Re: Question on shredding a terebyte drive

[Dean S. Messing]

Bruno Wolff wrote:
> Given 1, this seems like a foolish policy. Just eat the cost as part of
> securing your data. It might be cheaper than having you keep an eye of
> multiple write passes covering several days.

"I have no comment at this time."  :-)


> There was some old documentation that claimed reading the remmants from
> previous writes were recoverable, though I don't remember seeing costs
> estimates that low. I would have expected a lot of human time needed to
> help deal with the incomplete recovery.

I suppose the cost of such equipment is much cheaper now than in the
olden days of 15 years ago.  Also, given my comment below, a sensitive
read head (rather than an MF or AF Microscope) may be all that's
needed in the case of a "zero write-over".

> If one can recover a significant amount of data after writing zeros, one
> is going to be able to do it after writing a single pass of random data
> as well.

I don't think this is correct, based on my reading.  The situation is
a little bit like trying to decrypt a file after adding an unknown
constant numerical value to the data, vs. adding a "one-time pad" of
random numbers.  That's because writing zeros does not completely zero
out the local magnetic orientations so the variations can still be
detected.  A random pattern makes the problem much harder.  Multilple
passes (which is what /usr/bin/shred does) makes it even harder.

Dean

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Re: Question on shredding a terebyte drive

[Dean S. Messing]

Bruno Wolff wrote:
> Given 1, this seems like a foolish policy. Just eat the cost as part of
> securing your data. It might be cheaper than having you keep an eye of
> multiple write passes covering several days.

"I have no comment at this time."  :-)

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Re: Question on shredding a terebyte drive

[Dean S. Messing]

Rick Stevens wrote:
> >  4) I don't know if the fact that the process runing at 100% of one CPU
> > means it is compute bound.  Looking at the disk I/O meter in
> > gkrellm I see bursts of writes followed by intervals of no
> > transfer.  I know that magnetic reorientation requires some time
> > to "set" and that may be why the delays are there.  Or it may be
> > compute bound.
> 
> Run "top" and you may find that the shred process is in a "D" state a
> lot of the time.  That means it's in an I/O wait state, waiting on the
> drive to complete some operation.  A "D" state can suck up a lot of CPU.

Thanks Rick.  It's in "D" state only about 5-10% of the time.  Yet
disk writes are occuring (according to the spikes and numbers in
gkrellm) for 1 second or so, every 2 seconds.  So that either points
to random number computation or the wait needed to let the new
magnetic orientation 'set'. Not sure.

Dean

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Re: Question on shredding a terebyte drive

[Dean S. Messing]

Thanks to all for the replies.

I'll answer most of the comments here.

0) The disk is unmounted.

1) The drive is (was) a backup drive with a great deal of sensitive
   corporate laboratory research data and algorithms on it.  The
   monitary loss of the data being stolen would be significant though
   it's hard to put a $$ value on it.  More importantly, I'm following
   corporate policy.

2) The drive is under extended warranty and so I'm sending it back for
   a new drive.  The Power Supply in the enclosure is bad.  The actual
   drive is still good, but they want the whole thing back for a
   replacement.  Sanding off the oxide and then melting the drive
   probably won't go over well with the manufacturer.

3) Writing zeros is a not a good idea if the data is valuable.  The
   small latent magnetic orientation info left from the previously
   written data is not _that_ hard to recover with $5000 equipment, so
   I've read.  Multiple passes of random patterns are needed to make
   recovery costly.

   Tony Nelson's remark about newer drives having overlapping data
   tracks is interesting and I don't know what current research says
   about the effects of that on recovery, but Gutmann's (slightly old)
   paper from 1996:

 

   says in Section 2:

  When all the above factors are combined it turns out that each
  track contains an image of everything ever written to it, but
  that the contribution from each "layer" gets progressively
  smaller the further back it was made. Intelligence organisations
  have a lot of expertise in recovering these palimpsestuous
  images.
   
   Which is why 25 passes meets DoD (and my corporate) standards.

 4) I don't know if the fact that the process runing at 100% of one CPU
means it is compute bound.  Looking at the disk I/O meter in
gkrellm I see bursts of writes followed by intervals of no
transfer.  I know that magnetic reorientation requires some time
to "set" and that may be why the delays are there.  Or it may be
compute bound.

Thanks for all the interesting comments on my question.  At this point
I think I'll just let the thing run for the five days.

Dean

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Question on shredding a terebyte drive

[Dean S. Messing]

I have a terebyte sata drive that I need to securely wipe clean.  It
originally had 2 partitions.  I deleted them using `fdisk', rebooted,
and then as root ran

shred -vz /dev/sdd

The drive is capable of about 60MB/sec, but shred is only "shredding"
about 25MB every 5 seconds according to its output.  Since the default
number of passes is 25, this works out to about 5 days.

The `shred' process is running at 100% CPU, presumably computing
the special random patterns for erasure.  Since I have 4 CPUs
would creating 4 unformatted partions on the drive and then running
something like:

   shred -vz /dev/sdd1
   shred -vz /dev/sdd2
   shred -vz /dev/sdd3
   shred -vz /dev/sdd4

in parallel cut my time?  Would be just as secure?

Thanks
Dean

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Re: Q about installing F10 from Live DVD

[Dean S. Messing]

Thanks to all (to many to name individually) for the helpful answers!
My colleague may be a new member soon.

Dean

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Re: Q about installing F10 from Live DVD

[Dean S. Messing]

Kam Leo wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Dean S. Messing  wrote:
> >
> > A colleague of mine is interested in trying Linux Fedora 10 on a new
> > machine he's purchased. He asked me to help him.  I thought I'd try
> > the "Live install" of which I've read, but have never done before.  It
> > seems like a fast way to install and time-to-install is a bit limited.
> >
> > I looked at the Installation Guide at
> > 
> > but it didn't seem to answer my questions.  Maybe I missed it.
> >
> > So ...
> >
> > I presume that the machine will "just come up", running in-memory from
> > the Live Image on the DVD. (Is that right?) So, how does one get the
> > in-memory system onto a root partition?  Does the Anaconda Installer
> > get involved in the process so that a "regular install" occurs using
> > the Live data as source?
> >
> > Pointers to instructions will be appreciated.
> >
> > I've copied my colleague so that he can see for himself what helpful
> > chaps y'all are. :-)
> >
> > Thanks
> > Dean
> 
> If you have the live-dvd you would have discovered the answer for
> yourself: A menu option is presented to either run the live-cd or
> perform an install.

Thanks Kam.  I don't yet have it (which is why I didn't know).  So I
take it the install from the live-cd is just an ordinary
Anaconda-based install?  If so, what's the advantage over just using
the F10 install DVD (February respin, of course)?

Dean

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Q about installing F10 from Live DVD

[Dean S. Messing]

A colleague of mine is interested in trying Linux Fedora 10 on a new
machine he's purchased. He asked me to help him.  I thought I'd try
the "Live install" of which I've read, but have never done before.  It
seems like a fast way to install and time-to-install is a bit limited.

I looked at the Installation Guide at 

but it didn't seem to answer my questions.  Maybe I missed it.

So ...

I presume that the machine will "just come up", running in-memory from
the Live Image on the DVD. (Is that right?) So, how does one get the
in-memory system onto a root partition?  Does the Anaconda Installer
get involved in the process so that a "regular install" occurs using
the Live data as source?

Pointers to instructions will be appreciated.

I've copied my colleague so that he can see for himself what helpful
chaps y'all are. :-)

Thanks
Dean

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Re: copying lvm with the same name

[Dean S. Messing]

Slip of the brain:
> Well, being a researcher, I'd not do this, but rather figure out
> exactly what's causing the funning remapping. But you may not be the
 ^^^ funny
> curious type. :-)

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Re: copying lvm with the same name

[Dean S. Messing]

Frank Cox wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:24:12 -0700 (PDT)
> Dean S. Messing wrote:
> 
> > Regarding the actual problem the OP seems to have, it seems to me (not
> > being an LVM expert) from his output that he has a Volume Group (00)
> > that spans sda2 and sdb2, two LVs that are defined in the VG, both of
> > which sit on sdb2, but no LV defined on sda2.  Is this unusual?
> 
> I actually have two Volume Group 00's, one on each of sda2 and sdb2.

>From your earlier posted output that was not clear to me (but, again,
I'm not an expert).  On my F10 system, which LV organisation I hand
configured after installing non-lvm on an outboard disk (because I
wanted to do stuff I didn't know how to make anaconda do), I have:

   [r...@neuron ~]# pvscan
 PV /dev/sdb3   VG vg01   lvm2 [148.17 GB / 0free]
 PV /dev/sdc3   VG vg01   lvm2 [148.17 GB / 0free]
 PV /dev/sda2   VG vg00   lvm2 [73.77 GB / 64.00 GB free]
 Total: 3 [370.11 GB] / in use: 3 [370.11 GB] / in no VG: 0 [0   ]
   [r...@neuron ~]# vgscan
 Reading all physical volumes.  This may take a while...
 Found volume group "vg01" using metadata type lvm2
 Found volume group "vg00" using metadata type lvm2
   [r...@neuron ~]# lvscan
 ACTIVE'/dev/vg01/lv00' [117.19 GB] inherit
 ACTIVE'/dev/vg01/lv01' [19.53 GB] inherit
 ACTIVE'/dev/vg01/lv02' [19.53 GB] inherit
 ACTIVE'/dev/vg01/lv03' [140.09 GB] inherit
 ACTIVE'/dev/vg00/lv00' [9.77 GB] inherit

>From my pvscan output, one might say that I have two vg01 volume
groups.  In fact, I have one vg01 VG spanning sdb3 and sdc3 (both of
which of identical size on identical disks---I'm running interleaved
Logical Extents---similar to RAID 0.

The reason I said I thought you might have a misunderstanding is
because of this statement from an earlier post of yours:

: I don't know if this comes back to the fact that the volume names on both sda2
: and sdb2 are the same, so it's only showing me the first (or last) one that it
: finds?

I took "same volume names" as "same logical volume names" and
assumed you were confusing LVs and VGs since I have not seen anything
indicating that the actual LV names were the same.  But you may have
just typed "volume group" as "volume".

Haveing said all this, I understand you _do_ still have a problem:

> sda2 is "live" in that it's the one that I'm using right this minute.

I may have missed it but is sda the drive that's been on the current
machine all along?  Has it been 465 GB all along?  I ask this because
I have a machine running F6 that somehow swaps the names sda and
sdb. In fstab the "sdb" disk (according to df) is listed as "sda".
It's running a hardware (non-fake) RAID, though, so it is not the same
situation as yours.

> sdb2 is somehow both present and not present, depending on how you
> look at it, 

Your comment also seems to apply to sda2 since it is present in the df
output but not in the "lvdisplay -vm" output.

> but it doesn't appear to be accessible in its current
> form.  I'm considering using fdisk to remove the partitions on it and
> re-create something "from new" but I'm not entirely sure how wise that
> would be, or exactly what I should create on there.

Well, being a researcher, I'd not do this, but rather figure out
exactly what's causing the funning remapping. But you may not be the
curious type. :-)


> Another approach would be to just forget it and leave everything as-is until
> such time as I reformat and reinstall Fedora on this box (if that ever 
> happens)
> at which time I think the installer would automatically do its thing and 
> create
> a volume that occupies both hard drives.  After all, everything is working
> and this extra drive is neither helping or hurting my activities.  But it 
> seems
> to me that a logical volume, by its nature, should be easily expandable 
> without
> taking drastic measures.

Maybe you said this already, but what does the machine report
(`lvdisplay -vm' and `vgdisplay -v' in particular), if you remove the
added drive (sdb?).

Dean

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Re: copying lvm with the same name

[Dean S. Messing]

Rick Stevens wrote:

> Perhaps we should take this off-list--I don't know that we want to
> occupy the list's bandwidth with the back-and-forth of geting this
> sorted.  When it's fixed, we could post a summary on what we did for
> those who are interested.

I, for one, would like you to _leave it on the list_ as I am following
and learning.  With all the, um, "philosophical discussions" that
spend bandwidth, it is actually refreshing to see the list being used
for "Community assistance, encouragement, and advice for using
Fedora."

Regarding the actual problem the OP seems to have, it seems to me (not
being an LVM expert) from his output that he has a Volume Group (00)
that spans sda2 and sdb2, two LVs that are defined in the VG, both of
which sit on sdb2, but no LV defined on sda2.  Is this unusual?

There also seems to be some confusion between "Volume Group" and
"Volume" (ie. LV), which is the root of some misunderstanding on the
OP's part.

Again, I may be all wet on this but that's what his output and
comments indicate to me.

Dean

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Re: Is kpager available for KDE 4.2 under F10?

[Dean S. Messing]

Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Dean S. Messing wrote:
> > 1) How do I easily revert (rollback) to the current packages if these
> >  updates break my system?  Is there an easy way short of hand
> >  de-installing each package and re-installing the current ones?
> 
> The easiest way I know of is to rpm -Uvh --oldpackage the list of 33
> packages (with full file names or URLs for each).
> 
> > 2a) Which packages do I need to install to test the fix of "pager"?
> 
> kdebase-workspace, but it'll also need at least newer kdelibs and
> kdebase-runtime, probably more newer stuff.
> 
> > 2b) Will a subset of the updates-testing packages be compatible with
> >  my current up-to-date installation?
> 
> Yes, the problem is always to know what the subset is. ;-) And by the way,
> kde* may not be it. You have been warned.
> 
> We're going to push 4.2.1 out to stable shortly, it may be worth waiting if
> you're nervous about trying out updates-testing.



Thanks, Kevin, for these helpful answers.  One clarification please:
When you say

> The easiest way I know of is to rpm -Uvh --oldpackage the list of 33
> packages (with full file names or URLs for each).

does "full file names" mean the "full name of the rpm" including the
version numbers as found in "updates-testing", or does it mean the
"full rpm name of the de-installed packages from "updates" or
something else.

(I may take your advice about waiting. Then again, there's nothing
liking trying something new in order to learn.  I hope I don't learn
that I should have taken your advice. :-)

Den

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Re: Is kpager available for KDE 4.2 under F10?

[Dean S. Messing]

Dean Messing wrote:
> Rex Dieter wrote:
> > Dean S. Messing wrote:
> > > Rex Dieter wrote:
> > >> Dean Messing wrote:
> > >> > If so, where?  I've looked but can't find it.
> > >> 
> > >> There's a "pager" plasma applet, is that what you're looking for?
> > > 
> > > I don't know.  The machine on which I'm writing this (not the F10
> > > machine I was asking about), I run F7 / KDE-3.5.9-5.fc7.
> > 
> > Based on your description, the pager applet is it.
> > 
> > Plasma applets (in general) can be placed in either the panel or in your
> > desktop/workspace.
> > 
> > -- Rex
> 
> I'll give it a try this evening when I get home.
> Thanks very much!

Replying to my own post (sorry):

I tried it last evening.  The applet is similar and will serve the
purpose, except that it is buggy.  Specifically, when I resize and
reposition the "pager" applet, the resize is not remembered across
invocations of KDE.  (If it makes a difference, I start KDE with
"startx" from a VT.)

When I restart KDE, the position is roughly remembered but the "pager"
starts out with a size that of about 1cm square.  Another one is that
once you size it like you want, if you now go to configure it, say,
with desktop numbers each desktop pane w/in "pager", the applet
shrinks a small amount.  Each time you reconfigure it, it shrinks
again, till it is almost disappears.

There are other small bugs having to do with positioning and sizing
but these two are the biggies.  I searched the bugzilla DB and found a
this recent pager bug report:

<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=486478>

with replies by you (Rex).

I'm using kdebase-workspace-4.2.0-8.fc10.i386 and friends like the bug
reporter.

I notice that you don't have the problem using the packages from
updates-testing.

I want to try them tonight.  But when I do:

yum update  "*kde*"  --enablerepo updates-testing

it says it wants to install 33 packages.  So:

1) How do I easily revert (rollback) to the current packages if these
 updates break my system?  Is there an easy way short of hand
 de-installing each package and re-installing the current ones?

2a) Which packages do I need to install to test the fix of "pager"?

2b) Will a subset of the updates-testing packages be compatible with
 my current up-to-date installation?

Thanks
Dean

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Re: Is kpager available for KDE 4.2 under F10?

[Dean S. Messing]

Rex Dieter wrote:
> Dean S. Messing wrote:
> > Rex Dieter wrote:
> >> Dean Messing wrote:
> >> > If so, where?  I've looked but can't find it.
> >> 
> >> There's a "pager" plasma applet, is that what you're looking for?
> > 
> > I don't know.  The machine on which I'm writing this (not the F10
> > machine I was asking about), I run F7 / KDE-3.5.9-5.fc7.
> 
> Based on your description, the pager applet is it.
> 
> Plasma applets (in general) can be placed in either the panel or in your
> desktop/workspace.
> 
> -- Rex

I'll give it a try this evening when I get home.
Thanks very much!

Dean

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Re: Is kpager available for KDE 4.2 under F10?

[Dean S. Messing]

Rex Dieter wrote:
> Dean Messing wrote:
> > If so, where?  I've looked but can't find it.
> 
> There's a "pager" plasma applet, is that what you're looking for?

I don't know.  The machine on which I'm writing this (not the F10
machine I was asking about), I run F7 / KDE-3.5.9-5.fc7.

Have a look at this:

==> rpm -qf $(which kpager)
kdebase-extras-3.5.9-3.fc7.x86_64

Kpager a nice app that places a small image of all N desktops in a
small (resizable) window, with different "display modes".  You can
specify that desktop windows show up as scaled images of themselves,
or as representative icons, or merely as plain rectangles.  The
organisation of the desktops can be horizontal, vertical, or in an
array.  You can move stuff around on or between desktops from the
kpager window.

Obviously my ignorance of KDE 4.2 is showing, but I could find no such
application w/in the repositories when doing a yum search.

Thanks, Rex, for your kind help.

Dean

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Is kpager available for KDE 4.2 under F10?

[Dean S. Messing]

If so, where?  I've looked but can't find it.
Thanks.
Dean

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Re: Screwiness with PCI-E SATA card?

[Dean S. Messing]

Your problem may be the e-sata hardware itself.  I recently bought a
(cheap) e-sata PCI card from Newegg:



that uses the Initio INIC 1623 chip.  I bought the card because I had
just one internal Sata port left and I thought I'd "upgrade" my old
system.  I put a 1Tbyte drive on the e-sata.  Straight ext3 w/
journaling; single filesystem; no raid; no LVM.  (Use it for
incremental system backups.)

I needed to pull in a file from a backup at one point couple of weeks
ago and found it was corrupted.  Ran fsck.  The fsck started
locking-up, then continuing again. It found all sorts of inode
problems.  My /var/log/messages file was full of error timeouts and
resets on this drive.

On a lark, I plugged the drive directly into the remaining internal
sata with an e-sata --> sata conversion cable.  The timeouts stopped.
After many hours of data moving I was able to reconstruct most
everything. I re-made a fresh ext3 on it, moved the data back, and the
disk has been running fine since.  Fsck's don't stop and start and
lockup, and they find no corrupted inodes.  All seems well.

Aside: the e-sata card seemed to work fine (no lock-ups) when short
amounts of data were transferred.  But when I started pulling 55MB/s
for more than 3 or 4 seconds during the fsck, the lockups and resets
would start.

Dean

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Re: XkbOptions in xorg.conf being ignored (F10)

[Dean S. Messing]

Todd Zullinger wrote:
> Dean S. Messing wrote:
> > I'm trying to get an xorg.conf to work in F10.  One of the stanzas
> > that was created by livna-config-display (yes, I'm using the nasty
> > closed-source nvidia driver :-)  is:
> > 
> > # Xorg configuration created by livna-config-display
> > 
> > Section "InputDevice"
> > # keyboard added by rhpxl
> >Identifier  "Keyboard0"
> >Driver  "kbd"
> >Option  "XkbModel" "pc105+inet"
> >Option  "XkbLayout" "us"
> >Option  "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps" # <== added by me
> > EndSection
> > 
> > The last line was added by me.
> > 
> > For some reason X, which I start with "startx", is ignoring the
> > XkbOptions.  I think this has something to do with the new "evdev"
> > driver stuff but I don't understand it well enough to know how to
> > proceed.  Would someone tell me the "fix"?  Or tell me what to provide
> > for help.  Thanks.
> 
> Wow, almost the same exact question by two different people within an
> hour. ;)

It is remarkable, esp. as I did not see the other post at all, but
learned that something called "evdev" was involved by running

startx -- -verbose 6 > /tmp/startx.log 2>&1

and inspecting the output of startx.log.

> I don't know if it works for sure, but it's probably worth trying what
> I suggested in the other thread:
> 
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-December/msg01354.html
> 
> This will require a restart of haldaemon and X, at least.

I'll give it a try tonight, but I don't particularly like
the solution, as this appears to be a bug.  In fact, 

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-December/msg01410.html

seems to indicate that it is a bug, though I don't pretend to follow
what's going on there.  Looks like I'll have to spend time to
understand this evdev stuff a bit better.

Dean

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Re: XkbOptions in xorg.conf being ignored (F10)

[Dean S. Messing]

Note: Todd, sorry about the threading.  I  accidently removed all
the header info on your message and tried to reconstruct by hand.

Todd Zullinger wrote:
> Dean S. Messing wrote:
> > I'm trying to get an xorg.conf to work in F10.  One of the stanzas
> > that was created by livna-config-display (yes, I'm using the nasty
> > closed-source nvidia driver :-)  is:
> > 
> > # Xorg configuration created by livna-config-display
> > 
> > Section "InputDevice"
> > # keyboard added by rhpxl
> >Identifier  "Keyboard0"
> >Driver  "kbd"
> >Option  "XkbModel" "pc105+inet"
> >Option  "XkbLayout" "us"
> >Option  "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps" # <== added by me
> > EndSection
> > 
> > The last line was added by me.
> > 
> > For some reason X, which I start with "startx", is ignoring the
> > XkbOptions.  I think this has something to do with the new "evdev"
> > driver stuff but I don't understand it well enough to know how to
> > proceed.  Would someone tell me the "fix"?  Or tell me what to provide
> > for help.  Thanks.
> 
> Wow, almost the same exact question by two different people within an
> hour. ;)

It is remarkable, esp. as I did not see the other post at all, but
learned that something called "evdev" was involved by running

startx -- -verbose 6 > /tmp/startx.log 2>&1

and inspecting the output of startx.log.

> I don't know if it works for sure, but it's probably worth trying what
> I suggested in the other thread:
> 
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-December/msg01354.html
> 
> This will require a restart of haldaemon and X, at least.

I'll give it a try tonight, but I don't particularly like
the solution, as this appears to be a bug.  In fact, 

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-December/msg01410.html

seems to indicate that it is a bug, though I don't pretend to follow
what's going on there.  Looks like I'll have to spend time to
understand this evdev stuff a bit better.

Dean

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XkbOptions in xorg.conf being ignored (F10)

[Dean S. Messing]

I'm trying to get an xorg.conf to work in F10.  One of the stanzas
that was created by livna-config-display (yes, I'm using the nasty
closed-source nvidia driver :-)  is:

# Xorg configuration created by livna-config-display

Section "InputDevice"
# keyboard added by rhpxl
Identifier  "Keyboard0"
Driver  "kbd"
Option  "XkbModel" "pc105+inet"
Option  "XkbLayout" "us"
Option  "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps" # <== added by me
EndSection

The last line was added by me.

For some reason X, which I start with "startx", is ignoring the
XkbOptions.  I think this has something to do with the new "evdev"
driver stuff but I don't understand it well enough to know how to
proceed.  Would someone tell me the "fix"?  Or tell me what to provide
for help.  Thanks.

Dean.

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Re: Yum errors on rpmfusion in F10: Please help

[Dean S. Messing]

Deepak Shrestha wrote:
> Dean Messing wrote:
>> ONBOOT=no
>By the way isn't that ONBOOT should be set to "yes"?

>From what I've read, I don't think so if Network Manager is running.

> > I think NetworkManager
> > is "taking care of things" for me.  This is my first
> > experience with NM.  (I usually hand edit
> > ifcfg-eth0 on mh other systems.)
> >
> > Right after installation I was able to yum update w/o
> > a problem.  But Firefox would not resolve names.
> > After googling, I learned that I needed to disable
> > ipv6.  Having done that, Firefox started working,
> > and I didn't seem to have any other network problems.
> >
> > Then I tried to install the rpmfusion stuff and
> > the current problem began.


> Hi I am not sure of your problem but recently heard about bug in
> Network Manager.  Googling about bug in network manager gives me some
> links
> 
> http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=206177
> http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg16682.html
> http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=205145
> 
> Hope this will be useful.
> 
> In my case network manager is disabled, IPv6 enabled and working perfectly 
> fine.
> 
> http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f10.html#network
> 
> I suspect network manager is causing the problem. Try disabling
> network manager and try hand edit the network configuration.

I posted  the solution I found on a parallel thread.

You may be right about NM being involved, but I'm tired
of fooling with the problem as it is now solved.
If I have any more "network" problems, I'll
simply disable NM and go back to hand-editing
ifcfg-eth0 as I've been doing for years.

Again, thanks for the links.

Dean

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Re: Analog-to-Digital Audio:

[Dean S. Messing]

Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
>Tim wrote:
>> Patrick O'Callaghan:
 Turntables are also available. Ironically, a lot of these actually
 come with Audacity even though they're marketed for Windows.
>> Mikkel L. Ellertson:
>>> For example:
>>> http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=3DTTUSB-PB-R&cpc=3DSCH
>> I'd be very surprised if any of those plastic turntables were anything
>> but utter crap.  But then they're aimed at the MP3/iPod users, where
>> audio quality is the least thing on their mind...
>Considering the quality of the analog to digital converter most
>people are going to be using, it probably would not be much better
>using a quality turntable, cartridge, and preamp. The A to D
>converter in the sound cards of most computers is not that great.
>(Good enough for mp3, but that is about it.)

What sound cards (that have Linux drivers) would you recommand for
very high fidelity stereo digitising?  I have two purposes.  One is a new
interest in audio work.

Another is a project in which I need to digitise and analyse two
related analogue waveforms.  Low noise, good linearity, flat
freq. response down to 5 Hz, sampling rate of (at least)
192 Ksamples/sec are my initial specifications.  The flat response is only
a "want".  I can calibrate out any deviations if they are not severe
(like being at -60dB at 5 Hz :-).

Thanks.
Dean

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Re: Yum errors on rpmfusion in F10: Please help (SOLVED!)

[Dean S. Messing]

I forgot to say THANK YOU MAX! for providing the clue
to my problem with using the rpmfusion repos.

Dean

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Re: Yum errors on rpmfusion in F10: Please help (SOLVED!)

[Dean S. Messing]

This message, from Max Kanat-Alexander in a parallel thread, is the
fix to my and many other people's similar problem:

> On Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:14:24 -0500 Jim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > [Errno 4] IOError: 
> > Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for
> > repository: rpmfusion-free-updates. Please verify its path and try
> > again
> 
>   If you frequently get this but not always, you are experiencing
> this:
> 
>   http://www.fedorafaq.org/f10/#dns-slow
> 
>   -Max


This problem turns out to be a "slow response" DNS problem.  The FAQ
contains a clear solution which worked immediately for me.

The FAQ entry also contains a pointer to _this bug_:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=459756

which has more than 70 comments, many of which are complaining about
why this bug has so far not been fixed.  For many, this bug is
rendering F10 useless. Indeed Chris Terpak (comment 71 in the bug
report) says it very well:

   I pulled my hair out trying to find this. IMHO, this bug is not a
   'medium' priority - it makes F10 useless. I disagree that users should
   have to go and try and find downstream software that uses glibc when
   it is glibc that changed (and I read every entry in this
   thread). F6,7,8,9 were all fine on the exact same hardware.

   This should be critical priority not medium. Forcing a user to install
   BIND or DNSMASQ as a work around is utter nonsense.

I couldn't agree more.

Dean

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Re: Yum errors on rpmfusion in F10: Please help

[Dean S. Messing]

Deepak Shrestha wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 2:39 PM, Dean S. Messing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I can't imagine this being a network problem on my machine, router, or
> > provider as I can get to the darn repomd.xml file (and look inside
> > it!) via Firefox.
> >
> > Other suggestions?
> >
> > Dean
> >
> 
> I am not expert in this but similar to my problem I suspect it must be
> the network settings problem. This is what exactly happened when I
> tried to update after fresh fedora 10 and later found out that my
> subnetmask is reset to 192.168.1.1. (especially if you used
> system-config-network tools).
> 
> Anyway check your /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0 (or
> other cards) to see something is wrong there.
> 
> Probably it has nothing to do with yum or repos

Here is that file:

# Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller
DEVICE=eth0
HWADDR=XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX   <-- hidden by me
ONBOOT=no
IPV6INIT=no
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no

I added the last two lines yesterday as part of
the disabling of ipv6 which seems to be causing
so many others network problems.

Except for the last two lines, this is what
the system defaulted to after intallation of F10.
I actually don't recall doing anything about networking
during the installation.  I think NetworkManager
is "taking care of things" for me.  This is my first
experience with NM.  (I usually hand edit
ifcfg-eth0 on mh other systems.)

Right after installation I was able to yum update w/o 
a problem.  But Firefox would not resolve names.
After googling, I learned that I needed to disable
ipv6.  Having done that, Firefox started working,
and I didn't seem to have any other network problems.

Then I tried to install the rpmfusion stuff and
the current problem began.

Dean

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Re: Yum errors on rpmfusion in F10: Please help

[Dean S. Messing]

Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> On 05.12.2008 07:39, Dean S. Messing wrote:
> > Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> >> On 05.12.2008 06:30, Kam Leo wrote:
> > 
> >>> Try using the main rpmfusion server. Edit the rpmfusion repo files in
> >>> /etc/yum.repos.d directory, enable the baserul (i.e. remove the "#"
> >>> character), and disable the mirrorlist (i.e place a "#" at beginning
> >>> of line).
> >> See also:
> >> http://rpmfusion.org/FAQ
> >>

> >[...] I did that already (by hand) before I wrote
> >to the list; didn't help.


> [...] you should post the error message that you get now after doing that 
> change (which you afaics didn't do yet; but maybe I missed it) -- 
> without that we can only guess around what might be wrong.

The error message was so similar (just the path name changed) that I
didn't think it necessary.  Again, for those who haven't read the full
thread, ipv6 is entirely shut off on this system so its not that.

Here is more complete data on my problem:

Verifying I have the right rpmfusion packages:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# rpm -qa | fgrep rpmf
rpmfusion-nonfree-release-8-6.noarch
rpmfusion-free-release-8-6.noarch

Demonstration of problem when "mirrorlist" line is upcommented and
"baseurl" line is commented in /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmfusion-free.repo:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# yum update
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Could not retrieve mirrorlist 
http://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/mirrorlist?repo=free-fedora-10&arch=i386 error was
[Errno 4] IOError: 
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: 
rpmfusion-free. Please verify its path and try again


If I now comment the "mirrorlist" line and uncomment the "baseurl" line
in /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmfusion-free.repo I get:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# yum update
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/releases/10/Everything/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml:
 [Errno 4] IOError: 
Trying other mirror.
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: 
rpmfusion-free. Please verify its path and try again


I notice the "Trying other mirror."  That seems strange as its now operating
on the baseurl, not the mirrorlist.  Here's the first lines of
/etc/yum.repos.d/rpmfusion-free.repo:

[rpmfusion-free]
name=RPM Fusion for Fedora $releasever - Free
baseurl=http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/releases/$releasever/Everything/$basearch/os/
#mirrorlist=http://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/mirrorlist?repo=free-fedora-$releasever&arch=$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-free-fedora


Nota bene: I've disabled all the other rpmfusion repos ("enable=0")
except rpmfusion-free so as to keep things simple.

One more piece of data which I just discovered.
If I do a "yum clean all" first I get:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# yum clean all
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Cleaning up Everything
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# yum update
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/10/i386/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 4] IOError: 

Trying other mirror.
livna   
livna/pr
http://fedora.mirrors.tds.net/pub/fedora/releases/10/Everything/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml:
 [Errno 4] IOError: 
Trying other mirror.
fedora  
fedora/p
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/releases/10/Everything/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml:
 [Errno 4] IOError: 
Trying other mirror.
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: 
rpmfusion-free. Please verify its path and try again
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# 

I notice similar [Errno 4] messages from the  livna and fedora repos, but they 
somehow recover!
Why not the rpmfusion repo?

For completeness I now will uncomment "mirrorlist" and comment "baseurl" in
/etc/yum.repos.d/rpmfusion-free.repo and run the same commands:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# yum clean all
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Cleaning up Everything
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# yum update
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/10/i386/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 4] IOError: 

Trying other mirror.
livna   
livna/pr
fedora  
fedora/p
Could not retrieve mirrorlist 
http://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/mirrorlist?repo=free-fedora-10&arch=i386 error was
[Errno 4] IOError: 
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: 
rpmfusion-free. Please verify its path and try again

Hmm. This time livna failed, retried and succeeded, fedora had no
problem at all, and rpmfusion failed and did not recover.
I'm completely stumped.

Dean

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Re: Yum errors on rpmfusion in F10: Please help

[Dean S. Messing]

Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> On 05.12.2008 06:30, Kam Leo wrote:

> > Try using the main rpmfusion server. Edit the rpmfusion repo files in
> > /etc/yum.repos.d directory, enable the baserul (i.e. remove the "#"
> > character), and disable the mirrorlist (i.e place a "#" at beginning
> > of line).
> 
> See also:
> http://rpmfusion.org/FAQ
> 
> Quoting:
> > 
> > === Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: 
> > rpmfusion-foo. Please verify its path and try again ===
> > 
> >Yum cannot connect to the RPM Fusion servers if you get above
> >message. That could be a problem with your local network or a problem
> >with the !MirrorManager servers from RPM Fusion. If it's the latter
> >use this comment to temporary work around the problem:
> > {{{
> > su -c "sed -i 's|^#baseurl|baseurl| ; s|^mirrorlist|#mirrorlist|' 
> > /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmfusion*free*repo"
> > }}}
> > 
> > To undo the change later use this command:
> > {{{
> > su -c "sed -i 's|^baseurl|#baseurl| ; s|^#mirrorlist|mirrorlist|' 
> > /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmfusion*free*repo"
> > }}}
> > 

Am I missing something here?

Doesn't this `sed' script do precisely what Kam Lao suggested---namely
to comment out the mirrorlist URL and uncomment the baseurl?  If yes,
then (as I wrote to Kam) I did that already (by hand) before I wrote
to the list; didn't help.

I can't imagine this being a network problem on my machine, router, or
provider as I can get to the darn repomd.xml file (and look inside
it!) via Firefox.

Other suggestions?

Dean

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Re: Yum errors on rpmfusion in F10: Please help

[Dean S. Messing]

Kam Leo wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 9:14 PM, Dean S. Messing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > Nonetheless, like some others on the list I am getting this error from
> > yum after installing the rpmfusion repos:
> >
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# yum  update
> > Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
> > Could not retrieve mirrorlist 
> > http://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/mirrorlist?repo=nonfree-fedora-updates-released-10&arch=i386
> >  error was
> > [Errno 4] IOError: 
> > Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: 
> > rpmfusion-nonfree-updates. Please verify its path and try again
> >
> > These repos were installed using the command suggested by Kevin Kempter:
> >
> > rpm -ivh 
> > http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
> >  
> > http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
> >
> > which installed just fine.
> >
> > In fact:
> >
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# rpm -qa | fgrep rpmfus
> > rpmfusion-nonfree-release-8-6.noarch
> > rpmfusion-free-release-8-6.noarch

> > Can anyone help me (other some others) fix this?
>
> Try using the main rpmfusion server. Edit the rpmfusion repo files in
> /etc/yum.repos.d directory, enable the baserul (i.e. remove the "#"
> character), and disable the mirrorlist (i.e place a "#" at beginning
> of line).

Thanks.
I did that before I wrote to the list.  Didn't help.
Other suggestions?

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Yum errors on rpmfusion in F10: Please help

[Dean S. Messing]

Recently did a fresh install of F10. All updates (a boatload of them!)
as of yesterday.  Disabled IPv6 (in modprobe.conf) Disabled ip6tables
(chkconfig) and rebooted.  The ipv6 module is not loaded.

Nonetheless, like some others on the list I am getting this error from
yum after installing the rpmfusion repos:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# yum  update
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Could not retrieve mirrorlist 
http://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/mirrorlist?repo=nonfree-fedora-updates-released-10&arch=i386
 error was
[Errno 4] IOError: 
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: 
rpmfusion-nonfree-updates. Please verify its path and try again

These repos were installed using the command suggested by Kevin Kempter:

rpm -ivh 
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
 
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

which installed just fine.

In fact:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# rpm -qa | fgrep rpmfus
rpmfusion-nonfree-release-8-6.noarch
rpmfusion-free-release-8-6.noarch

I can get to the metadata file "repomd.xml" just fine by plugging the
URL from the rpmfusion repo into Firefox, but try as I might, yum
refuses to go there or work at all unless I disable the rpmfusion
repos.

Can anyone help me (other some others) fix this?
Thanks

Dean

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help with linux symlinks in vmware XP client

[Dean S. Messing]

I'm running an XP client in VMware on a Fedora machine.
I keep all my personal windows stuff in "~/ddriv"
which is then available to XP via the "Shared Folders"
mechanism of VMware.

That way, when XP is not running, I still have access
to ~/ddriv from linux for backup and other purposes.

The problem is that XP does not understand linux symlinks.
This did not used to be a problem under Win4lin/windows98.

Are there easy solutions to this short of hardlinks?

-dsm

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Re: pgftranslate on beamer (LaTeX)

[Dean S. Messing]

Globe Trotter wrote:
> I tried using my old beamer presentations and I come to a stop with
> the following:
> 
>  Environment pgftranslate undefined.
> 
> I was wondering where this environment is set and what do I need. I
> had not used this for a while so it may have been an earlier
> problem. I do know that it worked at least a couple of Fedoras ago.
> Any help?

I believe "pgftranslate" is located in
"/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/pgf/pgf.sty",
at least in an F8 tetex installation.

Does
  
help?

Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

Les Mikesell writes:
> On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Dean S. Messing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> >> I've never bought anything from the itunes store, but I use it daily, so
> >> I can't complain.  Itunes will happily rip your own CD collection, (and
> >> to mp3's if you like)
> >
> > But to Flac?  That's what I'm ripping to.
> >
> 
> I've never had any occasion (or the disk space) to use flac, but a
> quick google search says it can be taught to hand them:
> http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/06/12/how-to-play-flac-files-in-itunes/

Since we are comparing links, have a look at
<http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/cowon/a3/tech_specs.html>
and scroll down to "Applications" and you'll see all the
formats that the Cowon A3 supports.

> >> and add the track names and cover art for you
> >> without charging extra.
> >
> > I suppose, then, that she can get the cover art with iTunes. I've
> > spent all my hours ripping (and editing countless mistakes out of the
> > ID3 tags that get pulled down from FreeDB).
> 
> >> Hmmm... It's hard to beat an ipod and itunes at what they do.
> >
> > They can't play Flac, and an iPod does not tocuh a Cowon A3 in
> > audio quality (according to both the reviews and her ear.) and
> > the wonderful number of format, both video and audio, it can handle.
> 
> I suspect that you are really comparing lossless flac to a highly
> compressed mp3 in your listening tests (where a reasonably-sized aac

I'm not.  I'm an old audio hand (used to work as a researcher
in Tektronix Labs doing audio).

The audio quality of the Cowon A3 on .wav files exceeds anything I've
heard on another PMP.  This is what they are _really_ good at.  iPods
are strictly commodity level players (with a fantastic UI, I'll
admit).

> would be somewhere in between), but my ears aren't that great and the
> places where I use a portable player aren't conducive to detecting
> quality anyway so I'm not the best judge.   Also, note that the laptop
> is a fine player itself.

My ears aren't either.  But my budding concert pianist daughter's are.
But even I can hear the difference in (for example) background noise
between the iPod Classic and the Cowon A3 in the many pianissimo
(quite) sections Classical pieces.

> >> If you get a network connection, you can use rsync -av to copy a whole
> >> tree including the symlinks.
> >
> > This assumes I know how to set up networking on an Mac.
> 
> Macs are at their best when you give them a standard environment and
> don't have to set anything up.

Ok. I will keep that in mind. I'm bringing a cable to try to hook my
laptop to her new Macbook after we pick it up.

> > I don't even know how to turn it on and I'll have no time
> > to learn.  I have 48 hours in Chicago and it's the first day
> > of school for Freshman.
> 
> If you know your way around the linux side, set up a DHCP server that
> will hand out a single IP address, plug the 2 machines together and
> ssh to that address from your laptop.  When that works, you can use
> rsync to copy anything you want.   If you need to be root on the mac,
> log in as the first user that was added or one with admin rights, then
> 'sudo su -' and type that user's password again.  You'll get a very
> familiar shell environment  with a somewhat different filesystem
> layout and a case-insensitive filesystem.

Never done dhcp services. Just use 'em.  I know my way around several
parts of Linux but networking is a weak area (though I still do all my
networking by editing config files by hand:-)

> Or, if the school has anything resembling a normal network, plug both
> machines into their network, run ifconfig in terminal windows to find
> your IP addresses, and go from there - but if your laptop has a gig
> nic the direct connect will be faster.

I'll indeed try this. My laptop does do 1Gig.  I suppose the MacBook
does to.  Does the school's?  We'll find out.

I'm off to the airport so I'll be silent for a few days.

Thanks to all for your many helpful suggestions.  I've learned a lot
in 48 hours.

Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

poc wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 18:57 -0700, Dean S. Messing wrote:
> > Rick Stevens wrote:
> > > The simplest thing is to use vfat on the pen drive.  Most of them come
> > > preformatted with vfat and both Linux and OS/X can handle them fine.
> > 
> > Does vfat support ext2 style symlinks?   The file system I wish to create
> > will be full of 'em if they turn into hard copies of the pointed-to
> > files, the size of the filesystem will explode.
> 
> No, vfat is an ancient DOS-based filesystem. It doesn't even support
> file permissions in any reasonable way. However it is a lowest common
> denominator.

That's what I thought.  But since Rick suggested it after I said
I needed symlinks, I thought I'd ask.

> > Also, do pen drives hold 30 Gigs these days?  The last one I bought
> > held only 4.  But that was a year ago.
> 
> 4 is the largest I've seen for pen drives, however you can get external
> USB hard drives in assorted sizes, easily large enough for 25GB (mine is
> 500GB) and they aren't expensive. They invariably come preformatted with
> either FAT (really vfat) or NTFS. This could be the easiest way to do
> what you want (copying 25GB over the Internet might take a while, and
> get your daughter noticed by the university IT admins).

Again, that's what I thought, but at Rick's suggestion I thought
I'd check in case I missed something.

> There's an old exercise in Tanenbaum's networking book involving
> calculating the bandwidth of a carload of CDs. For certain distances it
> beats anything else out there :-)

Until this year, when we got 1G networking in my lab,
we used "sneaker-net" all the time to carry large amounts of video
data (100's of GB) from one part of the lab to the other.

Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

> > Is there F/S that Mac and Linux have in common that supports
> > symlinking?  I have the ntfs-3g stuff installed on this F8 machine,
> > but I don't know if (i) Mac speaks it and (ii) it supports symlinks.
> > I can find out for myself if (ii) is true, but I don't
> > have access to a Mac to find out (i).
> 
>   ZFS. Macs have it built-in, on Linux you need zfs-fuse (just like
> ntfs-3g). Plus, you got data integrity protection (provided enough
> redundancy) thrown as bonus.

Not according to the apple store tech guy.
(But I really don't know, first hand.  Do you?)

Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

Les Mikesell writes:
> Dean Messing writes:
> I don't need to learn to hate macs (or Apple).  I bought
> an iPod for my daughter a few months ago and quickly learned
> what a pool of iTunes quicksand their whole business model is.
> 
> I've never bought anything from the itunes store, but I use it daily, so 
> I can't complain.  Itunes will happily rip your own CD collection, (and 
> to mp3's if you like)

But to Flac?  That's what I'm ripping to.

> and add the track names and cover art for you 
> without charging extra.

I suppose, then, that she can get the cover art with iTunes. I've
spent all my hours ripping (and editing countless mistakes out of the
ID3 tags that get pulled down from FreeDB).


> > I'm buying the mac because the Conservatory "requires it."
> 
> Don't apologize - just learn to take best advantage of what it does.

> > I need the links because the music is going to be transferred
> > onto her iPod replace, a Cowon A3 PMP (which runs linux inside)
> > but the device does not deal with ID3 tags.  The link structure Dad's
> > "poorman" attempt to give her multiple views of the music
> > (by composer, by performer, etc.)
>
> Hmmm... It's hard to beat an ipod and itunes at what they do.

They can't play Flac, and an iPod does not tocuh a Cowon A3 in
audio quality (according to both the reviews and her ear.) and
the wonderful number of format, both video and audio, it can handle.

But you are right when it comes to the UI.

 > The transfer to the Mac is just an intermediate step so she
> > has a computer copy of the music.  She may use iTunes on it eventually,
> > but not for communicating with the PMP.
> 
> If you get a network connection, you can use rsync -av to copy a whole 
> tree including the symlinks.

This assumes I know how to set up networking on an Mac.
I don't even know how to turn it on and I'll have no time
to learn.  I have 48 hours in Chicago and it's the first day
of school for Freshman.

Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

Craig White wrote:
> a network is 2 computers and a network cable. Since the new MacBook will
> clearly have 1Gb network connection, a simple cable between the 2
> computers is your network and all you need to do is manually address
> them on the same network/subnet and you can transfer the file(s) via
> scp.

Agreed.  And I'd be willing to bring my linux laptop if I had enough
knowledge of Macs to even turn one on :-) I have 0 knowledge of the
Mac (and no time to learn).  On the other hand I feel some confidence
that I can get a writable HFS+ filesystem onto an 120GB USB drive that
I'm cleaning off right now.

I've downloaded hfsplus-tools. Now all I need to do is find
"pdisk" so I can create a Mac partition on the drive, run 1mkfs.hfsplus',
figure out how to turn off journaling, and I'm there (I think).

I'm perfectly confortable working in Linux, but I'm out of my depth
with a Mac (or M$ Windows for that matter).  If I had a few days
to tinker around, or someone to do the Mac side for me I might be able to do it.
But I don't.   Thanks for your patience.

Dean



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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> Split the tar into pieces less than 2GB (with split -b), copy to a VFAT 
> formatted USB drive and on the mac, cat the pieces back together to feed 
> to tar.  But, if the music files have standard tags that itunes will 
> recognize, I'd just copy the files themselves to a vfat drive without 
> the symlink structure, drop them into itunes and let it organize them 
> its own way.  You'll quickly learn to hate macs if you try to force them 
> to do things your way.

I don't need to learn to hate macs (or Apple).  I bought
an iPod for my daughter a few months ago and quickly learned
what a pool of iTunes quicksand their whole business model is.

I'm buying the mac because the Conservatory "requires it."
I need the links because the music is going to be transferred
onto her iPod replace, a Cowon A3 PMP (which runs linux inside)
but the device does not deal with ID3 tags.  The link structure Dad's
"poorman" attempt to give her multiple views of the music
(by composer, by performer, etc.)
The transfer to the Mac is just an intermediate step so she
has a computer copy of the music.  She may use iTunes on it eventually,
but not for communicating with the PMP.

Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

Rick Stevens wrote:
> And you'd better use a "flipped" cable or it won't work.  Or two
> regular cables and a hub/switch.

Evidently the MacBook Pro has the ability to switch its ethernet input
automagically to mimick a null modem within its hardware.  That's
what the technical guy at the Apple story told me earlier today when
we discussed filesystems and such.  He also suggested networking the
machines but admitted that if I'd never touched a Mac it might not be
the best idea.

Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

Rick Stevens wrote:
> The simplest thing is to use vfat on the pen drive.  Most of them come
> preformatted with vfat and both Linux and OS/X can handle them fine.

Does vfat support ext2 style symlinks?   The file system I wish to create
will be full of 'em if they turn into hard copies of the pointed-to
files, the size of the filesystem will explode.

Also, do pen drives hold 30 Gigs these days?  The last one I bought
held only 4.  But that was a year ago.

Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

In my last message I stupidly wrote:

> I just called the local Apple store and they said that zfs is not
> natively supported under OS X (yet).  The 4 that are, are:
> XFS, XFS+, Fat, and NTFS.

Of course, I meant HFS and HFS+.

I'd like to say it was a simple typo, but the X is too far from the H
for that to fly.  I'll have to admit it was a braino.

Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

> I think you are over thinking this...
> 
> If you tar the files and untar them on the MacOS HD (HFS+), the symbolic
> links should be fine.
> 
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPFileSystem/Articles/Aliases.html
> 
> I seriously doubt that bringing in a non-native file system is the
> answer you are looking for.

Thanks for the link and the advice, Craig.

Now that I've looked into things, I agree with you about the
non-native filesystem.

But I'm missing something fundamental.  How, without being on a
network, do I get the 30GB tar file off my disk and onto her computer?

Her Mac is in its packing box at the bookstore at her college in
Chicago.  I live in Washington. I fly out tomorrow.  In the short time
I'll be in Chicago, we'll have little time to mess with computer
stuff.  She'll be busy with a million other "freshman orientation"
things.  I'm clearly missing the obvious.  Please clue me in.
Thanks.

Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

George N. White III wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Aug 2008, Dean S. Messing wrote:
> 
> > I just purchaced a Macbook for my daughter as she's off to college 
> > (required by the dept. she's in).  I'm wondering if OS X understands the 
> > ext3 filesysystem.  In particular, will it properly handle symlinks 
> > generated under linux?  I wd. like to give her a USB disk containing an 
> > ext3 filesystem (that has lots of symlinks) with her 25 Gig organised 
> > classical music library on it (done on an F8 system).
> 
> Why not just set up the USB disk using the mac and rsync the files
> across via networking?

Thanks for the suggestion, George.

Were I to bring my own (FC-6) laptop to Chicago, where she's attending
school, that might be an option.  We'll pick up the MacBook at the
bookstore there on Thurday.  But I have not a clue about how to get
networking working on it, so even if I brought my own linux laptop
(for truly local area networking) I'm not sure of myself at all.

What I'd hoped to do is be able to hand her the drive and have it "just
work".  She knows as much about computers in general as I do about
Macs (zero).  (She spent all her free time the last 7 years training
to be a concert grade pianist :-)

She'll likely be on the network in a few days via the school's IT dept.
but then I have no idea if I'd be able to get 25-30Gigs of data to her
via rsync/ssh. Does the school disallow it through their firewall?
Does the Mac have the server for me to connect to?  I don't know
the answer to any of these.  

Besides this (andthe Macbook) was suppose to be my (hassle-free) gift
to her. :-)


> OS X doesn't do ext3.  You might be able to create an HFS+ filesystem
> (I mount my HFS+ iPOD and write to it with linux, but there are
> warnings "write on journalled filesystem not supported").  OS X does
> have zfs and linux has fuse+zfs, so that might be worth a try too.

I just called the local Apple store and they said that zfs is not
natively supported under OS X (yet).  The 4 that are, are:
XFS, XFS+, Fat, and NTFS.

I suppose I can write an NTFS FS to the drive but I don't
know if the symlinks will work.  I think I read that true NTFS symlinks
are a recent thing.  I'l look into creating an HFS+ FS under linux
(with journalling turned off as per your warning above.
I've got till tomorrow to solve this.  That's when I fly out.

Thanks again.
Dean

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Re: OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

Rodney D. Myers wrote:
> > Dean Messing wrote:
> > I just purchaced a Macbook for my daughter as she's off to college
> > (required by the dept. she's in).  I'm wondering if OS X understands
> > the ext3 filesysystem.  In particular, will it properly handle
> > symlinks generated under linux?

> 
> Not out of the box.
> 
> I think this is the project I'm using to access my linux external  
> drives.
> 
> 

Not what I was hoping to hear. :-)
(But  thanks for your quick response!

I'll have a look but, being entirely ignorant of Macs, I probably
shd. ask another question:

Is there F/S that Mac and Linux have in common that supports
symlinking?  I have the ntfs-3g stuff installed on this F8 machine,
but I don't know if (i) Mac speaks it and (ii) it supports symlinks.
I can find out for myself if (ii) is true, but I don't
have access to a Mac to find out (i).


Dean

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OT question about Macbook (OS X) file systems

[Dean S. Messing]

I just purchaced a Macbook for my daughter as she's off to college
(required by the dept. she's in).  I'm wondering if OS X understands
the ext3 filesysystem.  In particular, will it properly handle
symlinks generated under linux?  I wd. like to give her a USB disk containing
an ext3 filesystem (that has lots of symlinks) with her 25 Gig organised 
classical
music library on it (done on an F8 system).

Thanks for your help.
Dean



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Re: rkhunter (root kit hunter) warning

[Dean S. Messing]

Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> Dean Messing wrote:

> > Do you know if not having the Properties DB would cause the
> > warning message I got:
> >=20
> >Please inspect this machine, because it may be infected.
> 
> Yes. It will do that until you run propery update.=20


Thanks again, Kevin for your help.
I'll do the -propup and see what happens.
I'll soon be installing F8 on this machine and
will be sure to do the properties update before putting
it on the network.

Dean

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Re: rkhunter (root kit hunter) warning

[Dean S. Messing]

Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:54:05 -0700 (PDT)
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] ("Dean S. Messing") wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I just installed rkhunter on this F7 machine
> 
> Sadly, F7 is no longer supported... 
> 
> > and am using the default config file (probably
> > a mistake.)
> 
> Well, I maintain rkhunter, and some issues were found with the config,
> but only after F7 was end of lifed. I thus wasn't able to update it. ;( 
> 
> You could try rebuilding the F-9 src.rpm for F7. 
> 
> Also, make sure you run 'rkhunter -propupd' to update the properties. 

Thanks a lot Kevin!

Were the changes you mention made during F8? If so I might have more
success rebuilding and installing the latest F8 rpm (1.3.2-4.fc8, I
think).  In the past I've had problems trying to build new packages on
older systems due to changes in "rpm" and new package requirements
(dependency hell).

Do you know if not having the Properties DB would cause the
warning message I got:

   Please inspect this machine, because it may be infected.

I had not run  "-propupd" because the F7 machine is several
months old and I could not guarantee what was required in the warning
on the man page:

  WARNING: It is the users responsibility to ensure that the files on
  the system are genuine and from a  reliable  source.  rkhunter  can
  only  report  if a file has changed, but not on what has caused the
  change. Hence, if a file has changed,  and  the  --propupd  command
  option is used, then rkhunter will assume that the file is genuine.

Dean

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rkhunter (root kit hunter) warning

[Dean S. Messing]

I just installed rkhunter on this F7 machine
and am using the default config file (probably
a mistake.)
This morning I found this in my mail:

  Subject: [rkhunter] Warnings found for medulla
  Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 04:07:41 -0700 (PDT)

  Please inspect this machine, because it may be infected.

I've looked at the generated log and found nothing suspicious.  But
I'm not an experienced hunter and the log is >1000 lines long. I'd
like to post it here but I think it is too long for that.  Here is the
final summary:


[04:07:40] System checks summary
[04:07:40] =
[04:07:40]
[04:07:40] File properties checks...
[04:07:40] Required commands check failed
[04:07:40] Files checked: 129
[04:07:41] Suspect files: 0
[04:07:41]
[04:07:41] Rootkit checks...
[04:07:41] Rootkits checked : 64
[04:07:41] Possible rootkits: 0
[04:07:41]
[04:07:41] Applications checks...
[04:07:41] Applications checked: 5
[04:07:41] Suspect applications: 0
[04:07:41]
[04:07:41] The system checks took: 29 seconds
[04:07:41]
[04:07:41] Info: End date is Mon Aug 18 04:07:41 PDT 2008

The only thing that catches the eye is the "Required commands check
failed."  But a search for the words "failed" or "required" finds only
this line.

Lots of stuff was "skipped" in the log.  For example:

[04:07:35] Performing trojan specific checks
[04:07:35] Info: Starting test name 'trojans'
[04:07:36]   Checking for enabled inetd services [ Skipped ]
[04:07:36] Info: Check skipped - file '/etc/inetd.conf' does not exist.

Indeed it doesn't.   I believe it has been replaced by /etc/xinetd.d/

This machine has iptables running on it is behind our
corporate firewall.  I'm not sure how to proceed.

Dean

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Re: Need application suggestions for ripping to Cowon A3 PVP

[Dean S. Messing]

Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Dean Messing wrote:
> > I'm not actually even sure what "ID3" tags are.
>
> They are meta-information records included with most digital sound files
> (e.g. title, composer, artist, year, bitrate, genre and so on). In
> Fedora they are supported via the id3lib package. Amarok, RythmBox etc.
> simply use this information to organize tracks and playlists.

So, perhaps I'll be able to use the tags + Amarok to organise
all the music, and then write the file structure out to
the Cowon?

> > I only know that the Cowon A3 does _not_ [use IDE tags] for
> > automatic searching and organisation (according to
> > reviews).
> 
> I know nothing about this player, though I'd be surprised if it had no
> support at all for tags.

It evidently does not.  But it has many other features that compensate
for that, including many open audio and video formats, It also has
about the highest audio quality of any player out there.

For your interest, here's a link to a Feb 08 review:


> In any case, you definitely want to add tag
> info to your tracks for your own future sanity (and some other model of
> player you might eventually own).

Agreed, though I'm not sure what that means.  Is the tag information
carried in the file name, or in some metadata area w/in the track
itself, or as separate files w/in the ripped-to directory?

> Tags for CDs you rip yourself have to be either added manually or
> downloaded from an online database such as http://www.freedb.org/. Most
> rippers can do this for you automatically (they calculate an ID based on
> the combination of track durations, which is a fairly unique fingerprint
> for each CD). If for any reason your CD isn't in the database, you get
> to add the tags by hand (and preferably return something to the
> community by uploading them to the database). The rippers will allow you
> to create tags, or you can use a package such as easytag (yum install
> easytag).

Very helpful.  Do you recommend a ripper under KDE/F8 that is powerful
and easy.  I have very little time to rip 83 CDs, figure out Amarok
(or whatever) for the purpose of organising things, and then putting
it all on the Cowon.  Others have suggested KaudioCreator and I'm happy
to try it.  Anything better?  (I've only comline ripping with cdparanoia).

> > What I hope will happen is that the name of the files ripped will
> > contain what's on the CD jacket, stuff like 
> > 
> > "Nocture no. 20 in e minor"
> 
> That depends on whether anyone has uploaded the tag information
> somewhere. Otherwise you do it yourself.

Oh, I  hope not too many!  Very little time, though I'm happy
to provide what I do to the community. 

> > and not "track3"
> > 
> > Several months ago, before I returned the iPod I orignally bought her
> > due to it not working well with linux, I was told on this list that
> > I'd need to use an application like Amarok with it.
>
> I've had reasonable success with gtkpod, though the user interface
> leaves a lot to be desired (note that gtkpod is only for managing your
> ipod, it's not a music player though it can call on Amarok for that).

I tried to get both gtkpod and Amarok to work with the newest Classic iPod.
This was last February and I was running F7 at the time.  Nothing but
lock-ups, deleted data, and wasted time.  One of the great things
about the Cowon is that it runs Linux internally and appears simply
as a 60GB USB disk drive to my system.  Not sure if there are other
modes of communication. We just got it.


> Then again I also think iTunes is overrated as a user interface.

Never seen it but I believe you. Most Apple stuff is over-rated,
though I must say that the circular touch pad on the iPod classic
makes the tiny joystick on the Cowon seem very clumsy and retro.  On
the other hand the visual UI on the Cowon and the 4" screen are very,
very nice.  And the audio quality is, indeed, magnificient.

Dean

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Re: Need application suggestions for ripping to Cowon A3 PVP

[Dean S. Messing]

Mark Haney wrote:
> Dean S. Messing wrote:
> > I have little experience with CD ripping so your kind help wd. be
> > appreciated.  I have purchased a Cowon A3 (60GB) PMP for my daugther.
> > She has asked me to load up a selection of her classical music CD's
> > (83 of them!)  on the Cowon.  It does not use ID3 tags so I'll
> > organise things myself, probably by composer


> 
> Generally speaking any current CD ripper (in GNOME it's Grip isn't it?) 
> and I use KaudioCreator in KDE will hit CDDB and give you plenty of 
> options to fill in ID3 tags on the fly for those CD's you have. 
> Assuming of course they aren't self created CD's.  That should be more 
> than adequate for your needs.


Thanks Mark.

I'm not actually even sure what "ID3" tags are.
I only know that the Cowon A3 does _not_ for
automatic searching and organisation (according to
reviews).

What I hope will happen is that the name of the files ripped will
contain what's on the CD jacket, stuff like 

"Nocture no. 20 in e minor"

and not "track3"

Several months ago, before I returned the iPod I orignally bought her
due to it not working well with linux, I was told on this list that
I'd need to use an application like Amarok with it.

I exchanged the iPod for the Cowon for several reasons, one of
which was its "linux friendliness". 

Will such an application be needed with the Cowon A3?

Dean

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Need application suggestions for ripping to Cowon A3 PVP

[Dean S. Messing]

I have little experience with CD ripping so your kind help wd. be
appreciated.  I have purchased a Cowon A3 (60GB) PMP for my daugther.
She has asked me to load up a selection of her classical music CD's
(83 of them!)  on the Cowon.  It does not use ID3 tags so I'll
organise things myself, probably by composer

I _would_ like to get all the metadata that comes on a CD when I rip
and load onto the Cowon.  Not sure yet what format I'll encode to, but
I'll worry about that later.  (She's a classical pianist and her ears
are golden.)

In the past I've just used cdparanoia from the comline to pull a few
.wav files.  No title, (except trackN.wav) or anything.  She won't be
happy with directories full of names like that!  (FYI, the Cowon A3
runs Linux internally, connects to a computer via USB and looks to the
computer like an external disk.)

What applications shd. I consider.  Amarok?
Suggestions and advice most welcome!
I'm running F8.

One more thing: she's entering the Conservatory next week and they require
their students to use Macs. I just purchased a MacBook Pro, if that
makes any difference in your suggestions.

Dean


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Re: Broken F8 driver for e-Sata chip

[Dean S. Messing]

Alan Cox wrote:
>> 
>> Can someone (Alan?) give me some help on this.
>> What is the current status of this driver?
>
>Tejun Heo got the driver working sort of based on the minimal data sheet
>available. Initio promised info but then went silent whenever asked but
>recently threw an updated driver over the wall. From that Tejun updated
>the in kernel driver and it now works well.
>
>So basically you need a pretty current kernel (eg 2.6.26.x) and all will
>spring to life.


Thanks very much, Alan.  I guessed when I titled the subject line that
you would respond.  In my Google poking, your name came up a
couple of times regarding this chip.

I suppose Fedora will package 2.6.26.x for F8 at some point. (I wonder
how long.)  Till then I have a workaround:  the machine has an
internal SATA port on the Mother board and I can buy a passive cable
that "converts" to the e-Sata form factor.

Again, thanks.
Dean

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Broken F8 driver for e-Sata chip

[Dean S. Messing]

Can someone (Alan?) give me some help on this.
What is the current status of this driver?

The Story:

I just purchased a PCI card for an older computer
so I cd. hook up a couple of external SATA's to it.
The card uses the INI-1623 chip:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# lspci | fgrep Ini
02:0b.0 SATA controller: Initio Corporation INI-1623 \
PCI SATA-II Controller (rev 02)

When I boot the machine, the BIOS sees the 1TB drive on that card.
It's also seen by the OS.  However, what looks like a driver
error occurs.  This is from /var/log/dmesg:


sata_inic162x :02:0b.0: version 0.3
ACPI: PCI Interrupt :02:0b.0[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
scsi5 : sata_inic162x
scsi6 : sata_inic162x
ata5: SATA max UDMA/133 mmio [EMAIL PROTECTED] port 0xfeafe000 cmd 0xd400 ctl 
0xd002 irq 23
ata6: SATA max UDMA/133 mmio [EMAIL PROTECTED] port 0xfeafe040 cmd 0xde00 ctl 
0xdd02 irq 23
ata5: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata5.00: HPA detected: current 1953525168, native 18446744072357965232
ata5.00: ATA-8: WDC WD10EACS-00ZJB0, 01.01B01, max UDMA/133
ata5.00: 1953525168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
ata5.00: ERROR: This driver doesn't support LBA48 yet and may cause
data corruption on such devices.  Disabling.
ata5.00: disabled
ata6: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)


The board advertised linux compatibility so (foolish me) I bought it
w/o asking on this list.  The supplied driver on the Manu. site is for
kernel version 2.6.15 --- useless for the F8 system running on the
target machine (2.6.25.11-60.fc8).

Googling, I find that th LBA48 stuff was a "known problem" about a
year ago and people were working on it.  Do any of you know if there
is a working patch or a workaround?

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Re: Colour Cordination ??

[Dean S. Messing]

On Sat, 02 Aug 2008, William Case wrote:
> Does anybody know of a site, tutorial or a manual that explains how to
> get all my colour formats and equipment synchronized?


Type

"icc color profile" linux

into Google (including the quotes) and start poking around.  Also,
  
"icc colour profile" linux

gives a another set of links to surf in.

Dean

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