> That said, there are other statements that are odd:
Not sure what you find odd about them:
> "I really can’t recommend strongly enough that you do not attempt
> to mix UEFI-native and BIOS-compatible booting of
> permanently-installed operating systems on the same computer, and
>
> Following is a bash script which challenges the disk's fidelity in
> respect to small writes on a relatively small file over a long time.
I see no indication *at all* from Gene's description that the problem
could have anything to do with the OS or the hardware.
My guess is rather that his edit
>> A big, rapidly blinking BLOCK cursor would help these old eyes find
>> it a lot easier. But in 20 years thats fallen out of style, dammit.
100% idle state is important to reduce power consumption, so blinking
while otherwise idle is to be avoided in general, yes. But it's OK to
blink when th
>> So the actual disk isn't to blame (cat'ing a file that was just saved
>> won't look at the disk anyway).
> Whats it look at 5+ minutes later?
Same difference: if `cat` can't see it, then the change hasn't been
received by the OS at all (even less so by the underlying disk).
> The file had not
>> > And eventually the updates made to the file are not actually saved,
>> Can you be more precise than "eventually"?
> Probably 100+ edits and saves over 4 or 5 hours.
>> More importantly: what makes you think they're not actually saved?
> Going to another shell and cat'ing the file shows the old
> And eventually the updates made to the file are not actually saved,
Can you be more precise than "eventually"?
More importantly: what makes you think they're not actually saved?
Stefan
> curty@einstein:~$ apt-cache search integration | grep continuous
> debci - continuous integration system for Debian
> debci-collector - continuous integration system for Debian (collector daemon)
> debci-worker - continuous integration system for Debian (worker daemon)
> trac-bitten - continuous
>> UUIC that's partly why it's finally losing popularity and being replaced
>> with json for that use. I'm not familiar enough with json to know if
>> it's really a good replacement, but it does look like an improvement.
> that is simply not true.
Did you read the text to which I was responding?
> But (mis-)using it as a data serialization language must be one
> of the worst (and ugliest) misunderstandings IT has had the last
> 20 years.
UUIC that's partly why it's finally losing popularity and being replaced
with json for that use. I'm not familiar enough with json to know if
it's reall
> Actually people saying mbox is a bad database are in principle right
> (I never liked maildir either: dumping metadata into file names seemed
> to me a bit disgusting too, but I disgress). But there's something
> special about mail databases which eases that a bit: records (i.e.
> mails) are *mo
> You just seem to have Decided, for reasons known only to you, that
> The Character Length Of A String Is Not Useful. Despite literally
> decades of programs that have used strlen() in various ways.
strlen was mostly used in a context where char-length = byte-length =
display-width. Most of tho
>> > What is the length of a string?
>> When is that relevant?
> When you're trying to display one on a screen, or print one on paper.
To display a string you don't just need its length, you need the actual
bitmap representation, and getting info such as length is trivial once
you've rendered the
> I have an extremely simple real-world litmus test which every system
> I've ever seen so far has failed:
>
> How do I set MAIL=$HOME/Maildir/ in the login environment of every
> user, regardless of their shell, or how they log in (console, ssh,
> X Display Manager, GNOME Display Manager, et
> I'm running with a 'nouveau.noaccel=1' kernel parameter added at hand
[...]
> Is there any way to deactivate and reactivate such a parameter without
> the need to reboot?
You can try and change it with
# echo 0 > /sys/modules//parameters/noaccel
-- Stefan
> My new 2TB HD just arrived. Old 1.5TB to be rescued, made in 2010, has
> 8 pending sectors reported by smartctl.
FWIW, there's a good chance that your old drive is still perfectly
usable: after backing up your data, a pass of overwriting the whole disk
(e.g. dd /dev/sdXX) will probably bring the
> An alternative is org mode in Emacs if you have Emacs already
> installed. Simple spreadsheet capabilities in tables.
There's also SES, also part of Emacs (i.e. C-x C-f .ses RET should
get you started). And Emacs being what it is, there's also the Dismal
package, which you can install from GNU
> I will agree that it increases the unpredictability of execution time,
> and if I wanted to guarantee I could meet deadlines I'd turn it off.
Turning it off may indeed improve predictability of execution time in
some cases. Especially if the various active threads have different
real-time prior
> Can someone advise me of the best-practice way to completely disable
> Hibernation system-wide?
I don't know the "best-practice way" to do it, but a hackish way you can
do it is by adding
touch /var/run/do-not-hibernate
to your /etc/rc.local.
Stefan
> since my bank forced me to an upgrade to Firefox 58 I am runing into the
Just install UAControl (or any other such plugin that lets you control
your user-agent string) and keep using the version you prefer.
Stefan
> I'm using XEmacs 21.4.24 and gnome-terminal 3.26.2 in sid. And I can't copy
> a text from the terminal and paste it into XEmacs. I have tried marking the
> text and then middle button; Shift-Ctrl-C and then right-button to get the
> 'paste' option; and some other combinations of these. Nothing wo
>> What is the recommended method for preventing grub from using UUIDs to
>> refer to filesystems in the current Debian stable distribution?
> One method for you use case it to put /boot or at least /boot/grub
> in a plain partition on the same disk as GRUB's core image.
Indeed, that's what I have
> It was installed because CraftCMS depends on it :)
Care to give some details? E.g. *how* was it installed, then?
IIUC your system needs it, so the removal caused some breakage (which
is why you noticed the issue).
Normally APT only auto-removes packages which are marked as
"automatically insta
> ... where Linux (as an OS--yes, I see you coming from here)
We usually call it GNU/Linux,
Stefan
> Is it correct to call branch prediction the same as speculative execution?
Not really: they're closely related yet different.
Stefan
>> With TLB cache and all that? Pretty impressive :)
> I am not sure about the 68010 and its separate MMU. But beginning with 68020
> there surely was memory space separation per process and cache memory in the
> CPU.
The 68020 didn't have an MMU on chip (it required a separate chip
(MC68851) if y
> Hello, I want to buy a old Sony compact digital camera which supports
> only Memory Stick, a removable flash memory card format, before buy it,
> I get its memory card to check is it supported under Linux or not.
FWIW, if you use a USB-connected card reader, then the physical media
doesn't actua
> The weakest link in most chains of Data protection is the person that
> has access to it.
And rather than breaking knuckles, sometimes it's more ...elegant.. to
just fool/seduce the target,
Stefan
> It has an antenna. A sharp knife or some conductive tape or adhesive
> and Bob's your uncle.
Hmm... I thought the antenna on those devices nowadays are physically
just traces printed on a PCB. They're not necessarily very easy to find
AFAIK (hell, just opening the device such that you can clos
> Disabling the radio in a smartphone should be easy.
^^
As a moral imperative, I agree. In practice it seems to be harder than
... it should
Stefan
> I'm interested in investigating cumulative data to/from the internet for
> selected interval ranging from an hour to a week.
> My only connection is a device connected thru a USB port.
> My web search turned up only discussion of measuring throughput RATE.
> Suggestion of keyword(s) for search?
>
> I had the same situation with my Sandisc Exreme thumb drive before! Here
> heparin reports TRIM too, and fstrim failed too. At that time I thought
> that the problem is the thumb drive controller.
hdparm's report mostly comes directly from the drive within the
enclosure. So all it says is that
> I have had Debian up on my Xiamo smartphone. I believe it uses the existing
> kernel. Had a xwindows as well but did not like the interface. In the end,
> question was what to do with it.
One of the first things I do with a Debian install on those devices:
run an sshd daemon which lets me rsyncd
> If you want a smartphone but don't want a smartphone, it sounds to me
> as if you want a smartphone with no SIM card. It's possible that this
Indeed. I was looking for a "modern walkman" and the best and cheapest
option nowadays is to get a smartphone for that (and simply not use the
phone part
> Who's saying it must be installed? Maybe I've missed something, but I think
> the consensus in this discussion was that if you want your resolv.conf to be
> unmanaged/static/administrator-controlled, then don't have resolvconf
> installed.
This is a ridiculous idea. This thread is about a user
>> Granted, it might be nice if resolvconf had an easier way to configure
>> a static setup, but as it is now packages that need to access
>> resolv.conf should do this through resolvconf if it is available, so
>> installing and configuring it *is* the right way to handle this.
> I must argue again
>> > If Debian developers who are responsible for resolvconf are reading this,
>> > and if they actually CARE about making things work correctly and sensibly,
>> > then here is yet another proposal: give us a way to QUICKLY and EASILY
>> > and RELIABLY tell resolvconf "never do anything".
>> `resol
> If Debian developers who are responsible for resolvconf are reading this,
> and if they actually CARE about making things work correctly and sensibly,
> then here is yet another proposal: give us a way to QUICKLY and EASILY
> and RELIABLY tell resolvconf "never do anything".
`resolvconf` only to
> I am not willing to accept
And what are you going to do about that? Sue us? Sue Debian Inc. ?
> that there is no way to identify what is going on that is causing
> resolv.conf to change.
BTW, maybe one way to identify the culprit is:
- install resolvconf [ I know it sounds bad, but bear with
>> Also the solution I showed has the advantage that when he stops his
>> bind deamon, he still gets his host names resolved (via the
>> DHCP-provided DNS server).
> Even for shop.coyote.den?
Of course: for all host names he cares to use.
And obviously, his DHCP-provided DNS server will answer wi
> Yes. Still the open question remains: why is it being changed although
> the "immutable" attriibute was set?
I'm not sufficiently familiar with the "immutable" attribute to answer
that, sorry.
Stefan
>> I just gave you a solution to your underlying problem, which *uses* the
>> infrastructure rather than fighting it. I won't force you to use it, tho.
> I thought the canonical method which was discussed in the
Depends on "method to do what?".
A static resolv.conf is basically a concept from th
>> With such a setup, your host should correctly use your local `bind`
>> server, and if you ever stop your `bind` server it should start using
>> your ISP's server instead. And when you restart your `bind` server, it
>> will switch back to using that.
> That is not at all what I am trying to acco
> My /etc/resolv.conf looks like this:
> domain example.com
> search example.com.
> nameserver 127.0.0.1
Here's how I'd do it:
- install resolvconf
- move the resolv.conf config you use with bind to somewhere else, like
/etc/resolv.conf.bind
- arrange for the script which starts your `bind` ser
>> Now "import" is quite another kettle of fish: it's part of the
>> ImageMagick suite (not much to do with X, actually), which has the
>> (questionable) tradition of calling its things "display", "convert",
>> "identify", "compare"... or even "conjure"). Now ImageMagick is so
>> useful that people
> "Unti recently" because there now is a way to do data retention, but:
> "bup only has experimental support for pruning old backups."
Indeed, it's a relatively new feature, but it's been working fine in
my tests.
Stefan
>> However, the virtual hard disk is a pretty large size. My method
>> compresses it further so that the size of the backup is much smaller.
> Have a look at "borg". It is ideal to backup VMs (or anything using
> large files with only marginal changes inside) and I have been using it
> for my Virtu
> I have a need to sort lists of URLs and associated titles formatted as
> follows:
>
>* [[][]]
>
> e.g [[http://www.google.com][Google search]]
>
> I'd like to get a simple sort routine to do that.
In my quick test,
sort -t '[' -k 4
seemed to do the trick,
Stefan
> Yes for VM it is possible only if you use ESX server and licensed VM Ware
Then better use Free Software, such as kvm, VirtualBox, ...
Stefan
>> There are the so called snapshots, which you can make and then include in
>> your back up. No need to down the VM.
[...]
> I may be wrong but I don't think snapshots can be scheduled, but rather
> must be initiated
I have no idea what that means. The way it normally works is that you
have a
> I would like a backup tool that does not bring a million dependencies with
> MBs of files. Something that works on server without X Windows and can
> send backup to an externally attached USB drive. Nothing fancy. No
> network infrastructure. Incremental backups would be greatly appreciated.
>> Of course it all depends on what you mean by "booting from". AFAICT in
>> Leandro's situation, he's loading Grub from some other disk (probably
>> the main HDD or SSD), so he's already "not booting from the SD card" in
>> this sense.
> By "booting from" I mean everything which is needed to brin
> That eases problems for Debian servers, I don't see an advantage to me.
Given that there is an advantage (for Debian servers), the question
isn't if there's an advantage to you, but instead if there's
a *dis*advantage to you (or others).
Stefan
> I have a very annoying problem. I can't write to my usb drives (fat32,
> ntfs, etc.) without root permissions. How can I fix this?
How did you mount it? I usually mount those with `pmount`.
Stefan
> This is the 4-in-1 card reader; the one you want you are trying to boot
> from. As indicted by /dev/mmcblk0p1 it is on the PCI bus. 'lspci' should
> display the chip used; one from Ricoh?
>
> GRUB doesn't see anything on this bus (it has no drivers for the device),
> so booting from it is not pos
I tried "aptitude install Thursday" and that failed miserably.
Then I tried with `apt-get`: same result.
The worst part is that I get the same kinds of failures when I try
"aptitude install this Thursday" or "aptitude install next Thursday".
Stefan "confused about this Debian thing"
>>
> Maybe it's a problem with the battery?
Sounds very much like it.
Try another battery in the same laptop (or the same battery in another
laptop) to confirm.
Stefan
> Note: I still want to keep experimental in my sources.list for the
> cases where I *explicitly* request experimental packages.
I keep these extra thingies commented out in my sources.list and
whenever I want to explicitly request some package from them,
I uncomment the line, redo the `update` an
> Could i identify the environment by inspecting the file system (for
> example)? (I imagine the answer there must be 'no', because different
> users could have different environments but necessarily share the same
> file system, but maybe i'm making some unjustified assumptions?)
That's right.
> 1. a search and replace which can include a "newline" in new string.
> 2. display/edit 2 files simultaneously *side by side*
Really?
I find it hard to believe that there could be editors out there which
don't satisfy both of those.
Of course, I'd recommend Emacs, but really: *any* editor shou
> It'd probably be fairly easy to come up with a backup system based on Git
> (probably not good for whole-system backups, but likely workable for
> homedir backups), but I haven't come across such a thing yet.
Well, for the reference I've now found `bup` which isn't using Git
directly but uses th
>> > Having been there and done that, I can assure you that having a
>> > live snapshot system -- rsnapshot or btrfs/zfs native tools --
>> > is more fun and less work for everyone.
I looked at rsnapshot but its behavior is poor when you have lots of
directories with lots of tiny files.
It'd prob
> I'm not sure it's a "bug" in the "bug report" sense.
Sure looks like a bug to me (not being able to access the accept button
looks like a window manager bug, OTOH. At least with the
window-manager I use (ctwm), I have it configured such that I can move
a window from anywhere to anywhere by grab
>> I would like to hear some ideas on how to set various environment
>> variables (PATH, MANPATH, EDITOR etc.) in one place that would make them
>> effective everywhere. My "everywhere" means:
>> - X session started through lightdm and ~/.xsession script
>> - Linux console login (bash)
>> - user's
> among others "same UUID" (I know, I know), so no need to change fstab.
Yuck! I recommend you stay away from UUIDs in your fstab. Instead name
your partitions. If you use LVM (which you should do anyway for all
kinds of other reasons) your volumes are already named anyway so there's
nothing sp
> using something like rsync, which means no duplicate UUIDs, you aren't
> spending time copying sectors that aren't referenced, the SSD gets
> fewer write cycles and it can be interrupted and resumed.
FWIW, copying files has its own form of overhead, so if the drive is
reasonably filled, it'll be
> The HDD is a Seagate 250GB 7200rpm, the SDD is a Samsung 250GB EVO 850.
> The total capacity matches exactly.
You mean they really have *exactly* the same number of blocs?
> dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb status=progress bs=4K
FWIW, after doing that, I'd recommend you look at the partition table,
> Basically anything that can run Debian and has two suitable
> ethernet ports will do. An old laptop? One of the shiny little
> Raspberry-Pi style devices? (Probably not the Pi itself; it only
> has one ethernet port.)
I use a BananaPi for that. It has 3 network interfaces:
- the ethernet one, w
> This is what is called the Kernel-ABI. All modules compiled for
> "3.16.0-4-amd64" will be compatible with all kernels providing this.
I had kind of figured that out, but one thing still puzzles me: why
isn't it "3.16-4-amd64"? I mean, all those versions seem to always have
a ".0" which is unus
several tools making and applying those decisions and that
might be part of the problem (at least that has been the case for the
LCD brightness management which has historically been handled at all
kinds of places with various successes at avoiding conflicts between
them).
Stefan
> On Mon,
> But somehow would like to fix the unmute, not unmuting speaker channel
> and don't know where to look.
If/when you do find out, please report here: I've had similar problems
on my laptops but could never figure out how those things are expected
to work nor how to change their behavior.
> AIUI you save 100% "more power" with hibernate; the machine is
> powered off.
FWIW I've seen cases where the power brick consumes *more* when the
machine is off than when it's suspended (and in my experience there's
usually little difference between the two; the largest difference I've
seen is w
> To speedup obtaining a lease you should probably restart dhclient on
> usb0 addition/removal.
Right, that's basically the issue. I know I can write all this with
enough post-up scripting in /etc/network/interfaces (or even udev
.rules files), but I was hoping there was something already written
> But, it all changes if you replace conventional bridge with
> openvswitch, which *can* add new interfaces (ports as they call it) to
> its own bridges dynamically *and* it can be configured via interfaces(5).
Interesting. Would it work if the IP address of the bridge is acquired
dynamically via
>> Interesting. Any hint how?
> It would be too long to explain here, but this page seems to cover the
> basics of what you need:
> http://packetpushers.net/udev/
I don't see any mechanism in there that will bring up an interface or
add it to a bridge, nor bring up the bridge.
As I said, I alrea
>> Is there something better? Like a predefined way to just say that when
>> `usb0` appears, it should be added to `br0` (and ideally, this would
>> also `ifup` the `br0` interface if it's not up yet).
> Not with /etc/network/interfaces and ifupdown, but udev can do all that.
Interesting. Any hi
I have a bridge interface `br0` which usually contains jut `eth0` but
occasionally also needs to contain `usb0`, which is an ethernet-dongle
kind of thing.
How do I setup /etc/network/interfaces for that?
Currently, I just setup everything "manually": `br0` is setup `static`,
and `usb0` is setup
> Just wondering if anybody on here has acquired something like the
> following (basically a computer on a stick / pendrive) and tried
> loading Debian (or any Linux) on it?
> Have you found any that aren't preloaded with Windows?
Not sure what "computer on a stick" you're thinking of.
All the
I have a headless machine connected to an ad-hoc network here.
I have the network setup in /etc/network/interface and it is brought up
fine at boot, but after suspend/resume the connection is lost until
I manually do ifdown+ifup.
I guess I could add the ifdown+ifup to /etc/pm/sleep.d, but I was
wo
> apt-mark showmanual gives you the complement of apt-mark showauto.
> The second paragraph of apt-mark's description explains what's meant
> by "auto". So "manual" doesn't mean what you appear to assume it does,
> that you were involved in manually selecting it for installation. It
> just mean
> Can anybody share any comments or links about this topic?
> - quiet (fanless), low-power and low cost hardware suitable for Gigabit
> routing and maybe use as a NAS too. It would also be useful to have
> fibre support in the router and avoid using a media convertor.
I don't know what you consid
>> > Futzing with partitions is the admin's job.
>> Could be, but it's not (g)parted's job to enforce these kinds of rules:
>> that's what Unix permissions (and Linux's capabilities) are for.
>> It's OK to add a warning and prompt the user to make sure he really
>> means to do that, but there's no
> Feel free to weight in ;-)
^^^
No idea where this `t` came from,
Stefan
>> LVM has bitten me more than once in the past and I will not use it
>> again. In both situations it spanned more than one disk and one of the
>> disks failed - leaving you with unrecoverable data.
> I don't think I've ever used it like that, and probably wouldn't. At
> least not unless the under
>>> I once read that it was possible to swap to a named file, rather
>>> than a swap partition. Is that possible with Jessie?
Of course, it's possible. But if you setup a system from scratch I'd
highly recommend you put "everything" into an LVM volume group so you
can then use an LVM volume for
> I need to boot into a hard drive diagnostic tool which is provided only as
> an ISO image by the manufacturer. Since my laptop does not have a CD drive,
> I hoped I could use a USB flash drive to run this tool from.
I would try `grub-imageboot`: put the .iso into /boot/images/ then
update-grub,
>>> 2. Debian 8.6 w MATE run from LIVE DVD _displays_ the correct time
>>> 3. Debian 8.6 w MATE installed from DVD 1 of 13 with aid of custom
>>> preseed.cfg
>>> _displays_ a time 5 hours earlier.
>> My guess: the Live DVD uses NTP so as not to depend on the hwclock
>> whereas your installs don't.
>2. Debian 8.6 w MATE run from LIVE DVD _displays_ the correct time
>3. Debian 8.6 w MATE installed from DVD 1 of 13 with aid of custom
> preseed.cfg
> _displays_ a time 5 hours earlier.
My guess: the Live DVD uses NTP so as not to depend on the hwclock
whereas your installs don't.
> I am an 86 year old Photoshop Guru and having trouble printing from PS
> in OS 10.12.
> So I found Gutenprint and downloaded the latest version for my Epson
> 4880. But what do I do now?
First things first: install Debian.
Stefan
> My only slight worry is following the above instructions the partition
> created on the stick was marked as "Linux". Really? Is that OK?
The partition type is very rarely used (it's kind of an announce of
the *purpose* of this partition, but the partition's content is always
the one that really
> It's a 4GB stick and I am thinking of using all the space in a single
> partition.
Assuming the USB stick is at /dev/sdb I'd do:
% fdisk /dev/sdb
o
n RET RET RET RET
w
q
% mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1
This has always worked well for me, for Windows and Mac OS X.
[ IIUC using vf
>> AFAICT, the latest amd64 kernel in Debian x86 testing is still 3.16
>> (i.e. the one from Debian stable).
>> Any idea why there's no newer one?
> Since linux 4.0, the -amd64 kernel flavor is no longer built on i386:
Hmm... that's what I thought.
> To install the -amd64 kernel via multiarch, ru
AFAICT, the latest amd64 kernel in Debian x86 testing is still 3.16
(i.e. the one from Debian stable).
Any idea why there's no newer one?
Stefan
>> Not really. Which version of psgmlx are you using?
>> What problem(s) did you encounter with it?
> Most of the details are on the deb-doc list now. Basically, emacs24 can't
> handle the old elisp in psgmlx, hence my need for an older version of emacs.
This "hence" is a bit hasty. Myself, I w
> I think (hope) the subject says it all.
Not really. Which version of psgmlx are you using?
What problem(s) did you encounter with it?
Stefan
>> > It's a pity that Aptitude is so poorly designed.
>> Just because it doesn't always work the way you want it doesn't mean it
>> should labeled "poorly designed".
> I'm not the only one to complain.
My point is that saying it's "poorly designed" is like calling the author
an idiot. So it's ver
> Can this be adjusted to allow me to install via apt-get this package?:
> https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/emacs23
> My fear is that if I monkey with sources.list I will trigger an unwanted
> dist-upgrade.
dist-upgrade doesn't happen automatically. So yes, you can add the
above and then do som
> It's a pity that Aptitude is so poorly designed.
Just because it doesn't always work the way you want it doesn't mean it
should labeled "poorly designed".
Stefan
> It doesn't remove anything without your permission. It proposes
> a solution to the problem you present it with. You can reject that
> solution and have it try again.
FWIW, the way it presents the solution makes it hard to see what's
really going on. More specifically, the list of removed pac
> I'm not asking it to read my mind. I just want it not to
> remove any package I have manually installed.
FWIW, I really wish Debian could upgrade their package tools to follow
a model similar to Nix/Guix. Basically, I'd like to have a master
configuration file where I list the packages I want t
> I'm experimenting with TCP to see how long it takes to send a small amount
> of data from A to B. One would expect a latency of a few hundred
> milliseconds, but it's a few hundred microseconds instead. It is as if
> Nagle's algorithm has been disabled.
I suggest you re-read https://en.wikipedia
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