from:"PJ"

Polytropon wrote:
 On Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:21:18 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 No.  The only way is by hitting the SysRq/PrintScreen key if the
 AllowEmptyInput is not off, otherwise you have to reboot.
 

 Reboot isn't needed to fix things - that's a misbelief
 from Windows land. :-) Simply SSH into the box and kill
 X.

   
Well, unfortunately it was like trying to fly a dead plane... the
controls were absolutly useless... no keyboard, no mouse, nada... nothing!
   
 Yes, but you are supposed to see the x for the mouse.  Doesn't happen...
 as I mentioned, on one try when doing ctl/alt/del the X appeared and
 then - shutdown.
 

 Strange. Ctrl+Alt+Del isn't supposed to have an effect in
 X, if I remember correctly. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace should kill
 the X server, but doesn't obviously work when no input is
 accepted. There's the DontZap setting in xorg.conf.

   
Right, but it has never worked for me on any computer or installation -
since the advent of happy hal.

   
 I use fluxbox and for some years now, I have never had to put anything
 into .xinitrc except startfluxbox of just plain fluxbox and it
 always worked.
 

 That's correct. Your ~/.xinitrc should at leas contain
 an interpreter command, and then the commands you want to
 run, e. g.

   #!/bin/sh
   [ -f ~/.xmodmaprc ]  xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc
   xsetroot -solid rgb:3b/4c/7a
   exec fluxbox

 Note that the fluxbox call is to be preceeded by exec.

   
Well, again, in my case, it used to work with just plain fluxbox; then
startfluxxbox and that's how it works now. =-O


   
 It seems to me that the options for flatpanel must be activated... bin
 there, done that...
 

 Separate options? For flat panel? I must have slept for many
 centuries...



 Let's have a look at the log:

   
 (WW) AllowEmptyInput is on, devices using drivers 'kbd', 'mouse' or
 'vmmouse' will be disabled.
 (WW) Disabling Mouse0
 (WW) Disabling Keyboard0
 

 Okay, no input for you.

 I can't see any further warnings (WW) or errors (EE) in this
 log. Seems that X is up and running, and nothing more?

 Check .xinitrc and .xsession respectively.

   
Ok, I finally did get it running...
here's my shot at the Xorg mailing list:

I quote:

Well, I did get it up and running, but no thanks to any information in
either the xorg or freebsd manuals...

I accidentally ran startx and to my great surprise the screen came up
with fluxbox and did work, albeit very sporadically... it kept going
black and sort-of flickered.
I shutdown and checked the log and lo and behold, the configuration file
was one I had forgotten about that came from another computer from where
the current disk was cloned.
So, with a little tweaking, the thing now works - but the what and the
why excape me completely.
The configurations does not need any parameters for horiz or vertical
scanning - only the screen depth and monitor size. I guess the name of
the manufacturer and the model are irrelevant. Oh yes, the
AllowEmptyInput had to be off ;  the DontZap was also off
Setting the FlatPanel settings (3 of them) to True does not seem to
make any difference whether they are T of F.
So, although it now works, configuration is still a total mystery.
Does anyone understand just what is going on or are we just groping in
the dark along with our blind leaders?


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Re: anybody manage to get Xorg to work with LG flat panel W2361

Roland Smith wrote:
 On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 04:21:18PM -0400, PJ wrote:
   
 I also have tried with the monitor in digital mode as well as in
 analog... neither works.
 

 Do you mean with a VGA and DVI connector?
   
You got it... right!
   
 It seems to me that the options for flatpanel must be activated... bin
 there, done that...
 

 Why?
   
Had to try anything I could.
   
 And that is because I saw those kinds of directions activated under the
 display management in XP. O:-)
 

 And since when is XP a good example of how to configure X? ;-)
   
You're making an assumption... see above.
   
 So, here's my log:

 X.Org X Server 1.6.1
 Release Date: 2009-4-14
 X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
 Build Operating System: FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE i386
 Current Operating System: FreeBSD grendl.my.domain 7.2-RELEASE FreeBSD
 7.2-RELEASE #0: Fri May  1 08:49:13 UTC 2009
 r...@walker.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386
 Build Date: 21 August 2009  12:40:03PM
  
 (==) Log file: /var/log/Xorg.0.log, Time: Mon Nov  2 11:07:26 2009
 (++) Using config file: xorg.conf1
 (==) ServerLayout X.org Configured
 (**) |--Screen Screen0 (0)
 (**) |   |--Monitor Monitor0
 (**) |   |--Device Card0
 (**) |--Input Device Mouse0
 (**) |--Input Device Keyboard0
 (==) Automatically adding devices
 (==) Automatically enabling devices
 

   
 (**) ModulePath set to /usr/local/lib/xorg/modules
 (WW) AllowEmptyInput is on, devices using drivers 'kbd', 'mouse' or
 'vmmouse' will be disabled.
 (WW) Disabling Mouse0
 (WW) Disabling Keyboard0
 

 This could be the reason why you are not seeing a mouse cursor...

 Try adding

 Option AutoAddDevices  off

 to your ServerLayout section, and remove any AllowEmptyInput lines. Or
 install and configure and start sysutils/hal before starting Xorg. For myself
 I find it easier to build the Xorg server without hal support and use the
 option shown above, so I don't have to deal with hald.

   
 (--) NV(0): Virtual size is 1920x1080 (pitch 1920)
 (**) NV(0): *Driver mode 1920x1080: 138.5 MHz, 66.6 kHz, 59.9 Hz
 (II) NV(0): Modeline 1920x1080x59.9  138.50  1920 1968 2000 2080  1080
 

 It looks like a correct resolution is found and activated.

 As an aside, and not related to your problem, you might want to try the
 xf86-video-nouveau instead of nv. It is under heavier development and is
 working toward supporting 3D accelleration and supporting newer chips.

   
 (II) Initializing built-in extension DAMAGE
 (II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized /usr/local/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so
 (II) GLX: Initialized DRISWRAST GL provider for screen 0
 

 Normally, you'd expext to see some stuff from the mouse and keyboard drivers
 last in the logfile... Since theay are missing, and seeing the warning printed
 above, your problem isn't what it seems to be. I think the server gets stuck
 because it can't find a keyboard and mouse. That would explain why you don't
 see a cursor.
   
My quote from my dig at xorg mailing list:

Well, I did get it up and running, but no thanks to any information in
either the xorg or freebsd manuals...

I accidentally ran startx and to my great surprise the screen came up
with fluxbox and did work, albeit very sporadically... it kept going
black and sort-of flickered.
I shutdown and checked the log and lo and behold, the configuration file
was one I had forgotten about that came from another computer from where
the current disk was cloned.
So, with a little tweaking, the thing now works - but the what and the
why excape me completely.
The configurations does not need any parameters for horiz or vertical
scanning - only the screen depth and monitor size. I guess the name of
the manufacturer and the model are irrelevant. Oh yes, the
AllowEmptyInput had to be off ;  the DontZap was also off
Setting the FlatPanel settings (3 of them) to True does not seem to
make any difference whether they are T of F.
So, although it now works, configuration is still a total mystery.
Does anyone understand just what is going on or are we just groping in
the dark along with our blind leaders?


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Re: anybody manage to get Xorg to work with LG flat panel W2361

Oh, yes... I forgot to mention that although I got it to work... it
works only in DVI mode (digital) - on FreeBSD, anyway. This makes me
wonder how I could ever set up two of these babies on the same video
card. Like for video editing?
On XP it only works in DSUB (analog) mode.
The DSUB mode just give a bunch of horizontal bars.
It's a faabulous display, I must say.
The resolution is superb, contrast is highest Ièm seen on any display.
Connection to both DVI and DSUB are simultaneous - one merely chooses
which to use by touch of a button.
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and now for conky gremlins

conky is still working ok...but the calendar is limping...
rather strange
here's the .conkyrc:
snip...
${color green}CALENDAR ${hr 2}$color
#${execi 300 ~/bin/calendar.sh}
${execi 300 cal | awk 'NR1' | sed -e 's/   //g' -e 's/[^ ] / /g'
-e 's/..*/  /' -e s/\ `date +%d`/\[`date +%d`\]/}

output should be: 1  2  3 [4] 5 6 7 etc.
is:1 2 3 4 5 6

the calendar.sh is exactly:
#!/bin/sh
cal | awk 'NR1' | sed -e 's/   //g' -e 's/[^ ] / /g' -e 's/..*/ 
/' -e s/\ `date +%d`/\[`date +%d`\]/

I upgraded ports and now the calendar.sh cannot be found - it exists;
bash no longer wishes to execute or recognize it...

I am puzzled as to what is going on? I seem to be chasing after gremlins
... again ... and again..
like, even firefox can't be upgraded on one system (identical) but can
on another... bugs  gremlins... oooh, gadzooks!
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anybody manage to get Xorg to work with LG flat panel W2361

2009-11-02 Thread PJ

I have posted to Xorg, but I find this list most reassuring and
competent ;-)
I have searched the web, followed the instructions in the manual, the
man pages and suggestions on the web.
Nothing, nada. And I see there is a lot of frustration out there and not
solutions discernible.
I can post the config files...
If anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate it... but please, don't waste
your time telling me to read the manual or search the web... I have done
all that and if there is something I have missed - maybe hal (that seems
to be the most absurd addition to Xorg as it seems to produce no visible
advantages but only problems) maybe someone will have an idea what was
my blind spot?
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Re: anybody manage to get Xorg to work with LG flat panel W2361

2009-11-02 Thread PJ

Roland Smith wrote:
 On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 12:47:47PM -0400, PJ wrote:
   
 I have posted to Xorg, but I find this list most reassuring and
 competent ;-)
 I have searched the web, followed the instructions in the manual, the
 man pages and suggestions on the web.
 Nothing, nada. And I see there is a lot of frustration out there and not
 solutions discernible.
 

 Most modern monitors Just Work IMO, just specify the resolution you want. The
 X server should then be able to get the required modeline from the monitor.

 How you you know it isn't working? Do you get back to the command prompt?
   
No.  The only way is by hitting the SysRq/PrintScreen key if the
AllowEmptyInput is not off, otherwise you have to reboot.
 Note that by default you get a black screen with the current Xorg.
Yes, but you are supposed to see the x for the mouse.  Doesn't happen...
as I mentioned, on one try when doing ctl/alt/del the X appeared and
then - shutdown.
  You have to
 put commands in ~/.xinitrc to set a background, launch a window manager etc.
   
I use fluxbox and for some years now, I have never had to put anything
into .xinitrc except startfluxbox of just plain fluxbox and it
always worked.
   
 I can post the config files...
 

 Better post the Xorg logfile, /var/log/Xorg.0.log

   
 If anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate it... but please, don't waste
 your time telling me to read the manual or search the web... I have done
 all that and if there is something I have missed - maybe hal (that seems
 to be the most absurd addition to Xorg as it seems to produce no visible
 advantages but only problems) maybe someone will have an idea what was
 my blind spot?
 

 Find out what the native resolution is for this monitor, it should be
 1920x1080 according to 
 http://milo.com/lg-23-widescreen-flat-panel-lcd-hd-monitor-black#
   
I was aware of all that plus all the timings etc that one can find in
the log. I tried all that and nothing clicks.
 Put that in the Display subsection of your Screen
 section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, like this:

 Section Screen
 Identifier Screen0
 Device Card0
 MonitorMonitor0
 DefaultDepth 24
 SubSection Display
Depth24
Modes1920x1080
 EndSubSection
 SubSection Display
Depth16
Modes1920x1080
 EndSubSection
 EndSection

 Make sure that the Device and Monitor names match yours. :-)

 And check if your video card is capable of driving this monitor. Your
 /var/log/Xorg.0.log should give you some clues there.
I also have tried with the monitor in digital mode as well as in
analog... neither works.
It seems to me that the options for flatpanel must be activated... bin
there, done that...
And that is because I saw those kinds of directions activated under the
display management in XP. O:-)
So, here's my log:

X.Org X Server 1.6.1
Release Date: 2009-4-14
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE i386
Current Operating System: FreeBSD grendl.my.domain 7.2-RELEASE FreeBSD
7.2-RELEASE #0: Fri May  1 08:49:13 UTC 2009
r...@walker.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386
Build Date: 21 August 2009  12:40:03PM
 
Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
(++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: /var/log/Xorg.0.log, Time: Mon Nov  2 11:07:26 2009
(++) Using config file: xorg.conf1
(==) ServerLayout X.org Configured
(**) |--Screen Screen0 (0)
(**) |   |--Monitor Monitor0
(**) |   |--Device Card0
(**) |--Input Device Mouse0
(**) |--Input Device Keyboard0
(==) Automatically adding devices
(==) Automatically enabling devices
(**) FontPath set to:
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/OTF,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/OTF,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/,
/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/,
built-ins
(**) ModulePath set to /usr/local/lib/xorg/modules
(WW) AllowEmptyInput is on, devices using drivers 'kbd', 'mouse' or
'vmmouse' will be disabled.
(WW) Disabling Mouse0
(WW) Disabling Keyboard0
(II) Loader magic: 0x7a0
(II) Module ABI versions:
X.Org ANSI C Emulation: 0.4
X.Org Video Driver: 5.0
X.Org XInput driver : 4.0
X.Org Server Extension : 2.0
(II) Loader running on freebsd
(--) Using syscons driver with X support (version 2.0)
(--) using VT number 9

(--) PCI:*(0...@1:0:0) nVidia Corporation NV31 [GeForce FX 5600] rev 161,
Mem @ 0xfd00

Re: flashplugin

Polytropon wrote:
 On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:53:18 +, Tony McC af...@btinternet.com wrote:
   
 You seem to want everything to just work without
 having to think about it, so perhaps Windows would be better for you?
 [...]
 But my
 guess is that you really would be happier and more productive with a
 Windows OS.  That isn't meant to be a please go away and let us get on
 with using FreeBSD, it is an honest reaction to the pain and confusion
 you seem to cause yourself as you randomly try things in FreeBSD. 
 

 In Windows, things don't work without thinking. The
 misbelief that is does is grounded in the fact that
 other people have to deal with problems, while the
 user praises Windows for its easyness of use.

 In PJ's case, maybe PC-BSD is a good choice. As far as
 I know, they offer a working Flash plugin that can
 be installed by their PBI system. I haven't tested
 this because PC-BSD with its KDE centric concept simply
 isn't my cup of tea, but that doesn't mean that it's
 not a good OS - hey, it's still FreeBSD. :-)

 Tony, I can understand that you might get the impression
 that PJ doesn't have a full understanding of the concepts
 and procedures needed to know in order to properly operate
 FreeBSD. This may be true. But he's constantly learning
 and understanding, and I think even with the troubles he
 likes to use FreeBSD (PJ, correct me if I'm wrong).

 When I came to FreeBSD (from a Linux and WEGA background,
 with lots of strange mainframe knowledge), I had similar
 trouble. I had many issues with C, too, before it became
 my primary programming language, but the fact that I can
 master FreeBSD now (at a sufficient level) is due to the
 fact that I had much good help, especially from this list,
 as well as much practice. Recognizing and resolving library
 requirements can surely be such a step into the right
 direction. It's not a state, it's a process.

 In the future, PJ will not only know that things work, but
 additionally understand *how* and *why* they work, and this
 will make him a master of FreeBSD, too.
   
Thank you for your support, Polytropon :-)

You are quite right. And I do wish I could use only FreeBSD... the
problem is that there are some limitations on compatibility with the
normal user's MS systems... OpenOffice.org is not completely
compatible with MS nor are the Adobe products completely replaceable -
mainly because the commercial printers and other users are not equipped
or compatible with Unixes. And, of course, the difficulty with learning
curves and adaptability of the unix alternatives are also deterrents. :-(

I have been working with FreeBSD in limited ways since about 1997 (if I
recall right).
I don't know if I'll ever become a master, but I am learning more by
actually using it since I am a firm believer in direct use learning.
The only reason I use MS is because most normal users use word,
illustrator, photoshop. They are a huge pain because they have a lot of
bugs that have been around for a long time and have never been properly
addressed by MS or ms developers like Adobe. Just check the web and you
will see that there are an awful lot of crash problems on the MS office,
the Windows OSs as well as the Adobe stuff. I just reinstalled the CS4
programs on a fresh XP install and immediately I'm getting errors about
harware acceleration when the system is installed on the same computer
on a different disk and was not getting those errors on the other
installation. The only reason I reinstalled the CS4 was because I wanted
to have it working cleanly with a fresh installation of MS Office which
was impossible to install/reinstall/fix on the other disk. Now the MS
Office works fine, but CS4 does not... talk about problems So,
FreeBSD is not really any more complicated. The only time I really have
problems with FreeBSD is when so;mething stupid happens, like a physical
disc suicide (mbr sector gone) or if I did something accidentally like
shutting down. I then try to learn what to do to fix things (have never
lost any data - was able to recover it), how to clone, dump, restore.
These are processes that are not simple and are not something that I
have needed before.
What is great about FreeBSD is that it is quite simple to set up,
configure and use. Problems arise when one makes errors or there are
incompatibilities caused by some installation conflicts and that seems
to be the cause of most difficulties.
For instance, I have no problem installing FreeBSD, setting up and
configuring apache, php, samba, cups, or most programs I use. Sometimes
I see inquiries on the list and know what the problem is and would be
happy to help someone but I am not secure enough to butt in. Yet I see
that it is a simple solution... follow the instructions, read the
manual, check the web and the man pages and you're likely to find the
solutuion. The list here is very hehlpful, especially for lazy guys like me.
But to study the manual is beyond the capabilities of anyone ... sure

Re: flashplugin

Tony McC wrote:
 On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:10:25 +0100
 Polytropon free...@edvax.de wrote:

   
 In Windows, things don't work without thinking. The
 misbelief that is does is grounded in the fact that
 other people have to deal with problems, while the
 user praises Windows for its easyness of use.

 In PJ's case, maybe PC-BSD is a good choice. As far as
 I know, they offer a working Flash plugin that can
 be installed by their PBI system. I haven't tested
 this because PC-BSD with its KDE centric concept simply
 isn't my cup of tea, but that doesn't mean that it's
 not a good OS - hey, it's still FreeBSD. :-)

 Tony, I can understand that you might get the impression
 that PJ doesn't have a full understanding of the concepts
 and procedures needed to know in order to properly operate
 FreeBSD. This may be true. But he's constantly learning
 and understanding, and I think even with the troubles he
 likes to use FreeBSD (PJ, correct me if I'm wrong).

 When I came to FreeBSD (from a Linux and WEGA background,
 with lots of strange mainframe knowledge), I had similar
 trouble. I had many issues with C, too, before it became
 my primary programming language, but the fact that I can
 master FreeBSD now (at a sufficient level) is due to the
 fact that I had much good help, especially from this list,
 as well as much practice. Recognizing and resolving library
 requirements can surely be such a step into the right
 direction. It's not a state, it's a process.

 In the future, PJ will not only know that things work, but
 additionally understand *how* and *why* they work, and this
 will make him a master of FreeBSD, too.
 

 Hi Polytropon,

 thanks, I hope you are right, and I would love to see PJ become a
 master of FreeBSD, but my impression from the mailing list is that that
 progress is going to be too long and too frustrating.  I suppose only
 PJ can know if he/she feels that progress is happening.  Nonetheless, I
 stand by the advice to work systematically through the handbook and try
 to gain a real understanding rather than a series of fixes.  I suppose
 I was suggesting that rather than address endless frustrating symptoms
 of what looks like a mismatch between PJ's character (not ability, I
 certainly do not wish to disparage that - by character I mean a
 reluctance to stand back, slow down and approach the learning
 systematically and to give it the time it will need) and the FreeBSD
 way of doing things, it might be better to just move to something
 more pre-packaged.  PC-BSD may well be a good choice, I haven't tried
 it.

 Oh, and you are exactly right about the kind of understanding that can
 come with spending time with FreeBSD.  But perhaps it's not for
 everyone.  
   
Hi Tony,
I understand you POV but...
I don't see why FreeBSD should not be for everyone. It sure would be
great if we could lose MS and their associate mush.

I see no reason why a FreeBSD user should have to become as master of
the system. If the software is properly set up and maintained, there
should be no need for huge techincal know-how. Your assumption is that
the user should have enough knowledge to fix bugs or problems that are
caused by technical errors and/or complexities.
Isn't it a litttle absurd that often small updates to ports/progams
cause huge problems in adapting to the new versions? Maybe that is an
indication that the original concept of the port/proram was somewhat
lacking and that just puts us right smack on a par with MS, Adobe and
all the overbloated programs associated therewith.
When FreeBSD programs are set up right and work fine it's a real
delight... but when an update or small change blows things apart and you
have to go back to kindergarden to learn a new universe... it's nt
very comforting.
Cheers.
PJ=he not she  heh...heh...heh :-)
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Re: flashplugin

Tony McC wrote:
 On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +
 Tony McC af...@btinternet.com wrote:

   
 Hi PJ,

 ok, I tried (I was also trying to offer you support, just a different
 kind). There was a lot of irrelevant material in your response but the
 part I have quoted shows such a deep misunderstanding of what I was
 trying to suggest that I think I'm done. I honestly hope you do get
 past your headaches with FreeBSD, one way or another.
 

 Replying to myself, sorry.  I think I owe you an apology for a grumpy
 response.  I think it comes down to the fact our learning styles must
 be very different.  You seem to like to try things first and then try
 to understand when things go wrong.  I like to gain a reasonably firm
 theoretical understanding first and then try out things according to a
 plan, keeping notes at each stage.  When something happens that I don't
 understand then of course I learn from that.   I think we are just
 different.  So no, I'm not suggesting you learn the manual by heart
 before going any further.  I am suggesting that you *start* with the
 manual, take it step by step, and only try things that might break your
 system when a) you think you have a firm grasp of what you are doing
 and b) you have a contingency plan to revert to the way things were
 before if something surprising happens.  And, again, as part of a
 learning style, when I do come across those uncomfortable surprises
 (and I do), I generally assume that I must have done something stupid,
 not that FreeBSD itself is stupid. That is also a learning experience
 for me.

 Best,
 Tony

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That's cool. NP.
My thing is simply... if it works use it. If it doesn't try to fix it...
and here's where you sometimes have to learn or find help.  8-)

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Re: flashplugin

Polytropon wrote:
 On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:13:02 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 And I do wish I could use only FreeBSD... the
 problem is that there are some limitations on compatibility with the
 normal user's MS systems...
 

 You're mixing up things here. Things in MICROS~1 land are
 not compatible to the rest of the world.



   
 OpenOffice.org is not completely
 compatible with MS nor are the Adobe products completely replaceable - [...]
 

 Vice versa.



   
 [...] mainly because the commercial printers and other users are not equipped
 or compatible with Unixes.
 

 That's correct. Modern printers aren't compatible (in terms
 of compatibility or compliance to existing standards). This
 is true for many other kind of devices, such as webcams, scanners
 and digital media (cameras, players).



   
 And, of course, the difficulty with learning
 curves and adaptability of the unix alternatives are also deterrents. :-(
 

 I don't think that's correct. Remember, in the past, ordinary
 users found their way with DOS and used complicated programs.
 Is there so much more dumbness around today? No. I think it's
 just the result of aggressive marketing and clever indoctrination.



   
 I don't know if I'll ever become a master, but I am learning more by
 actually using it since I am a firm believer in direct use learning.
 

 It's always wise to use experimental testing and autodicatic
 reading side by side. Of course, most people don't learn without
 making their own mistakes, but there's no need to repeat all
 the stupid mistakes that happen if a person doesn't read the
 manpage or learn about a certain syntax, concept or procedure.



   
 The only reason I use MS is because most normal users use word,
 illustrator, photoshop.
 

 Are you talking about those who use PIRATED COPIES of the programs
 you mentioned? :-)



   
 They are a huge pain because they have a lot of
 bugs that have been around for a long time and have never been properly
 addressed by MS or ms developers like Adobe.
 

 They simply aren't interested.



   
 Just check the web and you
 will see that there are an awful lot of crash problems on the MS office,
 the Windows OSs as well as the Adobe stuff. I just reinstalled the CS4
 programs on a fresh XP install and immediately I'm getting errors about
 harware acceleration when the system is installed on the same computer
 on a different disk and was not getting those errors on the other
 installation. The only reason I reinstalled the CS4 was because I wanted
 to have it working cleanly with a fresh installation of MS Office which
 was impossible to install/reinstall/fix on the other disk. Now the MS
 Office works fine, but CS4 does not... talk about problems
 

 This is the kind of user-friendly, modern and good looking
 that some people seem to expect from FreeBSD. :-)



   
 So,
 FreeBSD is not really any more complicated. The only time I really have
 problems with FreeBSD is when so;mething stupid happens, like a physical
 disc suicide (mbr sector gone) or if I did something accidentally like
 shutting down.
 

 That's exactly the point: The FreeBSD OS does what it is told to,
 it is completely predictable. If it acts strangely, there is a
 reason for it, e. g. faulty hardware, wrong command, missing
 library... In MICROS~1 land you often simply cannot tell if it
 is a defective installation, a virus, malware, or whatever, so
 you need to reinstall everything.



   
 I then try to learn what to do to fix things (have never
 lost any data - was able to recover it), how to clone, dump, restore.
 These are processes that are not simple and are not something that I
 have needed before.
 

 Hmmm... I think they are simple, but that's a very individual
 point of view. Just imagine how simple it is to use the cp
 command to copy files, and in opposite, how complicated it is
 to achieve the same using JCL. :-)

 Once you have understood a certain concept, you can rely on
 this knowledge, no matter which version of FreeBSD, which BSD
 or even which UNIX you are using. Things you've learned will
 serve you well everywhere, even in Linux. You won't find such
 an experience in MICROS~1 land.



   
 What is great about FreeBSD is that it is quite simple to set up,
 configure and use. Problems arise when one makes errors or there are
 incompatibilities caused by some installation conflicts and that seems
 to be the cause of most difficulties.
 

 As I said, this is completely correct if you consider the
 fact that the OS can only act as it is told.



   
 The list here is very hehlpful, especially for lazy guys like me.
 

 This list represents a very friendly and educated community.



   
 But to study the manual is beyond the capabilities of anyone ... sure,
 you can read it and study it... but you will forget anything you have
 read almost immediately if you are not applying what you are studying at
 once... there may

Re: flashplugin

Polytropon wrote:
 On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:55:20 -0400, Jerry ges...@yahoo.com wrote:
   
 On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:25:53 +0100
 Polytropon Polytropon free...@edvax.de replied:

 [snip]

 
 That's not FreeBSD's fault. If professional web designers
 need to optimize their content in order to prevent you from
 properly accessing it, it's their fault. I would complain to
 them, or just ignore them. Content that its creator doesn't
 want me to see is not worth seeing.
   
 You don't really believe that do you.
 

   
 Web creators attempt to make their
 sites accessible to the largest possible audience.
 

 Let's say, they *should*. I've seen (or not seen) web pages...
 for example one that doesn't even tell you which page you
 are on without Flash. Very useful for blind persons.



   
 It is probably cost
 prohibited, if even reasonably possible to make a site 100% viewable in
 every browsers (don't forget lynxs) available.
 

 In most cases where Flash is used, it is used to annoy
 users with animated advertisement (where previously animated
 GIFs had been used) or to implement something that simple
 as a list of further links (which can be done in HTML, in
 JavaScript, but shouldn't require a proprietary plugin).

 If a web page is viewable in lynx, it's high quality. The
 term quality does not refer to the amount of different
 media embedded, nor does it refer to the amount of different
 fonts, font sizes, colors and images used. It refers to what
 you said: largest possible audience. This includes all
 the exceptions, such as blind users who need a readout
 on a braille line, or a synthesized speech output.

 You can, however, achieve this with Flash, if you embed
 it correctly and maybe offer an alternative (No 'Flash'
 version) of the content. The same is for using the alt=
 and longdesc= attributes in HTML for images.

 Okay, I will be honest: Nobody does this today anymore.
 Well... I do... but I'm completely mad.



   
 Any intelligent business
 plan would dictate that they therefore concentrate on the largest
 possible audience.
 

 Let's say, the largest subset of the possible audience, that
 would be more correct. Web developers, as well as cretors
 of viruses and malware, rely on what the majority of PC users
 do use: Windows and Flash. If this is present, fine. If
 not... NO CONTENT FOR YOU! NEXT ONE! :-)



   
 This problem, like the nVidea 64 bit drivers, rests with FreeBSD.
 

 FreeBSD develops nVidia's GPUs and their drivers? I don't think
 so. For FreeBSD users there are two options on the side of
 nVidia:
   a) open up the devices and the drivers so the
  community can develop quality drivers
   b) develop quality drivers in-house and offer
  binary packages
 And of course, for the users:
   c) If it doesn't run on my OS, I don't buy it.

 FreeBSD's and X's sources are free, so it's easy to implement
 the drivers. Vice versa, it's not easy to develop drivers for
 a GPU that (FreeBSD's and X's) developers don't know enough
 about.

 According to Flash, why would you think it's okay to require
 a proprietary plugin that is developed in a closed way and
 hooks SO DEEPLY into the system that it's that hard to implement?
 And when you think about the benefits of having such a plugin...
 sometimes you are glad that you can easily TURN IT OFF.

 Again the analogy for images: Sometimes, their use makes a
 web page ugly as sin and unreadable. Then I just switch the
 images off in Opera. I don't need a plugin from an arbitrary
 company to see PNG images, and know that this company does
 not offer such a plugin for my platform, and that the plugin
 for viewing PNG images hooks deeply into the system's kernel
 so there is no 100% usable free alternative of it.

 The day that Flash is an open standard and can be used the
 same way as PNG images in a web page (and through the means
 of a web browser), I will be glad to review my attitude.



   
 You
 simply cannot expect any software developer to develop and maintain a
 product for what is in reality a niche OS.
 

 Well, I don't expect the software development company to do so.
 They have the change to make Flash a standard (by opening it).
 If they don't, it's okay, it is their right to do so. But then,
 a web developer can't expect me to buy an expensive PC with
 some Windows and a prone-to-abuse plugin of Flash just to
 see some advertisement or something else that every half-skilled
 web developer could easily implement with HTML, CSS and maybe
 JavaScript.
   

HEY, GUYS

I think you're forgetting one very important aspect of all this crap...
the fault lies with ADOBE just look at the greedy sobs - they
produce overpriced products (that, incidentally, they sell to the
kChinese at ludicrous prices  or repates and tolerate their illegal
copying) which are notoriously buggy - they bloat the OSs and never
really fix their errors they are the ones who should provide some

Re: flashplugin

2009-10-27 Thread PJ


Sergio de Almeida Lenzi wrote:
  

That is precisely why I keep an XP box nearby. There is no way in hell
that I would want to personally, or expect a colleague for that matter,
to waste valuable time getting a simple plug-in to work; especially
since I can do it in a matter of seconds on a Microsoft product.




Strange.. it has been a long time since I used a windows box... our
computers
here at home and in the offices are all freebsd... and flash works like
a charm
in 64 and 32 bits using R7.2 and 8.0... it is faster than windows, no
problem
with the browser

We use gnome 2.26 and epiphany with the libxul backend libxine as
multimedia,
and pulseaudio as audio driver...

we have several notebooks running R7.2 and some acer notebooks running
Linux too
all with gnome 2.26..  no problem at all  only 


At home, sometimes I use a windows box (ancient XP)... for a game (IL2
1946)... 




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I wish someone could explain to me why I am no longer able to install 
flashplugin ... none of the methods work for me on amy version... I have 
literally tried them all..
the latest was linux-f10 - I cleaned out all the linux stuff, umounted 
the proc sytem cleaned out everything I could find related (?) to linux 
and reinstalled. No go, no way, José!
I did catch some kind of warning that flashed by on the screen about 
Glib - seems to be gstreamer related...??? and the only thing I can find 
is the error message that flashplugin.so (or whatever the file is) could 
not be loaded because shared file libfreetype.so.6 could not be 
found... and the only libfreetype.so.6 file on the s;ystem is 
...so.6.something.something...
If the system is smart enought to not find the right file, it ought to 
be smart enought to know where this file should be and to what it is 
related... duh !

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Re: flashplugin

2009-10-27 Thread PJ

Sergio de Almeida Lenzi wrote:
 Ok... supose you use FreeBSD 7.2 P3  (last version) but the RELEASE
 should work too..

 supose you use AMD64

 1) compile a custom kernel with SEM (semaphore enable)
 (sem_enable=YES) in the loader.conf
 2) deinstall all linux stuff,  remove the /compat/linux from the
 system, deinstall all pkg with linux
 3) supose you will choose the basics... that is linux fc4
 4) mount the /proc and linprocfs  in fstab
 linproc /compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw,noauto 0 0
 proc /proc procfs rw 0 0
 5) install portmaster (recomended)
 6) portmaster -Bdg www/linuxpluginwrapper
 7) portmaster -Bdg www/linux-flashplugin9
 8) mount -a (this will mount the /proc and linprocfs
 9) nspluginwapper -v -a -i  
 10 ) if you are using epiphany. cd
 /usr/local/lib/epiphany/2.26/plugins;ln -s
 /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/*.so .
 11) make sure linux module is on the kernel..
 12) run browserand type about:plugins(this will show you the
 plugin running)


 This sure works...

The installation on the Acer travelmate 4400 turion 64bid was quite
simple - just following instructions I found for installing flashplayer9
... it went without a problem

The problem is on 7.2 p4 if I'm not mistaken on i386 - as I said, I was
able to install flashplayer9 and all went well, but the something
happened and I don't know what... now it is impossible to install any
flashplayer... I have tried them all... now I have linux-f10 with
flashplayer10 installed and all I get is an error that flashplugin.so
cannot be started because a shared file freetype.so.6 cannot be
found... It's there allright and is linked to fretype.so.6.13 or some
number like that... the fine name may not be correct as I don't have it
in front of me... but then, where is this shared file supposed to be?
The setups for the flashplayer are such a ridiculous mess that I can
only laugh...There are obviously conflicts or something screwing things
up from other programs like gimp or ImageMagic or gstreamers or some
such stuff...

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Re: flashplugin

2009-10-26 Thread PJ

Thank you very much Herbert,

I appreciate your input.
As I wrote in my original query, I had auccessfully installed the
lilnux-flashplugin9 on FreeBSD 7.2 both on a 64 bit portable _ Acer
Travelmate 4400 - and on a couple of disks on the same machine (i386). I
followed the instructions  from
http://crnl.org/blog/2008/11/01/flash-9-for-freebsd-71#comment-form

 upgrade FreeBSD. Once that's done the rest is straight forward.
 
Step 1: Enable Linux compatibility and linprocfs
Add linux_enable=YES to /etc/rc.conf. Add
compat.linux.osrelease=2.6.16 to /etc/sysctl.conf. Add
OVERRIDE_LINUX_BASE_PORT=f8 to /etc/make.conf. Add this line to /etc/fstab:
linproc /usr/compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw 0 0
Then run these commands:
mkdir -p /usr/compat/linux/proc
mount /usr/compat/linux/proc
/etc/rc.d/abi start
/etc/rc.d/sysctl start   
Step 2: Update ports and install all the needed software
You will now need to install the following ports and their
dependencies:
cd /usr/ports/emulators/linux_base-f8  make install clean
cd /usr/ports/www/linux-flashplugin9  make install clean
cd /usr/ports/www/nspluginwrapper  make install clean
Follow the nspluginwrapper instructions to enable all
available plugins:
# nspluginwrapper -v -a -i
Auto-install plugins from /usr/X11R6/lib/browser_plugins
Looking for plugins in /usr/X11R6/lib/browser_plugins
Auto-install plugins from /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-flashplugin
Looking for plugins in /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-flashplugin
Install plugin /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
into /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
Auto-install plugins from /root/.mozilla/plugins
Looking for plugins in /root/.mozilla/plugins
Restart or open Firefox 3 and enter about:plugins into your
address bar. You should see something like the following:

And that's it! Open your favourite Flash site and all should
work.
If your browser doesn't register the Shockwave Flash plugin
as pictured above, you might need to do a bit of extra work as I had to
do on one of my machines:
cd /usr/local/lib/firefox3/plugins  ln -s
/usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
I'm not sure why one of my machines needed this, but it
might happen to you so this is just a heads up.
Update: I have learned that the change with the plugin
directory is due to a change in FreeBSD's Firefox 3 port. If you're
running port version 3.0.1_1 or later you will need to use the new
plugin directory as shown above. CVS change history can be seen here.
Enjoy!
 
Worked without a problem. But while learning how to dump/restore to make
clones, I cannot imagine what happened, but I found that the machines
now had lilnux-fc4 distribution. This did not work. I have tried to
install all the versions  of  linux, except the f10, and all versions of
flashplayer 0 7, 9 and even 10 ... no way will it work...so I just have
to abandon it an accept the fact that Adobe sucks just as much as
MushWindows.

I have also tried following the instructions in the manual and have lost
a tremendous lot of time... really, this is the kind of shit that we
just don't need ... why do we tolerate the likes of Adobe and MS?
(Rhetorical question)
Thanks, anyway.
   
 
   

herbert langhans wrote:
 I have some instructions on http://freebsd.langhans.com.pl/af/index.html - 
 not updated for a while, but it might be some useful input.

 Cheers
 herb langhans


 On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 07:56:58PM -0400, PJ wrote:
   
 Is there any definitive install guide for flashplugin.
 I was able to install it on a 7.2 64bit machine and then on an i386 but
 somehow it has morphed into god-knows-what and no longer works.
 I thought I had installed it with linux-f8 emulations but I found the
 linux-f4 on the machine... so I don't know what is going on.
 Now, trying to reinstall under linux-f8 and flashplugin9 does not work...
 Adobe seems to be toally unreliable as to what they are doing with their
 software; at least from what I can see about the problems users are
 having with their products.
 So, the question - what is the latest method to get the flashplugin to
 work - what linux emulation, whick version of flashplugin... stumble,
 bumble and mumble ...
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Re: flashplugin

2009-10-26 Thread PJ

Matthew Seaman wrote:
 PJ wrote:
 Is there any definitive install guide for flashplugin.
 I was able to install it on a 7.2 64bit machine and then on an i386 but
 somehow it has morphed into god-knows-what and no longer works.

 This is what I did for a 7.2 box.  Note that there are compatibility
 issues between new versions of Linux emulation and older versions of
 FreeBSD, so don't expect this to work with anything older.

 * Make a note of all the linux-emulated software you have installed
  for later reference:

 # pkg_info -orx linux  linux-stuff

  We save the package origins in particular, because this procedure
  will result in a name change for most linux packages.

 * Delete everything linux related

 # pkg_delete -rx linux

 * Check and clean out /compat/linux -- there shouldn't be any interesting
  files left in this directory after the above step.  As I recall, when I
  did this, there was a ldconfig.hints file (which would be regenerated on
  demand), and some Acrobat related stuff under /compat/linux/home/matthew
  which I didn't care about, and which shouldn't have been there anyhow.

 # cd /compat/linux
 # find . -type f -ls
 # rm -rf *

 * Change the default Linux kernel version for emulation:

 # sysctl compat.linux.osrelease=2.6.16

  Also add compat.linux.osrelease=2.6.16 to /etc/sysctl.conf so it
  gets reset on reboots.

 * Tell the ports system we want to use Fedora-10 as the Linux base by
 adding

 OVERRIDE_LINUX_BASE_PORT=   f10
 OVERRIDE_LINUX_NONBASE_PORTS=   f10

   to /etc/make.conf.

 * Now install www/linux-f10-flashplugin10 from ports -- this should
 have all
  of the following as dependencies (modulo any version updates that may
 have
  happened since writing this):

 % pkg_info -r linux-f10-flashplugin-10.0r32
 Information for linux-f10-flashplugin-10.0r32:

 Depends on:
 Dependency: linux_base-f10-10_2
 Dependency: linux-f10-openssl-0.9.8g
 Dependency: linux-f10-openldap-2.4.12_1
 Dependency: linux-f10-libssh2-0.18
 Dependency: linux-f10-cyrus-sasl2-2.1.22
 Dependency: linux-f10-curl-7.19.4_4
 Dependency: linux-f10-nspr-4.7.4
 Dependency: linux-f10-sqlite3-3.5.9_1
 Dependency: linux-f10-nss-3.12.2.0

  if that isn't the case and you aren't getting the f10 flavour of those
  ports, double check everything you've done so far for errors, and try
 again
  from the top.

 * Add nspluginwrapper to enable Firefox to load the flash add-on:

 # portinstall www/nspluginwrapper

  (This has a dependency list as long as your arm, so it might take some
  time...)

  Following the install instructions for the nspluginwrapper package
 (which
  you can redisplay by pkg_info -Dx nspluginwrapper)  install
 whatever globally
  available plugins there are by running this as root:

 # nspluginwrapper -v -a -i

  This puts plugins into /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/ which Firefox
 should
  read.  Alternatively, install the plugins locally to your own user
 account
  by running that command under your own UID:

 % nspluginwrapper -v -a -i

 * Finally, fire up Firefox and check that it has loaded the flash
 plugin by
  typing 'about:plugins' into the URL bar.  Find a site with flash
 content[*],
  and enjoy.

 * Check the list you made at the first step, and reinstall any other
 linux
  applications you want. 
 So far I've found flash10 under Fedora10 to be pretty stable and
 inoffensive
 on FreeBSD 7.2.  You even get the sound track on Flash movies. 
 However I'm
 still running Firefox with xpi-flashblock-1.5.11.2 and
 xpi-noscript-1.9.3.3 on general principles

 Adobe Acrobat isn't working, but I think that's more to do with the
 map_at_zero stuff introduced in the last security advisory.

 Cheers,

 Matthew

 [*] I think there are one or two flash based things at YouTube.com

Much appreciated, Matthew.
I will give it a shot... maybe I should have tried to clean things out
earlier... I was just too-dumb-lazy and din't know the shortcuts you
offer above.
Will let you know... but it may take some time as I have to catch up
with lost time  energy. :-)
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Re: flashplugin

2009-10-26 Thread PJ

Freminlins wrote:
 2009/10/25 Matthew Seaman m.sea...@infracaninophile.co.uk


   
% pkg_info -r linux-f10-flashplugin-10.0r32
Information for linux-f10-flashplugin-10.0r32:

Depends on:
Dependency: linux_base-f10-10_2
Dependency: linux-f10-openssl-0.9.8g
Dependency: linux-f10-openldap-2.4.12_1
Dependency: linux-f10-libssh2-0.18
Dependency: linux-f10-cyrus-sasl2-2.1.22
Dependency: linux-f10-curl-7.19.4_4
Dependency: linux-f10-nspr-4.7.4
Dependency: linux-f10-sqlite3-3.5.9_1
Dependency: linux-f10-nss-3.12.2.0

 

 Why the hell the Flash plugin (for Linux) needs openldap and sqlite I do not
 know. SASL too for that matter.

 I must admit I gave up ever getting Flash to work RELIABLY on FreeBSD a long
 time ago. It's just too hard, too much work, and not worth the misery of
 installing heaps of crud just to get a flipping browser plugin working
 unreliably.
   
I haven't tried your last suggestion yet... but it will be the last...
I'm only wanted to be able to use it for my own development stuff - I
have to time for the youtubes and mindless twitterings. Fortunately, as
much as I hate MS, flash does work on it. But adobe and ms muck up the
system so that it lumbers along like a humpty-Dumpty overstuffed
S-car-go! ;-)
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flashplugin

2009-10-24 Thread PJ

Is there any definitive install guide for flashplugin.
I was able to install it on a 7.2 64bit machine and then on an i386 but
somehow it has morphed into god-knows-what and no longer works.
I thought I had installed it with linux-f8 emulations but I found the
linux-f4 on the machine... so I don't know what is going on.
Now, trying to reinstall under linux-f8 and flashplugin9 does not work...
Adobe seems to be toally unreliable as to what they are doing with their
software; at least from what I can see about the problems users are
having with their products.
So, the question - what is the latest method to get the flashplugin to
work - what linux emulation, whick version of flashplugin... stumble,
bumble and mumble ...
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Re: flashplugin

2009-10-24 Thread PJ

Glen Barber wrote:
Howdy,

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 7:56 PM, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:

Is there any definitive install guide for flashplugin.
I was able to install it on a 7.2 64bit machine and then on an i386 but
somehow it has morphed into god-knows-what and no longer works.

Any errors?

I was just about to add what I had forgotten...
latest fiddling with the non-working installation gives error: shared
object libdl.so.2 not found required by libflashplugin.so

And I've roamed the web trying to find solutions, but nothing really is
solid... I used some instructions from crnl.org-blog-Flash 9 for
FreeBSD 7.1 and it worked when I first installed it both on 7.2 x64bit
and i386... but that wasn't for long..

I thought I had installed it with linux-f8 emulations but I found the
linux-f4 on the machine... so I don't know what is going on.
Now, trying to reinstall under linux-f8 and flashplugin9 does not work...

I used the steps in the handbook[1] to get flash on my FreeBSD 8
machines. I never used flash on 7 because it wasn't worth the
trouble. Things have changed since.

I've been using 7.2 thinking it was to be stable for a while... oh,
well... now I'm waiting for 8 to be released before switching.

Adobe seems to be toally unreliable as to what they are doing with their
software; at least from what I can see about the problems users are
having with their products.

Any major software vendor fits in this category, IMHO.
But MS and Adobe are unbelievabley horrendous...and why they don't fix
the problems their software have had for many years already is beyond me..
Not everything
works for everyone. Computer configurations, hardware, OS, etc differ
from person to person, company to company.

Well, that's normal if the user has no idea of what they are doing...
I'd hope I know a little more than that... but that doesn't help
eityher... for instance, the only way I can get Windoze XP office to
work is to set up a new user and it works fine... the original user
just refuses to work... ridiculous... but then, I only use the damned
thing when someone else has forceed me to open what they have made...

So, the question - what is the latest method to get the flashplugin to
work - what linux emulation, whick version of flashplugin... stumble,
bumble and mumble ...

[1] -
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop-browsers.html#MOZ-FLASH-PLUGIN

Yeah, I had installed that and it worked fine... but now it no longer
works... I had it on two machines and two installations of 7.2 on the
same machine... but now ... it no longer works... and I don't understand
why... I did install gimp and inksckape on one of the installations, but
neither the other nor this one wanted to work... so hurray for adobe and
Linux... I waste more time trying to get their stuff to work without
hindrances and

Thanks for the suggestions.
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Re: glabel clarification

2009-10-20 Thread PJ

Polytropon wrote:
 On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:12:06 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 this is ad12; ad6 is the same - I guess I hae to get rid of those labels
 in ad6 but am not sure if I need to use glabel to remove them or if just
 editing fstab will do it?
 

 You could indicate if a given disk is your working disk (w)
 or your backup disk (b). A possible fstab would look like
 this:

 The working disk:
   /dev/label/w-swap none  swap  sw  0  0
   /dev/label/w-rootfs   / ufs   rw  1  1
   /dev/label/w-tmp  /tmp  ufs   rw  2  2
   /dev/label/w-var  /var  ufs   rw  2  2
   /dev/label/w-usr  /usr  ufs   rw  2  2
   /dev/label/w-home /home ufs   rw  2  2
   /dev/label/w-backups  /backups  ufs   rw  2  2

 The backup disk:
   /dev/label/b-swap none  swap  sw  0  0
   /dev/label/b-rootfs   / ufs   rw  1  1
   /dev/label/b-tmp  /tmp  ufs   rw  2  2
   /dev/label/b-var  /var  ufs   rw  2  2
   /dev/label/b-usr  /usr  ufs   rw  2  2
   /dev/label/b-home /home ufs   rw  2  2
   /dev/label/b-backups  /backups  ufs   rw  2  2

 (Note that I sorted the partitions by usage priority.)

 The downside is that you would have to keep a difference
 between /etc/fstab(w) and /etc/fstab(b). On its own, each
 disk will work on any controller (because of proper labels).

 Funny question: What happens if a system has access to
 two disks with labelled partitions where the labels are
 identical?
   
Exactly what is happening on my system. That's basically what has been
troubling me. I cloned ad12 to ad6 and then wanted to boot from ad6...
well, everytime I boot from ad6 the boot is from ad12 because both have
identical labels. The only way out is to change the labels on ad6 to
point to ad6 partitions and not to /dev/label/name.
So the only reason to use glabel, in my case, is to boot from the clone
on another system without worrying about the actual disk label. Once
it's booted, the label can be changed to conform to the label on the new
system.
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glabel clarification

I understood that labeling a disk with glabel would permit the disk to
be switched to another system and booting from that disk would not
require other manupulations than adjusting network configuration, samba,
rc.conf and a few others..
But what if there is already a disk on the system with the identical
labels in /dev/label/ ?
I understood that whatever the actual disk might be (ad4, ad12,
ad1...)would be irrelevant?
It would appear that the actual booting goes according to the label; so,
if there are duplicate labels the boot will not necessarily be from the
newly installed disk if there is another disk with duplicate glabel labels?
So doing a glabel seems superfluous...
What then is the real purpose of glabel, since the boot process seems to
need a unique identifier?

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Re: glabel clarification

Johan Hendriks wrote:
 I understood that labeling a disk with glabel would permit the disk to
 be switched to another system and booting from that disk would not
 require other manupulations than adjusting network configuration,
 
 samba,
   
 rc.conf and a few others..
 But what if there is already a disk on the system with the identical
 labels in /dev/label/ ?
 I understood that whatever the actual disk might be (ad4, ad12,
 ad1...)would be irrelevant?
 It would appear that the actual booting goes according to the label;
 
 so,
   
 if there are duplicate labels the boot will not necessarily be from the
 newly installed disk if there is another disk with duplicate glabel
 
 labels?
   
 So doing a glabel seems superfluous...
 What then is the real purpose of glabel, since the boot process seems
 
 to
   
 need a unique identifier?
 

 Switching between machines is not what labels are for.(enlighten me if
 it is)
 As far as understand, it makes switching the drive in the same machine
 easier.
 It does not matter if labels are used, that the device is seen as
 /dev/ad0 or /dev/ad{x}.
 This makes adding and replacing disk much easier.
 Sometimes the disk numbers change when removing raid controllers or
 other hardware.
   
Here are my specifics:
I just cloned disk - ad6 from ad12...
I assume that the two are identical except for their bios assignments -
that is ad6 and ad12. Other than that they are quite identical, or 
should be.
ad12 was just glabeled, so I would assume that the clone would have all
the identical information - anyway, it looks like it does.
To test things, I booted from ad12 and then from ad6 but the boot is
always from ad12 - this is evidenced from changing the motd on ad6s1a...
the fstab on both ad4 and ad12 are identical... and dmesg shows the boot
device... so, where have I erred?

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Re: glabel clarification

Johan Hendriks wrote:
 I understood that labeling a disk with glabel would permit the disk to
 be switched to another system and booting from that disk would not
 require other manupulations than adjusting network configuration,
 
 samba,
   
 rc.conf and a few others..
 But what if there is already a disk on the system with the identical
 labels in /dev/label/ ?
 I understood that whatever the actual disk might be (ad4, ad12,
 ad1...)would be irrelevant?
 It would appear that the actual booting goes according to the label;
 
 so,
   
 if there are duplicate labels the boot will not necessarily be from the
 newly installed disk if there is another disk with duplicate glabel
 
 labels?
   
 So doing a glabel seems superfluous...
 What then is the real purpose of glabel, since the boot process seems
 
 to
   
 need a unique identifier?
 

 Switching between machines is not what labels are for.(enlighten me if
 it is)
 As far as understand, it makes switching the drive in the same machine
 easier.
 It does not matter if labels are used, that the device is seen as
 /dev/ad0 or /dev/ad{x}.
 This makes adding and replacing disk much easier.
 Sometimes the disk numbers change when removing raid controllers or
 other hardware.
   
Yes, this is true and that is why I thought that glabel would work; I am
trying to set up my computers with identical clones that I can update
with changes on the master machine from time to time and thus prevent
data loss in case of problems. So I use ad12 as the main system; if it
were to crash I would then boot from ad6 which is identical. But the
/etc/fstab is identical in both machines. So if I boot from ad6, I will
get booted from ad12 ... so that doesn't work. It looks like we need an
unique identifier for each disk.
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Re: glabel clarification

Adam Vande More wrote:
 On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:26 AM, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:

 Yes, this is true and that is why I thought that glabel would
 work; I am
 trying to set up my computers with identical clones that I can update
 with changes on the master machine from time to time and thus prevent
 data loss in case of problems. So I use ad12 as the main system; if it
 were to crash I would then boot from ad6 which is identical. But the
 /etc/fstab is identical in both machines. So if I boot from ad6, I
 will
 get booted from ad12 ... so that doesn't work. It looks like we
 need an
 unique identifier for each disk.


 Why not use gmirror?


 -- 
 Adam Vande More
I've been having such headaches with glabel, I didn't want to get a
migraine. ;-)
Actually, I don't know gmirror but will look it up and see whatit can do
for me.
Thanks.
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Re: glabel clarification

Adam Vande More wrote:
 On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:26 AM, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:

 Yes, this is true and that is why I thought that glabel would
 work; I am
 trying to set up my computers with identical clones that I can update
 with changes on the master machine from time to time and thus prevent
 data loss in case of problems. So I use ad12 as the main system; if it
 were to crash I would then boot from ad6 which is identical. But the
 /etc/fstab is identical in both machines. So if I boot from ad6, I
 will
 get booted from ad12 ... so that doesn't work. It looks like we
 need an
 unique identifier for each disk.


 Why not use gmirror?


 -- 
 Adam Vande More
because I am not using RAID. :-(
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Re: glabel clarification

Adam Vande More wrote:
 On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:35 AM, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:

 Adam Vande More wrote:
  On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:26 AM, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca
  mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
 
  Yes, this is true and that is why I thought that glabel would
  work; I am
  trying to set up my computers with identical clones that I
 can update
  with changes on the master machine from time to time and
 thus prevent
  data loss in case of problems. So I use ad12 as the main
 system; if it
  were to crash I would then boot from ad6 which is identical.
 But the
  /etc/fstab is identical in both machines. So if I boot from
 ad6, I
  will
  get booted from ad12 ... so that doesn't work. It looks like we
  need an
  unique identifier for each disk.
 
 
  Why not use gmirror?
 
 
  --
  Adam Vande More
 because I am not using RAID. :-(


 gmirror + ggated = disk or slice replicated to remote system

 -- 
 Adam Vande More
You ae trying to give me a migraine. :-)
But what happens if the disks are not identical in size? Dump/restore
allows for that; dump/restore will copy only the used date and not the
entire partition or slice.
 
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Re: glabel clarification

Adam Vande More wrote:
 On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:46 AM, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:

 Adam Vande More wrote:
  On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:35 AM, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca
  mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
 
  Adam Vande More wrote:
   On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:26 AM, PJ
 af.gour...@videotron.ca mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca
  mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca
   mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca
  mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
  
   Yes, this is true and that is why I thought that
 glabel would
   work; I am
   trying to set up my computers with identical clones that I
  can update
   with changes on the master machine from time to time and
  thus prevent
   data loss in case of problems. So I use ad12 as the main
  system; if it
   were to crash I would then boot from ad6 which is
 identical.
  But the
   /etc/fstab is identical in both machines. So if I boot
 from
  ad6, I
   will
   get booted from ad12 ... so that doesn't work. It
 looks like we
   need an
   unique identifier for each disk.
  
  
   Why not use gmirror?
  
  
   --
   Adam Vande More
  because I am not using RAID. :-(
 
 
  gmirror + ggated = disk or slice replicated to remote system
 
  --
  Adam Vande More
 You ae trying to give me a migraine. :-)
 But what happens if the disks are not identical in size? Dump/restore
 allows for that; dump/restore will copy only the used date and not the
 entire partition or slice.


 It depends on what your end goals is which is still not entirely
 clear.  Do you want a disk that can be unplugged from a machine and
 used to boot immediately in your orginal system in case of hd
 failure.  If yes then gmirror + ggated is the way to go.  If you
 simply want data to be backed up on regular basis, something like
 rsync is easier.


 -- 
 Adam Vande More
Actually, I have been trying to clone a disk and then install the disk
in another machine or same clone in several machines. That's why I
thought that once the clone is make it would boot on any machine. This
in presuming that each clone is identical including the fstab file; I
understood that this would allow immediate bootup regardless of what the
disk may be ad4, ad1, ad12 or whatever. This would permit changing the
necessary configurations of samba, network, etc. Now I see that it
doesn't work that way. I can still clone the disk but then just have to
find what disk is the clone.
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Re: glabel clarification

Adam Vande More wrote:
 On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 10:58 AM, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca
 mailto:af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:

 Actually, I have been trying to clone a disk and then install the disk
 in another machine or same clone in several machines. That's why I
 thought that once the clone is make it would boot on any machine. This
 in presuming that each clone is identical including the fstab file; I
 understood that this would allow immediate bootup regardless of
 what the
 disk may be ad4, ad1, ad12 or whatever. This would permit changing the
 necessary configurations of samba, network, etc. Now I see that it
 doesn't work that way. I can still clone the disk but then just
 have to
 find what disk is the clone.


 Are all the systems identical?� If so, make sure cabling is identical
 as well then gmirror clone would work as well.

 Also my understanding of glabel is different than mentioned above.� As
 long as fstab mounts the glabel location eg /dev/ufs/label it should
 be portable across systems since that info is stored as meta data on
 the drive.

 What does your fstab look like?
# DeviceMountpointFStypeOptionsDumpPass#
/dev/label/swapnoneswapsw00
/dev/label/rootfs/ufsrw11
/dev/label/backups/backupsufsrw22
/dev/label/home/homeufsrw22
/dev/label/tmp/tmpufsrw22
/dev/label/usr/usrufsrw22
/dev/label/var/varufsrw22
/dev/acd0/cdromcd9660ro,noauto00
linproc  /usr/compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw 0 0

this is ad12; ad6 is the same - I guess I hae to get rid of those labels
in ad6 but am not sure if I need to use glabel to remove them or if just
editing fstab will do it?
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Re: glabel clarification

Adam Vande More wrote:
 On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 12:12 PM, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:

   
 # DeviceMountpointFStypeOptionsDumpPass#
 /dev/label/swapnoneswapsw00
 /dev/label/rootfs/ufsrw11
 /dev/label/backups/backupsufsrw22
 /dev/label/home/homeufsrw22
 /dev/label/tmp/tmpufsrw22
 /dev/label/usr/usrufsrw22
 /dev/label/var/varufsrw22
 /dev/acd0/cdromcd9660ro,noauto00
 linproc  /usr/compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw 0 0

 this is ad12; ad6 is the same - I guess I hae to get rid of those labels
 in ad6 but am not sure if I need to use glabel to remove them or if just
 editing fstab will do it?

 

 You need to use gmirror.  If you get it to clone a disk following these
 instructions

 http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/geom-mirror.html

 the disk will boot up on the new machine no problem provided hardware
 compatibility.  Get rid of any label/fstab work you've done so far and
 follow that page.
   
I am trying to digest the procedure.
Forgive me if I am a little slow, but I want to be sure to do it right.
1. this procedure requres that both diisks be identical... ?? This is
not always possible... I'm not sure I have that possibility at the
moment and I don't want to empty other disks from other machines.
2. I am trying to under stand if the procedure is to be done from the
active disk, say ad4 and the idea is to copy ad4 to say ad6? Or should I
be running on a third disk, say ad12 and be copying ad4 to ad6?
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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

2009-10-18 Thread PJ

Bob Hall wrote:
 On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 05:36:43PM -0400, PJ wrote:
   
 Bob Hall wrote:
 
 On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 02:34:40AM +, Mark wrote:
   
   
 Actually, this has got very little to do with being a native English
 speaker or not. It's ere a matter of intonation (which, in writing, can
 only be conveyed to a certain degree, of course). 'Should' can certainly
 mean Don't try that. As in:

 Will the ice hold me?
 Well, technically it should.

 (Meaning: it probably will, but I'm not overly confident.)
 
 
 Actually, what's happening here is dropping part of a sentence. It's
 common in English to shorten
 Yea, it should work, but it doesn't.
   
   
 Absolutely not! There is nothing to suggest either statement above. If
 one says it should work, it can mean (of course, it changes within
 different contexts) that all is ok and normal conditions (whatever they
 may be) will allow things to function correctly. There is certainly no
 implication about confidence... where do you get that? 
 

 From common English usage. Specifically, where? Australia, England, Russia, 
 France, USA, Canada... Again, that is your personal interpretation and 
 certainly not common English usage. Or better yet, try common sense. Or, 
 better yet, you *should* go back to school.
   

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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

2009-10-18 Thread PJ

Manolis Kiagias wrote:
 PJ wrote:
   
 Manolis Kiagias wrote:
   
 
 PJ wrote:
   
 
   
 Manolis, my state of mind is quite clear... and I'm coping with
 everything quite allright... I'm not about to get mad at anyone or
 anything...
 but tell me, honestly, when you see the stuff I have described above?
 Woldn't that confuse anyone in their right mind?

   
 
   
 
 I am sorry, but there is something here, either some mistake on your
 part or some other weird problem on your system I can not think of.

 I don't seem to remember glabel ever failing to store metadata, unless
 1) The device is non-existing 2) The device is mounted.
 As a matter of fact, I did the glabel stuff on a machine a few hours
 ago. This was already fully installed, I rebooted single user and was
 done in less than 2 minutes.
 And yes, if you get a metadata error, it means nothing was done so you
 are *not* to go and change fstab!

 Could you  please send us /etc/fstab and the results of ls /dev/ad*
   
 
   
 Here are the outputs:

 fstab:
 # DeviceMountpointFStypeOptionsDumpPass#
 /dev/ad12s1bnoneswapsw00
 /dev/ad12s1a/ufsrw11
 /dev/ad12s1h/backupsufsrw22
 /dev/ad12s1g/homeufsrw22
 /dev/ad12s1d/tmpufsrw22
 /dev/ad12s1f/usrufsrw22
 /dev/ad12s1e/varufsrw22
 /dev/acd0/cdromcd9660ro,noauto00
 linproc  /usr/compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw 0 0

 df:
 Filesystem   1K-blocksUsedAvail Capacity  Mounted on
 /dev/ad12s1a   2026030  319112  154483617%/
 devfs1   10   100%/dev
 /dev/ad12s1h  50777034   4 46714868 0%/backups
 /dev/ad12s1g  50777034 6276538 4043833413%/home
 /dev/ad12s1d   4058062  36  3733382 0%/tmp
 /dev/ad12s1f  50777034 5729324 4098554812%/usr
 /dev/ad12s1e   2026030  176070  1687878 9%/var
 linprocfs4   40   100%/usr/compat/linux/proc

 # ls /dev/ad*
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0,  97 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad0
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 103 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad0s1
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 101 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 106 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 121 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1a
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 122 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1b
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 123 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1c
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 124 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1d
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 125 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1e
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 126 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1f
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 127 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1g
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 102 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 107 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 128 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1a
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 129 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1b
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 130 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1c
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 131 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1d
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 132 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1e
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 133 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1f
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 134 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1g
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 135 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1h
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0,  99 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 104 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 108 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1a
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 109 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1b
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 110 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1c
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 111 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1d
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 112 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1e
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 113 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1f
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 114 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1g
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 100 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 105 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 115 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1a
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 116 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1b
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 117 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1c
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 118 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1d
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 119 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1e
 crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 120 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1f

 Sorry, but I don't see what this is going to tell you... ad0 is XP; ad10
 is minimal FreeBSD 7.2; ad12 is 7.2 on 500gb; ad4 is 7.2 on 80gb; and
 ad6 is messed up FBSD I'm cheking  setting up with clone of ad12
 (dump/restore)
 Now I will try the glabel again...
 # shutdown now
 # glabel label rootfs /dev/ad12s1a
 glabel: Can't

Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

2009-10-18 Thread PJ

Ian Smith wrote:
 PJ,

 having (in this case at least) the luxury of reading freebsd-questions 
 as a digest, I'm going to quote a few of your extracts from several 
 messages, largely without surounding context, as it's all incredibly 
 repetitive, masively overquoted and mostly just grasping for ambiguity 
 as Warren Block so eloquently put it.

   To be as precise as possible, it means normally it should work so go
   ahead; then the question is - what do you mean by normally.
   In our case above, the instructions were to do the operation with the
   disk not in use and the os in SUM. That's very clear. Now, I f they
   wanted to point out a bug, the bug means that there is an anomaly under
   certain circumstances - and in this case there really is no bug as it is
   very clear as to how the instructions should be used. If they consider
   the operation under a live files system a bug, then they should just
   make a warning and say something along the lines of do not use on live
   system as that may destroy data or something to that effect.

 I think you're only being so obtuse about this because you haven't had 
 much experience reading man pages, and seem to expect them to conform to 
 some sort of English Literary standards that are entirely inapplicable.

   Just a note: I find it strange that nobody looked into the problem of
   the confusion... I thought I had pointed out where the co;nfusion
   arises... and no one seems to have either understood the inconsistencies
   or bothere to read the explanation... oh well... let's keep on
   blundering away... ;-)

 Must we?  The confusion, and the seems-like-a-hundred messages it's now 
 spawned, is all yours.  Many have tried relentlessly and unsuccessfully 
 to explain to you what just about everyone else has had no difficulty in 
 understanding, because they don't try applying linguistic contortions to 
 a simple statement by its (entirely English-speaking) authors.

  M. McKusick, W. Joy, S. Leffler, and R. Fabry, A Fast File System for
  UNIX, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 2, 3, pp 181-197, August
  1984, (reprinted in the BSD System Manager's Manual, SMM:5).

 BUGS
  This utility should work on active file systems.

  You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish.

 If you want to see the _fascinating_ history of the tunefs(8) man page:
   http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sbin/tunefs/tunefs.8

 First go right down the bottom, Rev 1.1, and choose 'annotated' view .. 
 you'll see the original text committed by Rodney Grimes.  If you don't 
 know who Marshall McKusick, Bill Joy, Sam Leffler and Robert Fabry are, 
 do some googling, or start at http://www.mckusick.com/articles.html

 Rev 1.4 adds an interesting warning .. perhaps some pedant had suggested 
 that a little humour was inappropriate :)  At some later point, mckusick 
 corrected the spelling of 'Daemon', and later ru@ changed can't to 
 cannot (FFS!).  This is a very carefully considered BUGS section, with 
 over 15 years' of history.  Mess with it at your peril :)

   What in the world is RFC 2119? (that's a rhetorical question) I
   prefer to stick to orinary dictionaries, like Oxford, Collins, Webster...
   then again, my college university studies were in English lit... but I'm
   afraid I have have neglected that and have been somewhat dragged down to
   the level of the plebes in the hope they may catch some of my
   meanings... :-D

 You need to use the right terms in the appropriate context, and it's 
 best to try avoiding condescension when dealing with people who may not 
 have attained your literary qualifications, but who clearly know a hell 
 of a lot more about this subject than you do.

 If you don't know about RFCs you'll get lost with lots of UNIX (and 
 other computer system) references.  Google is your (and our!) friend.

I understand that I'm confused :)

 Ok.

Actually, what's happening here is dropping part of a sentence. It's
common in English to shorten
 Yea, it should work, but it doesn't.
  
   Absolutely not! There is nothing to suggest either statement above. If
   one says it should work, it can mean (of course, it changes within
   different contexts) that all is ok and normal conditions (whatever they
   may be) will allow things to function correctly. There is certainly no
   implication about confidence... where do you get that? It can mean ver
   confident just as well. And dropping a sentence is a very presumptuous
   assumption. but is doesn't is a specific condition... and there can me
   innumerable conditions.

 Semantic obfuscation and failure to understand usage of 'BUGS' sections.  
 Try reading a whole lot more manpages to get their drift, eg what would 
 you make of BUGS: bound to be some without knowing the wisdom therein?

   In the end, it's up to the author to clarify... I don't understand what
   he's trying to do as on my stem his instructions/example just do

Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Polytropon wrote:
 On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:29:04 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 It is simple to understand Emglish but not so simple what was meant by
 whoever wrote it...I cannot correct something that I do not uderstand...
 come on, man, that should be easy to understand.
 

 As English is not my native language, I *now* understand the
 meaning of it should; in this case, it seems to mean something
 like basically, it is supposed to, but in this case, it does
 not, regarding the desired action.
   
To be as precise as possible, it means normally it should work so go
ahead; then the question is - what do you mean by normally.
In our case above, the instructions were to do the operation with the
disk not in use and the os in SUM. That's very clear. Now, I f they
wanted to point out a bug, the bug means that there is an anomaly under
certain circumstances - and in this case there really is no bug as it is
very clear as to how the instructions should be used. If they consider
the operation under a live files system a bug, then they should just
make a warning and say something along the lines of do not use on live
system as that may destroy data or something to that effect.



   
 I am afraid that with all the globalization people still do not
 understand that translations should be left to experts... an by that I
 mean the final version should always, and I mean always, be by a native
 speaking person.
 

 It's still possible that non-native speakers misunderstand.
   
Of course... but what you need is cooperation between the two - and both
should have some understanding of the particular area of expertise they
are dealing with.

Just a note: I find it strange that nobody looked into the problem of
the confusion... I thought I had pointed out where the co;nfusion
arises... and no one seems to have either understood the inconsistencies
or bothere to read the explanation... oh well... let's keep on
blundering away... ;-)
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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Mark wrote:
 -Original Message-
 From: owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org 
 [mailto:owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of PJ
 Sent: zaterdag 17 oktober 2009 3:50
 To: Steve Bertrand
 Cc: Polytropon; freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
 Subject: Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

 but from man tunefs:
 BUGS
 This utility should work on active file systems.
 What in hades does this mean--just above it says cannot be run on
 active file systems. ???

 It should. This means: Don't try that. :-)

 My printer isn't printing!
 But it should.
 No, it is not printing!
 Yes, but it should.
 :-)

 Actually, this has got very little to do with being a native English
 speaker or not. It's ere a matter of intonation (which, in writing, can
 only be conveyed to a certain degree, of course). 'Should' can certainly
 mean Don't try that. As in:

 Will the ice hold me?
 Well, technically it should.

 (Meaning: it probably will, but I'm not overly confident.)

 Aha! Gotcha! Whoever wrote that has made an unintentionnal booboo. It
 is a subtle difference and is indicative that whoever wrote it is not
 a native english user... the meaning is clearly should be executed,
 done, carried out, performed

 The meaning of 'should' is not nearly as narrow as you suggest. Often it
 also denotes reservation (as in the above example). To illustrate once
 more:

 Can I run dump on an active file system?
 It *should* run on an active file system, provided (enumerations of
 conditions which would need to be met; like preferably no disk-activity
 when making the backup).

 (Meaning: it can be done, but it's ill-advised, really.) And clearly it
 does not mean should be executed, done, carried out, performed.

 Another one:

 Will he run for President?
 Well, he should be able to get enough votes.

 (Meaning: if everything goes as planned, he might succeed, but it's by no
 means guaranteed he'll actually get enough votes).

 So, given the right intonation and context, This utility should work on
 active file systems. can certainly be understood to mean one could
 technically do so, but that it's not recommended.

 - Mark

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I think you're trying to take the meaning of should a little too
far... to keep it simple, and without trying to intellectualize it, it
simply means (and this can change within certain contexts) normally, it
should work (in our context, here) but there is no implication of any
warnings or dangers ... the normally is implied, the rest you can do
with it as you wish, obviously at your rist... but even then the
interpretation goes too far. As I suggested to Polytropon, in this
particular case the instructions for the implementation of the procedure
are very clear: use on an inactive system or SUM... so where's the
bug... to suggest that it should work on an active system is confusing
- if the author thought it important that it wouldl not work on an
active system, perhaps he should have merely said do not use on an
active system... that would be consistent and very clear. ;-)
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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Warren Block wrote:
 On Fri, 16 Oct 2009, Bob Hall wrote:
 On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 07:27:42PM -0400, PJ wrote:
 BUGS
 This utility should work on active file systems.

 I'm a native English speaker, and the manual makes perfect sense to me.
 It's very clear to me that since the statement is in the BUGS section,
 it means that the utility should, but doesn't. Since it follows a
 statement that the utility doesn't, the meaning is unambiguous.

 I understand it, but see ambiguity in the word should.  Easy enough
 to rewrite:

 BUGS
 This utility does not work on active file systems.

 Now here's my challenge to PJ: use send-pr(1) or the web PR interface
 at http://www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html to submit this as a doc bug
 report.

 That's how FreeBSD gets better, and how you help the next person in
 the same situation.

 -Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA

As I mentioned earlier, I do not understand what the author really
intended, so I am out of place making any judgments. All I was saying is
that my understanding of all the instructions I found was and still is
confused... as I mentioned, changing this is between the author and
whoever translated, if that is the case. For me, I would still like to
hear from somone who could clear up the confusion... read my explanation
of what I found in themanuals and you will perhaps understand what is
confusing (tunefs and glabel appear to be stumbling over each other and
criss-crossing instructions.
From the way things are written, it would appear that one must do tunefs
before doing glabel and that they are interdependent. But tunefs says to
do tunefs /home /disk-slice yet glabel is dealing with partitions...
what does /home supposed to be a specific directory or a partition and
how does it relate to the disk? And then, how does it relate to glabel?

Manolis seems to have cleared things slightly on how to use glabel, but
strangely it did not work for me. I am about to try again and will sen
the fstab and ls disk prinouts as soon as I have another little problem
sorted out... shortly or tomorrow. Sorry.
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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Manolis Kiagias wrote:
 PJ wrote:
   
 Manolis, my state of mind is quite clear... and I'm coping with
 everything quite allright... I'm not about to get mad at anyone or
 anything...
 but tell me, honestly, when you see the stuff I have described above?
 Woldn't that confuse anyone in their right mind?

   
 

 I am sorry, but there is something here, either some mistake on your
 part or some other weird problem on your system I can not think of.

 I don't seem to remember glabel ever failing to store metadata, unless
 1) The device is non-existing 2) The device is mounted.
 As a matter of fact, I did the glabel stuff on a machine a few hours
 ago. This was already fully installed, I rebooted single user and was
 done in less than 2 minutes.
 And yes, if you get a metadata error, it means nothing was done so you
 are *not* to go and change fstab!

 Could you  please send us /etc/fstab and the results of ls /dev/ad*
   
Here are the outputs:

fstab:
# DeviceMountpointFStypeOptionsDumpPass#
/dev/ad12s1bnoneswapsw00
/dev/ad12s1a/ufsrw11
/dev/ad12s1h/backupsufsrw22
/dev/ad12s1g/homeufsrw22
/dev/ad12s1d/tmpufsrw22
/dev/ad12s1f/usrufsrw22
/dev/ad12s1e/varufsrw22
/dev/acd0/cdromcd9660ro,noauto00
linproc  /usr/compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw 0 0

df:
Filesystem   1K-blocksUsedAvail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ad12s1a   2026030  319112  154483617%/
devfs1   10   100%/dev
/dev/ad12s1h  50777034   4 46714868 0%/backups
/dev/ad12s1g  50777034 6276538 4043833413%/home
/dev/ad12s1d   4058062  36  3733382 0%/tmp
/dev/ad12s1f  50777034 5729324 4098554812%/usr
/dev/ad12s1e   2026030  176070  1687878 9%/var
linprocfs4   40   100%/usr/compat/linux/proc

# ls /dev/ad*
crw-r-  1 root  operator0,  97 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad0
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 103 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad0s1
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 101 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 106 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 121 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1a
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 122 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1b
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 123 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1c
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 124 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1d
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 125 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1e
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 126 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1f
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 127 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad10s1g
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 102 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 107 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 128 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1a
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 129 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1b
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 130 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1c
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 131 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1d
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 132 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1e
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 133 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1f
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 134 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1g
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 135 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad12s1h
crw-r-  1 root  operator0,  99 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 104 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 108 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1a
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 109 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1b
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 110 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1c
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 111 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1d
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 112 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1e
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 113 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1f
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 114 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad4s1g
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 100 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 105 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 115 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1a
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 116 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1b
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 117 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1c
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 118 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1d
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 119 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1e
crw-r-  1 root  operator0, 120 Oct 17 16:36 /dev/ad6s1f

Sorry, but I don't see what this is going to tell you... ad0 is XP; ad10
is minimal FreeBSD 7.2; ad12 is 7.2 on 500gb; ad4 is 7.2 on 80gb; and
ad6 is messed up FBSD I'm cheking  setting up with clone of ad12
(dump/restore)
Now I will try the glabel again...
# shutdown now
# glabel label rootfs /dev/ad12s1a
glabel: Can't store metadata on /dev/ad0s1a

manual: it is assumed that a single ATA disk is used, which is
currently recognized by the system as ad0. It is also assumed

Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Steve Bertrand wrote:
 PJ wrote:
   
 Steve Bertrand wrote:
 
 PJ wrote:
   
   
 Polytropon wrote:
 
 
 On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:54:23 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
   
   
   
 but from man tunefs:
 BUGS
 This utility should work on active file systems.
 What in hades does this mean--just above it says cannot be run on active
 file systems. ???
 
 
 
 It should. This means: Don't try that. :-)

 My printer isn't printing!
 But it should.
 No, it is not printing!
 Yes, but it should.
 :-)

   
   
   
 Aha! Gotcha! Whoever wrote that has made an unintentionnal booboo. It is
 a subtle difference and is indicative that whoever wrote it is not a
 native english user... the meaning is clearly should be executed, done,
 carried out, performed - should work means it  can be carried out  - I
 think the author meant to say should not be done
 
 
 If you feel that you've found a 'bug' within the manual/documentation of
 a piece of software or function, I highly recommend that you pass it by
 other users/developers ( as you've kind-of done here ), and then contact
 the person who is normally listed in the AUTHOR section of the man page
 after you get a consensus on whether the manual, the code or you have
 the bug :)

 If you believe the problem is an engish-linguistic one (and the man page
 is written in english), let the author know this. Provide the correct
 verbiage, and an explanation of what your words mean compared to theirs
 (remember, english may not be their first language).

 Also, take a look at RFC 2119 for the keyword 'SHOULD' and 'SHOULD NOT'.
 RFC 2119 is highly regarded as the authority for many keywords, and a
 quick reference of it may help when trying to explain to an author where
 you feel their documentation is incorrect (or lacking).
   
What in the world is RFC 2119? (that's a rhetorical question) I
prefer to stick to orinary dictionaries, like Oxford, Collins, Webster...
then again, my college university studies were in English lit... but I'm
afraid I have have neglected that and have been somewhat dragged down to
the level of the plebes in the hope they may catch some of my
meanings... :-D
 Cheers,

 Steve

   
   
 It is simple to understand Emglish but not so simple what was meant by
 whoever wrote it...I cannot correct something that I do not uderstand...
 come on, man, that should be easy to understand.
 

 I understand that I'm confused :)

   
 I am afraid that with all the globalization people still do not
 understand that translations should be left to experts... an by that I
 mean the final version should always, and I mean always, be by a native
 speaking person.
 

 That's an unfair thing to say. Are you saying that if someone with a
 French native tongue wrote software that would benefit everyone, and
 they wrote the manual in English to reach a broader audience, that the
 manual shouldn't be released unless proof-read and re-written by an
 English native?
   
YES! There are plenty of people who would be happy to help the guy get
the translation right... would you want someone to get a hold of a
weapon and then misuse it because the instructions are in sanskrit?
 Vous faire ce travail, mon ami? Je n'aime pas d'accord avec votre
 utilisation du mot doit.
   
You are definitely not a frog... ;-)
 ...the manual is available. I didn't mean to dis-respect you, I just
 meant that if one 'could' help, then the developer is the one to hit up.
   

   
 I speak english, french, italian, some spanish and german as well as
 latvian... but I would never attempt to translate into any language
 other than English... and then not without the help of the original
 language's originator. ;-)
 

 Nice... How 'bout Dutch ;) You will understand then:

 Ne dis pas que la documentation ne peuvent etre ecrites par un auteur si
 leur lange nest pas une espece indigen. 
   
Duh... that's not Dutch...
Nice try... your Frenchreminds me of my German... great pronunciation,
but the grammar is horrible  ;-)
Too many years ago I knew it well.
 Steve

   

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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Bob Hall wrote:
 On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 02:34:40AM +, Mark wrote:
   
 Actually, this has got very little to do with being a native English
 speaker or not. It's ere a matter of intonation (which, in writing, can
 only be conveyed to a certain degree, of course). 'Should' can certainly
 mean Don't try that. As in:

 Will the ice hold me?
 Well, technically it should.

 (Meaning: it probably will, but I'm not overly confident.)
 

 Actually, what's happening here is dropping part of a sentence. It's
 common in English to shorten
   Yea, it should work, but it doesn't.
   
Absolutely not! There is nothing to suggest either statement above. If
one says it should work, it can mean (of course, it changes within
different contexts) that all is ok and normal conditions (whatever they
may be) will allow things to function correctly. There is certainly no
implication about confidence... where do you get that? It can mean ver
confident just as well. And dropping a sentence is a very presumptuous
assumption. but is doesn't is a specific condition... and there can me
innumerable conditions.
If you look at the immediate context of what we are dealing with here,
the author has clearly stated use in SUM and that implies an unmounted
system. If he considers using it on an active system as a bug, then he
should be clear about it and say do not use on an active system.

 to
   Yea, it should work.
 In order to catch the meaning, you have to be aware of context.

 Contrary to the OP's claim, this shows a pretty good grasp of English
 idiom. It's definitely not evidence that the man author is not a native
 speaker of English.

 On the other hand, it can be clarified so that the meaning is clear even
 without context. If the OP really believes that the present wording is a
 problem, other people have made suggestions on what to do about it.
   
In the end, it's up to the author to clarify... I don't understand what
he's trying to do as on my stem his instructions/example just do not
work anyway. :-(
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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

michael wrote:
PJ wrote:
Why is it that the manual pages, as thorough as they may be, are very,
very confusing.
Perhaps I am being too wary, but I find that too many
instructions/examples are stumbling blocks to appreciation of the whole
system:
for instance, let's look at the instructions for changing disk labels
with glabel or is it tunefs ?
man glabel(8):

for UFS the file system label is set with
tunefs(8)
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tunefssektion=8apropos=0manpath=FreeBSD+7.2-RELEASE.

what happened to glabel?
man tunefs(8)
The *tunefs* utility cannot be
run on an active file system. To change an active file system, it must
be downgraded to read-only or unmounted.

So, you have to run tunefs from an active file system to modify another
disk?
but from man tunefs:
BUGS
This utility should work on active file systems.
What in hades does this mean--just above it says cannot be run on active
file systems. ???
To change the root file
system, the system must be rebooted after the file system is tuned.

You can tune a file system, but you cannot tune a fish.
How cute... And fish eat bugs.

Seriously, now to the manual:
To create a permanent label for a UFS2 file system without destroying
any data, issue the following command:
# tunefs -L /home/ /dev/da3

Oh? home is what? What does this have to do with the partitions?
Here's from man glabel(8):

EXAMPLES
The following example shows how to set up a label for disk ``da2'', cre-
ate a file system on it, and mount it:
glabel label -v usr /dev/da2
newfs /dev/label/usr
mount /dev/label/usr /usr
[...]
umount /usr
glabel stop usr
glabel unload

The next example shows how to set up a label for a UFS file system:
tunefs -L data /dev/da4s1a
mount /dev/ufs/data /mnt/data

Am I to understand that glabel is only for a new system? What's with the
newfs... I'm trying to set labels on an system that is already set up.
And, the glabel examle above is not for UFS file systems? Oh, that's for
tunefs?
So why are we even dealing with this glabel?

from manual:
# tunefs -L /home/ //dev/da3/
A label should now exist in /dev/ufs which may be added to /etc/fstab:
/dev/ufs/home /home ufs rw 2 2

Why? Is this necessary? and somewhere I saw tunefs -L volume
/dev/da0s1a or something like that. Does that mean that each partition
should be tunefsd? Maybe the guys who programmed this stuff understand;
I sure don't. I just want to be able to set the labels according to what
they say can be done... so shy not have a clear and concise explanation?

Do people who write this stuff ever read it? Tell me that its clear and
simple and to the point... so far, I have been running back and forth
between half a dozen web pages trying to understand what is going
on... and doing things through a dense fog does not produce creative
results!
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ok, in short since i didn't see anyone answer this directly, your
question of tunefs vs glabel:

tunefs is for UFS: it labels a UFS filesystem, no matter the device,
ie: ad or da. tunefs is part of the filesystem utilities for UFS.
good example, can't tunefs -L SWAP /dev/ad0s1b if it is a swap. you
can glabel it.

glabel is for labeling a device itself. you can glabel an ntfs
filesystem or ext2, whatever.

Thanks for that, Michael.
But can you explain what this means? It just is not clear for me.
# tu;nefs -L home /dev/da3
This puts a label on that disk? So now it can be referred to as home?
da3 = home ?

I'll try to delve into the man glabel further... but things still look
murky.

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GEOM label clarification

If I understand correctly from the manual, giving the labels their slice
name (/dev/label/rootfs rather than /dev/ad4s1a) will assure that
regardless of the disk, the boot will be from the disk being booted and
not from another disk as happened to me recently - the fstab on disk ad4
was referncing ad12 so the boot was from ad12 rather than ad4.
The handbook says:
By permanently labeling the partitions on the boot disk, the system
should be able to continue to boot normally, even if the disk is moved
to another controller or transferred to a different system. For this
example, it is assumed that a single ATA disk is used, which is
currently recognized by the system as ad0.
If the disk is moved to another system, it may no longer be ad0... So
will it still boot correctly?

Or should the ufsid labels be used?

Will both of these contortions work?

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Re: GEOM label clarification

Manolis Kiagias wrote:
 PJ wrote:
   
 If I understand correctly from the manual, giving the labels their slice
 name (/dev/label/rootfs rather than /dev/ad4s1a) will assure that
 regardless of the disk, the boot will be from the disk being booted and
 not from another disk as happened to me recently - the fstab on disk ad4
 was referncing ad12 so the boot was from ad12 rather than ad4.
 The handbook says:
 By permanently labeling the partitions on the boot disk, the system
 should be able to continue to boot normally, even if the disk is moved
 to another controller or transferred to a different system. For this
 example, it is assumed that a single ATA disk is used, which is
 currently recognized by the system as ad0.
 If the disk is moved to another system, it may no longer be ad0... So
 will it still boot correctly?

   
 

 In short, yes. I do this routinely all the time.
 Assuming of course that the device is connected to a controller that
 FreeBSD recognizes.
 This should be a non-issue for standard ATA/SATA disks.

   
 Or should the ufsid labels be used?

   
 

 The ufsid is also an option if you do not wish to create the labels
 yourself.
 The advantage of user-created labels is that they are not 'cryptic' like
 the ufsid ones
 and you may actually remember them :)

   
 Will both of these contortions work?
   
 

 Yes, both will do.

   
Thanks for the reassurance. Now to start labelling. Uh.. I guess that
means that if I label 1 disk and then clone it to several others, they
wil  all work from any system... Well, I guess I'll try it. Thanks again.

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Re: GEOM label clarification

Manolis Kiagias wrote:
 PJ wrote:
   
 Manolis Kiagias wrote:
   
 
 PJ wrote:
   
 
   
 If I understand correctly from the manual, giving the labels their slice
 name (/dev/label/rootfs rather than /dev/ad4s1a) will assure that
 regardless of the disk, the boot will be from the disk being booted and
 not from another disk as happened to me recently - the fstab on disk ad4
 was referncing ad12 so the boot was from ad12 rather than ad4.
 The handbook says:
 By permanently labeling the partitions on the boot disk, the system
 should be able to continue to boot normally, even if the disk is moved
 to another controller or transferred to a different system. For this
 example, it is assumed that a single ATA disk is used, which is
 currently recognized by the system as ad0.
 If the disk is moved to another system, it may no longer be ad0... So
 will it still boot correctly?

   
 
   
 
 In short, yes. I do this routinely all the time.
 Assuming of course that the device is connected to a controller that
 FreeBSD recognizes.
 This should be a non-issue for standard ATA/SATA disks.

   
 
   
 Or should the ufsid labels be used?

   
 
   
 
 The ufsid is also an option if you do not wish to create the labels
 yourself.
 The advantage of user-created labels is that they are not 'cryptic' like
 the ufsid ones
 and you may actually remember them :)

   
 
   
 Will both of these contortions work?
   
 
   
 
 Yes, both will do.

   
 
   
 Thanks for the reassurance. Now to start labelling. Uh.. I guess that
 means that if I label 1 disk and then clone it to several others, they
 wil  all work from any system... Well, I guess I'll try it. Thanks again.


   
 
 How are going to clone it? Will the clone also  copy the labels?
 For example, if doing a dump / restore (which I often do) I recreate the
 partitions manually, newfs them, label them and then restore the
 contents. In many cases I use a live (Fixit) system for this.
   
I'm looking into that just now.
I am playing with two disks... one is 80gb sata on USB... and the second
is 250Gb sata on USB.
I had tried to set them up with livefs but the 80Gb is all wrong... I
usually set up 2Gb on /, 3Gb on swap, 2gb on /tmp, 2gb on /var and 50gb
on /usr . But I just newfsd the partitions on the 80gb and found that
the da0s1d was 50gb which doesn't make sense as I had set it for 2gb and
d should have been /tmp, e = /var, f= usr and g=/home. That explains why
I ran out of space when trying to restore to the disk.
So now I'm going to try to redo the disk manually with fdisk, bsdlabel
and newfs. We'll see...
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Re: GEOM label clarification

NOW THIS SUCKS.

SUM

# glabel label rootfs/dev/ad12s1a
glabel: Can't store metadata on /dev/ad12s1a: Operation not permitted

This is direct from the manual what the $#*(@)! is going on?
No identical post on web, but similar say to ignore: it's harmless?

I so, why is it there?

There seem to be quite a lot of these kinds of stumbling blocks that are
just plalin annoying...

Is this an annoyance or what for the above situation?
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Re: GEOM label clarification

Manolis Kiagias wrote:
 PJ wrote:
   
 NOW THIS SUCKS.

 SUM

 # glabel label rootfs/dev/ad12s1a
 glabel: Can't store metadata on /dev/ad12s1a: Operation not permitted

 This is direct from the manual what the $#*(@)! is going on?
 No identical post on web, but similar say to ignore: it's harmless?

 I so, why is it there?

 There seem to be quite a lot of these kinds of stumbling blocks that are
 just plalin annoying...

 Is this an annoyance or what for the above situation?

   
 

 Is this your normal '/' filesystem, and is it mounted?
 If it is reboot your system and select 'single user mode' from the
 loader.menu
 Then use glabel in the single user mode prompt.
 This will not work if you just 'shutdown now', you have to reboot into
 single user mode.

 If it is not your real '/' at the moment, and it is not mounted, you
 should be able to do it.
 Booting from the fixit LiveCD will also work in any case.

   
I appreciate your holding my hand as I will otherwise fall on my ass
or off my donkey... whatever... I need a big stiff drink...it's been a
heady week...
I already tried, screwed up the fstab, fixed it and booted up just fine.
Don't want to screw it up again. See my bithing in another post...
you'll understand how reading the manuals and man pages can be
depressing. Shit, shit, shit.

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Re: usb key problem

Polytropon wrote:
 On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:06:08 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 Anyway, I found the solution on the web... couldn't belive it was that
 simple: just ignore the crap spewed out on the screen and just mount iit
 as you would any other disk.
 # mount  -t msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /mnt
 and that's it
 

 Additionally, when you use mount_msdosfs, you can specify
 masks (-m and -M) in order not to have +x attributes on all
 the files; the MS-DOS file system on the stick could give
 you unwanted results, for example if you have a .jpg file
 on the stick and want to open it (with the default app for
 .jpg file type), the system will try to execute it.



   
 Now to see how I can use it to restore stuff. :-D
 

 If you want to use the stick for FreeBSD operations, why not
 give it a real file system (i. e. UFS) instead of some old
 FAT? You can simply

   # newfs /dev/da0

 and then access it in the standard way:

   # mount /dev/da0 /mnt

 See that file owner:group, permissions and flags are now
 supported, and files that are not supposed to be executables
 don't have +x attribute (as in opposite to FAT / msdosfs).

 You could even add an entry in /etc/fstab like this:

   /dev/da0s1 /media/stick msdosfs rw,noauto,noatime 0 0

 or, for proper UFS:

   /dev/da0 /media/stick ufs rw,noauto,noatime 0 0

 Keep in mind that when using device names, it's a matter of
 in which sequence device are detected that result in the
 corresponding device name (da0, da1 etc.); using labels is
 the more elegant way here.
   
How do you mean, using labels; could you illustrate or clarify? for the above, 
I mean.

I'm trying to set up labels for my normal systems with glabel and struggling...


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I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Why is it that the manual pages, as thorough as they may be, are very,
very confusing.
Perhaps I am being too wary, but I find that too many
instructions/examples are stumbling blocks to appreciation of the whole
system:
for instance, let's look at the instructions for changing disk labels
with glabel or is it tunefs ?
man glabel(8):

for UFS the file system label is set with
tunefs(8)
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tunefssektion=8apropos=0manpath=FreeBSD+7.2-RELEASE.
what happened to glabel?
man tunefs(8)
The *tunefs* utility cannot be
run on an active file system. To change an active file system, it must
be downgraded to read-only or unmounted.

You can tune a file system, but you cannot tune a fish.
How cute... And fish eat bugs.

Seriously, now to the manual:
To create a permanent label for a UFS2 file system without destroying
any data, issue the following command:
# tunefs -L /home/ /dev/da3

Oh? home is what? What does this have to do with the partitions?
Here's from man glabel(8):

The next example shows how to set up a label for a UFS file system:
tunefs -L data /dev/da4s1a
mount /dev/ufs/data /mnt/data

from manual:
# tunefs -L /home/ //dev/da3/
A label should now exist in /dev/ufs which may be added to /etc/fstab:
/dev/ufs/home /home ufs rw 2 2

Do people who write this stuff ever read it? Tell me that its clear and
simple and to the point... so far, I have been running back and forth
between half a dozen web pages trying to understand what is going on...
and doing things through a dense fog does not produce creative results!
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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Manolis Kiagias wrote:
PJ wrote:
Why is it that the manual pages, as thorough as they may be, are very,
very confusing.
Perhaps I am being too wary, but I find that too many
instructions/examples are stumbling blocks to appreciation of the whole
system:
for instance, let's look at the instructions for changing disk labels
with glabel or is it tunefs ?
man glabel(8):

You can tune a file system, but you cannot tune a fish.
How cute... And fish eat bugs.

Seriously, now to the manual:
To create a permanent label for a UFS2 file system without destroying
any data, issue the following command:
# tunefs -L /home/ /dev/da3

Oh? home is what? What does this have to do with the partitions?
Here's from man glabel(8):

The next example shows how to set up a label for a UFS file system:
tunefs -L data /dev/da4s1a
mount /dev/ufs/data /mnt/data

from manual:
# tunefs -L /home/ //dev/da3/
A label should now exist in /dev/ufs which may be added to /etc/fstab:
/dev/ufs/home /home ufs rw 2 2

Relax. You are having a bad day, and you are topping it by trying to
perform some stuff while you are not in the right state of mind.

If you do insist on continuing with this, do the following:
Make a list of your partitions - I'll assume a device name of /dev/ad1
for the disk. You should have:

ad1s1a for root = Label this as rootfs
ad1s1b for swap = Label this as swap
ad1s1e for tmp = Label this as tmpfs
ad1s1d for var = Label this as varfs
ad1s1f for usr = Label this as usrfs

If you are unsure of the device names, try ls /dev/ad* (or ls /dev/da*
if you are using SCSI disks, which I think you are not)

Now, reboot:
shutdown -r now
Press 4 and enter single user mode in the loader.
In the single user mode prompt type:

glabel label rootfs /dev/ad1s1a
glabel label swap /dev/ad1s1b
glabel label tmpfs /dev/ad1s1e
glabel label varfs /dev/ad1s1d
glabel label usrfs /dev/ad1s1f

You should get no error messages from these.
Type exit and continue to multiuser boot.
Ok, but that is exactly what I did. Exactly that and that is what is in
the manual. And I can read and I did check and recheck my input for
typos. But, I did get error messages!
# glabel label rootfs/dev/ad12s1a
glabel: Can't store metadata on /dev/ad12s1a: Operation not permitted
and the message was the same for all partitions!
So, you must wonder as I did why was I getting error messages. I looked
on the web and there was nothing directly related to the errors.So what
is going on?
Since the web gurus were saying that the error messages were not
important and to ignore them, I tried that and continued through with
the boot and changed the fstab entries and rebooted and the boot failed.
So I had to fix the fstab and fortunately I was able to boot ok...
Something is warped here... and I hope it isn't my little brain. :-(

Change /etc/fstab:

change

/dev/ad1s1a to /dev/label/rootfs
/dev/ad1s1b to /dev/label/swap

and so on.

Reboot once again. Everything should work.

Do people who write this stuff ever read it? Tell me t

Yes, we do. All the time actually.

hat its clear and
simple and to the point... so far, I have been running back and forth
between half a dozen web pages trying to understand what is going on...
and doing things through a dense fog does not produce creative
results!___

You will have best results when trying with a clear mind.
Also having a test system

Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Polytropon wrote:
On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:54:23 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:

Why is it that the manual pages, as thorough as they may be, are very,
very confusing.

A common misunderstanding about manpages can be that they
are often (wishfully?) seen as a tutorial or a howto. In
fact, they are references.

Perhaps I am being too wary, but I find that too many
instructions/examples are stumbling blocks to appreciation of the whole
system:
for instance, let's look at the instructions for changing disk labels
with glabel or is it tunefs ?
man glabel(8):

for UFS the file system label is set with
tunefs(8)
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tunefssektion=8apropos=0manpath=FreeBSD+7.2-RELEASE.
what happened to glabel?

That's confusing...

man tunefs(8)
The *tunefs* utility cannot be
run on an active file system. To change an active file system, it must
be downgraded to read-only or unmounted.

So, you have to run tunefs from an active file system to modify another
disk?

No. Active file system refers to a file system that is mounted
rw - the common method of using a file system. But in order to run
a program from a file system, the file system can as well be mounted
ro. This still allows running programs.

A setting you'll often find is maintenance done in single user
mode; here, / is mounted ro to give access to the basic programs
in /bin and /sbin. All other partitions, including /usr, are not
mounted. They don't need to be for having a fully functional
system in maintenance mode.

but from man tunefs:
BUGS
This utility should work on active file systems.
What in hades does this mean--just above it says cannot be run on active
file systems. ???

It should. This means: Don't try that. :-)

My printer isn't printing!
But it should.
No, it is not printing!
Yes, but it should.
:-)

Aha! Gotcha! Whoever wrote that has made an unintentionnal booboo. It is
a subtle difference and is indicative that whoever wrote it is not a
native english user... the meaning is clearly should be executed, done,
carried out, performed - should work means it can be carried out - I
think the author meant to say should not be done

To change the root file
system, the system must be rebooted after the file system is tuned.

You can tune a file system, but you cannot tune a fish.
How cute... And fish eat bugs.

Nice you found this. :-)

Seriously, now to the manual:
To create a permanent label for a UFS2 file system without destroying
any data, issue the following command:
# tunefs -L /home/ /dev/da3

Oh? home is what? What does this have to do with the partitions?

The volume name, according to the manual, is /home/ now,
isn't it?

from manual:
# tunefs -L /home/ //dev/da3/

I cannot find this in the tunefs manual in group 8... It
seems that there are too many /s in it...

typo, sorry

Wow... I'm having problems now, too. Maybe I should re-read
the manpages a few times...

I agree that the manual is not intended as a tutorial... but then what
is a manual but a source for a tutorial... ;-)
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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Manolis Kiagias wrote:
 PJ wrote:
   
 Manolis, my state of mind is quite clear... and I'm coping with
 everything quite allright... I'm not about to get mad at anyone or
 anything...
 but tell me, honestly, when you see the stuff I have described above?
 Woldn't that confuse anyone in their right mind?

   
 

 I am sorry, but there is something here, either some mistake on your
 part or some other weird problem on your system I can not think of.

 I don't seem to remember glabel ever failing to store metadata, unless
 1) The device is non-existing 2) The device is mounted.
 As a matter of fact, I did the glabel stuff on a machine a few hours
 ago. This was already fully installed, I rebooted single user and was
 done in less than 2 minutes.
 And yes, if you get a metadata error, it means nothing was done so you
 are *not* to go and change fstab!

 Could you  please send us /etc/fstab and the results of ls /dev/ad*
   
Shortly... have to reconfigure GAG.

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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Manolis Kiagias wrote:
 PJ wrote:
   
 Manolis, my state of mind is quite clear... and I'm coping with
 everything quite allright... I'm not about to get mad at anyone or
 anything...
 but tell me, honestly, when you see the stuff I have described above?
 Woldn't that confuse anyone in their right mind?

   
 

 I am sorry, but there is something here, either some mistake on your
 part or some other weird problem on your system I can not think of.

 I don't seem to remember glabel ever failing to store metadata, unless
 1) The device is non-existing 2) The device is mounted.
 As a matter of fact, I did the glabel stuff on a machine a few hours
 ago. This was already fully installed, I rebooted single user and was
 done in less than 2 minutes.
 And yes, if you get a metadata error, it means nothing was done so you
 are *not* to go and change fstab!

 Could you  please send us /etc/fstab and the results of ls /dev/ad*


 it'll have to be later - tomorrow or monday...
   
I'm fighting with a stubborn disk from a broken raid0 array that
prevents the system from booting another load or horsemanure!

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Re: I hate to bitch but bitch I must

Steve Bertrand wrote:
 PJ wrote:
   
 Polytropon wrote:
 
 On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:54:23 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   

   
 but from man tunefs:
 BUGS
 This utility should work on active file systems.
 What in hades does this mean--just above it says cannot be run on active
 file systems. ???
 
 
 It should. This means: Don't try that. :-)

 My printer isn't printing!
 But it should.
 No, it is not printing!
 Yes, but it should.
 :-)

   
   
 Aha! Gotcha! Whoever wrote that has made an unintentionnal booboo. It is
 a subtle difference and is indicative that whoever wrote it is not a
 native english user... the meaning is clearly should be executed, done,
 carried out, performed - should work means it  can be carried out  - I
 think the author meant to say should not be done
 

 If you feel that you've found a 'bug' within the manual/documentation of
 a piece of software or function, I highly recommend that you pass it by
 other users/developers ( as you've kind-of done here ), and then contact
 the person who is normally listed in the AUTHOR section of the man page
 after you get a consensus on whether the manual, the code or you have
 the bug :)

 If you believe the problem is an engish-linguistic one (and the man page
 is written in english), let the author know this. Provide the correct
 verbiage, and an explanation of what your words mean compared to theirs
 (remember, english may not be their first language).

 Also, take a look at RFC 2119 for the keyword 'SHOULD' and 'SHOULD NOT'.
 RFC 2119 is highly regarded as the authority for many keywords, and a
 quick reference of it may help when trying to explain to an author where
 you feel their documentation is incorrect (or lacking).

 Cheers,

 Steve

   
It is simple to understand Emglish but not so simple what was meant by
whoever wrote it...I cannot correct something that I do not uderstand...
come on, man, that should be easy to understand.
I am afraid that with all the globalization people still do not
understand that translations should be left to experts... an by that I
mean the final version should always, and I mean always, be by a native
speaking person.
I speak english, french, italian, some spanish and german as well as
latvian... but I would never attempt to translate into any language
other than English... and then not without the help of the original
language's originator. ;-)
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booting from wrong disk

While trying to learn and understand the dump-retore process, I messed
up the ad4s1a partition and could not boot. To fix it I restored a
dumpfile of ad12s1a which is, for all intents and purposes, the same as
ad4s1a. I then boot from ad4 and surprise, surprise...
#df shows we have been booted from ad12 and all partitions are ad12
Booting from ad12s1a gives exactly the same results.
So, how can I get ad4s1a to boot from ad4?
I imagine it is something in the boot files... but how to fix that?
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Re: booting from wrong disk

PJ wrote:
 While trying to learn and understand the dump-retore process, I messed
 up the ad4s1a partition and could not boot. To fix it I restored a
 dumpfile of ad12s1a which is, for all intents and purposes, the same as
 ad4s1a. I then boot from ad4 and surprise, surprise...
 #df shows we have been booted from ad12 and all partitions are ad12
 Booting from ad12s1a gives exactly the same results.
 So, how can I get ad4s1a to boot from ad4?
 I imagine it is something in the boot files... but how to fix that?
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I see from the boot process that this should fix it...
# fdisk -B -b /boot/boot0 ad4
but...
how do I get this onto the right disk? If I boot from ad4 or ad12 and
change the mbr, then it will be the ad12 that will be booting from ad4
and vice versa... or have I got it wrong? But in the end, I suppose it
really doesn't matter, or does it?
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Re: booting from wrong disk

PJ wrote:
 While trying to learn and understand the dump-retore process, I messed
 up the ad4s1a partition and could not boot. To fix it I restored a
 dumpfile of ad12s1a which is, for all intents and purposes, the same as
 ad4s1a. I then boot from ad4 and surprise, surprise...
 #df shows we have been booted from ad12 and all partitions are ad12
 Booting from ad12s1a gives exactly the same results.
 So, how can I get ad4s1a to boot from ad4?
 I imagine it is something in the boot files... but how to fix that?
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add another thought...

If I change the mbr on the ad12 then mount ad4s1a to /mnt copy
/mnt/boot/boot0 to /boot/boot0.tmp and then copy the modified
/boot/boot0 (for ad4) back to /mnt/boot/ and then umount ad4s1a --- I
should be ok, OK? Have I got it?
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Re: booting from wrong disk

Polytropon wrote:
 On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:13:08 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 add another thought...

 If I change the mbr on the ad12 then mount ad4s1a to /mnt copy
 /mnt/boot/boot0 to /boot/boot0.tmp and then copy the modified
 /boot/boot0 (for ad4) back to /mnt/boot/ and then umount ad4s1a --- I
 should be ok, OK? Have I got it?
 

 Why not just remove the active marking from the disk you do
 not want to be booted from? Furthermore, I'm not sure if the
 desired operation can be performed UFS-file-wise...

 The easiest way really is to use sysinstall. It's the lazy man's
 swiss army knife. :-)


   
Yeh, but even with a swill army knife you can cut yourself.  ;-)
But sysinstall will overwrite all the info on the disk and that defeats
the whole purpose of the exercise.
What complicates matters is the use of GAG as boot manager. If I select
to boot from ad4 and the boot is from ad12, then there is something
wrong. It indicates to me that the mbr is loading the wrong disk.
I noticed this when trying to boot a disk on my other computer... it was
looking for ad12 when there was no ad12 installed. I found that strange,
but then I recalled thatManolis Klagias had warned about something of
the sort. Now, I'll have to sort that out.
And you think you're lazy... this is back-braking work for me... :-D
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Re: booting from wrong disk

Polytropon wrote:
 On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:22:29 -0600 (MDT), Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com 
 wrote:
   
 The /etc/fstab from ad12 will point at ad12.  After restoring on ad4, 
 did you edit fstab to now have ad4 entries?
 

 Ha! Excellent point; I missed to see this obvious thing.
 Next to booting, the /etc/fstab mechanism is very important
 to have a look at when cloning disks that will have a
 different signature in the target than in the source.


   
AHA! Now, we're getting somewhere... cut's the workload. ;-)
I'll try it ASAP.
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how to prepare disk for dump/restore

I would like to just partition, label and newfs the disk; livefs wants
to waste my time by installing other stuff like the kernel  man pages
etc that I have not even selected; and if I use postinstall
configuration, that doesn't do anything. Or should I use fixit and then
do the manual thing?
Sysinstall requires already being booted... ???
Or do I do it manually as per Polytropon's recipe of fdisk, bsdlabel,
newfs  mount, dump/restore and use/play? ;-)

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usb key problem

I am running 7.2 but cannot properly attach/detach cruze 8gb and 4gb USB
keys.
When inserted, generate errors:
da0 seems to be read correctly
but then comes arow of
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:1): snip CAM Status: SCSI Status Error
snip NOT READY asc:3a,0
Medium not present
Unretryable error
then
cd0 at umass-sim0 dada,dada,dada
attempt to query device size failed; UNIT ATTENTION, Not ready to ready
change, medium may have changed

# camcontrol devlist
SanDisk U3 Cruzer Micro 4.04 at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (da0,pass0)
same as above - ---   lun 1 (pass1,cd0)

Something is not functioning  I don't understand. It did function a
while (some weeks) ago but now, no go...
I did look on the web, but...


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Re: booting from wrong disk

Polytropon wrote:
 On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:42:24 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 But sysinstall will overwrite all the info on the disk and that defeats
 the whole purpose of the exercise.
 

 If you only change a slice's state and add an MBR, it won't
 do anything to the data inside the slice.



   
 What complicates matters is the use of GAG as boot manager.
 

 Hmmm... I'm not familar with that, nor have I ever heared of
 it.



   
 If I select
 to boot from ad4 and the boot is from ad12, then there is something
 wrong.
 

 Check /etc/fstab as suggested. Furthermore, check what GAG
 actually does - just to be sure it boots the correct device.
 I always assumed that you use the standard MBR which does,
 as I explained, simply boot the first active slice on the
 first disk it finds. Maybe GAG acts differently.

   
Gag is really about the simplest you can find... it is installed on the
main drive that is selected by bios and it works from there. I have
found it to be quite safe and reliable. Only difficulty is sometimes to
figure ;out what dist it is booting from but that can be worked out be
trial and error. I've tried the rest, this is the best KISS.

   
 It indicates to me that the mbr is loading the wrong disk.
 

 In this case, it's good to read how booting works. MBR, and
 bootN, the FreeBSD loader and the kernel own specified points
 in this race. :-)



   
 I noticed this when trying to boot a disk on my other computer... it was
 looking for ad12 when there was no ad12 installed.
 

 Who was looking for ad12? Was it at the boot or the Ok
 prompt?
   
the boot... it could be seen in the onscreen mesages... and then the
boot oviously failed...


   
 I found that strange,
 but then I recalled thatManolis Klagias had warned about something of
 the sort. Now, I'll have to sort that out.
 

 You have to be entirely sure that the booting process works as
 intended. The easiest way to ensure this is to first use only
 one disk at once in the system. There are different stages where
 things can get messed up, such as the loader or /etc/fstab.
 They have to match the situation.

 As a sidenote, GEOM supports labelling partitions so it does not
 matter anymore if, for example, a / partition is ad4s1a or ad12s1a.
 There's a section in the handbook that illustrates how to get rid
 of device names in /etc/fstab.
   
I noticed that but have not yet had the opportunity to look into it.

The fstab did cure the problem and showed some of the pitfalls one can
encounter. After fixing the fstab, the boot did not complete because the
fstab from the source disk had anextra partition (/backups) which were
not present in the original ad4 disk. But that was easiily fixed by
simply removing the fstab entry for that  /backups partition. Now it
works fine.




   

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Re: how to prepare disk for dump/restore

Polytropon wrote:
 On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:59:51 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 I would like to just partition, label and newfs the disk; livefs wants
 to waste my time by installing other stuff like the kernel  man pages
 etc that I have not even selected;
 

 Just don't go through the whole installation cycle; from the
 sysinstall main menu, select Custom and perform slicing
 (setting disk active, adding standard MBR) and partitioning
 (creating partitions, format them with w or z). Then
 leave the menu and use the shell. You can get to the Fdisk
 and Label through Configure in the main menu, too.



   
 and if I use postinstall
 configuration, that doesn't do anything. Or should I use fixit and then
 do the manual thing?
 

 You can use sysinstall from the Fixit CD, too. That's the way
 I'm mostly doing this kind of thing: Preparing the disk with
 the sysinstall tool, then dropping to CLI for the restoring
 process.



   
 Sysinstall requires already being booted... ???
 

 No. You can execute it even on a running system.
   
That's what I meant. :-)


   
 Or do I do it manually as per Polytropon's recipe of fdisk, bsdlabel,
 newfs  mount, dump/restore and use/play? ;-)
 

 This method is quite usable when you completely understood what
 you're doing; furthermore, it enables scripting automated
 processes, which is very handy especially when you want to
 provide larger numbers of cloned systems.

 In any case: Be sure which device you're operating on, and keep
 in mind that it may (!) be a different device when in the place
 where it should go.

 For example, if you intend to prepare a disk to be ad4 in the
 target system, let it be (if possible) ad4 in the source system,
 and boot your source system from ad12. From this running system,
 perform the cloning. If everything is done, check references
 for ad12 and change them to ad4 (even *that* can be scripted);
 eyes on /etc/fstab. After you've done everything, shut down the
 running system, unplug ad12 and let the system boot from ad4.
 Everything should be alright now. Extract ad4 and take it to
 its new system.
   
I think i'm at the stage where my stumbling is beginning to get
straightened out... ;-)
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Re: how to prepare disk for dump/restore

Tobias Rehbein wrote:
 Am Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 09:17:43PM +0200 schrieb Polytropon:
   
 On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:59:51 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:

 You can use sysinstall from the Fixit CD, too. That's the way
 I'm mostly doing this kind of thing: Preparing the disk with
 the sysinstall tool, then dropping to CLI for the restoring
 process.
 

 If all you want to do is to prepare the disks you can leave sysinstall alone 
 and
 use sade(8).

   
Hmmm, very, very interesting... Will check it out. 8-)
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Re: usb key problem

PJ wrote:
 I am running 7.2 but cannot properly attach/detach cruze 8gb and 4gb USB
 keys.
 When inserted, generate errors:
 da0 seems to be read correctly
 but then comes arow of
 (probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:1): snip CAM Status: SCSI Status Error
 snip NOT READY asc:3a,0
 Medium not present
 Unretryable error
 then
 cd0 at umass-sim0 dada,dada,dada
 attempt to query device size failed; UNIT ATTENTION, Not ready to ready
 change, medium may have changed

 # camcontrol devlist
 SanDisk U3 Cruzer Micro 4.04 at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (da0,pass0)
 same as above - ---   lun 1 (pass1,cd0)

 Something is not functioning  I don't understand. It did function a
 while (some weeks) ago but now, no go...
 I did look on the web, but...
 

   
Now that I  have had a few moments to think about it, maybe I have to
give good old cruze and enema and format it under XP ... maybe all it
needs is a clean system on it. ;-)

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Re: usb key problem

Polytropon wrote:
 On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:19:16 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 I am running 7.2 but cannot properly attach/detach cruze 8gb and 4gb USB
 keys.
 When inserted, generate errors:
 da0 seems to be read correctly
 but then comes arow of
 (probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:1): snip CAM Status: SCSI Status Error
 snip NOT READY asc:3a,0
 Medium not present
 Unretryable error
 then
 cd0 at umass-sim0 dada,dada,dada
 attempt to query device size failed; UNIT ATTENTION, Not ready to ready
 change, medium may have changed

 # camcontrol devlist
 SanDisk U3 Cruzer Micro 4.04 at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (da0,pass0)
 same as above - ---   lun 1 (pass1,cd0)
 

 It would be good if you provide the full dmesg lines that
 are corresponding with this problem.

 By the way, I had problems with defective by design SanDisk
 USB sticks, too. This is how it looked:

 % dmesg | tail
 umass0: SanDisk Cruzer Micro, class 0/0, rev 2.00/2.00, addr 2 on uhub2
 da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
 da0: SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8.02 Removable Direct Access SCSI-0 device 
 da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
 da0: Attempt to query device size failed: UNIT ATTENTION, Medium not present
 umass0: at uhub2 port 2 (addr 2) disconnected
 (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): lost device
 (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): removing device entry
 umass0: detached

 I could not access the stick, /dev/da0 was the only device
 that appeared, and I could only dump the partition table
 (in terms of DOS primary partitions, i. e. slices) with
 the fdisk da0 command. But I could not access it.

 Finally, I printed out dmesg on a line printer (looks very
 impressing), marked the lines shown above and returned it to
 the shop. I'm now happy with a Sony USB stick which works
 excellently.



   
 Something is not functioning  I don't understand. It did function a
 while (some weeks) ago but now, no go...
 

 It did function, and now no more? I would say that if you didn't
 change anything on your system, the SanDisk stick is broken.

 Could you try the stick in another system for reference?



   
 I did look on the web, but...
 
 

 Did you see a spider that made the web? :-)
   
Yeah, and it scared the shit out of me... ;-)

Anyway, I found the solution on the web... couldn't belive it was that
simple: just ignore the crap spewed out on the screen and just mount iit
as you would any other disk.
# mount  -t msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /mnt
and that's it
I don't know if it makes any difference, but I did delete everything on
the key and formatted with Fat32. That got rid of everything and only
took up 4k instead of 32 when not formatted and I could put my own label
on the disk.
Yea!
Now to see how I can use it to restore stuff. :-D
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Re: usb key problem

Polytropon wrote:
 On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:18:45 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 Now that I  have had a few moments to think about it, maybe I have to
 give good old cruze and enema and format it under XP ... maybe all it
 needs is a clean system on it. ;-)
 

 I'm not sure if USB sticks tend to degrade filesystem-wise,
 but when you put such a stick into random Windows PCs, it's
 quite possible that data gets messed up. The most ideal
 solution of course is to simply newfs the stick and give it
 a UFS file system, but sadly, Windows PC are resistent to
 standards, so they won't read it, but will force you to use
 old-fashioned MS-DOS-like file systems. :-)


   
I do hate MS, but can't totally avoid it.
Now, I hope the key works to transfer the dumpfiles even if it's in Fat32...

Anyway, thanks much for your guidance and patience. :-)
I think I'll be able to float by myself... for a while at least.
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clone-dump-restore

2009-10-14 Thread PJ

Gentlemen,
I have not had a chance to thank you for your very helpful suggestions.
I have tried to follow them as well as possible and I cerainly am
grateful for your input.
It has taken me some time to prepare for a cloning of an existing 7.2 sytem.
Now that I have everything running smoothly with all the proggies 
configurations the way I want them, I tried (notice - tried) to clone
the system.
Here's the setup:
FBSD 7.2 on ad4 and same on ad12.
First, running on ad4, I tried to dump  restore each partition directly:
ad12s1a to da0s1a (usb sata disk).  No go. I had set it up originally
with livefs, minimal; then redid it all with fdisk, bsdlabel and nwfs; then
dump -0af - /dev/ad12s1a | restore -rf - /dev/da0s1a
--- got error messages about not being a tape device. Great.
Next, I tried with another usb/sata disk on da0... dumped to files (dump
went w/out problems) ... mounted da0 partitions 1 x 1 to /mnt, cd'd to
/mnt and did
restore -rf file.
Only the ad12s1f(usr) restore gave long list of unable to create file
or link or something like that.
When I then installed the restored disk to another computer (identical
except for CPU (3gb instead of 2.4gb), booted from the restored disk and
saw that it was trying to boot from ad12s1a which doesn't exist on the
new machine. uh...oh...
Somehow I think I may not have understood something.
Perhaps I should install the disk directly in the dump/restore machine
and try again.
Oh, yes, another sign from the gods... when restoring to a partition
just newfsed there is a warning that .snap is already installed... now
what on earth or moon is that?
I will try again... and try to document more clearly... :-(
TIA
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Re: clone-dump-restore

2009-10-14 Thread PJ

I believe that my problems arise out of subliminal refuse syndrome: the
brain refuses to comprehend dump and restore TOs and FROMs.
In other words, I'm beginning to see that
dump -0af TO ( - or device/file) FROM (device or directory/file)
and
restore -rf  (TO curr.dir FROM device or file) 

or
dump -0af  - (FROM device or file) | restore  -rf - (TO device or directory)

or do I still not have it right?
It's the stdout and stdin that makes me stumble.
Do I really need to mount the partitions or can I just dump and restore
from device to device directly?
The manual says I should be able to dump  restore across the lan too...
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conky calendar

2009-10-10 Thread PJ

I'm having a bit of a time with the calendar.sh script I found on the
Net; it doesn't display quite correctly.
It should have brackets around the current date, but I can't figure out
what is not functioning correctly:

#!/bin/sh
cal | awk 'NR2' | sed -e 's/   //g' -e 's/[^ ] / /g' -e 's/..*/  
/' -e 's/ \('`date | awk '{print $2}'`'\) /\['`date | awk '{print $2}'`'\]/'

Change the NR2 to NR1 and the printout includes the days of the week:
  Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
   1   2   3
   4   5   6   7   8   9  10
  11  12  13  14  15  16  17
  18  19  20  21  22  23  24
  25  26  27  28  29  30  31

Since today is the 10th, we should be seeing [10] - but we are not.
Also, there is the problem of the 1,2,3 not showing in the right days -
in conky this can be fixed by not using xft... but then I'm not sure of
how to change the font size... perhaps the xorg screen size is the
default ???

I'm not very good at programming, but I did look up the man pages for
cal, sed and awk but it is a little complicated for my little brain.
Can anyone help, please?
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just cloning

2009-09-30 Thread PJ

Maybe this is what I really need since I want to set up 3 identical 7.2
computers and back them up and update as needed. This should assure a
minimum of headaches like what I have been experienceg lately.
This link
http://cabstand.com/usbflash.html
seems to be about right, but I'd like to get some opinions on what would
be the best way to go about this.
I assume that I must do one difinitive installation on 1 computer. Then
to clone, do I dump the partitions to a usb disk and restore to the
other two computers; or do I follow the instructions on the above link.
Obviously, it would be nice if it could be K.I.S.S.

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backups cloning

I am getting more and more confused with all the info regarding backing
up and cloning or moving systems from disk to disk or computer to computer.
I would like to do 2 things:
1. clone several instances of 7.2 from and existing installation
2. set up a backup script to back up changes either every night or once
a week

There are numerous solutions out there; but they are mostly confusing,
erroneous or non functional.
To start, could someone please explail to the the following, which I
found here:http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=185

You can move system from disk to disk on fly with
Code:

$ newfs -U /dev/ad2s1a
$ mount /dev/ad2s1a /target
$ cd /target
$ dump -0Lauf - /dev/ad1s1a  | restore -rf -

you can do the same using sudo
Code:

$ sudo echo
$ sudo dump -0Lauf - /dev/ad1s1a  | sudo restore -rf -

This may be clear to someone; it certainly is not to me.
As I understand it, newfs will (re)format the slice.
Ok,  But what is standard out in the above example.  The dump is from
where to where?
Could someone clarify all this for me?
So far, I have been unable to dump the / slice, not even with the -L
option. I am trying to dump the whole system (all the slices)except swap
to a usb (sata2 500gb disk) and then restore to another computer with
7.2 minimal installation.
Slices ad2s1d,e,f and g dump ok to usb. a does not - errors (should use
-L when dumping live filesystems)
Do you have to newfs each slice before restoring?  But if you are
restoring on a running 7.2 system, don't you have to restore to another
disk than the one the system is on?
I am beginning to think that you have to have a system running and dumpt
to another disk on that system and then remove that disk and install in
another box and boot from that?
Am I getting close?
I know it's a lot to ask, but then, I know you guys are capable...  :-)
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Re: backups cloning

Warren Block wrote:
 On Tue, 29 Sep 2009, PJ wrote:

 I am getting more and more confused with all the info regarding backing
 up and cloning or moving systems from disk to disk or computer to
 computer.
 I would like to do 2 things:
 1. clone several instances of 7.2 from and existing installation
 2. set up a backup script to back up changes either every night or once
 a week

 There are numerous solutions out there; but they are mostly confusing,
 erroneous or non functional.
 To start, could someone please explail to the the following, which I
 found here:http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=185

 You can move system from disk to disk on fly with
 Code:

 $ newfs -U /dev/ad2s1a
 $ mount /dev/ad2s1a /target
 $ cd /target
 $ dump -0Lauf - /dev/ad1s1a  | restore -rf -

 This may be clear to someone; it certainly is not to me.
 As I understand it, newfs will (re)format the slice.
 Ok,  But what is standard out in the above example.  The dump is from
 where to where?

 dump is reading /dev/ad1s1a and using stdout for output.
 restore is writing to the current directory (/target) and is reading
 from stdin.
But what does that mean? But ad2s1a has just been newfs'd - so how can
it be dumped if its been formatted? And what exactly does stdout mean?
What is dump doing? outputting what to where exactly? I don't see it or
should I say, understand this at all.and then the restore is from what
to where?

 Could someone clarify all this for me?
 So far, I have been unable to dump the / slice, not even with the -L
 option.

 It's hard to help without knowing the exact commands you are using and
 the errors they are producing.  Help us to help you by posting them.

 I am trying to dump the whole system (all the slices)except swap
 to a usb (sata2 500gb disk) and then restore to another computer with
 7.2 minimal installation.

 A minimal install makes it easier.  You don't need to copy /tmp, either.

 Slices ad2s1d,e,f and g dump ok to usb. a does not - errors (should use
 -L when dumping live filesystems)

 Right.  So what happens when you use -L? 
write error 10 blocks into volume 1
do you want to restart:
The first time I tried with -L the error was 20 blocks...
Both the slices for dump from and to are same size (2gb) and certainly
not full by a long shot ( if I reccall correctly, only about 14% is used)

 A long pause while the system makes a snapshot is normal.
And what's this about a snapshot? AFAIK, I'm not making a snapshot;
anyway, there is no long pause except for the dumb look on my face upon
seeing these messages.
As it is, I am currently erasing the brand new 500gb disk on which I
want to restore.
Things started out really bad... don't u;nderstand what is going on. I
installed a minimal 7.2, booted up and turned to another computer to do
some serious work. About 2 hours and 49 minutes later I notice messages
on the 7.2 about a page fault or something like that and then the system
reboots. Obviously with errors... but then I reboot again and it comes
up... I tried som copying from another disk and ended up with the disk
all screwed up... yet the Seagate Seatools for Dos doesnt find any
errors on it; Partition magic found an error but couldn't fix it, so now
Im wiping the whole thing and will try to reinstall tomorrow. Doesn't
make sense.


 Do you have to newfs each slice before restoring?

 The first time.  But your minimal install already did that for you.

 But if you are restoring on a running 7.2 system, don't you have to
 restore to another disk than the one the system is on?

 Nope.  You can overwrite the running system.  I restore in /usr, /var,
 and then / order.  Then reboot and you are running the new clone.

 I am beginning to think that you have to have a system running and
 dumpt to another disk on that system and then remove that disk and
 install in another box and boot from that? Am I getting close? I know
 it's a lot to ask, but then, I know you guys are capable...  :-)

 It's usually best to limit messages to a single question.
Sure, I agree... but when things are really complicated... I, at least,
don't know how to separate them when they are quite interdependent.
Thanks for responding.
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Re: backups cloning

You are a Master among masters... extraordianry understanding of the
genre and ver, very clear explanations...
I guess my filter between the brain and the computer is a bit foggy... :-(
I really appreciate your explanations.
But I still have a couple of small questions below...


Polytropon wrote:
 On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:44:38 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
 This may be clear to someone; it certainly is not to me.
 As I understand it, newfs will (re)format the slice.

 No. The newfs program does create a new file system. In
 other terminology, this can be called a formatting process.
 Note that NOT a slice, but a PARTITION is subject to this
 process. So

 # newfs -U /dev/ad2s1a

 does format the first partition (a) of the first slice (s1)
 of the third disk (ad2).



 Ok, But what is standard out in the above example. The dump is from
 where to where?

 According to the command

 # dump -0Lauf - /dev/ad1s1a | restore -rf -

 you need to understand that the main purpose of dump is to
 dump unmounted (!) file systems to the system's tape drive.
 Assuming nobody uses tape drives anymore, you need to specify
 another file, which is the standard output in this case, which
 may not be obvious, but it is if we reorder the command line:

 # dump -0 -L - a -u -f - /dev/ad1s1a | restore -r -f -

 You can see that -f - specifies - to be the file to backup to.
 The backup comes from /dev/ad1s1a.

 The restore program, on the other side of the | pipe, does
 usually read from the system's tape drive. But in this case,
 it reads from standard input as the -f - command line option
 indicates. It restores the data to where the working directory
 at the moment is.

 Here's an example (ad1 is source disk, ad2 is target disk):

 # newfs -U /dev/ad2s1a
 # mount /dev/ad2s1a /mnt
 # cd /mnt
 # dump -0Lauf - /dev/ad1s1a | restore -rf -

 Could someone clarify all this for me?

 Hopefully hereby done. :-)
I feel a bit stupid, as usual, my carelessness led me to miss the
difference between ad1 and ad2... dumb, dumb, dumb.
Ok, so I see that this works if you have two different drives on the
same machine...
But... 2 questions:
1. will the s1a slice dump the entire system, that is, the a, d, e, f
and g slices or is it partitions?

 So far, I have been unable to dump the / slice, not even with the -L
 option.

 Always keep in mind: Use dump only on unmounted partitions.

 I am trying to dump the whole system (all the slices)except swap
 to a usb (sata2 500gb disk) and then restore to another computer with
 7.2 minimal installation.

 I think that's not possible because dump operates on file system
 level, which means on partitions, not on slices.
I've been very confused with the slices/partitions.
I meant above, to dump the whole slice - but I guess that it has to be
done with the partitions.
 Slices ad2s1d,e,f and g dump ok to usb. a does not - errors (should use
 -L when dumping live filesystems)
and when I do dump -0Laf  /dev /ad1s1a  /dev/da0s1a
the errors are
write error 10 blocks into volume 1
do you want to restart:
The first time I tried with -L the error was 20 blocks...
Both the slices for dump from and to are same size (2gb) and certainly
not full by a long shot ( if I reccall correctly, only about 14% is used)


 Keep an eye on terminology, you're swapping them here: The
 devices ad2s1[defg] are partitions, not slices. The corresponding
 slice that holds them is ad2s1.
Sorry; now it's getting clearer.

 Anyway, if you can, don't dump mounted file systems. Go into
 single user mode, mount / as ro, and run dump + restore. If you
 can, use a live system from CD, DVD or USB, which makes things
 easier.

 Do you have to newfs each slice before restoring?

 Partitions. You don't have to newfs them once they are formatted.
 It's just the usual way to ensure they are free of any data.

 But if you are
 restoring on a running 7.2 system, don't you have to restore to another
 disk than the one the system is on?

 I don't understand this question right... if you're using a running
 system for dump + restore - which is the system you want to be the
 source system, then do it in minimal condition. SUM is the most
 convenient way to do that, with all partitions unmounted, and
 only / in read-only mode so you can access the dump and restore
 binaries.

 I am beginning to think that you have to have a system running and dumpt
 to another disk on that system and then remove that disk and install in
 another box and boot from that?
 Am I getting close?

 Again, I'm not sure I understood you correctly. If you've done
 the dump + restore correctly, you always end up with a bootable
 system, so you can boot it in another box. Dumping and restoring
 just requires a running system, no matter if it is the source
 system itself or a live system from CD, DVD or USB. (I prefer
 tools like FreeSBIE for such tasks, but the FreeBSD live system
 CD is fine, too.)

 As far as I now understood, you don't want to clone from source
 disk

Re: backups cloning

Olivier Nicole wrote:
 $ newfs -U /dev/ad2s1a
 $ mount /dev/ad2s1a /target
 $ cd /target
 $ dump -0Lauf - /dev/ad1s1a  | restore -rf -
 
 [...]
   
 But what does that mean? But ad2s1a has just been newfs'd - so how can
 

 Thats ad*1*s1a that has just been formatted, not ad2...

 Best,

 Olivier

   
Thanks for that.  It took me a while to see that.
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Re: backups cloning

Polytropon wrote:
 On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:26:19 -0400, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote:
   
 But what does that mean? But ad2s1a has just been newfs'd - so how can
 it be dumped if its been formatted?
 

 When you're working on this low level, triple-check all your
 commands. Failure to do so can cause data loss. In the example
 you presented, ad1 was the source disk, ad2 the target disk.
 You DON'T want to newfs your source disk.

   
 And what exactly does stdout mean?
 

 This refers to the standard output. In most cases, this is the
 terminal, the screen, such as

   # cat /etc/fstab

 will write the /etc/fstab to stdout. If you redirect it, for
 example by using  or |, you can make stdout a file, or the
 input - stdin - for another program.

 This is how the dump | restore process works: It leaves out
 the use the tape or use the file, but instead directs the
 output of dump - the dump itself - to the restore program as
 input to be restored.



   
 What is dump doing? outputting what to where exactly?
 

 The dump program is outputting a dump of the specified partition
 to the standard output, which in this case is directly trans-
 mitted to the restore program, which picks it up and processes
 it = restores it.



   
 I don't see it or
 should I say, understand this at all.
 

 Have a look at the command line again, simplified:

   # dump -0 -f - /dev/ad0s1a | restore -r -f -

 Run the dump program, do a full backup of the 1st partition of
 the 1st slice of the 1st disk, write this dump to the standard
 output, pipe this output to the restore program, do a full
 restore, read the dump to be restored from standard input.



   
 and then the restore is from what
 to where?
 

 The restore program gets the dump to be restored from the standard
 input - remember, that's the output of the dump program - and
 writes it to the current working directory. That's the reason
 why you should always check with

   # pwd

 in which directory you're currently located, because that will
 be the place where the restored data will appear.



   
 write error 10 blocks into volume 1
 do you want to restart:
 

 Could you present the command you're actually using, especially
 with where you issued it from?
   
Duh I think I see where this is leading... I'm pretty sure it was
issued from / which makes it redundant, right? I should have issued it
from somewhere else, like from home, usr or whatever but not from / as
that is what I was trying to dump :-[


   
 The first time I tried with -L the error was 20 blocks...
 Both the slices for dump from and to are same size (2gb) and certainly
 not full by a long shot ( if I reccall correctly, only about 14% is used)
 

 I'm not sure where you put the dump file. Write error seems
 to indicate one of the following problems:
   a) The snapshot cannot be created.
   b) The dump file cannot be created.



   
 And what's this about a snapshot? AFAIK, I'm not making a snapshot;
 anyway, there is no long pause except for the dumb look on my face upon
 seeing these messages.
 

 Check man dump and search for the -L option. The dump program,
 in order to obtain a dump from a file system that's currently in
 use, will need to make a snapshot because it cannot handle data
 that is changing. So it will dump the data with the state of the
 snapshot, allowing the file system to be altered afterwards.



   
 As it is, I am currently erasing the brand new 500gb disk on which I
 want to restore.
 

 Excellent.



   
 Things started out really bad... don't u;nderstand what is going on.
 

 Polite question: Have you read the manpages and the section in the
 Handbook?
   
Yes... but my brain can't handle it all so quickly... and being as
impatient as I am, I tend to miss things on the run... it usually comes
to me sooner or later... unfortunately, it's more often later than
sooner... I've been reading the stuff in the man pages, and getting more
confused by googling... Actually, I've been trying to get things
straightened ot for at least 3 days already.


   
 I
 installed a minimal 7.2, booted up and turned to another computer to do
 some serious work. About 2 hours and 49 minutes later I notice messages
 on the 7.2 about a page fault or something like that and then the system
 reboots.
 

 This often indicates a hardware problem...
   
Well, that's why I'm really checking my new disk... but it could be the
motherboard... I've always suspected it had something of a glitch in it
ever since I got it... I don't think just a slower cpu should give it so
many problems... a twin computer has the same hardware except for the
cpu and it gives far less problems - only MS related.


   
 Obviously with errors... but then I reboot again and it comes
 up... I tried som copying from another disk and ended up with the disk
 all screwed up...
 

 How that?



   
 yet the Seagate Seatools for Dos doesnt find any
 errors

conky, anyone?

2009-09-04 Thread PJ

Anybody have any luck with installing conky on 7.2?
I get errors when configured with or without xmms2:
with - file xmmxclient.4 not found
without - conky.h:67:18: error: bmpx.h: no such file of directory...
TIA
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Re: conky, anyone?

2009-09-04 Thread PJ

Herbert J. Skuhra wrote:
 2009/9/4 PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca:
   
 Anybody have any luck with installing conky on 7.2?
 I get errors when configured with or without xmms2:
 with - file xmmxclient.4 not found
 without - conky.h:67:18: error: bmpx.h: no such file of directory...
 TIA
 

 Error 1: Apply attached patch

 Error 2: disable BMPX support. Neither multimedia/bmpx nor
 sysutils/conky installs/includes bmpx.h.
   
Thanks, Herbert,

I got rid of the all the dependencies except for the last three in the
configure options and now it installed.
Didn't need the dependencies as I never use them... should have learned
from that dumb cat that died from curiosity. ;-)
PJ
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moving a disk

I am trying to move a 7.2 installation to another computer where it is
to be the only OS acting as a server for the lan.
On bootup I get the message:
Using drive 0, partition 3.
And there it hangs.
I have tried to rewrite the mbr but that did absolutely nothing.
fik ad0 returns:
partitions 1,2,3 are UNUSED
Parrtition 4 give the cylinder, heads, sectors, blocks stuff

The disk did boot up on another box...

What should I do? And what information do I need to supply or look for
to solve this.
I'd rathernot go through another installation even if this is farly
elementary.
Oh, yes... all my former problems were definitely software related as I
have checked and double, triple checked my HDDs and cannot find any
problems therewith.
TIA
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Re: moving a disk

PJ wrote:
 I am trying to move a 7.2 installation to another computer where it is
 to be the only OS acting as a server for the lan.
 On bootup I get the message:
 Using drive 0, partition 3.
 And there it hangs.
 I have tried to rewrite the mbr but that did absolutely nothing.
 fik ad0 returns:
 partitions 1,2,3 are UNUSED
 Parrtition 4 give the cylinder, heads, sectors, blocks stuff

 The disk did boot up on another box...

 What should I do? And what information do I need to supply or look for
 to solve this.
 I'd rathernot go through another installation even if this is farly
 elementary.
 Oh, yes... all my former problems were definitely software related as I
 have checked and double, triple checked my HDDs and cannot find any
 problems therewith.

here is what I have found in looking at the disk when it's mounted
on another FBSD system through an USB interface:
it is mounted on /dev/ad0
fdisk ad0 --- returns partitions 1,2,3 as UNUSED; partition 4 is
marked for sysid 166 OpenBSD (this seems to be left over from an
installation that was never completed)

fdisk ad0s4 --- returns same, except partition 4 is: sysid 165
(FreeBSD,NetBSD/386BSD)

I also note that the other functioning FBSD 7.2 has partitions 2-4 as
UNUSED and partition 1 has the cylinder parameters.

I get the impression that I should use the disklabel editor to change
all that but am not familiar with it and am not sure how to use it.

Here is what bsdlabel shows:

# /dev/ad0s4:  #this is the one that does not boot
8 partitions:
#size   offsetfstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  a:  2097152   634.2BSD 2048 16384 28552
  b:  2097152  2097215  swap   
  c: 12594897   63unused0 0 # raw part,
don't edit
  d:  2097152  41943674.2BSD 2048 16384 28552
  e:  2097152  62915194.2BSD 2048 16384 28552
  f:  4204544  83886714.2BSD 2048 16384 28552
partition c: partition extens past end of unit
disklabel: partition c doesn't start at 0!
disklabel An incorrect partition c may cause problems for standard
system utilities


# /dev/ad4s1: #this one boots
8 partitions:
#size   offsetfstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  a:  419430404.2BSD 2048 16384 28552
  b:  6291456  4194304  swap   
  c: 1563014250unused0 0 # raw part,
don't edit
  d:  6291456 104857604.2BSD 2048 16384 28552
  e:  4194304 167772164.2BSD 2048 16384 28552
  f: 69206016 209715204.2BSD 2048 16384 28552
  g: 66123889 901775364.2BSD 2048 16384 28552 

Is there a way to fix this thingy?
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Re: moving a disk

Roland Smith wrote:
 On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 11:50:28AM -0400, PJ wrote:
   
 PJ wrote:
 
 I am trying to move a 7.2 installation to another computer where it is
 to be the only OS acting as a server for the lan.
 On bootup I get the message:
 Using drive 0, partition 3.
 And there it hangs.
   

 Probably because the boot code can't find the 3rd stage loader... It is
 strange that it is trying partition 3 instead of partition 4.

 Did you prepare the disk as explained in the handbook (�16.3 Adding Disks)?
 I get the impression that you didn't. And that can have caused the problem. 

 Try booting again, and press any key to interrupt the boot process to get to
 the boot prompt. You should see something like:

  FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
  Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/loader
  boot:

 At this boot prompt, type

 0:ad(0,4,a)/boot/loaderENTER

 This will try to boot from the 4th partition. See boot(8). N.B. the boot
 manpage uses the term 'slice' for partitions. By default the boot code looks
 for either the active slice or the first slice with the freebsd type.

   
 I have tried to rewrite the mbr but that did absolutely nothing.
   

 That is not surprising, The mbr is only part of the boot process. The problem
 seems to be that it cannot locate the rest... Read the chapter The FreeBSD
 Booting Process from the FreeBSD Handbook. And see
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

 This will provide insight into how FreeBSD actually boots. It is a bit of a
 convoluted process due to historical restrictions of the PC
 architecture. Reading the manual pages for fdisk(8), boot(8) and loader(8)
 might also prove enlightening.

   
 fik ad0 returns:
 partitions 1,2,3 are UNUSED
 Parrtition 4 give the cylinder, heads, sectors, blocks stuff
   

 Why did you install on partition 4? Normally one would use parition 1.

   
 What should I do? And what information do I need to supply or look for
 to solve this.
   

 See below.

   
 I'd rathernot go through another installation even if this is farly
 elementary.
   

 With any luck you don't have to.

   
 Oh, yes... all my former problems were definitely software related as I
 have checked and double, triple checked my HDDs and cannot find any
 problems therewith.
   

   
 here is what I have found in looking at the disk when it's mounted
 on another FBSD system through an USB interface:
 it is mounted on /dev/ad0
 fdisk ad0 --- returns partitions 1,2,3 as UNUSED; partition 4 is
 marked for sysid 166 OpenBSD (this seems to be left over from an
 installation that was never completed)
 

 It should be type 165 for FreeBSD! _Or_ partition 4 should be marked as active
 (flag 80). Is it? If not you can use the -a flag of fdisk to update the active
 partition.  I think you should use something like 'fdisk -u -a -4 ad0'. Look
 at the fdisk manual page to see what this does. I'm not sure if this is the
 right invocation. I have never dealt with this problem.

 Setting the active partition _should_ be enough. If that doesn't work, you're 
 in
 trouble. As far as I know there is no easy way to just change the partition
 type, without starting over. In theory you can set the type by fiddling some
 bits in the partition table, but that is probably harder than it sounds. Maybe
 sysinstall can do it, but I haven't tried.

 Next time you want to install FreeBSD on a disk, read �16.3 Adding Disks of
 the FreeBSD handbook first, and follow the steps laid out there! That would
 create and active a single partition which would almost certainly have avoided
 this problem.

   
 I also note that the other functioning FBSD 7.2 has partitions 2-4 as
 UNUSED and partition 1 has the cylinder parameters.

 I get the impression that I should use the disklabel editor to change
 all that but am not familiar with it and am not sure how to use it.
 

 No. The disklabel works at a lower level.

 Historically PC harddisks can be divided into 4 partitions (This is what fdisk
 does). So the disk ad0 can have partitions 1--4: ad0s1--ad0s4. In older 
 FreeBSD
 literature these are called slices, hence the 's' in the partition name.

 FreeBSD can subdivide a partition in labeled sections. These sections are
 labeled with a letter, so partition ad0s1 can be divided (in 7.x) into labeled
 pieces a--g: ad0s1a--ad0s1g. This is what the bsdlabel(8) program does. And it
 is usually on these subdivisions that filesystems are created with newfs(8).

   
 Is there a way to fix this thingy?
 

 Make sure that partition 4 is the active partition. That should fix it. 

   
Hi Roland,
I'm going to keep this email as a valued reminder of what to do and not
to do.
I'm afraid I was a bit impatient and messed up the already messed up
disk... frankly, I don't recall whatever happened to the thing in the
first place. I did install a good working 7.2 with samba, mysawl, php
and that's about it. It booted fine and I just left it alone not being
sure of what I would do

Re: moving a disk