /usr/local/VDEV is a directory, I'd imagine you'd farm out its files
to the directories listed in the preceding paragraph. If VDEV is an
executable, it would go in /usr/bin, or perhaps /sbin or /usr/sbin.

Like I say, I'm the world's least authoritative person when it comes to
package managers, but if I've understood what I've heard others, the
preceding pretty much sums up what to do.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Packaging Vdev

[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2016 15:26:49 -0400
Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Mar 2016 19:05:20 +0100
> aitor_czr <aitor_...@gnuinos.org> wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > By default, PSTAT (a dependency of VDEV) is installed in
> > "/usr/local", just as VDEV.
> > 
> > As Daniel Raurich explained in another thread:
> > 
> > [...] the "/usr/local" directory is for non-packaged local stuff
> > [...]
> > 
> > So, should i change this configuration for those packages, or should
> > i skip debhelper's "dh_usrlocal" script adding:
> > 
> > binary:
> >  dh binary --before dh_usrlocal
> >  dh binary --after dh_usrlocal
> > 
> > to debian/rules?
> > 
> > Thanks in advance,
> > 
> > Aitor.  
> 
> This is pure opinion: Get a second opinion:
> 
> My understanding is that /usr/local is the base of the tree used for
> software *not* installed by the distro's package manager. When I
> compile my own dmenu or lyx, it goes under the /usr/local directory,
> with all executables going in /usr/local/bin.
> 
> My understanding is that the distro's package manager never puts
> anything in the /usr/local tree. If the thing is an executable, it
> goes in /usr/bin. Libraries go in /usr/lib. Header files go
> in /usr/include. Fonts and themes and other stuff like that goes
> in /usr/share.
> 
> If /usr/local/VDEV is a directory, I'd imagine you'd farm out its
> files to the directories listed in the preceding paragraph. If VDEV
> is an executable, it would go in /usr/bin, or perhaps /sbin
> or /usr/sbin.
> 
> Like I say, I'm the world's least authoritative person when it comes
> to package managers, but if I've understood what I've heard others,
> the preceding pretty much sums up what to do.

Stephanie later brought up a reason why it should be on /sbin or
something else always on the root partition, so ignore what I said.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Packaging Vdev

[Steve Litt]

I agree with Stephanie.

If a person wants to run sans-initramfs, we don't want to make it
harder for him/her.

SteveT

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On Sat, 19 Mar 2016 19:24:48 +
Stephanie Daugherty <sdaughe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I would argue vdev belongs in  / rather than /usr because it is
> likely to be necessary to mount filesystems and such.
> 
> The split is somewhat arbitrary these days but historically things
> needed during the boot process and to repair the system have gone
> in / while less essential bits have gone into /usr
> 
> People do still partition that way sometimes so it's a good idea not
> to break the system for them :)
> 
> On Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 14:14 Rainer Weikusat
> <rainerweiku...@virginmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> > aitor_czr <aitor_...@gnuinos.org> writes:  
> > > By default, PSTAT (a dependency of VDEV) is installed in
> > > "/usr/local", just as VDEV.
> > >
> > > As Daniel Raurich explained in another thread:
> > >
> > > [...] the "/usr/local" directory is for non-packaged local stuff
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > So, should i change this configuration for those packages, or
> > > should i skip debhelper's "dh_usrlocal" script adding:
> > >
> > > binary:
> > > dh binary --before dh_usrlocal
> > > dh binary --after dh_usrlocal
> > >
> > > to debian/rules?  
> >
> > To which degree this actually makes a difference would be a good
> > question but the convention-so-far has been that distribution
> > provided stuff goes into / or /usr and that /usr/local can be used
> > as seen fit by whoever controls/ administrates a particular
> > installation. If the packaged vdev is supposed to become an
> > integral part of the OS/ distribution, it should honour the
> > existing convention unless there's a good reason for not doing this.
> > ___
> > Dng mailing list
> > Dng@lists.dyne.org
> > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
> >  

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Re: [DNG] Packaging Vdev

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 20 Mar 2016 08:57:20 +1300
Daniel Reurich <dan...@centurion.net.nz> wrote:

> On 20/03/16 08:24, Stephanie Daugherty wrote:

> > The split is somewhat arbitrary these days but historically things 
> > needed during the boot process and to repair the system have gone
> > in / while less essential bits have gone into /usr  
> 
> I don't think the split is arbitrary, although some have worked hard
> to break that structure and smear the history and wisdom of that
> design.

And who might those "some" be who worked hard to break that structure?
Have those same people broken anything else, by any chance?

:-)

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Microsoft upgrades Windows 7 to 10 without permission

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:27:14 +
David Harrison <da...@olansa.co.uk> wrote:

> On 16/03/2016 10:49, dng-requ...@lists.dyne.org wrote:
> > I Dropped back to 7, created a .exe that simply returns to OS, and
> > then replaced c:\Windows\system32\GWX\GWX.exe and
> > c\Windows\SysWOW64\GWX\GWX.exe with my NOP code.  
> 
> Would it be possible to share that .exe off-list? It would come in
> very handy with killing the nags on my own Win7 box.

WARNING: Regardless of David's intent, which I assume is benign, the
preceding paragraph is solicitation to commit felony copyright
infringement. Nobody should email proprietary software to others,
without a written OK from the copyright holder. This kind of request
should never be made on any kind of mailing list.

Thanks,

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Microsoft upgrades Windows 7 to 10 without permission

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2016 19:03:07 -0400
"Steven W. Scott" <codekra...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey David,
> 
>  You can find the source and executable here -->
> https://github.com/nekarkedoc/GWX/
> 
> I had debated on putting it up there in the first place, since I
> could find no suitable existing project.
> 
> Thanks Klaus for those keys, I may find use for them. The fact that a
> common user would have to go to that effort to avoid the Win10 #fail
> is more than disappointing. We're all here because we like freedom to
> chose, and that isn't choice or user friendly.
> 
> Lighten up there, Steve-O. You're gonna curl your tie.
> 
> SWS

Yes. Now that I know it's licensed with the MIT license, I withdraw my
warning, and in another post (subject Dng Digest, Vol 18, Issue 42), I
apologized.

Sorry for my assumption.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Read the news! UbuntuBSD

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 21 Mar 2016 09:22:39 -0300
Marlon Nunes <nu...@openmailbox.org> wrote:

> On 2016-03-21 09:19, Marlon Nunes wrote:
> > http://news.softpedia.com/news/meet-ubuntubsd-unix-for-human-beings-501959.shtml
> > https://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntubsd/
> > https://bsd.slashdot.org/story/16/03/21/0321213/meet-ubuntubsd-unix-for-human-beings
> > https://askubuntu.com/questions/tagged/ubuntubsd  
> 
> And the best part, The code name is: "Escape from systemD"

For now.
 
SteveT

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Re: [DNG] audio died again AND GOT RESURRECTED.

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2016 19:14:12 -0400
Hendrik Boom <hend...@topoi.pooq.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 12:57:02PM -1000, Joel Roth wrote:
> > Hi Hendrik,
> > 
> > Hendrik Boom wrote:  
> > > My system is an old ASUS netbook.
> > > 
> > > I installed devuan alpha 2 when it was current, and have upgraded
> > > it regularly.  It should be an up-to-date devuan jessie, modulo a
> > > few days.
> > > 
> > > I've had sound working on this system.
> > > 
> > > Long ago, with debian all I got was laptop loudspeaker sound.
> > > 
> > > When I switched to devuan, sound appeared on headphones but never 
> > > loudspeaker.  This worked around Christmas.
> > > 
> > > Today I tried using audio again, and all I get is total silence.
> > > 
> > > Has anything related changed in devuan?
> > > 
> > > How do I go about diagnosing the problem? 
> > > 
> > > As far as I know, I'm using alsa.  
> > 
> > It's worth verifying that you don't have pulse audio
> > installed.
> > 
> > dpkg -l pulseaudio  
> 
> That was enough.  I ued aptitude to remove it, and it also took out
> pulseaudio-module-x11. 
> 
> Oh, I did an
> 
>   alsactl init
> 
> afterward just in case alsa needed initialization.
> 
> Now it works nicely.

I'm not surprised. I've always viewed Pulseaudio as a bunch of extra
series lightbulbs plugged into your series Christmas Tree light string.
Just another set of ways to mute your sound, not all of which are
easily discoverable.

The only benefits I can see for Pulseaudio are:

* Allows centralized per-player volume controls: Big whoop.

* Necessary for use of Microsoft Skype, after Microsoft deliberately
  saddled formerly ALSA-complatible Skype with this dependency.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Microsoft upgrades Windows 7 to 10 without permission

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2016 21:30:57 +0100
Klaus Hartnegg <hartn...@uni-freiburg.de> wrote:

> On 16.03.2016 at 17:27 David Harrison wrote:
> > On 16/03/2016 10:49, dng-requ...@lists.dyne.org wrote:  
> >> I Dropped back to 7, created a .exe that simply returns to OS, and
> >> then replaced c:\Windows\system32\GWX\GWX.exe and
> >> c\Windows\SysWOW64\GWX\GWX.exe
> >> with my NOP code.  
> >
> > Would it be possible to share that .exe off-list? It would come in
> > very handy with killing the nags on my own Win7 box.  
> 
> Use the official method documented by Microsoft.
> 
> Read https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3080351
> 
> Set these registry keys:
> 
> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade]
> "ReservationsAllowed"=dword:
> 
> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
> "DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:0001
> 
> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Gwx]
> "DisableGwx"=dword:0001

This thread is offtopic, and is better persued on FreeNode's ##windows
channel, where everyone's friendly, informed, and informative.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Claywand dosplay bananager

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 06 Mar 2016 16:57:16 +0300
Mitt Green <mitt_gr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> This question is long-standing, but I forget to
> ask it. What's wrong with Wayland? I never used
> it, except for a couple of broken Fedora Live
> sessions, when everything freezes.
> 
> Mitt

From what I understand, Wayland is shot through with systemd-isms.
Better let that sleeping dog lie.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Claywand dosplay bananager

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 6 Mar 2016 15:13:36 +0100
Stephan Seitz <stse+dev...@fsing.rootsland.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 06, 2016 at 04:57:16PM +0300, Mitt Green wrote:
> >ask it. What's wrong with Wayland? I never used  
> 
> As far as I know Wayland doesn’t support TCP connections anymore, so
> you don’t have X11 forwarding anymore.

If that's true, what a steaming pile of dog excrement!

What did they replace X11 forwarding with? (I shudder to ask)


SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Devuan Rpi2 Lxde

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 6 Mar 2016 12:06:42 +0100
"Ivan J." <para...@dyne.org> wrote:


> Another thing is, you might need polkit/consolekit to run it
> unprivileged.

I think polkit and consolekit are the kind of thing we're trying to
stay away from. Why not just make a group and put the group in sudoers?

SteveT

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[DNG] Dependency Hell: was leveldb support proposal

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 1 Mar 2016 15:15:05 +0100
Didier Kryn <k...@in2p3.fr> wrote:

>  I hesitated to reply because I know my answer is politically 
> incorrect. "dependency hell" is the consequence of dynamic linkage. I 
> understand that dynamic linkage is a necessity for distros, but if
> the concern is about one package, this very one can be linked
> statically. 

I'm constructing my wpa_supplicant toolset. So far it's 100% /bin/sh.
Installation involves nothing more than copying its directory tree
somewhere on your computer, and then, on your executable path, putting
a 1 line shellscript that calls the main program in my toolset with
argument $@.

I can copy it to any machine with those two operations, and remove it
by deleting the directory tree and the 1 line shellscript.

I'd like to take credit for this easy installation idea, but of course I
can't. This was the main way of installing programs on MS-DOS. No DLLs.
No .so's. No registry. Just copy the directory, and bang, you're
installed. And so it is that, today, I can still run WordPerfect 5.0,
or Clarion 2.1, decades after my Windows programs became unrunnable.

Let me show you my top level shellscript:

=
#!/bin/sh
mydir=`realpath $0 | sed -e's+/[^/]*$++'`
export PATH=$mydir:$PATH
export AP_SELECTION=/tmp/ap_selection.txt
fcn=$mydir/rw_$1.sh
shift
if test -f $fcn -a -x $fcn; then
$fcn $@
else
echo FAIL: File $fcn must exist and be executable. >&2
echo Aborting. >&2
exit 61
fi
=

Installation by directory is as simple as realpath $0.

I'm not recommending this for every app. But I've got to tell you, when
you think about installation by package manager, with its pinnings and
exclusions and dependencies and conflicts, not to mention sabotage of
packaging by the poetterists and their ilk, installation by directory
starts to have its own charm, for certain applications.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] My virtual terminals seem amiss

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2016 08:40:02 -0600
dev <devua...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> I noticed today, upon trying to rebuild my nvidia module, that I have
> no login available on the virtual terminals customarily available via
> the keypress [CTRL][ALT]+(F1-F8 keys).
> 
> The keypresses work, showing console output, but there is no "login:"
> 
> /etc/inittab is here:
> 
> $ egrep -v '(#|^$)' /etc/inittab
>id:2:initdefault:
>si::sysinit:/etc/init.d/rcS
>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
>l0:0:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 0
>l1:1:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 1
>l2:2:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 2
>l3:3:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 3
>l4:4:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 4
>l5:5:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 5
>l6:6:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 6
>z6:6:respawn:/sbin/sulogin
>ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t1 -a -r now
>pf::powerwait:/etc/init.d/powerfail start
>pn::powerfailnow:/etc/init.d/powerfail now
>po::powerokwait:/etc/init.d/powerfail stop
>1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
>2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
>3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
>4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
>5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
>6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6
> 
> 
> And this is /proc/cmdline. Nothing odd in there either:
>BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.16.0-4-amd64 \
>root=UUID=903c83ee-aa77-41c3-aaac-548a4f280c45 ro ipv6.disable=1
> 
> 
> Any thoughts how to get this working?
> Thanks


Step 1 is this:

ps ax | grep getty

Here's my output:

=
[slitt@mydesk ~]$ ps ax | grep getty
  621 tty6 Ss+0:00 agetty tty6 38400 linux
  622 tty5 Ss+0:00 agetty tty5 38400 linux
  626 tty4 Ss+0:00 agetty tty4 38400 linux
  631 tty2 Ss+0:00 agetty tty2 38400 linux
  634 tty3 Ss+0:00 agetty tty3 38400 linux
 4873 pts/10   R+ 0:00 grep getty
[slitt@mydesk ~]$
=

However, I'm not using Devuan right now, so your mileage may vary.
Notice I'm running "agetty", not "getty", which is respawned in your
inittab. I don't remember ever seeing a Linux (as oppposed to BSD) that
ran "getty" instead of "agetty". You might need to change that.

Also, seeing whether your gettys, each of which represents one virtual
terminal, are running. If not, that tells you something.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] systemd==bad

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2016 17:16:32 +0400
anon.ud...@subscribed.udmvt.ru wrote:


> For example, my friends are split:
> the older generations are looking for a viable alternative for a
> migration, or have already migrated (FreeBSD, yes) their desktops and
> servers, the young generation can't comprehend (the comlexity for
> ex.) yet, so they are happy to adopt systemd and are boasting about
> that, since I personally didn't adopt it at the moment and still
> fighting it's installation on our servers.
> So, young admins are slowly just installing what's given and it just
> works for them... Unknown systemd is no worse for equally unknown
> world of sysvinit+shell_scripts for the young generation. Bad news
> for us...

I'd think twice before phrasing this as an age issue (the way
PoetterPoser does). I've seen photos of (vdev creator) Jude Nelson,
and he doesn't look like he's ready for a cane and suspenders.

Also, I think it depends more on experience than age. I'd imagine a
person, who had been in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, who
just came to Linux in 2015, wouldn't care about his init. I'd also
imagine a 21 year old just graduating college, who has been using Linux
since 2004, would dumpster all systemd distros.

Why this is important is that, to the extent this is perceived as an
age thing (with the must-have pejorative "neckbeard" or "graybeard"),
you give PoetterPoser more credibility when he characterizes systemd
resistance as "you can't teach an old dog new tricks."

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Making sense of C pointer syntax.

[Steve Litt]

Because we're developing software.

On Mon, 28 Mar 2016 06:03:13 -0400
Boruch Baum  wrote:

> Why on this list, of all the possible places in Creation? It's a great
> and important topic, but have you found no other, more appropriate
> forum?
> 
> On 03/28/2016 02:50 AM, Edward Bartolo wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > As the title of the email indicates, I am doing some exercises to
> > make sense out of C pointer syntax. I have been using pointers for
> > as long as I have been programming without issues, apart from the
> > usual initial programmatic errors when new code is run for the
> > first time. However, C pointer syntax is proving to be as
> > unintuitive as it can be. For this reason, I am doing some
> > exercises regarding C pointer use.
> > 
> > I am attaching two short C programs that I created and which I
> > tested to work although the mechanism by which they work is still
> > somewhat hazy to me. Both programs use a function to change the
> > value of a parameter. I want to understand, as opposed to knowing
> > by rote, the mechanism why they work. Please note that I didn't
> > consult any books to create the pointers. This is because I have
> > already the concepts, but I cannot make sense, as in deeply
> > understanding the details, of pointer syntax as used in C.
> > 
> > Edward
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Re: [DNG] Making sense of C pointer syntax.

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 28 Mar 2016 14:51:19 +0200 (CEST)
k...@aspodata.se wrote:

> Rainer Weikusat:
> ...
> > One thing to note here: Every C pointer is really a pointer to an
> > array of values, although the size of the array may just be one.  
> ...
> 
> I thought it was the other way around, a pointer is just an address to
> some (a single) memory location which can be part of an array

You're both right. A pointer is definitely an address of a single
memory address of a single byte or char or int or whatever, but that
single memory address *could* be the first element of an array, thus
defining the beginning location of the whole array. And of course the
end of the array must be defined by a second pointer, an integer
length, or a sentinel value such as '\0' or NULL.

char *p;
p="01234";  /* skeezy, but makes the point */
printf("p points to char %c\n", *p);
printf("p indicates start of string %s\n", p);


SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Making sense of C pointer syntax.

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 28 Mar 2016 12:28:03 +0200 (CEST)
k...@aspodata.se wrote:

> To exemplify the "as they are used" statement, take a function
> pointer declaration:
> 
>  void (*log_func)(int priority, const char *format);
> 
> here you cannot conveniently move the "*" to the "void" so it will
> look like a "pointer" declaration; it declares log_func to be
> something which if used as (*log_func)(a, b, d) will "give" you a
> void value.

Years ago I gave up trying to logically explain the syntax of function
pointers, which are so essential for callbacks and pseudo-oop, and just
memorized the idiom.

Edition 1 of K had an actual algorithm by which one could dissect any
lvalue (thing that can appear on the left of the equal sign), but it
was so complicated I couldn't understand it. So I memorized the idiom
for function pointers.

I think C would have been much more successful (and it's already been
quite successful) if it could have had a better syntax for function
pointers. I think the reason you see so few callback functions in
average C code is the syntax, as well as the unforgivingly strict typing
of the arguments.

Some time compare what it takes to do a callback in C compared to
Python, or especially Lua.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] *****SPAM***** Download iso 32bit devuan alpha2 or higher(based installation without network)

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2016 10:45:04 -0500
"Ismael L. Donis Garcia" <sli...@citricos.co.cu> wrote:

> Spam detection software, running on the system "tupac2",

I understand spam is a real hassle, but could everybody please
whitelist dng so that your problem with spam doesn't become the whole
list's problem. For gosh sakes, could you please create an email filter
that sends all suspected spam to a spam folder, and not respond to
anything in that folder?

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Making sense of C pointer syntax.

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2016 13:53:08 +0100
KatolaZ <kato...@freaknet.org> wrote:

 
> But be careful with statically initialised strings,
> since they are effectively constant char pointers (they are stored in
> the current stack frame, not in the heap, and the address stored in
> such variables cannot be modified, AFAIR).

This isn't exactly responsive to what you said, KatolaZ, but the worst
(and one of the most costly) programming mistakes I ever made was this:


=
char * read_bbs(){
  char rtrn[WAY_BIGGER_THAN_EVER_NEEDED];
  strcpy(rtrn, grab_bbs_part1());
  strcat(rtrn, grab_bbs_part2());
  return(rtrn);
}

result_string = read_bbs();
do_other_stuff();
use_result_string(result_string);
=

Well, it worked 99.6% of the time, but once in a while the whole
program blew up. :-). I solved this intermittent on my third visit,
racked up probably 10 hours trying to fix it, and my problem probably
cost a couple hundred hours of keypuncher time before I fixed it.

WAY_BIGGER_THAN_EVER_NEEDED really was way bigger than ever needed. Bad
programming, but that wasn't the problem.

All I can say is I *never* made that mistake again.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Download iso 32bit devuan alpha2 or higher(based installation without network)

[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 02 Apr 2016 13:30:05 -0400
fsmithred <fsmith...@gmail.com> wrote:


> For those who are more daring or want a minimalist approach, Devuan
> debootstrap is installed, and you can start from scratch and build it
> the way you want.

Isn't Devuan Debootstrap a chroot install, kinda like Arch or Gentoo
(minus all the compilation)?

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] icedove install-recommends

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 4 Apr 2016 03:28:31 +
Boruch Baum <boruch_b...@gmx.com> wrote:

> The default install for icedove also installs packages
> 'calendar-google-overview' and 'iceowl-extension'. I don't remember
> such in any other install of icedove or thunderbird.
> 
> Personally, I'm in the camp of opposing the integration of mail and
> calendar, kind of out of the same sensibility that has me opposing
> systemd.
> 
> One can over-ride the default by using --no-install-recommends, but
> devuan, should it choose to do so, can take a stand by including
> icedove in the default install without the two packages.
> 
> My vote is obvious. Please consider.
> 

Isn't Icedove a re-branded Thunderbird? Every time I try to use
Thunderbird, it's an order of magnitude slower than Claws-Mail. If
adding the calender stuff is part of why it's so slow, I'd recommend
going granular and not including it by default.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] ...and when trolling went too far

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 04 Apr 2016 11:09:01 +0300
Mitt Green <mitt_gr...@riseup.net> wrote:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lennart_Poettering=703955376

Occupation: Bloatware generator.

I would have added: 

Slogan: Do  you  hate  disabled  people ?

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] suspend and hybernate

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 13 Apr 2016 12:20:49 +0200
richard lucassen <mailingli...@lucassen.org> wrote:


> Beware of kernel changes, do not hibernate after a kernel change.

Can I safely assume you mean don't hybernate after a new kernel which
I've never before booted to?

Thanks,
 
SteveT

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Re: [DNG] suspend

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 13 Apr 2016 08:04:40 + (UTC)
Trond Arild Ydersbond <t_a_ydersb...@yahoo.no> wrote:

> +1
> 
> I wonder if two new lists could be helpful, in addition to what is
> planned: 
> 
> 
> 1. dng-oppftopic  - for the rants, systemd general stuff,
> debian-related, public discussions 
> 
>about Linux etc etc
> 2. dng-users- for support, discussion of more special issues, toy
> projects that 
> 
>are not necessarily very significant for devuan as a whole etc.
> 
> Then it would be easier to filter on a per topic, rather than per
> user basis?
> 
> Trond

Splitting a mailing list greatly reduces its power as a meeting of the
minds. 

What I've found, and your mileage may vary, is that if a few of
somebody's posts bore you or anger you, *most* of that person's posts
bore or anger you. And I've also found that, with very few exceptions,
people whose posts annoy you convey little truly valuable information.
So it costs little to /dev/null by person.

I use Procmail, so it's pretty easy for me to /dev/null by subject, if
the subject goes on too long.

So how bout this: If you enjoy a given person's posts, listen to them,
respond to them, trying your best not to perpetuate flame wars. If they
bore or anger you, all I ask is instead of flaming the person onlist,
you either /dev/null them (this is my choice) or write them privately.
That way we won't have constant flame wars, with the attendant constant
suggestions to split the list.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] dropping ballast

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 13 Apr 2016 10:36:58 +0200
Jaromil <jaro...@dyne.org> wrote:

> hi all
> 
> today at 10:00 CET Nextime has dropped our first batch of ballast off
> the board.
> 
> https://git.devuan.org/devuan-infrastructure/amprolla/commit/3221b047d6f54bb5dd06888c3c354ec882e4ea6e
> 
> meaning now the systemd and systemd-sysv packages are not anymore
> available from the Devuan repositories.

This is *such* good news. You're putting your money where your mouth
is: Unavailablity of systemd as a crutch means you're now the real deal.

When DebianFork.Org went up in the fall of 2014, a person could be
forgiven for thinking this project was a bluff, by the anonymous
"Veteran Unix Admins", to influence Ian Jackson's GR:

https://web.archive.org/web/20141019125519/http://debianfork.org/

Now, 20 months later, Devuan doesn't use systemd, even as a shim or
crutch. People are using Devuan as a daily driver desktop or an
important server. And I think one could make a very credible case that
today, the Devuan community is more trustworthy and perhaps more
skilled than the Debian community it forked.

   * *
\ o /
 \|/ 
  | Y E A H !
 / \  _  
    /   \/
   /
  -



SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Which desktops work without systemd

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2016 10:38:04 +0100
Arnt Gulbrandsen <a...@gulbrandsen.priv.no> wrote:

> Steve Litt writes:
> > I've never been afraid of sounding ignorant, especially when I'm
> > right.  
> 
> Uhm.
> 
> > One more thing: I think this whole wm/de thing is a useless
> > distinction that never should have been made.  
> 
> I suppose I count as an old fart, because I was around twenty-plus
> years ago, when it was made.
> 
> So do you want a history lesson, or do you want to go on just being
> right?

I'm not sure the preceding sentence yields a mutual exclusivity, but
yes, I really would like that history lesson, as this is something that
has bothered me for a long time.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Which desktops work without systemd

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2016 14:12:18 +0300
Mitt Green <mitt_gr...@riseup.net> wrote:


> I suppose, he meant that there's a  fine line between
> a window manager and a DE sometimes.

Thanks Mitt,

What I really meant is there's a very fuzzy line. As I stated before, a
spectrum.

> EDE (Equinox Desktop Environment) includes only a
> window manager and a panel, as far as I know.
> Some window managers provide panel (bar) too, think Fluxbox,
> Blackbox, dwm and its remakes, i3, wmii. FVWM lets you make your own
> panels and what people now call widgets.

> LXDE, on the other hand, has its own panel, file manager,
> task manager, appearance settings programme,
> desktop and session. So, 'tis an environment definitely.

So, if I took dwm, packaged it with the fbpanel panel, an fbpanel
config tool, the Rox Filer file manager, the scrot screenshot utility,
the dmenu app-selector, Edward's Network Tool (forgot its current name),
and a custom GUI app, made by me, that acquires settings from the user
and recompiled dwm accordingly (dwm must be recompiled to be
configured), and a special menu leading to all these addons, and name
the whole thing GammaRay, then GammaRay is a DE using dwm as its WM?

If that's your definition, then there is indeed a clear line of
demarcation. And that well may be the definition.

But in everyday life, that's not how most people define them. How often
do you hear Xfce being called a "window manager"? Happens all the time.
LXDE and IceWM have pretty much identical user interfaces and
functionalities, except LXDE has a few more peripheral utilities. If
IceWM chose to give a separate name to its window manager component (the
component that manages and decorates windows), then IceWM would be
considered a DE, whereas because of its lightweightness and the fact
that it doesn't give a separate name to its window manager component
(and perhaps its window manager component isn't a distinct module),
I've seen it uniformly called a "window manager."

If one defines a window manager as the thing that decorates and
controls windows, and a desktop environment as a group of software
containing and interacting with a distinct, thin-interfaced window
manager module, then most X interfaces are DEs. Heck, even Openbox
ships with a system menu and an (incomplete) configuration GUI. With
the definitions declared at the top of this paragraph, some window
managers are surrounded by more software than others, and they're almost
uniformly DEs, because a pure WM would be useless to most folks.

But the REAL problem is that it seems like each person has his own
definition of WM and DE. Which means when they ask questions, you must
preface the discussion by their querying their definition. In this
thread, does Xfce qualify? Does LXDE? Openbox? Dwm? We have to go back
to the OP to find out. I find a vocabulary leading to that level of
ambiguity unsettling.

I wish we lived in a world with a single name for both concepts. I use
wm/de or wmde a lot. Perhaps TLGUI (Top Level Graphical User
Interface). Because in 95% of interactions, it would save time and
garner clarity if a person said "I want a TLGUI that's lightweight, but
it's got to have a panel and a GUI config program."

This has very little to do with Devuan or systemd, so it's not
something to get worked up about. It's just something to think about.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] What do we want for ascii ?

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2016 10:29:18 -0400
Hendrik Boom <hend...@topoi.pooq.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 12:21:50AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Mon, 25 Apr 2016 04:01:33 +
> > Stephanie Daugherty <sdaughe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >   
> > > I'd like to see a long term focus on removing the entanglement
> > > with other invasive dependencies, particularly those which are
> > > likely to be folded into systemd in the future, and on staying
> > > true to the Unix philosophy.
> > > 
> > > DBUS and PulseAudio are freedesktop backed technologies which are
> > > likely to be folded entirely into systemd in the future.  
> > 
> > Unfortunately, long term I think you can add dracut to your list, as
> > it's part of the Fedora project. This is a shame, because it's the
> > best initramfs builder utility (from what I understand). But Fedora
> > scooped it up, and IIRC emptied the old version git repositories,
> > so I predict a systemdification in the future.
> > 
> > So we shouldn't assume that dracut will always be available to us.  
> 
> fork it now?

There's one project that Redhat took over and then emptied the git
repository of older, non-Redhat versions. At the very least, if we can
get our hands on the older version's source code, get it and keep it.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] What do we want for ascii ?

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016 15:18:23 +
hellekin <helle...@dyne.org> wrote:

> On 04/20/2016 03:46 PM, Didier Kryn wrote:
> >>
> >> This is not the first time apulse has been discussed on this list.
> >> There was talk of packaging apluse for Devuan last year but that
> >> conversation has been lost in time.  Perhaps adding apulse to
> >> Devuan will be reconsidered once the beta is out.  I would
> >> certainly like pulseaudio and it's libs out of my system.
> >>
> >> golinux
> >>  
> > +1
> > 
> > BTW, if skype is 32-bit, apulse must be 32-bit as well - it
> > involves a library.
> >   
> 
> Does apulse serve for anything else than running non-free spyware?

The apulse program just helped me get Skype up and running, so I can
now communicate with my kids the same way I did 3 years ago, before
Microsoft bought and sabotaged Skype.

There's no reason apulse should be part of a default install, but it
should be in some Devuan repo (perhaps nonfree or whatever), so that
somebody who really needs it can install it.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Which desktops work without systemd

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016 19:57:51 +0200
Rob van der Putten <r...@sput.nl> wrote:

> Hi there
> 
> 
> Which desktops work without systemd?
> A list would be nice.

I suspect you're asking for three lists:

1) Desktops that work without needing dbus, which has been taken over
   by systemd.
2) Desktops requiring significant systemd-provided software with a
   non-systemd PID1.
3) Desktops heavily encumbered with systemdisms but still manage to
   work to some extent with a non-systemd PID1.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Which desktops work without systemd

[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016 10:15:36 +0900
Simon Walter <si...@gikaku.com> wrote:


> If by desktops you mean DE, then I thought some have some
> dependencies on systemd by way of the included packages. DE vs.
> window manager. There is a big difference.

In my opinion there's no magic line where things on one side are window
managers and things on the other side are desktop environments. I think
we can all agree that Unity, KDE and Gnome are desktop environments,
and dwm and i3 are window managers, but what's Xfce? What's LXDE?
What's Openbox?

I think of de/wm as a spectrum, not a 1/0.
 
SteveT

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Re: [DNG] M$ Linux-frendly

[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016 18:18:56 +0200
Didier Kryn <k...@in2p3.fr> wrote:

>  Interesting discussion on Microsoft involvement with Linux:
> http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-Byfield-s-Blog/Hating-Microsoft
> 
>  I cite a sentence:
>   "More recently, a minority have muttered that Systemd is an attempt
> by Red Hat to monopolize the Linux operating system."
> 
>  I wonder who's that minority...

This might be a good time to remember the 2006 Redhat Smoking Gun
Interview:

http://asay.blogspot.ru/2006/10/interview-with-red-hat-cto-brian.html

===
Red Hat's model works because of the complexity of the technology we
work with. An operating platform has a lot of moving parts, and
customers are willing to pay to be insulated from that complexity.

I don't think you can take one finite element - like Apache - and make
a business out of it [using our model]. You need product complexity.
===

Signed, sealed, delivered, they're busted. We aren't "muttering" that
it's a monopolization technique, that's a fact for anyone willing to do
a little research.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] For all you automounter programmers

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 26 Apr 2016 15:36:52 -0400
Hendrik Boom <hend...@topoi.pooq.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 02:08:33PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > It seems like everyone in the Devuan community has written his or
> > her own usb drive automounter, and I've just discovered something
> > that will help us all.
> > 
> > The thumb drive you buy at the store is formatted with a Windows
> > file system, and that's a good thing because it's mountable pretty
> > much by any device or computer. Sneakernet at its best.
> > 
> > But you must be root to mount it unless it's declared in /etc/fstab,
> > which is a bad idea for a number of reasons. And if you mount it as
> > root, normally the owner is root, and with its (typical) 755
> > permissions, a normal user can't write to it. Defeating its whole
> > purpose.
> > 
> > What you really want is for anyone in a certain group to be able to
> > write to it. I used group "floppy", because a USB drive is a pretty
> > good analog to a floppy, and floppies aren't even used much
> > anymore. So do the mount like this:
> > 
> > mount -o gid=floppy,fmask=113,dmask=002 /dev/sdd1 /mnt/thumb
> > 
> > or
> > 
> > mount -o gid=floppy,fmask=113,dmask=002 /dev/sdd1 /mnt/sdd1
> > 
> > The gid= means the thumb drive and all its files are group "floppy",
> > and the fmask and dmask make directories 775 and 664 respectively,
> > so group "floppy" can write.
> > 
> > I haven't yet tried this on a genuine ext4 formatted thumb drive,
> > so I don't know whether it would have any downside there. If so, the
> > different mount options would only appear if the thumb drive was
> > determined to be vfat/fat/msdos etc.  
> 
> I have a USB backup drive. I have root mount it, It's formatted 
> ext3, and I have no problems doing so.  It even allows me to use my 
> systems's user IDs, though I expect it'll get confused if I were to
> use it on several systems with different UIDs.
> 
> I just mount it as mount /dev/sdb1 /usbackup

Yes. Ext(2,3,4) formatted thumb drives need no special sauce to be
written by a normal user. My instructions were for a windows formatted
thumb drive. The reason you would sometimes use a Windows formatted
thumb is to do things like operate a scanner in the "direct to usb
drive" mode and sneakernet to the computer, which on most printers, is
much easier than sane. Or trade files with your Windows buddies.

My experience is that if I'm going to use the thumb drive for archive
or backup, *of course* I'll format it ext4 for performance reasons.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] For all you automounter programmers

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 08:32:06 +0200
Didier Kryn <k...@in2p3.fr> wrote:


>  But there are tools on Linux to add a label to a filesystem;
> here is the first thing I do to a new usb stick:
> 
>  /sbin/dosfslabel /dev/sdb1 $my_name
> 
>  Very usefull when exchanging sticks.
> 
>Didier

Very, very nice!

I've been looking for something like that for a long time.

Do you happen to know a corresponding utility to read/write the label
on an ext4 formatted thumb drive partition?

Thanks,

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] For all you automounter programmers

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2016 08:25:02 -0400
fsmithred <fsmith...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 04/26/2016 09:32 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Tue, 26 Apr 2016 18:19:32 -0400
> > fsmithred <fsmith...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> >   
> >> I like pmount for mounting usb devices. It's pretty smart. For
> >> removable devices, you don't need to list them
> >> in /etc/pmount.allow, and it handles encrypted filesystems
> >> (cryptsetup/luks).  
> > 
> > 
> > Ahh, now I remember. Pmount isn't an AUTOmounter, you still must
> > tell it which device to mount. It doesn't mount the second you plug
> > in your thumb drive.
> > 
> > Therefore: pmount, when combined with the inotifywait automounters
> > we've all made, should be perfect.
> > 
> > Those pmount automounter commands should run as the user who plugs
> > in the thumb, so rather than running straight from the init, they
> > should probably run when you log in, and if there's already a copy
> > running when you log in, it does nothing.
> > 
> > SteveT
> >   
> 
> That's pretty much what my usb-mounter does. Inotifywait runs when
> you log into the desktop, and when you plug in a thumb drive, it pops
> up a window showing you the partitions on that device. You then
> choose one to mount, and the script runs pmount in your name.

That sounds *perfect* to me, always assuming the "window" is a CLI
question and answer i X isn't running. Where's the source code? I'd like
to start using it.

Somebody suggested we package an automounter for Devuan. What you
describe sounds like the right thing.


> Bypassing the popup window and automounting would be a simple edit,

My no-user-confirmation version was problematic and vaguely disturbing.
I'd leave the user in the loop.

> as would making it work without a gui.

Yes. This being Devuan, some facility for asking and recieving an
answer should be provided even if X isn't runnnig.

> I don't know what happens if
> there are multiple users logged in at the same time, but that might
> be an edge case.
> 
> So, who else beside you and me wrote something to mount thumb drives?

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] For all you automounter programmers

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2016 09:10:25 +0200
Didier Kryn <k...@in2p3.fr> wrote:


>  Wishlist: the "automounter" shouldn't mount automatically, by 
> default. It should rather offer an easy mount-handle, and the umount 
> counterpart.

What is an "easy mount-handle"?
 
SteveT

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Re: [DNG] For all you automounter programmers

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2016 06:46:24 +
Noel Torres <env...@rolamasao.org> wrote:

> Joel Roth <jo...@pobox.com> escribió:
> > As a suggestion for an aspiring automounter writer (or
> > reminder to self) I was thinking that if we can get a
> > sufficiently unique identifier from the device (UUID, etc.)
> > it might be nice to map that to a memorable mount target.
> > It could be a noun or adjective-noun from a list that would
> > be automatically chosen and written to the device after
> > mounting.
> > [...]
> > Too weird? Okay, I'm open, just something better than
> > /mnt/sde7.  
> 
> Why not just the Label of the filesystem being mounted?

Not all filesystems have labels.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Tochpad scrolling on devuan

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2016 11:25:19 +0200
aitor_czr <aitor_...@gnuinos.org> wrote:

> On 04/27/2016 11:21 AM, aitor_czr wrote:
> > If so, try doing:
> > synclient TouchpadOff=1
> >
> > for enabling the touchpad, and:
> >
> > synclient TouchpadOff=0
> >
> > for disabling it.  
> 
> Sorry, it's in the other way around:
> 
> synclient TouchpadOff=0
> 
> enables the touchpad :)

And for even more fun, here's the "touchtoggle" shellscript I put on
every laptop, linked to hotkey Ctrl+Shift+j:

=
#!/bin/sh

curstate=`synclient | grep -i TouchpadOff | sed -e"s/.*= //"`
if test "$curstate" = "1"; then
synclient TouchpadOff=0
else
synclient TouchpadOff=1
fi
=


SteveT

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Re: [DNG] For all you automounter programmers

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2016 06:47:38 +
Noel Torres <env...@rolamasao.org> wrote:

> Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> escribió:
> > Therefore: pmount, when combined with the inotifywait automounters
> > we've all made, should be perfect.
> >
> > Those pmount automounter commands should run as the user who plugs
> > in the thumb, so rather than running straight from the init, they
> > should probably run when you log in, and if there's already a copy
> > running when you log in, it does nothing.  
> 
> Could we just create a package with that "devuan-automounter" and
> publish it?
> 
> Regards
> 
> Noel

I don't think my automounter is ready for prime time. And after fsr's
point about pmount, I think I might change the whole philosophy of my
automounter to take advantage of pmount. Fsr's automounter might be
more ready to accompany the distro.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] For all you automounter programmers

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2016 19:22:06 +0200
Didier Kryn <k...@in2p3.fr> wrote:

> Le 27/04/2016 19:17, Steve Litt a écrit :
> > On Wed, 27 Apr 2016 09:10:25 +0200
> > Didier Kryn <k...@in2p3.fr> wrote:
> >
> >  
> >>   Wishlist: the "automounter" shouldn't mount automatically, by
> >> default. It should rather offer an easy mount-handle, and the
> >> umount counterpart.  
> > What is an "easy mount-handle"?
> >   
> >  
>  I mean there might be a list of connected removable media,
> showing which ones are mounted and a way to toggle mount/umount for
> each of them. I remind you that filesystems mus be unmounted before
> they are removed; this is what is called "remove safely" or "eject"
> by DEs' helpers.
 
Yes!

One program pops up upon insertion of a thumb drive, and asks mount or
not on that thumbdirve and shows the result.

But another program, started by the user, lists every thumb drive,
whether it's mounted or not, if it's mounted the user who has it
mounted, and gives mount options for the unmounted ones, and umount
options, IF THE USER IS THE ONE WHO MOUNTED IT, for the mounted ones.

No matter what you do, somebody's going to pull one out without
umounting. I've done it. Lots of people have. Oops!

Perhaps we can include a daemon that runs sync command every 10
seconds. I doubt that would have much effect, but would probably
minimize problems with just yanking out thumb drives.





-- 
SteveT

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Re: [DNG] For all you automounter programmers

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2016 19:35:08 +0200
Didier Kryn <k...@in2p3.fr> wrote:

> Le 27/04/2016 19:13, Steve Litt a écrit :
> > Not all filesystems have labels.  
>  For my information, could you list some? Every filesystem I ever 
> used to format disks had one (ext?, reiserfs, btrfs, vfat)
> 
>  Didier

You can make one with fdisk or cfdisk or parted or gparted or similar.
Just fail to include a label.

This isn't just a theoretical thing, lots of people don't label their
thumb drives. 

Another issue is a lot of thumb drives have the same label. I bet there
are millions with the label "backup".

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] For all you automounter programmers

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2016 19:51:54 -0400
Hendrik Boom <hend...@topoi.pooq.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 07:24:29PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > 
> > Another issue is a lot of thumb drives have the same label. I bet
> > there are millions with the label "backup".  
> 
> And I'd like all my drives labelled "backup" to be mounted at the
> same mountpoint so I can use one backup script for all of them.
> 
> I really believe in multiple backups.
> 
> -- hendrik

Ohhh! I see what you're doing: You're keying completely off
labels so scripts work. Makes perfect sense.

I don't know of a way to tell pmount or udev/vdev/eudev to assign a
particular device to a thumb drive, without manually doing all the
mknod and all that. Excellent idea, very useful. But if something's
already assigned to that device, you're sol.

But...

I think my original handled that, by creating a database of UUID, label
and device name (and now it's going to need to include user mounting it
too). So a little universal shellscript can go in the database (which
of course is a simple file), find the label, and read across the row to
find its current device so you can plug that into an environment
variable and use that.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] For all you automounter programmers

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 26 Apr 2016 18:19:32 -0400
fsmithred <fsmith...@gmail.com> wrote:


> I like pmount for mounting usb devices. It's pretty smart. For
> removable devices, you don't need to list them in /etc/pmount.allow,
> and it handles encrypted filesystems (cryptsetup/luks).


Ahh, now I remember. Pmount isn't an AUTOmounter, you still must tell
it which device to mount. It doesn't mount the second you plug in your
thumb drive.

Therefore: pmount, when combined with the inotifywait automounters
we've all made, should be perfect.

Those pmount automounter commands should run as the user who plugs in
the thumb, so rather than running straight from the init, they should
probably run when you log in, and if there's already a copy running
when you log in, it does nothing.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Which desktops work without systemd

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2016 21:43:55 +0300
Mitt Green <mitt_gr...@riseup.net> wrote:

> ‎   Steve Litt wrote:‎

> > LXDE and IceWM have pretty much identical user
> > interfaces and functionalities, except LXDE has a few
> > more peripheral utilities.  
> 
> And that is what makes it a DE.

Which brings us back to the original point: How many "more peripheral
utilities" does it require to make something a DE? And what happens if
different people have different ideas about that quantity?

At this point, this is more of an intellectual exercise than something
that really matters to Devuan.

SteveT

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[DNG] Meaningful and concise posts: was Dng Digest, Vol 19, Issue 76

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2016 16:31:24 -0400
Vaughn Kenny <vak...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Linux mint mate desktop as far as I know works without systemd.

Hi Kenny,

I see you receive the digest version of this list's posts. Many people
do. People on the digest have a responsibility to change the subject
line to the subject of the post to which they're responding. They also
have the responsibility to delete all matter from other posts.
Additionally, for clarity, they need to delete context material, even
from the responded to post, so as to make their meaning clear. Those
who top-post need to use specifics instead of pronouns and articles, so
that readers know the reference without detailed parsing of the
context. People who interleave post don't have the same need to avoid
pronouns and articles.

I understand that some people find it more convenient to receive their
posts in digest batches, but please everyone, don't inconvenience others
with meaningless titles and 440 lines of context, most of which has
nothing to do with what you're replying to.

Thanks,

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] What do we want for ascii ?

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2016 04:01:33 +
Stephanie Daugherty <sdaughe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd like to see a long term focus on removing the entanglement with
> other invasive dependencies, particularly those which are likely to
> be folded into systemd in the future, and on staying true to the Unix
> philosophy.
> 
> DBUS and PulseAudio are freedesktop backed technologies which are
> likely to be folded entirely into systemd in the future.

Unfortunately, long term I think you can add dracut to your list, as
it's part of the Fedora project. This is a shame, because it's the best
initramfs builder utility (from what I understand). But Fedora scooped
it up, and IIRC emptied the old version git repositories, so I predict
a systemdification in the future.

So we shouldn't assume that dracut will always be available to us.

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] cloud (was: Beta)

[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 30 Apr 2016 10:12:40 +0200
Jaromil <jaro...@dyne.org> wrote:


> Can you come up with an alternative to 'cloud' which keeps generic,
> since cloud-init is not openstack specific?

All I know is "cloud" is a meaningless buzzword of value only to
marketers, probably of the Microsoft variety. Ask "what is the cloud"
to ten intelligent people, and you'll get ten different answers. That
in itself is reason to call this thing anything but "cloud". Call it
Khrushchev or H2O for all I care, but nothing containing "cloud".

SteveT

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Re: [DNG] Open Letter To Linas Vepstas

[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 30 Apr 2016 14:59:55 -0400
Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:

> Hi all, 
> 
> A guy named Linas Vepstas wrote this essay/rant:
> 
> http://linas.org/?utm_content=buffer5190b
> 
> In response, I wrote this Open Letter to Linas Vepstas at:
> 
> file:///d/websites/tjunct/linux/avoid_complexity.htm

The URL *should* be 

http://troubleshooters.com/linux/avoid_complexity.htm

Thanks Lars!!!

SteveT

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