Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
On Sat, 8 Jan 2022 20:39:42 -0500 "Stewart C. Russell via talk" wrote: > I recently spent time debugging why a major embedded > project never came with a PDF manual, despite their docs being managed > in Sphinx. It turns out that there's one instance of a Unicode omega / > Ohm symbol in their entire document base, and their Sphinx PDF rules > aren't Unicode-aware. That is a bit weird. My old linuxdoc SGML file won't compile for some reason. If I delete half the document, it compiles. If I delete the other half of the document it compiles. It appears to be length limited, so I have converted everything over LaTeX, which has fantastic PDF support, fairly good HTML support, and okay RTF support if I don't do any graphics. -- Howard Gibson hgib...@eol.ca jhowardgib...@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
On 2022-01-06 11:44 a.m., Scott Allen via talk wrote: On Thu, 6 Jan 2022 at 11:28, Giles Orr via talk wrote: I open a man page, I scroll - done. I opened the man page because I wanted to learn about the command whose man page I opened - I don't want to have to learn about 'info' before I can learn about any other command ... Well, you do have to learn about 'less' or whatever pager 'man' is using on your system (default or specified). However, I agree. I never liked using 'info', mostly for the same reasons you've given. I don't use info. I tried it in the early days but found it wasn't easy to use. I never got the hang of how to navigate around to find the information I wanted. On the other hand man shows me a single page that I can easily search for the information I need using a command key I use in vi. I rarely tried using info back in the day and it has been so long since I last tried to use it that I had pretty much forgotten all about it. My system has less as the pager which is part of what makes using man pages to get information about something nice and easy. -- Cheers! Kevin. http://www.ve3syb.ca/ | "Nerds make the shiny things that https://www.patreon.com/KevinCozens | distract the mouth-breathers, and | that's why we're powerful" Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172 | #include | --Chris Hardwick --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
On 2022-01-08 8:39 p.m., Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote: At least its better than Microsoft, whose embedded docs are essentially just Bing searches. Man RTFM. ;-) --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Debian install fails due to network failure
On 2022-01-08 16:16, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: | From: sciguy via talk This second message had a lot more useful information. That eliminates several hypotheses / blind alleys. | On 2022-01-08 11:20, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: | > [I hate top-posting but it seems best in this case.] | | [No prob. I hope you will tolerate my "interleaved" posting :-) ] | | > | > It sounds like you have two problems: | > | > (1) debian doesn't understand your network card (NIC) | > | > (2) your UEFI setup isn't doing what you need it to | > | > What is your computer? | | "Brand-X". My own concoction from a few years ago. The motherboard is a ASUS | Maximus VI Hero. Video is a NVidia GeForce GTX 1660 supporting a dual monitor. | Sound is on-board. Processor is an Intel Core i7-4770K. If I remember correctly, computers of that era supported UEFI but were generally configured to use the alternative. The alternative doesn't have an official name. MBR or "Legacy" or "BIOS" are sometimes used. It's best to have one booting scheme on a computer. If your current Windows system is MBR, your Linux ought to be the same. There are complexities. Like: how do you support large disks with MBR? The Linux convention is to use GPT partitioning but fake an MBR partition table to allow MBR booting. I'm not going to discus that. Is your Windows set up as UEFI-booting or as MBR-booting? | > What is your NIC? | | The NIC is also just a chipset on the motherboard. On Windows, my Device | Manager says that I am using "Intel Ethernet Connection I217-V". Network | discovery is enabled. I don't have wireless on this computer. A direct cat-5 | goes to the router, and DHCP is used. Google is your friend. Is this your problem?: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=191981 It looks as if the Windows driver, if Wake on LAN is enabled, puts the device in a state that Linux cannot deal with. Rebooting doesn't fix it. Turning off the computer doesn't fix it. Unplugging the computer long enough (30 seconds?) does work. | > (2) | > | > UEFI can almost always be convinced to do what you need. If you are not | > used to it, you are probably trying to get it to do something unnatural. | > | > Note: UEFI and GRUB are not alternatives: you will be using both. | > | > UEFI booting is a multi-stage process (true of all kinds of booting) | > | > - UEFI starts | > | > - UEFI has a setting for what to boot. This will be the path to a .efi | > file within the ESP (EFI System Partition) of the hard drive. | > | > - The ESP is a distinguished FAT partition. It will have been created by | > installing Windows. Linux needs to share it. | | I think this is a bottleneck. I notice that it stalls when "writing to boot | record" or something like that. I never saw EFI mentioned by Linux, so I | wouldn't know how to "share" the EFI with Linux. I notice it is not doing it | on its own; or in the case of Debian, it just goes halfway. | | I have also just tried installing Slackware, and it happily installs, but | stalls on the dialog for writing boot information. Pressing ENTER cleared that | dialog and the install finished, but something was probably up, since it only | booted partially, and only with a USB as a boot drive. At least with Fedora, if you booted the installation medium with UEFI, it will try to install a UEFI system. Note: the Fedora installation meddium can be boote using UEFI or MBR. Make sure that your boot options boot the flash memory stick the same way as you want the installed system to boot. What I ended up doing is enabling UEFI (which had to be done in 3 places in the boot settings menu), disable secure boot, and set the boot order. I found on another discussion group that Debian and Ubuntu Studio have a dedicated BIOS mode and EFI mode. The installer auto-detects which menu to offer me after it scans the BIOS/EFI. If it sees BIOS, install is in BIOS mode; if it is EFI, the install is in EFI mode. I got the BIOS mode menu first, and that tipped me off to reboot right away and go into the ASUS boot settings. As a bonus, I installed Ubuntu Studio and the network now works. It also read the desktop settings from my user accounts on /home, and it is as if I haven't left (but for some programs that still need to be installed). But I do have an internet connection and am sending this email over it right now. I attempted to mount the EFI partition, but it won't met me chdir into it. :-( Paul --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
info was only ever a Gnu thing, and there are as many people who'd do the opposite of what the FSF would say on principle. A major strike against info is its reliance on texinfo, its own weird markup language. texinfo also has dependencies that run into the gigabytes, since installing texinfo will also install TeX Live, the now-vast TeX system for Linux. tbh, I'm surprised that something better than man hasn't come along. But you can write manpages in anything (rst, markdown, LibreOffice ...) and have them converted to man pages via packages like pandoc — https://pandoc.org/ . But when you need PDF output, TeX is lurking in there somewhere. I recently spent time debugging why a major embedded project never came with a PDF manual, despite their docs being managed in Sphinx. It turns out that there's one instance of a Unicode omega / Ohm symbol in their entire document base, and their Sphinx PDF rules aren't Unicode-aware. At least its better than Microsoft, whose embedded docs are essentially just Bing searches. cheers, Stewart --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Debian install fails due to network failure
| From: sciguy via talk This second message had a lot more useful information. That eliminates several hypotheses / blind alleys. | On 2022-01-08 11:20, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: | > [I hate top-posting but it seems best in this case.] | | [No prob. I hope you will tolerate my "interleaved" posting :-) ] | | > | > It sounds like you have two problems: | > | > (1) debian doesn't understand your network card (NIC) | > | > (2) your UEFI setup isn't doing what you need it to | > | > What is your computer? | | "Brand-X". My own concoction from a few years ago. The motherboard is a ASUS | Maximus VI Hero. Video is a NVidia GeForce GTX 1660 supporting a dual monitor. | Sound is on-board. Processor is an Intel Core i7-4770K. If I remember correctly, computers of that era supported UEFI but were generally configured to use the alternative. The alternative doesn't have an official name. MBR or "Legacy" or "BIOS" are sometimes used. It's best to have one booting scheme on a computer. If your current Windows system is MBR, your Linux ought to be the same. There are complexities. Like: how do you support large disks with MBR? The Linux convention is to use GPT partitioning but fake an MBR partition table to allow MBR booting. I'm not going to discus that. Is your Windows set up as UEFI-booting or as MBR-booting? | > What is your NIC? | | The NIC is also just a chipset on the motherboard. On Windows, my Device | Manager says that I am using "Intel Ethernet Connection I217-V". Network | discovery is enabled. I don't have wireless on this computer. A direct cat-5 | goes to the router, and DHCP is used. Google is your friend. Is this your problem?: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=191981 It looks as if the Windows driver, if Wake on LAN is enabled, puts the device in a state that Linux cannot deal with. Rebooting doesn't fix it. Turning off the computer doesn't fix it. Unplugging the computer long enough (30 seconds?) does work. | > (2) | > | > UEFI can almost always be convinced to do what you need. If you are not | > used to it, you are probably trying to get it to do something unnatural. | > | > Note: UEFI and GRUB are not alternatives: you will be using both. | > | > UEFI booting is a multi-stage process (true of all kinds of booting) | > | > - UEFI starts | > | > - UEFI has a setting for what to boot. This will be the path to a .efi | > file within the ESP (EFI System Partition) of the hard drive. | > | > - The ESP is a distinguished FAT partition. It will have been created by | > installing Windows. Linux needs to share it. | | I think this is a bottleneck. I notice that it stalls when "writing to boot | record" or something like that. I never saw EFI mentioned by Linux, so I | wouldn't know how to "share" the EFI with Linux. I notice it is not doing it | on its own; or in the case of Debian, it just goes halfway. | | I have also just tried installing Slackware, and it happily installs, but | stalls on the dialog for writing boot information. Pressing ENTER cleared that | dialog and the install finished, but something was probably up, since it only | booted partially, and only with a USB as a boot drive. At least with Fedora, if you booted the installation medium with UEFI, it will try to install a UEFI system. Note: the Fedora installation meddium can be boote using UEFI or MBR. Make sure that your boot options boot the flash memory stick the same way as you want the installed system to boot. | > - To boot most Linux distros, there will be a "shim" .efi program in the | > ESP. | > | > On a Fedora system, it is /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/shim.efi | > | > - Once the UEFI has started shim.efi, the shim loads grub | > (/boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubx64.efi) | > | > At this point things are close to what you are used to. | > | > What is odd under UEFI is selecting what .efi to boot. Almost every | > UEFI firmware has a setup page that lets you select what .efi to boot, | > but the capabilities and methods vary wildly. I cannot tell you what | > to do from the setup page because I cannot see yours. | | I guess I could repeat the Slackware boot procedure (since it offers an extra | root console), and mount the EFI partition. Are these .efi files text files? A live Ubuntu system (i.e. running from the installation medium) offers lots ot oportunities for hacking. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Debian install fails due to network failure
Have you tried this? https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/ regards, Daniel Villarreal On Sat, 8 Jan 2022 at 12:48, sciguy via talk wrote: > ... I have tried so far: Debian and Ubuntu > not getting internet on installation ... > --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Debian install fails due to network failure
On 2022-01-08 11:20, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: [I hate top-posting but it seems best in this case.] [No prob. I hope you will tolerate my "interleaved" posting :-) ] It sounds like you have two problems: (1) debian doesn't understand your network card (NIC) (2) your UEFI setup isn't doing what you need it to What is your computer? "Brand-X". My own concoction from a few years ago. The motherboard is a ASUS Maximus VI Hero. Video is a NVidia GeForce GTX 1660 supporting a dual monitor. Sound is on-board. Processor is an Intel Core i7-4770K. What is your NIC? The NIC is also just a chipset on the motherboard. On Windows, my Device Manager says that I am using "Intel Ethernet Connection I217-V". Network discovery is enabled. I don't have wireless on this computer. A direct cat-5 goes to the router, and DHCP is used. (1) Some NICs are have non-open drivers. By default, debian would not have those drivers but Ubuntu might. That could be the problem. Some NICs are too new to have drivers in a stable debian. My computer is at least 6 or 7 years old. And Ubuntu wants to connect to the internet for non-free drivers. A chicken-and-egg problem if that is true. Anecdote: (perhaps a year ago) my son's motherboard came with a 2.5 gigabit NIC that was not supported by the latest official Fedora installation image. But it was supported after updates were applied. Does the live Ubuntu system (i.e. the booted installation medium) see your network? That is a fine environment in which to try to debug networking hardware. It does not see any network. So, no Samba or any of that either. Hack: install via a different NIC. If you have tried wireless, try wired. Or vice versa. If desperate, try a USB NIC. Or a NIC card from another computer. Sounds like a last resort, since this NIC has worked since the days of Windows 7 and older Linux vesions, and still works in Windows. (A USB ethernet NIC is a handy thing to have in your toolbox.) Yes, got that, but again, I will keep it in the back of my mind as a last resort. (2) UEFI can almost always be convinced to do what you need. If you are not used to it, you are probably trying to get it to do something unnatural. Note: UEFI and GRUB are not alternatives: you will be using both. UEFI booting is a multi-stage process (true of all kinds of booting) - UEFI starts - UEFI has a setting for what to boot. This will be the path to a .efi file within the ESP (EFI System Partition) of the hard drive. - The ESP is a distinguished FAT partition. It will have been created by installing Windows. Linux needs to share it. I think this is a bottleneck. I notice that it stalls when "writing to boot record" or something like that. I never saw EFI mentioned by Linux, so I wouldn't know how to "share" the EFI with Linux. I notice it is not doing it on its own; or in the case of Debian, it just goes halfway. I have also just tried installing Slackware, and it happily installs, but stalls on the dialog for writing boot information. Pressing ENTER cleared that dialog and the install finished, but something was probably up, since it only booted partially, and only with a USB as a boot drive. - In a running Linux system, the ESP is conventionally mounted as /boot/efi - To boot most Linux distros, there will be a "shim" .efi program in the ESP. On a Fedora system, it is /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/shim.efi - Once the UEFI has started shim.efi, the shim loads grub (/boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubx64.efi) At this point things are close to what you are used to. What is odd under UEFI is selecting what .efi to boot. Almost every UEFI firmware has a setup page that lets you select what .efi to boot, but the capabilities and methods vary wildly. I cannot tell you what to do from the setup page because I cannot see yours. I guess I could repeat the Slackware boot procedure (since it offers an extra root console), and mount the EFI partition. Are these .efi files text files? Once you have Linux running, Grub will usually let you select Windows to boot, and that is the most convenient way to control what gets booted. I've posted to this list a few messages about the mysteries of UEFI in general and efibootmgr(8) in particular. Thanks, Hugh. Paul | From: sciguy via talk | This has happened with what I have tried so far: Debian and Ubuntu. I have | been accustomed to my network card being auto-detected and the internet being | automatically connected with an installation, but I am not getting internet on | installation, so much of the installation has failed. | | This machine was set up as a dual boot, and is running Windows 10 with the | latest updates. It has previously run a version of Ubuntu Studio, but with | this upgrade (first by USB then by DVD), I am not getting a network, and so | the installation remains half-finished. | | Somehow, after changing this over to Debian, where
Re: [GTALUG] Debian install fails due to network failure
[I hate top-posting but it seems best in this case.] It sounds like you have two problems: (1) debian doesn't understand your network card (NIC) (2) your UEFI setup isn't doing what you need it to What is your computer? What is your NIC? (1) Some NICs are have non-open drivers. By default, debian would not have those drivers but Ubuntu might. That could be the problem. Some NICs are too new to have drivers in a stable debian. Anecdote: (perhaps a year ago) my son's motherboard came with a 2.5 gigabit NIC that was not supported by the latest official Fedora installation image. But it was supported after updates were applied. Does the live Ubuntu system (i.e. the booted installation medium) see your network? That is a fine environment in which to try to debug networking hardware. Hack: install via a different NIC. If you have tried wireless, try wired. Or vice versa. If desperate, try a USB NIC. Or a NIC card from another computer. (A USB ethernet NIC is a handy thing to have in your toolbox.) (2) UEFI can almost always be convinced to do what you need. If you are not used to it, you are probably trying to get it to do something unnatural. Note: UEFI and GRUB are not alternatives: you will be using both. UEFI booting is a multi-stage process (true of all kinds of booting) - UEFI starts - UEFI has a setting for what to boot. This will be the path to a .efi file within the ESP (EFI System Partition) of the hard drive. - The ESP is a distinguished FAT partition. It will have been created by installing Windows. Linux needs to share it. - In a running Linux system, the ESP is conventionally mounted as /boot/efi - To boot most Linux distros, there will be a "shim" .efi program in the ESP. On a Fedora system, it is /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/shim.efi - Once the UEFI has started shim.efi, the shim loads grub (/boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubx64.efi) At this point things are close to what you are used to. What is odd under UEFI is selecting what .efi to boot. Almost every UEFI firmware has a setup page that lets you select what .efi to boot, but the capabilities and methods vary wildly. I cannot tell you what to do from the setup page because I cannot see yours. Once you have Linux running, Grub will usually let you select Windows to boot, and that is the most convenient way to control what gets booted. I've posted to this list a few messages about the mysteries of UEFI in general and efibootmgr(8) in particular. | From: sciguy via talk | This has happened with what I have tried so far: Debian and Ubuntu. I have | been accustomed to my network card being auto-detected and the internet being | automatically connected with an installation, but I am not getting internet on | installation, so much of the installation has failed. | | This machine was set up as a dual boot, and is running Windows 10 with the | latest updates. It has previously run a version of Ubuntu Studio, but with | this upgrade (first by USB then by DVD), I am not getting a network, and so | the installation remains half-finished. | | Somehow, after changing this over to Debian, where the installation failed for | the same reason, Windows 10 EFI detected the incomplete installation and now | offers "finishing the Debian installation" as a boot option when I reboot. | | It seems the root of my problem is in Microsoft's choice to take over the EFI | in a recent update, thereby supplanting GRUB, which was there before. GRUB was | a technology I understood fairly well; EFI is not. Can anyone suggest, or | point to some resources, for how to install Linux alongside W10, in a way that | the EFI appears to recognize (since it seemed to almost accidentally with | Debian). | | Thanks | | Paul | --- | Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org | Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk | --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
[GTALUG] Debian install fails due to network failure
This has happened with what I have tried so far: Debian and Ubuntu. I have been accustomed to my network card being auto-detected and the internet being automatically connected with an installation, but I am not getting internet on installation, so much of the installation has failed. This machine was set up as a dual boot, and is running Windows 10 with the latest updates. It has previously run a version of Ubuntu Studio, but with this upgrade (first by USB then by DVD), I am not getting a network, and so the installation remains half-finished. Somehow, after changing this over to Debian, where the installation failed for the same reason, Windows 10 EFI detected the incomplete installation and now offers "finishing the Debian installation" as a boot option when I reboot. It seems the root of my problem is in Microsoft's choice to take over the EFI in a recent update, thereby supplanting GRUB, which was there before. GRUB was a technology I understood fairly well; EFI is not. Can anyone suggest, or point to some resources, for how to install Linux alongside W10, in a way that the EFI appears to recognize (since it seemed to almost accidentally with Debian). Thanks Paul --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
