Re: update-initramfs

[Marc Auslander]

On 4/10/2023 11:00 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Mon 10 Apr 2023 at 20:17:11 (-0400), Marc Auslander wrote:

I'm on Buster.

In /boot I keep a copy of the current working linux named by appending
-knowngood to the four files.  My idea is that if an update fails, I
have a recent working linux.  This is different from vmlinuz.old which
is the previous kernel version.  The updates in question are not to
the kernel but to initrd.image of course.

Suddenly, update-initramfs insists in trying to first update
initrd.-knowngood  which of course fails because there are no
underling file with that name.  This never happened in the past,
AFAIK. Once it fails it gives up.

There seems no way to force update-initramfs to update the right kernel.


Perhaps check that "all" hasn't been accidentally inserted:

   $ grep update /etc/initramfs-tools/update-initramfs.conf
   # Configuration file for update-initramfs(8)
   # update_initramfs [ yes | all | no ]
   # If set to all update-initramfs will update all initramfs
   # If set to no disables any update to initramfs beside kernel upgrade
   update_initramfs=yes
   $

A workaround: change the sort order of the backup initrd files
by adding an appropriate prefix, like backup-knowngood-…
so the "real" ones get updated first.

Cheers,
David.
thanks but that's the first thing I checked - it's yes, not all.  But my 
backup names contain the current version string.


I'm not sure about the sort order hack.  My goal is to have update-grub 
see the knowngood as a bootable linux and include it in the boot menu. 
That's also why .bak of initrd isn't good enough - I need a complete copy.

Re: update-initramfs

[Marc Auslander]

On 4/11/2023 9:30 AM, zithro wrote:

On 11 Apr 2023 02:17, Marc Auslander wrote:

I'm on Buster.

In /boot I keep a copy of the current working linux named by appending 
-knowngood to the four files.  My idea is that if an update fails, I 
have a recent working linux.  This is different from vmlinuz.old which 
is the previous kernel version.  The updates in question are not to 
the kernel but to initrd.image of course.


In addition to what David wrote, why are you not using the backup
facility of initramfs instead of doing it manually ?

$ cat /etc/initramfs-tools/update-initramfs.conf
[...]
#
# backup_initramfs [ yes | no ]
#
# Default is no
# If set to no leaves no .bak backup files.

backup_initramfs=yes
[...]



Suddenly, update-initramfs insists in trying to first update
initrd.-knowngood  which of course fails because there are no 
underling file with that name.  This never happened in the past, 
AFAIK. Once it fails it gives up.


There seems no way to force update-initramfs to update the right kernel.

Ideas?



RTFM ? :)

The solution is in "man update-initramfs" :
update-initramfs -c -k $KERNEL_VERSION

-c creates a new initramfs
-k specifies the version of the kernel
This breaks when package update tries to update-initramfs.  My copies 
have the kernel version in their names - with -knowngood appended.

update-initramfs

[Marc Auslander]

I'm on Buster.

In /boot I keep a copy of the current working linux named by appending 
-knowngood to the four files.  My idea is that if an update fails, I 
have a recent working linux.  This is different from vmlinuz.old which 
is the previous kernel version.  The updates in question are not to the 
kernel but to initrd.image of course.


Suddenly, update-initramfs insists in trying to first update
initrd.-knowngood  which of course fails because there are no 
underling file with that name.  This never happened in the past, AFAIK. 
Once it fails it gives up.


There seems no way to force update-initramfs to update the right kernel.

Ideas?

Re: exim4 smarthost selection based on sender

[Marc Auslander]

On 11/27/2022 12:20 PM, Gregory Seidman wrote:

I send email from several email addresses. I pay for an email service for
both sending and receiving email, but I pull it down locally (via POP with
fetchmail) and send messages from my Debian server with mutt. All of those
email addresses wind up forwarding to the address with the paid service,
but I neither send nor receive messages directly with that email address.
One of the addresses I send from is hosted by Google, and therefore when I
send from that address through my paid service (which is how exim4 is
configured, using it as a smarthost) recipients usually see a warning about
the message being unverified or suspicious. This is presumably because of
DKIM or something.

What I'd like to do is configure exim4 as it is for most outgoing mail, but
to use GMail as the smarthost when the sender is that one particular email
address. Can someone guide me or give me a hint, please?

--Gregory

I used a simple solution:

dc_smarthost='"${if 
match{${lc:$header_from:}}{.*xxx.org}{smtp.xxx.net::587}{${if 
match{${lc:$header_subject:}}{SSS}{mail.SSS.net}{smtp.googlemail.com::587"'


Note you can test for any header.

linux-image-4.19.0-22-amd64

[Marc Auslander]

linux-image-amd64 wants linux-image-4.19.0-22-amd64 but only
linux-image-4.19.0-22-amd64-unsigned show up in a search.

Re: Ethernet Performance Problem Solved

[Marc Auslander]

On 9/6/2022 5:00 PM, Marc Auslander wrote:
I have an Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express 
Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02) Subsystem: Acer Incorporated 
[ALI] RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller


There is also a Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8161 (rev 15)
     Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8168 100BaseT not 
being used.


lspci -v says the driver is R8169 for both.

firmware-realtek is installed and does not appear to provide R8169 but 
I'm a novice about these things.


The cable leading to the debian computer, when connected to a different 
computer, runs at almost 1000 Mb according to iperf3.


When talking to Debian Buster it runs about 100Mb give or take.

ethtool says its running Speed: 1000Mb/s Duplex: Full

I just noticed this - in the past it ran at 1000Mb/s rates. It may have 
happened when I recently went from squeeze to buster, but I can't be 
sure of that.


Any suggestion on how to proceed.


I have used iptables to go dark to probes of my machine.  I had about 
10,000 entries. Apparently, now that is is deprecated, it's gotten a 
whole lot lest efficient in Buster.  Clearing the iptables made the 
issue go away.  Now to figure out nftables.

Re: A correct version follows. Ethernet Performance Problem

[Marc Auslander]

Please ignore this - a correct description follows.
On 9/6/2022 4:30 PM, Marc Auslander wrote:
I have an Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express 
Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)


lsmod says the driver is Realtek. firmware-realtek is installed

The cable leading to it, when connected to a different computer, runs at 
almost 1000 Mb according to iperf3.


When taking to Debian Buster it runs about 100Mb give or take.

ethtool says its running Speed: 1000Mb/s Duplex: Full

I just noticed this - in the past it ran at 1000Mb/s rates.  It may have 
happened when I recently went from squeeze to buster, but I can't be 
sure of that.


Any suggestion on how to proceed.

Ethernet Performance Problem

[Marc Auslander]

I have an Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express 
Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02) Subsystem: Acer Incorporated 
[ALI] RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller


There is also a Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8161 (rev 15)
    Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8168 100BaseT not 
being used.


lspci -v says the driver is R8169 for both.

firmware-realtek is installed and does not appear to provide R8169 but 
I'm a novice about these things.


The cable leading to the debian computer, when connected to a different 
computer, runs at almost 1000 Mb according to iperf3.


When talking to Debian Buster it runs about 100Mb give or take.

ethtool says its running Speed: 1000Mb/s Duplex: Full

I just noticed this - in the past it ran at 1000Mb/s rates. It may have 
happened when I recently went from squeeze to buster, but I can't be 
sure of that.


Any suggestion on how to proceed.

Ethernet Performance Problem

[Marc Auslander]

I have an Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express 
Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)


lsmod says the driver is Realtek. firmware-realtek is installed

The cable leading to it, when connected to a different computer, runs at 
almost 1000 Mb according to iperf3.


When taking to Debian Buster it runs about 100Mb give or take.

ethtool says its running Speed: 1000Mb/s Duplex: Full

I just noticed this - in the past it ran at 1000Mb/s rates.  It may have 
happened when I recently went from squeeze to buster, but I can't be 
sure of that.


Any suggestion on how to proceed.

Re: file born 30 seconds after its creation on ext4 - bug?

[Marc Auslander]

On 4/29/2022 10:20 AM, duh wrote:


On 4/27/22 11:05 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:




Having skimmed over a number of the replies, and really not being
qualified, may I just

toss out a probably useless ideas to use the "sync" command. Looking at
the 'man sync'

shows at the bottom several variants or whatever to sync. Just a thought
since when does

the data get transferred to the disk versus just being held in memory or
whatever?

This is probably just a useless tangent based on my ignorance, but once
in awhile it is possible

to discover something when falls into a hole.


sync isn't about this.  linux caches file system pages in memory - both 
content and metadata.  sync is about forcing the changed pages back to 
disk, for example before shutting down.  It's done automatically - maybe 
every 30 seconds (I'm not sure about linux on this).  But sync does not 
change what programs see unless they use a direct to disk read, which is 
certainly not what's going on here.

Re: random usernames in attempts to break in to my machine?

[Marc Auslander]

On 4/5/2022 3:30 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:


You gotta be careful: kicking out an IP for just one login failure
might shut *you* out because you forgot to ssh-add your key (or because
you mistyped your password once). OTOH, if "they" keep changing their
IP address for each retry, you wouldn't catch them otherwise. So it
is a fine line to walk. You might try to trigger on more specific
patterns, which means you'll have to adapt your recognisers, yadda,
yadda.

Take care & don't forget having fun. That's what computers are for,
after all.



I run a homebrew version of this idea to kill probes to my ssh server. 
And I realized the danger stated above.  So my server also reads email 
to an account just for it and I have a special subject line that causes 
it to clear the iptables - just in case.  Since I don't have a fixed IP, 
there is another special subject line that causes it to email the 
current ip to my email account.  All this so I can tunnel through the 
server when I travel.

Google smtp and pop

[Marc Auslander]

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?

Re: what is flooding /var/tmp?

[Marc Auslander]

On 11/24/2021 10:40 PM, sp...@caiway.net wrote:

Hello,

My /var/tmp directory gets flooded by big files named:

sort01ei1t
sort01Eq7u
sort01sLAs
...
sortzZZtvv


the files are approx. 13 Gb each.
In 24 hours > 6000 are written.

My big partition is filled by it until the system freezes.

The files are plain text files, containing sshfs paths:

/mnt/nas/sshfs/proc/self/task/413551/root/proc/self/task/413551/root/proc/self/task/413551/root/proc/self/task/413551/root/proc/
.

nas and desktop are running debian 11 daily updated.

How can I find out which program is writing these files?

Thanks!

You might look at file creation time and look in /var/log/syslog to see 
what CRON job is running when they are created.

Re: Memory allocation failed during fsck of large EXT4 filesystem

[Marc Auslander]

On 7/5/2021 4:30 AM, Reiner Buehl wrote:

Hi all,

I have a corrupt EXT4 filesystem where fsck.ext4 fails with the error 
message:


Error storing directory block information (inode=366740508, block=0, 
num=406081): Memory allocation failed


/dev/vg_data/lv_mpg: * FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *
e2fsck: aborted

/dev/vg_data/lv_mpg: * FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *

The system has 4GB of memory and a 8GB swap partition. The filesystem 
has 7TB. Is there a quick way to enlarge the swap space to help 
fsck.ext4 to finish the repair? I do not have any unused partitions but 
have space for swap on other filesystems if that is possible.
Are you sure it's not a ulimit issue?  Does the ulimit command return 
unlimited?

Re: Unexplained freezes and crashes, nothing in /var/log/messages

[Marc Auslander]

On 6/3/2021 10:20 AM, Ottavio Caruso wrote:

On 03/06/2021 09:09, Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote:
I check the temperature regularly with sensors and it's usually between 
42 and 52 C.



Problem is I can't check the temperature while it's freezing.


You might run a background job that keeps writing the sensors to a file, 
say every 5 minutes, although a really don't know how quickly the 
temperature can change.


That said, this sounds like a long shot to me.

Re: Thunderbird: how can I set permanent custom headers?

[Marc Auslander]

Ottavio Caruso  writes:

>Hi,
>
>For the lack of a dedicated Thunderbird mailing list, I am forced to
>ask here.
>
...

try alt.comp.software.thunderbird

Re: Creating my first LAN

[Marc Auslander]

Anssi Saari  writes:

>Brian  writes:
>
...
>>
>> Now - could I use this non-internet-capable router as a switch?
>
>Probably. Usually LAN ports on a router are setup as a switch. The
>router may have a DHCP server running though which you may want to
>disable.
In my experiance, you should put the router into access point mode,
connect your lan to the wan port, and then use the lan ports as
additional ports.  Some routers get confused when they think they are
routing even though they can't reach the wan.  And remember to turn off
WiFi unless it is far from your primary router and you want to extend
your WiFi network.

Also, make sure you set the IP address of the router to one on your lan
that's not in use and not in the DHCP range of your primary router.  I
normally use .2 for this purpose.

Re: SOLVED - Re: Deb10 installer can't install grub

[Marc Auslander]

On 3/3/2021 6:30 AM, Dave Sherohman wrote:



Based on this, I'm guessing that the original problem was that the
installer forgot to include mdadm support in its grub options, even
though it was configured with an mdadm boot device.  And then I missed a
couple steps after adding mdadm support, so it didn't all get installed
to the EFI partitions correctly.



One potential gotcha.  When you boot from an mdadm file system 
containing /boot/grub, grub will not write to the file system.  In 
particular, it will not update grub/grubenv even if you have a save_env 
line in grub.cfg.  So if you use grub-reboot to specify an alternate 
line in grub.cfg, you need to reset grubenv afterwards.  I do this in a 
root @reboot cron job.


If you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably don't need to 
worry about this.

Re: identifying my LInux machine on my LAN

[Marc Auslander]

Paul Scott  writes:

>
>ssh and Bitvise still fail t o connect
>
>Paul
/var/log/auth.log may show what's happening if the request gets that far.

Re: Raid 1

[Marc Auslander]

Andy Smith  writes:
>...
>So personally I would just do the install of Debian with both disks
>inside the machine, manual partitioning, create a single partition
>big enough for your OS on the first disk and then another one the
>same on the second disk. Mark them as RAID members, set them to
>RAID-1, install on that.
>...

You don't say if this is or will become a secure boot system, which
would require an EFI partition.  Leaving a bit of space just in case
seems a good idea.

Re: Add a hard drive to existing system??

[Marc Auslander]

Jerry Mellon  writes:

>Hello,
>New to Debian, but have gotten Debian 10.7 loaded on to my system. I
>have an ASUS gaming laptop(dont use it for gaming) with 12gb of memory
>and intel corei7 and a 500gb hard drive.
>
>My question is what is the best(use dummy for linus statements please)
>way to add a second hard drive with 2T of space. I wiil use this to
>store photos and documents etc.
>
>Thanks

A possible alternative is to see if your router supports storage, and if
not consider an upgrade.  Many modern routers support an attached disk
and provide network storage. Of course a major advantage of this is that
you will be able to carry the laptop around and maintain access to the
storage. An issue is that the storage will probably be Windows
formatted, and thus you will have to deal with incompatible meta
data. And you will have to configure debian access to a windows share.
To be honest, I've never tried this.  My linux sever is the NAS and
windows machines access it.

I think creating a linux nas may be too much for you, at least for now. 

Re: mdadm usage

[Marc Auslander]

Reco  writes:
>
>And what purpose would it serve? IMO it's not a backup unless it's
>stored in a way that's inaccessible to the system its taken from (until
>it's actually needed of course).
>
>Reco
IMHO, there are two levels of backup.  The more common use is to undo
user error - deleting the wrong thing or changing something and wanting
to back out.  For that, backups on the same system are the most
convenient.  And if its on the same system, and you have raid1, you
don't need a separate physical drive.

The second is of course disaster recovery, a very low probability
event - and I backup in the cloud and occasionally on removable media
for that.

Re: mdadm usage

[Marc Auslander]

Andrei POPESCU  writes:
>
>Automatic mirroring / synchronizing is unsuitable for backups, because 
>it will also sync accidental changes to files (including deletions) or 
>filesystem corruptions in case of power outage or system crash (that may 
>lead to corrupted files or entire directories "disappearing").
>
...

BUT - once you have hardware reliable storage (raid1) you can do backups
into the same disks you are backing up!

Re: Boot process hangs at, it seems, network initialisation

[Marc Auslander]

On 3/22/2020 10:50 AM, Brad Rogers wrote:

Hello,

For the first time, I'm having problems installing Debian testing on new
hardware;

Asus TUF X570 Plus mobo with onboard Realtek network L8200A i/f

As things stand, it /seems/ that the boot process is waiting for the
network interface to come up, before proceeding to start the SDDM log in
manager.  Switching to tty2 and logging in would appear to bear this
out, as attempting to ping anything other than LAN machinery results in
'No route to host' reports.

The package firmware-realtek from testing has been installed.

The OS was installed using a net-install CD, so clearly, the network
card is working.  Having never previously encountered network i/f issues
myself, I'm really rather at a loss as to how I should proceed.


/etc/network/interfaces reads (comments & empty lines omitted);

source /etc/networks/interfaces.d/*
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback


/etc/networks/interfaces.d/ is an empty directory.

For the sake of full disclosure, I see this;

[FAILED] Failed to start NVIDIA Persistence Daemon

during the boot process.  I suspect it has little bearing on the issue
I'm experiencing, but mention it 'just in case'.

My $SEARCH foo has turned up nothing recent, only stuff from 2002, 2009
or thereabouts.

IDK how to proceed.  Ideas and pointers (even moral support) sought and
welcomed.

Thank you.


Could it be https://wiki.debian.org/BoottimeEntropyStarvation

(I tried to post this elsewhere - if it works forgive the double post)

Re: Sudden “operation not permitted”

[Marc Auslander]

David Christensen  writes:

>On 4/16/19 11:25 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:
>> (Apologies if this mail comes through poorly formatted for the list; my
>> main machine is unavailable due to this problem and I’m writing on an
>> iPad...)
>>
>> Running Stretch on a circa-2009 self-built machine which has run happily
>> without serious issues since it was built, apart from the odd annoyance
>> with Bluetooth audio which the list has already had the pleasure of hearing
>> about.
>>
>> This morning I unlocked it before leaving home, and noticed that load was
>> fairly constant at about 1.0 when it should have been at 0 as the machine
>> should have been idle. I listed processes with top and noticed that upowerd
>> was taking up a whole CPU to itself. Normally I wouldn’t notice this daemon
>> doing its thing.
>>
>> Google turned up nothing relevant.
>>
>> I decided to try a reboot, which cleared the upowerd problem and returned
>> load to 0 or close to it. But now, network activity is not working. Any
>> attempt to ping an IP address (eg my router) results in “Operation not
>> permitted” even when run as root. Attempt to access any web page results in
>> failing to find the site. Attempting to ping a text domain (eg
>> www.google.com) results in an error message (instantly) saying could not
>> resolve...
>>
>> It seems like networking is bejiggered suddenly on this machine. I did not
>> install updates before rebooting, last time updates were installed was
>> Sunday, and all has been well since then until this morning, although I did
>> not reboot during that period until this morning. The machine is attached
>> to my network via an Ethernet cable running to a WiFi+wired router. That is
>> obviously working as the machine was able to get an IP address by DHCP
>> after the reboot (ip route after reboot showed IP address correctly
>> assigned) but unable to resolve any address and unable to ping an IP
>> address of the form 192.168.xx.yy with the “Operation not permitted” error.
>>
>> All the pinging I’ve been trying worked without issues before this problem
>> occurred, both as root and as an unprivileged user.
>>
>> Looking through the journalctl since my reboot, I do not see anything that
>> obviously points to the problem. Network Manager seems to start OK, as far
>> as I can tell. I don’t see any significant errors except postgreSQL failing
>> to start, which is normal and I don’t use it. The first sign of trouble (to
>> my eye, anyway) in the boot log is when services that want the network eg
>> ntp start trying to interact with it, and failing.
>>
>> A second reboot produced exactly the same result. Other devices on my
>> network are working fine.
>>
>> Putting the upowerd behavior together with the suddenness of this problem,
>> I’m very afraid that this isn’t really permissions and is in fact some sort
>> of hardware issue — the machine is 10 years old, was built by me, and has
>> been in continuous use since it was built... Any suggestions for what I can
>> do to diagnose?
>>
>> Thanks in advance
>>
>> Mark
>
>If you updated/ upgraded but did not reboot, then there could be a
>problem with one or more upgrades.  (I try to reboot immediately after
>upgrading to avoid delayed surprises.)
>
>
>I would pull the system drive, put it into a second machine, boot it,
>and see if the problems persist.  I would also run the system drive
>manufacturer's diagnostic tool and test the system drive.
>
>
>While testing the system drive in another machine, I would test the
>first machine -- e.g. verify all cables fully seated, test the power
>supply with a hardware tester, run any motherboard firmware
>diagnostics, run software memory diagnostics, etc..
>
>
>David

Wouldn't it make more sense to boot a rescue CD and see if the hardware
works - specifically the networking?

Re: ssh trouble

[Marc Auslander]

Glenn English wrote:

4 boxes on the same network; an RPi3 running Raspian Stretch, a laptop
and a desktop running Buster, and a Cisco router running IOS 12.4
(note upper case 'I' :-).

I have an expect script to get into the router. It's the same on all the hosts.

The problem is that the RPi and the desktop get

"Unable to negotiate with 216.17.134.201 port 22: no matching key
exchange method found. Their offer: diffie-hellman-group1-sha1"

from the router -- diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 is listed as one of the
encryption types available from my SSH programs.

And from expect:

send: spawn id exp4 not open
 while executing
"send "\r""
 (file "./lir.sh" line 14)

On the laptop it works fine -- that says to me that there's nothing
wrong with the router. It worked on the others a couple days ago.

I've tried to get into the router by entering commands by hand, and I
get the same response.

I purged everything that looked like it had anything to do with ssh
(except some that were major dependencies for other things) from the
desktop and reinstalled and configured the packages. Also removed the
.debs from apt/archives. Exactly the same response.

And I SSH around between the hosts with no trouble. That says there's
nothing wrong with SSH. But something is, somewhere.

Anybody run into anything like this before?
 

Newer versions of ssh deprecate diffie-hellman-group1-sha1
Putting KexAlgorithms +diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 in config for the host 
works for me.  There is also a way to do it on the ssh command line.

Re: why is the kernel "unsleeping" a HDD put to sleep with hdparm -Y ?

[Marc Auslander]

Zenaan Harkness  writes:

>So I have a 'spare' internal spinning rust bucket which I only use
>for backups, and so most of the time when I'm not using it I put it
>to sleep with:
>
>sudo hdparm -Y /dev/sda
>
>Unfortunately the kernel wakes the drive up again:
>
>Aug 27 19:44:40 eye kernel: ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 
>action 0x6
>Aug 27 19:44:40 eye kernel: ata1.00: waking up from sleep
>Aug 27 19:44:40 eye kernel: ata1: hard resetting link
>Aug 27 19:44:41 eye kernel: ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 
>300)
>Aug 27 19:44:41 eye kernel: ata1.00: ACPI cmd ef/02:00:00:00:00:a0 (SET 
>FEATURES) succeeded
>Aug 27 19:44:41 eye kernel: ata1.00: ACPI cmd f5/00:00:00:00:00:a0 (SECURITY 
>FREEZE LOCK) filtered out
>Aug 27 19:44:41 eye kernel: ata1.00: ACPI cmd ef/10:03:00:00:00:a0 (SET 
>FEATURES) filtered out
>Aug 27 19:44:43 eye kernel: ata1.00: ACPI cmd ef/02:00:00:00:00:a0 (SET 
>FEATURES) succeeded
>Aug 27 19:44:43 eye kernel: ata1.00: ACPI cmd f5/00:00:00:00:00:a0 (SECURITY 
>FREEZE LOCK) filtered out
>Aug 27 19:44:43 eye kernel: ata1.00: ACPI cmd ef/10:03:00:00:00:a0 (SET 
>FEATURES) filtered out
>Aug 27 19:44:43 eye kernel: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
>Aug 27 19:44:43 eye kernel: ata1: EH complete
>
>Why is the kernel doing this, and how do I stop it from happening?
>
>TIA,

I do a similar thing but use hdparm -y.  I never see the drive spin back
up.

I would look in the log for a cron job related to the drive comming back up.

Re: Add kernel parameter to specific kernel using grub?

[Marc Auslander]

Boyan Penkov  writes:

>Hello folks,
>
>Let's say I have two kernels -- the default that's maintained by the
>distro, and one that I'm playing with that I compile from source to
>get dpkgs. Call the distro one linux4.4 and "mine" -- linux4.16 (for
>reference, all this is playing out on an ubuntu system...not sure if
>that will garner me some eyerolls ;) ).
>
>I'm using 4.16 to test the effects of BFQ, and 4.4 because I need a
>fallback. With that in mind, I'd like to pass the kernel parameter
>"elevator=bfq" to 4.16 ONLY (and not 4.4).
>
>Does anybody know where to look to add this to /etc/default/grub.cfg
>without passing the parameter to all kernels that are then found after
>grub-mkconfig (which will inevitably run after a few instances of sudo
>apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade)?
>
>Cheers!
what i know works is to put a custom menu definition in /etc/grub.d
which then gets including in grub.cfg.  You can copy one from grub.cfg
and modify it. it goes in 01-vmlinuz or 40_custom depending on where you
want them in grub.cfg.

Re: How to use a particular kernel for only one boot

[Marc Auslander]

Roberto C. Sánchez  writes:

>On Tue, Mar 06, 2018 at 07:35:37PM +, John wrote:
>> I am still looking for a clean way to upgrade my Debian box.
>> 
>> Background is that the m/c is the interface to the world from the LAN,
>> runs headless, and is fairly difficult to access physically.  My
>> attempt to upgrade from Whezzy to Jessie broke as it would not
>> run/load the 3.16.0-4-amd64 kernel, and after a painful period I
>> managed to get Jessie running with the Whezzy 3.2.0-4-amd64 kernel.  I
>> have uploaded the 3.16.0-5-amd64.  What I would like would be to try a
>> boot into the new kernel, but if that fails for the next and
>> subsequent boots to be to the (working) Whezzy kernel.  I think I
>> heard once that there was such a mechanism but  have not found it.
>> BTW it is running grub.
>> 
>grub-reboot (8)  - set the default boot entry for GRUB, for the next
>boot only
>
>Regards,
>
>-Roberto
A caveat - if your boot directory is in a raid parition grub will not
reset the boot environment - it knows how to read but not write raid
partitions.

If you boot successfully you can reset it yourself - but if the boot fails
you will be stuck.

Re: Using apcupsd for power failure controle

[Marc Auslander]

(Was Were is gapcmon?)
>> 
>> I've always use apcupsd which still works in stretch.  My use is pretty
>> trivial - just reports - I don't do anything automatic on power fail
>> since I can't figure out how to do anything that will always wind up
>> with my machine running when the power comes back!
>
>I think you can usually set the power-on behaviour in the BIOS (or EFI,
>presumably) - independently of the OS or any shutdown process.
>
>Richard

So here's the issue - maybe I'm missing something.

If I configure apcupsd to shutdown on power fail and the power really
stays off till the apc unit shut down, my machine will reboot on power
up.  But what if the power comes back once the daemon has started the
shutdown?

What is needed is a guaranteed power cycle from the apc unit - which
AFAIK is not an option.

So I just use the apc to cover short outages and prevent power bouncing
which I know from experience can cause damage.  When the battery goes
flat I get a hard powerfail shutdown which modern linux tollerates quite
well - yeah for journaled file systems.

Marc Auslander

Re: printer with static ip address inaccessible from lan

[Marc Auslander]

I don't think you can talk to a 192.168.1.xxx ip address from a machine that 
thinks
it's on a 192.168.2/24 network - you machine will just try to route the
traffic through your router.

I might try to change the netmask on the router to 255.255.0.0 which
would put the 192.168.1.xxx into your local lan.  You'll need to restart
you client machine afterwards, assuming it uses DHCP from the router.

Alternately, as has been suggested, reconfigure the router to use 192.168.1/24

You don't want to try to run another DHCP server on your lan if the
router is already a DHCP server.

Re: Were is gapcmon?

[Marc Auslander]

"Juan R. de Silva"  writes:

>I've been using gapcmon GUI to control my APC UPS backup units for years. 
>I cannot find it in Debian Stretch repos. Was the package removed? For 
>what reason? What can I use in its stead?
>
>Thanks.

I've always use apcupsd which still works in stretch.  My use is pretty
trivial - just reports - I don't do anything automatic on power fail
since I can't figure out how to do anything that will always wind up
with my machine running when the power comes back!

Re: exim4 wont configure resolved

[Marc Auslander]

Problem was a complicated smarthost specification which exim4 is happy
to honor bug exim-config postinst could not grok.
error was:

+ RET=20 Unsupported command "${if" (full line was "${if
match{${lc:$header_subject:}}{MarcAtAuslanderDotNameWorkingCheck}{mail.optonline.net}\")
received from confmodule.

Issue may be use of continuation but I'm not sure about that.

Marc Auslander <marca...@gmail.com> writes:

>after the recent security update to exim4 im seeing:
>
>dpkg: error processing package exim4-config (--configure):
> subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 20
>
>what now?

Re: exim4 wont configure

[Marc Auslander]

When I trace I see
+ exec /usr/share/debconf/frontend
/var/lib/dpkg/info/exim4-config.postinst configure 4.89-2+deb9u2
but the installed version of exim4.config is:
Version: 4.89-2+deb9u3

I'll assume that's the problem - so what should I do if it is?

exim4 wont configure

[Marc Auslander]

after the recent security update to exim4 im seeing:

dpkg: error processing package exim4-config (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 20

what now?

Re: New Kernel fails to boot when laptop is plugged in

[Marc Auslander]

Have you tried adding pti=off to the kernel boot line?  This is supposed
to turn off the spectre/meltdown "fix".

Henning Follmann  writes:

>Hello,
>I have a strange issue with the newest kernel
>4.9.0-5-amd64 on this 2011 Macbook Pro.
>As far as I can see it has to do with the power management of this laptop.
>Whenever the laptop is on power supply the boot process stops hard after
>I enter the passphrase for the encrypted lvm. There is one last message
>that it tries to mount root but it stops hard there. There is also no log
>(of course not because there is no device to write to yet).
>when I unplug the laptop during boot it boots fine.
>Previous kernel do not show this behavior.
>
>-H

Re: Banishing UUIDs from grub

[Marc Auslander]

Dave Sherohman  writes:

>What is the recommended method for preventing grub from using UUIDs to
>refer to filesystems in the current Debian stable distribution?
>

I don't know about "recommended" but could you put your own menu
entry into /etc/grub.d and make it the default?

Re: Kernel problem?

[Marc Auslander]

The new kernel implements the "fix" for meltdown.  You could try booting
with the fix turned off - I believe the kernel parameter is pti=off
Rob Hurle  writes:

>Hi All,
>
>I'm running Stretch and yesterday I did my normal:
>
>sudo apt-get update
>sudo apt-get upgrade
>
>It seemed to install vmlinuz-4.9.0-5-686-pae (and associated config
>and image files, etc) in place of 4.9.0-4-686-pae versions. Now the
>system won't boot at all. I have reverted to 4.9.0-4-686-pae and all
>is well. My questions are:
>
>1. Does anyone else see this?
>
>2. How can I revert without losing my working 4.9.0-4-686-pae system?
>Can I just change the soft links for initrd.img and vmlinuz at / to
>point to the 4.9.0-4-686-pae versions instead of the 4.9.0-5-686-pae
>ones? Will this break something else for a future upgrade?
>
>Any help much appreciated. Thank you.
>
>Cheers, Rob Hurle
>
>-
>Rob Hurle
>e-mail: rob1...@gmail.com
>Mobile: +61 417 293 603 (Australia)
>Telephone: (02) 6236 3895
>28 Mirrormere Rd, Burra, NSW 2620, Australia

Re: “Meltdown” and “Spectre”: Every modern processor has unfixable security flaws

[Marc Auslander]

Nicholas Geovanis  writes:

>On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 6:55 AM,   wrote:
>> (mainframes of that time had at least VM, possibly
>> speculative prefetch).
>
>Is it correct to call branch prediction the same as speculative execution?
>If so, then "yes" they had it, but I don't honestly know if that's correct.
>Pipeline rewinding was necessary on prediction failure, etc, similarly.
>
>> Cheers
>>
>> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000
>>
>> - -- tomás
Branch predition can serve (at leasst) two purposes.  The first is to start
fetching the target instruction data from memory.  AFAIK this cannot be used 
for the
attacks in question.

The second is in conjunction with spectulation. Specultation means
starting to execute an instruction sequence which may not in fact really
be executed.  The processor is able to roll back all the (architected)
effects of the computation if it turns out not to be needed.

The attacks are based on un-architected effects of speculative execution
- specifially changes in cache content - which can be detected.

Re: Mixing and Matching DHCP and static IPs

[Marc Auslander]

The safest way to fix an ip address in a dhcp served network is to tell
the dhcp server to associate that address with the mac of the unit.  The
address should be outside the dhcp range you set up.  I normall pin down
all my connected devices that way, leaving the dhcp assignment for
guests etc.  I've never seen a router which didn't support this.

Re: mplayer changed behaviour in stretch

[Marc Auslander]

In stretch mplayer may be linked to mpv - the current prefered
multi-media player in debian.  The mplayer2 package does this.

Look at /usr/bin/mplayer and see if its a symlink.

There is an mplayer package as well - I don't know if its the old mplayer.

Install stretch in existing Raid 1 partition

[Marc Auslander]

I have a debian system with three raid 1 partitions, root and 2 data 
partitions.  It's x86 and I've decided to clean install amd64 and face 
the music of re configuring everything.  My plan/hope is to install a 
new amd64 stretch in my root partition and then clean up the mess.


The installer manual is silent about installing in an existing raid 
partition.  I could follow my nose but wondered if there is any advice 
you can provide.


(Note that I have never had any issues booting from the raid root.  its 
md1.2.)

Re: dh-python:amd64

[Marc Auslander]

Sven Joachim wrote:

On 2017-11-25 21:39 -0500, Marc Auslander wrote:


I am running Jessie x86 with amd64 as a foreign architecture.

I want to replace python3 with python3:amd64


Do you intend to crossgrade your whole system to amd64, or why do you
want to do that?


but I get a dependency on
dh-python:amd64 which is not satisfied.  dh-python is marked as all
architectures and is installed.  So it appears that dh-python all
architectures is not being seen as satisfying dh-python:amd64.


This is correct.  A package, even an arch-independent one as dh-python,
only fulfills dependencies of foreign arch packages if it is marked as
"Multi-Arch: foreign".


Any ideas?


You could rebuild dh-python with the Multi-Arch field added.  In fact,
the field had been added in version 1.2014-1, but was backed out in
1.2014-2 at the request of the release managers.  It has been
re-added after the Jessie release.

You will almost certainly run into unsatisfied dependencies while
crossgrading python3, good luck in resolving them.

Cheers,
Sven

thanks.  My situation is historical - this is a very old debian which 
has been upgraded for many years.  I have tried to avoid the pain of a 
clean install and the attendant reconfigure and possibly lost 
facilities.  For example, I prefer running emacs-22 since the gtk fonts 
don't work as well on my system.  maybe it's time.  sigh.

dh-python:amd64

[Marc Auslander]

I am running Jessie x86 with amd64 as a foreign architecture.

I want to replace python3 with python3:amd64 but I get a dependency on 
dh-python:amd64 which is not satisfied.  dh-python is marked as all 
architectures and is installed.  So it appears that dh-python all 
architectures is not being seen as satisfying dh-python:amd64.


(I know I may have to replace python as well but that's not my problem).

Any ideas?

dh-python:amd64

[Marc Auslander]

I am running Jessie x86 with amd64 as a foreign architecture.

I want to replace python3 with python3:amd64 but I get a dependency on 
dh-python:amd64 which is not satisfied.  dh-python is marked as all 
architectures and is installed.  So it appears that dh-python all 
architectures is not being seen as satisfying dh-python:amd64.


(I know I may have to replace python as well but that's not my problem).

Any ideas?

Re: Using -prune option of find to ignore hidden directories

[Marc Auslander]

Richard Owlett  writes:

> The man page for find confuses me.
> Looking for explanatory material I found and tried to follow examples
> in http://mywiki.wooledge.org/UsingFind#A-prune .
>
> I tried
>   find /home/richard \( -type d -name .* -prune \) -o -atime -42 -print
> and
>   find /home/richard \( -type d -name .* -prune \) -atime -42 -print
> unsuccessfully.
>
> Each got an "find: paths must precede expression: .." error
>
> HOW?
> TIA
.* is being globed.  Put it in quotes.

Re: How do you disable / enable services from starting in systemd

[Marc Auslander]

Jiangsu Kumquat  writes:

>How do you disable / enable services from starting in systemd?
>I have gotten very used to the old way of how to start/stop services
>when booting using runlevels but I cannot figure out how to do any of
>this using systemd.
>So, I don't always use my web and SQL servers so I don't want it
>auto-starting at boot but I don't know how to turn it off.
>Thanks for reading this.
I've gotten tired of the passive agressive RTFM in this thread.

systemctl enable|disable unit-name

Re: upgraded config files in /lib/systemd/system

[Marc Auslander]

Dominique Dumont  writes:

> On Tuesday, 28 February 2017 14:01:18 CET Harald Dunkel wrote:
>> short question about /lib/systemd/system: AFAICS the config
>> files here are supposed to be overridden by local config files
>> in /etc/systemd/system, using the same path, as described in
>> systemd.unit(5)
>> 
>> How can I make sure that there is a conflict dialog at upgrade
>> time, if I have to modify the unit file shipped with my package?
>
> I don't understand why a change in /lib/systemd/system should trigger a 
> conflict warning.
>
> Either you have changed a value not modified by end user and there's no 
> conflict
>
> Or you change a value overridden by user, then your change is not taken into 
> account by systemd: conflict is solved by giving priority to user value.
>
> Did I miss something ?
>
> All the best
> -- 
>  https://github.com/dod38fr/   -o- http://search.cpan.org/~ddumont/
> http://ddumont.wordpress.com/  -o-   irc: dod at irc.debian.org

IIRC in the "old" world, if you had a modified version of a config
file and an update modified the original released version, you got
a warning and a dialog which let you decide how to proceed.

The question is whether or not you will get such a warning using the
described method of modifying a config file by publishing a new
version in the override directory.

Re: /etc/dhcp3 in jessie.

[Marc Auslander]

pe...@easthope.ca writes:

> During an update or upgrade this message surfaced.
> dpkg: warning: while removing resolvconf, directory 
>   '/etc/dhcp3/dhclient-enter-hooks.d' not empty so not removed.
> dpkg: warning: while removing resolvconf, directory 
>   '/etc/dhcp3' not empty so not removed.
>
> "dpkg -l | grep dhcp" reports a few dhcp packages; no dhcp3.  
> Therefore "rm -r /etc/dhcp3" is OK?
>
> Thanks, ... Peter E.
>
> -- 
>
> 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789
> Tel: +1 360 639 0202  Pender Is.: +1 250 629 3757
> http://easthope.ca/Peter.html  Bcc: peter at easthope. ca
On my system, /etc/dhcp3 is a symlink to /etc/dhcp.  Look carefully.

Re: /etc/dhcp3 in jessie.

[Marc Auslander]

pe...@easthope.ca writes:

> During an update or upgrade this message surfaced.
> dpkg: warning: while removing resolvconf, directory 
>   '/etc/dhcp3/dhclient-enter-hooks.d' not empty so not removed.
> dpkg: warning: while removing resolvconf, directory 
>   '/etc/dhcp3' not empty so not removed.
>
> "dpkg -l | grep dhcp" reports a few dhcp packages; no dhcp3.  
> Therefore "rm -r /etc/dhcp3" is OK?
>
> Thanks, ... Peter E.
>
> -- 
>
> 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789
> Tel: +1 360 639 0202  Pender Is.: +1 250 629 3757
> http://easthope.ca/Peter.html  Bcc: peter at easthope. ca
My generic answer when faced with this question is - rename it,
reboot, see if anything is broken.

Re: HELP! Re: How to fix I/O errors? (SOLVED)

[Marc Auslander]

Marc Shapiro  writes:

> BTW, what is your third partition, and why would you not separate it
> now if starting from scratch?
My third partition is for backups which I make to protect against
software or operator error.  At one point it was on a separate disk
since disks were small and without LVM had to be a different
partition/file system.
>
>
> One other question.  If using raid, how do you know when a disk is
> starting to have trouble, as mine did?  Since the whole purpose of
...
> Marc

Ok - I'm pretty paranoid about that.  smart is checking.
mdadm will notice if a disk is bad and turn
it off, so to speak.  Again in the logs.
I run a cron job to check form smart errors based on:

smartctl -l error -q errorsonly "device"
smartctl -H -q errorsonly "device"

But I've always checked all my disks once a week.  A root cron job
reads the whole disk with dd into /dev/null.  Any error get logged, of
course.  Separately, a cron job scans syslog and syslog.1 grepping for
"IO Error" and informs me by email if any new errors are found.  This
catches error in the dd check but also actual errors in operation.

Re: HELP! Re: How to fix I/O errors? (SOLVED)

[Marc Auslander]

Marc Shapiro  writes:

> the past couple of weeks.  AIUI you can use LVM over raid.  Is there
> any actual advantage to this?  I was trying to determine the
> advantages of using straight raid, straight LVM, or LVM over raid.  If
> I decide, later, to use raid, how dificult is it to add to a currently
> running system (with, or without LVM)?
>
>
> Marc
I do not use LVM over raid 1.  I think it can be made to work,
although IIRC booting from an LVM over RAID partion has caused issues.

LVM is useful when space requirements are changing over time and the
ability to add additional disks and grow logical partions is needed.
In my case, that isn't an issue.  I have only a small number of
paritions - 3 because of history but starting from scratch, I'd only
have two - root (including boot) and /home.

I converted to mdamd raid as follows, IIRC.

Install the second disk, and parition it the way I wanted.
Create a one disk raid 1 partion in each of the new paritions.
Take down my system, boot a live system from CD, and use a reliable
copy program like rsync to copy each of the partitions contents to the
equivalent raid partition.
Run grub to set the new disk as bootable.  This is by far the
trickiest part.
Boot the new system and verify it's happy.
Repartion the now spare disk to match the new one if necessary.
You may need to zero the front of each partion with dd if=/dev/zero
to avoid mdadm error checks.
Add the partitions from that disk to the mdadm paritions and let mdadm
do its thing.

Re: HELP! Re: How to fix I/O errors? (SOLVED)

[Marc Auslander]

You didn't ask for advice so take it or ignore it.

IMHO, in this day and age, there is no reason not to run raid 1.  Two
disks, identially partitioned, each parition set up as a raid 1
partition with two copies.

When a disk dies, you remove it from all the raid partitions, pop in a
new disk, partition it,  add the new partitions back into the raid
partitions and raid rebuilds the copies.

Except for taking the system down to replace the disk (assuming you
don't have a third installed as a spare) you just keep running as if
nothing has happened.

Re: determining subnet mask using ip but not using ifconfig in debian 9.0 (stretch)

[Marc Auslander]

Dan Hitt  writes:

> What is the preferred way to determine the subnet mask of your box
> using /bin/ip on debian 9.0 (stretch)?
>
> In the old days, this sort of information would come out of ifconfig,
> but it looks like debian really wants to get away from ifconfig, and i
> think use ip as a sort of replacement.
>
> So i would like to do the same thing, using ip or whatever the debian
> people think is the best practice.
>
> I tried to search for this information using google, but not very skillfully.
>
> TIA for any info.
>
> dan

On squeeze ip addr does it for me.

Re: How to fix I/O errors?

[Marc Auslander]

A few observations.

Are your filesystems journaled.  They say ext3, which IIRC does
support journaling?

the flashplayer should not be able to trash the file system.

/var/log/syslog is a place to look for io errors.  If you are having
them you likely have a failing disk and need to replace it ASAP.

given the cost of disks, running raid 1 with pairs of disks is really
a good idea.  When one fails you pull it, replace it, and rebuild, all
without data loss or loss of use of the system.

Re: How to get an older emacs on Jessie

[Marc Auslander]

I see what you mean.  I must assume that the other packages have
survived my upgrades from previous versions and are still in my
package database.  Sorry for the misleading post - it shows I don't
know how aptitude works :-)

Re: How to get an older emacs on Jessie

[Marc Auslander]

I'm running Jessie with the standard repositories and emacs from 21 on
are available.  Have you looked?

google-chome aborted

[Marc Auslander]

I am running Jessie with the default architecture x88 and amd64 as a
foreign architecture.  The kernel is amd64.

I install the amd64 google-chrome-stable.

When I try to start it I get "Aborted"

Me set up does not have a desktop manager or windows manager on the
linux machine.  I run x-clients talking to
an x-server on a windows laptop.

firefox is happy to start but complains about addons.xpi and
bootstrap.js - but it seems to work.

I'm wondering if the issue it amd64 as foreign or the lack of a
desktop manager (fragments of gnome have been pulled in but it is not
installed).

Any suggestions appreciated.

Re: Moving from a 686-pae kernel to amd64?

[Marc Auslander]

I did exactly that several years ago with no problem.

I installed an amd64 kernel at which point grub knew about both.
Changed default boot to the new kernel and ran for a while.  Once all
was well I uninstalled the pae kernel.

I did it mostly because I expect that amd64 is the dominant kernel in
the future.

Although I haven't needed to, I believe I could add 64 bits as a
foreign architecture if I wanted to run a 64 bit process.

What appears to be too hard to contemplate is changing the base
process architecture to 64 bits.


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Re: tzdata=2015a-0wheezy1 breaks other packages

[Marc Auslander]

When I ran the update is replaced tzdata-java with 2015a-0wheezy1 and
nothing broke.


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Re: firefox compaining about missing library

[Marc Auslander]

Gene Heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com writes:

 On Saturday 17 January 2015 19:32:16 Marc Auslander did opine
 And Gene did reply:
 Gene Heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com writes:
  Greetings;
  
  Does anyone know where to find, for Wheezy, this library?
  VDPAU backend libvdpau_nouveau.so?
 
 ...
 I am running firefox 35 under wheezy with no problem. And I do not
 have the names library.  I just untar that tarball into /usr/lib and
 go.

 And your video card and driver are?

 Cheers, Gene Heskett

None - I'm running headless with a remote X-server on a windows
desktop.  Sorry for the un-helpful post.

try two - you could try putting
user_pref(layers.acceleration.disabled, true);
into prefs.js

this corresponds to unchecking use hardware acceleration in prefs.

although I'm not sure how this would work unless firefox is
dynamically loading the library.


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Re: firefox compaining about missing library

[Marc Auslander]

Gene Heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com writes:

 Greetings;

 Does anyone know where to find, for Wheezy, this library?
 VDPAU backend libvdpau_nouveau.so?

...
I am running firefox 35 under wheezy with no problem. And I do not
have the names library.  I just untar that tarball into /usr/lib and go.


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Re: upgrade kernel

[Marc Auslander]

Pol Hallen de...@fuckaround.org writes:
 Hi folks!

 a security updates of kernel is available (from apt-get upgrade), so:
 must I reboot my pc (after upgrade) to avoid security problems? Is
 there another way?

 thanks for help!

 Pol



I always reboot after a kernel related upgrade on the grounds that if
something goes wrong, I want to know about it right now.

The alternative is that sometime in the future, a scheduled or
unscheduled reboot leads to trouble and you have no idea what caused it!


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Re: Please stop systemd-fsck on _every_ boot!

[Marc Auslander]

Just a reminder.  fsck is responsible for applying the journal to
journaled filesystems.  So you really do want it to run everytime.

This discussion should be about controlling the full fsck that
happens if requested or if the mount count or time exceeds it's
limit.  These are all controlled outside of the init system and fstab.

The mystery of why fsck is apparently looking at a swap file is of
course a real issue.


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Re: Skipping fsck during boot with systemd?

[Marc Auslander]

Long ago, I decided that inconvenient fsck's were not what I
needed. And that cancelling them was not an option - I run quasi
headless so there's no way.

So - I use tune2fs to set a ridiculous reboot count for automatic
fsck.  Then a run a cron job the does a reboot with the -F option once
a month in the middle of the night when I don't need the machine.

systemd won't change a thing for me.

cron job follows.  it actually checks for a disk that needs an fsck.

#!/bin/bash
#check for fsck needed and force it and reboot if needed
[ $1 = -force ]  force=yes
month=$(date +%b)
reboot=no
while read disk rest
do
lastfsck=$(tune2fs -l $disk | grep 'Last checked:')
lastfsck=${lastfsck:30:3}
[ $lastfsck = $month ] || reboot=yes
done  --end
$(df | egrep '^/dev')
--end
if [ $force != yes ]
then
[ $reboot = no ]  exit
if [ -n $(who) ]
then
echo 'Not rebooting because of logged on users'
who
exit
fi
fi
echo 'checkfsck rebooting' | mail -s checkfsck root
# -F below forces check of all filesystems, not just root
echo 'checkfsck rebooting'
shutdown -rF now
sleep 120
echo 'shutdown seems to be broken again'
shutdown -nrF now
sleep 120
echo 'shutdown -n seems to have failed'
sleep 120
touch /forcefsck
sync;sync;sync;sleep 60;reboot -f
sleep 120
echo 'it just wont die - need help'


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Re: Retaining Older Kernels After Image Update

[Marc Auslander]

Andrei POPESCU andreimpope...@gmail.com writes:

 On Sb, 02 aug 14, 12:11:43, Kenneth Jacker wrote:
 [ Wheezy;  3.2.0-4-amd64 ]
 
 I've noticed that when I upgrade a kernel image, the prior one appears
 to be removed.  So, at any time there is only one kernel image in /boot.


I just manually copy the four files in /boot associated with the
working kernel.  I append -knowngood to get new names.  update grup
happily makes boot entries for them.

My copy script is:

#!/bin/bash
for x in *knowngood
do
( set -x; cp -p $x ${x}-old )
done
for x in *amd64
do
( set -x; cp -p $x ${x}-knowngood )
done


You'll have to replace *amd64 by whatever the right search is for your
kernel.

Of course, I only run this after successful reboot and snif test with
the new kernel.


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Re: capitalone banking website compatibility with iceweasel

[Marc Auslander]

For what its worth, the site is fine with the latest build of firefox
on debian (the 34a nightly).  What firefox version is iceweasel?


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Re: capitalone banking website compatibility with iceweasel

[Marc Auslander]

Ok - to firefox 101.  Try in safe mode and see if the problem
persists.  If it doesn't, you have an add-in that's causing the
problem.

As for your bookmarks etc - you can always find your profile with
about:support if you don't know where is is.

You can save the whole profile directory using normal unix stuff and
then copy it over the profile of firefox to get back all your setting.


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Re: Logging of commands in a bash script to a file

[Marc Auslander]

exec  filename redefines standard out as filename


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PAM Logging

[Marc Auslander]

pam is logging every cron event into auth.log, filling it up.  Can I
control pam logging?
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Re: Great Debian experience, part 2

[Marc Auslander]

I'm running squeeze on a 2003 IBM T40 - also 2Gig.  It runs fine and
runs Lotus Notes fine as well.  I'm backlevel because Notes is broken
on the latest Gnome.

It's just a machine I use to boot, look, shutdown and it's wonderfully
fast for that.  Replaced Windows XP which was a pig and going out of
service.

I actually tried Ubuntu but it has piggish tendancies as well!


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Re: (toughed out) Re: reboot/halt/shutdown does nothing

[Marc Auslander]

At one point you reported that reboot did nothing.
Was that reboot -f or just reboot - which calls shutdown if you're
running at 0 or 6 according to the man page.


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Lotus Notes on Wheezy

[Marc Auslander]

In the slim chance that any of you run Lotus Notes on Debian -

Notes is broken on Wheezy - it's apparently incompatible with the
level of Gnome included.  It works on squeeze/gnome.

Has any one built a successful workaround?  There are lots of
partial suggestions from Google but nothing that looks sound to me.

What I was hoping for was some way to force Notes to use back level
libraries that don't cause the issue.  Of course I'd need to get those
libraries from someplace.

Failing versions of notes are 8.5.3FP6 and 9.2.
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Re: mdadm gives segmentatin fault on wheezy. RAID array now incomplete.

[Marc Auslander]

Hendrik Boom hend...@topoi.pooq.com writes:

 I ran

 mdadm /dev/md1 --add /dev/sdd2

 and got a segmentation fault.


 april:/farhome/hendrik# cat /proc/mdstat
 Personalities : [raid1] 
 md1 : active raid1 sdb2[1]
   2391295864 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]
   
 md0 : active raid1 sda4[0] sdc4[1]
   706337792 blocks [2/2] [UU]
   
 unused devices: none
 april:/farhome/hendrik# mdadm /dev/md1 --add /dev/sdd2
 Segmentation fault
 april:/farhome/hendrik# 


 /dev/sdd2 used to be part of the /dev/md1 RAID1 array, but it went bad,
 presumably becaues of a hard reset.

 I did a 

 mdadm /dev/md1 --fail /dev/sdd2 --remove /dev/sdd2

 which appeared to work correctly, and after that

 april:/farhome/hendrik# cat /proc/mdstat
 Personalities : [raid1] 
 md1 : active raid1 sdb2[1]
   2391295864 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]
   
 md0 : active raid1 sda4[0] sdc4[1]
   706337792 blocks [2/2] [UU]
   
 unused devices: none
 april:/farhome/hendrik# mdadm /dev/md1 --add /dev/sdd2
 Segmentation fault
 april:/farhome/hendrik# 


 What now?

 -- hendrik


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You might try writing zeros on the beginning of the device you are
trying to add.  Something like

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd2 bs=512 count=16


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Re: Is this OK in C++ and C?

[Marc Auslander]

Zbigniew Komarnicki cblas...@gmail.com writes:


 I wanted to prohibit user to assign negative value to a variable. 
 This variable is later passed to a recurrence function as 
 argument and of course I got segmentation fault, because 
 the function is called 4294967291 times.

You MUST check the input.  Consider a user who has an int with the
value he wants to pass.  If there were a check, he'd just write:

func(unsigned int(x)) to get the thing to compile.

Or a user who in error computes a silly large positive value by any nunmber of
means.

There are languages which attempt to do bounds checking statically,
but C isn't like that - which is why buffer overflow still is the
friend of the malware writer.


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Re: How do you read logs?

[Marc Auslander]

Hugo Vanwoerkom hvw59...@care2.com writes:

 jug...@lavabit.com wrote:
 Hello.

 There are a lot of `possible break-in attempts' messages in my
 logs. So it's hard to read them `by hand' (with last or more). How do
 you read yours? Do you use any log analyzers? Which ones?

I just read them with emacs, and or use grep to find particular
records.  Low tech but often good enough.


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Re: Copy 2 partitions to .img file

[Marc Auslander]

If you just copy the first 4GB, which includes the partition table,
and put it on a 4GB drive, you will have a bogus partitions table (I
think). Maybe it will just work as long as you don't try to make new
partitons.  Alternately, I don't know what it would take to repair it
although I'm sure it can be done.  Thus the alternative of dumping
each partition may be safer.

However, note that if you dump each partition, you will have to deal with
putting a correct partition table and MBR on the new drive.  If the
drive is bootable, this will probably involve re-running the boot
loader install process.


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Re: Problem With exim4 smtp authenication

[Marc Auslander]

Thomas H. George li...@tomgeorge.info writes:

 I have edited passwd and entered server:user:password exactly as
 described in exim4_passwd_client and run dpkg-reconfigure
 exim4-config.  When I try to send mail using exim4 and then tail
 /var/log/exim4/mainlog I find authenication has failed.  I have double
 checked every entry.  They are all correct and work with both iceape
 and the android mail client on my HP Touchpad.

 Any one have a clue why this doesn't work?

 Tom
exim4 looks up the ip address of the target server, then reverse
translates back to its ip name to look up in passwd - which may not be the same 
as the name
you are using in the configuration.

My entries to use the gmail smtp are:

smtp.googlemail.com:m...@gmail.com:mypassword
*.googlemail.com:m...@gmail.com:mypassword
*.google.com:m...@gmail.com:mypassword


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Re: exim4 smtp server userid

[Marc Auslander]

Jon Dowland j...@debian.org writes:

 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?


The exim4 documentation claims that the passwd.client file is applied
to the result of reverse translating the ip address of the host!  The
fact that I need to put wildcard names into passwd.client seems to
support this claim.  I thus rejected /etc/hosts tricks as a
workaround.  But thanks for the thought.


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exim4 smtp server userid

[Marc Auslander]

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?

Re: Best way to migrate disks

[Marc Auslander]

Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com writes:

 On 3/25/2012 2:48 PM, Marc Auslander wrote:

 As far as the root partition itself, just make a new file system in
 the partition you want to be the new boot and use tar to copy the old
 root over.  Make sure you don't copy anything mounted on root - just
 root itself.

 'cp -a' worked fine for me the last time I did such a boot/root
 filesystem migration to a new disk.  What advantage does tar have here?

 -- 
 Stan

Sorry to cause confusion.  I've always used tar for this purpose and
so my fingers know what to do.  cpio was always an alternative.

In newer versions of Unix, cp also has been extended to be useable for
this purpose.

Probably I should of just said copy the file system contents.


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Re: Best way to migrate disks

[Marc Auslander]

You are probably asking a more subtle question that I'm going to
answer but ...

As far as the root partition itself, just make a new file system in
the partition you want to be the new boot and use tar to copy the old
root over.  Make sure you don't copy anything mounted on root - just
root itself.

Then edit fstab in the obvious way to account for the new UUID of the
new root.

Assumine LILO can boot from the partition on the larger disk, fix
lilo.conf in the obvious way, run lilo, and remember to make the new
root partion bootable.


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Re: grub gets confused when I upgrade the kernel

[Marc Auslander]

Hendrik Boom hend...@topoi.pooq.com writes:
...

 (b) If I were to progress to grub2, where I gather I can't take control 
 of the boot process by editing menu.lst, is there some other way of 
 making sure things go right?  I fear that one of these years, upgrading 
 to grub2 will become inevitable.


With grub2 you put custom stanzas into /etc/grub.d and they are
included in grub.cfg (the new menu.lst) whenever it is rebuilt.  I use
this to make absolutely sure my default kernel stays the default
kernel, for example.


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Re: quick and dirty backup

[Marc Auslander]

Bonno Bloksma b.blok...@tio.nl writes:

 Hi,

 My Debian machines have almost no data, just packages and config files. Just 
 before a major upgrade, and a few othe times, I'd like to have a quick and 
 dirty backup of most files including logfiles, run files like dhcp.leases 
 etc. So what I do is a simple:
tar -zcf /mnt/backup/linXXX-lenny.tar.gz / --exclude /mnt --exclude 
 /proc --exclude /sys
 A while ago I noticed I needed to add the /sys directory to that exclusion.

 Is there anything else I need to exclude? Using Lenny with kernel 
 2.6.26-2-686 it seems my backup is running forever but maybe I'm just 
 impatient. ;-)
 I am going to upgrade this system to Squeeze later today so the kernel will 
 probably end up being 2.6.32-5-686 at the end of the day.

 Bonno


What I do is to tar just the root filesystem, not the stuff mounted on
top of it.  You can either use --one-file-system option, or bind mount
root someplace else and to the tar there.  I just tar everything,
since it's not really that big.

I have restored and booted root's saved this way and it works.


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Re: boot failure

[Marc Auslander]

Pierre Frenkiel pierre.frenk...@gmail.com writes:

 On Tue, 24 Jan 2012, Pierre Frenkiel wrote:

Remains the question how /etc/modprobe.d/options was corrupted
May-be after a power failure, but I thought that this couldn't
happen with a ext4 file system.


The default/normal configuration of ext4 journals only metadata.
This means that file system integrity is guaranteed but individual
file content can be corrupted by a power failure or other hard crash.

To update files that must be correct, one can write a new version,
sync, and then use mv to replace the old with the new version.  Since
mv is a metadata operation, it is guaranteed to either have happened
or not after crash recovery.

The journal_data option provides full protection, but I suspect it is
not a practical solution for normal usage.


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Re: issue with mdadm and mirroring drives

[Marc Auslander]

Jon Dowland j...@debian.org writes:


 Pretty sure at that stage it has loaded modules that let it interpret
 a selection of filesystem types, in order to fetch grub.cfg (and
 further

How does it decide which partition (on which disk) and what pathname
to use to find grub.cfg.  I assume one it chooses a partition it can
look at partitions, figure out what kind they are, and figure out how
to read them.

Also - if the chosen partition is raid1 does it assemble the array
or just use the chosen partition as if it where a degraded array.


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Re: issue with mdadm and mirroring drives

[Marc Auslander]

This discussion opens a question I've been curious about.

IIUC, bios choses a boot device and runs the MBR code.  Assuming
that's GRUB2 MBR code, GRUB2 then loads the 1.5 code hidden before the
first partition of the same device.  Next step is to process grub.cfg.

Now, does that code contain a copy of grub.cfg?  Or
does it read it from someplace?  If the second, how does it decide
where/how to read grub.cfg.

I understand how, once it has grub.cfg, it decides what to boot.  It's
where grub.cfg comes from that I don't understand.


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Re: grub-pc mdadm root

[Marc Auslander]

Tom H tomh0...@gmail.com writes:

 On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Marc Auslander marca...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm still having no luck booting an mdadm 1.2 root.

 grub2 works - I get into the boot kernel and initram.  But when it
 comes to mount the real kernel, I fall into initramfs shell with a
 message that the kernel can't be found.  And it can't, because the
 raid root device hasn't been assembled.  (No raid devices exist in
 /dev).

 I can assemble it in initramfs shell using mdadm, so all the stuff is there.

 So I really need to see any grub.cfg stanza that actually works -
 mostly to see what vmlinuz parameters are needed.

 It think that it's your initrd that needs some attention...

 Anyway, from a wheezy install:


Thanks for the help.

That's essentially what my grub stanza does.  I've run
update-initramfs.  So I don't know what attention my initrd needs at
this point.

As I reported - all the code and mdadm.conf are in it.  In the initrd
shell, if I assemble my root raid disk and exit, the boot completes
normally.

This is squeeze - is it possible that the newer kernel has code to
assemble early?

Is there some other option or setting which causes it to assemble early?

Also, are you using md version 1.2 raid.  


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Re: grub-pc mdadm root (Resolved?)

[Marc Auslander]

Marc Auslander marca...@gmail.com writes:


 As I reported - all the code and mdadm.conf are in it.  In the initrd
 shell, if I assemble my root raid disk and exit, the boot completes
 normally.


I stumbled on the initramfs scripts, held my breath and added a
local-top script which assembled my root array.  Now I boot!

So it works - but is this the right way to do it?

In an case, thanks for the help.  Knowing it could work kept me flailing.


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Re: grub-pc mdadm root (really Resolved)

[Marc Auslander]

From /etc/defaults/mdadm

# INITRDSTART:
#   list of arrays (or 'all') to start automatically when the initial ramdisk
#   loads. This list *must* include the array holding your root filesystem. Use
#   'none' to prevent any array from being started from the initial ramdisk.
INITRDSTART='none'

Changing this to all (or just the root device, but I put in all) is
the correct fix.

How did I miss that for so long.  Sigh.

Thanks to all.


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Re: grub-pc mdadm root

[Marc Auslander]

I'm still having no luck booting an mdadm 1.2 root.

grub2 works - I get into the boot kernel and initram.  But when it
comes to mount the real kernel, I fall into initramfs shell with a
message that the kernel can't be found.  And it can't, because the
raid root device hasn't been assembled.  (No raid devices exist in
/dev).
I can assemble it in initramfs shell using mdadm, so all the stuff is there.

So I really need to see any grub.cfg stanza that actually works -
mostly to see what vmlinuz parameters are needed.

Any help will be appreciated.


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boot from raid1 mdadm version 1.2 partition

[Marc Auslander]

Earlier posts seem to say this should/might work.

I made an mdadm v 1.2 partions, and put a copy of my root file system
on it.

update-grub doesn't see it at all.

if I try to boot by hand, I can get grub to boot the kernel but then I
get mysterious error messages about not being able to mount /dev/pts
and fall into the recovery shell.  It appears that my raid partions
have not been assembled.

Any hints.

Does anyone actually have boot from raid1 version 1.2 working?  If so,
could you post the grub.cfg entry that makes it work?
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Re: boot from raid1 mdadm version 1.2 partition

[Marc Auslander]

 also sprach Marc Auslander marca...@gmail.com [2012.01.12.2226 +0100]:
 Earlier posts seem to say this should/might work.
 
 I made an mdadm v 1.2 partions, and put a copy of my root file system
 on it.
 
 update-grub doesn't see it at all.

 Are you using grub-pc aka. grub2?

 In the future, please always provide version information for the
 software with which you are having problems.

 -- 
  .''`.   martin f. krafft madduck@d.o  Related projects:
 : :'  :  proud Debian developer   http://debiansystem.info
 `. `'`   http://people.debian.org/~madduckhttp://vcs-pkg.org
   `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
  
 tempt not a desperate man.
 -- william shakespeare
Sorry for the lack of detail.

grub-pc (aka grub2) v 1.98 on squeeze up to date with stock kernel.

martin f krafft madd...@debian.org writes:


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grub-pc mdadm root

[Marc Auslander]

Is it possible to boot a raid root file system.  I'm having trouble
finding up to date documentation.

Some searchs talk about a separate /boot partition - I don't
understand why that is needed or relevant.

I'm assuming I'd make a mdadm v 1.2 raid 1 partition for root.

Can someone either tell me if this is workable, or point me at
documentation.  (the current grub-pc info is silent about mdadm).

google search lead to various bug reports.
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Re: Emacs ignoring my settings in ~/.emacs after Debian SID Upgraded

[Marc Auslander]

Vincent Lefevre vinc...@vinc17.net writes:

...

 The window geometry is usually not stored in the .emacs file (that
 would be a bad idea because the window appears before this file is
 read). It is configured via the X resources. As XDM and GDM do not
 read the same X init files, here's the potential problem.

In my experience, if you set the geometry in the initial-frame-alist
the intitial window resizes to that setting.

This takes a bit of doing.

I have a helper function:

;;; useful function for modifying alists like default-frame-alist
(defun modify-alist (alist changes)
  In ALIST, modify or add entries in changes, returning new alist
  (let (next)
(while changes
  (setq next (car changes) changes (cdr changes))
  (setq alist (append (delq (assoc (car next) alist) alist) (list next
alist))

and then do things like:

(setq default-frame-alist
  (modify-alist default-frame-alist
'((height . 44) (width . 81)
  (left . 510)(top . 30)
  (mouse-color . white)))
  initial-frame-alist
  (modify-alist initial-frame-alist
'((left . 0)(top . 0))
)))

to get my configuration as I like it.

I actually test for which window system and how I got started and have
different versions.


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purge a package without removing config or remaining files

[Marc Auslander]

The Debian version of the logitechmediaserver has gotten tangled up
with dpkg.

The package used to be squeezeboxserver.  They created a new package
named logitechmediaserver.  However, most of the config files were
retained with their old names.  Installing lms triggered a remove of
sbs, then used the existing config files - so it looked like an
upgrade.

The problem is that we can't now purge squeezeboxserver since it tries
to remove the config files now used by logitechmediaserver.

Any suggestions as to how to fix this.

Would hacking the postrm script in info work?  There is also a .list file - I 
don't
know if dpkg tries to delete those - if so I'd have to hack it as
well.  I think this would clean me up, but it's not an exportable solution.
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Re: purge a package without removing config or remaining files

[Marc Auslander]

Julien Claassen jul...@mail.upb.de writes:

 Hello Marc!
   I believe your problem *shoud(TM)* be fixed by not purging but removing:
 aptitude remove squeezeboxserver
 or:
 dpkg remove squeezeboxserver
   Not sure if the remove option is exactly the same for dpkg, but it
 should be and otherwise that could be easy to find out from the
 manpage. - It says, that remove is exactly there, to remove a package
 aka it's binariesand libs, but not its config files.
   Warmly yours
Julien

Thanks.  I was not clear enough.  It was automatically removed when
the new package was installed.  It now lurks in the configured state
waiting for me to accidently purge it and destroy my new
installation.  I'd like to get rid that risk.


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Which repository

[Marc Auslander]

I'm probably missing something obvious but ... Is there a way to find
out which repository an installed package came from?  The various show
commands list the path inside the repository, but not the repository itself.
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isc-dhcp quibble

[Marc Auslander]

This is the sort of thing that drives non-experts crazy.

init.d entry is called isc-dhcp-server, as it the /etc/default entry
the /var/lib directry is called dhcp
the /etc directory for the config files is called dhcp
the files in /etc/dhcp and /var/lib/dhcp all start with dhcp
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grub2 complaint/question

[Marc Auslander]

Maybe I'm missing something here.

update-grup creates a grub.cfg with menuentrys for every kernel it can
find - except a menu entry using /vmlinuz on the current root as the kernel!  
But in
debian, the obvious default is whatever kernel /vmlinuz points to.

I made a custom entry to do just that - but why isn't it in the debian
version, and why isn't it the default?  Am I missing a config setting here?
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