SOLVED: Re: Glitchy sound in Steam games after hard drive upgrade
On 2024-04-22 16:50, Jeffrey Walton wrote: What are the old and new hard drive model numbers and specs? Correction: the 4TB drive is a Western Digital WD40EFPX. I was reading it by shining a flashlight through a gap in the frame and squinting from a wide angle because I didn't want to take the box apart yet again. I've trying several of the suggestions people have kindly posted here. The /etc directory on the new drive was getting messed up badly enough that I decided to try copying the 500GB drive's root partition to the 4TB drive using dd. The machine hung partway through the subsequent boot. So I wiped the root partition and re-installed Debian from scratch, leaving the /home partition intact. But the real magic was the re-installation of the Steam launcher. Since my Portal icons were on my desktop, and clicking them made it run (sort of), I was fooled into thinking everything was still there. But I found a detailed set of instructions for installing Steam at https://wiki.debian.org/Steam and followed them. This installed or overlaid the missing or broken parts and presto! my sound is now clean. Many thanks to everyone for your help. This a good lesson to not take too many things for granted, and also to be a bit more adventurous. (A full Debian re-install really doesn't take that long...) -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | You can't save the earth \ /| unless you're willing to X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | make other people sacrifice. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Dogbert the green consultant
Re: Subject: Glitchy sound in Steam games after hard drive upgrade
On 2024-04-22 16:50, Jeffrey Walton wrote: What are the old and new hard drive model numbers and specs? The old drive is a Western Digital WD5000YS (500GB SATA). The new drive is a Western Digital Red, WF40EFPX (4TB SATA). If the old hard drive was spinning rust, it is acceptable to replace it with a solid state drive. I did it several times in the past. But nowadays a new machine usually (always?) comes with a SSD, so you usually don't need to upgrade for performance reasons. Both drives are spinning rust. I'm upgrading for the increased capacity, i.e. to store more MP3s and videos. Many thanks to all who have replied. When my schedule permits me to continue experimenting, I'm going to try copying /etc from the old drive to the new one. I've already learned how _not_ to do this: Boot from the new drive $ su root # cd / # mv etc etc.ori # rsync -av /mnt/backup/etc . The second line makes the system fall over and makes logins impossible. It took a boot from the rescue CD to undo the damage, which fortunately was easy since the deadly step at least succeeded in backing up /etc. Next time I'll do it while booted from the old drive. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Subject: Glitchy sound in Steam games after hard drive upgrade
I should probably be posting this to the Steam forums, but most of the denizens there are Windows people so I might be better off letting you Debian gurus have a go at it first. TL;DR: Copying an existing /home into a fresh Debian installation causes audio in Steam games to glitch - but all other sound is OK. Full description: I have a machine in the living room that stores MP3s and videos and serves them to other machines on our network as well as playing them locally on our TV's big screen. I also play a few Steam games (e.g. Portal) on it. It's a 2007-vintage machine, but it has 8GB of RAM and enough CPU power to do the job, and runs the latest version of Bookworm. Recently I decided to upgrade its storage capacity, and replaced its 500GB hard drive (which was pretty large at the time I bought it) with a 4TB drive. I did an install from scratch using a network install CD, then copied my /home partition (using rsync) from the old drive. Everything works great with one exception: when I fire up Portal the sound gets glitches about once a second. This only happens with Steam games; I can play MP3s and videos with mpv and the sound is perfect, as it is when watching YouTube videos. If I swap the old drive back in everything is fine. Obviously my Steam programs and configuration files are in my home directory, since the updated system comes up icons and all without re-installing Steam, and can find everything it needs to run the games. But perhaps there are a few files somewhere else (/usr?) containing information critical to audio for Steam. Any ideas? (Side question: is this an acceptable way to upgrade a hard drive?) -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Issues after upgrading 11 -> 12
On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 21:50:01 +0100 Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?= <2695bd53d...@ewoof.net> wrote: > On 30 Jan 2024 10:14 -0800, from cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs): > >> VirtualBox, which I use heavily, has disappeard, so I'm going to >> have to re-install some packages anyway. > > I'm pretty sure VirtualBox has not been shipped by Debian for quite a > while because of its licensing status, so I guess you're relying on a > third party package for that? (Probably Oracle's.) That's another > thing that can easily cause complications during an upgrade, which is > why the release notes recommend to disable third-party repositories > before upgrading between releases and holding off on upgrading those > packages until after the main system has been upgraded successfully; > another detail that doesn't seem to be mentioned on the wiki page. No worries, I'm used to installing VirtualBox afterwards. > Semi-unrelated, but you might want to consider switching to KVM > virtualization instead; it's supported by the stock kernel, making > things easier. AQEMU is a fairly VirtualBox-like GUI front-end for it, > and VMs can be converted (though especially if you're virtualizing > Windows, I'm not sure how it takes to the changes in virtualized > hardware). I switched from VirtualBox to KVM a while ago and haven't > looked back. I did some reading on KVM vs. VirtualBox. For my application, there didn't seem to be enough benefit to KVM to justify climbing yet another learning curve. As it turns out, re-installing VirtualBox is now just a matter of going to Oracle's web site, which contains one line you can add to /etc/apt/sources.list. At this point you can just type sudo apt install VirtualBox-7.0 (new version!) Since its .vdi files (etc.) were already in $HOME, it came right up. I told it to load guest extensions, and my Windows XP VM was up and running again, complete with network and USB bridges. >> Once I get this mess sorted out, I have one more machine to >> upgrade. I'll follow the release notes to the letter then, >> and see whether I have better luck. > > For what it's worth, back when I upgraded my system from Bullseye to > Bookworm (I think around the time 12.1 came out) closely following the > release notes, the process was smooth, including Xfce and X11. To be honest, most of my upgrades have gone smoothly too. Maybe I was becoming complacent and got careless - and if things go wrong, they can go _very_ wrong. For now, though, my laptop is happily running 12.4. It occurs to me that a full install from scratch isn't really that big a thing if /home is intact. I'll be occasionally finding a package that isn't installed, but that's a matter of 30 seconds to install it; it'll find its old configuration files in $HOME and all will be well. Thanks, everyone, for your help. Hopefully I'll remember some lessons I can take to my next upgrade. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft \ /| has stolen their car and parked X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
Re: Issues after upgrading 11 -> 12; was: Is 12.4 safe, or should I wait for 12.5?
[Sorry about the broken threads; I read this group on Usenet.] On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 08:50:01 +0100 Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?= <2695bd53d...@ewoof.net> wrote: > On 29 Jan 2024 19:54 -0800, from cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs): > >> Today I took a thorough backup of my laptop and dove in, using the >> instructions at https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUpgrade as a guide. > > Did you actually follow _that_ page, or did you read and follow the > _release notes_ as it says near the top of that page? Mea culpa. I used the wiki. > As a rule the release notes for a release should be considered the > authoritative truth about upgrading to any given release from the > immediately preceding release. (Skipping releases is not supported and > strongly discouraged.) There are also meaningful differences in system > setup between 11 and 12, not least non-free-firmware (which, were it > just that, would be easy enough to add after the fact). Noted. Hopefully I'll remember to go there first the next time I do an upgrade, rather than following the first page that comes up in my search engine. > A plain Debian release upgrade should not switch your desktop > environment on its own, and last I looked Xfce wasn't yet compatible > with Wayland, so although I haven't looked in detail, it seems likely > that your issues are related to something which you did or did not do > during the upgrade process. That seems the obvious conclusion. I was pretty gobsmacked, though, when my system came up in a totally different graphical environment. Even though I've had strange things happen in other upgrades, this one takes it to a whole new level. I'm obviously playing with dynamite. > Do you have a "script" transcript of the upgrade session (as the > release notes also strongly recommend [1] in case there are problems)? > > [1]: https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#record-session Alas, no. Again, something to remember for next time. Although just about everything seems to be there, I feel uneasy enough about the whole thing that I think I'll just re-format the root partition (while leaving the separate /home partition intact) and install Bookworm from scratch. VirtualBox, which I use heavily, has disappeard, so I'm going to have to re-install some packages anyway. This isn't the first time I've had to do this; when I tried to upgrade this same laptop from (IIRC) Stretch to Buster, I was left with an unbootable machine. The takeaway (for me, anyway) is that upgrading a system is a complicated and hazardous process which requires a lot of study before attempting it. Often it goes smoothly, but when it doesn't I"m in for a world of hurt. So it goes. Once I get this mess sorted out, I have one more machine to upgrade. I'll follow the release notes to the letter then, and see whether I have better luck. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Is 12.4 safe, or should I wait for 12.5?
On Wed, 24 Jan 2024 21:20:01 +0100 Greg Wooledge wrote: > On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 11:52:04AM -0800, Charlie Gibbs wrote: > >> I updated my main machine to Bookworm (12.2, kernel 6.1.0.13-amd64) >> some time ago and it's running well. >> >> I read the fuss about EXT4 file system corruption. At first >> I got the impression that this happened in 12.4, but further digging >> suggests that the bug was in 12.3, fixed in 12.4. Is this the case, >> or should I wait for 12.5 before updating my other machines? > > Yes, it's fixed. The current stable kernel ABI is 6.1.0-17, which is > from a security update post 12.4. > <https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2024/msg0.html> > > The data corruption bug was initially fixed by a kernel which had a > major bug in a Wifi support module. The kernel after *that* was the > first safe one. And now we have -17 which is that plus some more > security fixes. Upgrading is recommended. Thanks, Greg - and everyone else who answered - for the reassurances. Today I took a thorough backup of my laptop and dove in, using the instructions at https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUpgrade as a guide. The process went smoothly, as always, so I took a deep breath and performed the scariest step of all: re-booting. It took a while, but being the first boot on a new system I gave it some slack (no pun intended). Then the screen painted and... what the HELL happened to my desktop? It looked more like my wife's Macbook than good old Xfce. The only way I could get a command prompt was to SSH in from another machine (at least the networking came up OK). I can run slrn remotely - which is how I read this list - and I can even run my preferred web browser, Seamonkey, from that remote command line. A bit more web searching came up with these commands: $ echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP $ (Well, maybe since it's a remote login it doesn't work properly.) $ ps -e | grep -E -i "xfce|kde|gnome" Omigod, I'm infested with GNOMEs! What happened to Xfce? This didn't happen when I upgraded my main machine, although it went to 12.2, not the 12.4 that's on my laptop. And the damned thing hibernates - making my SSH session hang - rather than running xscreensaver. (OK, I found a setting to stop the hibernation, but Jamie Zawinski's pride and joy is still nowhere to be found.) However, I can make the laptop's screen display a settings window, which contains interesting things like: OS Name Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) OS Type 64-bit GNOME version 43.9 (Aha!) Windowing SystemWayland (WHAT!?) I followed the update steps exactly, accepting all defaults. Well, there was one thing: since I was already at a root prompt after doing my backup, I just typed "apt-get " rather than prefixing the commands with "sudo". Could this cause such a drastic change? And if so, it would be nice if the documentation warned about it. Xfce to GNOME? Xorg to Wayland? That's pretty extreme. I'm not yet ready to wipe it and restore my backup, but there's only so much time I'm willing to spend tinkering with this. I regularly use my laptop for work on the road, and I'm trying to minimize my downtime. I don't understand it - when I upgraded my main machine, everything went smooth as butter, and my desktop and all applications were left exactly as is. But on my laptop, the only thing that appears intact is the contents of /home. Can anyone suggest what happened and how to fix it? -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Is 12.4 safe, or should I wait for 12.5?
I updated my main machine to Bookworm (12.2, kernel 6.1.0.13-amd64) some time ago and it's running well. My laptop, and the media box in the living room, are still running Bullseye. I was about to update them when I read the fuss about EXT4 file system corruption. At first I got the impression that this happened in 12.4, but further digging suggests that the bug was in 12.3, fixed in 12.4. Is this the case, or should I wait for 12.5 before updating my other machines? Just looking for re-assurance before I take the plunge. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Re: counting commas
On Sun Jan 21 10:12:00 2024 John Hasler wrote: > Roy J. Tellason writes: >> Where does that leave those of us that wrote c for CP/M? > I wrote: >> Or for MTS? > Gene writes: >> That, i've not heard of John, please expand. > > Michigan Terminal System. A multi-user OS running on the Amdahl > 470V/6 at the University of Michigan. It goes back well before that (or even C, for that matter). At the end of 1968, when I was a freshman at the University of B.C., they replaced their IBM 7044 with a 360/67. It ran MTS from day one. I've never programmed C on a mainframe. It sounds weird. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | You can't save the earth \ /| unless you're willing to X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | make other people sacrifice. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Dogbert the green consultant
Re: difference in seconds between two formatted dates ...
On 2023-12-25 18:05, Jeffrey Walton wrote: On Mon, Dec 25, 2023 at 8:43 PM Charlie Gibbs wrote: On Mon Dec 25 12:01:59 2023 "Andrew M.A. Cater" wrote: Yes - that's the obvious way. I set my machines to /etc/UTC (or /etc/GMT) and leave them there. No daylight saving time, no offsets - all logs unambiguous. That's why (worldwide) radio logkeeping is/was in UTC. If you're travelling in an aircraft, you don't _need_ to know ground time but you do need to know flight time against a reference time. The Royal Air Force keep to UTC wherever they are in the world for just this reason. Not just the RAF. All aviation works in UTC, to avoid problems when flights cross time zone boundaries, and to keep wide-area weather forecasts sane. Your average airline passenger never sees UTC, since airlines use it behind the scenes and convert it to local time for display purposes. (That's why you can see some strange intervals between departure and arrival times.) The US airlines I worked for in the late 1980s and 1990s used Zulu time. If I recall correctly, flight arrivals and departures were specified like 10:34Z or 23:10Z. I don't know why Z was used instead of UTC or GMT. Probably to save space, and save some ink if a schedule was printed. Not to mention time, back in the days when weather data was broadcast across networks of Baudot Teletypes running at 45 baud. I don't know if that is still the case. It is. In fact, even though weather data has evolved somewhat, it is still in a highly compressed form which, once you learn to read it, enables you to scan a lot of data very quickly. Here's a copy of this hour's METARs (weather observations) and TAF (terminal area forecast) for Vancouver, B.C. Note the Z at the end of many times (ddhhmmZ), although the Z is omitted if this wouldn't be ambiguous. METAR CYVR 270300Z 08010KT 20SM SCT140 OVC160 08/05 A2998 RMK AC3AS5 SLP155= METAR CYVR 270200Z 09007KT 20SM OVC160 08/05 A3000 RMK AC8 SLP161= METAR CYVR 270100Z CCA 05010G15KT 25SM BKN150 BKN170 09/05 A3002 RMK AC5AC3 SLP168= METAR CYVR 270100Z 05010G15KT 25SM BKN150 BKN170 09/05 A3002 RMK AC4AC3 SLP168= TAF CYVR 270304Z 2703/2806 09008KT P6SM FEW080 OVC160 FM271100 09012G22KT P6SM SCT040 OVC100 TEMPO 2711/2715 P6SM -SHRA FEW020 BKN040 OVC080 FM271500 09012G22KT P6SM BKN040 OVC120 FM271800 10012G22KT P6SM BKN080 OVC150 FM272200 10012G22KT P6SM -SHRA BKN020 OVC040 FM280400 11015G25KT P6SM FEW040 SCT120 BKN200 RMK NXT FCST BY 270600Z= -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Re: difference in seconds between two formatted dates ...
On Mon Dec 25 12:01:59 2023 "Andrew M.A. Cater" wrote: > Yes - that's the obvious way. I set my machines to /etc/UTC (or > /etc/GMT) and leave them there. No daylight saving time, no offsets - > all logs unambiguous. That's why (worldwide) radio logkeeping is/was > in UTC. If you're travelling in an aircraft, you don't _need_ to know > ground time but you do need to know flight time against a reference > time. The Royal Air Force keep to UTC wherever they are in the world > for just this reason. Not just the RAF. All aviation works in UTC, to avoid problems when flights cross time zone boundaries, and to keep wide-area weather forecasts sane. Your average airline passenger never sees UTC, since airlines use it behind the scenes and convert it to local time for display purposes. (That's why you can see some strange intervals between departure and arrival times.) As a side note, a similar dichotomy applies to airport designators; passengers and baggage handlers only see the three-letter IATA codes (e.g. YYZ for Toronto), while flight plans are filed using the 4-letter ICAO codes (e.g. CYYZ for Toronto). For the most part, Canadian ICAO codes are the IATA code with a C in front, and American ICAO codes are the IATA code with a K in front - but there are exceptions. And ICAO codes cover all registered airports, not just those with scheduled airline service. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Linux supprt
On Tue Nov 14 13:25:36 2023 Nicholas Geovanis
wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 13, 2023, 12:35 PM wrote:
>
>> But yes, in a way convenience can drown out freedom. See that other
>> thread in this mailing list about mail providers. All people flocking
>> to gmail although it's clear that Google would like to kill mail
>> as we know it.
>
> But mail as "they" know it has nothing to do with transport or
> networking. They know it as a service not as anything else.
> Like electricity. The "freedom" to exchange email is what
> matters to them.
Especially if they can control that freedom.
> Just about everyone in the developed countries permits and is ok
> with their electric/telecom/heating service coming from a monopoly,
> oligoploy, or government-owned entity. So the same situation for
> email is ok with them as long as the cost is low.
The difference with utilities like electricity is that they are
_regulated_ monopolies. There is at least a bit of government
oversight to make sure the electricity provider doesn't gouge
its subscribers too badly. Tech giants like Google, etc. are
_unregulated_ monopolies, who can do whatever they want to us
without having the government come after them. In Canada they're
threatening to cut off news feeds in retaliation for the government's
attempts to make them pay news providers for the data they're
redistributing. Most people are too ignorant to realize that
this is an idle threat - there are plenty of other sources of
news - but they've already meekly accepted the tech corps. as
de facto monopolies.
"You get what you settle for."
-- Thelma and Louise
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ /| Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: Chromium under Xfce/bookworm anyone?
On Wed Sep 13 10:22:29 2023 David Wright wrote: > On Wed 13 Sep 2023 at 08:24:27 (-0400), Celejar wrote: > >> I have no choice - there's at least one important site (of a major >> financial institution) that I need that simply doesn't work with >> Firefox. Tell me about it. I normally use Seamonkey (a Firefox variant), but even the latest Firefox didn't work. > Usual question: what does "doesn't work" mean? I can do most of my online banking with Seamonkey/Firefox, but when trying to activate a new credit card I got halfway into a set of screens that I don't normally access, and things just hung. I decided I might as well waste as much of the bank's time as they were wasting of mine, so I went down to my local branch and managed to get a supervisor. The first thing he did was ask me which browser I was using. I told him I was using Firefox, and he said, "Never heard of it." (!) He turned around his terminal so I could get at it, and I went through the same steps as I had tried at home. Naturally, since it was running their anointed browser (Microsoft Edge), everything went smoothly. I pointed out that this is a form of discrimination, and left the bank muttering things about digital racism. Since the supervisor wasn't Caucasian, this had a gratifying effect. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They offer a huge range of \ /| world-class vulnerabilities X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | that only Microsoft can provide. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- druck
Re: Looking for a good "default" font (small 'L' vs. capital 'i' problem)
On Mon Aug 21 16:23:25 2023 "Christoph K." wrote: > Am Sun, 20 Aug 2023 21:41:04 + > schrieb "Russell L. Harris" : > >> On the 3, 5, 6, and 9, open the end of the loops, and shorten the >> horizontal stroke on top of the 5 so the 5 is not mistaken for an S. >> Always put horizontal strokes on I. Make the 1 with a flag on the >> upper end and put a horizontal stroke on the 7, German-style. My >> handwriting is a odd mixture of cursive script and printing. > > Thanks for sharing! > > Really interesting ... I'm already implementing all of these "rules". > I learnt to write the 7 in German style because I live in Germany ;-) Here on the west coast of Canada the stroke through the 7 isn't too common, although I do see it from time to time. I avoid it because it makes a 7 look like certain script forms of the letter F (see the Fender guitar logo, for instance). > We also learned to put a "flag" on the 1 in school. I was surprised to > see other people don't. To me it's quite confusing to see 1 just as a > straight line. When I was 8 years old I started writing the numeral 1 with the "flag". I quickly stopped, because everyone confused it with 7. This leaves the lower-case L. It was a long time before this became a problem, either because I didn't use them frequently or because readers could figure it out from context. (This was in my pre-computer days.) Now if there's a potential problem I'll put a little hook on the bottom, similar to many computer fonts. The vertical bar... well, I'll either make it noticeably taller than other characters on the line, or I'll write nearby 1s with both a flag and a bottom line. It's a bit of a compromise that I deal with on an individual basis. > I don't remember when I startet to put bars on the 'I', probably > during my studies of electrical engineering when we used lots of > formulas. I think I used them right from the beginning, so that wasn't a problem. > I also have a "mixed handwriting" with some ligatures (for example on > the double 'l'). For the small 's' I use two different glyphs (not on > purpose) that usually depend on my mood. For a long time I wasn't even > aware I was doing this :-) Interesting. I went through something like that when I started cursive writing. When writing a contraction I'd write the whole word and then go back and place the apostrophe between the appropriate two letters - except when writing "o'clock", where for some reason I would leave a break after the "o". Go figure. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: why bookworm isn't called deb12?
On Fri, 07 Jul 2023 23:10:01 +0200 John Hasler wrote: > Bret writes: > >> With bits and bytes, one strange thing that I remember, is that, in >> 1985, in Australia, a particular computer was introduced, that had a >> 32 bit processor with 8 bit buses. It was a Motorola 68008 CPU, and, >> I could not understand why a company would produce a 32 bit CPU wit >> 8 bit buses. > > That processor was targeted at embedded systems and it made sense in > some applications. I don't understand why anyone would put it in a > desktop. For the same reason that IBM put the 8088 (an 8086 with an 8-bit bus) into their original Personal Computer: to save money by interfacing with existing 8-bit support chips. In addition, rumour has it that the 8-bit bus helped cripple the machine enough to not pose a marketing threat to their other product lines. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | You can't save the earth \ /| unless you're willing to X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | make other people sacrifice. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Dogbert the green consultant
Re: why bookworm isn't called deb12?
On Fri Jul 7 09:59:56 2023 fxkl4...@protonmail.com wrote: >> Microsoft for good or bad has made major advances in software Yup. Like surveillance, flakiness, and an endless merry-go-round of forced upgrades into ever-increasing bloatware. >> and is responsible for a fair fraction of what we experience in >> our Linux world. And the Taliban is responsible for a fair fraction of what we experience in our Western world. So what? > true > if microsoft had ever produced a decent product > linux may not have ever become as popular as it is "The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they make vacuum cleaners." -- unknown -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is not \ /| a necessary evil. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Microsoft is not necessary. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Ted Nelson (paraphrased)
Re: Cable colors and urban legends
On Mon Jun 5 09:58:04 2023 gene heskett wrote: > I could go on with my war stories, but I'm boring the list > with off topic rattling. Just suffice to say I've BT & DT many times. Come on over to alt.folklore.computers. It exists to exchange war stories. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft \ /| has stolen their car and parked X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
Re: repeat of previous question that has gone unansweredseveraltimes.
On Sat May 6 21:11:09 2023 Alex King wrote: > Printing on Linux is poor. CUPS is poor. It doesn't work for some (a > lot?) of people. > > I have a Brother HL-L2300D printer. It is connected to my (Debian > bullseye) workstation by USB. I have CUPS installed. > > My printer prints sometime. Other times, it spins up (makes a noise > like it is about to start printing), but nothing comes out. I can't > get any useful diagnostics to tell me where the problem might be. > > My parents, who live some distance away have an HP inkjet printer. > It works sometimes. Other times it doesn't. I get it set up so it's > working and it might work for a while, but it will stop working for > no reason. I've managed to get CUPS working reasonably well, although occasionally I lose the ability to print. Although I don't have a permanent fix, going into CUPS by pointing a web browser at localhost:631, removing the printer, and adding it back in gets things going again. My printer is connected via Ethernet; I suspect that power outages might cause DHCP to give it a different IP address when it comes back up, and CUPS gets confused. Since you 're using a USB connection, this might not help you - but you might try removing and re-adding the printer anyway. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: EPSON ET M 1120 new printer: If You can read this, you are using the wrong driver
On Tue, 02 May 2023 13:40:01 +0200 "Thomas Schmitt" wrote: > Hi, > > i wrote: > >>> i see 100% non-Hanlon opinions including a "sudo rm -R /" >>> assassination attempt. > > to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > >> Murder by a Hanlon razor. Now that would be... something. > > It would only be deadly if the assassination target is indeed stupid > and not just pretending. > >> Perhaps this is just a dark tentacle of ChatGPT, probing the >> more fringe aspects of human psychology. > > Some german list members speculated about a psychology or sociology > experiment going on. Nevertheless i think to have observed Sophie > before ChatGPT (but after ELIZA). > >> It's coming from a Microsoft domain, after all. > > What is our position on Microsoft Inc. and Hanlon's Razor ? I don't know about your position, but I find myself repeating Hanlon's Razor a lot: "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity." But then, in the back of my mind, a little voice replies: "But Microsoft isn't stupid!" -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: disk usage for /usr/lib on bullseye
On Tue, 02 May 2023 18:10:01 +0200 David Wright wrote: > On Tue 02 May 2023 at 11:39:09 (-0400), The Wanderer wrote: > >> It's a pointless thing to discuss, in any case, since I have been >> unable to think of essentially any reason why anyone would ever want >> to do any such thing. > > It makes me think of that gruesome cartoon where a meat mincer's > handle is being turned by an arm emerging from the funnel. Oh yes, the one with the police inspector who dryly observes: "It's the most determined case of suicide I've ever seen." -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Second monitor doesn't quite work
Last week I replaced my video card. The old one, made by Zotac,
contains the Nvidia GT630 chip set. It has two DVI outputs, which I
used to feed two monitors: a BenQ GL2760 and my trusty old Sharp
LL-T19D1-B. The new card (ASUS with the GT730 chip set) has only one
DVI output, but also has HDMI; I switched the BenQ monitor over to its
HDMI input.
I used the Nvidia X Server Settings utility to set up the displays; it
detected both monitors. I set it up to use the larger BenQ monitor as
the primary display, but when I boot the system the POST and boot
messages come up on the Sharp monitor. Once the boot is complete, the
desktop appears on the BenQ monitor. The Sharp is black; I can move the
mouse pointer over it but no windows will open on it. If I try to drag
an existing window from the BenQ to the Sharp, it flips into an
alternate desktop. Interestingly, xscreensaver finds both monitors and
displays on both. However, xrandr can only find the BenQ monitor
(HDMI-0); the Sharp monitor (DVI-D-0) doesn't show up.
I tried swapping the monitors, but that just caused everything from boot
to desktop to appear on the Sharp monitor; the BenQ stayed black (except
for the mouse pointer and xscreensaver output).
I'm running Bullseye. Originally I was using versio 390.xx of the
Nvidia driver, but upgrading to 470.161.03 had no effect.
Any idea why the second monitor is sort of there but not quite? Below
is a copy of the xorg.conf generated by the Nvidia setup utility.
# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings: version 470.141.03
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
Screen 1 "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
InputDevice"Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice"Mouse0" "CorePointer"
Option "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection
Section "Files"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
# HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "BenQ GL2760"
HorizSync 30.0 - 83.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 76.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
# HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Sharp LL-T19D1-B"
HorizSync 31.0 - 68.0
VertRefresh 60.0 - 75.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce GT 730"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 0
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Device1"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce GT 730"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor"Monitor0"
DefaultDepth24
Option "Stereo" "0"
Option "metamodes" "HDMI-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
Option "SLI" "Off"
Option "MultiGPU" "Off"
Option "BaseMosaic" "off"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Device1"
Monitor"Monitor1"
DefaultDepth24
Option "Stereo" "0"
Option "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0"
Option "metamodes" "DVI-D-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0
{AllowGSYNC=Off}"
Option "SLI" "Off"
Option "MultiGPU" "Off"
Option "BaseMosaic" "off"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | You can't save the earth
\ /| unless you're willing to
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | make other people sacrifice.
/ \ if you read it the right way. |-- Dogbert the green consultant
Re: Black screens on old nVidia card
On Wed Apr 12 21:44:23 2023 Charles Curley wrote: > On Wed, 12 Apr 2023 10:59:43 -0700 > Charlie Gibbs wrote: > >> $ cat /etc/debian_version >> 11.5 > > Hmm, the current version is 11.6. Maybe there's a fix in the upgrades > you haven't yet installed??? Dunno. But the display has always been a bit flaky. Things got really bad after my annual vacuuming of the box. >> [ 1406.213319] NVRM: GPU at PCI::01:00: >> GPU-d7903bd4-9549-9f07-5796-886c12d2031c >> [ 1406.213322] NVRM: Xid (PCI::01:00): 79, GPU has fallen off the >> bus. [ 1406.213324] NVRM: GPU at :01:00.0 has fallen off the bus. > > ??? I wonder if the card has an electrical problem? Thermal? > >> Yes, that video card is pretty long in the tooth; I'd gladly replace >> it if a new board will solve the problem. (If not, why bother? >> It works well enough for my purposes.) > > How much is your time worth? Buying a new inexpensive card may be less > expensive than tracking this down. Maybe your local computer store > will lend you a test video card??? Perhaps. I went there after the vacuuming I mentioned above, which left the machine unable to light the screens at all. Their tech reseated a few things I missed and tweaked things a bit. That made it work again (for a while, at least), and they were kind enough to not even charge me, so I think it's worth going back and buying a new video card from them. Thanks for the help. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | You can't save the earth \ /| unless you're willing to X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | make other people sacrifice. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Dogbert the green consultant
Black screens on old nVidia card
My tower (running Bullseye) has been suffering the black screen of... well, not quite death (I can ssh in from another machine and look at things), but it's certainly unusable for normal purposes. I have an old nVidia video card; I've always had a bit of trouble with it, but things got better when I replaced nouveau with the appropriate proprietary nVidia driver (currently version 390.157). But lately things have been getting worse; it might be only minutes before my screens go black, and the only way to get things back is to ssh in from another machine and force a re-boot, or reach for the Big Red Switch. $ uname -a Linux killer-penguin 5.10.0-19-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.149-2 (2022-10-21) x86_64 GNU/Linux $ lsb_release -a Distributor ID: Debian Description:Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) Release:11 Codename: bullseye $ cat /etc/debian_version 11.5 $ lspci -v 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108 [GeForce GT 630] (rev ff) (prog-if ff) !!! Unknown header type 7f Kernel driver in use: nvidia Kernel modules: nvidia $ top top - 09:16:25 up 1:08, 2 users, load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00 Tasks: 192 total, 2 running, 190 sleeping0 stopped, 0 zombie %Cpu(s): 25.0 us, 0.0 sy, 0.0 ni, 71.3 id, 0.1 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st MiB Mem : 7900.4 total, 6840.5 free,513.5 used,546.7 buff/cache MiB Swap: 16384.0 total, 16384.0 free, 0.0 used. 7126.4 avail Mem PID USER PR NIVIRTRESSHR S %CPU %MEM Time+ Command 865 root 20 0 278732 105992 55708 R 100.0 1.3 48:37:59 Xorg A tail of dmesg yields the following messages: [ 1406.213319] NVRM: GPU at PCI::01:00: GPU-d7903bd4-9549-9f07-5796-886c12d2031c [ 1406.213322] NVRM: Xid (PCI::01:00): 79, GPU has fallen off the bus. [ 1406.213324] NVRM: GPU at :01:00.0 has fallen off the bus. [ 1406.213329] NVRM: A GPU crash dump has been created. If possible, please run NVRM: nvidia-bug-report.sh as root to collect this data before NVRM: the NVIDIA kernel module is unloaded. [ 1416.567009] nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed to query display engine channel state: 0x857c:0:0:0x000f [ 1416.567013] nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed to query display engine channel state: 0x857c:1:0:0x000f [ 1416.590288] nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed to query display engine channel state: 0x857c:0:0:0x000f [ 1416.590292] nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed to query display engine channel state: 0x857c:1:0:0x000f [ 1416.590682] nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed to query display engine channel state: 0x857c:0:0:0x000f [ 1416.590686] nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed to query display engine channel state: 0x857c:1:0:0x000f [ 1416.591011] nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed to query display engine channel state: 0x857c:0:0:0x000f [ 1416.591015] nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed to query display engine channel state: 0x857c:1:0:0x000f "GPU has fallen off the bus" looks suspicious. Yes, that video card is pretty long in the tooth; I'd gladly replace it if a new board will solve the problem. (If not, why bother? It works well enough for my purposes.) I tried running nvidia-bug-report.sh as recommended in the dmesg dump. It generated a _lot_ of data. Is there a guide to interpreting it? I did notice the following lines: (==) Matched nvidia as autoconfigured driver 0 (==) Matched nouveau as autoconfigured driver 1 Does this mean that nouveau is still there and possibly causing a conflict? Can anyone suggest where to look next? Thanks... -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: alternative views of PNG (was Re: Buster => Bullseye: packages keptback)
On Wed Mar 29 08:56:04 2023 davidson wrote: > If I wrote an essay about the undignified interfaces I have no time > for, I would call it "Of Mice and Menus". If I write my essay first, I might have to steal that (properly attributed, of course). > People want to waste their time. If you get in the way of that, if you > suggest they should do something else, they will hate you forever. Stop it. My hands are getting sore. Let them waste their time. I draw the line when they waste _my_ time. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | You can't save the earth \ /| unless you're willing to X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | make other people sacrifice. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Dogbert the green consultant
Re: Distro tries to set up own partition
On Sun Mar 26 14:37:35 2023 Rich wrote: > The OP very much reminds me of a poster who goes by a different handle > who posts in a different group where each post begins with a vague > statement of a chosen solution for a "problem" and asking for help > with transitioning their chosen solution to completion. > > Of course, omitted is any detail of the initial problem that is trying > to be solved, as well is omitted any and all useful factual details of > system, setup, or environment. > > Then, much like here, after 85+ posts, diverging in multiple different > directions, that other poster will finally be cajoled into revealing > a critical bit of the actual problem and/or a critical fact re. their > system, setup, or environment which shows that all 85+ posts, in seven > different directions, were all just wasted time, and had that poster > just mentioned the real problem they were trying to solve, the > solution could have been offered quickly, and on point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | You can't save the earth \ /| unless you're willing to X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | make other people sacrifice. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Dogbert the green consultant
Re: should CLI have a nice UI today?
On Fri Mar 24 09:13:41 2023 cor...@free.fr wrote: > Should CLI (command line interface) have a nice UI library? As an option, possibly. As a standard default, NO! > today web dev has so many libraries that make web pages with > rich/colorful interactive views. And which often get in the way of getting real work done. > But CLI is still in dull mode. That should be improved in these days. What's wrong with dull? Sometimes you just want an answer without all the eye candy. If you're making a shopping list, does it have to be a coffee table book with 100 pages in dazzling colour? > for example, run "df -h" we got the statistics with plain text. But > web statistics for cloud storage (GCP,AWS etc) are chart like, which > give people more intuitive feeling. But you can redirect the output of "df -h" to a file for archival purposes, or pipe it to other tools that can do a quick analysis. And once you get to know it, you can get an intuitive view from well-designed text output much faster than with a graphical view, as well as actually being able to do something with it. And what do you do if you're having trouble getting X running, and can't see those fancy displays? Give up and get a Windows box? Let me give you a real-world example. Recently I renewed a credit card. I tried going onto the bank's web site to activate it. I can access the bank's web site for normal banking functions, but halfway through all the pretty screens (how many pretty screens do you really need to activate a credit card?) the process froze. I went to the bank and complained. I was lucky enough to get a supervisor. The first thing he said was, "What browser are you using?" When I said I was using Firefox, he replied, "Never heard of it." Because I was not using one of the approved browsers from our favourite monopolies (Edge and Chrome), I was persona non grata. And all so I could be presented with a wonderful User Experience (yuck!), when half a dozen lines of text could have done the job quickly and let me get on with my day. IMHO computer systems should be ugly and boring. Ugly, as in lacking all the eye candy that gets in the way, and boring as in just doing what you want without unpleasant surprises. Short answer: Not over my dead Teletype. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | You can't save the earth \ /| unless you're willing to X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | make other people sacrifice. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Dogbert the green consultant
Re: Setting default sound device (was Re: New Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Series 3511 sound problem on Debian 11 Stable)
[Sorry about the broken threading - I read this list through linux.debian.user] On Mon Feb 13 09:36:01 2023 David Wright wrote: > I think the section "Wrong card used by default" in: > > https://wiki.debian.org/ALSA > > should help. There's more detail at: > > https://alsa.opensrc.org/MultipleCards > > and I think both these are pure ALSA and PA-free. Thanks for the links. I worked through them, but as usual, found it tough sledding. I did come across another page that pointed out that alsa.conf has moved from /etc/modprobe.d/ to /usr/share/alsa/, for what it's worth. This isn't the first time I've tackled this problem, and it's really just a convenience thing, not a desperate need. When I switch my TV from my cable box to the computer, I have to walk over to the sound system to change its input selector from the TV's audio output to the computer's analog jacks. (That input selector is the one knob my universal remote can't touch.) If I work on this problem for more than 100 times the time it takes to walk across the room and back, I figure I've reached the point of diminishing returns, and it's time to set it aside for another day. Thanks anyway, though. I've filed these notes for the next time I have an hour or two to spare. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Setting default sound device (was Re: New Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Series 3511 sound problem on Debian 11 Stable)
This is going a bit off topic, but since there are probably
a number of sound gurus following the original thread, I
thought I'd throw out another sound question.
I have a desktop machine running Debian 11. It contains an
nVidia card which I've hooked to my TV via HDMI. Currently
sound is coming out the analog jacks on the computer; I'd like
to put the sound on the HDMI output so when switching the TV
from my cable box to the computer, I don't have to also switch
my sound system's input.
I know my hardware is capable of doing this; if I type
mpv --audio-device=alsa/hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 foo.mp3
foo.mp3 will play through the HDMI audio output rather than
the default analog jacks. What I want to do is make the HDMI
audio output the default.
When I bring up alsamixer and hit F6, I get the following choices:
0 HDA Intel
1 HDA NVidia
2 IVTV-0
3 IVTV-1
There's no mention of which is the default or how to set a default.
Here's the output of the aplay -l command:
List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: STAC9271D Analog [STAC9271D Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: STAC9271D Digital [STAC9271D Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
I've tried cobbling together bits and pieces I've found in
various places to create the following /etc/aplay.conf:
defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.pcm.device 0
defaults.ctl.card 1
defaults.ctl.device 0
pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
device 0
}
ctl.!default {
type hw
card 1
device 0
}
I've tried substituting both 3 and 7 on the "device" lines,
but nothing seems to have any effect.
I'm not sure what it takes to get ALSA to recognize a change in
its configuration, so I rebooted after each change just in case.
Although I've found many references to this topic on the web,
the answers are confusing, conflicting, or oriented toward
PulseAudio rather than ALSA. Can someone help clear the air?
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ /| It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: How can I check (and run) if an *.exe is a DOS or a Windows program?
On Sat Jan 7 17:34:05 2023 wrote: > On Sat, Jan 07, 2023 at 08:47:09AM -0500, Jude DaShiell wrote: > >> If I remember correctly, dos and windows .com and .exe programs >> all have control-z as their first character. The file command >> may also help. > > No. Control-Z (aka 0x1a) was an EOF character under DOS. Files were > (sometimes...) terminated with that. Hilarity ensued when there was > stuff after that (DOS/Windows was very hilarious, for some value of > hilarious). The use of control-Z to mark the end of a text file was inherited from CP/M, whose directory entries store the size of a file as a number of 128-byte sectors. The control-Z was a hack to enable the actual end of the text to be found in the last sector - and if the file size is a multiple of 128 it isn't even necessary. MS-DOS and Windows store the size of a file to the byte, so control-Z is not needed. However it lives on to this day, still causing its share of headaches. In fact, an early version of MS-DOS (3.0 or 3.1, IIRC) contained a bug: if you redirected standard output to append to a file, e.g. dir >>foo and the file foo existed and contained text ending in hex 1A, the appended text did not overwrite the hex 1A, resulting in the appended text being dropped by any program that subsequently read the file. Microsoft fixed that one pretty quickly. A control-Z EOF marker is not required - and has never been required - in any version of MS-DOS or Windows. Any program I write eradicates it. But getting back to the original poster's message, try using a hex editor or running the strings utility on the executable file, and look at the first 128 bytes or so. If it's MS-DOS, you probably won't see anything interesting. I've looked at various Windows programs, compiled by different compilers, and found one of the following messages in the first 128 bytes: This program must be run under Microsoft Windows. This program must be run under Win32 This program cannot be run in DOS mode. This program requires Microsoft Windows. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft \ /| has stolen their car and parked X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
Re: [OT] coo, was Re: Debian release criteria.
Re: [OT] coo, was Re: Debian release criteria. On Sat Jan 7 13:37:31 2023 cu...@free.fr wrote: > On 2023-01-07, Greg Wooledge wrote: > >> To an American audience, the meaning is quite different. >> We only use "coo" to describe the noise made by a dove, >> or as an (urban) slang term which is a shortened form of "cool". > > I haven't been following, but coo to me is the sound a pigeon > makes, or the soft, endearing sound some amorous person might > emit in the presence (or the ear) of the loved one, as in the > lyrics of "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue": > > But could she love, could she woo? > Could she, could she, could she coo? I always thought it was "Coochie, coochie, coochie coo", although a web search suggests that your version is the correct one. "Coochie-coo" is often said when tickling an infant, although I've heard it used in a more adult context, usually when tickling more delicate parts. To heck with it, let's just fall back on Allan Sherman's description of a dejected man from Mars searching for his girlfriend, who's... Eight foot two, solid blue Five transistors in each shoe Has anybody seen my gal? Lucite nose, rustproof toes And when her antenna glows She's the cutest Martian gal You know she promised me, recently She wouldn't stray But came the dawn, she was gone Eighteen billion miles away Her steering wheel has sex appeal Her evening gown is stainless steel Has anybody seen my gal? How I miss all the bliss Of her sweet hydraulic kiss Has anybody seen my gal? Lovely shape, custom built Squeeze her wrong and she says TILT Has anybody seen my gal? She does the cutest tricks with her six Stereo ears When she walks by, spacemen cry 'Specially when she shifts her gears If she's found, run like mad Put her on a launching pad Down at Cape Can-av-er-al And shoot me back my cutie My supersonic beauty Send me back my Martian gal -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Buster->Bullseye scrambled xsane settings
On 2022-11-23 15:35, Peter von Kaehne wrote: is there another scanning package I could use in the meantime? My scanning needs are very simple, black and white and occasional only. I use gnome’s simple-scan. It works well enough for me. Including usb and network scanning, bw, colour, single and multi page, but all in one very uncomplicated package I installed it and ran a few tests. It seems to do the trick, once I figured out that "text" means "black and white" and "image" means "colour". That ought to hold me for now. I can still use xsane for colour and grayscale scans. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Buster->Bullseye scrambled xsane settings
I just upgraded my main machine from Buster to Bullseye; I have two more machines that I upgraded recently and they're running well so I decided to go for it on the machine on which I do my important work. The upgrade went smoothly and all in all works quite well. But then I tried scanning. I do a lot of scanning to PDF using xsane and an Epson WF-2760 all-in-one. Most of my scans are of printed documents in black and white (I use the Lineart setting in xsane). Last night I tried to do some scans for the first time since the upgrade. The xsane windows looked different from before; they opened in different locations on the screen and had different contents. The scans themselves looked nothing like what I was used to; the contrast was washed out (and adjusting the contrast slider doesn't help). When I scan a cheque the background causes random dots to appear - and there's no threshold slider to adjust this. The main xsane window added sliders for gamma, brightness, and contrast, which I didn't have before; there was no threshold slider, although on a subsequent run this slider appeared but seemed to have no effect. I've been getting inconsistent results - on one invocation the gamma, contrast, brightness, and threshold sliders disappeared, and now they all appear except for threshold. I tried copying the previous version of xsane back into /usr/bin from the backup I took before the upgrade, but that made no difference. Ditto for the configuration files in ~/.sane/xsane. This suggests that it's not the new version of xsane itself that is broken. I know this all sounds rather incoherent, but I don't seem to be getting coherent results. Is there an xsane expert who can help me restore the ability to scan black-and-white documents? (Colour and grayscale scans work beautifully, but that's not what I need right now.) If all else fails, is there another scanning package I could use in the meantime? -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Help: disk swap
On Wed Jul 27 10:30:05 2022 tony wrote: > I turned on my main home server after a few weeks absence, and got > smoke from its power supply. Fortunately, I have a backup system, > which does work; both are running Debian 10, so I swapped use to that > machine. and am able to work with that, but some of the files and > settings are a bit out of date. > > I decided to move the disk from the broken machine to the backup, but > on booting I'm dropped into a grub screen saying disk id > not found. Not entirely surprising perhaps. > > So, how do I get it to recognize, and boot from the old disK. You might not be able to. I once had a power supply fail in such a way as to destroy the motherboard and the two hard drives in the machine. I lost about 180GB of stuff, only some of which I was able to replace. My backups are _much_ better now. Let's hope you're luckier than that. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: OT, Recommendation for low cost laptop
On Sun Jul 17 09:16:57 2022 Dekks Herton wrote: > john doe writes: > >> I'm comtemplating buying a Pinebook pro but I'm not sure if this is >> better then buying a Windows laptop and putting linux on it. >> >> I'm looking for something cheap (max would be around 300 bucks), >> do you have any suggestions/ideas? > > 2nd hand Thinkpad off ebay, craigslist etc, likely easy to upgrade and > certainly straightforward to install linux. Another place to look is your local laptop store. My current laptop, as well as its predecessor, are refurbished ThinkPads I bought there for about $300. They run Linux just fine. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft \ /| has stolen their car and parked X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
Re: Frozen mouse and keyboard
On Wed, 15 Jun 2022 16:20:01 +0200 Joe wrote: > On Wed, 15 Jun 2022 09:21:58 +0100 > Mick Ab wrote: > >> I have a fairly new desktop PC running Debian 11. Recently >> there have been a few occasions when the PC has failed to >> be woken up in the morning after being left overnight. >> The mouse and keyboard are frozen. Sometimes the monitor >> appears to be off and on one occasion it was on. >> >> A hard reboot has been used to reset the PC, but it is not a good >> idea to keep doing that. >> >> There is also a worry that if there is a hardware fault, the >> situation might get worse over time. >> >> Has anyone any idea as to what may be causing the problem and what >> would be the best way to try and solve it ? >> >> I anticipate it might be difficult to solve the problem given that >> the fault is intermittent. > > The usual recommendation for a first test is to see whether there > is any network activity e.g. response to ping or ssh. Also try > Ctrl-Alt-F3 to see if a console is reachable as X might have problems. If you can ssh into the machine from elsewhere, you can at least do an "su reboot" and get an orderly shutdown. > Have you checked logs to see whether there is anything suspicious > before the freeze? If there isn't, the odds are in favour of a > hardware failure. > > If that looks to be the case, I'd open up the machine (assuming it's > not under warranty, if it is, it's someone else's problem) and reseat > all the movable connectors and RAM. There's less chance of contact > problems with SATA than with the big old PATA connectors, but it's not > impossible. 'Fairly new' it may be, but connectors which aren't locked > can be jarred half-way out by transport. We can probably rule out a > build-up of dust yet, but if the machine is very quiet, and modern > machines tend to be, the fan might have died. There will be a lot more > troubleshooting tips around the Net. Those are all good tips. One more thing: are you running xscreensaver? As wonderful as it is, it is notoriously unforgiving of poorly-written drivers. I have nVidia graphics cards, and for some time I was getting all sorts of lockups using the nouveau driver. Switching to nVidia's proprietary driver solved the problem. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Re: Networking pb
On Mon, 09 May 2022 04:10:01 +0200 Charles Curley wrote: > On Mon, 09 May 2022 01:31:35 +0200 > Hussein Yahia wrote: > >> What exactly do you mean by "connect"? SSH? ping? If you mean via >> SMB, that suggests you successfully set the Linux computer up as >> an SMB server. Did you? >> >> I don't remeber to have installed smb on my Linux. I just downloaded >> the packages. On the mac, I click on the Linux Desktop'name, (which >> appears in any window), a window appears, I can login in the Desktop >> Linux with my name and password, and I see my files, when I'm on the >> mac. > > I should probably clarify: SMB (Service Message Block) is the > protocol, originally from IBM, later Microsoft. Samba is a server > and client suite of programs for Linux and Unix that implement SMB. > Microsoft has its own suite. Apple has at least a client. SMB is > also known as CIFS (Common Internet File System, I think). Another alternative is NFS. When my wife wants to get at my music library, she runs a script I put on her Mac to do an NFS mount on my Linux box. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: [SOLVED] Re: One-user system.
On Fri, 06 May 2022 19:30:01 +0200 gene heskett
wrote:
> On Friday, 6 May 2022 13:11:13 EDT Greg Wooledge wrote:
>
>> On Fri, May 06, 2022 at 09:24:35AM -0700, pe...@easthope.ca wrote:
>>
>>> What I'm doing is similar to using DOS years ago; although DOS
>>> predates experience of most people reading now.
>>
>> I think you're vastly underestimating the average age of subscribers
>> on this list.
>
> I think he might be too Greg. I'm 87, and largely bypassed
> dos on my way to linux in the 90's. We've come a long way,
> and if dos disappeared yesterday, I'd have bought a 6 pack
> for a mini-celebration last night. We're still trying to
> put up with its lack of features other filesystems have
> given us since.
If Microsoft disappeared in its entirety, I'd buy a case of
champagne and invite my friends over for a _major_ celebration.
I've spent far too much of my career working around their
poor design decisions and outright bugs.
I'm 71, and started my programming career in 1970, five
years before Microsoft existed. The machine at my first
job had a whopping 16K of memory. We were a service
bureau, running things like payroll and accounts
receivable for companies all over town who couldn't
afford a computer of their own (i.e. most of them).
So when someone tells me how many gigabytes of memory
I'd need to do a job, I take it with a _very_ large
grain of salt.
We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the
impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much,
for so long, with so little, we are now qualified
to do anything with nothing.”
-- Konstantin Josef Jireček
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ /| has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
Re: slrn broke after power failure
Thanks, everyone, for all your help. I think I might have found the solution thanks to songbird: > then remove the zero length file and remove the .overview file > for that group and see if you can then get that message again. > i think a missing .overview file should be regenerated every time > there is a new article downloaded. I didn't realize that there were hidden files in each group's directory. Sure enough, I found files named .minimax, .overview, and .servermin. Deleting .overview seems to correct the problem. Tim Woodall: my NNTPSERVER was OK. Again, thanks to everyone. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: slrn broke after power failure
On Mon, 18 Apr 2022 02:50:01 +0200 songbird wrote: [description of .jnewsrc snipped] I've tried fiddling with .jnewsrc, but that doesn't seem to be the problem. I retrieve news with slrnpull, which retrieves articles and updates .jnewsrc accordingly. This has worked properly both before and after my problem began. I read the articles at my leisure using slrn, which shouldn't be going anywhere near a server; I have the following lines in .slrnrc: set server_object "spool" set post-object "slrnpull" set use_slrnpull 1 I'm trying to figure out why slrn is saying "Server read failed" when I've told it not to access a server. >> Oh well, I've been meaning to upgrade my laptop to Bullseye - >> maybe it's time to nuke slrn and re-install it from scratch. > > you can uninstall it but that may not clear up the spool for > the groups, so you'd need to see if that actually works or not. Again, my issue is not with the spool, but why slrn seems to be trying to bypass it and access the server directly. Unless that "server read failed" message is a red herring... -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: slrn broke after power failure
On Sat, 16 Apr 2022 05:40:02 +0200 songbird wrote: ["Server read failed." when trying to enter a newsgroup] > i have four thoughts. > > first one would be to do a fsck on that file system (after > unmounting it). No joy > second one is to restore from backup or redownload articles > after running the expire process. I've tried the "c" (catchup) command, but that didn't help. > third one would be to start over with a clean spool and > then just grab the most recent few hundred articles for > each newsgroup you want to read. > > and the last is maybe the least intrusive would be to test > something out by deleting an empty file. will you be able > to redownload it? try it and see what happens for one article > and if you can then perhaps you can write a script that would > get rid of all the zero length files and then be able to redownload > them or expire them or something. The zero-length files were easy enough to find, and few enough that I just deleted them by hand. No luck. I've even tried deleting the entire contents of a group, e.g.: rm /var/spool/slrnpull/news/linux/debian/user/* Still no luck. The group header window still shows the number of messages that were available; the "c" command resets this to zero, but I still get "Server read failed." when trying to enter the group. Oddly enough, there are one or two groups which are still working properly. > i'm not at all familiar with slrn's spooling or structure since > i've been using leafnode ever since i started usenet. leafnode > has a process that goes through and checks consistency and will > rebuild an overview file for a group but i've never had a problem > with it truncating contents to zero. I was hoping that there was an slrn guru who could explain all this. Oh well, I've been meaning to upgrade my laptop to Bullseye - maybe it's time to nuke slrn and re-install it from scratch. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
slrn broke after power failure
Running Buster: Linux cjglap2 4.19.0-20-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.235-1 (2022-03-17) x86_64 GNU/Linux Today when I tried reading Usenet I ran into problems. I use slrnpull to fetch news from a server - that part still works. When I run slrn to read the news, it comes up with the normal list of newsgroups and number of new messages in each group. If I then try to enter one of the groups, the status line says "Selecting ...", quickly followed by "Server read failed." At this point I'm not trying to access the NNTP server; the messages have already been downloaded by slrnpull, and I can see them in (for example) /var/spool/slrnpull/news/linux/debian/user. I did notice that a number of files containing articles which I downloaded yesterday now have a length of zero. ~/.slrnrc and ~/.jnewsrc appear to be intact. It might be a coincidence, but the laptop I read news on had its battery run down overnight. Normally this isn't a problem; it's always successfully cleaned up the file systems on re-boot. Searching the web for "slrn server read failed" draws a blank. Any suggestions where to look next? -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Can't create a password successfully.
On Sun Apr 3 23:07:14 2022 to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Sun, Apr 03, 2022 at 07:45:47PM +, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > > [...] > >>> Indeed, all of this happens, usually without any explanation >>> whatsoever. >>> For whose benefit are such requirements constructured? > > Much of it is security theater. I'll remember that phrase. > Someone (TM) up the chain can tick the checkbox "password security > enforced". Then, the Rest of the Web (TM) goes forth and cargo-cults > that, because that's how the Web is held together. https://xkcd.com/936/ -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Sharing photos from Linux to Apple devices
On Tue Mar 8 20:20:41 2022 Tom Browder wrote: > Most of my relatives now have Apple devices, and we can share photos > and videos among ourselves. > > I, on my Linux computer, have about 32 Gb of slides I digitized some > years ago (they are also duplicated on my Windows computer). I have a > Google account that currently has 100 Gb of storage. I also have an > iCloud account with 200 Gb of storage. > > Can anyone suggest a good way to get my Linux (or Windows) pictures > onto some site that Apple devices can use? If one of those Apple devices is a full-fledged computer, just open a terminal window and rsync the files across from your Linux box. This is how I transfer files to and from my wife's Macbook. It's fast, efficient, and doesn't need any third-party facilities. Once you have the files transferred to an Apple computer, your relatives can share them using whatever Apple mechanism they prefer. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Google smtp and pop
On Fri Mar 4 11:30:12 2022 Christian Britz wrote: > On 2022-03-04 18:30 UTC+0100, Charlie Gibbs wrote: > > Find another mail host. > > And you could find a mail client which correctly replies to messages. > ;-) Actually, I'm not reading this list with a mail client at all; I read its Usenet echo with slrn. I don't post here that often, and I'd rather not have the list flooding my mailbox. I admit that it makes my responses somewhat disjointed, though. Yours for a Google-free world... -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Re: Google smtp and pop
On Fri Mar 4 09:25:02 2022 Marc Auslander wrote: > Google has now said they are pulling the plug on userid/password > authentication for apps. > > I use fetchmail and exim4 to get and send mail. Neither, AFAIK, > supports OAUTH2. I'm also still on stretch but will update if > I have to. > > So what suggestions does anyone have for dealing with OAUTH2 access > to gmail? Find another mail host. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft \ /| has stolen their car and parked X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
Re: miracle of Firefox in the hotel.
On Sat Feb 12 15:17:38 2022 Dan Ritter wrote: > Felmon Davis wrote: > >> Greets! >> >> Sitting in a hotel in Hamburg, Germany, thankful for Firefox-esr >> which provides the page necessary for logging into the network. >> I'm on Debian 10. >> >> this miracle of connectivity doesn't seem to happen with Brave >> browser or Iron. >> >> (a) what is the mechanism FF uses for this feat? >> >> (b) can it be replicated in Brave and Iron (which I generally >> prefer)? >> >> I admit Brave is often a bit touchy about accessing pages where >> it suspects security threats. > > The portal works by intercepting any web page request at all and > answering with its own sign-up page. > > Good implementations of HTTPS prevent this. > > So, go to a page which you know will be served via plain HTTP. > > If you can't think of one, try http://www.plainwebsite.com When I try that one, I get re-routed to https://www.buydomains.com. My go-to in this situation is http://neverssl.com -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Memory leak
On Fri Feb 11 09:43:03 2022 Celejar wrote: > On Fri, 11 Feb 2022 09:53:17 -0700 > Charles Curley wrote: > >> On Fri, 11 Feb 2022 11:06:01 -0500 >> Celejar wrote: >> >>> I seem to have a serious memory leak on my system (Lenovo W550s) - >>> the memory usage seems to slowly but more or less steadily keep >>> increasing. >>> >>> This is a more or less normal (I think) desktop installation of Sid, >>> running Xfce4. Typical applications used are Firefox (currently with >>> just one extension: uBlock Origin), LibreOffice Writer, Sylpheed, >>> Xfce4 Terminal, and Liferea, all from the official repos. >> >> Firefox left running for days on end is a possible culprit. > > So I've heard. So is this something I just have to live with? Does > everyone have this problem? I actually did used to kill firefox > when I was experiencing memory pressure - it certainly relieved > the immediate problem, but I think I found that not all the memory > used was returned, and when I restarted firefox, the problem of > running out of memory often returned before long (i.e., in much > less time than after a fresh install). You can quickly test this by taking Firefox down. If the problem is indeed with Firefox (as opposed to Debian), this isn't the place to discuss it. It seems to be the fashion nowadays to leave one's web browser up 24/7, with dozens of tabs open. Personally I can't understand this - I seldom have more than two or three tabs open at once, and most of the time I have only one open, which is why I treasure the option to not display a tab bar when only one tab is open. Also, I shut down my browser (Seamonkey, for what it's worth) when I'm not using it; this reduces load on the system and might even help security a little bit. However, if this is a non-negotiable item for you, and the problem is with Firefox, I suggest you either take the discussion to a Firefox forum or just learn to live with it. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Re: Why did Norbert Preining (having maintained KDE) left Debian?
On Mon Jan 24 08:51:46 2022 max wrote: > For comparison, RMS is publicly against singular "they", > and Debian developers voted not to censure him. > https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html > Seems like a double standard, but whatever. I've bookmarked that web page. I largely agree with RMS on this one. (Although regarding his "y'all" comment, a Texan once explained to me that "y'all" is singular; the plural is "all y'all".) This PC 2.0 fad (like PC 1.0 in the early 1990s) has gotten out of hand. (My favourite riposte from the PC 1.0 era is "s/h/it".) IMHO "they" is plural. Period. If we want genderless pronouns (and I agree that we seem to need them) we should create something new, rather than indulging in a grotesque form of operator overloading. https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-06-01 https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-07-21 -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | \ /| WOKE: Without Originality, X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Knowledge, or Experience / \ if you read it the right way. |
Defaulting sound output to HDMI port
I have a computer in the living room which is hooked up to our TV
via an HDMI cable. I use it to play MP3s, videos, and games.
Our TV is hooked to our stereo system to get good-quality sound.
However, audio isn't passing through the HDMI connection from the
computer; to get sound I've run a separate cable from the computer's
headphone jack to an auxiliary input on the stereo system, and I have
to switch the stereo to this input to get sound. It's not the end of
the world, but it would be nice to send the audio via HDMI so I can
just switch the TV's input and leave the stereo set to the TV.
I'm running Buster with xfce. Here's some system information:
cjg@dragon:~$ uname -a
Linux dragon 4.19.0-6-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.67-2+deb10u1 (2019-09-20)
x86_64 GNU/Linux
cjg@dragon:~$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [Intel ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
HDA Intel at 0xe532 irq 27
1 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xe500 irq 17
2 [IVTV1 ]: CX2341[56] - IVTV-1
CX2341[56] #1 WinTV PVR 500 (unit #2) TV/FM
Radio/Line-In Capture
3 [IVTV0 ]: CX2341[56] - IVTV-0
CX2341[56] #0 WinTV PVR 500 (unit #1) TV/FM
Radio/Line-In Capture
cjg@dragon:~$ aplay -l
List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: STAC9271D Analog [STAC9271D Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: STAC9271D Digital [STAC9271D Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
After searching the web and mpv's man page, I found that the following
command would play sound through the computer's HDMI port:
cjg@dragon:~$ mpv --audio-device=alsa/hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 foo.mp3
Obviously there's nothing wrong with my hardware. Is there any
setting that will make audio output default to the HDMI port?
I've tried searching the web, and found lots of stuff that makes
my eyes glaze over. One site suggested creating /etc/asound.conf
and putting in the following lines:
defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.ctl.card 1
This had no effect, even after a re-boot.
I tried creating ~/.asoundrc containing the following,
also with no effect:
pcm.!default {
type hw
card "NVidia"
}
ctl.!default {
type hw
card "NVidia"
}
I've tried using aplay, but I can't make the -D parameter work.
I get either "Channels count non available" or "No such file or
directory".
I'm using ALSA, not PulseAudio. If I bring up alsamixer and
press F6, I get the following selections:
. (default)
0 HDA Intel
1 HDA NVidia
2 IVTV-1
3 IVTV-0
enter device name...
If I select 1 (HDA NVidia), all I get are a couple of mute switches
labeled "S/PDIF" and "S/PDIF 1". I've turned them both on.
Any suggestions as to where to go from here?
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ /| It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Emoji fonts in Debian [WAS:] Re: How to NOT automatically mount a specific partition of an external device?
On 2021-12-01, Jonathan Dowland wrote: > Speaking of colour, I work at Red Hat and I have had (U+1F3A9 TOP > HAT) as the shell prompt character for the main RHEL virtual machine I > use for work. At that time, my terminal did not support colour glyphs, > and the font that was used to render that happened to use the Fedora > fedora for that glyph, and I coloured it red using terminal colour > escape codes. Later, IBM bought Red Hat. And at a similar time, I > updated my (Debian) system and gained the ability to display coloured > glyphs. The chosen font to supply that glyph was changed, and my > red-coloured monochrome hat became a blue one. Spooky. For what it's worth, I read this list in slrn via Usenet (linux.debian.user). The "top hat" glyph you include above shows up as a two-character-wide box with tiny hex numbers in it, like this: .---. |01F| |3A9| `---' I'm running Buster on a Lenovo T410. My primary interest in UTF-8 is to display characters with various diacritical marks, which it handles quite well. On the other hand, while composing this reply in Thunderbird, the top hat showed up. BTW at the start of your signature lines I see the following: .---. |01F|01F| |471|3FB| `---' (pencil) .---. |01F| |517| `---' Note: those hex characters are _really_ tiny - even with a magnifying glass I might have misread some of them. In Thunderbird they come out as a blond-haired smiley face with light-coloured skin, a pencil, and a couple of links of chain. I guess Thunderbird's UTF-8 support is quite good. > (This whole thing reminded me of a sub-project I have on the > backburner to map the Debian swirl to a spare unicode code-point; > or, to U+F000 in the private use area, where Apple systems display > the Apple logo. I got as far as importing the swirl graphic into a > OTF format font. I should pick it up!) Fun. >> Again, my apologies. > > No problem. Thank you, Glad I could smooth the waters. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Emoji fonts in Debian [WAS:] Re: How to NOT automatically mount a specific partition of an external device?
On Tue Nov 30 11:54:48 2021 Jonathan Dowland wrote: > On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 11:54:16AM -0800, Charlie Gibbs wrote: > >> Am I the only one who sees the irony in all this? We're living >> in an era where the so-called "woke" generation is taking offence >> at every perceived slight or sign of racial or sexual discrimination, >> however minor. Yet these same people are eagerly leaving behind the >> originally all-text form of e-mail > > Since we're talking about my email signature here, this > characterisation you've described is meant to be me. I don't know > what *I've* done for you to describe me that way, but at best it's > irrelevant to debian-user. It's perjorative, and I would ask that you > stop writing perjoratively about me on this mailing list, and go and > re-read the Code of Conduct for participating in Debian. I wasn't aiming it specifically at you, but merely pointing out some conflicting trends that I've been seeing in society at large. On re-reading the thread, I realize that I did fly off the handle. Chalk it up to having read one too many news stories about the Politically Correct 2.0 bullshit that is going on these days. As the old netiquette guidelines suggest, one shouldn't post when tired, drunk, or angry. (I probably qualified for two of the three.) I apologize for having offended you; it was not my intent. >> eagerly leaving behind the originally all-text form of e-mail > > Unicode *is* text, as far as I'm concerned. I don't see the point in > limiting what I write to a 7-bit namespace from the 1960s, even if I > am fortunate enough that my chosen names are representable in it. Indeed, I'm an eager adopter of UTF-8 myself. > in favour of graphics that are gleefully being used to highlight them. > > My signature includes an emoji which is configured to be a reasonable > approximation of my appearance. That does sound like fun, even though curmudgeons like me might consider it frivolous. I doubt I'll have a hardware/software combination that's capable of displaying all of it anytime soon - I still see tofu on my flip phone - but I'm not trying to stop anyone else from having harmless fun with it. Again, my apologies. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: Emoji fonts in Debian [WAS:] Re: How to NOT automatically mount a specific partition of an external device?
On Sun Nov 28 11:38:54 2021 Celejar wrote: > On Sat, 27 Nov 2021 22:58:58 -0600 > David Wright wrote: > >> On Sat 27 Nov 2021 at 07:22:45 (-0600), John Hasler wrote: >> >>> Celejar writes: >>> >>>> I'm curious: do most users of Debian on the desktop (who use MUA >>>> software, as opposed to webmail via a browser) have such a font >>>> installed, or do they see tofu? >>> >>> I use Gnus. I've never manually installed any emoji fonts >>> (or any other fonts) but I see the glyphs, not the tofu. >> >> Questions like this remind me how little I understand font handling. >> I read mail in mutt in xterm in fvwm in X, currently in buster, and >> I see four glyphs. If I save the email in a file, then I see the > > ... > >> I wrote /four/ glyphs, but it sounds as if Celejar sees three, >> the first one being coloured with some sort of skin tone. My >> second glyph, , is a half-tone box with three lines of dots >> inside, of 3, 4 and 3 dots. > > I assume that the reason I see three and you see four is that the > first one (of my three) consists of a combination of the basic > "blond haired person" glyph plus a "light skin tone" modifier glyph, > which are presumably ideally supposed to be displayed together: > > https://emojiterra.com/blond-haired-person-light-skin-tone/ Am I the only one who sees the irony in all this? We're living in an era where the so-called "woke" generation is taking offence at every perceived slight or sign of racial or sexual discrimination, however minor. Yet these same people are eagerly leaving behind the originally all-text form of e-mail - which has no glyphs that portray such differences - in favour of graphics that are gleefully being used to highlight them. Why is nobody being "triggered" by this? -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: How can encrypt my messages sent to the forum?
On Sun Oct 10 10:16:22 2021 William Torrez Corea wrote: >--b6123b05ce02888b >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 > >TXkgbWVzc2FnZXMgaXNuJ3QgZW5jcnlwdGVkLCBpcyBpbiBwbGFpbiB0ZXh0Lg0KDQotLSANCg0K >V2l0aCBraW5kZXN0IHJlZ2FyZHMsIFdpbGxpYW0uDQoNCuKigOKjtOKgvuKgu+KituKjpuKggA0K >4qO+4qCB4qKg4qCS4qCA4qO/4qGBIERlYmlhbiAtIFRoZSB1bml2ZXJzYWwgb3BlcmF0aW5nIHN5 >c3RlbQ0K4qK/4qGE4qCY4qC34qCa4qCL4qCAIGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmRlYmlhbi5vcmcNCuKgiOKg >s+KjhOKggOKggOKggOKggA0K >--b6123b05ce02888b >Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 > >PGRpdiBkaXI9Imx0ciI+TXkgbWVzc2FnZXMgaXNuJiMzOTt0IGVuY3J5cHRlZCwgaXMgaW4gcGxh >aW4gdGV4dC4gPGJyIGNsZWFyPSJhbGwiPjxkaXY+PGJyPi0tIDxicj48ZGl2IGRpcj0ibHRyIiBj >bGFzcz0iZ21haWxfc2lnbmF0dXJlIiBkYXRhLXNtYXJ0bWFpbD0iZ21haWxfc2lnbmF0dXJlIj48 >ZGl2IGRpcj0ibHRyIj48ZGl2PjxwcmUgY29scz0iNzIiPldpdGgga2luZGVzdCByZWdhcmRzLCBX >aWxsaWFtLg0KDQriooDio7TioL7ioLviorbio6bioIAgDQrio77ioIHioqDioJLioIDio7/ioYEg >RGViaWFuIC0gVGhlIHVuaXZlcnNhbCBvcGVyYXRpbmcgc3lzdGVtDQrior/ioYTioJjioLfioJri >oIvioIAgPGEgaHJlZj0iaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGViaWFuLm9yZyIgdGFyZ2V0PSJfYmxhbmsiPmh0 >dHBzOi8vd3d3LmRlYmlhbi5vcmc8L2E+DQrioIjioLPio4TioIDioIDioIDioIAgDQo8L3ByZT48 >L2Rpdj48L2Rpdj48L2Rpdj48L2Rpdj48L2Rpdj4NCg== >--b6123b05ce02888b-- You've just done it. :-) -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | I could never get the hang \ /| of ideology. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I do the rock, myself. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Tim Curry
Re: The future of computing.
On Thu Sep 23 10:39:23 2021 Nicholas Geovanis wrote: > On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 10:15 PM Gene Heskett > wrote: > >> On Wednesday 22 September 2021 22:23:29 Nicholas Geovanis wrote: >> >>> No there aren't that many millionaires and billionaires and >>> They make sure of it. >> >> This is true, but I'd also include the mba's who's major lesson >> to those billionaires is its ok to do it if you don't get caught. >> And buy them off or do away with the witnesses if you do get caught. >> Jeffery E. got caught but he was not the king pin, just the >> disposable front man. Same game continues, new address & phone >> number. > > I don't want to stress the folks on this list, they've got Debian > releases coming up :-) > > So my last comment will be: > > I don't see billionaires taking orders from MBAs like you say. > Just because the Victoria's Secret kingpin did, lots of others > distrusted Jeff E including Trumpf. > > I'm American so I'm embarrassed using French, but :-) You should be - they don't have a word for entrepreneur. :-) > There's this concept of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie and > how they rule modern societies. It's nothing new and it still works. Indeed. Those MBAs that Gene refers to are merely the front rank of a group that is ready and eager to jump in and act just like those billionaires if they get the chance. Such people have been the shock troops for demagogues throughout history. Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except on the side of mercy. -- Robert Ingersoll (The first part is often misattributed to Lincoln.) -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ /| It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lily Tomlin
Re: Debian 11: Nvidia NVS 310 with nvidia driver freezes after two days
On Mon Sep 20 08:42:33 2021 "Alexander V. Makartsev" wrote: > On 19.09.2021 16:22, Roger Price wrote: > >> My Nvidia NVS 310 card with the nvidia 390.144 driver starts off >> perfectly, but after two days freezes: no reaction to keyboard or >> mouse action. > > Have you tried to run some benchmarks to force the issue? By doing > that you could reveal some potential problem with inadequate cooling > or problems of electrical nature. > It is quite old hardware so it is hard to tell for sure. There could > be myriad reasons why it freezes, ranging from faulty capacitors on > motherboard and VGA to a faulty PSU. I was having similar problems with an old nVidia card (GeForce 630). A friend gave me an ATI card to try. Although I never did get his card to work, I did discover that my old card was in rough shape physically. The fan had broken down, and the cooling fins on the heat sink were full of dust bunnies. There wasn't much I could do for the fan, but I gave the heat sink a thorough cleaning and put the card back in. It's been running for over a week now with no problems, where before it was locking up every day or two. >> I still have nouveau present. dpkg-query -l | grep nouveau reports: >> ii libdrm-nouveau2:amd64 2.4.104-1 amd64 Userspace interface >> to nouveau-specific kernel DRM services -- runtime >> ii xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.17-1 amd64 X.Org X server -- >> Nouveau display driver > > Doesn't matter if you have 'nouveau' installed, since proprietary > nvidia driver blacklists it for you upon installation. On earlier versions of Debian (I'm currently running Buster), I was having trouble with the nouveau driver locking up. Replacing it with nVidia's proprietary driver corrected that problem, so I've been wary of nouveau ever since. But if your graphics card overheats, it doesn't matter which driver you're running. :-) -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: Debian 11 bullseye Gdm3 nvidia 7200go nouveau glitches and more
On Mon Aug 16 16:05:28 2021 "dimitris.varu" wrote: > Hi i recently install debian 11 stable. Amd64 in hp dv6300 laptop. > Gnome is very glitched from login through desktop. > Many textures missing > icons missing white squares everywhere... > Lxde runs ok without problems... > Gpu is nvidia 7200go nouveau driver. > I know is old hardware.. any help or advice is most welcome! > Tnx for your time For what it's worth, I've always been suspicious of nouveau. I too am running older hardware (GeForce 630), and I was getting frequent lockups on a previous version of Debian (either Jessie or Stretch, I think), so I switched to nVidia's proprietary driver and the problem went away. Somewhere along the line of Debian upgrades, the system reverted to using nouveau. I'm currently running Buster, and my machine spontaneously reboots once a day or so. I've just replaced nouveau with the nVidia driver (version 390.143). So far, so good. I'm hoping my machine will become stable once again. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | \ /| "Alexa, define 'bugging'." X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | / \ if you read it the right way. |
Re: [OFFTOPIC] Plonk (wss: Meta: behavior on list)
On Sat Aug 14 10:23:31 2021 Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote: > On 2021-08-13 4:59 p.m., John Hasler wrote: > >> Stefan writes: >> >>> How odd. I always assumed that it was the comic-strip style >>> representation of the sound of hanging up the phone abruptly. >> >> No. I was there when it came into use. It definitely represents the >> sound of a small object dropping into a large tank with liquid at the >> bottom. A septic tank, for example. It was common to respond to a >> particularly asinine article with the one-word followup "plonk". >> >> I've never seen any point in telling the world (or the plonked >> individual) about the action, though. > > I have serious doubt against the "plonked" being able to appreciate > what is happening to him. Most of the time, they won't stop and will > just continue to argue against themselves. Something trying to use > words from language they don't even master while trying to do so. Some people will respond by switching to a different e-mail address in order to work around the killfiles they know they're now in. These are particularly dedicated individuals who feel that their message must be heard under any circumstances. https://xkcd.com/386/ -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Subject: sync sync, was Re: Problem with crash post-install
On Fri Jul 30 10:11:24 2021 "Thomas Schmitt" wrote: > to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > >>> While I've read about issuing sync *twice* with the explanation >>> that sysadmins are a supersticious bunch > > Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote: > >> I'm really asking why do it 3 time. >> In case it came back to the prompt *before* finishing to do it's job > > I dimly remember that it was part of the shutdown procedure of one > of the earliest Unix machines which i met. IBM RT, Apollo DN3000, > > > microVAX ... ? > The shutdown spell was something like > > sync ; sync ; halt > > Googling "sync halt" leads me to an interesting theory at > https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/07/when-unix-learned-to-reboot2.html > > According to section "That sync; sync; sync Thing..." two bugs of > early systems' sync existed (one explored by the blog's author, > one as rumor): > > 1: The sync system call returned without waiting. >Workaround: >Keep the human operator busy while the machine is still not done >with flushing buffers. E.g. prescribe to type three lines of >"sync" before typing "halt". > > 2: Only the first sync call returned early, whereas the second sync >properly blocked until flushing was done. >That seems to be the origin of my memory. I fed "multiple sync commands" into DuckDuckGo, and got the following hit, which is even nicer: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/TheLegendOfSync Basically, the act of typing three sync commands, each on a separate line (as opposed to "sync ; sync ; sync"), gives the system enough time for the first sync command to do its thing. Or, as Tony Orlando once sang: Sync three times on the console if you want me. Close all the pipes if the answer is no. Just remember, things could be worse - and if Microsoft is involved, they usually are. I first noticed a "feature" in Windows 95 which persists to this day: requests to delete a file are queued, and done when Windows gets around to it. This means that if your program issues an unlink(), the file might still be there when the call returns. Thus, the old trick of updating a file by copying it to a work file while making changes, deleting the original file, and renaming the work file to the original file's name runs the risk of failure if the deletion doesn't take effect before the rename, which will then fail. It doesn't happen often, but if you have a program that's run daily by a couple of thousand users, even a .01% chance of failure means that your support staff will get several anguished calls a week from customers who have lost critical files. (It happens with batch files too.) -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: Receipt [ was : needrestart - how to supress ncurses gui]
On Mon Jul 26 09:07:22 2021 Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote: > On 2021-07-25 7:59 p.m., Charles Curley wrote: > >> On Sun, 25 Jul 2021 17:30:57 -0400 >> Dan Ritter wrote: >> >>> Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:=20 >>> >>>> "Suspenders" in UK are used with old fashioned silk stockings and a >>>> garter belt or similar: small clips to hook the stockings to. The >>>> sort of thing you might see in a burlesque show, maybe, or for a >>>> fancy dress party. >>> >>> And there's another one: >>> >>> UK fancy dress party sounds, in the US, like "formal evening >>> attire" but means "costume party" or "masquerade". >> >> H. L. Mencken's The American Language has an entire chapter devoted >> to differences between American English and British English. Or, in >> Mencken's terminology, American and English. I think he repeated the >> old saw about how Americans and British are divided by a common >> language, but can't find it right now. >> >> "Subway" v. "underground" comes to mind. > > Subway (US) vs Underground (UK) v Metro (Canada) s/Canada/France/ The only Canadian subway referred to as "Metro" is the one in Montreal. I've never heard a Torontonian refer to their subway that way. And in Vancouver, ironically, we call it "SkyTrain", because most of it is elevated instead. At least until they build that subway line out to UBC; I guess we weren't paying enough taxes as it was... -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Re: [OT] Selling beer (was: Re: Working for free [was: Offensive variable names])
On Thu Jul 15 12:42:45 2021 Andrei POPESCU wrote: > On Mi, 14 iul 21, 08:02:19, Charlie Gibbs wrote: > >> On Tue Jul 13 16:50:38 2021 Michael Lange >> wrote: >> >>> On Tue, 13 Jul 2021 21:25:17 +0100 >>> Joe wrote: >>> >>> (...) >>> >>>> Back when we had TV advertisements >>>> for beer, it was always the rubbish beers that got the publicity. >>> >>> here (Germany) we still have those TV ads for beer, and I can assure >>> you that the advertised brands (its not up to me to decide whether >>> they are rubbish or not) are the ones that are available virtually >>> everywhere, so I believe that it is safe to assume that they are >>> also the brands that sell. >>> So yes, unfortunately at least in some cases advertisements >>> apparently pay. >> >> If they didn't pay, companies would have stopped sinking vast amounts >> of effort and expense into them a century ago. > > You're giving (big) companies a lot of credit, possibly unwarranted: > > Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 1: TV) (Ep. 440) > https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/ > > Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 2: Digital) (Ep. 441) > https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/ > > (the links contain the transcripts as well, for those who prefer > reading) Thanks for the links (extra points for them being available as text). Money might reign supreme, but there's nothing like a good management fantasy to push profits into second place. I particularly like the part where the interviewee tried to pretend he couldn't hear the interviewer when he got backed into a corner. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: MDs & Dentists
On Wed Jul 14 07:38:52 2021 Dan Ritter wrote: > ellanios82 wrote: >> >> - have heard it opined that MDs & Dentists are seldom good >> investors, for the reason that they are used to usually being >> 'Right' I've heard that surgeons can be particularly bad. > I'm not sure what this has to do with Debian, but this overlaps > with my professional interests. > > As far as I can tell, the reason that MDs and dentists are > notable as bad investors is the same reason that they are > notable as bad pilots: in the middle to end of their careers > they have lots of money and no particular life experience other > than their professions. They look for something that is > appealing on the surface, put just enough time into it to > convince themselves that they are going to be quite good at it > because they are already successful, and then crash. > > https://generalaviationnews.com/2017/03/29/the-doctor-killer/ Ah yes, the infamous "V-tail doctor killer", adored by birdwatchers everywhere. Still, if you read the article to the end you'll see that improved training is offsetting the trend. > Luckily, programming is a useful alternative hobby for medical > professionals. As long as you stay away from certain obscure > areas -- say, device drivers and financial software -- the > penalties for screwing up are much lower. Yeah, just write another piece of glitzy crap with a shitty user interface... you could always get a job with Microsoft, I suppose. > If you like your doctor or dentist, encourage them to learn > Debian and get into programming rather than daytrading or > piloting. Either that, or ensure that they have - or develop - enough humility to fly safely. As for me, I'm content to stay with my Cessna 172, and work to keep my instrument flying skills sharp. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
[OT] Selling beer (was: Re: Working for free [was: Offensive variable names])
On Tue Jul 13 16:50:38 2021 Michael Lange wrote: > On Tue, 13 Jul 2021 21:25:17 +0100 > Joe wrote: > > (...) > >> Back when we had TV advertisements >> for beer, it was always the rubbish beers that got the publicity. > > here (Germany) we still have those TV ads for beer, and I can assure > you that the advertised brands (its not up to me to decide whether > they are rubbish or not) are the ones that are available virtually > everywhere, so I believe that it is safe to assume that they are > also the brands that sell. > So yes, unfortunately at least in some cases advertisements apparently > pay. If they didn't pay, companies would have stopped sinking vast amounts of effort and expense into them a century ago. >> As for 'targetted advertising', I've never seen any. When I notice >> the ads around the sides of web pages, none of them are aimed at me > > The same here. So maybe I have developed some skills obscuring my > "profile" to "them", or (maybe more likely) I am just too dumb to > realize that those ads *are* in fact targeted at me :-) If they're targeted at me, I try to make sure they miss. -- /~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way. X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. / \ "Alexa, define 'bugging'."
Re: Offensive variable names [was: Cool down ...]
On Mon Jul 12 11:07:51 2021 Brian Thompson wrote: > On Mon, Jul 12, 2021 at 05:39:43PM +0300, Kevin N. wrote: > >>> Right, and I myself have lodged a ticket to ban bar after foo >>> because it might lead to blithe attitudes concerning alcohol >>> in our vulnerable youth. >> >> Don't get me wrong: like many other things, offensive languages >> is a serious one. But, instead of helping, I think that you are >> in fact minimizing its gravity with such exaggerated actions. > > It's only offensive to the people who are offended. Theoretically > all words are offensive since any word can be offensive to anyone > just because they deem it so. Some people derive a sense of superiority from being offended, and will exploit every opportunity to do so. Back in the 1980s Vancouver was known for Wreck Beach, a clothing-optional beach. It isn't easy to get to - you have to walk a long, twisting, steeply-descending trail to the base of a cliff. You aren't going to have your delicate eyeballs assaulted without going to a lot of work. Yet a city councillor by the name of Bernice Gerard was so determined to be offended that she made the effort, and complained loudly about it afterwards. The resulting newspaper article made for a good laugh. > Censoring (i.e. changing the language) of everything to appease > everyone 1) isn't possible, 2) is foolish at best, 3) is a waste > of everyone's time, and 4) creates a power hungry mob of zealots > looking to dismantle any word they deem offensive (e.g. paper > machete). Paper machete? > It's amazing how many people have bought into the corporatization > of the Internet. I'll leave the growth of the corporate fascist state for another thread. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Re: Messed up Email
On Tue Jun 22 11:11:38 2021 Gene Heskett wrote: > On Tuesday 22 June 2021 07:02:25 Richard Owlett wrote: > >> On 06/22/2021 04:44 AM, Brad Rogers wrote: >> >>> In addition to everything everybody else has said, and just to make >>> it absolutely clear; >>> >>> gmail != email >>> >>> or, in words; >>> >>> gmail IS NOT email >>> >>> There may be vast swathes of overlap, but don't expect google to do >>> anything right. >>> >>> All that google offer is for THEIR benefit, not yours. >> >> One reason I pay a local supplier for email service -- effectively >> it is cheaper than any so called "free service". > > Doesn't your ISP provide an email server? In my neck of the woods, > its part of the services an ISP provides for a basic 10 megabaud > connection. Our ISP (Telus) recently decided to get out of the e-mail and web hosting business. All e-mail accounts have been transferred (e-mail addresses and all) to Google. I believe the appropriate term is "sold down the river". I was doing e-mail through a third party long before getting involved with Telus, so I don't have to worry about it. It's a few extra dollars, but IMHO it's money well spent. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: which command can show if usb 3.0 is used
On 2021-05-31, Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote: > On 2021-05-30 9:53 p.m., Long Wind wrote: > >> Jude, it sounds foolish, there has to be some better way >> and i don't have usb 2.0 disk >> >> my usb disk is new, it supports usb3 >> stretch must support usb3 because usb3 is supported ever since >> /kernel 2.6.31/ >> i wonder if hp t5740e supports usb3 > > You can install hwinfo and it will tell you what's installed in your > computer, including the type of usb controler. > > Or you can simply check the specs of your computer. Is the connector blue? It's a convention to make USB 3.0 connectors blue, while USB 2 connectors aren't. My machine has a mix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0 -- /~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way. X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. / \ "Alexa, define 'bugging'."
Re: How to capture composite video
On Sat May 29 14:58:54 2021 Dan Ritter wrote: > Andrei POPESCU wrote: > >> On Vi, 28 mai 21, 17:00:37, Charlie Gibbs wrote: >> >>> Presumably the Hauppauge card has an audio encoder somewhere; >>> I just have to find it. "ls -l /dev/ds*" shows nothing, and >>> "arecord -l" shows: >>> >>> List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices >>> card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog] >>> Subdevices: 1/1 >>> Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 >>> card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 2: ALC892 Alt Analog [ALC892 Alt >>> Analog] >>> Subdevices: 1/1 >>> Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 >>> card 2: CX8801 [Conexant CX8801], device 0: CX88 Digital [CX88 >>> Digital] >>> Subdevices: 0/1 >>> Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 >>> >>> None of those appear to be part of the Hauppauge card; they're >>> probably on the motherboard. Hmmm, maybe I could use one of >>> them instead... >> >> It's probably the Conexant, unless you know for sure it's on the >> motherboard. Maybe you can tell from the output of lspci with -t >> and -nn or so. > > Andrei is correct. Indeed. $ lspci | grep Conexant 04:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder (rev 05) 04:00.1 Multimedia controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [Audio Port] (rev 05) 04:00.2 Multimedia controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [MPEG Port] (rev 05) 04:00.4 Multimedia controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [IR Port] (rev 05) Maybe it's time to change the subject from "How to capture composite video" to "How to capture audio", since that's where I am now. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs) If your nose runs and your feet smell, you're built umop-apisdn.
Re: How to capture composite video
On Fri May 28 16:18:42 2021 Dan Ritter wrote: > Charlie Gibbs wrote: > >> Note the "Audio: no sound" line. I still have to figure that one out >> to get beyond silent movies. Any hints? > > Yes: composite video doesn't carry audio at all. Your VCR has > either mono or stereo RCA audio output jacks, and you can plug > them into a stereo RCA-> 1/8" stereo headphone plug or adapter > cable to bring it into your sound card. Possibly your video > capture card has a separate jack for that? > > Input 0 is probably RF-frequency NTSC with a tuner to select > channels. That's low-quality, but includes audio. > > Input 2 is S-Video, which is the best of the available video > connections if your VCR supports it. (I have one that does... > if it still powers up.) Yes, my card's inputs show up as RF, composite, and S-Video respectively. I have composite video coming in just fine. As for audio, I've run a triple RCA cable (red, white, and yellow) from the jacks on the VCR to the corresponding jacks on the bracket attached to my Hauppauge card. It's the same cable I used to hook the VCR to my TV, where it worked fine. The VCR doesn't have S-Video output. Presumably the Hauppauge card has an audio encoder somewhere; I just have to find it. "ls -l /dev/ds*" shows nothing, and "arecord -l" shows: List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 2: ALC892 Alt Analog [ALC892 Alt Analog] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 2: CX8801 [Conexant CX8801], device 0: CX88 Digital [CX88 Digital] Subdevices: 0/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 None of those appear to be part of the Hauppauge card; they're probably on the motherboard. Hmmm, maybe I could use one of them instead... BTW there's no need to post copies to my e-mail; I see everything on the list via the Usenet feed to linux.debian.user. Thanks. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ /| but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Re: How to capture composite video
[copy of posting to comp.os.linux.misc] References: On 2021-05-17, Peter 'Shaggy' Haywood wrote: > mencoder tv:// -tv \ > driver=4vl2:input=1:norm=pal:width=720:height=576:fps=25 \ > -endpos 1:30:00 -ovc lavc -oac copy -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 \ > -o filename.avi I finally found the time to do some more experimenting. The example above is a good starting point. I found that I can watch VHS tapes (or whatever else is plugged into the composite video input) on my machine with the following command: mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=1:norm=NTSC-M:width=720:height=480 Here's what gets written when I tee stdout: MPlayer 1.3.0 (Debian), built with gcc-8 (C) 2000-2016 MPlayer Team Playing tv://. TV file format detected. Selected driver: v4l2 name: Video 4 Linux 2 input author: Martin Olschewski comment: first try, more to come ;-) Selected device: pcHDTV HD5500 HDTV Tuner cap: STEREO LANG1 LANG2 Tuner rxs: MONO Capabilities: video capture VBI capture device tuner read/write streaming supported norms: 0 = NTSC-M; 1 = NTSC-M-JP; 2 = NTSC-443; 3 = PAL-BG; 4 = PAL-I; 5 = PAL-DK; 6 = PAL-M; 7 = PAL-N; 8 = PAL-Nc; 9 = PAL-60; 10 = SECAM-B; 11 = SECAM-G; 12 = SECAM-H; 13 = SECAM-DK; 14 = SECAM-L; inputs: 0 = Television; 1 = Composite1; 2 = S-Video; Current input: 1 Current format: UYVY v4l2: current audio mode is : MONO == Opening video decoder: [raw] RAW Uncompressed Video Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied. VO: [vdpau] 720x480 => 720x480 Packed UYVY Selected video codec: [rawuyvy] vfm: raw (RAW UYVY) == Audio: no sound Starting playback... V: 0.0 1/ 1 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0 [counts up] v4l2: 137 frames successfully processed, 0 frames dropped. Exiting... (Quit) Note the "Audio: no sound" line. I still have to figure that one out to get beyond silent movies. Any hints? If I get the parameters wrong (which I did a lot while trying to get the aspect ratio right), my screen and keyboard lock up. The machine is still alive, though; I can ssh in from another machine and send a kill -HUP to mplayer's PID, and it does an orderly shutdown and releases everything. Once I get sound working, the next step is to persuade mencoder to write the video to a file. I tried adding the other parameters you mentioned above, starting with -ovc, but I get the message: Unable to open '/dev/dsp': No such file or directory. It's really upset about this; the message appears three times. And indeed, /dev/dsp doesn't exist. How do I get one? -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft \ /| has stolen their car and parked X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
xv (was Re: Changing background automatically, Mint 20.)
On Fri May 21 16:08:33 2021 Rich wrote: > There are five binaries that get installed in Slackware for the > xv package: > usr/bin/xvpictoppm > usr/bin/xv > usr/bin/vdcomp > usr/bin/bggen > usr/bin/xcmap > > and there are zero libraries installed. So if you do get a successful > compile, you can simply put the "xv" binary in a ~/bin directory, add > that dir to your PATH, and use it without 'mucking up' anything with > the rest of the system. I love xv - it's my go-to JPEG viewer. Its command-line interface is dead simple, and it's lightweight and fast. It has one problem, though: it can't display many newer JPEG files. It comes up with the message: : Unsupported JPEG process: SOF type 0xc2 I have to fall back to another viewer (usually ristretto, which I really don't like) to view these files. (Working on a file that xv likes with the Gimp is one good way to make a file it doesn't like.) The latest version I've been able to find is 3.10a. Is there a newer version out there that can handle all JPEGs? -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: How to capture composite video
On Mon May 17 10:56:10 2021 Dan Ritter wrote: > The subsystem you are looking for is V4L2, Video For Linux 2. > > Showing up as /dev/video0 is an extremely positive sign. > > https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/V4L_capturing is what you > want to read. This looks like a possibility - v4l2-ctl identifies the tuner, composite, and S-Video inputs on my card. So far, though, mpv just shows noise. I'll continue puttering... -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
How to capture composite video
I have a number of VHS tapes which I'd like to digitize, and I'm trying to figure out where to start, hardware- and software-wise. I'm running Debian Buster (10.5), kernel 4.19.0-10-amd64. I found a pcHDTV HD-5500, which I believe is basically a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 tweaked for Linux, and dropped it into my box, where it is found by lspci and shows up as /dev/video0. The card has an extender cable which leads to a bracket with RCA connectors for audio and composite video, as well as an S-Video connector. (For now, at least, I'm not interested in the TV tuner on the card.) Presumably, with the proper software and configuration settings, I should be able to plug a VCR into the RCA connectors and have video come up on the computer's screen, and hopefully save it to disk in some sort of standard format. What's a good starting point to find information on how to do this? -- -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft \ /| has stolen their car and parked X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
Re: ot: kx-p1124i configuration
On Sat May 8 12:04:42 2021 Gene Heskett wrote: > Regretably, that leaves the printer itself, have you tried another? I happen to have a KX-P1124 gathering dust. If you need another, it's yours for the price of shipping. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft \ /| has stolen their car and parked X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
Re: Installing Debian 10.9 Buster on iMac G5 (powerpc)
On Sun May 2 08:17:13 2021 Greg Wooledge wrote: > On Sun, May 02, 2021 at 04:38:21PM +0200, didier gaumet wrote: > >> From what I understand (If I understand correctly), your processor >> is a powerpc64 Big Indian, not a powerpc64 Little Indian [...] > > That's "Endian", not "Indian". 8080 One little, 8085 Two little, 8086 Three little-endians 8088 Four little, 80186Five little, 80286Six little-endians 80386Seven little, 80386SX Eight little, 80486Nine little-endians Pentium DIVIDE ERROR -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft \ /| has stolen their car and parked X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
Re: xsane can't see Brother ADS-2700W scanner
On Sat Apr 3 16:42:15 2021 John Boxall wrote: > On 2021-04-03 1:00 p.m., Charlie Gibbs wrote: > >> On 2021-04-02 10:56 a.m., Charlie Gibbs wrote: >> >> the error message. I forget the exact wording, but it >> was pretty specific about the USB device being full, >> as opposed to some sort of internal memory overflow. > > Charlie, > > It is also a possibility that your USB thumb drive _doesn't_ have the > capacity that it says it does. There are a lot of "fake" USB thumb > drives that have far less capacity than advertised. Would you be able > to try an external hard drive connected via a USB adapter? I tried a freshly-formatted 16GB stick, and the document scanned successfully. The PDF is just shy of 40MB for 360 pages. The scanner was hiccuping a lot toward the end, though - I suspect that its algorithms don't scale up nicely beyond 300 pages or so. That's not a disaster - I can always scan smaller chunks (say, 200 pages) and put them together with pdfunite. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: xsane can't see Brother ADS-2700W scanner
On 2021-04-02 10:56 a.m., Charlie Gibbs wrote: Emboldened by this, I went into the advanced options and turned on "Continuous scan", then dropped in the first part of a 300-page manual. Once the sheets were scanned, the scanner asked me whether I had more; I put in the next bundle of sheets, said yes, and away it went. All was well until partway through the last set of pages - on about page 280 the scanner halted with an error message saying it had run out of space. A sheet was half-fed, the PDF file was incomplete and therefore corrupt, and a second file was created which contained garbage left over from a previously deleted file. That's not graceful - the least it could have done was closed off the file cleanly. The 2GB thumb drive was only 3% full. (Maybe the limit is internal to the scanner.) For now I'll assume a limit of 200 pages per file, and use pdfunite to put the pieces together in the computer. I did some more experimenting with scanning this larger manual (about 360 pages, it turns out). I re-formatted that 2GB thumb drive and tried again; this time the scanner fed the last sheet before coming up with the error message. I forget the exact wording, but it was pretty specific about the USB device being full, as opposed to some sort of internal memory overflow. (Apparently the scanner has 512MB of memory.) Again I got a corrupt PDF file, plus a second file which contained data which should have only existed on my other computers - which makes me wonder about data security. I suspect that the scanner needs a _lot_ of extra space on the USB device to build the PDF file. I tried again with a freshly-formatted 16GB stick and the entire document scanned successfully. The finished PDF file is just short of 40 megabytes. Toward the end of the scanning, the scanner was pausing more and more frequently - it seems that things don't scale too well beyond about 300 pages. Still, it's turning out to be a nice little scanner for offline use. If anyone has managed to do SFTP from a Brother scanner, let me know how you did it. I realize that this has turned into a review of the scanner, but I've gotten so far into it that I might as well see it through to the end. For now, connection to a computer is merely something it would be nice to have, rather than a necessity. The important part is that I can use it to get my work done, one way or another. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: xsane can't see Brother ADS-2700W scanner
On 2021-04-01 3:51 a.m., Brian Potkin wrote: Hello Charlie, It would appear that you are not subscribed to debian-user. Have you seen all the replies to your post that await you there? Yes, I have. I just haven't had time to act on them. I did download a driver from the Brother site but it had no effect. I suspect there's something I'll have to do with xsane to get it to find the scanner. (And then I'll have to go through it again with my wife's Macbook.) Meanwhile I tried setting it up to use sftp, but I haven't managed to get the authentication worked out yet. Oh well, worst case I can scan to a thumb drive. It does that well - and fast. Apologies for the intrusion. No worries. Thanks for the note. I'm hoping to find time this weekend to try out some of the things that have come through on the list. I'll post a summary of my results when I get them. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
xsane can't see Brother ADS-2700W scanner
I just got a Brother ADS-2700W sheet-fed scanner and am trying to access it from xsane. I've done a lot of flatbed scanning, first with an HP 3970, and lately with an Epson WF-2650 all-in-one, but I have a lot of old manuals I want to scan and upload to Bitsavers, and a sheet feeder will speed the process along. The Brother got a lot of good reviews so I decided to give it a try. It offers many options, such as e-mail, [S]FTP, etc. over Ethernet, wi-fi, and USB. But so far, I haven't been able to get xsane to recognize it. My wife tried to get at it from her Macbook (which accesses the Epson with no trouble), but had no luck either. It's not a connectivity issue - the scanner happily connects to my wi-fi and gets an IP address, and I can access it from a web browser and get at all of its configuration screens. But neither xsane nor my wife's Macbook can see it. The one way I did manage to get the scanner to work was to a USB flash drive. It quickly sucked in a handful of sheets, scanned both sides, and wrote them to a file on the stick. If all else fails, I can work with it that way. But I'd really like to let xsane manage the process. I'm beginning to wonder, though, whether fashions are changing. Scanners nowadays seem to want to push data to a server, rather than being commanded to scan by a computer. Is this really happening? If so, whither (or should that be "wither") xsane? If anyone has gotten one of these newfangled machines to work as a slave, rather than a master, please share your secrets. aTdHvAaNnKcSe... -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft \ /| has stolen their car and parked X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway. / \ if you read it the right way. |-- Mayayana
Subject: Re: Slow connections - DNS problems?
Further to my 20-30 second delay when firing up slrnpull: Here are some of your responses and my replies: On Wed Mar 24 13:08:20 2021 wrote: > On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 10:32:27PM -0700, Charlie Gibbs wrote: >> [contents of /etc/resolv.conf -> /run/NetworkManager/resolv.conf] >> # Generated by NetworkManager >> search telus >> nameserver 192.168.0.1 >> nameserver 75.153.171.122 >> nameserver 2001:568:ff09:10a::56 >> # NOTE: the libc resolver may not support more than 3 nameservers. >> # The nameservers listed below may not be recognized. >> nameserver 2001:568:ff09:10b::122 > The 20-30 seconds hint at a DNS timeout. > > Try removing your first entry (192.168.0.1) from resolv.conf and > see whether this changes (don't restart, NM will clobber your > changes!) I tried removing the 192.168.0.1 line along with the "search telus" line. I didn't notice any difference, but could this be because this stuff is buffered somewhere? Perhaps I need to kick something to make sure the new file is read. On Wed Mar 24 13:08:25 2021 Darac Marjal wrote: > Do you have an IPv6 address? If you run "ip -c -6 a", do you have an > address with "scope global"? You may have one with "scope link", but > that won't help at the moment. If you do, then congratulations: Telus > have provided you with a connection to the modern internet. If not, then > you won't be able to reach these resolver addresses. 1: [36mlo: [0m mtu 65536 state UNKNOWN qlen 1000 inet6 [34m::1[0m/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 2: [36menp0s25: [0m mtu 1500 state [32mUP [0mqlen 1000 inet6 [34m2001:569:74d8:9900:b476:fd78:f387:922c[0m/64 scope global temporary dynamic valid_lft 14655sec preferred_lft 14355sec inet6 [34m2001:569:74d8:9900:5eff:35ff:fe07:33d2[0m/64 scope global dynamic mngtmpaddr noprefixroute valid_lft 14655sec preferred_lft 14355sec inet6 [34mfe80::5eff:35ff:fe07:33d2[0m/64 scope link noprefixroute valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 3: [36mwlp3s0: [0m mtu 1500 state [32mUP [0mqlen 1000 inet6 [34m2001:569:74d8:9900:f953:7d51:de1c:b63d[0m/64 scope global dynamic noprefixroute valid_lft 14655sec preferred_lft 14355sec inet6 [34mfe80::fb30:bc15:abf9:1f48[0m/64 scope link noprefixroute valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever On Wed Mar 24 13:08:45 2021 pioruns2019 wrote: > You can use DNS Benchmark by Steve Gibson, written like 20 years ago > in assembly language. This will test your various DNS configurations > and diagnose them: > > https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm > > Use Wine to run it. > > wine DNSBench.exe > > It will tell you what's wrong, if anything, with your DNS configuration. I have Windows XP running under VirtualBox on another machine; I downloaded and ran DNSBench there. It was happy with my network, and claimed that 192.168.0.1 was one of the fastest DNS servers available. On Wed Mar 24 13:10:44 2021 Greg Wooledge wrote: > Or, you could simply run > > dig @192.168.0.1 www.debian.org > > And see what happens. I bet it times out after about 30 seconds. It came back instantly with ; <<>> DiG 9.11.5-P4-5.1+deb10u3-Debian <<>> @192.168.0.1 www.debian.org ; (1 server found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 52104 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.debian.org.IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: www.debian.org. 218 IN A 149.20.4.15 www.debian.org. 218 IN A 128.31.0.62 ;; Query time: 8 msec ;; SERVER: 192.168.0.1#53(192.168.0.1) ;; WHEN: Wed Mar 24 13:13:11 PDT 2021 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 75 I tried again with the command "dig @192.168.0.1 news.newsguy.com", since that's the news server it takes so long to connect to. After a barely-discernible pause, it came back with ; <<>> DiG 9.11.5-P4-5.1+deb10u3-Debian <<>> @192.168.0.1 news.newsguy.com ; (1 server found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 7019 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 8, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;news.newsguy.com. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: news.newsguy.com. 3550IN A 74.209.136.90 news.newsguy.com. 3550IN A 74.209.136.91 news.newsguy.com. 3550IN A 74.209.136.82 news.newsguy.com. 3550IN A 74.209.136.88 news.newsguy.com. 3550IN A 74.209.136.94 news.newsguy.com. 3550
Slow connections - DNS problems?
I read Usenet (including this mailing list via the newsgroup linux.debian.user) on my laptop. so I can keep up from anywhere. It works well, but at home it takes 20 or 30 seconds to connect to my NNTP server, newsguy.com. If I take my laptop to the office and run slrnpull there, it connects instantly. I've mentioned this to people in the past, and the consensus seems to be that it's some sort of DNS problem. My laptop is running NetworkManager. When I wake it up at a new location, resolv.conf (which is actually a link to /run/NetworkManager/resolv.conf) gets overwritten with information that works where I now am. At the office, it's simply: # Generated by NetworkManager nameserver 192.168.1.5 nameserver 192.168.1.1 while at home it becomes more intricate: # Generated by NetworkManager search telus nameserver 192.168.0.1 nameserver 75.153.171.122 nameserver 2001:568:ff09:10a::56 # NOTE: the libc resolver may not support more than 3 nameservers. # The nameservers listed below may not be recognized. nameserver 2001:568:ff09:10b::122 My home router (supplied by Telus, notice the "search" line) shows two DNS addresses - 75.153.176.1 and 75.153.171.122 - on its configuration screen. The second address (but not the first) winds up in resolv.conf. The router is at 192.168.0.1. Dunno about those IPv6 addresses; I've made no conscious effort to use IPv6 anywhere. I suspect there's something fishy about that home resolv.conf; can one of you gurus suggest what it might be? -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: [OT] Re: Social-media antipathy (was Re: How i can optimize my operating system?)
On Sun Mar 21 00:01:59 2021 Stefan Monnier wrote: >> In my (not so humble) opinion, this level of security could make >> sense for a disident in a totalitarian state, less so for regular >> users in democratic country. > > Reminds me of the saying that the difference between USA and USSR was > that in USSR the population knew that it was propaganda. Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. -- John Kenneth Galbraith -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: Social-media antipathy (was Re: How i can optimize my
On Sat Mar 13 10:15:13 2021 Stefan Monnier wrote: >>>> Besides the social part of asking *everybody* *else* to switch I'm >>>> also not aware of a viable . Fortunately most of >>>> the conversations have been moving to WhatsApp (where they are >>>> supposed to be encrypted, at least). >>> >>> W.r.t. something else, I don't know anything comparable to Facebook >>> (which isn't saying much since I never used Facebook and neve >>> looked for something like it), but there are several alternatives >>> to WhatsApp (I'm using Matrix for that). >> >> https://www.xkcd.com/918/ >> >> Time was that'd have been a serious suggestion, but as >> https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/918:_Google%2B points out, >> it's not an option anymore; Google shut it down (for the general >> public, at least) a couple of years ago. It makes little difference to me; not only do I not use Facebook (never have, never will), my machine is a Google-free zone. (DuckDuckGo works fine for searches.) BTW my ISP, Telus, recently decided to get rid of their e-mail servers; all of their e-mail users have been sold down the river to Google. I'm not affected by this either; I get my e-mail through a third party. > I was talking about alternatives which don't suffer from the same > underlying problem of centralization. E.g. Matrix is a *protocol*, > with a Free Software implementation of it available in Debian, so > you can run your own (e.g. as part of FreedomBox), and it can be > used to communicate with users of other Matrix servers as well > (using basically the same model as email), and there are several > different clients available, most of them Free Software as well > (and some of them included in Debian). It's ironic. Back in the '60s and '70s, computing was completely centralized, for the simple reason that computers were so expensive that even medium-sized corporations could barely afford one. The plunging cost of hardware starting in the '80s meant that anyone could have a computer, and designs such as the ARPAnet (the precursor to today's Internet) created a decentralized model. (Who remembers the phrase "global village"?) But now, alas, we've come full circle, as large conglomerates gobble up small companies, and build a surveillance state that makes Orwell's telescreens look quaint. But I digress. I do not use any form of mainstream social media. Usenet, where I hang out (and read this list) doesn't count; it has no graphics, so is totally unacceptable to J. Random Luser. If people want to communicate with me, I tell them to use e-mail like my grandpappy used to do. I understand that for some people, Facebook is like scrapbooking - but I have my own hobbies, thankyouverymuch. When I see how much time people spend glued to their phones and other devices, it makes me realize that I could never go there. I still have a flip phone, which, as handy as it is, I use very little by today's standards. I have better things to do with my time. Many of these things involve contact with people that isn't mediated (and monitored) by multinational corporations. Matrix sounds like it's worth checking out. To paraphrase Ted Nelson in his 1974 book _Computer Lib_ (back then he was talking about IBM): Facebook is not a necessary evil. Facebook is not necessary. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: missing memory and the mystery of MTRRs
[Sorry about the lack of threading - I read this list via its Usenet group so I can't reply to the list.] On Sun Feb 14 11:58:31 2021 "Alexander V. Makartsev" wrote: > On Sat Feb 13 16:44:34 2021 Charlie Gibbs wrote: > >> [ 0.012080] WARNING: BIOS bug: CPU MTRRs don't cover all of >> memory, losing 4800MB of RAM. >> Is there some sort of HOWTO that covers this stuff? Where do I go >> from here? > > Even if there is a "HOWTO" to learn some information, are you capable > of unpacking, disassembling and patching BIOS of your motherboard and > reassemble working image of it to flash into ROM? I was afraid it might come down to that. > I suggest you to fiddle with BIOS settings first. Search for anything > that looks like memory related, like "Memory Hole", or something. > If this trial and error approach won't help, you can update your BIOS > as a last resort. > Since your motherboard is pretty old, and Intel has dropped all > support for Legacy products, you can't download BIOS updates from > Intel official source anymore. [1] > But you can still find them on archive sites. [2] I can't vouch for > this site, but it looks like genuine BIOS update from Intel. > I have to warn you about security risks, because there could be a > small possibility, it was patched with malware, but considering this > BIOS is for an ancient hardware I have my doubts and personally I > would take the risk. > And besides, there are no other options. Well, there is one other option: replace the motherboard. Given that it's becoming increasingly cranky on boot, that might be the way to go. We had a power outage the other day, and when I tried to restart the machine it would get past the Grub screen, then sit there forever with a screen that was blank except for a blinking cursor. It took about half a dozen tries before it finally continued the boot process from there. I seem to recall that this happened last time we had a power outage too. For now I think I'll just keep my backups current, and come the day it decides not to boot anymore I'll just replace it. Thanks for the hints. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Missing memory and the mystery of MTRRs
[This would probably be an FAQ if I knew the proper incantation...] I realized recently that a box I've been running for a while isn't seeing all of its installed memory. The BIOS screens indicate that 8GB is installed, but Debian (recently upgraded to Buster) only sees a bit over 3GB. cjg@dragon:~$ head -1 /proc/meminfo MemTotal:3331096 kB During boot I noticed the following message: [0.012080] WARNING: BIOS bug: CPU MTRRs don't cover all of memory, losing 4800MB of RAM. So I guess it's time to start learning about the wonderful world of MTRRs. cjg@dragon:~$ cat /proc/mtrr reg00: base=0x0 (0MB), size= 2048MB, count=1: write-back reg01: base=0x08000 ( 2048MB), size= 1024MB, count=1: write-back reg02: base=0x0c000 ( 3072MB), size= 256MB, count=1: write-back reg03: base=0x0cff0 ( 3327MB), size=1MB, count=1: uncachable cjg@dragon:~$ head -9 /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 15 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz stepping: 2 microcode : 0x56 cpu MHz : 1598.388 cache size : 2048 KB Here's the first part of /var/log/messages: [0.00] Linux version 4.19.0-6-amd64 (debian-ker...@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 8.3.0 (Debian 8.3.0-6)) #1 SMP Debian 4.19.67-2+deb10u1 (2019-09-20) [0.00] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-6-amd64 root=UUID=4d3143dd-d732-4755-b832-05753ab9c53a ro quiet [0.00] x86/fpu: x87 FPU will use FXSAVE [0.00] BIOS-provided physical RAM map: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x-0x0008efff] usable [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0008f000-0x0009] reserved [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000e-0x000f] reserved [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0010-0xcfd60fff] usable [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0xcfd61000-0xcfd6dfff] reserved [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0xcfd6e000-0xcfe1efff] usable [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0xcfe1f000-0xcfee8fff] ACPI NVS [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0xcfee9000-0xcfeecfff] usable [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0xcfeed000-0xcfef1fff] ACPI data [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0xcfef2000-0xcfef2fff] usable [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0xcfef3000-0xcfefefff] ACPI data [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0xcfeff000-0xcfef] usable [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0xcff0-0xcfff] reserved [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0xfff0-0x] reserved [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0001-0x00022bff] usable [0.00] NX (Execute Disable) protection: active [0.00] SMBIOS 2.4 present. [0.00] DMI: /DG965WH, BIOS MQ96510J.86A.1687.2007.0510.0258 05/10/2007 [0.00] tsc: Fast TSC calibration using PIT [0.00] tsc: Detected 1864.782 MHz processor [0.02] e820: update [mem 0x-0x0fff] usable ==> reserved [0.05] e820: remove [mem 0x000a-0x000f] usable [0.011126] last_pfn = 0x22c000 max_arch_pfn = 0x4 [0.011134] MTRR default type: uncachable [0.011135] MTRR fixed ranges enabled: [0.011137] 0-9 write-back [0.011139] A-F uncachable [0.011140] MTRR variable ranges enabled: [0.011142] 0 base 0 mask F8000 write-back [0.011144] 1 base 08000 mask FC000 write-back [0.011145] 2 base 0C000 mask FF000 write-back [0.011147] 3 base 0CFF0 mask 0 uncachable [0.011148] 4 disabled [0.011149] 5 disabled [0.011149] 6 disabled [0.011150] 7 disabled [0.011968] x86/PAT: Configuration [0-7]: WB WC UC- UC WB WP UC- WT [0.012074] e820: update [mem 0xcff0-0x22bff] usable ==> reserved [0.012080] WARNING: BIOS bug: CPU MTRRs don't cover all of memory, losing 4800MB of RAM. Is there some sort of HOWTO that covers this stuff? Where do I go from here? -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: Debian 10 64bit
On Thu, 24 Dec 2020 10:40:02 +0100 wrote: > On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 07:29:21PM -0600, David Wright wrote: > > [...] > >> Yes. And that's probably why google searches so often land on Arch >> wiki pages=E2=80=94I assume that google is still ranking on the basis >> of links to pages. > > Google? What /is/ that google thing people keep talking about? I found out about it at https://www.duckduckgo.com > ;-P Back at ya, good buddy. > Xmas, happy new and all that And a happy Hanukkwanzaamas to you too. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: 780 files in /usr/share/zoneinfo/
On Mon, 30 Nov 2020 14:10:02 +0100 "Martin McCormick" wrote: > If you aren't in to trying to modify some sort of > embedded system to do something it wasn't originally designed to > do then ram and storage are getting cheaper by the day and some > things just aren't worth worrying about. To a great extent that's true, although there is the danger of falling into the attitude that abundance justifies waste. (This can once again make things worth worrying about, well before it might be necessary if you do things efficiently.) However, there's another consideration: the KISS principle. A system that needs 780 files is going to be a lot more complex and difficult to understand than one that gets by with one or two. This can have serious impacts on reliability and maintainability. I'm seeing more and more cases of systems falling apart because they're becoming too complex to administer. Some of this is because they "just grew", without proper planning and pruning. Some of it is due to that effect described by Blaise Pascal, who once apologized for the length of the letter he was writing because he didn't have time to make it shorter. And some, I'm sad to say, are a deliberate effort at obfuscation: an old trick long used by politicians to keep the electorate blissfully ignorant of their shenanigans, and now adopted by some equally nefarious system designers. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: NTFS partitions can't be mounted
On Wed, 25 Nov 2020 22:30:02 +0100 Joe wrote: > On Wed, 25 Nov 2020 22:11:47 +0100 wrote: > >> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 03:47:12PM -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote: >> >>>> Microsoft changes the system required to kill the fast-boot every >>>> so often, almost surely to make it difficult for users of Linux >>>> to access Windows from the Linux system. >>> >>> That seems highly unlikely: it's a tiny number of users, and not >>> only they're not a threat but annoying them won't bring any benefit >>> to MS. >> >> This is a pattern which I like to call "emergent evil". Most likely >> nobody does it on purpose, yet it happens often enough to annoy >> competing ecosystems. Magic! > > NTFS has been NTFS since the 90s, while Linux has had ext2, ext3, > ext4, Reiser among other filesystems. Is it not likely that 'NTFS' > has really been a similar parade of different filesystems with each > version of Windows retaining the code to read previous versions? > Occam's Razor? In situations like this, I think not of Occam's, but of Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. At this point, though, a little voice in the back of my mind says, "But Microsoft isn't stupid!" This isn't just paranoia, nor is it the first time. For instance, when Samba was first developed to allow non-Windows machines to access Windows file shares, Microsoft changed their software to deliberately send an invalid command. If the error message returned wasn't worded exactly the way they expected, they would refuse to work. Thanks to the open source community, a Samba patch was issued within a few days so that it would spoof the expected response. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Top-posting (was Re: how to test disk for bad sector)
On Sun, 30 Aug 2020 16:30:01 +0200 Charles Curley wrote: > On Sun, 30 Aug 2020 14:02:48 + > Andy Smith wrote: > >> Between your top posting and the HTML mails, I find it very >> difficult to read your emails so I mostly haven't bothered. > > Hear, hear. My sentiments exactly. > > Yahoo mail is broken. I encourage Mr. Wind to get another mail reader. If someone can't be bothered to take the time to write a readable message, I can't be bothered to take the time to decipher it. As for Outlook, I've been told that the correct pronunciation is "Look out!" -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: Signature not working
On Fri Jul 31 14:39:39 2020 Stefan Monnier wrote: >>> Then you're confused: his `-- t` is perfectly normal and valid >> >> No, I'm not confused. '-- t' is NOT a valid sig separator. > > Indeed it's not, and that's OK because Tomas doesn't use it as > a "signature separator" (the thing that should be `-- \n`), but > just as the last line of text in his email, which stands more or > less for his name. > > There are 3 separate notions of signature here at play: > A) the `-- \n` notion of signature taken from ~/.signature. > B) the non-computer-related notion of someone adding his name > at the end of his text > C) the cryptographic data meant to prove authenticity. > > Tomas means his `-- t` to be of the (B) category (just like my > `-nStefan` below), and according to the RFCs with which I'm familiar > it does indeed correctly fall into the (B) category. > > IIUC you think it was meant to be in the (A) category, but I have no > idea what makes you think so. Compounding the confusion, even the signatures from The Wanderer and Brad Rogers don't come out properly on my machine. I read this list through the newsgroup linux.debian.user, using slrn - and the "--\n" from these two people comes through as --=20, hence is not recognized. This probably has something to do with the fact that their messages contain a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable", which I've always thought to be a nasty format. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: Are the assigned capacities sufficient for my setup?
On Wed Jul 29 08:39:26 2020 Andrew Cater wrote: > You _can_ use guided partitioning as a guide. Use Windows to > reduce the amount of space it takes on the disk. Use Windows > tools to format the second half of the disk, or whatever to vfat. Note that with NTFS you can't shrink the Windows partition to less than half its size. NTFS creates a Master File Table smack in the middle of the partition, and it's immovable. Well, generally - if you go to https://www.raxco.com you'll find a utility called PerfectDisk, which with minor handwaving and a reboot or two can move the MFT. You can download a demo that will work long enough to do the job. Repeat as necessary; I shrank the NTFS partition on my formerly Windows-only laptop from 250GB down to 45GB. As for partition sizing, I set up my machines with three partitions: /, /home, and swap. If you're going to be installing lots of software on your machine (especially games), I'd recommend setting aside 20 or 30 gigabytes for /, since /usr can get pretty large. I learned this the hard way after getting caught behind the 8-ball after a kernel upgrade. Fortunately, gparted came to the rescue, allowing me to shave 10GB off /home and give it to /. I use the old rule of thumb of twice memory size for swap, and give what's left to /home. You definitely want /home in its own partition - it makes life much easier when doing upgrades, since you can completely wipe out / while leaving /home intact. (Needless to say, though, I back up /home regularly, plus /etc and /usr for good measure.) BTW please don't top-post. Not all of us are Jeopardy fans. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Can slrn decode MIME messages?
Due to the high volume of messages in this mailing list, I prefer to read it via the newsgroup linux.debian.user using slrn. This works well for the most part. However, some messages (e.g. ones from Matthew Campbell) are MIME-encoded. I see appropriate headers: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 followed by a block of base64-encoded data. A second block sometimes appears, with Content-type: text/html. The message itself is unreadable unless I save the base64 data to disk and run the base64 utility on it. Is there a way to get slrn to decode MIME messages? I'm running Stretch on the laptop on which I read Usenet, and "slrn --version" returns the following: slrn 1.0.3 S-Lang Library Version: 2.3.1 Operating System: Linux COMPILE TIME OPTIONS: Backends: +nntp +slrnpull +spool External programs / libs: +canlock +inews +ssl +uudeview +iconv Features: +decoding +emphasized_text +end_of_thread +fake_refs +gen_msgid -grouplens -msgid_cache +piping +rnlock +spoilers -strict_from Using 64 bit integers for article numbers. DEFAULTS: Default server object: nntp Default posting mechanism: nntp -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: technical terms overhaul
On Sun Jun 21 08:15:00 2020 deloptes wrote:
> Eike Lantzsch wrote:
>
>> If we change the language it might change the mind little by little -
>> or not at all. Depends on which influences on a person or group of
>> persons is stronger. ("For mere oppression may make a wise one act
>> crazy, ..."[2])
>
> You have obviously no idea of how language works - you are trying
> dictatorship.
> Language serves communication needs.
Most of the time. However, it can also be used for manipulation.
> Language follows our society.
Unless it's used to warp our society. It's time a lot of us
gave Orwell's _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ another read. Pay particular
attention to the appendix on Newspeak, wherein he describes how
language can be used to alter - and limit - thought itself.
> So please - go change the real problems in society that is really
> not the language.
Agreed. And resist the revisionist lexicographers.
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ /| Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: *nix
References: On 2020-02-17 at 06:00:01, David Wright wrote: > On Sun 16 Feb 2020 at 13:03:05 (-0800), Charlie Gibbs wrote: > >> On Sun, 16 Feb 2020 21:10:01 +0100 >> Andrei POPESCU wrote: >> >>> On Du, 16 feb 20, 09:36:16, Charlie Gibbs wrote: >>> >>>> On Sun, 16 Feb 2020 14:20:01 +0100 >>>> Andrei POPESCU wrote: >>>> >>>>> Just use whatever works for you. >>>> >>>> If you can. I really resent the increasing amount of coercion >>>> toward using GUIs (no keyboard equivalents for menus, etc.) that >>>> I'm seeing in modern software. >>> >>> Coercion is a strong word. It seems to me it's rather a form of >>> demand and supply. >> >> They're demanding you use what they supply. > > I can understand that on systems where you don't have a choice; > for example, Hulu on Roku, where they introduced a new interface > to much disapproval. Many TV interfaces now look as though they > were designed for mobile phones, and I suspect they are. > > But with Debian, you have choices. I prefer a GUI for browsing, > and obviously for graphics processing, but one or two other > programs bridge the gap, like gnumeric and xpdf, where I almost > entirely use the keyboard, but a few operations are easier with > a mouse, like copying text out of xpdf, or adjusting column widths > in gnumeric, for example. > > And I can't think of any software that has been deliberately > withdrawn because of a GUI replacement. Not withdrawn, no. But newer software tends to neglect the keyboard in favour of pointy-clicky stuff. Note that I'm not just talking about Linux, which really isn't that bad. On other OSes, however, the situation is much worse. >>> With touchscreen technology becoming the standard even for laptops >>> and desktop monitors the demand for keyboard oriented interaction >>> decreases so the developers must create interfaces that are better >>> suited for tap / swipe. >> >> Fine. But the keyboard should still be an option. All I'm asking >> is that I be allowed to choose. I'm not insisting that everyone >> use a keyboard, and likewise people should not insist that I >> _not_ use a keyboard. > > Perhaps you're not choosing your software with sufficient discernment. > I gravitate towards applications that have keyboard shortcuts/functions > and allow you to define more of them. > > Where that's not straightforward, then I try to coerce some other > application to do the job. So, for example, I define keys in my > window manager, fvwm, to do such things as control audio levels > (amixer), take screenshots (scrot) and capture movies (ffmpeg), > rotate the screen (xrandr), and even emulate Left and Right > Mouse Clicks, as well as all the usual window functions (raise, > lower, resize, move, etc). I also tend to use programs that allow me to use the keyboard. mplayer - and its successor, mpv - work great with the keyboard. xv works great for displaying GIFs and JPEGs. (At least older ones - some newer JPEGs contain codes that xv can't handle. At that point I reluctantly fall back to ristretto. No doubt there are programs that would suit my needs better, but I haven't been willing to take the time to find them.) > So my mouse gets very little exercise, and most of the time it's > just used to set which window has focus. What, you don't use alt-tab? :-) >>> The keyboard will soon be used exclusively for text entry and will >>> probably disappear as soon as we have something better, >> >> FSVO "better" > > Well, screens don't seem to have killed off keyboards, as people > furiously type away with their thumbs on faked ones. > >>> like voice dictation, >> >> Good luck if you have a cold. > > Or want any privacy. Or want to carry on a conversation at the same time. > >>> direct neural interface, whatever. >> >> Now _that_ might be interesting... > > Alarming. Now there would be justification for thought police. Depends on how it's implemented. It does seem less attractive now than prior to, say, 1984. > BTW Because your email client seems unable to cope with threading, > I sometimes link posts manually with mutt's & key; which means > I look at your quoting attribution text (to link it the correct > parent). I find its text curious. > > For example, the post I'm replying to has > On Sun, 16 Feb 2020 21:10:01 +0100 Andrei POPESCU wrote: > but the email from Andrei POPESCU quoted is timestamped > Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 21:50:52 +0200 > > Apart from any timezone mixups (I prefer my attributions to be given > in the timezone of th
Re: *nix
On Sun, 16 Feb 2020 21:10:01 +0100 Andrei POPESCU wrote: > On Du, 16 feb 20, 09:36:16, Charlie Gibbs wrote: > >> On Sun, 16 Feb 2020 14:20:01 +0100 Andrei POPESCU >> wrote: >> >>> Just use whatever works for you. >> >> If you can. I really resent the increasing amount of coercion >> toward using GUIs (no keyboard equivalents for menus, etc.) that >> I'm seeing in modern software. > > Coercion is a strong word. It seems to me it's rather a form of > demand and supply. They're demanding you use what they supply. > With touchscreen technology becoming the standard even for laptops > and desktop monitors the demand for keyboard oriented interaction > decreases so the developers must create interfaces that are better > suited for tap / swipe. Fine. But the keyboard should still be an option. All I'm asking is that I be allowed to choose. I'm not insisting that everyone use a keyboard, and likewise people should not insist that I _not_ use a keyboard. > The keyboard will soon be used exclusively for text entry and will > probably disappear as soon as we have something better, FSVO "better" > like voice dictation, Good luck if you have a cold. > direct neural interface, whatever. Now _that_ might be interesting... -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: *nix
On Sun, 16 Feb 2020 14:20:01 +0100 Andrei POPESCU wrote: > On Du, 16 feb 20, 03:36:44, ghe wrote: > >> Complexity of the software is for us programmers to deal with. >> Making the programs useful for a user can be one of the problems >> in our writing and design. That, I think, is what they meant by >> "One program doing the job well" -- users have a collection of >> reasonably straightforward and simple tools to do things, and >> the tools work. The screwdrivers and cork screws and knife blades >> can be piped together, you know. Or called in a script. > > To find out how many items I have in my mpd playlist I would run > something like 'mpc playlist | wc -l'. In order to rearrange the > playlist I would rather use a GUI client so I can just drag and > drop songs around. > > Sure it's possible to do either task with the other tool (TIMTOWTDI), > it's just that one is more efficient than the other for the > specific user, situation and / or environment (e.g. I might > prefer a TUI interface if I don't have a mouse connected). > > None of the approaches will be able to solve all use cases and the > line between loose | tight integration is very much personal opinion. > > Just use whatever works for you. If you can. I really resent the increasing amount of coercion toward using GUIs (no keyboard equivalents for menus, etc.) that I'm seeing in modern software. Even in Linux, many window managers' file requesters don't provide a place where you can type a file specification, requiring you to point and click your way up and down directory trees to get to where you want to go. I am a skilled touch typist, and not being allowed to use my keyboard cripples me. Any designer who does this to me deliberately is on my enemies list. -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: *nix
> On 2020-02-15 16:16, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > >> On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 02:03:02PM -0700, ghe wrote: >> >>> FYI, fogies, in the Jul-Aug, 1978 Bellsystem Technical Journal, >>> announcing Unix, in the Style section of the Foreward is a list of >>> "maxims...gained currency among the builders and users..." The first >>> sentence of the first maxim in the list is, "Make each program do >>> one thing well." >>> >>> The second sentence is "To do a new job, build afresh rather than >>> complicate old programs by adding new 'features.'" >>> >>> Until recently, the *nix communities have stuck pretty well to >>> these recommendations -- they're just descriptions of competent >>> programming, after all. There may be some discussion over the >>> definitions of "one thing" and "well" but there is software in >>> our Linux that, I think, doesn't conform to anybody's understanding >>> of these maxims. >> >> While I tend to those maxims, two points: >> >> - I usually subsume them under "complexity is your enemy" >> >> and then >> >> - all generalizations suck. >> >> So, to each her own, YMMV, etc. > > Just so. At what point does a small and natural generalization of > "one thing" become more complex than a new thing? Simplicity is the > friend, complexity the enemy; order the friend, entropy the enemy. > It takes a lifetime of design to see where to draw those lines, and > we never stop learning. > > [But it was nice to be reminded of a time when programming was often > seen as a generalization of list processing.] Complexity is a weapon. The KISS principle is a countermeasure. Never forget that many people have a vested interest in complexity. Empire-building politicians (corporate and otherwise) want larger kingdoms to rule, and monopolistic corporations want nothing more than to make systems so complicated that users can't use them without becoming dependent on the latest app. Simplify, simplify. -- Thoreau -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: debian format usb drive that a Mac likes
On Tue, 04 Feb 2020 08:48:54 -0600, "Martin McCormick" marti...@suddenlink.net> wrote: > If one is on a debian system and formatting a usb drive > that will be recognized by a Mac, I know that xfs is usually > a good choice for the file system but what type of partition > are we supposed to use to enclose that xfs file system? I know from personal experience that Macs recognize FAT32 (read/write) and NTFS (read only) - but not ext3. > I know if you plug a linux thumb drive in to a Mac, the > Mac says it can't read the disk and immediately offers to > initialize it for you. This behaviour goes all the way back to the original classic Mac in the mid-'80s; back then they would even eagerly offer to format FAT16 disks created on an MS-DOS box. Death to impure file systems! -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship. \ /| Apple is a cult. X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy. / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: failed upgrade to Buster
On Mon Oct 28 11:19:13 2019 Tony van der Hoff wrote: > I've just attempted to upgrade from Jessie to buster. All went well > until the dist-upgrade stage, when it ran out of space in my /usr > partition. which has 14G allocated. 1.4G of this appears to be the > doc/ folder, which seems excessive. It has, for instance all the > language files, whereas I only require en-GB. > > Can anyone please advise on how to get rid of this chaff? I recently updated a machine from Jessie to Buster (although I did it in two steps, Jessie -> stretch -> buster). I too ran out of space in /usr. My 500GB disk has two partitions: one for /home and the other for everything else. Rather than fight with things any longer than I already was (nVidia driver problems), I just used gparted to shave 10GB off my /home partition and give it to /, enlarging it from 10GB to 20GB. Problem solved. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: [OT] replacement for SystemRescueCD
On Thu Oct 24 13:48:19 2019 Greg Wooledge wrote: >> >>> Even though in some situations "guys" is claimed to be a >> >>> gender-neutral word, I doubt that everyone thinks of themselves >> >>> as a "guy". And it will be polite to those people to not make >> >>> them choose between doing that or feeling excluded. > [...] >> This should be on the wiki and on the guidelines for the Debian's >> mailing list. >> For non-native English speakers those subtlety are hard to >> comprehend! :) > > There's no consensus for how to handle gender neutrality, even among > native speakers. The English language isn't built for it. Every > single approach is wrong, so basically you have to choose which > wrongness you can tolerate. > > "It" is considered offensive, because it implies that the antecedent > is not a person. > > "They" is grammatically horrible because it's clearly a plural > pronoun, not a singular pronoun. > > "He/She" or "him/her" is just clumsy and awkward. > > "Sie" or "xie" or similar German-derived words just sound ridiculous > and made-up, at least to those of us who don't speak German. > > Just try to do the best you can. Nobody has any good answers yet. Back when all this Political Correctness silliness was getting started, someone suggested "s/h/it". -- /~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way. X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. / \ "Alexa, define 'bugging'."
Diagnosing lockups
I've set up a new machine with Buster (my first foray, my other machines are still running Stretch). It frequently locks up so hard that I have to hit the reset button. It seems to happen when scrolling a Notepad window in Windows XP, which is running under VirtualBox 6.0.10 r132072. The machine has an ASUS P5L-MX motherboard and I'm using its onboard VGA adapter. I suspect a video driver issue. Can anyone point me to some info on configuring and troubleshooting such things? Up until now any machine I've installed Linux on has Just Worked. I've heard of various gotchas but this is the first time I've been bitten. Here's the output of a little diagnostic script I put together based on stuff I cribbed from Stack Exchange: $ cat /proc/version Linux version 4.19.0-5-amd64 (debian-ker...@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 8.3.0 (Debian 8.3.0-6)) #1 SMP Debian 4.19.37-5+deb10u2 (2019-08-08) $ lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display' 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 $ lsmod | grep "kms\|drm" drm_kms_helper200704 1 i915 drm 483328 6 drm_kms_helper,i915 $ find /dev -group video /dev/fb0 /dev/dri/card0 $ cat /proc/cmdline BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-5-amd64 root=UUID=13c0f985-950e-42ec-a1a6-0766ef3c7025 ro quiet $ find /etc/modprobe.d/ /etc/modprobe.d/ $ cat /etc/modprobe.d/*kms* cat: '/etc/modprobe.d/*kms*': No such file or directory $ ls /etc/X11/xorg.conf ls: cannot access '/etc/X11/xorg.conf': No such file or directory $ glxinfo | grep -i "vendor\|rendering" direct rendering: Yes server glx vendor string: SGI client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI Vendor: Intel Open Source Technology Center (0x8086) OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center $ grep LoadModule /var/log/Xorg.0.log [27.469] (II) LoadModule: "glx" [28.044] (II) LoadModule: "intel" [28.228] (II) LoadModule: "modesetting" [28.313] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev" [28.346] (II) LoadModule: "vesa" [28.440] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw" [28.509] (II) LoadModule: "dri3" [28.509] (II) LoadModule: "dri2" [28.509] (II) LoadModule: "present" [32.436] (II) LoadModule: "libinput" $ egrep -i " connected|card detect|primary dev|Setting driver" /var/log/Xorg.0.log [28.402] (II) intel(0): Using Kernel Mode Setting driver: i915, version 1.6.0 20180719 -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Re: Where did my gateway go?
[Oops! Mistakenly replied to to...@tuxteam.de - here's where it should have gone.] On 30/08/19 03:42 PM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 01:45:47PM -0700, Charlie Gibbs wrote: > >> My laptop (a Lenovo T410 running Stretch) has suddenly lost the >> ability to access the Internet. >> >> cjg@cjglap2:~$ ping pop.surfnaked.ca >> PING pop.surfnaked.ca (216.113.192.36) 56(84) bytes of data. > > Hm. Host resolution seems to work, somehow. Don't count on > "ping" (ICMP) getting through, not all firewalls allow that > (perhaps your ISP has changed his mind while you were away?) > > Try "traceroute pop.surfnaked.ca", that might shed some light traceroute to pop.surfnaked.ca (216.113.192.36), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 gateway (192.168.0.1) 95.588 ms 95.547 ms 95.517 ms 2 10.31.12.1 (10.31.12.1) 95.498 ms 95.477 ms 95.454 ms 3 154.11.12.196 (154.11.12.196) 95.438 ms 154.11.2.53 (154.11.2.53) 95.402 ms 154.11.12.196 (154.11.12.196) 95.388 ms 4 154.11.2.86 (154.11.2.86) 95.351 ms 95.325 ms 95.304 ms 5 * * * 6 * * * 7 69.196.88.130 (69.196.88.130) 23.574 ms 23.555 ms 23.517 ms 8 216.113.192.217 (216.113.192.217) 23.487 ms 23.437 ms 23.412 ms 9 * * * 10 * * * 11 * * * 12 * * * 13 * * * 14 * * * 15 * * * 16 * * * 17 * * * 18 * * * 19 * * * 20 * * * 21 * * * 22 * * * 23 * * * 24 * * * 25 * * * 26 * * * 27 * * * 28 * * * 29 * * * 30 * * * >> Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref >> Use Iface >> default gateway 0.0.0.0 UG0 0 > >> What's that word "gateway" doing in the "Gateway" column? [...] > > That's because your host resolves whatever IP address to that > host name. > > Try "route -n" if you don't want that. That gave me 192.168.0.1. Interesting that this doesn't happen on my desktop machine, which is also running Stretch (albeit a slightly older version). Anyway, my laptop seems to be able to access the Internet again. Thanks for the help. -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Where did my gateway go?
My laptop (a Lenovo T410 running Stretch) has suddenly lost the ability to access the Internet. cjg@cjglap2:~$ ping pop.surfnaked.ca PING pop.surfnaked.ca (216.113.192.36) 56(84) bytes of data. --- pop.surfnaked.ca ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2037ms I don't know whether this is coincidence, but it started happening when I got my laptop home from a trip where I accessed several foreign wifi hotspots. The Ethernet interface doesn't work at home anymore either, although I can still access my LAN by either Ethernet or wifi. I was wondering whether my routing table got borked: cjg@cjglap2:~$ sudo route Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric RefUse Iface default gateway 0.0.0.0 UG0 00 wlp3s0 default gateway 0.0.0.0 UG0 00 enp0s25 link-local 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 00 wlp3s0 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 10000 enp0s25 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 60000 wlp3s0 What's that word "gateway" doing in the "Gateway" column? Why doesn't it show my router's IP address (192.168.0.1) like my desktop machine does? (Or the "ip route" command, for that matter.) cjg@cjglap2:~$ ip route default via 192.168.0.1 dev wlp3s0 default via 192.168.0.1 dev enp0s25 169.254.0.0/16 dev wlp3s0 scope link metric 1000 192.168.0.0/24 dev enp0s25 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.36 metric 100 192.168.0.0/24 dev wlp3s0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.38 metric 600 The router is accessible, just not in the routing table: cjg@cjglap2:~$ ping 192.168.0.1 PING 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.02 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.466 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.01 ms --- 192.168.0.1 ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2033ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.466/0.835/1.021/0.262 ms If I try to access the name "gateway", it looks up an IPv6 address, although I'm set up for IPv4: cjg@cjglap2:~$ ping gateway PING gateway(gateway (fe80::1278:5bff:fec8:34d0%enp0s25)) 56 data bytes 64 bytes from gateway (fe80::1278:5bff:fec8:34d0%enp0s25): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.09 ms 64 bytes from gateway (fe80::1278:5bff:fec8:34d0%enp0s25): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=1.15 ms 64 bytes from gateway (fe80::1278:5bff:fec8:34d0%enp0s25): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.09 ms --- gateway ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2002ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.095/1.114/1.151/0.026 ms What has happened to my routing and how can I restore it? -- cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
