Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 5 MTP failure

[Walter Dnes]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 08:23:42AM -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote
> On 2017-06-16 14:23, Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
> > This is not the first time I've seen somebody mention this "songs and
> > pictures" stuff. I don't understand.  When I use mtpfs to mount my
> > Android devices, a "file-level view" is exactly what I get: I see the
> > device's root directory and everything underneath it the exact same
> > way I would if it were a USB-storage device.
> 
> The last time I tried MTP was on Debian maybe 2 years ago or 3 years,
> using the jmtpfs package.  IIRC this was what happened; yes, I could see
> individual files, but only certain types, and only in certain
> directories.

  That package is currently keyworded.  Use sys-fs/simple-mtpfs instead.
It simply works; and it works simply.  From the command line

1) create a working mount directory, e.g. $HOME/tablet

2) attach smartphone/tablet/whatever to USB port

3) sudo simple-mtpfs -o allow_other $HOME/tablet

4) cd $HOME/tablet

5) do whatever

6) cd

7) sudo fusermount -u $HOME/tablet

8) dettach smartphone/tablet/whatever from USB port

-- 
Walter Dnes 
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE 5 MTP failure

[Grant Edwards]

On 2017-06-16, Grant Edwards  wrote:
> On 2017-06-16, Ian Zimmerman  wrote:
>
>> The last time I tried MTP was on Debian maybe 2 years ago or 3 years,
>> using the jmtpfs package.  IIRC this was what happened; yes, I could see
>> individual files, but only certain types, and only in certain
>> directories.
>
> Interesting.  I just tried it on my Moto G, and it appears that I see
> absolutely everything, but now it's only the SD card.  The last time I
> tried it (probably almost a year ago), I saw the internal storage
> also.  All I ever want to transfer is to/from the SD card, so it's
> still good enough for me, but it doesn't work the way you want it to
> (which is how it used to work).

At least it's not just me:

https://forums.androidcentral.com/moto-x-pure-edition/622358-6-0-marshmallow-internal-memory-storage-does-not-show-up-when-connected-laptop-via-usb.html

This seems to be how Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) works if you've
formatted your SD card for 'Internal' use and opted to "migrate" your
data to it.  The internal flash is no longer made available via MTP.

>
> phone
> └── SD card
> ├── AI Factory Stats
> │   └── Backgammon.stats
> ├── Alarms
> ├── albumthumbs
> │   ├── 1418949716037
> [...]

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! My EARS are GONE!!
  at   
  gmail.com

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE 5 MTP failure

[Grant Edwards]

On 2017-06-16, Ian Zimmerman  wrote:

> The last time I tried MTP was on Debian maybe 2 years ago or 3 years,
> using the jmtpfs package.  IIRC this was what happened; yes, I could see
> individual files, but only certain types, and only in certain
> directories.

Interesting.  I just tried it on my Moto G, and it appears that I see
absolutely everything, but now it's only the SD card.  The last time I
tried it (probably almost a year ago), I saw the internal storage
also.  All I ever want to transfer is to/from the SD card, so it's
still good enough for me, but it doesn't work the way you want it to
(which is how it used to work).


phone
└── SD card
├── AI Factory Stats
│   └── Backgammon.stats
├── Alarms
├── albumthumbs
│   ├── 1418949716037
[...]
│   └── 1418951626418
├── alt_autocycle
├── amazon
│   └── shared_test_data
│   └── fontconfig
│   └── cachedir
│   ├── 27cf29a221eaa093d4b928e3745e49e5-le32d8.cache-3
[...]
│   ├── f641fe1c134a0cfab7cc5f63c0b106e5-le32d8.cache-3
│   └── f8d250095eb18f59cf6cfb3e0b53e660-le32d8.cache-3
├── amazonmp3
│   └── temp
├── Android
│   ├── data
│   │   ├── com.amazon.kindle
│   │   │   ├── cache
│   │   │   │   └── uil-images

[...]

475 directories, 3238 files


-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Hello?  Enema Bondage?
  at   I'm calling because I want
  gmail.comto be happy, I guess ...

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE 5 MTP failure

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2017-06-16 14:23, Grant Edwards wrote:

> This is not the first time I've seen somebody mention this "songs and
> pictures" stuff. I don't understand.  When I use mtpfs to mount my
> Android devices, a "file-level view" is exactly what I get: I see the
> device's root directory and everything underneath it the exact same
> way I would if it were a USB-storage device.

The last time I tried MTP was on Debian maybe 2 years ago or 3 years,
using the jmtpfs package.  IIRC this was what happened; yes, I could see
individual files, but only certain types, and only in certain
directories.

-- 
Please *no* private Cc: on mailing lists and newsgroups
Personal signed mail: please _encrypt_ and sign
Don't clear-text sign:
http://primate.net/~itz/blog/the-problem-with-gpg-signatures.html

[gentoo-user] Re: nscd not caching hostnames

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2017-06-16 15:14, Adam Carter wrote:

> But i see from packet captures that a new request is sent to the dns
> server each time, and nscd -i hosts is always empty. stracing nscd
> shows that its not processing anything. How do i get it to intercept
> the name requests?  FWIW, im running systemd.

Doesn't systemd have its own built-in resolver?  I think that was their
plan, at least.

-- 
Please *no* private Cc: on mailing lists and newsgroups
Personal signed mail: please _encrypt_ and sign
Don't clear-text sign:
http://primate.net/~itz/blog/the-problem-with-gpg-signatures.html

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: ntp Vs openntp vis a vis Plasma desktop

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 10:34 AM, R0b0t1  wrote:
>
> Is it not possible to add it via a USE flag? Even if there are no real
> compile time options, could the flag pull in ntp?

Could a USE flag do this?  Sure.  Should it?  No.

"The usage of a USE flag should not control runtime dependencies when
the package does not link to it. Doing so will create extra
configuration for the package and re-compilation for no underlying
file change on disk. This should be avoided and instead can be
conveyed to the user via post install messages if needed."
https://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/use-flags/

If this is an optional runtime dependency the general practice is to
just output a message after installation.  Adding dependencies or USE
flags are both poor solutions in these situations.

GLEP 62 was actually created to address this, but it hasn't gone
anywhere.  To be fair, just printing an elog message isn't that
painful a solution.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: ntp Vs openntp vis a vis Plasma desktop

[R0b0t1]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 6:44 AM, Michael Palimaka  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 06/16/2017 04:19 PM, Andrew Lowe wrote:
>> Good afternoon all,
>>   Does anyone have any inside knowledge as to why 5.9.5 of KDE plasma
>> desktop did not require ntp whereas 5.10.5 does? I use Openntp and been
>> using KDE 5 for ages with the time being correct so was wondering why
>> now the requirement for net-misc/ntp specifically.
>>
>>   Any thoughts, greatly appreciated,
>>
>>   Andrew
>>
>>
>
> Someone raised the issue that the "time server" option in the date and
> time applet was greyed out on their system. It turns out that this
> occurs if neither ntpdate nor rdate binaries are present, so I added the
> dep. There's been some pushback on this so maybe it'll be reverted or
> maybe not. It's being tracked in bug #621754 for anyone who wants to
> chime in.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Michael
>

Is it not possible to add it via a USE flag? Even if there are no real
compile time options, could the flag pull in ntp? I'm not sure
complaining about the addition of net-misc/ntp is reasonable; for one,
you're already installing KDE and all of its dependencies; for
another, that KDE is designed with one NTP implementation in mind may
be a flaw but that probably belongs on the KDE tracker.

On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 9:26 AM, Grant Edwards
 wrote:
> On 2017-06-16, Michael Palimaka  wrote:
>>
>> Someone raised the issue that the "time server" option in the date and
>> time applet was greyed out on their system. It turns out that this
>> occurs if neither ntpdate nor rdate binaries are present,
>
> That seems like perfectly reasonable and correct behavior.  Why is
> it an issue?
>

It may not be immediately obvious how to fix it.

R0b0t1.

[gentoo-user] Re: ntp Vs openntp vis a vis Plasma desktop

[Grant Edwards]

On 2017-06-16, Michael Palimaka  wrote:
>
> Someone raised the issue that the "time server" option in the date and
> time applet was greyed out on their system. It turns out that this
> occurs if neither ntpdate nor rdate binaries are present,

That seems like perfectly reasonable and correct behavior.  Why is
it an issue?

> so I added the dep. There's been some pushback on this so maybe
> it'll be reverted or maybe not. It's being tracked in bug #621754
> for anyone who wants to chime in.

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! What I want to find
  at   out is -- do parrots know
  gmail.commuch about Astro-Turf?

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE 5 MTP failure

[Grant Edwards]

On 2017-06-15, Ian Zimmerman  wrote:

> Another option (Android only, of course) is the adb program in
> android-tools package.  I prefer it over MTP (independent of
> implementation issues) because it gives me file-level view of the
> device, rather than dealing in "pictures" and "songs".

This is not the first time I've seen somebody mention this "songs and
pictures" stuff. I don't understand.  When I use mtpfs to mount my
Android devices, a "file-level view" is exactly what I get: I see the
device's root directory and everything underneath it the exact same
way I would if it were a USB-storage device.

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Gee, I feel kind of
  at   LIGHT in the head now,
  gmail.comknowing I can't make my
   satellite dish PAYMENTS!

Re: [gentoo-user] 1-long 3-short beeps

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 9:01 AM,   wrote:
>
> I find it hard to believe as the computer was working for 3-months
> without any problem with video card in 8-bit PCI slot.
>

Something was definitely lost in translation here.  I suspect you
might be referring to 16x slots or 8x PCIe slots?  I didn't think 8x
slots were all that common, but I'm not much of a motherboard
enthusiast.  I tend to see more 1x and 16x in most boards I've looked
at.

PCIe uses a serial bus with packets, so the concept of bit width is a
bit more nebulous.  Each lane essentially has a one bit data bus.
When multiple lanes are used they aren't transmitting parallel bits
for the same word, but rather each is independently sending one byte
at a time sequentially, with some kind of interleaving.  I believe the
physical layer uses an 8bit->10bit encoding, so you could view it as
an 8-bit protocol in some sense.  Above the physical layer the
transmissions make up packets and those packets can have somewhat
large payloads (hundreds of bytes).

You could almost view PCIe the way you might look at ethernet.

The main difference in slots and cards is the number of lanes
supported.  Each lane increases the rate at which data can be sent.
Any device or slot can fall all the way back to 1x if the number of
lanes doesn't match.  Assuming the physical connectors allow for it
you can stick a 1x card in a 16x slot, or a 16x card in a 1x slot.
Any lanes that have matching connections will be used.  Now, most
slots tend to be closed off at the end so physically a 16x card won't
fit on most 1x ports but you could stick a riser in-between as an
adapter - the issue is purely mechanical and not electrical.

Maybe your motherboard has a picky firmware and cares which slot the
card goes in.  It seems just as likely that one of your slots went bad
and moving it to the other makes things better.  If you did have a 16x
card you would of course prefer to stick it in the 16x slot to get the
best performance out of it.

-- 
Rich

[gentoo-user] Re: e2fsck -a /dev/sdb1

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 16/06/2017 11:59 πμ, Helmut Jarausch wrote:

On 06/16/2017 12:26:07 AM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

If you don't need the files on the stick (as you mentioned on another
post), then I'd recommend formatting it using exfat. Works on both Linux
and Windows. Emerge sys-fs/fuse-exfat and mounting exfat sticks will
happen automatically, just like as if it was ext4.

To format the stick you can use sys-fs/exfat-utils (it installs
mkfs.exfat.) Or format it under Windows. You probably should erase the
partition first under Linux though so that Windows sees all space as
unclaimed. Just remember to select exfat instead of fat32 when you
format it.



I've read that one should use SDFormatter version 4 (on Windows)


Never heard of it. Sounds like it's for SD cards, not USB sticks?

Re: [gentoo-user] 1-long 3-short beeps

[thelma]

On 06/14/2017 09:18 AM, the...@sys-concept.com wrote:
> My 2-months old system is giving me 1-long 3-short beeps.
> No, video display.
> I've swapped the video cards, it is not it.
> 
> Is it a motherboard?
> Asus 970 PRO GAMING AURA Mobo
> 
> I've taken the system to the outfit that put it together (under warranty).

The outfit the put together the PC explain it to me that the video card
was plugged-in into a wrong PCI-express slot (8-bit); In case of single
video card on board the card should be plugged IN into 16-bit
PCI-express slot.

Apparently if there is only one video card on board the 8-bit PCI
express slot is disabled.

I find it hard to believe as the computer was working for 3-months
without any problem with video card in 8-bit PCI slot.

--
Thelma

Re: [gentoo-user] glibc-2.24-r2 failed (install phase)

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2017/06/16 at 09:55am, Mick wrote:
> On Friday 16 Jun 2017 04:05:17 tu...@posteo.de wrote:
> > On 06/15 08:18, tu...@posteo.de wrote:
> > > On 06/15 12:16, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 11:56 AM,   wrote:
> > > > > Hi,
> > > > > 
> > > > > While updateing glibc-2.24-r2 failed to install.
> > > > > 
> > > > > These are the last few lines of that process:
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > al/execinfo.c.texi
[snip]
> > > > > [Makefile:12: install] Error 2
> > > > > 
> > > > >  * ERROR: sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2::gentoo failed (install phase):
> > > > >  *   emake failed
> > > > >  *
> > > > > 
> > > > > If anything more is wanted, I will be happy to post the wanted logs.
> > > > > But I want to prevent to logbomnb the mailinglist in beforehand... ;)
> > > > 
> > > > What version of sys-apps/texinfo do you have installed?
> > > 
> > > [I] sys-apps/texinfo
> > > 
> > >  Available versions:  4.13-r2 5.2 6.1 (~)6.3 {nls static}
> > >  Installed versions:  6.3(06:29:05 AM 02/18/2017)(nls -static)
> > >  Homepage:https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
> > >  Description: The GNU info program and utilities
> > 
> > I installed this version:
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > [I] sys-apps/texinfo
> >  Available versions:  4.13-r2 5.2 6.1 [m](~)6.3 {nls static}
> >  Installed versions:  6.1(03:39:36 AM 06/16/2017)(nls -static)
> >  Homepage:https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
> >  Description: The GNU info program and utilities
> > 
> > and the same (see above) happens.
> 
> Did you try reinstalling sys-apps/texinfo, before glibc?

I had a similar issue with texinfo just yesterday, but not with glibc
- I was unable to emerge almost anything. In my case, I think texinfo
was a symptom, not the problem. Perhaps it is similar in your case?

I ran "perl-cleaner --all" once or twice, did an "emerge --deep -av
--newuse @world" which found one package to update, and then maybe
perl-cleaner again, and finally, "emerge --deep -avu @world" was able
to upgrade / reinstall texinfo. After that, I was able to emerge
new packages just fine.

So, point is - maybe try running something like perl-cleaner,
revdep-rebuild, or the such?

-- 
Chris Spackman

GNU Terry Pratchett

Re: [gentoo-user] Kde 5 Latin characters

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Raphael.

On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 08:49:07 -0300, Raphael MD wrote:
> Hi,

> I've installed kde 5 on my laptop, who have us keyboard.

> My Gentoo was installed with pt-BR and en-US L10N and locale.

> Despite that fact that I'm running a English system, I need to write in
> Portuguese.

> The problem is, when I type ~+a, my system writes ~a and not my desired
> chapter ã, the same for '+c that is showed 'c and not ç.

> I've realised when I set my keyboard config at kde, abnt2-br, keys
> combinations works well to show Latin characters, but when I set us generic
> keyboard, that is my keyboard layout, those key combinations to obtain
> Latin characters goes wrong.

> Anybody can suffered that?

Yes, I had basically the same problem when I wanted to enhance my
British English X keyboard layout to allow me to type German characters
with the  key, etc.

I contributed the method of doing this to the Gentoo wiki at
.

It's quite involved, and you have to patch source files to do it.

Best of luck!

> Thanks.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

[gentoo-user] Kde 5 Latin characters

[Raphael MD]

Hi,

I've installed kde 5 on my laptop, who have us keyboard.

My Gentoo was installed with pt-BR and en-US L10N and locale.

Despite that fact that I'm running a English system, I need to write in
Portuguese.

The problem is, when I type ~+a, my system writes ~a and not my desired
chapter ã, the same for '+c that is showed 'c and not ç.

I've realised when I set my keyboard config at kde, abnt2-br, keys
combinations works well to show Latin characters, but when I set us generic
keyboard, that is my keyboard layout, those key combinations to obtain
Latin characters goes wrong.

Anybody can suffered that?

Thanks.

[gentoo-user] Re: ntp Vs openntp vis a vis Plasma desktop

[Michael Palimaka]

Hi,

On 06/16/2017 04:19 PM, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> Good afternoon all,
>   Does anyone have any inside knowledge as to why 5.9.5 of KDE plasma
> desktop did not require ntp whereas 5.10.5 does? I use Openntp and been
> using KDE 5 for ages with the time being correct so was wondering why
> now the requirement for net-misc/ntp specifically.
> 
>   Any thoughts, greatly appreciated,
> 
>   Andrew
> 
> 

Someone raised the issue that the "time server" option in the date and
time applet was greyed out on their system. It turns out that this
occurs if neither ntpdate nor rdate binaries are present, so I added the
dep. There's been some pushback on this so maybe it'll be reverted or
maybe not. It's being tracked in bug #621754 for anyone who wants to
chime in.

Kind regards,

Michael

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: e2fsck -a /dev/sdb1

[Helmut Jarausch]

On 06/16/2017 12:26:07 AM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

On 15/06/2017 06:26 μμ, the...@sys-concept.com wrote:

I'm trying to repair USB disk (64GB) originally formatted with ext4

I read the USB stick on Windows via some kind of windows ext4 driver  
now I can not open it on Linux box.


e2fsck -a /dev/sdb1
64gb: recovering journal

(just stays there and does nothing).
when I unplug it I get:

e2fsck: No such file or directory while trying to re-open 64gb


If you don't need the files on the stick (as you mentioned on another
post), then I'd recommend formatting it using exfat. Works on both  
Linux

and Windows. Emerge sys-fs/fuse-exfat and mounting exfat sticks will
happen automatically, just like as if it was ext4.

To format the stick you can use sys-fs/exfat-utils (it installs
mkfs.exfat.) Or format it under Windows. You probably should erase the
partition first under Linux though so that Windows sees all space as
unclaimed. Just remember to select exfat instead of fat32 when you
format it.



I've read that one should use SDFormatter version 4 (on Windows)

Helmut

Re: [gentoo-user] glibc-2.24-r2 failed (install phase)

[Mick]

On Friday 16 Jun 2017 04:05:17 tu...@posteo.de wrote:
> On 06/15 08:18, tu...@posteo.de wrote:
> > On 06/15 12:16, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 11:56 AM,   wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > While updateing glibc-2.24-r2 failed to install.
> > > > 
> > > > These are the last few lines of that process:
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > al/execinfo.c.texi
> > > > /var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/build-amd64-x86_64-pc-li
> > > > nux-gnu-nptl/manual/add.c.texi
> > > > /var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/build-amd64-x86_64-pc-li
> > > > nux-gnu-nptl/manual/summary.texi
> > > > /var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/build-amd64-x86_64-pc-li
> > > > nux-gnu-nptl/manual/pkgvers.texi | sort;  
> > > >\> > > 
> > > >  echo "@end direntry") >
> > > >  /var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/build-amd64-x86_64-pc-l
> > > >  inux-gnu-nptl/manual/dir-add.texi.new> > > 
> > > > mv -f
> > > > /var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/build-amd64-x86_64-pc-li
> > > > nux-gnu-nptl/manual/dir-add.texi.new
> > > > /var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/build-amd64-x86_64-pc-li
> > > > nux-gnu-nptl/manual/dir-add.texi LANGUAGE=C LC_ALL=C makeinfo -P
> > > > /var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/build-amd64-x86_64-pc-li
> > > > nux-gnu-nptl/manual/
> > > > --output=/var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/build-amd64-x86
> > > > _64-pc-linux-gnu-nptl/manual/libc.info libc.texinfo libc.texinfo:6:
> > > > warning: @codequotebacktick should only appear at the beginning of a
> > > > line libc.texinfo:6: warning: @codequoteundirected should only appear
> > > > at the beginning of a line libc.texinfo:6: warning:
> > > > @codequoteundirected should not appear in @codequotebacktick
> > > > libc.texinfo:6: expected @codequoteundirected on or off, not `on'
> > > > require' libc.texinfo:6: superfluous argument to @codequotebacktick
> > > > libc.texinfo:6: expected @codequotebacktick on or off, not `on' and ''
> > > > make[2]: *** [Makefile:144:
> > > > /var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/build-amd64-x86_64-pc-li
> > > > nux-gnu-nptl/manual/libc.info] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory
> > > > '/var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/glibc-2.24/manual'
> > > > make[1]: *** [Makefile:215: manual/subdir_install] Error 2
> > > > make[1]: Leaving directory
> > > > '/var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2/work/glibc-2.24' make: ***
> > > > [Makefile:12: install] Error 2
> > > > 
> > > >  * ERROR: sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2::gentoo failed (install phase):
> > > >  *   emake failed
> > > >  *
> > > > 
> > > > If anything more is wanted, I will be happy to post the wanted logs.
> > > > But I want to prevent to logbomnb the mailinglist in beforehand... ;)
> > > 
> > > What version of sys-apps/texinfo do you have installed?
> > 
> > [I] sys-apps/texinfo
> > 
> >  Available versions:  4.13-r2 5.2 6.1 (~)6.3 {nls static}
> >  Installed versions:  6.3(06:29:05 AM 02/18/2017)(nls -static)
> >  Homepage:https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
> >  Description: The GNU info program and utilities
> 
> I installed this version:
> 
> 
> 
> [I] sys-apps/texinfo
>  Available versions:  4.13-r2 5.2 6.1 [m](~)6.3 {nls static}
>  Installed versions:  6.1(03:39:36 AM 06/16/2017)(nls -static)
>  Homepage:https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
>  Description: The GNU info program and utilities
> 
> and the same (see above) happens.

Did you try reinstalling sys-apps/texinfo, before glibc?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.

Re: [gentoo-user] e2fsck -a /dev/sdb1

[Mick]

On Thursday 15 Jun 2017 16:16:04 Daniel Frey wrote:
> On 06/15/2017 12:28 PM, Mick wrote:
> > If you remove the USB disk while the PC is accessing it, the electrical
> > discharge across the physical contacts of the USB connector can cause
> > terminal damage to the onboard chipset controller.
> > 
> > If you're lucky only partial corruption of the filesystem occurs and the
> > USB disk can be used again.  If you are very lucky and no I/O operations
> > were being performed at the time the USB will suffer no damage.  I try to
> > remember to unmount the USB before I remove it, but I had to learn this
> > the hard way.
> This is the first I've heard of this. I have witnessed our staff at
> working plugging something in and having static discharge fry a USB
> stick, but I've never seen that happen while unplugging.
> 
> I tell staff to touch the computer case before plugging it in first.
> When a user fries one I asked if they touched the case first and the
> answer is always "no".
> 
> Dan

Yes, ESD can fry anything up, including you MoBo.  I've damaged a CPU once 
because I was working on a nylon carpet without wearing a ESD wrist band.  I 
thought I had earthed on the chassis at the time, but it seems I moved enough 
on the carpet to cause an ESD.  :-(

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] e2fsck -a /dev/sdb1

[Mick]

On Thursday 15 Jun 2017 15:47:03 Rich Freeman wrote:

> You're comparing a 500kV breaker at a substation to a USB device?
> 
> I'm very skeptical of the claim that any electrical effects associated
> with unplugging a device is going to cause issues with any USB device.
> They're basically designed to be hot swapped.

The comparison was made tongue-in-cheek to illustrate the point.  I don't know 
what the probabilities are but on at least two occasions I ended up with a USB 
stick which had a large number of bad blocks and partially destroyed files.  
This was a relatively young, but cheap USB stick.  The I/O errors were quite 
high and over-writing the blocks with zeros did not fix the problem.  I've 
come across this problem on two different USB sticks, probably because I was 
the go to guy for recovering data in an office full of MSWindows PCs.


> I'd also buy the argument that some poorly designed USB drives could
> end up with data loss to something other than the block being
> immediately written, but honestly I'm skeptical that this is a
> widespread problem.

Losing the odd files because of unplugging a USB stick during a write 
operation is a regular occurrence.  Ending up with large numbers of bad blocks 
is a rare phenomenon in my experience.  I blamed the problem on cheap USB 
sticks not being able to cope with the enthusiastic unplugging they were 
submitted to, which caused semiconductor breakdown or damage to the USB 
controller chip.  At the time I thought the wear levelling chip went sideways 
and was no longer able to re-allocate sectors.  Attempts to fix the bad blocks 
were unreliable and after some time using smartctl and dd to zero badblocks I 
gave up.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] e2fsck -a /dev/sdb1

[Peter Humphrey]

On Thursday 15 Jun 2017 23:37:22 Mick wrote:

> Many old-timers lurking around here are still using text only
> (teletype) terminals.  :p

ASR-33, KSR-35. Takes me back, does that, to a two-day course on their 
maintenance. 1974.

-- 
Regards
Peter

[gentoo-user] ntp Vs openntp vis a vis Plasma desktop

[Andrew Lowe]

Good afternoon all,
Does anyone have any inside knowledge as to why 5.9.5 of KDE plasma
desktop did not require ntp whereas 5.10.5 does? I use Openntp and been
using KDE 5 for ages with the time being correct so was wondering why
now the requirement for net-misc/ntp specifically.

Any thoughts, greatly appreciated,

Andrew