Re: Rooting an Android Tablet on Debian

[Jon Dowland]

Hi, not answering your specific question, but

On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 02:57:18PM -0400, Charles Kroeger wrote:
> I got a Kobo Arc that runs Android 4.0.4 and would like to become su for this
> device
snip
> I use Calibre with the Arc for moving books around but Calibre is useless
> with the Adobe DRM menace and most of my books require this.

Are you only interested in rooting it in order to solve the second problem? In
which case I can't see *how* it solves the second problem. I guess you need to
strip the Adobe DRM, which if possible, could be done from a desktop machine,
after which your ebook reader on a non-rooted device would be fine.


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Re: Cost of packages in disk space?

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 11:47:22AM -0600, green wrote:
> So, imagine that I have a full filesystem and want to fix it by
> removing a single package.  I would need to get a list of manually
> installed packages, and go through each one of them individually,
> proposing a removal and saving aptitude's freed space result.  A week
> later, I might have a list of freed space values to sort.

Yes, unless you pre-sort the list of packages that you investigate to maximize
the chance of solving your issue with the least removals. Some local knowledge
would make this most efficient, say you run a predominantly GNOME/GTK desktop,
for example, but you have a small number (perhaps 1) of QT or KDE apps
installed, if you could spare them then such packages should be high up the
list.

> So this would have to be scripted to be useful

It would certainly be useful if this was scripted.


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Re: Cost of packages in disk space?

[Jon Dowland]

For simple per-package results, "dpigs" from debian-goodies gives you what you
want (and is little more than a one-liner similar to what was posted by another
to this thread, internally.)

As for cumulative space, what you want is not how much space a package takes up
but to answer the question: for a given set of package operations, what space
will be occupied/freed? In my experience, firing up aptitude, programming in 
the proposed change (removals or additions) and hitting 'go' once, gives you
the space changes that would result if you hit 'go' a second time.


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Re: OT: just falling back to fluxbox after Gnome3 mem-leak experince

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Feb 08, 2013 at 12:09:16PM -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> Indeed, but we're talking about 3GB of memory here, which seems hard to
> justify for such an application.

Sure, but my point was it's not a leak. Being memory inefficient is one thing.
Leaking memory is where, over time, it takes more and more memory because it
is not properly freeing up memory it has finished with. You need to sample
the memory usage more than once to establish that some is being lost to leaks.


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Re: OT - Convert output of byte count to GB count?

[Jon Dowland]

You could use GNU units. It appears to treat SI prefixes as strictly base 10,
so use the KiB/MiB etc. variants where applicable:

> $ units 8112116KiB MiB
>   * 7921.9883
>   / 0.00012623094

Something like

> …2>&1| awk '/transferred/' {print $1}'|while read i; do units "${i}bytes" 
> "GiB"; done

That will need playing around with.


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Re: OT: just falling back to fluxbox after Gnome3 mem-leak experince

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Feb 08, 2013 at 11:28:51AM +0100, Peter Viskup wrote:
> Hi all,
> just want to share my bad experience with Gnome3 in testing. They
> have/had some mem-leaks in there.
> 
> viskup@viskup:~$ uptime
>  11:10:57 up 16 days, 17:01, 10 users,  load average: 1.61, 1.34, 1.07

I'm not sure what this is supposed to demonstrate. Has gnome-shell been running
for 16 days?

> viskup@viskup:~$ awk '/Name|VmSize|VmPeak/' /proc/4186/status
> Name:   gnome-shell
> VmPeak:  3537456 kB
> VmSize:  3403068 kB

That doesn't show a memory leak. What was the memory usage at start-up?
For ref, my gnome-shell instance appears to have been running 8 days (odd,
I don't remember restarting it then) and is using 

awk '/Name|VmSize|VmPeak/' /proc/$(pidof gnome-shell)/status
Name:   gnome-shell
VmPeak:  1250636 kB
VmSize:  1190912 kB

> ii  gnome-shell  3.4.2-6   amd64 graphical shell for

I'm one version behind you.


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Re: copy current HDD setout on preseed

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Feb 06, 2013 at 02:40:18PM +0100, Frank Lanitz wrote:
> Depending on your goal you could create the layout and put it into kind
> of a image. Fastest way would be e.g. dd if=/dev/sda of=/foo/baa
> 
> At last as long as you are not writing, whats your goal ;)

OP mentioned preseeding. Can they perform an operation such as you suggest
from within a preseed configuration?


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Re: Gnome3 probe

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 08:30:24AM -0500, Rob Owens wrote:
> Cinnamon is actually in Sid right now.  I haven't tried it, so I don't
> know how well it works.

Thanks for the information. It still won't get into the next stable
release, but being officially packaged is likely to be in the one after
that.


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Re: Debian 7 wheezy should be released by now, don't u think?

[Jon Dowland]

On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 11:53:41AM +0100, Johan Grönqvist wrote:
> You can have a look at 
> 
> to see the number of release critical bugs. The release should wait
> until that number is zero.

Near zero. I don't think any release has waited until it was actually zero.


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Re: Network Manager icon not working well

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 12:50:36PM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > is there any service which monitors status of Ethernet and changes Network
> > manager's icon on gnome-control-panel?
> 
> Network Manager.

For GNOME3, nm does not draw the icon in the display, gnome-shell overrides it
and provides its own. I've had gnome-shell and nm fall out / lose d-bus
connection or something else more than once, and that may be a related problem
here.


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Re: Yast for debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 04:17:56PM +0500, Muhammad Yousuf Khan wrote:
> is there any tool equivalent to yast in Debian?

For those of us unfamiliar with what Yast is or does now, can you
explain the particular features you are looking for?


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Re: Gnome3 probe

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 11:35:59AM +0100, phi debian wrote:
> So my question, does next release of debian will be poluted with gnome3,
> are will we have a choice? Even a dangled gnome2 would be good for me.

GNOME2 will be gone, GNOME3 will be present, and the fallback mode has
been renamed "GNOME classic" and is available as a desktop session (that
is, you can select it from the login prompt). So, if you can customize
the fallback/classic mode to your tastes, which may involve writing or
using extensions, great. If not, you could consider one of the other
desktop environments in Debian, or you could use the 3rd party "MATE"
packages which are a fork of the GNOME2 codebase. There's some chance
that MATE will be officially packaged in Debian for the release after
next, but not for wheezy. Finally, there's another effort called
"Cinnamon" which tries to give a GNOME2-like experience on top of
GNOME3 technology, again that is not packaged officially for the next
release of Debian, but is available third party, and might be in the
release after next.


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Re: upgrade from Squeeze to Wheezy

[Jon Dowland]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 08:35:51PM -0500, Charles Kroeger wrote:
> hummm...I don't know but I care nothing for these code words squeeze wheezy 
> sid
> etc.  I prefer good 'ol stable testing unstable experimental.

They both serve their own purposes. The code names continue to point
at the same release, even when it changes from being testing to
stable, or stable to oldstable.

> Try these in your 'sources.list as well:
snip
> deb http://debian.lcs.mit.edu/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
> deb-src http://debian.lcs.mit.edu/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
> 
> deb http://debian.lcs.mit.edu/debian/ experimental main contrib non-free
> deb-src http://debian.lcs.mit.edu/debian/ experimental main contrib non-free

Dangerous unless you have also set up pinning properly.

> I would instead suggest to make or put into your /etc/apt/preferences file:
> 
> Package: debian-reference-fr  (en?)
> Pin: release a=unstable
> Pin-Priority: 500
> 
> Package: debian-reference-common
> Pin: release a=unstable
> Pin-Priority: 500

These particular pinning rules will not prevent unstable packages being
installed if you go for the above stanzes in the sources.list file.

> and in your /etc/apt/apt.conf file:
> 
> APT::Default-Release "unstable";

That will force the user to unstable. They want to use wheezy!

> Build-Essential "build-essential";
> Clean-Installed "true";
> Immediate-Configure "true";  // DO NOT turn this off, see the man page
> Force-LoopBreak "false"; // DO NOT turn this on, see the man page
> Install-Recommends "true";
> Install-Suggests "false";

These are all the default apt values. Why bother writing them out
in the config?

> Ignore-Hold "false";
> Cache-Start "20971520";
> Cache-Grow "1048576";
> Cache-Limit "0";
> Default-Release "";

I can't see the relevance of any of these for the problem at hand.


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Re: Problem With exim4 smtp authenication

[Jon Dowland]

Do either your username or password have a colon character in them?

Do you need to connect to a particular port on the remote SMTP server
in order to authenticate (e.g., some may accept authentication on the
default SMTP port, some might not - you may need to connect to the
submission port.)


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Re: Dying hard drive?

[Jon Dowland]

On Sat, Dec 01, 2012 at 08:04:52PM +1300, Chris Bannister wrote:
> Have a look at the /etc/inittab file.
> 
> I have:
> # less /etc/inittab
> [...]
> # What to do when CTRL-ALT-DEL is pressed.
> ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t1 -a -r now

I'm fairly sure that X eats CTRL-ALT-DEL and init doesn't get to see
those keypresses: so in X, CTRL-ALT-DEl does not trigger a shutdown.


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Re: which package has a binary like this sendmail one in exim?

[Jon Dowland]

Some interesting replies , many of which seem to have not read your message ;)

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 09:42:31AM -0900, Britton Kerin wrote:
> I know exim sometimes contains a sendmail binary because on one system I
> get this:
> 
>   britt...@brittonkerin.com [~]# sendmail --version
>   Exim version 4.76 #1 built 26-Oct-2012 16:41:54
snip
> But on my debian box (current stable distribution), there is no
> /usr/bin/sendmail binary even though I have exim installed.  There is a
> /usr/sbin/sendmail binary, but it doesn't seem to be the same one because:
snip
> Does anyone know what debian package provides the /usr/bin/sendmail program
> or its equivalent like on the first system described?

There are no packages providing /usr/bin/sendmail in Debian. However if you
were invoking 'sendmail' without a full path as root, you were probably
running /usr/sbin/sendmail. On which host did it result in the version
output? Could the owner of that host have built their own exim from source?

Next question: why do you want it? Although exim as /usr/sbin/sendmail does
not support --version, it does support most other sendmail flags, so it can
be used wherever you might have expected to use sendmail, as a user at least.
What are you trying to do?


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Re: which package has a binary like this sendmail one in exim?

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 09:40:18PM +0100, Cosme Domínguez Díaz wrote:
> El 28/11/12 19:42, Britton Kerin escribió:
> >Does anyone know what debian package provides the /usr/bin/sendmail program
  ^^^
> >or its equivalent like on the first system described?
> 
> http://packages.debian.org/search?suite=squeeze§ion=all&arch=any&;
> searchon=contents&keywords=%2Fusr%2Fsbin%2Fsendmail
  
Note 'bin' not 'sbin'. The answer, with adjusted search, is none.


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Re: help

[Jon Dowland]

Hi - 

 • I was not able to figure what you need help with from your mail
 • please use a descriptive subject when posting to this list
 • please do not send HTML to this list


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Re: how many users is enough? (was Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release)

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 11:00:07AM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Jon Dowland wrote:
> >On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 03:47:46PM +0100, Slavko wrote:
> >>Ubuntu leaves 93 % of packages untouched and changes/additions are done
> >>only to 7 % from them (statistic by some Ubuntu & Debian developer -
> >>sorry i have no link). Then Ubuntu has significantly less to do...
> >That's a flawed argument. It takes no notice of how big the changes in
> >those 7% of packages might be. And it does not consider packages which
> >do not exist in Debian.
> 
> That's an even more flawed argument.  We're talking about packaging,
> not development.

How do you draw a distinction? Lots of software in Debian and Ubuntu
carry lots and lots of patches on top of the code supplied by upstream.

Slavko's argument was that Ubuntu rides on the coattails of Debian,
but the cited statistic did not include enough information to draw
that conclusion.

> (Personally, I'm suspicious of software
> and changes that are distribution-specific.)

It's considered a good rule of thumb to deviate as little as possible and
submit deviations to upstream for inclusion where possible. But it's not
always possible.

> What that 7% statistic really suggests is some combination of:
> 
> a. Some of those packages are developed by folks who use Ubuntu, and
> don't get around to releasing a separate package for Debian (or
> nobody has stepped up to maintain a Debian package).  I expect this
> doesn't matter very much - just as most Debian packages work just
> fine under Ubuntu, I expect most Ubuntu packages would work just
> fine under Debian (haven't tried this, though).

Slavko phrased it as 'Ubuntu leaves 93 % of packages untouched', which
does not imply that packages only existing in Ubuntu and not Debian are
considered in that 7%.

> b. Some small percentage of Debian packages need to be "tweaked" to
> accommodate minor differences between the Ubuntu and Debian
> environments.

So 7% of packages are tweaked, but that says nothing about how big
the tweaks are, which was my point.

> Now where the number of users/contributors might really come into
> play is when it comes to maintaining/developing those aspects of
> Debian and Ubuntu that are unique to the respective distros (e.g.,
> their installers and package repositories).

One of the most important contributions one can make to Debian is to
find, diagnose, test and fix bugs. They can exist in any package in
the repository, not just those that are OS-specific, or particularly
heavily customized in each OS - and how well that process works is 
directly impacted by the number of users.


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Re: how many users is enough? (was Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release)

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 03:47:46PM +0100, Slavko wrote:
> Ubuntu leaves 93 % of packages untouched and changes/additions are done
> only to 7 % from them (statistic by some Ubuntu & Debian developer -
> sorry i have no link). Then Ubuntu has significantly less to do... 

That's a flawed argument. It takes no notice of how big the changes in
those 7% of packages might be. And it does not consider packages which
do not exist in Debian.


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Re: Dying hard drive?

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 02:50:39PM -0600, Nelson Green wrote:
> 197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   
> Always   -   12

I think this is bad.

> Num  Test_Description    Status  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  
> LBA_of_first_error
> # 1  Short offline   Completed: read failure   90%  2718 
> 529598095
> # 2  Short offline   Completed: read failure   90%  2718 
> 529598095
> # 3  Short offline   Completed: read failure   90%  2718 
> 529598095

Definitely bad. Time to get a new disk :)

> $ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb
...
> 197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   
> Always   -   0

example of healthy


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Re: shells (was Re: About standards Was: Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release)

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 03:43:00PM -0300, Beco wrote:
> I tried google, but without more keywords, "rc" was too little to search.

Good point, sorry.


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Re: How to prevent daemons from starting at boot after update?

[Jon Dowland]

One option would be to install and use systemd. Afaik with systemd,
one can use socket-based activation: that is, systemd listens on the
socket that your daemons will use and only starts those daemons if
something connects. You may need to manually configure that behaviour,
I don't know whether systemd in debian at present uses socket activation
for most daemons or not.


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Re: UEFI install

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 08:47:47PM +0100, Erwan David wrote:
> I got a new Lenovo T530, I added a SSD as second disk, and now have a
> win7, UEFI boot on MBR partitionned sdb disk.
> 
> I tried latest beta installer for wheezy (beta4), but it could not boot
> in UEFI mode
> 
> (I got a text menu writtent on the right of the screen, then after
> selecting an entry "Error, no suitable mode found", then reboot...)

Is that immediately? Do you get a prompt to choose graphical install
or text install (or rescue) first? If not, I guess the issue is grub2
failing to draw (it would appear d-i uses grub2 as part of its boot
chain nowadays. I'm installing Debian via d-i beta4 as I write,
incidentally, on a blank SSD. It's put a GPT table on and an EFI boot
partition, w/o there being another OS.)

> Is there a way for me to install a debian double boot without first
> reinstalling the windows ?

I'm sure we'll find a way :-)

> (and if someone knows what and how I could report the UEFI boot problems
> to the D-I team, i'd be glad to give them all info I can).

It's worth doing so, either mail to debian-boot@ or a bug report (but I
forget which package that should be filed against. Possibly
installation-reports?)


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Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 03:24:07PM +, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> And I'd *really* like to continue having stable software, and no release till
> it's ready.

I don't think those two things are incompatible with each other.

> One of the many things that I dislike about Ubuntu, is its habit of releasing 
> on time, and then ironing the bugs out afterwards.

Yes. That's not what I want.


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Re: sh (was Re: About standards Was: Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release)

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 03:11:54PM +, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> Thanks for the information, Jon.  I hadn't realised that!  I've merrily 
> carried on using "bash". :-/

Bash is a lot friendlier and better suited as a login or interactive
shell. The startup time is not so important for that situation.


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Re: shells (was Re: About standards Was: Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release)

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:17:50PM -0300, Beco wrote:
> Never heard of it. What is "rc"?

A shell. It's packaged in Debian, oddly enough in package 'rc'.
May I suggest you try "apt-cache show rc", or google?


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Re: Dying hard drive?

[Jon Dowland]

First and foremost, double check that your SATA cables are properly
secure.

Install smartctl and run smartctl -a /dev/$disk0 (where $disk0
is e.g. sda); check to see if any of the various SMART attributes
indicate a problem.

Run a short, then a long SMART self test

  smartctl -t short /dev/$disk0
  smartctl -t long  /dev/$disk0

Note that long tests take a LONG time, and you might be best leaving
it running and not using the disk much at the same time. It is an
online test, but it can be noisy.


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Re: sh (was Re: About standards Was: Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release)

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 02:29:15PM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> Does it really carry weight?

With sysvinit, which spawns a lot of sh instances, yes. With something like
systemd, no - it tries to solve the same problem in part by not spawning a
shell lots of times.


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shells (was Re: About standards Was: Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release)

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:53:30PM +0100, "Morel Bérenger" wrote:
> People can use other things than bash, I do not see the problem. And I
> think that someday I'll try zsh or csh. When I'll have the time :D

You should go really left-field and try rc! (but not for /bin/sh.)


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sh (was Re: About standards Was: Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release)

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 11:30:20AM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> Also very nice is the output of
> 
> $ ls -l /bin/sh
> 
> for Ubuntu it's not bash.

For modern Debian installations it's not bash either. Switching /bin/sh
to dash by default was done principally to make boot times quicker (dash
is smaller and faster to load than bash).

Are you actually running Debian, at the moment? I've seen a few statements
about you running Ubuntu, or Arch, or similar, and I often wonder why you are
posting to debian-user in that case… of course you may be using more than one,
in different places. Just curious.


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how many users is enough? (was Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release)

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:39:54AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > Let's welcome more (I assume we do want more users on our base, don't
> > we?
> 
> There needs to be a "critical mass"; but beyond that point, an
> increase in numbers is not necessarily beneficial.

Agreed for 'mere' users, but another factor is how many users become
useful contributors. A "conversion rate", if you will. And you can
compensate for a poor conversion rate, to a certain extent, by having
more users. I think we have a poor conversion rate in Debian, and not
enough contributors.


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Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 08:19:01PM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> The best solution for the "I must have the very latest, and I must have
> it now" crowd is to switch over to Ubuntu.  You can have it right, or
> you can have it now, but seldom can you have it "right now".

"I must have the very latest…" and predictable release times are not
the same thing.


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Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 05:33:40PM +1300, Chris Bannister wrote:
> IOW, is there a rush?

Perhaps not a "rush" but I'd *really* like to have a predictable release
schedule.


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Re: Mobile devices ... any of them still use Linux?

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 01:11:41PM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> It would be nice, if there would be the manpower to enable Linux installs on
> iThingies.

I've seen a proof-of-concept Linux running on (I think) a first gen
iPad, but I don't think it's got beyond the "cool this is possible"
stage.

> I won an iPad2 a long time ago and the hardware is amazing. As far as I know
> there's less hardware or no hardware that can compare with Apple hardware for
> tablet PCs.

It depends what you want to do with it, really, but Apple's build quality
is very good, yes.


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Re: how to encrypt/decrypt remote folder ?

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 10:52:44AM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> If I type "encfs vs" into Google I get:

Honestly, doing a basic google search and splurging the results
into a mailing list post helps nobody. If you don't have personal
experience of solving the problem, don't post.


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Re: systemd intermittent startup

[Jon Dowland]

Hi - please trim your quotes.

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 03:05:55PM +0100, "Morel Bérenger" wrote:
> If I am not wrong, there IS such a warning if you do the switch. At least,
> if you remove the package sysvinit (or whatever name) with aptitude, it
> will ask you to write an entire sentance which explain that you are
> breaking your system.

The 'systemd' package can be co-installed with your regular init without
any such warning, and you can optionally use it by specifying init=/bin/systemd
on your kernel command line (via GRUB2 or whatever bootloader you use).

The 'systemd-sysv' package 'Conflicts' and 'Replaces' sysvinit, which is
marked as an 'Essential' package. Installing systemd-sysv will provoke the
message you are talking about, and is not recommended except for very
advanced users. For those who want to use systemd, just install 'systemd'
and reconfigure your bootloader.
 


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Re: systemd intermittent startup

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 07:44:39AM -0500, Tom H wrote:
> The problem is that it's no longer possible for recent versions of
> udev to compile it without compiling systemd too.

The truth is a bit more complicated.  You can build just udev from the
systemd sources: "make udevd" rather than the default "make". The
developers have resisted requests to add another phony make target or
configure options to just build udev, arguing that "make udevd" works
just fine. However, I suspect it's more difficult to build all of the
udev components *and pick them out for an install* than it was before
they merged sources.

The Debian udev package is still from pre-merge and not built from
the systemd sources. I wonder what will happen post wheezy on that 
front…


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Re: Not OT: systemd intermittent startup

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 10:54:57AM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> why not warn people to use something that's known for issues only?

It isn't known for issues only. There's a lot of heat and noise about
problems with systemd, that is true, but a substantial amount of that
heat and noise is posts like the one of yours I complained about:
information-free.  The OP asked a support question about software you
don't use. Using systemd in Debian is not a default arrangement, so
the OP must have explicitly installed it and configured their system
to use it. You can then infer that they are reasonably well versed in
what it does, and that the OP is reasonably technically confident. In
fact I'd wager they knew a lot more about systemd than you do, since
they actually run it.

Sadly there's a self-reinforcing pattern on -user where a small group
of people post the majority of responses to queries. As the rate of
reply goes up, the value contained therein drops. The list as a whole
becomes less useful and hospitable to everyone else.

> Could you please answer this question of the OP:
> 
> On Mon, 2012-11-19 at 19:42 +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> > Can anyone here say they've achieved any sort of systemd joy, or am I
> > just asking for an ongoing world of hurt at the moment?

I use it and have had few problems.


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Re: systemd intermittent startup

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 03:07:54PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> Is this the best place for systemd assistance?

For systemd-in-Debian, most likely, yes.

> First, systemd worked.
> Now it hangs on bootup, with the following messages:

What has changed? Have you upgraded systemd or other packages? From what
version, to what version? (If you know / can figure it out)
`
> Looking at syslog, I get these sorts of red-colored entries (when
> viewed with vim):

Note that vim is colouring lines that match either 'error' or 'fail', so
there may be relevant log lines that are not being coloured. As far as I
can tell none of the lines you have provided are relevant. (But you are
running a name daemon - on purpose?)


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Re: systemd intermittent startup

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 09:07:17AM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-11-19 at 15:07 +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> > Is this the best place for systemd assistance?
> 
> The best place to get assistance are the insane people who try to force
> this into every Linux distribution, with LP leading the way.

Please do not waste anyone elses times except your own replying to questions
which you cannot answer (and indeed are hostile towards).


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Re: sid is not for newbies.

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 07:59:29AM -0800, Kelly Clowers wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 7:36 AM, Jon Dowland  wrote:
> > The trouble is that testing is very variable: pretty good from freeze 
> > onwards,
> > terrible immediately after freeze, etc. - not consistent.
> 
> Neither is Sid, it does the same thing.

It cleans up faster, but fair point: it does break at exactly the same times.


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Re: sid is not for newbies.

[Jon Dowland]

The trouble is that testing is very variable: pretty good from freeze onwards,
terrible immediately after freeze, etc. - not consistent.


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Re: vim

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 05:18:52AM -0800, james gray wrote:
> which vim
> /usr/bin/vim
> ls -l /usr/bin/vim
> lrwxrwxrwx -> etc/alternatives/vim
> ls -l etc/alternatives/vim
> lrwxrwxrwx -> /usr/bin/vim.basic

the name "/usr/bin/vim" is managed by the alternatives system (see
update-alternatives(8)) in order that the name can be used by more
than one Debian package, and so those packages can be co-installed.

So in my case:

$ update-alternatives --list vim
/usr/bin/vim.gnome

Slightly different results for the binary name 'vi':

$ update-alternatives --list vi
/usr/bin/elvisnox
/usr/bin/vim.gnome
/usr/bin/vim.tiny
$ readlink -f $(which vi)
/usr/bin/vim.gnome

> is there a for see able security issue coming from the programers view
> point , to have vim.basic with its file access as they are root root
> rwxr-xr-x.

No.

> can the end usr mutilate the file access and group of vim.basic and change
> to:
> 
> root admin rwxrwx---

The end-user couldn't, except by elevating to root via sudo or similar.
Why would you want to do this?


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Re: Gnome3 and Wheezy.

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 10:04:10PM +, GEOFF BAGLEY
wrote:
> I have poor eye-sight, and make much use of "CTRL shift +"
> to magnify that which I need to see, and "CTRL -" to
> reverse. This was not possible in many GNOME3 cases.

GNOME3 has an "accessibility" icon (silhouette of a human over
a circle) on the task bar (at the top), with a context menu
containing (amongst other bits and pieces) "Large text On/Off".
Did you find that? If so, did you try it, and how well did it
work?


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Re: A good GUI MUA? - Was: Gnome3 and Wheezy.

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 10:17:52AM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> I made less good experiences when using IMAP, e.g. thousands of mails
> once were loaded 2 times.

That sounds more likely to be a problem with your MUA than with the 
imapd.


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Re: The following packages will be REMOVED:

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 03:00:41PM -0500, Charles Kroeger wrote:
> So since I don't have 'aptitude or aptitude-common' installed, why is apt-get
> trying to remove all my non-free programs?
> 
> Does it need to remove the non-free stuff before it can upgrade ia32-libs
> ia32-libs-gtk?

I suspect what is happening is the transition from ia32-libs to multiarch, and
the non-free 3rd party packages have not been updated to work with the multiarch
way of doing things.


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OT - PCI vs external sound cards for professional audio (was Re: What professional PCIe audio cards do work with Linux?)

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 11:25:51AM -0500, Rob Owens wrote:
> I use an M-Audio Delta 1010LT on Debian Squeeze.

Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing!

I have an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 which I use for some very amateur
messing around. I occasionally hook an Alesis Micron up to it, both
MIDI and the headphone-out into the M-Audio's line-in.

I've read/heard some folks suggest that for "serious" audio work,
one should use an external sound "card" (e.g. via USB - such as the
old SB Extigy's), because all PCI cards suffer from some noise due
to their nature (close proximity to the HDD, signal interference on
the mainboard etc.) -- is this basically horseshit? I've never
noticed any such problems with the Audiophile nor with an SB Live!
PCI card, although I probably wouldn't notice some distortions as
I'm not a professional.  I did notice that the on-board sound chips
on both my desktop and successive laptops have had a lot of noise
on their inputs.


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Re: Visualization of directory tree of my machine

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 06:52:35AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I'm running Debian 6.0.5 with the default gnome desktop.
> The default file browser (Nautilus?) does not give the
> view/perspective I need.

If you are planning to upgrade to Wheezy, these are the steps
required for nautilus 3.4.2-1+build1:

1) If the sidebar is not showing, press F9 to show it.
2) Go to View → Sidebar → Tree

They may or may not work in 6.0.5/squeeze-era nautilus (2.x?)

They may or may not work in more recent nautilus versions,
which have recently gone through a feature purge:
http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2012/08/30/on-nautilus/


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Re: How to set display resolution manually?

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2012 at 06:26:02AM -0800, houkensjtu wrote:
> Basically I don't use any desktop system, instead I use the windows manager:
> ratpoison.  So unfortunately I don't have those utilities come with gnome...

The correct answer is probably then xrandr, a command-line tool.


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Re: How to detect what file was installed?

[Jon Dowland]

Karl's answer is very thorough for your other questions,

On Wed, Nov 07, 2012 at 02:25:52AM -0800, houkensjtu wrote:
> I know I can use the "which" command to detect where a executable file reside
> in, but how about all the other stuff? 

Take a look at "locate".


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Re: How to set display resolution manually?

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2012 at 05:37:06AM -0800, houkensjtu wrote:
> I installed debian-wheezy on my lenovo x121e laptop, and since it comes with
> a only 11.6 inch display, I plugged in a monitor through VGA port.
> Fortunately without any configuration I could got the same content display on
> both my laptop and the monitor I plugged. However the resolution are both
> 1366x768, which is not enough for my full HD monitor.
> 
> So I don't want fancy dual-display, I just want to fix the resolution on my
> monitor to become 1920x1080. How can I do it?

What desktop environment are you using?

With GNOME 3, 

System Settings → Displays

And what you set is re-used next time you attach the monitor.

(I have the x121e! It's a great laptop.)


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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Intel/AMD x86 CPU microcode update system in non-free

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 05, 2012 at 06:12:53PM -0200, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> Microcode updates will be applied immediately when the microcode
> packages are installed or updated: you don't have to reboot.  You will
> have to keep the packages installed, though: as explained above, the
> microcode updates have to be reapplied at every boot.
> 
> You can check which version of the microcode your processors are running
> by looking for "microcode" lines on /proc/cpuinfo.  This information is
> only available on recent kernels (such as the Wheezy kernel).

This did not appear to work for me automatically. I did not upgrade my kernel
in the same aptitude session.

Before: 

> $ grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo
> microcode : 0x1b

After installing intel-microcode and iucode-tool 0.8.3-1:

> $ grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo
> microcode : 0x1b

After some manual fiddling

> # iucode_tool --scan-system -vv
> iucode_tool: cpuid kernel driver unavailable, cannot scan system processor 
> signatures
> # modprobe cpuid
> # iucode_tool --scan-system -vv
> iucode_tool: trying to get CPUID information from /dev/cpu/0/cpuid
> iucode_tool: system has processor(s) with signature 0x000206a7
> iucode_tool: trying to get CPUID information from /dev/cpu/1/cpuid
> iucode_tool: trying to get CPUID information from /dev/cpu/2/cpuid
> iucode_tool: trying to get CPUID information from /dev/cpu/3/cpuid
> iucode_tool: checked the signature of 4 processor(s)
> $ grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo
> microcode : 0x28
> $ dpkg -S /boot/vmlinuz-$(uname -r)
> linux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amd64
> ii  udev   175-7amd64/dev/ and hotplug management daem

Shall I file a bug?


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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Intel/AMD x86 CPU microcode update system in non-free

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 05, 2012 at 06:23:40PM -0300, Dr Beco wrote:
> Hoping to add some 'reference', so we can compare actual microcode
> versions, I find myself with
> $ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep microcode
> microcode 0x1b
> ...

Slighly faster to type and run

$ grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo
microcode   : 0x1b

See  for some history.


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Re: Trojan Detected by Kaspersky in One Debian DVD

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 08:17:52PM -0400, Alan Feuerbacher wrote:
> A couple of weeks ago I downloaded to my Windows 7 machine 10 DVD
> iso files for debian-6.0.6-amd64. I have not yet installed Debian to
> this machine.
> 
> Last night Kaspersky anti-virus detected a Trojan in one of the files:
> 
> debian-6.0.6-amd64-DVD-7.iso\pool\main\n\nepenthes\nepenthes_0.2.2-6_amd64.deb\data.tar\.\usr\share\doc\nepenthes\README.VFS
> 
> The Trojan is called Trojan-Downloader.BAT.ftp.z
> 
> Is this a real Trojan? If so, why would it be there? If not, what is it?

This is a false positive: There is no trojan in the file README.VFS, but what's
interesting is that the package concerned (nepenthes, as John helpfully provided
a packaging link to) is a security tool related to trojans:

"versatile tool to collect malware by emulating widespread vulnerabilities"


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Re: screensaver occasionally stops running (squeeze, gnome)

[Jon Dowland]

Argh. I recall having similar problems. It might be the screensaver process
segfaulting. Is there anything useful in ~/.xsession-errors?


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Re: First attempt to use preseeding

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 07:23:27AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> Jon Dowland wrote:
> >On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 04:13:17PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >>It appears to me that my preseed.cfg file is not being read at all.
> >
> >OK. I don't know the nature of the problem you are trying to fix,
> 
> The nature of the problem is  that I have found *NO NONE NADA*
> complete explicit instructions of  what to do when handed THREE
> objects:
>  1. dedicated laptop capable of running Debian
>  2. Debian 6.0.5 DVD 1 of 8
>  3. a USB stick which may be partitioned and formatted as required
> on which can be placed a pressed.cfg.
> NOTE BENE: The word "network" does not appear in that description.

OK. I am not familiar with trying it this way. I've only done it by
fetching the preseed file over the web via url= passed
on the kernel command line to the installer.

> What I have found is incomplete and conflicting descriptions of
> portions of the procedure(s) required drawn from various Debian
> releases.

Yes. Me too.

> >but could
> >it be reproduced/triaged in a virtual machine? It might be much 
> >quicker/easier
> >to explore kicking off the installer in a VM, which you can interrupt/throw
> >away and start again very quickly.
> 
> Based on over 50 years of trouble shooting experience

Let's discount that from before personal computers or virtual machine
technology existed, shall we?

> I cannot see the benefit of adding a VM to the mix when the problem is lack
> of documentation.r

Agreed. I thought, from your first message, you were trying to debug a
bug in the installer, in which case a VM can be very useful. I've just
been doing pretty much exactly this earlier in the week, which is why
I replied to your message.

> When I wrote "Is there a "Preseeding for Newbies" page somewhere? ", I was
> indicating that I was new to Linux not that I did not have background to draw
> on.

I concur that the documentation, as it stands, sucks.


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Re: First attempt to use preseeding

[Jon Dowland]

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 04:13:17PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> It appears to me that my preseed.cfg file is not being read at all.

OK. I don't know the nature of the problem you are trying to fix, but could
it be reproduced/triaged in a virtual machine? It might be much quicker/easier
to explore kicking off the installer in a VM, which you can interrupt/throw
away and start again very quickly.


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Re: First attempt to use preseeding

[Jon Dowland]

In my experience, preseeding is pretty awkward. My advice: start
from scratch, try to guess the right thing to put in in order to 
answer the first couple of questions, try it. Did those questions
get answered?  Then add a few more for the next few questions.
Repeat.


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Re: 32bit binaries on 64bit system?

[Jon Dowland]

What libraries does your binary require? try using ldd to find out.
You may have missed a particular 32 bit library dependency. If you
are prepared to upgrade to wheezy, multiarch might make this a bit
easier.


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Re: raid

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 04:19:08PM +0200, steef wrote:
> hi all,
> 
> my youngest son gave me two hd's (1 terab. each) included a
> raid-array on ech hd 500 GB; *made by windows7*
> 
> how do i get rid of this array? mdadm tells me nothing up till now.

Use a partition tool such as gparted or cfdisk to change the types of
the partitions to something else, then you could reformat them as LVM
physical volumes, or ext4 or another filesystem as you see fit.

If you are not using the HDDs for anything else yet at all, I'd suggest
just erasing the entire partition table and putting new ones on. Any of
the above partitioning tools could do that.


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Re: code of conduct (was Re: Another OT: GRUB location on Dual-Boot with TWO hard drives)

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:53:59PM -0400, Wally Lepore wrote:
> I understand. Thank you for correcting my humbly mistake. Will comply.

You're welcome - and whilst I'm at it, welcome to the list! I hope you find it
useful.


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Re: OT: Various modethods accesing debian-user list

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 06:22:36PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> PS: Isn't there a sandbox list for such OT talk? We do have a lot of
> that discussions on that list and should continuing starting it here,
> but then take it to another list.

Well indeed, but you've selectively quoted an OT sentence from a more on-topic
mail.


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Re: Various modethods accesing debian-user list

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 10:23:54AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I am subscribed to debian-user@lists.debian.org in the normal
> fashion. Last weekend, for an unknown/unknowable reason, mail from
> all lists from lists.debian.org was interrupted. Also I was unable
> to connect to the archive page. Whatever the problem was, it is
> apparently resolved.
> 
> That got me looking for alternatives in case it recurs.

At the end of the day, if the list server is down, then even if you
can read the archives or submit posts via a gateway, they won't be
distributed to other subscribers until the list server is up again.
Take the opportunity to get some fresh air and an ice cream instead :)


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code of conduct (was Re: Another OT: GRUB location on Dual-Boot with TWO hard drives)

[Jon Dowland]

Hi Wally,

When communicating on a Debian mailing list, please direct your emails at the 
list
address and do not CC the participants explicitly. For this and other rules, 
please
see the Code of Conduct at 

Thanks


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Re: Wally Lepore

[Jon Dowland]

I for one am tired of reading OT threads about people's own mail filtering
failings. The mails you are receiving will have a proper List-Id header. If
your mailer cannot filter on them, then please fix your mailer or change it,
don't clog thie list with more irrelevance.


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Re: Number of Debian packages available.

[Jon Dowland]

This can be answered (by a developer) using UDD -
http://wiki.debian.org/UltimateDebianDatabase

The answer today is

udd=> select count(*),release from public.packages group by release;
 count  | release  
+--
  2 | wheezy-security
 272170 | wheezy
 189517 | squeeze
 298810 | sid
  13816 | squeeze-backports
   8712 | squeeze-security
  34908 | experimental
746 | wheezy-proposed-updates
372 | squeeze-updates
625 | squeeze-proposed-updates
(10 rows)

or source packages

udd=> select count(*),release from public.sources group by release;
 count | release  
---+--
 1 | wheezy-security
 17867 | wheezy
 14969 | squeeze
 18854 | sid
   599 | squeeze-backports
   207 | squeeze-security
  1007 | experimental
16 | wheezy-proposed-updates
 6 | squeeze-updates
 9 | squeeze-proposed-updates
(10 rows)


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Re: No such file or directory ...

[Jon Dowland]

The error "no such file or directory" could be a red-herring in some cases.
What is the filesystem and mount options for the drive upon which you've put
Java? (output of "mount", please)


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Re: Recurring email messages in IceDove and I'm feeling deja vu

[Jon Dowland]

Try rebuilding/repairing your INBOX and/or other effected folders. Right-click
on the folder in the left-hand pane, select 'Properties' and then "Repair
Folder".  This can happen when Thunderbird's cache gets out-of-sync from the
server and it cannot figure out how to get back in sync on it's own. I used to
get this quite a lot when using IMAP to access an Exchange mailbox (Exchange is
a notoriously poor IMAP server)


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Re: Perl: where is the command in system("command -v wget") documented?

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Oct 08, 2012 at 10:58:27PM +0100, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote:
> "command" is a shell built-in command - so you should find it in the
> documentation for your shell - e.g. "man sh" should get you to the
> right manual page. Exactly *which* shell this is, depends on your
> system, but it is most likely "bash" or "dash" which provides /bin/sh.

For this reason I'd shy away from relying on 'command' in a script where you
cannot guarantee the execution shell. 'which' is a suitable shell-agnostic
alternative.


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Re: devscripts:rc-alert: A patch for on the fly selection of curl or wget

[Jon Dowland]

Cool - you should probably send this to the devscripts devel team, though:
devscripts-de...@lists.alioth.debian.org


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Re: Fwd: Re: Security support for CMSes

[Jon Dowland]

On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 08:41:14PM +0200, Robert Pommrich wrote:
> Putting it back to the list where it came from.

It was already there. I'm not sure what you've done to your mail
configuration, but list mail is working fine: no need to forward
more copies to it.


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Re: Editing org.gnome.desktop.background in /etc/gdm3/greeter.settings doesn't change login wallpaper

[Jon Dowland]

Is /opt definitely mounted at the time gdm3 starts?


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Re: exim4 smtp server userid

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 03, 2012 at 10:13:34PM -0400, Marc Auslander wrote:
> I want to configure exim4 to use the same (google) smtp server with two 
> different userid's depending on the from address.  I can put the 
> appropriate tests into my c_smarthost string, but I don't know how to 
> specify the userid - passwd.client seems to tie a single userid to each 
> smtp host.
> 
> Any suggestions?

Can you alias two local hostnames to the google SMTP server in your /etc/hosts
file, use those two distinct aliases in passwd.client and then set the outgoing
server accordingly in your exim test?


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Re: openmotif 3

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Oct 01, 2012 at 09:25:16PM +0200, Dan wrote:
> I would like to run a program that requires libXm.so.3 but libmotif3
> has been replaced by libmotif4 and I can not find anywhere libXm.so.3.
> Any idea?

I have found that symlinking LibXm.so.3 to LibXm.so.4 works for some
legacy applications. It might be worth a try.


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Re: IA64 or AMD64?

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 01:35:49AM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> Maybe we could start some kind of petition for "Itanium" and
> "AMDINTL64".  I think these tell everyone at a glance what they need to
> know when selecting a port, and would completely eliminate the confusion.

Itanium will probably disappear as a supported release architecture sooner than
it would take to convince enough people it was worth renaming.


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Re: why would fdisk -l take so long?

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 01:23:59PM +0100, Dom wrote:
> It *is* possible that smartctl is mis-interpretting the status of
> your disk, but given your slow fdisk command I suspect not.
> 
> Time to backup, backup, backup, buy a new disk and transfer the data
> over asap.

YES to backup, but it's worth changing your SATA cable before investing
in a new disk, or at least ensuring your current one is seated properly.
Try to measure the *rate* that Hardware_ECC_Recovered is increasing over
a set period of time, check/replace cable, measure again.


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Re: Sound very *very* quiet on Debian.

[Jon Dowland]

Hi Conrad,

Please do not reply to an un-related post when you are writing
a new topic to a mailing list.  For clients that support threading,
the result is your discussion mixed up with the other one. This can
mean either confusion for people participating in the other thread,
or less exposure for your issue (as it could be hidden with the
unrelated topic).


Thanks


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Re: Looking for an emacs replacement

[Jon Dowland]

Are you using GNU emacs? Then how about Xemacs (formely Lucid emacs)?

or vice-versa.


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Re: Fwd: RE: /var/spool/mail ?

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 06:52:24AM -0400, Wolf Halton wrote:
> # echo "" > /var/spool/mail/root
> will replace the content of the file with an empty string

The smiley of death is better:

# :> /var/spool/mail/root


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Re: Decompressing .m4a .

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 04:14:00PM +0700, Sthu Deus wrote:
> Good time of the day.
> 
> 
> I can not decompress .m4a files w/ mplayer2:

Can you play it back with anything else? m4a implies an iTunes-style
AAC-encoded file. VLC should be able to decode it, plus anything linking
to libfaad, such as faad or audacious.


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Re: Installation

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 01:54:39PM +, Camaleón wrote:
> Okay, then please _describe in detail_ what's what you find that hard or 
> what is taking your time at the Windows OEM installation process.

But kindly not on this list.  This thread is increasingly becoming more and
more OT.

Thanks


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Re: EXIM in Debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 02:48:38PM -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> Third, I'm a bit puzzled by Jon's remarks quoted above.  Martin
> recommends using a single, aka monolothic configuration file.  Jon says
> "I disagree" but then suggests doing away with the debian framework.

Martin was replying to me. My message suggested moving away from Debian's
framework. Martin replied suggesting that instead of doing that, you should
move to a monolithic file, controlled by Debian's framework. I replied 
because I felt my point was missed: you can use split or monolithic with
the Debian framework or without.

> 2. Like 1, but use the monolithic config file.  It's not clear to if
> changes you make in debconf, or that the package might make on upgrade,
> will get integrated in to the monolithic file in this case.

They are.

> 3. Don't use the Debian config stuff, and the exim4-config package, at
> all and just write your own configuration file.  Presumably you'd borrow
> from an existing one.

In the recipe I gave, the existing one you'd be basing it on is the one
generated by the Debian framework: so incorporating all the specifics that
were generated from your answers to the debconf questions.


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Re: EXIM in Debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 07:10:18PM +0200, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> I think its better to configure exim4 for single configuration file by 
> whatever means is described in the wiki page Camaleón linked to, likely an
> 
> dpkg-reconfigure exim4something

We differ in our opinion.

In my opinion, for anything but the simplest of deployments, the
Debian packaging introduces more complexity than it hides from you.
If you have to modify an exim configuration file by hand, and need
to know exim syntax, then you might as well do away with the Debian
framework. It just adds another layer that you need to understand,
with its own foibles and problems.

I've been running exim on Debian for a long time and this was the best
piece of advice I was ever given on the matter.


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Re: EXIM in Debian

[Jon Dowland]

Do you need split configuration? Are you wedded to it? My advice would be to
copy /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated to /etc/exim4.conf, at which point the
Debian exim configuration is overridden, and just edit that one file instead.


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Re: Bug#687804: installation-reports: users are not able to review external documentation while stuck in the installer

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 07:58:36PM +0200, lee wrote:
> Jon Dowland  writes:
> 
> > The installer (in expert mode) supports an ssh client on an alternative
> > VT, afaik.  One can connect to another machine with stuff already
> > installed via this if necessary. Surely this is sufficient to address
> > the request.
> 
> It requires you to have a computer you can connect to, and it is exactly
> the need to have another working computer before installing Debian on
> one which I would like to see eliminated.

I see. Is this a genuine need, or a hypothetical one?  In my experience, the
kind of people who might desire a working environment during an install are the
types of "power" users likely to have a few machines lying around.  Personally,
I think you should just finish the install and use the machine you're
installing to. A perfect excuse to go and read a book for 10 minutes or so.

> Or can I connect to yours any time I might need to?  Can I put software on
> some storage media like a CD or DVD with that without having to come around
> to pick it up?

Of course you couldn't.

> In case I do have another working computer, I don't need ssh to connect to
> it.  It's easier for me to use it directly.

That rules out access to a remote server such as a VPS.


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Re: Bug#687804: installation-reports: users are not able to review external documentation while stuck in the installer

[Jon Dowland]

The installer (in expert mode) supports an ssh client on an alternative
VT, afaik.  One can connect to another machine with stuff already
installed via this if necessary. Surely this is sufficient to address
the request.


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Re: Storage server

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 12:20:55PM +0200, Veljko wrote:
> Can you please explain what design flaw is that? Isn't directory with
> complete backup (but not occupying that much space due to hard links
> usage) very usable for backup? If slow work can be avoided by the use of
> XFS, what would be wrong about rsnapshot?

Read my prior posts about it in this thread. It's fine for backup, the problem
is when you try to remove old snapshots, or perform a restore, or otherwise
manipulate the backup trees.

By comparison with a CPU-intensive program. It doesn't matter how fast your
CPU is, if your program is doing a busy-wait. It will consume 100% of whatever
CPU you throw at it. Program design is important.


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Re: Removing Pulseaudio with Gnome: volume control missing

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 09:58:16AM +0200, José Luis Segura Lucas wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> Recently I installed Debian on a new computer, and I want to avoid using
> Pulseaudio (it is problematic for me, and this is a long discussion on
> this and another lists about that).
> 
> I tried to uninstall it, and certainly, I have no problem: I have sound
> but I don't have any volume control on my Gnome. I know that the Gnome
> volume control relays on Pulseaudio, but is there any wait to get a
> volume control for Alsa on the Gnome panel?

http://packages.debian.org/sid/volumeicon-alsa would appear to do the
trick, but it sits in the status area, not your panel. (for GNOME 3
at least).


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Re: Storage server

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 08:03:43PM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> http://www.taobackup.com/

Yes indeed, great read.

Also this: http://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html

A single external drive, normally stored away from the server, would be enough
to have a backup that would survive the host going up in flames.


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Re: Storage server

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 05:44:46PM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> Which is why I recommend XFS.  It is exceptionally fast at traversing large
> btrees.  You'll need the 3.2 bpo kernel for Squeeze.  The old as dirt 2.6.32
> kernel doesn't contain any of the recent (last 3 years) metadata
> optimizations.

Yes. You are becoming a bit of a broken record on that front :)

I have not performed any such timings but I am willing to believe you that
XFS will be faster.  I'd still not recommend rsnapshot, because faster merely
mitigates the big design flaw, it does not remove it, and rdiff-backup is
virtually a drop-in replacement.


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Re: Storage server

[Jon Dowland]

Denis' answer is very good, I won't re-iterate his points.

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 01:26:48PM +0200, Veljko wrote:
> Thanks for your valuable input. So, in case I have to backup lot of
> small files and only some of them are changed I should go with
> rsnapshot. If there are big text files that changes through time, I
> should go with rdiff-backup.

Actually, lots and lots of small files is the worst use-case for rsnapshot, and
the reason I believe it should be avoided. It creates large hard-link trees and
with lots and lots of small files, the filesystem metadata for the trees can
consume more space than the files themselves. Also performing operations that
need to recurse over large link trees (such as simply removing an old
increment) can be very slow in that case.

> Would it be reasonable to use them both where appropriate or thats just
> unnecessary complexity? 

Sounds like unnecessary complexity to me.


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Re: Storage server

[Jon Dowland]

I would say that neither hardware nor software RAID are a replacement for
a working backup scheme.


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Re: Storage server

[Jon Dowland]

On Sat, Sep 08, 2012 at 09:51:05PM +0200, lee wrote:
> Some people have argued it's even better to use software raid than a
> hardware raid controller because software raid doesn't depend on
> particular controller cards that can fail and can be difficult to
> replace. Besides that, software raid is a lot cheaper.

You also get transferrable skills: you can use the same tooling on different
systems.  If you have a heterogeneous environment, you may have to learn a
totally different set of HW RAID tools for various bits and pieces, which
can be a pain.


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Re: Storage server

[Jon Dowland]

On Sat, Sep 08, 2012 at 06:49:45PM +0200, Veljko wrote:
>   a) backup (backup server for several dedicated (mainly) web servers).
>   It will contain incremental backups, so only first running will take a
>   lot of time, rsnapshot

Best avoid rsnapshot. Use (at least) rdiff-backup instead, which is nearly
a drop-in replacement (but scales); or consider something like bup or obnam
instead.

>   and will run from cron every day. Files that will be added later are
>   around 1-10 MB in size. I expect ~20 GB daily, but that number can
>   grow. Some files fill be deleted, other will be added.

If you want files to eventually be purged from backups avoid bup.


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Re: systemd

[Jon Dowland]

On Sun, Sep 09, 2012 at 09:12:35PM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> > > Lennart would not be able to easily push random crap to the kernel 
> > > upstream
> > > even if he tried to.  It is a very different situation from userland.
> > 
> > How so? Do you believe Redhat, Fedora etc. ship anything Lennart writes 
> > without
> > any kind of review? Do you think he has carte blanche as part of his 
> > employment
> > to do whatever he wants?
> 
> No.  And you are the one saying the above, not me.

I must be misinterpreting what you are saying. I believed you meant that Lennart
is able to push "random crap" into userland, whereas he is not capable of doing
so for the Kernel.  My counter-point was to indicate that the gateway to 
userland
was the distributions, and Lennart's userland contributions don't reach the 
users
without review from other human beings.

Which part did I get wrong?

> I also happen to have  zero tolerance to this kind of argument line.

Never assume malovence when incompetence adequately explains the situation.


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Re: systemd

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Sep 07, 2012 at 04:06:08PM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> Kernel patches from Lennart were properly reviewed, and accepted only after
> the maintainers and subsystem maintainers approved them as an acceptable
> solution for the general problem they were supposed to be addressing.
> 
> Lennart would not be able to easily push random crap to the kernel upstream
> even if he tried to.  It is a very different situation from userland.

How so? Do you believe Redhat, Fedora etc. ship anything Lennart writes without
any kind of review? Do you think he has carte blanche as part of his employment
to do whatever he wants?

He is a convenient scapegoat. It's absurd to avoid code he's written, and
reductio ad absurdum, it would be absurd to avoid the kernel.


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Re: systemd

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Sep 06, 2012 at 12:09:52PM -0300, francis picabia wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Ralf Mardorf
>  wrote:
> > In cases of doubt, I'm against using anythin coming from Lennart
> > Poettering.

Odd, I can't find Ralph's mail in my d-u archive, was it a private one?
Anyway, replying here rather than there since I can't find it.

If you are determined to avoid Lennart's code, you're going to have to
stop running the Linux kernel:

> commit ebec18a6d3aa1e7d84aab16225e87fd25170ec2b
> Author: Lennart Poettering 
> Date:   Fri Mar 23 15:01:54 2012 -0700
> 
> prctl: add PR_{SET,GET}_CHILD_SUBREAPER to allow simple process 
> supervision

and

> commit 52a85e17091d2fe9ade6a5d94063e70c5d2a9d5b
> Author: Lennart Poettering 
> Date:   Thu Jun 4 16:18:13 2009 -0300
> 
> V4L/DVB (11993): V4L/pwc - use usb_interface as parent, not usb_device

and don't worry, there are more, across many of the core kernel subsystems.


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Re: What Version To Install On iMac?

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Sep 07, 2012 at 02:04:04AM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> Interesting statement.  Squeeze (6) is still STABLE.  After Wheezy (7)
> is moved from TESTING to STABLE, Squeeze will be fully supported for at
> least 1 year.  Thus "deprecated soon" is not accurate, unless your
> definition of "soon" means 12 months or more.

Perhaps his definition of "deprecated" doesn't mean "supported"…


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Re: e2fsck errror: Error reading block (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read)

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 11:39:37PM +0700, Sthu Deus wrote:
> You have to understand: You have to connect it to the controller
> directly OR You can not use what the SMART offers to You. That simple.

This is not actually true. Yes, the majority of USB hard drives do not support
SMART, but some do. See
,
which tells me that lucky me, my WD Elements Desktop 2TB is supported.


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