Re: [gentoo-user] Re: How to control SLOT?
On 16/05/2014 21:34, Mick wrote: On Friday 16 May 2014 18:09:08 Jörg Schaible wrote: Mick wrote: What else could I try? x11-wm/enlightenment:0.17 ~amd64 Thanks Jörg, this (partly) worked and put me on the right path. So, now I have in /etc/portage/package.keywords/enlightenment: x11-wm/enlightenment:0.17 ~amd64 and in /etc/portage/sets/enlightenment: x11-wm/enlightenment:0.17 Portage no longer tries to pull in e16 when I emerge set '@enlightenment' because the latter is only asking for SLOT :0.17. Of course, if I try 'emerge -1aDv enlightenment', then all bets are off without explicitly masking e16 off as Alan has done. I can remove that masking from here now, it dates back years to when e17 was in an overlay with some peculiar masking applied. Portage too many times would miss an update and want to install e16 so the easiest was to just mask it locally. I don't really need that anymore, so thanks for getting me to look there :-) -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] udev or Gentoo issue?
On Friday 16 May 2014 21:04:41 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Fri, 16 May 2014 17:07:33 +0100, Mick wrote: Samuli's right. I was experimenting on a new install how to stop net.eth0 from coming up (it was stalling forever because there was no ethernet cable present). No matter what I tried with /etc/rc.conf, or eselect rc, I couldn't stop the darn thing starting up. AFAIR you ned to install ifplugd, but not configure or run it. openrc uses it to determine if a cable is plugged in and delay setting up the interface if there is none. That's how I have been doing it, using ifplugd to monitor the presence of a link, but seem to recall that there is/was a netifrc-way of managing which network interface comes up at boot. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[gentoo-user] Fonts and bad eyes
Howdy, I'm curious. I'm sure there are some older folks on here that have eyes that are not in the best of shape. Mine are not real good even with glasses. My question is, what font is the easiest to read for folks with bad eyes? In other words, for you folks who can't see good, what font do you use? I'm just curious. Just reply and let me know what you use. I think I need to change mine to something better. Thanks Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] Copying data efficiently
On Saturday 17 May 2014 04:33:57 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Hi, is there any tool in the Gentoo portage which may speed up (make it mopre efficient) the following task: On my HD there are data I want to copy to two identical external HDs. These HDs are of the same type/model and each is separately connectable via USB to my PC (...these two of the typical mobile external USB-HDs). Instead of copying the data twice from my PC to eah of the HDs I want to do it once...like I would be able to give the cp-command two instead of one target where to copy two. The result should be two identically populated external HDs, each of them useable/readable without the need to the other one. What tool of the portage tree I able to accomplish this task? Best regards, mcc 1. You could set up the two ext drives as a mirrored RAID and use your copying/tar-ing/dd tool of choice. 2. Or you could use pipe and tee to split the feed into any devices you want, e.g.: pv /dev/sda1 | tee (dd of=/dev/sdb1) (dd of=/dev/sdc1) 3. Or you could use a sequential copy: cp -a /home /dev/sdb1/ cp -a /home /dev/sdc1 NOTES: a) Unlike other commands, pv will give you a progress bar so that you know how long your back up is taking. b) The 3rd example above will copy sequentially, but depending on the size of the file(s) the second copy may be read from cache. c) If you're doing this over the network then you can use nc in listening mode at the receiving end, or ssh if the network is untrusted. I'm interested to see what other ways will be suggested for this task. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] experience thus far
On Saturday 17 May 2014 04:02:35 William Kenworthy wrote: On 17/05/14 08:08, William Kenworthy wrote: On 17/05/14 04:15, Marc Joliet wrote: So, a week has passed since my conversion to btrfs. ... Have a nice weekend, Don't forget to have a maintenance program - run a scrub regularly once a week or so - I have enough btrfs drives (22 qemu files, 4 WD Greens att) to see about one or two scrub fixable errors a week with no obvious cause, sometimes serious (in a critical file). My experience is that if you ignore these errors they seem to increase over time resulting in a crash and burn. Keep an eye on your logs as btrfs will list the errors there as well (grep -i btrfs /var/log/messages). For the ones scrub cant fix, delete the file and restore from backup. Errors that require off-line fixing (btrfsck) are the ones where I have lost file systems - though I have not seen this in the last 6 months. I am quite practised in restoring from backups because of btrfs :) BillK This is from this mornings grep of the log: May 15 07:00:34 myth kernel: btrfs: checksum error at logical 1775247360 on dev /dev/vda3, sector 5580816, root 5, inode 6423718, offset 1839104, length 4096, links 1 (path: var/log/mythtv/old/mythbackend.20140421061150.6275.log-20140515) May 15 07:00:34 myth kernel: btrfs: bdev /dev/vda3 errs: wr 0, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 1, gen 0 May 15 07:00:34 myth kernel: btrfs: unable to fixup (regular) error at logical 1775247360 on dev /dev/vda3 May 15 07:41:40 myth kernel: btrfs: bdev /dev/vda3 errs: wr 0, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 1, gen 0 and May 16 20:40:33 moriah kernel: btrfs: bdev /dev/mapper/vg1-backups errs: wr 0, rd 250, flush 0, corrupt 13, gen 0 Thank you all for sharing your experiences with btrfs. It looks like it will be come the fs of choice in the future. I am not clear on one thing: is the corruption that you show above *because* of btrfs, or it would occur silently with any other fs, like e.g. ext4? -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Copying data efficiently
Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com [14-05-17 09:48]: On Saturday 17 May 2014 04:33:57 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Hi, is there any tool in the Gentoo portage which may speed up (make it mopre efficient) the following task: On my HD there are data I want to copy to two identical external HDs. These HDs are of the same type/model and each is separately connectable via USB to my PC (...these two of the typical mobile external USB-HDs). Instead of copying the data twice from my PC to eah of the HDs I want to do it once...like I would be able to give the cp-command two instead of one target where to copy two. The result should be two identically populated external HDs, each of them useable/readable without the need to the other one. What tool of the portage tree I able to accomplish this task? Best regards, mcc 1. You could set up the two ext drives as a mirrored RAID and use your copying/tar-ing/dd tool of choice. 2. Or you could use pipe and tee to split the feed into any devices you want, e.g.: pv /dev/sda1 | tee (dd of=/dev/sdb1) (dd of=/dev/sdc1) 3. Or you could use a sequential copy: cp -a /home /dev/sdb1/ cp -a /home /dev/sdc1 NOTES: a) Unlike other commands, pv will give you a progress bar so that you know how long your back up is taking. b) The 3rd example above will copy sequentially, but depending on the size of the file(s) the second copy may be read from cache. c) If you're doing this over the network then you can use nc in listening mode at the receiving end, or ssh if the network is untrusted. I'm interested to see what other ways will be suggested for this task. -- Regards, Mick Hi Mick, thank your reply! :) From your numbering of the possibilities... 1.) ...I am no RAID guru and would try this later with data, which are not valuable... 2.) That looks interesting! Unfortunately it seems to copy device contents on low level instead of files. The source are directory structure -- not whole devices... Or did I overlook an option mentioned in the manpage...? 3.) The files I want to copy are in the size of some GB each. So the cache isnt big enough to hold ALL files for the second part. Best regards, mcc
Re: [gentoo-user] Copying data efficiently
On Sat, 17 May 2014 09:59:08 +0200, meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: 3. Or you could use a sequential copy: cp -a /home /dev/sdb1/ cp -a /home /dev/sdc1 3.) The files I want to copy are in the size of some GB each. So the cache isnt big enough to hold ALL files for the second part. Run the two copies simultaneously, start the first, switch to another tab, start the second. That way the data for the second copy is always the most recently cached. However, I expect the speed limit here may be the USB bus unless you are using USB 3.0 drives on different buses. -- Neil Bothwick I'll never forget the 1st time I ran Windows, but I'm trying... signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] experience thus far
On Sat, 17 May 2014 08:08:17 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote: Don't forget to have a maintenance program - run a scrub regularly once a week or so - I have enough btrfs drives (22 qemu files, 4 WD Greens att) to see about one or two scrub fixable errors a week with no obvious cause, sometimes serious (in a critical file). That's a bit scary. I'm running ZFS on several systems, scrub twice a week and have never seen any corruption. Do you think this is because of btrfs, your hardware or your usage? -- Neil Bothwick Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] udev or Gentoo issue?
On Sat, 17 May 2014 08:15:19 +0100, Mick wrote: AFAIR you ned to install ifplugd, but not configure or run it. openrc uses it to determine if a cable is plugged in and delay setting up the interface if there is none. That's how I have been doing it, using ifplugd to monitor the presence of a link, but seem to recall that there is/was a netifrc-way of managing which network interface comes up at boot. I'm not saying you should use ifplugd, only that you should install it so that openrc can use it. -- Neil Bothwick Energize! said Picard and the pink bunny appeared... signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] experience thus far
On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 3:53 AM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: I am not clear on one thing: is the corruption that you show above *because* of btrfs, or it would occur silently with any other fs, like e.g. ext4? That is something I'm curious about as well as I stumbled on this thread. I've been running btrfs on a 5 drive array set to raid1 for both data and metadata for several months now, and I've yet to see a single error in my weekly scrubs. This is on a system that is up 24x7, running mysql, mythtv, postfix, and a daily rsync backup - basically light disk activity at all times, and heavy activity moderately often. The only issue I've had with btrfs is ENOSPC when it manages to allocate all of its chunks (more of a problem on a smaller ssd running btrfs for /), and panics when I try to remove several snapshots at once. I'm not sure how easy it would be to test for silent corruption on another fs, unless you tried using ZFS instead, or used tripwire or some other integrity checker. Testing the drive itself would be straightforward if you didn't need to use it in any kind of production capacity - write patterns to it and try to read them back in a few days. Rich
Re: [gentoo-user] experience thus far
On 17/05/14 18:07, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sat, 17 May 2014 08:08:17 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote: Don't forget to have a maintenance program - run a scrub regularly once a week or so - I have enough btrfs drives (22 qemu files, 4 WD Greens att) to see about one or two scrub fixable errors a week with no obvious cause, sometimes serious (in a critical file). That's a bit scary. I'm running ZFS on several systems, scrub twice a week and have never seen any corruption. Do you think this is because of btrfs, your hardware or your usage? Usage and bugs in btrfs - the backup drive is using dirvish which hammers the drive quite hard as its uses hardlinks for duplicate files (faster, saves space). Reiserfs which I used to use (same hardware) only ever got an error whih a cause like power outage in the middle of a backup - easily recovered if time consuming. Its also on an LVM running across a mixture of drives raging from an old ide to WD green. Part of the reason for converting it to btrfs is because if it survives the hammering (and its getting better), its a sign its getting robust. I did try ext 4 (twice) before reiserfs - both attempts lasted around a week. All this is on roughly the same hardware - Ive had a couple of disks fail, and move partitions around on the LVM as necessary. The motherboard is an old core2 but running 32bit. Kernels are all 3.12.13 gentoo-sources. For the VM's, they were still getting an occasional error when I had them on a reiserfs storage. I tried ceph on btrfs for awhile but not having enough hardware to do it properly (mostly btrfs failures it must be said) its now on a 3 disk btrfs raid1. Since creating that one just a few weeks ago I have not seen an error, though btrfs VM's stored on it have had errors. The VM's 10-12 gentoo, 3xwin (usually 6 running, not all 15 or so running at the same time) use a supermicro motherboard, dual quad zeons and 16G ram. BillK
Re: [gentoo-user] Fonts and bad eyes
140517 Dale wrote: I'm sure there are some older folks on here that have eyes that are not in the best of shape. Mine are not real good even with glasses. What font is the easiest to read for folks with bad eyes? New Century Schoolbook was designed for small children c 1910 : my eyes are good enough with glasses, but its shapes are my favorite. Perhaps it's what I learned to read with (I don't remember learning to read). -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
Re: [gentoo-user] Copying data efficiently
On Sat, 17 May 2014, at 8:46 am, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: ... a) Unlike other commands, pv will give you a progress bar so that you know how long your back up is taking. I've been using ddrescue recently - by default it seems to be faster than plain old regular dd. I assume it must be possible to adjust the parameters (blocksize?) to speed dd up, but I just want to run the command and not have to bother tinkering. On dumb blind copies, I'm finding ddrescue about 3x or 4x faster than dd, I would estimate. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Fonts and bad eyes
On Saturday 17 May 2014 02:17:17 Dale wrote: Howdy, I'm curious. I'm sure there are some older folks on here that have eyes that are not in the best of shape. Mine are not real good even with glasses. My question is, what font is the easiest to read for folks with bad eyes? In other words, for you folks who can't see good, what font do you use? I'm just curious. Just reply and let me know what you use. I think I need to change mine to something better. I'm glad you asked, Dale. I've been meaning to go a-searching fonts for some time and now you've prompted me into it. So far I've found these to be acceptable: Liberation Sans Bitstream Vera Sans Clockopia DejaVu Sans Droid Sans Free Sans Trebuchet MS URW Gothic L Verdana That last one, I believe, was designed by M$ for use in web pages. I'll spend some time with each of them and find which I like best. You'll notice that they're all sans-serif. That's because I believe serif fonts need a higher pixel density than most screens have, and that's why they work well when printed on paper but not here. Hope that hasn't muddied the waters even more! -- Regards Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] Copying data efficiently
Am 17.05.2014 11:58, schrieb Neil Bothwick: On Sat, 17 May 2014 09:59:08 +0200, meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: 3. Or you could use a sequential copy: cp -a /home /dev/sdb1/ cp -a /home /dev/sdc1 3.) The files I want to copy are in the size of some GB each. So the cache isnt big enough to hold ALL files for the second part. Run the two copies simultaneously, start the first, switch to another tab, start the second. That way the data for the second copy is always the most recently cached. However, I expect the speed limit here may be the USB bus unless you are using USB 3.0 drives on different buses. I was thinking about how to make sure cache is used, and that two simultanious cp won't work, because the progress for the two cp will quickly diverge. But then I realized: there is no need to think about the read cache - the limiting factor is always the writing side, especially with USB! So IMO it doesn't matter at all how you do it! I guess two simultaneous cp will be the same as two sequential cp, except if you have two separate USB-buses. Usually you have just one externally connectible, use lsusb -t to check. If you have less that 2 times the size of your files, IMO simultaneous cp will be worse, because Linux (don't know if USB-subsystem or cp) creates big buffers when cp'ing (check with free -m), and you'll probably get into memory trouble. Greetings, Daniel PS: Quickest way is always to open USB-case and plug SATA cable from motherboard into drive. With 80GB it's always worth the trouble. -- Get my PGP key at: * http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x837FB8B5BB9D4887 * $ gpg --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xBB9D4887 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Fonts and bad eyes
Hello, On Sat, 17 May 2014, Dale wrote: I'm curious. I'm sure there are some older folks on here that have eyes that are not in the best of shape. Mine are not real good even with glasses. My question is, what font is the easiest to read for folks with bad eyes? In other words, for you folks who can't see good, what font do you use? Even though I can see well with glasses on (I'm quite nearsighted, R:-5.0dpt, L:-6.5dpt) and I'm not even 40 yet ... (Font-) Readbility on- and off-screen is some sort of a hobby and of concern of mine. On screen or on paper? On screen, I use misc-fixed (gnu-unifont?) and Verdana almost exclusively except for Window-Titles and the WMaker App-menu (where I use Helvetica i.e. apparently LiberationSans (I thought it was the URW variant Nimbus Sans(?))) as it runs less wide. Misc-fixed has wonderfully unambiguous letter shapes, Verdana is pretty good in that respect too. The Linux text-console font is also very good. Adjust font-sizes to your ability (might get tedious), though experimenting with the screen's DPI might be a shortcut. Be wary of anti-aliasing and sub-pixel-hinting. Test both _after_ you've chosen a good font without them, if they help, esp. when tweaking non-screen-optimized layouts, activate them, if the do not, leave them off. Do NOT use normal serif-fonts for on-screen reading (like Times, Garamond etc.). Nor normal sans-serif ones (like Arial). Use those fonts optimized for the screen. If you need to set something in a specific font for printing, use misc-fixed/verdana for the typing (and use styles/formats in e.g. oowriter), and change the font as late as possible for final layout tweaks only. Oh, and _very_ importantly: get a _GOOD_ matt monitor if you haven't yet. You don't need a glaring shaving mirror on your desk ;) Any reflection, even a matt one, distracts and hurts the eye, and clear reflections like from glaring panels like the Apple ones are esp. exhausting. I've had the chance to use three 17 TFT side-by-side in twos a) an el-cheapo LG TN (yikes! I got headachey after ~30min) b) an not-quite-cheapo Samsung Syncmaster TN (wlll, endurable for a few hours, lots better than the LG) c) an about twice as expensive EIZO S1721 PVA. I use that without ever getting headachey for as much as 36h. current uptime is ~22h :) Also: always adjust the brightness to ambient light! And adjust the ambient light at night[1]! And with non-matt panels, you may have to turn up the brightness way too far to be comfortable, to still be able to see anything on screen. I'm using that EIZO now since early Apr. 2010, and still 35%-40% brightness suffices (as my window a bit right of the monitor is facing north, but there's a light-yellow colored house with a bright white picket fence, so depending, a _lot_ of light is reflected, so much so that it is blinding even when I'm not at the PC. It's esp. bugging, when there are quick changes on a, say, typical april day (mid-lats of the northern Hemisphere), one minute, the (reflected) sun glares at you, the next a dark cloud makes it seem like dusk. And no, the light sensor sadly does not seem to work. On paper, I very much prefer classic serif-fonts, esp. Garamond and I like the TeX fonts (Computer Modern/Latin Modern) quite much. -dnh [1] usually, I have a lamp at the side, barely lighting the table, but when I'm watching videos, I move the lamp lower, so it's only lighting the floor/low wall and gives a low ambient light. Very nice when watching darkish videos. Nicer than turning up the monitor brightness (even if I turn that up to 45% or even a bit more ;) -- Idiot, n.: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Re: [gentoo-user] Copying data efficiently
Daniel Troeder dan...@admin-box.com [14-05-17 16:36]: Am 17.05.2014 11:58, schrieb Neil Bothwick: On Sat, 17 May 2014 09:59:08 +0200, meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: 3. Or you could use a sequential copy: cp -a /home /dev/sdb1/ cp -a /home /dev/sdc1 3.) The files I want to copy are in the size of some GB each. So the cache isnt big enough to hold ALL files for the second part. Run the two copies simultaneously, start the first, switch to another tab, start the second. That way the data for the second copy is always the most recently cached. However, I expect the speed limit here may be the USB bus unless you are using USB 3.0 drives on different buses. I was thinking about how to make sure cache is used, and that two simultanious cp won't work, because the progress for the two cp will quickly diverge. But then I realized: there is no need to think about the read cache - the limiting factor is always the writing side, especially with USB! So IMO it doesn't matter at all how you do it! I guess two simultaneous cp will be the same as two sequential cp, except if you have two separate USB-buses. Usually you have just one externally connectible, use lsusb -t to check. If you have less that 2 times the size of your files, IMO simultaneous cp will be worse, because Linux (don't know if USB-subsystem or cp) creates big buffers when cp'ing (check with free -m), and you'll probably get into memory trouble. Greetings, Daniel PS: Quickest way is always to open USB-case and plug SATA cable from motherboard into drive. With 80GB it's always worth the trouble. -- Get my PGP key at: * http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x837FB8B5BB9D4887 * $ gpg --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xBB9D4887 Hi, thank you /.*/ for /.*/ replies ! :) ...one aspect is missing: The load (that is the I/O on the source hd). If this hd is busy spitting out the data twice, it cannot serve outhe jobs twice as long... H Best regards, mcc PS: On the source system # lsusb -t /: Bus 09.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ohci-pci/4p, 12M /: Bus 08.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ohci-pci/2p, 12M /: Bus 07.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ohci-pci/5p, 12M |__ Port 2: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 1.5M |__ Port 2: Dev 2, If 1, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 1.5M /: Bus 06.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/2p, 5000M /: Bus 05.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/2p, 480M /: Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ohci-pci/5p, 12M |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 1.5M |__ Port 3: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Audio, Driver=snd-usb-audio, 12M |__ Port 3: Dev 3, If 1, Class=Audio, Driver=snd-usb-audio, 12M /: Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/4p, 480M /: Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/5p, 480M /: Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/5p, 480M |__ Port 4: Dev 4, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/6p, 480M
[gentoo-user] btrfs only, without dracut
(new thread to separate things a bit more) Today I took the effort to completely re-install one of my two older thinkpads. booted via USB (sysresccd) because the X220 has no optical drive, backed up the contents of / and the encrypted /home to an external drive and started up gdisk to reorder the partitions. There were: sda1/boot/efi sda2swap(encrypted) sda3/root (the old ext4) sda4encrypted /home sda5/root (the new btrfs) Wasting the ~25GB of sda3 was not acceptable ;-) and adding that device to the new btrfs-pool somehow lead to flaky results with grub2-mkconfig It seems to not detect or interpret correctly the fact that there are 2 physical devices in there and then the linux ... line for grub.cfg gets messed up, at least for me here. Played around with that and then decided to redo all that from scratch. Removed sda[345] and did: sda1/boot/efi sda2swap(encrypted) sda3/root (new bigger btrfs) sda4encrypted /home (with btrfs inside) copied back my stuff, chrooted and re-fiddled my grub2/EFI-setup, that took me a bit but now it works great. - And even better(?): no more initrd included now! grub2-mkconfig somehow decides not to need the initrds generated by Canek's kerninst and it boots up fine so far. I will check if I should keep it that way or somehow enforce the usage of the initrd. opinions? - I looked if I can get rid of lvm2-pkg completely but AFAI understand I need that for cryptsetup, right? So I masked the lvm2-activation-services ... they don't do anything now at boot time ... a bit more speed (tiny) and less complexity somehow. - So quite a learning curve these days :-) Thanks for all the help and infos on this list, btw ... Stefan
Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs only, without dracut
Am 17.05.2014 17:56, schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger: sda3 /root (the old ext4) sda5 /root (the new btrfs) sorry for the missing precision here ... I don't mean /root but the root filesystem here for sure ... Stefan
Re: [gentoo-user] Copying data efficiently
On Sat, 17 May 2014 14:44:04 +0100, Stroller wrote: a) Unlike other commands, pv will give you a progress bar so that you know how long your back up is taking. I've been using ddrescue recently - by default it seems to be faster than plain old regular dd. I assume it must be possible to adjust the parameters (blocksize?) to speed dd up, but I just want to run the command and not have to bother tinkering. Use the bs option. The default is 512, which is incredibly slow, bs=4k makes a substantial difference. However, I usually use dcfldd these days, whch works out the best block size to use and adds progress reporting. -- Neil Bothwick Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes! signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] udev or Gentoo issue?
I have this: # dmesg | grep enp [4.297862] systemd-udevd[659]: renamed network interface eth0 to enp0s20u2u1 [4.778289] systemd-udevd[660]: renamed network interface eth0 to enp0s20u2u2 [6.496193] ax88179_178a 3-2.1:1.0 enp0s20u2u1: ax88179 - Link status is: 1 [7.905393] ax88179_178a 3-2.2:1.0 enp0s20u2u2: ax88179 - Link status is: 1 # That doesn't tell us when the network initscripts tried and failed to start but this from /var/log/messages/everything/current shows the first time in the boot sequence that a dependent service failed to start because of the networking failure so it should be before this: [kernel] [0.787433] serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12 [/etc/init.d/unbound] ERROR: cannot start unbound as net.enp0s20u2u1 would not start [kernel] [0.792081] rtc_cmos 00:04: alarms up to one month, y3k, 242 bytes nvram, hpet irqs Yeah, so I think the kernel is detecting your network card after udev has already started. One interesting experiment would be to delay the boot process to allow the kernel additional time to detect devices. Adding rootdelay=10 to your kernel command line should do the trick, unless you are using some broken initramfs. I tried that and it works great which I think confirms our suspicions that the kernel is detecting my network cards after udev has already started. If I remove rootdelay=10 and I do this: # ln -s /dev/null /etc/udev/rules.d/90-network.rules the network interfaces fail to come up which is the same thing I've experienced with rc_hotplug=net.*. - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs only, without dracut
On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 8:56 AM, Stefan G. Weichinger li...@xunil.atwrote: It seems to not detect or interpret correctly the fact that there are 2 physical devices in there and then the linux ... line for grub.cfg gets messed up, at least for me here. ACK, genkernel initramfs doesn't btrfs scan and TSHTF. genkernel-next works though. But if you have it working now without any initramfs then obviously that is full of win (the LA kind, not the Redmond variety)! I am a bit mystified -- or perhaps ignorant -- as to how it came to be that btrfs has no option to automatically initiate a scan (like md raid does, when it's built into the kernel as a non-module). Surely people must want that feature. I can see how scanning the wrong partitions could lead to terrible mayhem, though, say, in a disaster recovery scenario where you binary-cloned a failing drive and forgot to take the old one out before booting or whatever but btrfs has the secret sauce to most likely figure stuff like that out auto-magically anyhow, using the genid... so what gives? Anyone know? Perhaps the option really is there and I simply never found it; admittedly I didn't look very hard -- regardless, I can't imagine the btrfs people just never thought of it. If i's really not implemented, there must be a reason... and if that reason doesn't apply to my situation I might consider patching such a feature into my kernels as this is the only thing tying my workstation to an initramfs. -gmt
Re: [gentoo-user] udev or Gentoo issue?
On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 2:39 PM, Grant emailgr...@gmail.com wrote: I have this: # dmesg | grep enp [4.297862] systemd-udevd[659]: renamed network interface eth0 to enp0s20u2u1 [4.778289] systemd-udevd[660]: renamed network interface eth0 to enp0s20u2u2 [6.496193] ax88179_178a 3-2.1:1.0 enp0s20u2u1: ax88179 - Link status is: 1 [7.905393] ax88179_178a 3-2.2:1.0 enp0s20u2u2: ax88179 - Link status is: 1 # That doesn't tell us when the network initscripts tried and failed to start but this from /var/log/messages/everything/current shows the first time in the boot sequence that a dependent service failed to start because of the networking failure so it should be before this: [kernel] [0.787433] serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12 [/etc/init.d/unbound] ERROR: cannot start unbound as net.enp0s20u2u1 would not start [kernel] [0.792081] rtc_cmos 00:04: alarms up to one month, y3k, 242 bytes nvram, hpet irqs Yeah, so I think the kernel is detecting your network card after udev has already started. One interesting experiment would be to delay the boot process to allow the kernel additional time to detect devices. Adding rootdelay=10 to your kernel command line should do the trick, unless you are using some broken initramfs. I tried that and it works great which I think confirms our suspicions that the kernel is detecting my network cards after udev has already started. If I remove rootdelay=10 and I do this: # ln -s /dev/null /etc/udev/rules.d/90-network.rules the network interfaces fail to come up which is the same thing I've experienced with rc_hotplug=net.*. Yeah, so this is not solvable using service dependencies. You will either need to make that boot delay permanent, or rely on the hotplug functionality to start the net.en* services. In the latter case, you should remove them from the default runlevel. You may want to define rc_need=!net to prevent init scripts that need net from automatically starting the net.* services. For most services this is fine, but it will obviously break things like ntpdate which actually need a usable network connection.
Re: [gentoo-user] multiple monitor refresh rates and broken brains (was: fonts and bad eyes)
On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 4:21 AM, David Haller gen...@dhaller.de wrote: Oh, and _very_ importantly: get a _GOOD_ matt monitor if you haven't yet. Apologies, David, for hijacking your really good question-thread, which I'm also very eager to hear people's answers to. But, this reminds me of something I've been pondering lately... I think maybe refresh-rate discrepancies are subtly evil in multi-monitor setups. When I look at my 59.9 kHz apple cinema next to my 60 kHz POS Dell throwaway monitor, something spooky clearly happens in my brain -- if I get up close and look carefully, the pixels seem to rather dramatically swim near the bezels between the two monitors, in a way that reminds me of a migraine prodrome (perhaps because, to some degree, that's exactly what I'm inducing in my brain, by exposing it to high-frequency polyharmonic interference (presumably, there's a 0.5 MHz harmonic between those two displays, no wonder my brain doesn't like it!). In practice, I don't seem to have had any huge problem from this (and I'm going to get rid of that crappy Dell soon, anyhow) but I have heard reports from people claiming this type of thing caused eye fatigue and headaches. My semi-baseless theory is that, so long as the remainders of the greatest common multiples of your various monitors' refresh-rates form nice clean ratios like 1:2, 2:3, etc, you probably won't fry your wetware input circuitry looking at them. However, if, as above, there are ugly harmonics, I suspect it might be pretty bad for some people. If, like me, you're too cheap for the 100% solution of buying identical monitors, maybe just try to ensure everything you buy supports standard 60kHz standard modes, or even go read the 1990's-era ModeLine authoring FAQ's and attempt to actually understand the problem and fix it, if you're feeling ambitious :) Anyhow... we now return to our regularly schedule programming... -gmt
Re: [gentoo-user] Copying data efficiently
On Saturday 17 May 2014 08:59:08 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com [14-05-17 09:48]: On Saturday 17 May 2014 04:33:57 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Hi, is there any tool in the Gentoo portage which may speed up (make it mopre efficient) the following task: On my HD there are data I want to copy to two identical external HDs. These HDs are of the same type/model and each is separately connectable via USB to my PC (...these two of the typical mobile external USB-HDs). Instead of copying the data twice from my PC to eah of the HDs I want to do it once...like I would be able to give the cp-command two instead of one target where to copy two. The result should be two identically populated external HDs, each of them useable/readable without the need to the other one. What tool of the portage tree I able to accomplish this task? Best regards, mcc 1. You could set up the two ext drives as a mirrored RAID and use your copying/tar-ing/dd tool of choice. 2. Or you could use pipe and tee to split the feed into any devices you want, e.g.: pv /dev/sda1 | tee (dd of=/dev/sdb1) (dd of=/dev/sdc1) 3. Or you could use a sequential copy: cp -a /home /dev/sdb1/ cp -a /home /dev/sdc1 NOTES: a) Unlike other commands, pv will give you a progress bar so that you know how long your back up is taking. b) The 3rd example above will copy sequentially, but depending on the size of the file(s) the second copy may be read from cache. c) If you're doing this over the network then you can use nc in listening mode at the receiving end, or ssh if the network is untrusted. I'm interested to see what other ways will be suggested for this task. Hi Mick, thank your reply! :) From your numbering of the possibilities... 1.) ...I am no RAID guru and would try this later with data, which are not valuable... If the drives are not permanently connected, then you will have to assemble the RAID each time you want to copy something, after you plug them in. Perhaps not the most efficient method. 2.) That looks interesting! Unfortunately it seems to copy device contents on low level instead of files. The source are directory structure -- not whole devices... Well, I just offered an example for a whole drive. You will need to point it to the file(s) you want to copy over. The pv command works like cat; e.g. cat myfile | tee (blah ...) is the same like: pv myfile | tee (blah ...) Or did I overlook an option mentioned in the manpage...? 3.) The files I want to copy are in the size of some GB each. So the cache isnt big enough to hold ALL files for the second part. Best regards, mcc -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Fonts and bad eyes
On Saturday 17 May 2014 13:21:08 David Haller wrote: The Linux text-console font is also very good. Yes, except for one thing: the oblique stroke through the zero. That makes it almost indistinguishable from an 8, to my poor eyes (one acute myopia, the other even more acute astigmatism together with moderate myopia, and now both being destroyed slowly by glaucoma). Some time ago I tried to find out where the VC font is defined, with a view to removing that oblique bar, but I ran out of steam before finding it. If anyone can shed any light on this I'd be grateful. Oh, and Dale, so far I've come to like the Bitstream Vera Sans at size 14 for KMail text. -- Regards Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] Copying data efficiently
On Sat, 17 May 2014 20:41:15 +0100, Mick wrote: From your numbering of the possibilities... 1.) ...I am no RAID guru and would try this later with data, which are not valuable... If the drives are not permanently connected, then you will have to assemble the RAID each time you want to copy something, after you plug them in. Perhaps not the most efficient method. Whatever method is used will likely consist of multiple commands, and probably a good few arguments, lending itself best to scripting. In that case, the RAID approach becomes no more difficult to use once set up. -- Neil Bothwick The Computer is the logical advancement of humankind: intelligence without morality. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] boot problems
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 01:06:41PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote LVM is an excellent solution for what it was designed to do, which is to deal with stuff like this: Oops. I misjudged how big /var/log needed to be and now I need to add 50G to that partition. But it's sda6 and I have up to sda8. Argggh! Now I need 5 hour downtime to play 15-pieces with fdisk. LVM makes that 2 commands and 12 seconds. Yes, it's a bit complex and you have to hold the PV/VG/LV model in your head, but it also *fixes* the issue with rigid MSDOS partition style. The concept of Logical Volume Management is also useful for an encryption/decryption layer on top of an encrypted USB key. lvm2 is a mandatory dependancy for cryptsetup. -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org I don't run desktop environments; I run useful applications
[gentoo-user] Re: Having Trouble with Wireless Interface
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA512
On 05/15/2014 03:50 PM, Mick wrote:
On Thursday 15 May 2014 14:24:57 Alexander Kapshuk wrote:
On 05/15/2014 11:39 AM, Stroller wrote:
On Wed, 14 May 2014, at 12:36 pm, Alexander Kapshuk
alexander.kaps...@gmail.com wrote:
…
If you like to check if RTL8192CE is enabled in your kernel's .config
file. If it isn't, you probably want to compile it as a module, and
then add rtl8192ce to /etc/conf.d/modules as well.
Am pretty sure there's no need to add this one to /etc/conf.d/modules -
IME it'll just be found and loaded automagically by the kernel.
Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't aware of that. As I mentioned in
my previous post, I do not use genkernel myself.
Neither do I - for this reason I found it a little frustrating trying to
help in a recent thread, myself.
However, I'm pretty sure that loadable kernel modules behave the same
whether your kernel is built by hand or by genkernel - if you have
modules listed in /etc/conf.d/modules then I have to wonder if you
really need them there.
I haven't used that file for years, and I prefer to compile everything as
a module, too.
Stroller.
That's interesting. I wasn't aware of that either.
So far, I've just been following the instructions given in the handbook,
section 7.d, which do recommend explicitly specifying the kernel modules
to be loaded at boot time in /etc/conf.d/modules.
How does the kernel know then what modules to load at boot time, if it
doesn't rely on /etc/conf.d/modules to supply the list of modules to be
loaded?
Does it use udev, or some other mechanism for that?
Thanks.
I understand it is udev magic which probes the hardware and it fetches the
corresponding module from the kernel, as long as it has been compiled.
Incidentally, I noticed that I now have this running on my system:
/lib/systemd/systemd-udevd --daemon
The actual udev magic in question is this line from
/lib/udev/rules.d/80-drivers.rules:
ENV{MODALIAS}==?*, RUN{builtin}+=kmod load $env{MODALIAS}
When a new device is seen by the kernel (which includes cold-plug on
boot), udev calls the equivalent of `modprobe ${MODALIAS}` (in reality,
the actual command is now just a call to libkmod, which is linked into
udev itself), where ${MODALIAS} is the contents of the file modalias
under the /sys directory describing that device. This file may look
something like this (actual example from my machine):
pci:v8086d0416sv1558sd7104bc03sc00i00
This information (following the the initial pci:, indicating that this
is a PCI device), can be split into multiple identifier/number pairs,
like so:
v 8086
d 0416
sv 1558
sd 7104
bc 03
sc 00
i 00
In this case I have vendor 8086 (Intel Corporation), device
0416 (4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller),
subsystem vendor 1558 (CLEVO/KAPOK Computer), subsystem device
7104 (not listed in pci.ids, sorry), base class 03 (Display
controller), sub class 00 (VGA compatible controller), and programming
interface 00 (VGA controller).
This information is then used to look up the module in
/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/modules.alias (actually, modules.alias.bin is
used if present to speed up the lookup). This lookup finds the line:
alias pci:v8086d0416sv*sd*bc03sc*i* i915
As my card matches the glob in the second field in that line, the module
listed in the third field is loaded to handle the card. The actual
modules.alias file is generated by depmod when the module is installed
by reading the information from the module itself.
- --
Jonathan Callen
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Re: [gentoo-user] Fonts and bad eyes
On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 01:21:08PM +0200, David Haller wrote The Linux text-console font is also very good. I used to do email and various other stuff on a VGA2 screen (640x480). There are 5 lat1 consolefonts... /usr/share/consolefonts/lat1-08.psfu.gz /usr/share/consolefonts/lat1-10.psfu.gz /usr/share/consolefonts/lat1-12.psfu.gz /usr/share/consolefonts/lat1-14.psfu.gz /usr/share/consolefonts/lat1-16.psfu.gz They are all 8 pixels wide, giving 80 columns on a VGA screen. At 640x400 consolemode, you got... * lat1-08 (CGA-like) gave 80x50 (unreadable except on a large monitor) * lat1-10 gave 80x40, which was nice * lat1-12 gave 80x33 * lat1-14 (EGA-like) gave 80x28 * lat1-16 (VGA-like) gave 80x25 At 640x480 consolemode... * lat1-08 (CGA-like) gave 80x60 (unreadable except on a large monitor) * lat1-10 gave 80x48, which is surprisingly much nicer than 80x50 above. Those 2 extra pixels made a world of difference * lat1-12 gave 80x40 * lat1-14 (EGA-like) gave 80x34 * lat1-16 (VGA-like) gave 80x30 Then video drivers came along that insisted on taking over text mode, and running at native framebuffer resolution. I have a 1280x800 notebook that would be perfectly legible with the screen kicked into 640x480 mode, and lat1-12 font selected. Unfortunately, the Intel driver takes over and 1280x800 pixels text mode is barely legible 160 columns x 50 rows. On some machines, it was possible to override things and force 640x480 mode in consolemode at bootup. Unfortunately, that forcing would also stick in X, where you do not want 640x480 pixels!!! The consolefont program can select any available font. Question... * Plan A) can I get 16-pixel wide lat1 consolefonts from somewhere? * Plan B) is there free software around that can modify/tweak the regular fonts to double their width? -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org I don't run desktop environments; I run useful applications
Re: [gentoo-user] multiple monitor refresh rates and broken brains (was: fonts and bad eyes)
On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 9:37 PM, Greg Turner g...@malth.us wrote: On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 4:21 AM, David Haller gen...@dhaller.de wrote: Oh, and _very_ importantly: get a _GOOD_ matt monitor if you haven't yet. Apologies, David, for hijacking your really good question-thread, which I'm also very eager to hear people's answers to. But, this reminds me of something I've been pondering lately... I think maybe refresh-rate discrepancies are subtly evil in multi-monitor setups. When I look at my 59.9 kHz apple cinema next to my 60 kHz POS Dell throwaway monitor, something spooky clearly happens in my brain -- if I get up close and look carefully, the pixels seem to rather dramatically swim near the bezels between the two monitors, in a way that reminds me of a migraine prodrome (perhaps because, to some degree, that's exactly what I'm inducing in my brain, by exposing it to high-frequency polyharmonic interference (presumably, there's a 0.5 MHz harmonic between those two displays, no wonder my brain doesn't like it!). From your description I am suspecting that your problem is not due to 59.9 Hz vs 60.0 Hz but rather poorly tuned analog to digital conversions in one or both of the monitors, you could use a high-frequency test pattern such as [1] and press your monitors' Auto button (or select Auto configuration from some menu). The high frequency pattern will help the monitor during the auto configuration and let it tune the phase of the analog signal more precisely. This is if you are using a VGA cable and not something digital, such as DVI or HDMI. If you are having the same problems with digital signalling you probably have a bad cable. In practice, I don't seem to have had any huge problem from this (and I'm going to get rid of that crappy Dell soon, anyhow) but I have heard reports from people claiming this type of thing caused eye fatigue and headaches. My semi-baseless theory is that, so long as the remainders of the greatest common multiples of your various monitors' refresh-rates form nice clean ratios like 1:2, 2:3, etc, you probably won't fry your wetware input circuitry looking at them. However, if, as above, there are ugly harmonics, I suspect it might be pretty bad for some people. If, like me, you're too cheap for the 100% solution of buying identical monitors, maybe just try to ensure everything you buy supports standard 60kHz standard modes, or even go read the 1990's-era ModeLine authoring FAQ's and attempt to actually understand the problem and fix it, if you're feeling ambitious :) Anyhow... we now return to our regularly schedule programming... -gmt [1]: http://pixelmappat.nu/ Best regards, Joakim
