Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-07 Thread Hendrik Boom
On Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 11:54:17PM +0200, Philip Hands wrote:
> Alain D D Williams  writes:
> 
> > On Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 01:49:25PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> >
> >> If you want Mate and do not want systemd, you could start with Devuan and 
> >> install mate as a package.
> >> Mate is not the default desktop, but it is available.
> >
> > I would like LVM on top of Raid-1 (MDADM). I have tried hard, the Linux mint
> > installer only does LVM if you give it the whole disk. I mirrored 2 disks by
> > hand, and am installing on top of that - no LVM, so I shall throw it away 
> > once
> > I see if it works.
> >
> > Next: try plain Debian.
> 
> If you want anything complicated regarding RAID/LVM, while it is
> possible to do via debian-installer, it can be a bit of a pain,
> especially if you end up needing to drop to a shell to do the twiddly
> bits, given that the shell in d-i is busybox.
> 
> Instead, I'd recomend booting grml (a debian live image) which will then
> a) prove Debian will run nicely on your hardware (given that grml is
> very close to straight Debian), and give you a full OS with which to
> configure your disks etc.:
> 
>   https://grml.org/
> 
> Look here for docs:
> 
>   https://grml.org/docs/
> 
> Reading this might help too:
> 
>   https://grml.org/grml-debootstrap/
> 
> > I might be forced back to Centos 8 & Xfce ... if that does LVM on top of 
> > raid -
> > should do, it works in Centos 6 - but no guarantee.
> 
> LVM on MD is no problem at all with Debian -- personally I'd recomend
> creating several partitions on the disks, and then RAID each pair of
> partitions, and then add the resulting raids into LVM as PVs -- that way
> you get more choices about what to do when later migrating to bigger
> disks, or deciding that adding a third disk might be good, say.

That's what I do on my (very old now) server.  I have two functioning RAID-1's,
one partitioned by LVM and the other is /boot.  /boot has to be set up with an 
older version of RAID -- there are options to do that.  Roughly speaking grub 
doesn't care abput RAID, and the RAID software has to put all its identifying 
marks at the end of the partition, not the beginning.

I wish I hadn't put *all* my remaining disk space into the main RAID.  It makes 
it awkward to set up file systems that contain their own RAIDing, such as 
btrfs -- just to try it out.

By the way, all this runs under Devuan.

-- hendrik

> 
> > Thank goodness for virtual machines as play areas.
> 
> Definitely.
> 
> Cheers, Phil.
> -- 
> |)|  Philip Hands  [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]  HANDS.COM Ltd.
> |-|  http://www.hands.com/http://ftp.uk.debian.org/
> |(|  Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34,   21075 Hamburg,GERMANY
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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-07 Thread Philip Hands
Alain D D Williams  writes:

> On Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 01:49:25PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
>
>> If you want Mate and do not want systemd, you could start with Devuan and 
>> install mate as a package.
>> Mate is not the default desktop, but it is available.
>
> I would like LVM on top of Raid-1 (MDADM). I have tried hard, the Linux mint
> installer only does LVM if you give it the whole disk. I mirrored 2 disks by
> hand, and am installing on top of that - no LVM, so I shall throw it away once
> I see if it works.
>
> Next: try plain Debian.

If you want anything complicated regarding RAID/LVM, while it is
possible to do via debian-installer, it can be a bit of a pain,
especially if you end up needing to drop to a shell to do the twiddly
bits, given that the shell in d-i is busybox.

Instead, I'd recomend booting grml (a debian live image) which will then
a) prove Debian will run nicely on your hardware (given that grml is
very close to straight Debian), and give you a full OS with which to
configure your disks etc.:

  https://grml.org/

Look here for docs:

  https://grml.org/docs/

Reading this might help too:

  https://grml.org/grml-debootstrap/

> I might be forced back to Centos 8 & Xfce ... if that does LVM on top of raid 
> -
> should do, it works in Centos 6 - but no guarantee.

LVM on MD is no problem at all with Debian -- personally I'd recomend
creating several partitions on the disks, and then RAID each pair of
partitions, and then add the resulting raids into LVM as PVs -- that way
you get more choices about what to do when later migrating to bigger
disks, or deciding that adding a third disk might be good, say.

> Thank goodness for virtual machines as play areas.

Definitely.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands  [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]  HANDS.COM Ltd.
|-|  http://www.hands.com/http://ftp.uk.debian.org/
|(|  Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34,   21075 Hamburg,GERMANY
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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-07 Thread Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
On 10/7/20, Philip Hands  wrote:
https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

ah fantastic, that's really good to know.  my friend showed me mint
when it first came out, he loved it, it was really easy: then he said
"it's an ubuntu derivativr" and i switched off and never looked at it
since.

if since they've got a debian version that's a really nice combination.

l.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-07 Thread Philip Hands
Hi Alain,

Alain D D Williams  writes:

> Time to upgrade my desktop to be able to run Brave (which does work with
> jitsi).

Isn't Brave a bit dodgy in parts too?  ISTR seeing someone talking about
forking it to remove some sort of tiresomeness.

If you fancy something completely different, I'm really enjoying using
Nyxt as my browser at present.  It's a bit rough around the edges,
mostly because it's using webkit2gtk which has some issues, but it's
got great potential -- it's written in common lisp, and it sort-of emacs
for the web (the author actually prefers vi key bindings, so if you're
not into emacs that's not necessarily a reason to turn your nose up):

  https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/

> I have run RedHat/CentOS for 25 years, but Centos 8 comes with Gnome
> 3 -- which I hate with a passion. I could install Xfce - but prefer Mate - so 
> I
> am prob going to install Linux Mint - a child of Debian.

I knew it would happen eventually -- welcome to the clan :-)

Luke's wrong about Mint being exclusively Ubuntu based BTW, as you
probably already know, since you state that it's Debian based.

In fact it's both -- here's the Debian flavoured version:

  https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

> My desktop has mirrored disks. I will break the mirror, install on one disk,
> preserve the current installation on the other, run up the current system, run
> the new one as a virtual machine, configure it, copy stuff over, then boot the
> new system native, test, add the old disk as a mirror to the new system (which
> current versions of LVM should let me do).

If I were you I wouldn't do the mirroring in LVM, but rather in md.  You
can create md RAID1s with a missing disk, and then add in a second disk
to the raid when you have it available, with no noticeable changes to the
configuration.

Look in mdadm's man page for:  simply give the word "missing" in place of a 
device name.

Not having used the mint installer, I don't know how easy it is to do
that at install time though.

BTW I'd normally make several partitions on both disks and then raid the
partitions, and add those raids as PVs into LVM. That allows one to move
things around, and migrate to bigger disks etc. more flexibly than when
just mirroring the whole disk, but it takes a bit more work to keep such
a setup in order.

> I have been putting this off for far too long :-(

I imagine it will be a little painful to teach your fingers to type the
debian versions of some sysadmin incantations, so I'm sure I'd also put
this off if I was migrating in the other direction.

Here's hoping that you have fun learning some new tricks.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands  [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]  HANDS.COM Ltd.
|-|  http://www.hands.com/http://ftp.uk.debian.org/
|(|  Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34,   21075 Hamburg,GERMANY
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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-07 Thread Alain D D Williams
On Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 01:49:25PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:

> If you want Mate and do not want systemd, you could start with Devuan and 
> install mate as a package.
> Mate is not the default desktop, but it is available.

The principle of systemd I am OK with, what I do not like is that it has grown
too many tentacled arms and is going places where it should not be, replacing
things that work well, they refuse to acknowledge non Linux Unix. But it is not
a battle that I choose to fight, so I'll accept it.

What I really want to avoid is gnome 3.

I would like LVM on top of Raid-1 (MDADM). I have tried hard, the Linux mint
installer only does LVM if you give it the whole disk. I mirrored 2 disks by
hand, and am installing on top of that - no LVM, so I shall throw it away once
I see if it works.

Next: try plain Debian.

I might be forced back to Centos 8 & Xfce ... if that does LVM on top of raid -
should do, it works in Centos 6 - but no guarantee.

Thank goodness for virtual machines as play areas.

-- 
Alain Williams
Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT 
Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  https://www.phcomp.co.uk/
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: 
https://www.phcomp.co.uk/Contact.html
#include 

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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-07 Thread Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 6:49 PM Hendrik Boom  wrote:

> If you want Mate and do not want systemd, you could start with Devuan and
> install mate as a package.

the downside of devuan is how far they diverged from debian (global
search/replace debian on *everything*).  this means that if you want
to use debian/testing - say you are a developer and that makes
debian/testing absolutely essential - you're absolutely screwed
because the small devuan team absolutely do not have the resources to
keep the entire debian/testing repo converted and rebuilt absolutely
every single day 24x7 with the "global/search/replace" system they
created.

if they had done it as an "add-on" to the debian repository it would
have been fine, but the fact that they chose a "backlash" path meant
that they've completely isolated themselves and their community from
the rest of debian.

l.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-07 Thread Hendrik Boom
On Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 12:56:25PM +0100, Alain D D Williams wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 06, 2020 at 10:55:11PM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> > continues in 5 mins...
> 
> Yes ... I could not join ... I had set up a jitsi meeting early y/day
> evening ... Firefox could not see my webcam it could a few days ago - but was
> updated on Saturday - which, I suspect, is the issue - nothing else changed.
> 
> That FF update also brought in new options "Allow Firefox to send technical 
> and
> interaction data to Mozilla" and auto-set to on ... I do not recall that I was
> asked :-(
> 
> Time to upgrade my desktop to be able to run Brave (which does work with
> jitsi). I have run RedHat/CentOS for 25 years, but Centos 8 comes with Gnome
> 3 -- which I hate with a passion. I could install Xfce - but prefer Mate - so 
> I
> am prob going to install Linux Mint - a child of Debian.

If you want Mate and do not want systemd, you could start with Devuan and 
install mate as a package.
Mate is not the default desktop, but it is available.

-- hendrik

> 
> My desktop has mirrored disks. I will break the mirror, install on one disk,
> preserve the current installation on the other, run up the current system, run
> the new one as a virtual machine, configure it, copy stuff over, then boot the
> new system native, test, add the old disk as a mirror to the new system (which
> current versions of LVM should let me do).
> 
> I have been putting this off for far too long :-(
> 
> -- 
> Alain Williams
> Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT 
> Lecturer.
> +44 (0) 787 668 0256  https://www.phcomp.co.uk/
> Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: 
> https://www.phcomp.co.uk/Contact.html
> #include 
> 
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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-07 Thread Ibrahim Ghazal
On Wed, 7 Oct 2020 at 15:18, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton  wrote:
> sadly though they over-rode common sense *and blatantly disregarded
> the results of a major poll/vote* by making systemd the default.

What vote is that? There have been two Debian "General Resolutions"
about systemd. The result of the first one in 2014 [1] was "General
Resolution is not required" meaning that the topic wasn't appropriate
for a vote at the time.

The second one was done in 2019 [2]. The winning option was "Systemd
but we support exploring alternatives". Further to disprove your
point, the very last option was "Support for multiple init systems is
Required".

In conclusion: No, the Debian developers did not "disregard the result
of a major poll/vote" about systemd.

[1] https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003
[2] https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002

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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-07 Thread Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 12:56 PM Alain D D Williams  wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 06, 2020 at 10:55:11PM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> > continues in 5 mins...
>
> Yes ... I could not join ... I had set up a jitsi meeting early y/day
> evening ... Firefox could not see my webcam it could a few days ago - but was
> updated on Saturday - which, I suspect, is the issue - nothing else changed.

yep, almost certainly.  there is a dial-up link (which was in the
calendar invite)

> That FF update also brought in new options "Allow Firefox to send technical 
> and
> interaction data to Mozilla" and auto-set to on ... I do not recall that I was
> asked :-(

sigh.

> Time to upgrade my desktop to be able to run Brave (which does work with
> jitsi). I have run RedHat/CentOS for 25 years, but Centos 8 comes with Gnome
> 3 -- which I hate with a passion. I could install Xfce - but prefer Mate - so 
> I
> am prob going to install Linux Mint - a child of Debian.

it's not - not really.  it's ubuntu-based, which is known for more
repeated consistent privacy-violations than any other GNU/Linux
distro.  i strongly recommend you *not* to use anything based on
ubuntu.  aside from anything they enable background updates by default
without your consent and knowledge.

debian is extremely strict about privacy violations: they don't
tolerate them, at all.  however they do allow people to choose
foot-shooting by adding the nonfree repos, which is a good compromise.

sadly though they over-rode common sense *and blatantly disregarded
the results of a major poll/vote* by making systemd the default.  if
you make a "base" install (netinst minimal) followed by "apt-get
install sysvinit sysvinit-utils" then you can follow that up with
"apt-get remove systemd" and *then* use tasksel to install a full
desktop (or just do apt-get install task-lxde-desktop or apt-get
install task-mate-desktop) you should be good to go.

if you want something that's *guaranteed* to be free of systemd yet
has all the "modern" features expected of a GUI desktop, try "trinity
desktop", hosted by pearson computing.  it's KDE 3, and because it
doesn't have all the crap that's worked its way into QT5, it's
lightning quick to start up on modern hardware.

21 years ago i deliberately chose fvwm2 and do not install a "desktop"
*at all*.  i log in at the console, have created a suitable ~/.xinitrc
(which includes fvwm2 at the end, non-backgrounded), and run "startx".
i *do not want* anything that f***s around trying to tell me how to
"manage" files, or where to click to start programs.  i am perfectly
capable of typing "firefox &" in an xterm, and when i got bored of
that (about 5 years ago), i set up a script to do it for me, as well
as starting 8x 80x65 xterms on the same virtual screen.

l.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-07 Thread Alain D D Williams
On Tue, Oct 06, 2020 at 10:55:11PM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> continues in 5 mins...

Yes ... I could not join ... I had set up a jitsi meeting early y/day
evening ... Firefox could not see my webcam it could a few days ago - but was
updated on Saturday - which, I suspect, is the issue - nothing else changed.

That FF update also brought in new options "Allow Firefox to send technical and
interaction data to Mozilla" and auto-set to on ... I do not recall that I was
asked :-(

Time to upgrade my desktop to be able to run Brave (which does work with
jitsi). I have run RedHat/CentOS for 25 years, but Centos 8 comes with Gnome
3 -- which I hate with a passion. I could install Xfce - but prefer Mate - so I
am prob going to install Linux Mint - a child of Debian.

My desktop has mirrored disks. I will break the mirror, install on one disk,
preserve the current installation on the other, run up the current system, run
the new one as a virtual machine, configure it, copy stuff over, then boot the
new system native, test, add the old disk as a mirror to the new system (which
current versions of LVM should let me do).

I have been putting this off for far too long :-(

-- 
Alain Williams
Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT 
Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  https://www.phcomp.co.uk/
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: 
https://www.phcomp.co.uk/Contact.html
#include 

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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-10-06 Thread Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
continues in 5 mins...

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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-09-29 Thread Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
is on, now...
l.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-09-22 Thread Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 12:30 AM Richard Wilbur
 wrote:
>
> Sounds like a neat group.  What should I study up on to get the most out of 
> the discussion?

computers, time keeping (using atomic clocks), radio astronomy, 6-hole
whistles, cubesat satellites, err... nothing at all that's predictable
:)  it's not that kind of formal discussion, it's intended as more of
an informal social thing.

l.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] OpenPOWER virtual coffee continues every Tuesday UTC 22:00

2020-09-21 Thread Richard Wilbur
Sounds like a neat group.  What should I study up on to get the most out of the 
discussion?
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