Re: Pulseaudio setup question

[Michael Milliman]

On Mon, Jan 28, 2019, 12:54 deloptes  Michael Earl Milliman wrote:
>
> > I regularly use at least one loopback module in my pulseaudio setup,
> > looping incoming USB audio stream back to the computer speakers and/or
> > bluetooth headphones.  This means that I almost always run 'pactl
> > load-module module-loopback' as one of the first things I do when
> > booting up.  According to the pulseaudio documentation, I can put the
> > command 'load-module module-loopback' into a default.pa file in my
> > configuration folder for pulseaudio (~/.config/pulse) and it will be run
> > automatically on log-in.  Unfortunately, when I do so, the pulseaudio
> > server crashes (or fails to start).  I have also tried putting this
> > command in the system configuration folder, which causes much the same
> > problem.  Any ideas what I'm doing wrong, or what I need to do
> > differently.  Putting the appropriate command in my log-in script is an
> > option, but was hoping for a way to do it automatically through
> > pulseaudio.
>
> Ahm, PA is spawned by the user session, so you need to load (if at all)
> after you log in and PA is started.
>
> Yes, it is spawned by user session, which is why I attempted to place the
> command needed in my home configuration folder. Pulse does remember
> settings from the previous session, but only applies them after the module
> is loaded. It doesn't automatically load modules that were being used in
> the previous session.
>

I write (if at all), because I think PA can remember what you were doing
> before, but it could be also version related issue.
>
> Last but not least. I compiled 12.2 because all the rest had too many bugs.
> Don't know which is the version now in stretch - I got so pissed. Now
> finally it works 99.5%. My issues were also related to removable (BT)
> source. It was nasty with 11.1. 11.99 was better, but got a hint about 12.2
> and it is peace now.
>
> hope it helps
>
> regards
>
>

Re: Time of Removal of Installation media

[Michael Milliman]

Yep. Anytime after the message displays is good. The system reboots when
you press the continue button and you want it to reboot to your hard disk
not the installation disk. You did right.

On Jan 25, 2018 3:59 AM,  wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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>
> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 09:33:17AM +, Shehriyar Qureshi wrote:
> > Hi, I recently installed Debian Stretch and I was confused as if I
> > installed it correctly. At the end of the installation, I got to the
> point
> > where it said "Make sure to remove the installation media so you don't
> boot
> > into the installer". I removed the USB at that point and clicked continue
>
> That sounds about right, yes.
>
> > after which it did some small stuff and rebooted. Did I remove the USB at
> > the correct time or was I not supposed to remove it at that point? Thank
> > you :)
>
> I think anytime after this message is shown and before the computer starts
> booting after that is a good time.
>
> Cheers
> - -- tomás
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Re: EDA software.

[Michael Milliman]

I have used several of the choices mentioned. I have settled on gEDA suite
for a couple of times reasons. First, using the proper tool chain, it
integrates with the ngspice and gnucap simulators. It also allows complete
project creation from schematic thru simulation to PC board layout.

It is true that the learning curve is rather steep, but it is well worth
your while to take the time to learn how to use these tools.

73s de WB5VQX

On Dec 6, 2017 12:31, "Joe"  wrote:

On Wed, 06 Dec 2017 08:57:09 -0800
pe...@easthope.ca wrote:

> Hi,
>
> At https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTinker/Desktop#EDA is a list of
> packages for electronics design automation.  According to various
> documents, Electric, Fritzing and gEDA, at least, can help to create
> schematics.  I use librecad but have never used schematic
> construction software.  Which of the EDA packages will be a good
> starting point? Is any integrated with Librecad?
>

I suspect they all have a bit of a learning curve. The gEDA suite is
probably the most difficult, but I haven't tried any alternative, there
were none when I began and I don't really feel like changing horses
now. I suspect it is also the most powerful.

What people like about other systems is the 'integration'. The gEDA
suite is clearly two disparate major tools, with completely different
file structures, but as both are text based, it's not hard to plumb one
into the other. There are a number of command-line utilities, and
scripts and spreadsheets to generate families of parts.

I find I need to make most of the footprints I use, and a lesser number
of schematic symbols: there are libraries, and many user contributions
around the Net, but there are so many hundreds of thousands of parts
that a lot have to be made from scratch, which isn't difficult.

I'm not sure what kind of connection with LibreCAD there could be: DXF
is a much more complex file structure, and I think the most that could
be done would be to transfer PCB outlines and mounting points. There is
some provision for component height in PCB, but no easy way to
manipulate values, and I don't believe LibreCAD can do anything in the
way of 3D anyway.

--
Joe

Re: Can somebody explain the benefits of .d directories

[Michael Milliman]

On 11/27/2017 04:31 PM, Nicolas George wrote:

Hans-Peter (2017-11-27):

I have an honest question which is dead-simple: Why do we have ".d" directories

To allow packages to provide configuration snippets. Packages work at
the file level, they provide sets of files. When a package needs to
provide a configuration snippet, for example when it provides a plugin
for another software, it does so by providing a file. When the package
is upgraded, the normal handling of configuration files can be applied.
Modifying a monolithic configuration file would be much more fragile.
This is the reason that the .d directories were done.  However, I also 
find that for manual configuration, I do almost exactly the same thing.  
For example, if/when I decide to add a third party repository to my 
sources.list files, I usually do it by adding a file to sources.list.d, 
rather than editing the sources.list file. This makes it much easier for 
me to locate specific things in my repository lists.  I simply do an ls 
/etc/sources.list.d and can quickly locate the snippet responsible for a 
particular repository. I have used this strategy for other software 
which has a configuration file that can be pretty large.  I don't have 
to manually search through the file to find the one or two lines I'm 
looking for.

Regards,

Re: Cumulative internet data transfer {up AND down}

[Michael Milliman]

That's true. I didn't think about that...I almost never reboot the system I
use as a firewall, but you are right, reboot will kill any stats
accumulated by iptables.

73s de WB5VQX

On Nov 18, 2017 02:07, "Igor Cicimov"  wrote:

> ntop
>
> On 18/11/2017 1:52 am, "Richard Owlett"  wrote:
>
>> I'm interested in investigating cumulative data to/from the internet for
>> selected interval ranging from an hour to a week.
>> My only connection is a device connected thru a USB port.
>> My web search turned up only discussion of measuring throughput RATE.
>> Suggestion of keyword(s) for search?
>> Suggested software?
>> TIA
>>
>>
>>

Re: Cumulative internet data transfer {up AND down}

[Michael Milliman]

On 11/17/2017 11:05 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 11/17/2017 09:15 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 09:00:05AM -0600, Michael Milliman wrote:
AIR, iptables will do that. It has been a long time since I have 
looked at

iptables, but I seem to remember that it will keep those kinds of
statistics and it will do it on a per-interface level, all you have 
to do

is set it up to monitor the interface connected to the internet.

73s de WB5VQX

On Nov 17, 2017 08:52, "Richard Owlett" <rowl...@cloud85.net> wrote:

I'm interested in investigating cumulative data to/from the 
internet for

selected interval ranging from an hour to a week.


Does something like this work for you?


I don't know.
Using <https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/iproute2/ip.8.en.html> I 
was not able to parse the given example.

The output shown for the example hints at "Yes".
I'll have to investigate the references under "See Also".

A reference WITHOUT a link referred to "IP Command reference ip-cref.ps".
A search lead to <http://linux-ip.net/gl/ip-cref/> which EXPLICITLY 
stated "It is not a tutorial or user's guide."

But that's what I need. Where should I look?

After a little looking around, I found this tutorial that on the surface 
of it seems to be pretty comprehensive.


   http://homes.di.unimi.it/sisop/qemu/iptables-tutorial.pdf

AIR, iptables will keep statistics on each rule, and that you can design 
a rule to handle all traffic going out and another one to handle 
incomming traffic, by looking at the statistics associated with each 
rule, you will have the information you need.

TIA



  tomas@trotzki:~$ ip -stats -h link show wlan0
  3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state 
UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000

  link/ether 84:3a:4b:20:44:40 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
  RX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped overrun mcast
  4.52M  6.73k    0   0   0   0
  TX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped carrier collsns
  617k   5.32k    0   0   0   0

NOTE: the option -h is the one responsible for the suffixes (k, M).
 Like in "human".

Re: Cumulative internet data transfer {up AND down}

[Michael Milliman]

AIR, iptables will do that. It has been a long time since I have looked at
iptables, but I seem to remember that it will keep those kinds of
statistics and it will do it on a per-interface level, all you have to do
is set it up to monitor the interface connected to the internet.

73s de WB5VQX

On Nov 17, 2017 08:52, "Richard Owlett"  wrote:

> I'm interested in investigating cumulative data to/from the internet for
> selected interval ranging from an hour to a week.
> My only connection is a device connected thru a USB port.
> My web search turned up only discussion of measuring throughput RATE.
> Suggestion of keyword(s) for search?
> Suggested software?
> TIA
>
>
>

Re: Missing HDMI display

[Michael Milliman]

On Wed, 2017-08-02 at 01:48 -0400, Felix Miata wrote:
> Michael Milliman composed on 2017-08-01 21:22 (UTC-0500):
> 
> > With a little more research, I have found that the HDMI interface
> > is
> > detected and shows up on the xrandr output.  However, it shows up
> > as
> > being disconnected, even though it is indeed connected.  I note
> > that I
> > have checked both the cable and the the connector on the monitor
> > (HDTV
> > in this case) and they both are good -- both windows on the same
> > laptop, and the HDMI outputs of two different Android tablets work
> > with
> > the TV on their HDMI ports using the same cable and input on the
> > TV.
> > I have done a little additional research on the web, and found a
> > couple
> > of similar situations, but I have been unable to get xrandr to show
> > the
> > HDMI port as connected.
> 
> What does Xorg.0.log say? Share the whole thing via paste.debian.net
> (optionally
> pastebinit via cmdline).
Xorg.0.log does not exist on my system (this mystified me when I went
to look at it)
> 
> I suspect you're going to need specialized help due to some bug.
> Where to go I
> can't be sure, because nothing you've written makes it completely
> unambiguous
> whether the HDMI port is controlled by a proprietary NVidia driver or
> one of the
> FOSS drivers. https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c05567143 doesn't
> seem to
> help either.
> 
In trying to determine what driver is being used, I found this in the
lspci -v -nn output:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation Device
[10de:1c8d] (rev ff) (prog-if ff)
!!! Unknown header type 7f
Kernel modules: nvidia
Clearly the !!! Unknown header type 7f is an indication of a problem.

> If it's only NVidia showing up in the log, you probably need to goto
> NVidia's
> support forum. If Intel is showing up in the log, then I'd start with
> the
> intel-...@lists.freedesktop.org mailing list so that Intel's driver
> devs can
> take a look. For the latter,
> https://01.org/linuxgraphics/documentation/how-report-bugs has rather
> explicit
> instructions to consider.
-- 
73s de Mike, WB5VQX

Re: Missing HDMI display

[Michael Milliman]

On Mon, 2017-07-31 at 18:20 -0500, Michael Milliman wrote:
> On Sun, 2017-07-30 at 19:23 -0400, Felix Miata wrote:
> Thanks, Felix...
> > Michael Milliman composed on 2017-07-30 15:32 (UTC-0500):
> > 
> > > Ok, guys.  I'm working on getting Debian 9.1 with Gnome DEfully
> > > functional with a new laptop.  A couple of the issues have been
> > > addressed already, and fixed.  The next issue is a missing HDMI
> > > output.
> > > I'm running a very new HP Pavilion Power laptop (model number 15-
> > > cb045wm with core i7-7700 CPU, Intel Kabylake HD Graphics GT2,
> > > and
> > > NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU.  The laptop has an HDMI connector on
> > > the
> > > side, and it works with Windows 10.  However, the HDMI display
> > > does
> > > not
> > > show up under linux.  The HDMI output does show up under
> > > Pulseaudio,
> > > though it appears to be non-functional, i.e., when I set the
> > > configuration up for HDMI output, nothing comes out through the
> > > HDMI
> > > connection.  I have no real idea how to troubleshoot this issue,
> > > and
> > > suspect that this system may be new enough that the drivers have
> > > not
> > > caught up with the chipset, and so I may be out of luck for a
> > > little
> > > while.
> > > I have searched the debian-user list archive and found nothing
> > > that
> > > appeared to be useful.  Any information one of you Gurus might
> > > have
> > > will be appreciated.
> > 
> > Sounds to me like your key search terms should have been 'linux
> > hybrid graphics'
> > or 'debian hybrid graphics', and you don't have any of the possible
> > candidates
> > installed.
> > 
> > https://wiki.debian.org/Bumblebee looks like a place to start.
> 
> Check out this link, and installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver
> along
> with Bumblebee.  This solved another problem when the NVIDIA driver
> was
> installed which caused GDM to crash on boot.  However, this did not
> solve the issue with the HDMI output.  I still show only the main
> display in gnome-control-center, no HDMI display.
> 
> I suspect, therefore, that the problem is with the other VGA device
> showing on lspci: 
> VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device
> [8086:591b] (rev 04)
> which shows as "Intel Kabylake HD Graphics GT2" in
> /sys/bus/devices/:00:02.0/label
> 
> > 
> > These should be useful even though not intended for Debian:
> > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME
> > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus
> 
> Note that there does not appear to be an Intel Optimus device on the
> system, the NVIDIA card if an Intel GeForce GTX.
With a little more research, I have found that the HDMI interface is
detected and shows up on the xrandr output.  However, it shows up as
being disconnected, even though it is indeed connected.  I note that I
have checked both the cable and the the connector on the monitor (HDTV
in this case) and they both are good -- both windows on the same
laptop, and the HDMI outputs of two different Android tablets work with
the TV on their HDMI ports using the same cable and input on the TV.

I have done a little additional research on the web, and found a couple
of similar situations, but I have been unable to get xrandr to show the
HDMI port as connected.

-- 
73s de Mike, WB5VQX

Re: Missing HDMI display

[Michael Milliman]

On Sun, 2017-07-30 at 19:23 -0400, Felix Miata wrote:
Thanks, Felix...
> Michael Milliman composed on 2017-07-30 15:32 (UTC-0500):
> 
> > Ok, guys.  I'm working on getting Debian 9.1 with Gnome DEfully
> > functional with a new laptop.  A couple of the issues have been
> > addressed already, and fixed.  The next issue is a missing HDMI
> > output.
> > I'm running a very new HP Pavilion Power laptop (model number 15-
> > cb045wm with core i7-7700 CPU, Intel Kabylake HD Graphics GT2, and
> > NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU.  The laptop has an HDMI connector on
> > the
> > side, and it works with Windows 10.  However, the HDMI display does
> > not
> > show up under linux.  The HDMI output does show up under
> > Pulseaudio,
> > though it appears to be non-functional, i.e., when I set the
> > configuration up for HDMI output, nothing comes out through the
> > HDMI
> > connection.  I have no real idea how to troubleshoot this issue,
> > and
> > suspect that this system may be new enough that the drivers have
> > not
> > caught up with the chipset, and so I may be out of luck for a
> > little
> > while.
> > I have searched the debian-user list archive and found nothing that
> > appeared to be useful.  Any information one of you Gurus might have
> > will be appreciated.
> 
> Sounds to me like your key search terms should have been 'linux
> hybrid graphics'
> or 'debian hybrid graphics', and you don't have any of the possible
> candidates
> installed.
> 
> https://wiki.debian.org/Bumblebee looks like a place to start.
Check out this link, and installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver along
with Bumblebee.  This solved another problem when the NVIDIA driver was
installed which caused GDM to crash on boot.  However, this did not
solve the issue with the HDMI output.  I still show only the main
display in gnome-control-center, no HDMI display.

I suspect, therefore, that the problem is with the other VGA device
showing on lspci: 
VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device
[8086:591b] (rev 04)
which shows as "Intel Kabylake HD Graphics GT2" in
/sys/bus/devices/:00:02.0/label

> 
> These should be useful even though not intended for Debian:
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus
Note that there does not appear to be an Intel Optimus device on the
system, the NVIDIA card if an Intel GeForce GTX.
-- 
73s de Mike, WB5VQX

Missing HDMI display

[Michael Milliman]

Ok, guys.  I'm working on getting Debian 9.1 with Gnome DEfully
functional with a new laptop.  A couple of the issues have been
addressed already, and fixed.  The next issue is a missing HDMI output.

I'm running a very new HP Pavilion Power laptop (model number 15-
cb045wm with core i7-7700 CPU, Intel Kabylake HD Graphics GT2, and
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU.  The laptop has an HDMI connector on the
side, and it works with Windows 10.  However, the HDMI display does not
show up under linux.  The HDMI output does show up under Pulseaudio,
though it appears to be non-functional, i.e., when I set the
configuration up for HDMI output, nothing comes out through the HDMI
connection.  I have no real idea how to troubleshoot this issue, and
suspect that this system may be new enough that the drivers have not
caught up with the chipset, and so I may be out of luck for a little
while.

I have searched the debian-user list archive and found nothing that
appeared to be useful.  Any information one of you Gurus might have
will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
-- 
73s de Mike, WB5VQX

[Solved] Re: More Pulseaudio Issues

[Michael Milliman]

On Sat, 2017-07-22 at 11:01 +, Curt wrote:
> On 2017-07-22, michael.e.milli...@gmail.com  .com> wrote:
> > This is a revisit of previous threads dealing with pulseaudio and
> > bluetooth devices.  This problem is that there are two instances of
> > the
> >  pulseaudio daemon running on the system.  One for user Debian-gdm
> > and
> > the other for the local user.  I have searched the debian user list
> > archives (as I've seen and dealt with this problem before but
> > forgot
> > how to fix it) and none of the previously used solutions to this
> > problem work anymore.
> > 
> 
> Any help here?
> 
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Talk:Bluetooth_headset#GDMs_puls
> eaudio_instance_captures_bluetooth_headset
> 
> 
Implemented this fix, and this solved the problem.  I am now playing
the baseball game from my phone through the computer speakers.

Thanks, Curt for the reference.
> 
-- 
73s de Mike, WB5VQX

RE: Debian 9 - Stretch has been released!

[Michael Milliman]

-Original Message-
From: Dalios [mailto:dal...@eumx.net] 
Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2017 2:24 AM
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Debian 9 - Stretch has been released!

On 06/18/2017 06:42 AM, Jimmy Johnson wrote:
>   https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/
> 
> Cheers!
Prost!!
> 


I think these are better links as they are the official announcements and they 
contain other links (for example to available documentation).

[1] https://www.debian.org/News/2017/20170617
[2] https://bits.debian.org/2017/06/stretch-released.html


Anyway thanks to all Debian Developers, Maintainers, contributors, donators, 
volunteers, members of teams etc.

[3] https://www.debian.org/intro/organization
[4] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams
[5] https://nm.debian.org/public/people
[6] https://contributors.debian.org/
[7] https://www.debian.org/intro/help

RE: [SOLVED] Re: Email Problem

[Michael Milliman]

-Original Message-
From: Brad Rogers [mailto:b...@fineby.me.uk] 
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2017 12:57 AM
To: Debian Users ML <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
Subject: Re: [SOLVED] Re: Email Problem

On Fri, 16 Jun 2017 17:51:16 -0500
Michael Milliman <michael.e.milli...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Michael,

>Why is it we always miss what is blatantly obvious??

Because.


;-)

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
So true :))

We are the League, we are the anti band
We're The League - Anti-Nowhere League

[SOLVED] Re: Email Problem

[Michael Milliman]

On 06/16/2017 05:37 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
> Hey, folks, I've got a little problem with the email on my system.  I'm
> running debian/Sid, but the issue has been going on for quite some time
> even when I was running straight Jessie.  I'm sure it's a configuration
> thing, I'm just not sure where to fix it. Here's the deal:
> When I'm in Firefox browser and press the share by email button on
> various web sites, the email client that pops up is always mutt (which
> perhaps I should just un-install as I never use it).  Mutt tries to go
> through Exim to send the email, and I don't have Exim set up for
> internet access (another issue that is on the to-do list for another
> day).  What I would much rather have happen is that the email client
> that pops up be Thunderbird, which I use exclusively for all my email
> stuff.  Where is the setting that will change this behavior? I've looked
> through all the alternatives, and they seem to be set correctly, but it
> is entirely possible that I missed on.
> 
Yep...I missed something.  Of course it is the obvious!!  I finally
thought to check the preferences in Firefox, and sure enough it was set
for mutt (the default).  I changed it to Thunderbird, and everything is
just peachy.

Why is it we always miss what is blatantly obvious??

> As always, thanks for any help in advance.
> 

-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Email Problem

[Michael Milliman]

Hey, folks, I've got a little problem with the email on my system.  I'm
running debian/Sid, but the issue has been going on for quite some time
even when I was running straight Jessie.  I'm sure it's a configuration
thing, I'm just not sure where to fix it. Here's the deal:
When I'm in Firefox browser and press the share by email button on
various web sites, the email client that pops up is always mutt (which
perhaps I should just un-install as I never use it).  Mutt tries to go
through Exim to send the email, and I don't have Exim set up for
internet access (another issue that is on the to-do list for another
day).  What I would much rather have happen is that the email client
that pops up be Thunderbird, which I use exclusively for all my email
stuff.  Where is the setting that will change this behavior? I've looked
through all the alternatives, and they seem to be set correctly, but it
is entirely possible that I missed on.

As always, thanks for any help in advance.
-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Re: Why does no one care that Brad Spengler of GRSecurity is blatantly violating the intention of the rightsholders to the Linux Kernel?

[Michael Milliman]

On 06/15/2017 03:38 PM, deloptes wrote:
> Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
>> On 06/15/2017 02:10 PM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> Hmm, am I feeding the spammer?  [snip]
>>
>> Likely
>>
>>>
>>> PS: aconcernedfossdev doesn't "command" much respect in my mind,
>>> especially with no better explanation of the problem than what I read
>>> here.
>>
>> +1
> 
> The story behind is really interesting and pretty long. I read about the
> conflict perhaps 1/2y ago. Some of the accusations by GRSec make sense,
> however they do not justify their policy.
This is the first I've heard of an issue, however, I'm not really
plugged in to that type of news, so it is not surprising.

> In fact this is the best proof (IMO) how decentralized and open
> idea/project/work etc fails. It fails on both ends the Linux and the GRSec
> end because the first is not motivated to do good and the second to do good
> for free it fails badly.
> I do however think GRSec are wrong as the OP states, they clearly violate
> the license agreements.
> IMO everyone in the linux community should know the background of that story
> same as the background of systemd ... but there is sooo much to know
Perhaps you could post a link where some of us can bone up on the issue?
> 
> regards
> 
> 
> 

-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Re: SOLVED? - was [Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust]

[Michael Milliman]

On 06/10/2017 06:33 PM, songbird wrote:
> Richard Owlett wrote:
> ...
>> I've just done:
>> apt-get update
>> apt-get upgrade
>> apt-get dist-upgrade
>>
>> I no longer see the problem described in this thread.
>> [just a heads up for those who haven't recently done update etc]
> 
>   correct, updated versions of some MATE pieces were
> accepted into testing recently which fixed the
> issue.
> 
>   yay!  :)
> 
I second that motion!!! :))
> 
>   songbird
> 

-- 
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Re: SOLVED - was [Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust]

[Michael Milliman]

On 06/10/2017 03:55 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 05/18/2017 11:52 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>> I have no clue what happened, but the desktop background picture has
>> ceased to be displayed. I'm not even sure where to look to troubleshoot
>> the problem.  The salient information is: OS is fully updated Testing,
>> MATE desktop environment.  I have attempted to re-set the desktop
>> background via both system settings and via right-click->set desktop
>> background on the desktop to no effect.  Thinking that probably the
>> issue was associated with my normal login (the only one on the
>> ea7c4862-980d-56f3-3578-505684870f85@cloud85.netsystem),
>> I created a new user from root terminal and logged in with newly created
>> skeleton home folder; the problem persisted with the new user, so it is
>> a system-wide issue.  Past that, I have no clue.  Any ideas/help will be
>> greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.
>>
> 
> 
> I've just done:
>apt-get update
>apt-get upgrade
>apt-get dist-upgrade
> 
> I no longer see the problem described in this thread.
> [just a heads up for those who haven't recently done update etc]
> 
Yes, the required packages are now available in the unstable release.  I
upgraded to caja 1.16.6 and the problem is solved.  Thanks to all who
contributed to this thread.
> 
> 

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Re: Upcoming transition to Stretch

[Michael Milliman]

On 06/02/2017 08:52 AM, Fungi4All wrote:
> A sneaky way to have fun and be safe, not a very responsible user
> for testing and experimenting, but if you are so afraid of tgings
> blowing up and not knowing how to fix them here is a trick.
I really enjoy troubleshooting problems, and am not afraid to do so.
Unfortunately, I simply do not have the time to do this on a regular
basis.  I always learn a great deal when I do, and that is one of my
favorite things do do :) .  I have always gotten very good information
here on the list when I have had to troubleshoot.
> Let's say once a day, at the time you turn on your pc, you usually
> do updates and upgrades.  What if you reverse the order of things.  
> You read your list email, be forwarned of past 24hrs of trouble,
> then do and upgrade, then do an update which will not be in effect
> until you apply it the next day.  The next day the cycle continues.
> 
This is an excellent idea.  I already look through the proposed upgrades
and pick and choose what I allow on a package by package basis, so I'm
already implementing the most time consuming part of this process.  I
also look pretty closely at what a particular package upgrade brings
with it (i.e. libraries that may have an affect on the system as a
whole) before I bring an upgrade in.  That way I can manage the risks
involved.  I'm not bork-proof, but I haven't borked the system yet.
> For me, I get really sad when there is nothing new to upgrade now,
> even if I am the first to face the trouble.  But there is also a backup
> system which is not yet updated, so work can still be done.
> 
> Sid is real debian to me, the rest is just debian too refined to be debian.
> 
> On the other hand, resolv.conf is a package in even Jessie that needs
> "manual" configuration to work.  Despite what you do it is still linux
> in its finest.  No  matter what you do each day you may never know
> what will you learn or have to learn to get things done by the next
> morning.  Sleep is for windows morons.
> 
> 

-- 
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Re: Upcoming transition to Stretch

[Michael Milliman]

On 06/02/2017 08:54 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 02, 2017 at 08:40:38AM -0500, Michael Milliman wrote:
>> Thank you Siard and Greg.  This does clear up this part of the process.
>> Currently, I have my sources.list pointed at Stretch, recently modified
>> from pointing to Testing in anticipation of potential issues.  I think
>> I'll go ahead and set it back to Testing (which is the same as Stretch
>> at the moment, so it is just a name change) and see what the ride is
>> like.  I can always point back to Stretch (then stable) and do some
>> serious work in Synaptic if there is too much blood flowing :)
> 
> Uh, no.  If you track testing, and receive new packages after the release,
> you will NOT be (guaranteed) able to go back to stretch.  Downgrading
> has never been supported, and is manual and messy at best, impossible
> at worst.
> 
I have had to downgrade (packages, not entire system) before. It is
indeed messy, and depending on the package, impossible as the downgrade
can affect almost the entire system (ala libc6).  But it is possible to
downgrade the whole systemthe process is very, very messy, no doubt.

> If you want to play around with testing in a reversible fashion, you
> should set up either a chroot or a virtual machine.  (Or a separate
> bootable partition, or a separate computer.)  Otherwise, once you bring
> in something like libc6 post-release, you are *committed* to the next
> testing cycle.
This sounds like a great learning opportunity. I don't have quite enough
hamsters in the cage to run a VM with any degree of performance (I need
to buy a few more hamsters :) ).  But using a chroot may well be a good
option.  I haven't done anything with chroot in the past (outside of
certain packages that do some of that behind the scenes).  This may be
an opportunity to learn how to set one up.
> 

-- 
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Re: Upcoming transition to Stretch

[Michael Milliman]

On 06/02/2017 07:03 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 02, 2017 at 12:35:12PM +0200, Siard wrote:
>> Michael Milliman:
>>> As I understand it, Stretch will become stable in a couple of weeks.
>>> At that time what is now Sid (unstable) will become Testing. Is this
>>> correct?
>>
>> No, that is not correct. :-)  Testing will be unaffected.
>> Depending on how you configure /etc/apt/sources.list, you can either
>> have Testing continue as Stable, or the new Testing.
> 
> To expand on this:
> 
> Debian developers upload the new versions of their packages into unstable.
> During normal times, when there is NOT a freeze in effect, packages
> which meet certain criteria (no release-critical bugs, all dependencies
> satisfied, etc.) will be copied automatically from unstable into testing.
> 
> That process is not taking place now, because of the freeze.
> 
> It is not accurate to say that unstable "becomes" testing.  It's more
> like closing/opening a dam to prevent a river from flowing.
> 
> Furthermore, there is a "slushy" effect which is preventing developers
> from uploading (most) new packages into unstable.  Doing so would
> distract from the efforts to clean up stretch for release.  In essence,
> unstable is also mostly-frozen right now.  (Nothing is 100% absolute,
> because these are developers we're talking about.  They're like cats.)
> 
> After the stretch release, there is going to be a tremendous influx of new
> packages in unstable, as developers want to play with all their new toys.
> The unstable->testing dam will also be opened, so after a couple days,
> when packages become eligible for copying, they'll start to appear in
> testing too.  Anyone who is tracking unstable or testing at this time
> should prepare for Extra Fun.
> 
Thank you Siard and Greg.  This does clear up this part of the process.
Currently, I have my sources.list pointed at Stretch, recently modified
from pointing to Testing in anticipation of potential issues.  I think
I'll go ahead and set it back to Testing (which is the same as Stretch
at the moment, so it is just a name change) and see what the ride is
like.  I can always point back to Stretch (then stable) and do some
serious work in Synaptic if there is too much blood flowing :)

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Re: RTL8812/8821 network cards

[Michael Milliman]

On 06/02/2017 04:03 AM, Michael Lange wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 1 Jun 2017 19:34:20 -0500
> Michael Milliman <michael.e.milli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Have you tried the package firmware-realtek??  I'm not absolutely
>> positive that the drivers available in this package will work with your
>> specific 8812/8821 chipset (there are more than one), but it does have
>> drivers for some 8812/8821 chipsets that may work.
> 
> from a quick glance at the page the OP has linked I doubt that any of the
> drivers that are currently included in the linux kernel will work with
> this chipset if you just add some firmware file(s), I guess this is the
> reason why the developers bothered to write that driver ;)
> 
> I have here a similar problem with a realtek8723bs chipset, the 8723ae
> and 8723be drivers are no good for that one.
> 
I've had a similar problem in the past (quite some time ago).  AIR, I
had to do some searching to find a driver that would compile under
Debian and install it myself.  I haven't used the device that required
that in quite a while, and it is not needed on my current system, but I
think that a usable driver did eventually find its way into the
Debian distribution.  One of the side-effects of Debian policy is that
it takes quite a while for these things to work their way through the
system to the distro.
>>From what the project page suggests, building and installing the 8821au
> driver seems to be easy enough (no patches and no additional firmware
> files required) so I think it should be possible to build a debian
> package which could be added to a custom debian iso.
> 
>>From what the OP writes however I am not sure if they meant to include the
> driver in the official debian distro instead. This would surely require
> the driver to be added to the official kernel first. Even if this happens
> there is no guarantee that debian will include it in their kernel
> packages (as is currently the case with the rtl8723bs driver which
> finally made it into the kernel but is not included in debian's 4.11
> kernel package).
> 
> Regards
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
>>
>> On 06/01/2017 05:49 PM, Jessica Litwin wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 6:31 PM, Wei-Shun Lo <rali...@gmail.com
>>> <mailto:rali...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Debian,
>>>
>>> Is it possible to include below driver in the kernel for network
>>> installation?  
>>> Many cards are using this driver.
>>>
>>> https://github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux
>>> <https://github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux>
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Ralic 
>>> -- 
>>> 
>>> ************************************
>>> * _Contact Info_
>>> ** *
>>>  *US Mobile: 1-408-609-7628 <tel:(408)%
>>> 20609-7628>   * 
>>> Em
>>> ail: rali...@gmail.com
>>> <mailto:rali...@gmail.com> Line/ Skype :
>>> ralic_lo
>>> ************************************
>>> *
>>>
>>> *
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In the past I have made my own ISOs and included the contents of
>>> linux-firmware. Perhaps this may be something you can do also?
>>>
>>> // jkl
>>
>> -- 
>> 73's,
>> WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
> .-.. .. ...- .   .-.. --- -. --.   .- -. -..   .--. .-. --- ... .--. . .-.
> 
> Uncontrolled power will turn even saints into savages.  And we can all
> be counted on to live down to our lowest impulses.
>   -- Parmen, "Plato's Stepchildren", stardate 5784.3
> 

-- 
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Upcoming transition to Stretch

[Michael Milliman]

Hi folks,  I'm currently running Stretch, and have been for a couple of
months.  As I understand it, Stretch will become stable in a couple of
weeks.  At that time what is now Sid (unstable) will become Testing.  Is
this correct? If so, how disastrous might it be for me to upgrade from
Stretch to the new Testing?  Will this be a usable distribution, or
would it be advisable to wait for a little while before doing so?  I
don't have a problem with running on the "bleeding edge" as long as
there is not too much blood :)
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Re: RTL8812/8821 network cards

[Michael Milliman]

Have you tried the package firmware-realtek??  I'm not absolutely
positive that the drivers available in this package will work with your
specific 8812/8821 chipset (there are more than one), but it does have
drivers for some 8812/8821 chipsets that may work.

On 06/01/2017 05:49 PM, Jessica Litwin wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 6:31 PM, Wei-Shun Lo  > wrote:
> 
> Dear Debian,
> 
> Is it possible to include below driver in the kernel for network
> installation?  
> Many cards are using this driver.
> 
> https://github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> Ralic 
> -- 
> 
> ************************************
> * _Contact Info_** 
>*
>  *US Mobile: 1-408-609-7628    *
>  
> Em
> ail: rali...@gmail.com  
>  Line/ Skype : ralic_lo
> 
> ************************************
> *
> 
> *
> 
> 
> 
> In the past I have made my own ISOs and included the contents of
> linux-firmware. Perhaps this may be something you can do also?
> 
> // jkl

-- 
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Re: RTL8812/8821 network card driver

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/29/2017 07:12 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 04:29:35AM -0700, Wei-Shun Lo wrote:
>> Dear Debian,
> 
>> Is it possible to include below driver in the kernel for network 
>> installation?  
>> Many cards are using this driver.
> 
>> https://github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux
> 
> A couple of things:
> 
>  - this list is not "Debian". It's just the Debian User's mailing
>list. Debian users help each other (sometimes experts lurk here
>and help us all, which is very nice of them, but nobody is paid
>or forced to do that!)
> 
>  - if you want to get a hardware driver "in", the best path is,
>of course the kernel. This way, it'll find its way into all
>Linux distributions, not only Debian. That said, sometimes
>distributions carry a set of patches to the "official" or
>"vanilla" kernel, but most try to keep those patches to a
>minimum: it's a lot of work to maintain that, and this takes
>energy away to do other important things.
> 
>  - the mailing list for this kind of questions is most probably
>the Debian kernel mailing list:
> 
>https://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/
> 
>There are really nice people there, but please be nice to
>them. They are doing an awesome work without us paying them
>to do so. Do your homework first:
>(a) do newer versions of the Linux kernel carry this driver
>   already?
>(b) search the mailing list archives. Perhaps there's already
>   a discussion about this on-going.
> 
It is also possible that another driver than the one OP mentions is
being considered for inclusion in the kernel to handle the hardware in
question.  Linux, being what it is, there are often more than one
solution to the same problem, and one of the things the developers, both
debian and upstream, consider is what is the best fit for Debian/Linux
overall.

> Cheers
> -- tomás
> 

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signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Clairification - was [Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust]

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/29/2017 01:19 PM, Brian wrote:
> On Sat 27 May 2017 at 19:13:25 +0100, Brian wrote:
> 
>> On Sat 27 May 2017 at 09:52:45 -0500, David Wright wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat 27 May 2017 at 12:32:06 (+0100), Brian wrote:
>>>> On Fri 26 May 2017 at 17:57:40 -0500, Michael Milliman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> And actually, the --no-xinerama flag is not needed, at least on my
>>>>> system.  I use feh --bg-fill ... and it works just fine.  Of course,
>>>>> that is a very limited (and safe) usage of feh.  I don't think it wise
>>>>> to use it for anything much more (IMHO).
>>>>
>>>> Surprising after all these years that feh is now revealed as an unsafe
>>>> image viewer.
>>>
>>> Wow, I didn't realise I'd participated in a revelation.
>>
>> It happens all the time on -user. :)
> 
> Fancy another one?
> 
> There are legitimate concerns about aspects of feh's behaviour, not
> sufficient as yet to prevent my recommending it, but the topic prompted
> a bit of exploring. So I took a look at Debian's sxiv in Stretch.
> 
> sxiv is somewhat similar to feh. It has an installed size a third of
> feh's (an advantage?) and is fast at rendering and responsive. Nothing
> scientific, but thumbnails (without caching) seem to render quicker than
> feh does it. One can easily switch between thumbnail view and picture
> display. The upstream developer is also active, which is never a bad
> thing.
> 
> Downsides? Definitely. But this post is an advocacy one for those Debian
> users who just want to view their pictures without installing tons of
> GNOME dependencies or like to be able to configure things for their
> particular use case.
> 
> I am now torn between feh and sxiv. That is the problem with threads
> like this, which promote delving into available packages and having to
> make a choice. :)
> 
For me, though, the important aspect is will sxiv change the desktop
background like feh will? I have been following this thread closely
since opening it and have learned quit a bit.  I agree an active
upstream is always a good thing.  And I admit, I am concerned about some
of what has been reported of feh's behavior, though most of that
behavior is inconsequential in my use case.


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Re: Debian LiveCDs are missing UFW!

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/27/2017 06:43 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> It's quite pathetic to discover the recent Debian
> LiveCDs are missing UFW!
> 
Perhaps an oversight, perhaps not.  But, postings of this nature are
unlikely to result in anything constructive happening.
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Re: Poor X performance with Intel 8086:22b1 (Braswell)

[Michael Milliman]

Looks like this will probably top-post, or perhaps not have any quoted
material...I'm using mobile device at the moment, my apologies.
The last time I had to mess with anything Xorg was with the xorg.conf filr,
but that may well have been 10+ years ago.  I've probably forgotten more
than I ever knew about it now.  The conf file vs. conf.d directory has
become a common motif these days. I use the /etc/apt/sources.list.d
directory extensively on my system; it is the same principle (other than
not being optional).  Thanks for all the info, Felix, I have learned a lot,
though this was not originally my thread.  Hopefully, the OP has learned
some as well.

73's,
de WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

On May 26, 2017 21:48, "Felix Miata" <mrma...@earthlink.net> wrote:

Michael Milliman composed on 2017-05-26 20:23 (UTC-0500):

> ...Does this cp command overwrite an existing
> xorg.conf.  AIR, the xorg.conf is no longer required (of course I've
> slept several times since I think I saw that :) ).
xorg.conf is an optional file that is unnecessary and not present for the
vast
majority of users for all generations of Xorg going back too far to
remember,
probably getting close to 10 years, maybe longer. The primary and large
exception is users of proprietary NVidia driver users.

> If it is overwriting,
> perhaps it would be a good idea if the OP preserved the existing
> xorg.conf in case the new one borks the system worse (always possible
> when messing with the drivers).

I don't know of any reason why a fresh Stretch installation to Intel gfx
would
have xorg.conf. He wouldn't be overwriting an existing unless he created it
himself.

> Well, as I wrote this, I took a look, and on my system (Stretch, with an
> amd processor and Radeon graphics) the etc/X11/xord.conf.d/ directory
> does not even exist.

Both xorg.conf and xorg.conf.d/ are optional. Most distros either create an
empty xorg.conf.d/, or populate one with a small number of tweaks specific
to
various combinations of hardware and/or software. A common one contains
exclusively keyboard configuration. Mine enables Ctrl-Alt-BS, which IIRC is
disabled by default in upstream Xorg.

xorg.conf is a comprehensive file. xorg.conf.d/ is designed for presence of
multiple files, each optional, each designed to address specific components.
IIRC, presence in xorg.conf.d/ inconsistent with anything in xorg.conf if it
exists overrides it.
--
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: Seeing this, is it something I have done or?

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/26/2017 08:22 PM, Charlie S wrote:
> On Fri, 26 May 2017 20:09:41 -0500 Michael Milliman sent:
> 
>> On 05/26/2017 08:00 PM, Charlie S wrote:
>>  [...]  
>> This is interesting.  The post that you are quoting is one of mine.
>> On my system, the [...] do not appear.  I do show some excerpting
>> earlier in the email, but I'm not sure where the excerpting is
>> occuring, whether your claws-mail is doing or it is being introduced
>> somewhere else, I couldn't say.
>>  [...]  
> 
> 
>   After contemplation, my reply is:
> 
> Thank you for your reply.
> 
> Yes I just used that bit of a quote as an example. I can see this in
> all my folders, so it's a claw-mail thing obviously, not Debian-User
> list.
> 
> I'll have to see what is doing it in claws mail.
> 
Cool...I certainly don't mind you quoting my email, especially if it
illustrates a potential problem somewhere.  It is also perhaps possible
that the excerpting that I do see is being caused by Thunderbird (my
email client of choice).  I had never even thought about it.  Perhaps
some contemplation on my part is in order :)
> Charlie
> 

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Re: Poor X performance with Intel 8086:22b1 (Braswell)

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/26/2017 08:03 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
> Michael Milliman composed on 2017-05-26 19:40 (UTC-0500):
> 
>> OK, so the question is, since he is using the default modeset(0) driver,
>> what can he do,if anything, to install and try the Intel driver instead
>> and see if it works better?
> 
> In https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/05/msg00781.html I explained how,
> but he hasn't written here whether he tried or not. I asked for another
> Xorg.0.log, in order to find that out (among other things), but that hasn't
> happened.
> 
Yes, I remember that post earlier in the thread.  I have however, slept
since then :) The OP has not AFAICT performed the cp command to install
the xorg.conf file. Does this cp command overwrite an existing
xorg.conf.  AIR, the xorg.conf is no longer required (of course I've
slept several times since I think I saw that :) ). If it is overwriting,
perhaps it would be a good idea if the OP preserved the existing
xorg.conf in case the new one borks the system worse (always possible
when messing with the drivers).

> If the Intel driver has already been tried, then his focus probably needs to 
> be
> shifted to hunting down anything to be tried that's specific to his Braswell
> chipset generation.
> 
> One possible thing to try (which AFAICT can't work in Gnome), is disabling of
> compositing. Whether Mate can work with compositing disabled ...
As Mate is a fork of Gnome (Gnome 2 to be exact) I would suspect that if
Gnome will not work without compositing, Mate would not either.  But,
the current Gnome desktop is Gnome3, and has been for some time, so
perhaps the Mate fork is early enough that it may run without
compositing (but I wouldn't put MY money on it.  As I run Mate, I guess
I could try it and see.  As I know what changes I'm making, if I bork
the system, I can always fix it with a console log-in :).
...I have no idea, but
> I know it can in Plasma and TDE, and most likely also in IceWM, LXDE and other
> lightweights. I do it, when necessary, or desirable, globally, via
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-extensions.conf:
Well, as I wrote this, I took a look, and on my system (Stretch, with an
amd processor and Radeon graphics) the etc/X11/xord.conf.d/ directory
does not even exist.
> 
>   Section "Extensions"
>   Option  "Composite" "Disable"
>   EndSection
> 

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Re: Seeing this, is it something I have done or?

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/26/2017 08:00 PM, Charlie S wrote:
> 
> Hello Everyone,
> 
> All recent emails from Debian-user lists have come with quoted text like
> this:
> 
> e.g.
> 
> [quote]
> 
> On 05/26/2017 06:59 PM, Somebody wrote:
>  [...]  
>  [...]  
>  [...]  
> Thanks, Somebody.  I hadn't checked the posts 
> 
> [end quote]
> 
> Is this gmail creating the quoted text with these:
> 
>  [...]  
>  [...]  
>  [...] 
> 
> or is it some configuration in my Claws-Mail?
> 
> Anyone else seeing this?
This is interesting.  The post that you are quoting is one of mine.  On
my system, the [...] do not appear.  I do show some excerpting earlier
in the email, but I'm not sure where the excerpting is occuring, whether
your claws-mail is doing or it is being introduced somewhere else, I
couldn't say.
> 
> TIA
> Charlie
> 

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Re: Poor X performance with Intel 8086:22b1 (Braswell)

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/26/2017 07:35 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
> Michael Milliman composed on 2017-05-26 19:06 (UTC-0500):
> 
>> I hadn't checked the posts in the pastebin.  As I
>> stated, the problem is a little over my head at this point, so I'm not
>> sure what the modeset(0) driver being in use actually means, as the OP
> 
> It means he's most likely using the default Stretch Xorg driver configuration
> for Intel gfx
> 
>> also indicated.  At this point, he, and I for that matter, doesn't know
>> even whether that is correct, and if not what the alternative is or how
>> to configure for that alternative.
> The short story is that for some Intel users the Intel driver works better, 
> for
> other Intel users Xorg's integral modeset(0) driver works better, and for some
> Intel users, neither are satisfactory. Whether either driver is "correct"
> depends on the particular gfx hardware version.
> 
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item=Ubuntu-Debian-Abandon-Intel-DDX
> is the only default Intel driver change announcement I can recall seeing.
> 
OK, so the question is, since he is using the default modeset(0) driver,
what can he do,if anything, to install and try the Intel driver instead
and see if it works better?
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Re: Poor X performance with Intel 8086:22b1 (Braswell)

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/26/2017 06:59 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
> Michael Milliman composed on 2017-05-26 18:18 (UTC-0500):
> 
>> ...someone mentioned checking if the package
>> xserver-xorg-video-intel was installed on your system.  This package
>> should be installed if it is not.
> 
> He already reported in
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/05/msg00785.html
> that it is installed
> 
>   dpkg -l | grep intel:...
>   ii  xserver-xorg-video-intel2:2.99.917+git20161206-1
> 
> However, in https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/05/msg00767.html he
> provided a pastebin (now expired) of Xorg.0.log that reported the modeset(0)
> driver in use.
> 
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/05/msg00781.html explained how he
> could try configuring use of the Intel driver. Subsequently OP reported Gnome 
> to
> be working, but also that unsatisfactory AV playback in Totem remains, even in
> Mate, plus he sees poor scrolling behavior in LibreOffice.
Thanks, Felix.  I hadn't checked the posts in the pastebin.  As I
stated, the problem is a little over my head at this point, so I'm not
sure what the modeset(0) driver being in use actually means, as the OP
also indicated.  At this point, he, and I for that matter, doesn't know
even whether that is correct, and if not what the alternative is or how
to configure for that alternative.

He (the OP) also reports a problem with the mate desktop background.
But this is a separate issue with mate desktop (which is a fork of the
Gnome2 [now defunct] desktop), which currently has a bug reported.

> 

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Re: Oh no something has gone wrong! after reinstalling Debian and Gnome.

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/26/2017 06:53 PM, Anil Duggirala wrote:
> As more examples of the symptoms, in Firefox, scrolling through my
> email's Inbox list, is a little sluggish, however, scrolling through a
> site that has images and other things (rt.com), I can scroll up and down
> more smoothly.
> In the Applications Dropdown from the top bar in Gnome Classic, it
> sometimes is hard to select an item, I have to move the mouse around a
> little bit for it to actually "stand on" (highlight) an item, the whole
> menu is a little bit sluggish too.
This is also a common problem.  It sounds like you see it a little more
than most, but I too have occasional sluggishness on the menu, and have
seen that for quite some time.  I haven't done anything about it, as for
me it is an occasional minor annoyance rather than something I classify
as a real problem. I just figure that it is a result of my older
equipment, as it occurs more frequently when I have the system loaded
down pretty good.
> thanks
> 

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Re: Oh no something has gone wrong! after reinstalling Debian and Gnome.

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/26/2017 06:40 PM, Anil Duggirala wrote:
> On Fri, May 26, 2017, at 06:18 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
> 
>> Now means that 4.9+79 is what is now installed on your system.  4.9+80
>> is available from the testing distribution, so that would mean that you
>> have the testing distribution mentioned in your sources.list file in
>> /etc/apt.
> 
> I had just figured that out. In my sources.list I have deb entries with
> "stretch", not "testing", when Stretch is released as stable, will I
> remain in Stretch and not continue getting the Testing packages ?(that
> is what I want)
> 
>> This is not the problem, and given the totality of the
>> situation, I would not upgrade to the newer kernel.  
> 
> Too late. Since it was being proposed I did make the upgrade, I cant say
> for sure but no changes appear to have happened, maybe its taking longer
> for the initial load of the graphical interface in general (login and
> desktop), but cant be sure.
> 
> I appreciate your help and support, I really want Debian to work for me,
> I bought an Asus laptop because I thought they had better support in
> linux, they ship some of their PCs with linux (actually their EEEpc
> originally ONLY shipped with a modification of Debian)
> 
> As another symptom I have now is for example, scrolling down or up on a
> simple Libreoffice (docx) document is not smooth, it appears to be a
> purely graphical issue, not something beyond that in terms of
> processing, but I can be sure.
> 
> I have tried installing Mate, really I dont see a lot of difference at
> all with regard to any of my issues, actually I have a problem in Mate,
> it will not load the desktop background image and it is stuck in black.
> 
For completeness, the bug that I mentioned in my last post is Bug#862355.

> thanks again,
> 
> 

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Re: Oh no something has gone wrong! after reinstalling Debian and Gnome.

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/26/2017 06:40 PM, Anil Duggirala wrote:
> On Fri, May 26, 2017, at 06:18 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
> 
>> Now means that 4.9+79 is what is now installed on your system.  4.9+80
>> is available from the testing distribution, so that would mean that you
>> have the testing distribution mentioned in your sources.list file in
>> /etc/apt.
> 
> I had just figured that out. In my sources.list I have deb entries with
> "stretch", not "testing", when Stretch is released as stable, will I
> remain in Stretch and not continue getting the Testing packages ?(that
> is what I want)
> 

Stretch and testing are the same thing, right now.  However, you are
correct, when Stretch becomes the stable release, with stretch in your
sources.list file, you will remain on Stretch.  This sounds like what
you want, so all is good.

>> This is not the problem, and given the totality of the
>> situation, I would not upgrade to the newer kernel.  
> 
> Too late. Since it was being proposed I did make the upgrade, I cant say
> for sure but no changes appear to have happened, maybe its taking longer
> for the initial load of the graphical interface in general (login and
> desktop), but cant be sure.
> 
OK, Well, the change from 4.9+79 to 4.9+80 shouldn't cause any
additional concerns.  I, being a technical troubleshooting kind of
person (I do a lot of electronic troubleshooting), tend toward making
the fewest possible changes when I'm debugging something so as not to
cause any additional problems which might confuse the issue.

> I appreciate your help and support, I really want Debian to work for me,
> I bought an Asus laptop because I thought they had better support in
> linux, they ship some of their PCs with linux (actually their EEEpc
> originally ONLY shipped with a modification of Debian)
> 
> As another symptom I have now is for example, scrolling down or up on a
> simple Libreoffice (docx) document is not smooth, it appears to be a
> purely graphical issue, not something beyond that in terms of
> processing, but I can be sure.
> 
> I have tried installing Mate, really I dont see a lot of difference at
> all with regard to any of my issues, actually I have a problem in Mate,
> it will not load the desktop background image and it is stuck in black.
> 
Yes, I have the same problem (see the thread Desktop Background Bites
The Dust).  This is a known problem with the Stretch distribution.
There is an upstream fix (upstream being the people who actually develop
the mate desktop, as opposed to the people that maintain the Debian
repositories and that package within Debian).  The upstream fix is to
install caja version 1.16.3.  This version of caja hasn't made its way
into the Debian repositories yet (1.16.2 is currently available).  There
is a bug already filed against this problem, and I'm sure the Debian
maintainers will take the appropriate steps to fix the problem.

Please see the aforementioned thread, as there is a workaround using the
feh package (which has resulted in some interesting controversy in that
thread).  I am currently using feh to fix the problem, but plan to ditch
that package as soon as the problem is resolved.

> thanks again,
> 
> 

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Re: Oh no something has gone wrong! after reinstalling Debian and Gnome.

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/26/2017 09:38 AM, Anil Duggirala wrote:
> 
> On Wed, May 24, 2017, at 11:11 PM, Ric Moore wrote:
>> Please don't top post. You don't see anyone else doing that do you??
>> Take a clue. Ric
> 
> Sorry for top-posting, I have taken a clue now. 
> I deactivated Animations in Gnome (Tweak Tool - Appearance), this
> appears to have helped, dragging windows around is not so laggy and
> video playback does not appear to be crashing, and is running more
> smoothly, however the video playback is not really smooth. 
> 
>> Anil's log from about 3+ hours ago shows he's using the modeset(0) Xorg 
>> driver
>> still.
> What does this mean?? Is there any other driver for me to try??
> 
> Please help me, do I really have the right driver and firmware for my
> graphics card already?? Looking at package linux-image-amd64 in Synaptic
> shows 2 versions 4.9+79 (now), 4.9+80 (testing), this upgrade has been
> suggested by the automatic update app in Gnome. What does (now) and
> (testing) mean in Synaptic there. I have left my sources.list as is
> after install, "stretch" is the keyword, will my pc stay on stretch once
> it is released or continue upgrading to "testing"??  
> 
Now means that 4.9+79 is what is now installed on your system.  4.9+80
is available from the testing distribution, so that would mean that you
have the testing distribution mentioned in your sources.list file in
/etc/apt.  This is not the problem, and given the totality of the
situation, I would not upgrade to the newer kernel.  This is probably
safe, but it is possible that it could introduce additional issues.  At
least until you get the current problem resolved, IMHO (In My Humble
Opinion) you should make the fewest changes possible to the system,
changing only those things needed to move closer to a resolution to the
current problem, which we are trying to figure out.  I understand your
frustration, be patient, the guys (and gals) here are good.  It may take
a little time to figure out exactly what needs to be done
(troubleshooting by remote control is difficult at best), but it will
get figured out.  The situation is really over my head at this point,
however, someone mentioned checking if the package
xserver-xorg-video-intel was installed on your system.  This package
should be installed if it is not.

Thanks for your patience.  I rarely have a real problem with my Debian
distributions, but have always found good help here. :)
> thanks a lot,
> 

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Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/25/2017 06:27 AM, RavenLX wrote:
> On 05/21/2017 05:40 PM, David Christensen wrote:
>> As I understand it:
>>
>> *   'apt-get upgrade' is for rolling forward to a new minor revision
>> -- e.g. Debian 8.7 to Debian 8.8 -- and/or new packages -- e.g.
>> icedove 1:45.6.0-1~deb8u1 to thunderbird 1:45.8.0-3~deb8u1).
>>
>> *   'apt-get dist-upgrade' is for rolling forward to a new major
>> revision -- e.g. Debian 7 to Debian 8.
>>
>>
>> I do the former regularly -- once or more per week.
>>
>>
>> I avoid the latter, as it's caused me grief in the past (when I want
>> to do a major version upgrade, I backup, move the system disk aside,
>> do a fresh install, and restore).
>>
>>
>> My issue is likely tied to some software corner case due the the
>> hardware -- e.g. 32-bit laptop with an off-spec 64-bit processor
>> jammed in.
> 
> I've always used dist-upgrade for years without any problems. It's an
> old habit by now. If I don't, I learned there are some packages I *do*
> want to upgrade that get held back (ie. not upgraded) if I don't do
> dist-upgrade, such as new kernels (which I like to keep the kernel the
> newest out there). I haven't yet had any real major issues (even minor
> issues I've always found a work-around and 99% of the time it was just
> something I myself needed to configure, and not really a bug). I run
> stable so maybe that is why I have such good luck. On test VMs I do
> dist-upgrade basically because I know I can always start over if things
> go wrong. And Virtual Machines are the test systems anyway.
> 
Yeah, I like the VMs for testing as well.  Unfortunately, I'm poor :)
and my equipment is pretty slow, so VM performance is pretty poor too :)
Right now I'm running Stretch, and 99% of the time, I have no problems,
but every once in a while
> 

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Re: Clairification - was [Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust]

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/26/2017 09:48 AM, Ric Moore wrote:
> On 05/25/2017 06:56 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
>> On 05/24/2017 12:26 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
>>> The man page 
>>> _mentions_ setting wallpaper in passing my noting "Use --no-xinerama to
>>> treat the whole X display as one screen when setting wallpapers."
> 
> I use one wallpaper across four screens. I just right click on the
> desktop, select "Desktop Settings", select your wallpaper and scroll the
> vertical bar down to reveal the settings you want (or make it full
> screen)  select "Spanning Screens" style and check "Apply to all
> workspaces.  Bob's your uncle, you should be set. Net, go to some wall
> paper site and find W_I_D_E wallpapers. :) Ric
> p/s Using XFCE.
That is the problem, Ric.  My original post for this thread is that with
the current mate-desktop in Stretch, this no longer works.  The current
work-around is using feh to set the background, which does work. There
is an upstream fix, upgrading to caja version 1.16.3 is supposed to fix
the problem, but that version is not yet in the Stretch repositories.
There is currently a bug filed against this, and hopefully the
maintainers will get the problem solved and feh will be a thing of
history :)
> 

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Re: Clairification - was [Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust]

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/25/2017 06:08 AM, Dejan Jocic wrote:
> On 25-05-17, Richard Owlett wrote:
>> On 05/24/2017 12:26 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
>>> On 05/20/2017 09:31 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>>>> [snip]
>>>>>> The bug report also lists a workaround (which I haven't tried).
>>>>>>
>>>> The workaround is using the feh package to manually set the background
>>>> image.  This does work, however, it has to be done each time you
>>>> log-in. It is better than nothing.  Upstream also appears to have
>>>> a bug reported on it, and they suggest installation of mate-desktop
>>>> 16.2 with caja 16.3, neither of which has made it to the Debian
>>>> distribution as of yet.
>>>
>>> Being one who emphatically avoids graphics I found a subtle gotcha.
>>>
>>> The man page <https://manpages.debian.org/jessie/feh/feh.1.en.html>
>>> _mentions_ setting wallpaper in passing my noting "Use --no-xinerama to
>>> treat the whole X display as one screen when setting wallpapers."
>>>
>>> An example command line to use would be (as a single line):
>>> feh --no-xinerama /usr/share/backgrounds/mate/desktop/GreenTraditional.jpg
>>>
>>> It also does not mention how to set it as the wallpaper ;)
>>> Once the above command has displayed the chosen image:
>>>  1. right-click anywhere in the image
>>>  2. chose File->Background->Set Filled from the displayed menu/sub-menus
>>>
>>
>> If I had read the man page more slowly that using the menu to set the image
>> as wallpaper was unnecessary. Use:
>> feh --no-xinerama  --bg-fill
>> /usr/share/backgrounds/mate/desktop/GreenTraditional.jpg
>>
>>
>>
>>
> It's been a while since I've used feh for background. Anyway, it should
> save your choice in .fehbg file. And you should add that file to
> autostart, to preserve your background settings.
> 
That is what the man page says, and it does indeed create the ~/.fehbg
file.  But for whatever reason, I have not needed to invoke said file.
My background continues to work, even across a re-boot after having
invoked feh --bg-fill ...
> 
> 

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Re: Clairification - was [Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust]

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/25/2017 05:56 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 05/24/2017 12:26 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
>> On 05/20/2017 09:31 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>>> [snip]
>>>>> The bug report also lists a workaround (which I haven't tried).
>>>>>
>>> The workaround is using the feh package to manually set the background
>>> image.  This does work, however, it has to be done each time you
>>> log-in. It is better than nothing.  Upstream also appears to have
>>> a bug reported on it, and they suggest installation of mate-desktop
>>> 16.2 with caja 16.3, neither of which has made it to the Debian
>>> distribution as of yet.
>>
>> Being one who emphatically avoids graphics I found a subtle gotcha.
>>
>> The man page <https://manpages.debian.org/jessie/feh/feh.1.en.html>
>> _mentions_ setting wallpaper in passing my noting "Use --no-xinerama to
>> treat the whole X display as one screen when setting wallpapers."
>>
>> An example command line to use would be (as a single line):
>> feh --no-xinerama
>> /usr/share/backgrounds/mate/desktop/GreenTraditional.jpg
>>
>> It also does not mention how to set it as the wallpaper ;)
>> Once the above command has displayed the chosen image:
>>  1. right-click anywhere in the image
>>  2. chose File->Background->Set Filled from the displayed menu/sub-menus
>>
> 
> If I had read the man page more slowly that using the menu to set the
> image as wallpaper was unnecessary. Use:
> feh --no-xinerama  --bg-fill
> /usr/share/backgrounds/mate/desktop/GreenTraditional.jpg
> 
> 
And actually, the --no-xinerama flag is not needed, at least on my
system.  I use feh --bg-fill ... and it works just fine.  Of course,
that is a very limited (and safe) usage of feh.  I don't think it wise
to use it for anything much more (IMHO).
> 
> 

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Re: Clairification - was [Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust]

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/24/2017 06:57 PM, David Wright wrote:
> On Wed 24 May 2017 at 17:28:52 (-0500), Michael Milliman wrote:
> 
>> I installed and have been using feh as a stop-gap until the Debian
>> repositories catch up to upstream and/or fix the problem in Stretch.
>> Been working just fine, with its limitations.  It's better than a black
>> desktop. :)  I had to read the man page a couple of times and try it
>> another couple of times to make it work, but work it does.
> 
> I prefer to keep feh off my systems; its description is a lie.
> 
> feh - image viewer and cataloguer
> 
> It's an editor that has no concept of a buffer, but just scribbles
> over the original file. And, IIRC, the error message, when thwarted
> by a read-only file, is incorrect: it blames the permissions of
> the directory, not the file.
> 
This is a real problem, and I have no intention of using it for any
other reason than as a temporary fix to the MATE desktop background
issue.  There are much better applications for viewing/editing pictures
(Eye of Gnome/MATE, and GIMP come to mind).  I expect that as soon as
the background issue is resolved, I'll probably remove feh from my
system as well, as it has no other use for me.
> Cheers,
> David.
> 

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Re: Clairification - was [Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust]

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/24/2017 12:26 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 05/20/2017 09:31 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>> [snip]
>>>> The bug report also lists a workaround (which I haven't tried).
>>>>
>> The workaround is using the feh package to manually set the background
>> image.  This does work, however, it has to be done each time you
>> log-in. It is better than nothing.  Upstream also appears to have
>> a bug reported on it, and they suggest installation of mate-desktop
>> 16.2 with caja 16.3, neither of which has made it to the Debian
>> distribution as of yet.
> 
> Being one who emphatically avoids graphics I found a subtle gotcha.
> 
> The man page <https://manpages.debian.org/jessie/feh/feh.1.en.html>
> _mentions_ setting wallpaper in passing my noting "Use --no-xinerama to
> treat the whole X display as one screen when setting wallpapers."
> 
> An example command line to use would be (as a single line):
> feh --no-xinerama /usr/share/backgrounds/mate/desktop/GreenTraditional.jpg
> 
> It also does not mention how to set it as the wallpaper ;)
> Once the above command has displayed the chosen image:
>  1. right-click anywhere in the image
>  2. chose File->Background->Set Filled from the displayed menu/sub-menus

I installed and have been using feh as a stop-gap until the Debian
repositories catch up to upstream and/or fix the problem in Stretch.
Been working just fine, with its limitations.  It's better than a black
desktop. :)  I had to read the man page a couple of times and try it
another couple of times to make it work, but work it does.


> 
> 
> 
> 

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Re: Apt Question

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/23/2017 08:47 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 09:23:46AM -0400, Fungi4All wrote:
>>  Original Message 
>> Subject: Re: Apt Question
>> UTC Time: May 23, 2017 11:54 AM
>> From: wool...@eeg.ccf.org
> 
>>> If he
>>> is already running a sid linux kernel and some other core packages by
>>> switching to jessie he will be stuck with those packages almost 
>>> indefinitely,
> 
>> He's not running jessie, nor could he "switch to jessie" if he wanted
>> to. Once you've installed a single binary package from post-jessie,
>> there is no going back.
> 
> That will depend... on the dependencies :)
> 
> Of course, if some package from the N+1 distro pulls in something
> really fat, like, say libc, which upgrades half of your box (yes,
> that's doable: my box looks a bit like that at the moment), then
> your way back will be a bit... painful. 
Absolutely !! :) That's why I always check the proposed changes before
upgrading to a post-Stretch package to make sure that nothing that
drastic is going to be done.  There is a limit to how close to the edge
I will go!!  In fact, should the changes look too heavy, I also explore
going upstream and getting the source package for the newer version and
compiling it on the existing systemsometimes that will work,
sometimes it really needs the newer libraries that I suspect might break
the system.  In which case, I usually decide that bleeding edge probably
would cause too much blood loss!!
But if the package has no
> or very little dependencies, you just have to remember that apt
> (and most probably aptitude) have a natural aversion against
> downgrading packages and that you have to let them know that yes,
> you actually want to do such a seemingly foolish thing.
> 
> As Paracelsus put it once, "Sola dosis facit venenum" (i.e. "It's
> the dosis, stupid" ;-)
> 
> Cheers
> -- tomás
> 

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Re: Apt Question

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/23/2017 03:57 AM, Fungi4All wrote:
> 
>>  Original Message 
>> Subject: Re: Apt Question
>> UTC Time: May 22, 2017 11:02 PM
>> From: songb...@anthive.com
>>
>> Michael Milliman wrote:
>> > I have, for various reasons, the repositories from stable (Jessie),
>> > stretch, and sid in my sources.list file. I have Stretch installed and
>> > have it running for some time. On occasion, there is a bug in Stretch
>> > and I revert to the stable version of the package until the bug gets
>> > worked out. I also, on occasion, use a more advanced version of the
>> > package and get it from sid (with a careful look at the proposed changes
>> > to the system when doing so). I have set synaptic to prefer the Stretch
>> > distribution. However, when I reload, and tell synaptic to mark all
>> > upgrades, it marks upgrades which it will pull from sid. Is there a way
>> > to tell synaptic to ignore those upgrades, while allowing me to manually
>> > install them should I wish to do so? I had thought that telling
>> > synaptic to prefer the Stretch distribution would have handled that, but
>> > I guess not. I figure I'm just missing something.
>>
>> you can always uncheck the apt lines for stretch,
>> and sid in the Settings -> Repositories and then do
>> an update to reload. then that will show you only
>> the versions available in Jessie. then any versions
>> you have upgraded beyond Jessie will show up as
>> Installed (local or obsolete) in the Status selection.
> 
> I don't know, I am not being sarcastic, is this really good practice?
>  If he is already running a sid linux kernel and some other core
Actually, I'm running Stretch, with occasional packages reverted to
jessie distribution, and other occasional packages advanced to sid
distribution.
> packages by switching to jessie he will be stuck with those packages
> almost indefinitely, if the system doesn't eventually break due to
> inconsistencies.  Meanwhile any security and important updates in jessie
> will not apply to all those testing and unstable till their version gets
> superseded, and if ever.  Let's say he has linux 4.9.. on and jessie
> does an upgrade to 3.20, and packages in jessie are checked to all work
> with 3.20.  Who says that their update will work with an outdated 4.9?
I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that packages that run on previous
kernels (3.16 say) will continue to work under new kernels (4.9). I have
not been bitten by this as of yet, though it is always a possibility.
As far as packages advanced to Sid distribution, I make no assumptions,
I try out the package, if it works, great, if not, I can always revert
it to Stretch or Jessie.  I always inspect the changes made to the
system when installing from Sid to make sure that the changes are not
likely to break the whole system.  Again, I have not been bitten by this
as of yet, though it is probable that I will be at some time :)


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Apt Question

[Michael Milliman]

I have, for various reasons, the repositories from stable (Jessie),
stretch, and sid in my sources.list file. I have Stretch installed and
have it running for some time.  On occasion, there is a bug in Stretch
and I revert to the stable version of the package until the bug gets
worked out.  I also, on occasion, use a more advanced version of the
package and get it from sid (with a careful look at the proposed changes
to the system when doing so).  I have set synaptic to prefer the Stretch
distribution.  However, when I reload, and tell synaptic to mark all
upgrades, it marks upgrades which it will pull from sid.  Is there a way
to tell synaptic to ignore those upgrades, while allowing me to manually
install them should I wish to do so?  I had thought that telling
synaptic to prefer the Stretch distribution would have handled that, but
I guess not.  I figure I'm just missing something.
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Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/22/2017 02:55 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 02:40:47PM -0700, David Christensen wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>> As I understand it:
> 
>> *   'apt-get upgrade' is for rolling forward to a new minor revision
>> -- e.g. Debian 8.7 to Debian 8.8 -- and/or new packages -- e.g.
>> icedove 1:45.6.0-1~deb8u1 to thunderbird 1:45.8.0-3~deb8u1).
> 
>> *   'apt-get dist-upgrade' is for rolling forward to a new major
>> revision -- e.g. Debian 7 to Debian 8.
> 
> It's not *that* drastic. Rolling forward usually implies doing
> something to your sources.list (unless you state there something
> like "stable" or "testing", which change their meaning when a
> release is made).
> 
> As far as I understood it (corrections welcome!):
> 
> Upgrade just upgrades packages to newer versions, as far as possible.
> It *never* removes packages, even if that means that it can't advance
> a package's version to the newest. Dist-upgrade would remove (replace)
> packages when necessary.
> 
> E.g. if you have some appfoo depending on libblurb, and there's a
> newer version of apfoo depending on libblah, which conflicts with
> libblurb, upgrade would be stuck at the older version, whereas
> dist-upgrade would (other dependencies allowing it) replace libblurb
> with libblah, thus clearing the path for apfoo's new version.
> 
I think you are correct on the way upgrade vs. dist-upgrade works.  I
wasn't sure myself, but your explanation brought it into focus and made
some stuff I've read before make sense.  Thanks :)
> cheers
> -- t
> 

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Re: Oh no something has gone wrong! after reinstalling Debian and Gnome.

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/22/2017 12:28 PM, Anil Duggirala wrote:
> thanks a lot Fungi,
> I want to reinstall the whole system, so I will download Strech RC 3
> from here https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
> and then after finishing installation will change 'testing' for
> 'jessie', can I do that?
> thanks a lot,
> 
No, after installing, you want to change testing for stretch...in fact,
I would use stretch just to start with, then no change will be needed
after installation.  If you do a fresh install with the stretch
installation CD/DVD, then it should handle the sources.list file for
you, and you won't have to change anything.

> P.S. sorry for spamming your email Fungi
> 
> 
> On Mon, May 22, 2017, at 10:08 AM, Kent West wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 9:51 AM, Fungi4All > > wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> The only thing to fear is stability, or too much of it.  I have
>> run stretch and sid (testing and unstable currently) and I get a
>> sense that sid is even lighter and more stable in hardware
>> resources.  With all the fooling around I do I have yet to see
>> anything break or freeze or do anything unexpected in sid. 
>> Stretch is so stable it is boring :)   Now Jessie, that is a
>> really unstable system ;b   even your graphics don't like it.
>>
>>
>> I have run sid (unstable) for years (a decade? more?), and although
>> there's often little breakages (uh oh, can't install Firefox; wait a
>> day and a half; okay, all better now, it's installed), I can only
>> recall one time (8 years ago? 10?) when the breakage was serious
>> enough that it actually borked my box so I couldn't do anything with
>> it. But even that, as I recall, only had me broken a day or so, as I
>> either manually fixed it, or just reinstalled a fresh sid, or waited
>> until the breakage "fixed itself". The conclusion I have come to after
>> all these years is that for a workstation that doesn't have a
>> mission-critical need for five-9's uptime, sid/unstable is a good
>> solution for staying up-to-date and happy, but it's probably not
>> suitable for a mission-critical box.
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Kent West<")))><
>> Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com
> 

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Re: Is this sources.list correct?

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/22/2017 06:21 AM, Fungi4All wrote:
> 
>>  Original Message 
>> Subject: Re: Is this sources.list correct?
>> UTC Time: May 22, 2017 6:09 AM
>> From: compro...@list.comprofix.com
>> fjfj...@protonmail.com
>>
>> On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 12:45:05AM -0400, Fjfj109 wrote:
>> > On Stretch, upgraded from Jessie. https://paste.debian.net/933553/
>>
>> When updating from Jessie to Stretch. Just replace all the 'Jessie'
>> references in your /etc/apt/sources.list file to 'Stretch'
>>
>> You can do this with a quick sed (backup your sources.list first):
>>
>> sed -i 's|jessie|stretch|g' /etc/apt/sources.list
>>
>> Your sources look OK. I compared them to a Jessie one that I have and
>> other than the repo you are referencing looks good.
> 
> This is an optional addition to consider:
> http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch-backports/
> 
> https://backports.debian.org/ read some before you decide
>>
You might also consider adding contrib and/or non-free to the lines in
your souces.list file.  Many people have issues with non-free,
nevertheless, there are some packages that are of use in both of these
sections of the repositories.  Just add the words contrib non-free after
main in each line (separated by spaces).
>> Thanks
>> Matt
>>
> AK

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Re: Oh no something has gone wrong! after reinstalling Debian and Gnome.

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/21/2017 07:24 PM, Anil Duggirala wrote:
> Thanks everyone for your responses. I did not expect such quick and full
> response. I also really don't believe it has anything to do with
> partitioning (Debian deleted the partitions and created exactly
> corresponding partitions with guided partitioning). 
> More info: When I installed initially with LXDE, I had horrible graphics
> and no touchpad, upon installing the Linux-image from backports (4.9),
> these problems were resolved. I have tried installing Linux-image 4.9
> from backports (using the command line) now again, the problem persists.
> However, in the debian-laptop users list, I guy who said he has the
> exact same laptop (Asus X441SA) said he is running Gnome-Classic
> (Gnome), I have tried asking him if he got this problem but have
> received no response from him.
> All commands outputs here are in a new installation (I have installed 3
> times now), with the regular kernel (3.16)
> Outputs:
> inxi commands say 'command not found'
> lspci  :
> 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device
> [8086:22b1] (rev 35)
> Subsystem: ASUSTek Computer Inc. Device [1043:1290]
> 00:0b.0 Signa processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation Device 
> [8086:22dc] (rev 35)
> Subsystem: ASUSTek Computer Inc. Device [1043:1290]
> 00:13.0 SATA Controller [0106]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:22a3]
> (rev 35)
> 
> I have pasted Xorg log at https://paste.debian.net/933539
> 
> Should I just try Mate or XFCE?? is it possible that works?
> 
> thanks a lot,
> 
Sorry about the side conversation on partitioning.  Clearly your problem
is not the partitioning scheme.  As Felix found, the key information in
lspci output is the device id (8086:22b1) for your graphics controller
is not supported in the stable distribution of Debian.  It is, however,
supported in the Stretch distribution.  I am running Stretch currently,
and it is a good working distribution, with the vast majority of major
bugs already worked out of it.  You should be able to run Stretch
without problems.  I concur with Felix, install Stretch and enjoy :)
> 
> On Sun, May 21, 2017, at 03:57 PM, Jimmy Johnson wrote:
>> On 05/21/2017 12:52 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 05/21/2017 12:23 PM, Jimmy Johnson wrote:
>>
>>>>> However, the OP's post does not mention anything of this nature.  The OP
>>>>> deleted the existing Debian partition(s) leaving the existing Windows
>>>>> partition(s) alone.  No mention was made of the ordering of the
>>>>> partitions on the drive.  The OP then re-installed Debian with the
>>>>> Debian installer, effectively starting from scratch with Debian.
>>>>> Everything seems to work, except GNOME is crashing on boot.  There are
>>>>> several things that can cause this, and I have caused some of them on my
>>>>> system before, however the fact that this is a fresh install limits the
>>>>> possible causes, the most likely of them being a missing (non-free?)
>>>>> video driver or some such required by GNOME to run properly.  The way
>>>>> the OP went about scrapping and re-installing the Debian system is valid
>>>>> and should not have caused a problem under normal circumstances.  Hence
>>>>> the suspicion of a missing driver (again probably non-free, and likely
>>>>> Radeon as well...I've had similar issues with my laptop).
>>
>>>> I have a Lenovo laptop with the problem you describe and it's a
>>>> kernel/video/plasma problem, works fine with the old Sid 4.7 kernel but
>>>> not with the 4.9, first boot is ok, on restart you will not get the DM
>>>> or x and may freeze up.  Sometimes switching back and forth on the
>>>> consoles will get you x, alt+ctrl+F2-F1-F3-F7. Jessie back-ports are
>>>> also 4.9 and don't work right too. The problem here is an
>>>> Intel-965-mobile, I'm going to install the Jessie kernel and see if that
>>>> works or maybe a Ubuntu kernel, I think they are 4.4 and 4.8, I know the
>>>> 4.4 will work, for me anyways, but I have to do something cause the 4.7
>>>> kernel is old now and not getting security updates.
>>> Hey, its better than the 3.16 kernel I was stuck with for a long time up
>>> until just a couple of months. :)  In my case, laptop would boot, but
>>> the screen would be completely blanked out.  If I caught the boot
>>> process at just the right time with a alt+ctl+F1, I could get it to
>>> finish booting, if I missed the window, it was power-off, power-on!! :(
>>> The first-boot on 3.

Re: Oh no something has gone wrong! after reinstalling Debian and Gnome.

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/21/2017 12:23 PM, Jimmy Johnson wrote:
> On 05/21/2017 08:48 AM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 05/21/2017 05:48 AM, Jimmy Johnson wrote:
>>> On 05/21/2017 03:25 AM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 05/21/2017 05:09 AM, Jimmy Johnson wrote:
>>>>> On 05/21/2017 12:57 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
>>>>>> Le 21/05/2017 à 09:55, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
>>>>>
>>>>>>> No, you should NOT have deleted the partition, now your partition
>>>>>>> table
>>>>>>> is messed up.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bullshit. This is just a Gnome error.
>>>>>
>>>>> Unless you are deleting the last partition your partition table is
>>>>> going
>>>>> to be messed up. I hope you enjoy your B.S. You can workaround by
>>>>> using
>>>>> UUID, but personally I do not care for a messed up partition table.
>>>> I also call B.S. on this response.  The OPs problem has absolutely
>>>> nothing to do with the partition table or the UUIDs of the various
>>>> partitions.  If it did, the system would not have gotten to the
>>>> point of
>>>> starting GNOME.  Adding, deleting and resizing partitions, using the
>>>> appropriate tools, is relatively save in the modern era.  I have, on
>>>> many occasions over the years deleted and re-arranged the partitions on
>>>> my system to accommodate changing needs and have had no problems
>>>> whatsoever.
>>>
>>> Michael what I'm saying is if you have sda1,sda2,sda3, partitions and
>>> you delete sda2 partition, sda3 becomes sda2 and if you make a new
>>> partition, even in the same unused space it will become sda3. So, in the
>>> end the drive will read sda1,sda3,sda2 and personally I can't live like
>>> that, I have to many systems to tend too. But as it's been mentioned you
>>> can use UUID if your fstab and that reminds me, if you delete or format
>>> a partition the UUID will change, #blkid will give you the UUID's.  I
>>> hear your argument, but I say back-up and start over, do it right.
>> The Debian Installer uses UUIDs in the entries in the /etc/fstab file,
>> so changing the numbering of the partitions (/dev/sda2 vs. /dev/sda3)
>> does not have an effect on the overall functioning of the system.  You
>> can also use partition labels in the fstab file as well, as I do
>> frequently, as I move data from drive to drive on occasion and simply
>> relabel the partitions to move with the data.  With that, there is no
>> need to change the fstab when I move data around.
>>
>> However, the OP's post does not mention anything of this nature.  The OP
>> deleted the existing Debian partition(s) leaving the existing Windows
>> partition(s) alone.  No mention was made of the ordering of the
>> partitions on the drive.  The OP then re-installed Debian with the
>> Debian installer, effectively starting from scratch with Debian.
>> Everything seems to work, except GNOME is crashing on boot.  There are
>> several things that can cause this, and I have caused some of them on my
>> system before, however the fact that this is a fresh install limits the
>> possible causes, the most likely of them being a missing (non-free?)
>> video driver or some such required by GNOME to run properly.  The way
>> the OP went about scrapping and re-installing the Debian system is valid
>> and should not have caused a problem under normal circumstances.  Hence
>> the suspicion of a missing driver (again probably non-free, and likely
>> Radeon as well...I've had similar issues with my laptop).
> 
> I have a Lenovo laptop with the problem you describe and it's a
> kernel/video/plasma problem, works fine with the old Sid 4.7 kernel but
> not with the 4.9, first boot is ok, on restart you will not get the DM
> or x and may freeze up.  Sometimes switching back and forth on the
> consoles will get you x, alt+ctrl+F2-F1-F3-F7. Jessie back-ports are
> also 4.9 and don't work right too. The problem here is an
> Intel-965-mobile, I'm going to install the Jessie kernel and see if that
> works or maybe a Ubuntu kernel, I think they are 4.4 and 4.8, I know the
> 4.4 will work, for me anyways, but I have to do something cause the 4.7
> kernel is old now and not getting security updates.
Hey, its better than the 3.16 kernel I was stuck with for a long time up
until just a couple of months. :)  In my case, laptop would boot, but
the screen would be completely blanked out.  If I caught the boot
process at just the right time with a alt+ctl+F1, I could get it to
finish booting, if I missed the window, it was power-off, power-on!! :(
The first-boot on 3.16  would do usually boot into software emulation
mode, and then I installed the Radeon drivers, and everything was OK.  I
have 4.9 running now and working fine. Video drivers and wifi drivers
have been my bane for many a year!
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Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/20/2017 09:31 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
> 
> 
> On 05/20/2017 06:33 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 05/20/2017 01:56 PM, Mike Kupfer wrote:
>>> Michael Milliman wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have no clue what happened, but the desktop background picture has
>>>> ceased to be displayed.
>>> [...]
>>>> I have attempted to re-set the desktop
>>>> background via both system settings and via right-click->set desktop
>>>> background on the desktop to no effect.
>>>
>>> I don't know what caused your old wallpaper to go away, but the
>>> inability to set it is tracked by
>>>
>>>   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=862355
>>>
>> This appears to be the same problem.  I will be watching this bug report
>> with interest!!  It also seems to have been reported around the same
>> time my system went belly-up, so it is probably an update that was
>> installed.  Thanks for the info, at least I know it isn't something that
>> I botched up! :)
>>
>>> The bug report also lists a workaround (which I haven't tried).
>>>
> The workaround is using the feh package to manually set the background
> image.  This does work, however, it has to be done each time you log-in.
>  It is better than nothing.  Upstream also appears to have a bug
> reported on it, and they suggest installation of mate-desktop 16.2 with
> caja 16.3, neither of which has made it to the Debian distribution as of
> yet.
Note that the version numbers above should have been mate-desktop 16.0.2
and caja 16.0.3.
> 
>>> mike
>>>
>>
> 

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Re: Oh no something has gone wrong! after reinstalling Debian and Gnome.

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/21/2017 05:48 AM, Jimmy Johnson wrote:
> On 05/21/2017 03:25 AM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 05/21/2017 05:09 AM, Jimmy Johnson wrote:
>>> On 05/21/2017 12:57 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
>>>> Le 21/05/2017 à 09:55, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
>>>
>>>>> No, you should NOT have deleted the partition, now your partition
>>>>> table
>>>>> is messed up.
>>>>
>>>> Bullshit. This is just a Gnome error.
>>>
>>> Unless you are deleting the last partition your partition table is going
>>> to be messed up. I hope you enjoy your B.S. You can workaround by using
>>> UUID, but personally I do not care for a messed up partition table.
>> I also call B.S. on this response.  The OPs problem has absolutely
>> nothing to do with the partition table or the UUIDs of the various
>> partitions.  If it did, the system would not have gotten to the point of
>> starting GNOME.  Adding, deleting and resizing partitions, using the
>> appropriate tools, is relatively save in the modern era.  I have, on
>> many occasions over the years deleted and re-arranged the partitions on
>> my system to accommodate changing needs and have had no problems
>> whatsoever.
> 
> Michael what I'm saying is if you have sda1,sda2,sda3, partitions and
> you delete sda2 partition, sda3 becomes sda2 and if you make a new
> partition, even in the same unused space it will become sda3. So, in the
> end the drive will read sda1,sda3,sda2 and personally I can't live like
> that, I have to many systems to tend too. But as it's been mentioned you
> can use UUID if your fstab and that reminds me, if you delete or format
> a partition the UUID will change, #blkid will give you the UUID's.  I
> hear your argument, but I say back-up and start over, do it right.
The Debian Installer uses UUIDs in the entries in the /etc/fstab file,
so changing the numbering of the partitions (/dev/sda2 vs. /dev/sda3)
does not have an effect on the overall functioning of the system.  You
can also use partition labels in the fstab file as well, as I do
frequently, as I move data from drive to drive on occasion and simply
relabel the partitions to move with the data.  With that, there is no
need to change the fstab when I move data around.

However, the OP's post does not mention anything of this nature.  The OP
deleted the existing Debian partition(s) leaving the existing Windows
partition(s) alone.  No mention was made of the ordering of the
partitions on the drive.  The OP then re-installed Debian with the
Debian installer, effectively starting from scratch with Debian.
Everything seems to work, except GNOME is crashing on boot.  There are
several things that can cause this, and I have caused some of them on my
system before, however the fact that this is a fresh install limits the
possible causes, the most likely of them being a missing (non-free?)
video driver or some such required by GNOME to run properly.  The way
the OP went about scrapping and re-installing the Debian system is valid
and should not have caused a problem under normal circumstances.  Hence
the suspicion of a missing driver (again probably non-free, and likely
Radeon as well...I've had similar issues with my laptop).

-- 
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Re: Oh no something has gone wrong! after reinstalling Debian and Gnome.

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/21/2017 05:09 AM, Jimmy Johnson wrote:
> On 05/21/2017 12:57 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
>> Le 21/05/2017 à 09:55, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
> 
>>> No, you should NOT have deleted the partition, now your partition table
>>> is messed up.
>>
>> Bullshit. This is just a Gnome error.
> 
> Unless you are deleting the last partition your partition table is going
> to be messed up. I hope you enjoy your B.S. You can workaround by using
> UUID, but personally I do not care for a messed up partition table.
I also call B.S. on this response.  The OPs problem has absolutely
nothing to do with the partition table or the UUIDs of the various
partitions.  If it did, the system would not have gotten to the point of
starting GNOME.  Adding, deleting and resizing partitions, using the
appropriate tools, is relatively save in the modern era.  I have, on
many occasions over the years deleted and re-arranged the partitions on
my system to accommodate changing needs and have had no problems whatsoever.
-- 
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Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/20/2017 06:33 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
> 
> 
> On 05/20/2017 01:56 PM, Mike Kupfer wrote:
>> Michael Milliman wrote:
>>
>>> I have no clue what happened, but the desktop background picture has
>>> ceased to be displayed.
>> [...]
>>> I have attempted to re-set the desktop
>>> background via both system settings and via right-click->set desktop
>>> background on the desktop to no effect.
>>
>> I don't know what caused your old wallpaper to go away, but the
>> inability to set it is tracked by
>>
>>   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=862355
>>
> This appears to be the same problem.  I will be watching this bug report
> with interest!!  It also seems to have been reported around the same
> time my system went belly-up, so it is probably an update that was
> installed.  Thanks for the info, at least I know it isn't something that
> I botched up! :)
> 
>> The bug report also lists a workaround (which I haven't tried).
>>
The workaround is using the feh package to manually set the background
image.  This does work, however, it has to be done each time you log-in.
 It is better than nothing.  Upstream also appears to have a bug
reported on it, and they suggest installation of mate-desktop 16.2 with
caja 16.3, neither of which has made it to the Debian distribution as of
yet.

>> mike
>>
> 

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Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/20/2017 01:56 PM, Mike Kupfer wrote:
> Michael Milliman wrote:
> 
>> I have no clue what happened, but the desktop background picture has
>> ceased to be displayed.
> [...]
>> I have attempted to re-set the desktop
>> background via both system settings and via right-click->set desktop
>> background on the desktop to no effect.
> 
> I don't know what caused your old wallpaper to go away, but the
> inability to set it is tracked by
> 
>   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=862355
> 
This appears to be the same problem.  I will be watching this bug report
with interest!!  It also seems to have been reported around the same
time my system went belly-up, so it is probably an update that was
installed.  Thanks for the info, at least I know it isn't something that
I botched up! :)

> The bug report also lists a workaround (which I haven't tried).
> 
> mike
> 

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Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/19/2017 09:19 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> On 05/18/2017 09:52 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>> I have no clue what happened, but the desktop background picture has
>> ceased to be displayed. I'm not even sure where to look to troubleshoot
>> the problem.  The salient information is: OS is fully updated Testing,
>> MATE desktop environment.  I have attempted to re-set the desktop
>> background via both system settings and via right-click->set desktop
>> background on the desktop to no effect.  Thinking that probably the
>> issue was associated with my normal login (the only one on the system),
>> I created a new user from root terminal and logged in with newly created
>> skeleton home folder; the problem persisted with the new user, so it is
>> a system-wide issue.  Past that, I have no clue.  Any ideas/help will be
>> greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.
>>
> 
> I've been having problems with Xfce wallpaper on Debian 8.8 for a month
> or more.  It broke after an apt-get update/ apt-get upgrade.  I filed a
> bug report, received one reply, tried the suggestions to no avail, and
> replied.  I'm still waiting for a response:
> 
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=860925
> 
This also appears to be a different problem, as I can (as far as all
software indications) change the picture and its geometry, but have
nothing actually displayed on the screen.  My desktop is black with the
various icons displayed on top of it regardless of my selections of
picture and/or geometry.  I have tried selecting the pictures that come
with the distribution as well as pictures in my personal folders, to no
avail; all I get is a black background.
> 
> David
> 

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Re: Desktop Background Bites the Dust

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/20/2017 01:26 PM, Mike Kupfer wrote:
> Cindy-Sue Causey wrote:
> 
>> If I try to change my images via either "Settings > Desktop" or right
>> click on the desktop, that directory and many others are now faded
>> out/washed out/blanked out in that way our systems do so that
>> something is not clickable.
> 
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=849823
> 
This appears to be a different problem.  First, I'm using MATE desktop,
not XFCE, and secondly, I can select any folder/picture that I want, it
just has no effect.

> The report says it was fixed back in February.  I don't know what's
> needed to get the fix to propagate to Testing.
> 
> mike
> 

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Desktop Background Bites the Dust

[Michael Milliman]

I have no clue what happened, but the desktop background picture has
ceased to be displayed. I'm not even sure where to look to troubleshoot
the problem.  The salient information is: OS is fully updated Testing,
MATE desktop environment.  I have attempted to re-set the desktop
background via both system settings and via right-click->set desktop
background on the desktop to no effect.  Thinking that probably the
issue was associated with my normal login (the only one on the system),
I created a new user from root terminal and logged in with newly created
skeleton home folder; the problem persisted with the new user, so it is
a system-wide issue.  Past that, I have no clue.  Any ideas/help will be
greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.
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Re: How stable is the frozen stretch?

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/10/2017 06:57 AM, songbird wrote:
[...]
>   if you wanted to you could have one partition for
> booting the stable distribution and only update that
> when you have a good time for that.
> 
>   the thing with these setups is that in Debian you
> don't have to get automatic updates if you don't want
> them so you know when the system is being upgraded.
> 
IMHO, this is a most excellent way of doing things, given that time is
available to maintain such a system.  This way, you have the best of all
worlds. And can incorporate newer packages and versions as they are
available and tested on your system into your working system.


> 
>   songbird
> 

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Re: Question about Increasing the size of the Primary Partition

[Michael Milliman]

I'm looking at some possibilities now, but need a little more info on your
exact situation. Is the current image file large enough to accommodate the
new partitioning, or does its size have to be increased as well?

73's,
de WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

On May 8, 2017 7:50 PM, "Martin McCormick"  wrote:

After using dd to copy a smaller disk image on to a
larger drive, I get the general idea that one leaves the starting
sector alone, deletes the remaining partition which is swap and
then changes the end point of the Primary partition to the
maximum number of sectors minus the swap space so that swap gets
moved and recreated as the last N sectors like it was on the
small drive.

This should leave the primary partition properly
formatted with all it's files still intact but with a swath of
unformatted space which ends at the start of the swap sectors.

What is the safe way to format that so that the primary
partition's files don't get clobbered and sda1 just gets larger?
In other words, the new formatting from mkfs shouldn't reset all
the used tracks and sectors which are what was the smaller drive.

I did all this several years ago and have forgotten the
details.

Thank you very much.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ

Re: How stable is the frozen stretch?

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/07/2017 04:19 PM, RavenLX wrote:
> On 05/07/2017 04:33 PM, cbannis...@kinect.co.nz wrote:
>> By the way, the words "unstable" "stable" as used in the distribution
>> names
>> don't mean likely to crash, --- it refers to the amount of changes
>> occurring, i.e. 'stable' has no new packages entering it, and
>> supposedly only
>> security updates, whereas "unstable" is unstable because there are many
>> changes occuring on a constant basis.
> 
> Thank you for this info. I admit I always thought "unstable" meant it
> might still have bugs or still be in beta. I don't mind when things
> change frequently because sometimes this is how one can get new features
> in a newer version of a program.
> 
Yeah, this is one of the main things sited as a drawback to the Debian
distributionpackages are sometimes a little older than in other
distributions.  But, this is because the Debian developers spend so much
time making sure that they work properly in the distribution before they
are released in the repositories.  As a result, things change a lot less
frequently.  The benefit of this is that Debian is 'stable' in all
senses of the word...few serious bugs and system instability, and little
or no instability in what is part of the distribution.  For many people,
especially businesses, this stability is important.  For others, like
myself, I can afford a little more instability, and so can deal with any
instability in testing for the benefit of getting newer versions of the
packages and run Testing (Stretch). Many people also run Experimental
(Sid) for the benefit of bleeding-edge versions of software, but a lot
of instability (in all senses of the word).
> 

-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Re: How stable is the frozen stretch?

[Michael Milliman]

My pleasure. Good luck!

73's,
de WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

On May 6, 2017 9:24 PM, "RavenLX" <rave...@sitesplace.net> wrote:

> On 05/06/2017 08:07 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>
>> That is most definitely NOT a dumb question!! It is difficult at times
>> to determine where to report bugs.  However, if the bug is within the
>> Debian distribution, I would use the Debian bug reporter to report it,
>> the development team will work with upstream as necessary to resolve the
>> problem.
>>
>
> You know what, I never realized that was in there! I had to find it in the
> debian menu in XFCE (which I rarely use, since I have everything I need in
> a side panel).
>
> Many thanks for this info.
>
>
>

Re: need a tutorial on setuid

[Michael Milliman]

I can't see how dd could have been the culprit. dd is a block for block
copy and does not modify the data as it copies. I don't doubt that the
setup bits were changed, but I would suggest that you look for what really
changed those bits to prevent a future occurrence.

73's,
de WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

On May 6, 2017 9:52 PM, "Gene Heskett"  wrote:

> Greetings all;
>
> The man page for chmod has obviously been edited to remove all useful
> information.
>
> My reason asking is it appears that dd, when making a clone of an sd
> card, seems to have removed all setuid info from the executable files.
> So I'm apparently going to have to restore things as the lack is
> discovered.
>
> Thanks
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page 
>
>

Re: How stable is the frozen stretch?

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/06/2017 06:38 PM, RavenLX wrote:
> On 05/06/2017 06:46 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
>> beta testing.  Usually, by the time Stretch reaches the 'frozen' stage,
>> most of the major issues have been worked out, and it is reasonably
>> ready for production.  However, they may still be a few problems to be
>> worked out...it is a beta after all.
> 
> I have come to know over the years nothing is 100% perfect, even if it's
> out of beta. :) I've used beta software in the past that was very
> stable, and used stable software in the past that was buggier than
> you-know-what. (I must say the majority of the buggy software was back
> when I used to use Windows as my main OS). Since I use Debian as my main
> OS, I have had quite reliable and rock-solid results.
> 
>> I use out of distribution packages on occasion as well.  However, there
>> is no guarantee that such packages will work or continue to work under
>> the new distribution, even after it is released as Debian Stable.
> 
> The ones I use are Google Chrome (because I need to have things like
> bookmarks, etc. available across several devices), JEdit (I use this for
> development), TLP Power Management (because otherwise my laptop's fan
> would be on all the time and it would get quite hot for some reason),
> Thunderbird from Ubuntuzilla, and VirtualBox (because I like to have the
> latest). Also videolan is in there for the stuff needed for playing DVDs
> on my laptops. I don't use CiaroDock right now but I do have it
> commented out in case I want to go back to it. Also I added the
> backports repo. That's the crazy setup I have. I'm thinking of doing
> this for GIMP and Blender as well. Not sure yet. I like having new
> features. :) I'm considering going back to KDE and having the latest KDE
> updates, too (right now I'm doing quite well with XFCE from the Jessie
> repo). Sometimes I like to try different things (and do so usually first
> in a virtual machine for awhile).
> 
>> Having said that, if they worked under Debian 8, they may well work
>> under Debian 9.  Keep in mind, however, the libraries available with
>> Debian 9 will in many cases be new and updated versions, and may not be
>> the same as the ones used by the out of distribution packages. So there
>> may be some compatibility issues. (Issues I did have with one of the
>> out-of-distribution packages I use.)
> 
> I've had that happen a long time ago with something (I forgot what now).
> Very much a PITA.
> 
>> Give it a try.  If it works for you great.
> 
> Going to do that in a VM first.
> 
>> If you have problems,
>> especially with packages/libraries within the distribution, report them
>> so that they can be addressed and fixed.  That kind of input is
>> important in getting the Stretch distribution through the process to the
>> Stable distribution.
> 
> I'll earn the "dumb question of the century" award for this but...
> 
> What list do I report bugs to and is there something online that tells
> someone (who doesn't normally report bugs) the proper way to do bug
> reports?
> 
That is most definitely NOT a dumb question!! It is difficult at times
to determine where to report bugs.  However, if the bug is within the
Debian distribution, I would use the Debian bug reporter to report it,
the development team will work with upstream as necessary to resolve the
problem.  If if is out-of-distribution, they you would have to report it
through whatever method the package distributer provides for doing such
things, which varies from package to package.

> Thank you for the detailed information you gave. It's very much
> appreciated. :)
> 

-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Re: How stable is the frozen stretch?

[Michael Milliman]

On 05/06/2017 04:55 PM, RavenLX wrote:
> I am thinking about trying out Stretch (Debian 9) in either a spare
> laptop or a virtual machine. If I like it I might just point my sources
> list to that repo on both laptops if it's stable enough.
> 
I can't speak categorically, but In installed Stretch a couple of months
ago on my older laptop.  It has been running without a hitch 24/7 since
then.
> My question is, once it's "frozen", how stable is it or is it still
> pretty much not suitable for production yet? 

The word 'stable' doesn't refer to the stability of the installed system
vis-a-vis system crashes, etc.  It refers to the packages and versions
in the repositories for the distribution.  It is stable in that
the packages currently part of the release 9 distribution are/will be
the packages available at the versions currently in the repositories. It
is frozen in the sense that no new packages/version upgrades will be
admitted to the Stretch distribution. Patches may still be made to fix
security issues and serious bugs.  During this time between freezing the
distribution and its actual release as the 'stable' distribution it is
thoroughly tested to make sure everything works and the various packages
talk to each other they way they should.  In effect, Stretch is under
beta testing.  Usually, by the time Stretch reaches the 'frozen' stage,
most of the major issues have been worked out, and it is reasonably
ready for production.  However, they may still be a few problems to be
worked out...it is a beta after all.

I also use a couple
> programs from outside ppas (*gulp!* :-O) and am taking into
> consideration conflicts with those as well. They do work great with the
> current stable.

I use out of distribution packages on occasion as well.  However, there
is no guarantee that such packages will work or continue to work under
the new distribution, even after it is released as Debian Stable.
Having said that, if they worked under Debian 8, they may well work
under Debian 9.  Keep in mind, however, the libraries available with
Debian 9 will in many cases be new and updated versions, and may not be
the same as the ones used by the out of distribution packages. So there
may be some compatibility issues. (Issues I did have with one of the
out-of-distribution packages I use.)

Give it a try.  If it works for you great.  If you have problems,
especially with packages/libraries within the distribution, report them
so that they can be addressed and fixed.  That kind of input is
important in getting the Stretch distribution through the process to the
Stable distribution.

-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Re: live medium installer remounting medium

[Michael Milliman]

HmmI had a similar problem with the installer, though in my case I
had put the installation DVD image on a thumb drive.  Everything worked
fine up to a point.  Then I had to do something a little out of the
ordinary and the same thing happened to me...it wanted to remount the
the file system but tried to do so from /dev/sr0, assuming I guess that
was where the medium was. It refused to remount from the thumb drive.  I
suspect that this does need to be reported so that it can be
addressed...It is way to late for me to do so as it was some time ago,
and I haven't preserved enough information about the situation to be of
much help in a bug report.

On 05/04/2017 08:53 AM, Stefan Helmert wrote:
> If I start from debian 8.7.1 live cd/dvd over pxe and nfs, everything is 
> working fine. But clicking the installer desktop icon does nothing. This 
> happens, because the installer tries to mount the medium again. It tries to 
> mount /dev/sr0. But there is no /dev/srv0 because the medium is available as 
> mounted nfs.
> 
> The installer should not mount the medium again. The medium is already 
> mounted by the live system. I think this happens, because the developer of 
> the live install medium thought: I take the install medium and the live 
> medium and glue both together without any knowledge of each other.
> 
> I am right here to report this? Should I write in a bug tracker? where?
> 

-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Bluetooth Connection Issue

[Michael Milliman]

I am running a Toshiba Satellite L755D laptop, debian testing (recently
upgraded from jessie), MATE desktop with Blueman bluetooth manager.  I
was trying to pair a new tablet (running Android 6.0) to my laptop using
the Blueman graphical manager.  Unfortunately, regardless as to whether
the pairing request was initiated by the tablet or the computer, I got
the normal pop-up request on the tablet requesting verification of the
pass code, but nothing ever came up on the computer.  In the past, I got
a popup notification to verify the pass code.  Once the pass code was
verified both on the computer and tablet, pair completed, and the device
was usable.  But, as no notification showed up on the laptop, I could
not pair the device.

After a little looking around on my system (I maintain a complete set of
tools for cli maintenance, just in case), I was able to use bt-device to
get the MAC address of the tablet and pair it.  Once paired, I was able
to connect using Blueman, and was able to transfer files via bluetooth
both directions.

Given this information the following questions present themselves:
1) Is there a setting somewhere that will cause this issue?
2) Is this a known issue with Testing or Blueman?
3) Is there a solution which will allow use of Blueman for pairing?

Clearly, the kernel and drivers on the system are working correctly, or
I would not be able to accomplish the pairing with bt-device.  I suspect
the problem is with notifications, either in general, or with Blueman
specifically, that is causing the problem, and that were I to be getting
the notification I expect, I would be able to accept the pass code and
proceed normally.

-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Re: problems after installing Debian

[Michael Milliman]

On 03/19/2017 07:18 PM, Harry wrote:
> Hi,
>  I have installed Debian 8.5.0 cinnamon i386 .I like the program 
> after having a lot of crashes with linux mint !
> My problem now is i can't get anything to play a video disc , Totem
> does'nt work , video player gives the message could not support
> initializing library.
> Forums  suggest uninstalling gstreamer but then i find theres  several
> in the the system , so which one or all ??
> Nothing seems to  help . I thought of updating  Debian but i can't find
> out how to do that either ! Linux mint had a simple update manager .
> Hope you can help .
>  Thank you , Harry
As an addendum to my previous post on this topic, the reason this
library is not included in the Debian repositories is that there are
legal issues in some jurisdictions associated with using this library.
I'm not sure exactly what the legal issues are, but it has something to
do with copyrights, not of the library, but of the videos.  So, you
might want to check on the legalities in your jurisdiction.
-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Re: problems after installing Debian

[Michael Milliman]

On 03/19/2017 07:18 PM, Harry wrote:
> Hi,
>  I have installed Debian 8.5.0 cinnamon i386 .I like the program 
> after having a lot of crashes with linux mint !
> My problem now is i can't get anything to play a video disc , Totem
> does'nt work , video player gives the message could not support
> initializing library.
The problem is that the Debian repositories do not have the libdvdcss
library, which is required for most modern DVDs.  I have had the same
problem, and have had to solve it.  Add the following line to your
/etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/debian/stable/ /

Once this is added to sources.list, run:
sudo apt-get update
(or press the reload button in synaptic)
Then run:
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss
(or select the package of that name in synaptic and install it)
This should solve your problem.

This library is written and provided by the same group that writes the
VLC media player, and works rather well.

> Forums  suggest uninstalling gstreamer but then i find theres  several
> in the the system , so which one or all ??
> Nothing seems to  help . I thought of updating  Debian but i can't find
> out how to do that either ! Linux mint had a simple update manager .
> Hope you can help .
>  Thank you , Harry

-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Re: 回复: Coorperation

[Michael Milliman]

On 03/16/2017 09:21 PM, 李松林 wrote:
> Hello,  Manager, 
> 
> I am a sales from Archermind Technology , we work together with
> Mstar , and we want to debug Debian os ,
> 
This is a good place to start.  Tell us what the problem(s) is/are and
there are many people here who may be able to help solve the problems.
Be sure to be as detailed as possible when posting information, the more
information we have, the better chance we will have of being able to
figure out how to fix the problems.  Specifically, we need to know what
hardware you have and which Debian OS you are working with as well as
what is happening.
> so can you give me a contact to for further cooperation .
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Martin Lee
> 
> Archermind Technology 
> 
> www.archermind.com
> 
> 
> --
> The contents of this e-mail message and any attachments are confidential
> and are intended solely for the addressee. If you have received this
> transmission in error, please immediately notify the sender by return
> e-mail and delete this message and its attachments. Any unauthorized
> use, copying or dissemination of this transmission is prohibited.
> Neither the confidentiality nor the integrity of this message can be
> vouched for following transmission on the Internet.
> --

-- 
73's,
WB5VQX -- The Very Quick X-ray

Re: User Can Not Log In

[Michael Milliman]

On 02/24/2017 07:29 PM, Dan Norton wrote:



On 02/23/2017 08:40 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:



On 02/23/2017 04:16 PM, GiaThnYgeia wrote:

Michael Milliman:

On 02/23/2017 10:47 AM, Dan Norton wrote:

While playing around with Xfce, startx, and fvwm I've managed to
clobber something such that the user can't log in. All attempts 
result

in a fresh login box with my inputs removed. However, it is still
possible to log in as root.
fvwm was installed using Synaptic and run from an Xfce terminal
session. When it did not produce the expected result, I shut down and
rebooted. At this point it was no longer possible to log in as user -
only as root.

Do I have to rename /home/, delete , then re-define it as
a new user and restore its home directory?
Or is there a better way?
It should be possible to do some serious research and figure out 
exactly
which package is croaking, and why, and then edit the configuration 
file

for that package in /home/.  But in my experience with similar
situations, this takes much more time than it is worth.  I have found
that usually just deleting the configuration files in /home/ 
will

work.  This is probably easier than the solution that you propose, but
your solution should work as well, as long as you don't copy back the
configuration files when you do the restore.

Encouraged by the previous brave response, I have done similar hacks in
the past.

1  One thing I look at is date ordered of @home/ directory. See what
was last edited and reconfigured, most probably is the culprit. With
some packages renaming that directory in the home folder as something
else temporary (ie   home/gnubg --> home/gnubg.tmp may result into a
login and when you run gnubg it will act as started for first time --
not a good example I am afraid).  1.1  It may be more than one thing
gone bad.

2  Create a new user, copy config files that you don't suspect are
related to the problem and then go one at a time with the rest.

3  See if the file and directory rights are still in tact in your 
#home,
maybe you locked yourself out.  Root should always have the right to 
set

a new password for a user.

4  Are you switching between desktops, do you have an alternative
(openbox .. gnome .. mate ..etc).  Did you try a different desktop?  It
may relate to desktop settings or if you removed one you may have
affected an other in case you were crossing desktop specific packages.

5  Check your autostart folders for crap you can remove.
All very good suggestions...but I usually just get fed up looking 
before I find the problem, and just go for broke.  It seems much 
easier to just re-apply my preferences than to continue digging. But 
it is a little like using a shot-gun rather than a scalpel.
The user has been deleted after making a copy of his home directory. A 
user of the same name has been added back, with a different password 
and can be logged in. I'm restoring things a little at the time from 
the backup. Firefox, Icedove, Smalltalk, and GitHub are working as 
before. Documents directory is restored. Now I'm wondering what all 
that other stuff is good for


Are the config files in one place or are they scattered?

When the backup was made, only root could be logged in. The backup was 
made with "cp -r " which changed all owners and groups to root. The 
backup would have been better made with "cp -ra " I think.

Yeah, I always use cp --archive for such things.


Thanks, Michael and GiaThnYgeia.

 - Dan




--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

Re: User Can Not Log In

[Michael Milliman]

 Forwarded Message 
Subject:Re: User Can Not Log In
Date:   Fri, 24 Feb 2017 17:42:30 -0600
From:   Michael Milliman <michael.e.milli...@gmail.com>
To: Dan Norton <dnor...@mindspring.com>



On 02/24/2017 02:12 PM, Dan Norton wrote:



-Original Message-

From: Michael Milliman <michael.e.milli...@gmail.com>
Sent: Feb 23, 2017 8:40 PM
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: User Can Not Log In



On 02/23/2017 04:16 PM, GiaThnYgeia wrote:

Michael Milliman:

On 02/23/2017 10:47 AM, Dan Norton wrote:

While playing around with Xfce, startx, and fvwm I've managed to
clobber something such that the user can't log in. All attempts result
in a fresh login box with my inputs removed. However, it is still
possible to log in as root.
fvwm was installed using Synaptic and run from an Xfce terminal
session. When it did not produce the expected result, I shut down and
rebooted. At this point it was no longer possible to log in as user -
only as root.

Do I have to rename /home/, delete , then re-define it as
a new user and restore its home directory?
Or is there a better way?

It should be possible to do some serious research and figure out exactly
which package is croaking, and why, and then edit the configuration file
for that package in /home/.  But in my experience with similar
situations, this takes much more time than it is worth.  I have found
that usually just deleting the configuration files in /home/ will
work.  This is probably easier than the solution that you propose, but
your solution should work as well, as long as you don't copy back the
configuration files when you do the restore.

Encouraged by the previous brave response, I have done similar hacks in
the past.

1  One thing I look at is date ordered of @home/ directory.  See what
was last edited and reconfigured, most probably is the culprit.  With
some packages renaming that directory in the home folder as something
else temporary (ie   home/gnubg --> home/gnubg.tmp may result into a
login and when you run gnubg it will act as started for first time --
not a good example I am afraid).  1.1  It may be more than one thing
gone bad.

2  Create a new user, copy config files that you don't suspect are
related to the problem and then go one at a time with the rest.

3  See if the file and directory rights are still in tact in your #home,
maybe you locked yourself out.  Root should always have the right to set
a new password for a user.

4  Are you switching between desktops, do you have an alternative
(openbox .. gnome .. mate ..etc).  Did you try a different desktop?  It
may relate to desktop settings or if you removed one you may have
affected an other in case you were crossing desktop specific packages.

5  Check your autostart folders for crap you can remove.

All very good suggestions...but I usually just get fed up looking before
I find the problem, and just go for broke.  It seems much easier to just
re-apply my preferences than to continue digging. But it is a little
like using a shot-gun rather than a scalpel.

The user has been deleted and re-defined with a different password. It is now 
possible to log in as that user. I am now cautiously restoring the user's home 
directory, trying to avoid pulling in some configuration which might cause 
trouble again.

It seems that ~/.config would be a source of configurations, but is that the 
only one?

~/.config is the most likely, however, your desktop also usually has
configuration files in folders like ~/.gnome or ~/.mate (or maybe its
~/.mate-desktop), etc.  If the problem exists under multiple desktop
environments, then something in ~/.config is almost certainly the
problem.  One other thing, though.  You say that you can log in as
rootquestion: does the root login take you to a graphical desktop??
This is disabled in most installations, though it can be enabled (I have
modified my configuration to allow graphical login for root).  If you
log in as root from the command line, you might try logging in as the
user from the command line to make sure that works.  If you can log in
as root from the graphical environment, then the problem is certainly in
the user configurations probably in ~/.config.  If your system is not
set up to allow root logins from the graphical environment, then this
can't be confirmed, but ~/.config is the most likely culprit.  If your
system will allow graphical root logins, and the same problem happens
with graphical root login, then the problem is over in /etc, a much more
troubling problem.

Were it my system, I would simply delete all hidden files in
/home/ with the command rm -r /home//.*, however, a very
reasonable first gambit would be to rm -r /home//.config, and then
the more comprehensive rm -r /home//.*.  In either case, you lose
not actual data, just configuration/setup/preference information that
has to be re-done.

As I wrote this, I thought about another quick test to run.  Create a
new u

Re: User Can Not Log In

[Michael Milliman]

On 02/23/2017 04:16 PM, GiaThnYgeia wrote:

Michael Milliman:

On 02/23/2017 10:47 AM, Dan Norton wrote:

While playing around with Xfce, startx, and fvwm I've managed to
clobber something such that the user can't log in. All attempts result
in a fresh login box with my inputs removed. However, it is still
possible to log in as root.
fvwm was installed using Synaptic and run from an Xfce terminal
session. When it did not produce the expected result, I shut down and
rebooted. At this point it was no longer possible to log in as user -
only as root.

Do I have to rename /home/, delete , then re-define it as
a new user and restore its home directory?
Or is there a better way?

It should be possible to do some serious research and figure out exactly
which package is croaking, and why, and then edit the configuration file
for that package in /home/.  But in my experience with similar
situations, this takes much more time than it is worth.  I have found
that usually just deleting the configuration files in /home/ will
work.  This is probably easier than the solution that you propose, but
your solution should work as well, as long as you don't copy back the
configuration files when you do the restore.

Encouraged by the previous brave response, I have done similar hacks in
the past.

1  One thing I look at is date ordered of @home/ directory.  See what
was last edited and reconfigured, most probably is the culprit.  With
some packages renaming that directory in the home folder as something
else temporary (ie   home/gnubg --> home/gnubg.tmp may result into a
login and when you run gnubg it will act as started for first time --
not a good example I am afraid).  1.1  It may be more than one thing
gone bad.

2  Create a new user, copy config files that you don't suspect are
related to the problem and then go one at a time with the rest.

3  See if the file and directory rights are still in tact in your #home,
maybe you locked yourself out.  Root should always have the right to set
a new password for a user.

4  Are you switching between desktops, do you have an alternative
(openbox .. gnome .. mate ..etc).  Did you try a different desktop?  It
may relate to desktop settings or if you removed one you may have
affected an other in case you were crossing desktop specific packages.

5  Check your autostart folders for crap you can remove.
All very good suggestions...but I usually just get fed up looking before 
I find the problem, and just go for broke.  It seems much easier to just 
re-apply my preferences than to continue digging. But it is a little 
like using a shot-gun rather than a scalpel.

Thanks,
  - Dan


--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

Re: User Can Not Log In

[Michael Milliman]

On 02/23/2017 10:47 AM, Dan Norton wrote:
While playing around with Xfce, startx, and fvwm I've managed to 
clobber something such that the user can't log in. All attempts result 
in a fresh login box with my inputs removed. However, it is still 
possible to log in as root.


I've tried passwd to no avail.

I've tried editing /etc/shadow and removing everything between the 
first two : (expecting to log in with a blank or no password) to no avail.


To get to this point, I used Xfce on:
#1 SMP Debian 3.16.39-1 (2016-12-30)

fvwm was installed using Synaptic and run from an Xfce terminal 
session. When it did not produce the expected result, I shut down and 
rebooted. At this point it was no longer possible to log in as user - 
only as root.


Do I have to rename /home/, delete , then re-define it as 
a new user and restore its home directory?

Or is there a better way?
It should be possible to do some serious research and figure out exactly 
which package is croaking, and why, and then edit the configuration file 
for that package in /home/.  But in my experience with similar 
situations, this takes much more time than it is worth.  I have found 
that usually just deleting the configuration files in /home/ will 
work.  This is probably easier than the solution that you propose, but 
your solution should work as well, as long as you don't copy back the 
configuration files when you do the restore.


Thanks,
 - Dan


--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

[Solved??] Re: Synaptic broke

[Michael Milliman]

On 01/30/2017 08:32 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:


I just ran across a problem with synaptic.  When I start this program, 
I get a dialog box saying:


The value 'jessie-backports' is invalid for APT::Default-Release
as such a release is not available in the sources

Synaptic then exits with no opportunity to make any changes.
I have tried to find where this setting is to fix it, but have had no 
luck.  I have purged and re-installed synaptic with no luck.

I am running a fully updated jessie (8.7) system.
Anyone have any ideas how to repair this??
I ran apt-get update (which noted a hash sum mismatch on 
jessie-backports repositories) and apt-get upgrade.  I then tried 
synaptic again, and it seems the problem has cleared itself.  Very strange.

--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX


--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

Synaptic broke

[Michael Milliman]

I just ran across a problem with synaptic.  When I start this program, I 
get a dialog box saying:


   The value 'jessie-backports' is invalid for APT::Default-Release as
   such a release is not available in the sources

Synaptic then exits with no opportunity to make any changes.
I have tried to find where this setting is to fix it, but have had no 
luck.  I have purged and re-installed synaptic with no luck.

I am running a fully updated jessie (8.7) system.
Anyone have any ideas how to repair this??

--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

Re: Which driver for RealTek RTL8168 ethernet interface card?

[Michael Milliman]

On 01/14/2017 04:43 AM, Michael Milliman wrote:



On 01/14/2017 04:13 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:

Le 14/01/2017 à 10:18, M.A. Perry a écrit :


On boot-up, the monitor briefly shows a message to the
effect "... failed to load rtl_nic/rtl8168g-2.fw firmware".
Running "dmesg | tail" shows much the same in more detail.

Nevertheless, the wired ethernet connection to internet
seems to work fine.(...)

The above suggests that other software takes over the
function of the missing Non-Free RealTek driver.


No.
1) The missing file is a firmware, not a driver.
2) No other software takes over the function of a missing firmware. 
The function just won't be used. Some firmware functions are 
optional, such as offload optimizations.


While I do not have a RealTek ethernet nic, the wireless interface on 
my laptop is RealTek and it has a similar situation, though without 
the firmware, the wireless interface will not run at all. The required 
firmware for my interface is contained in 'firmware-linux-nonfree' 
package.
After a little more research, I find that I am in fact incorrect. The 
package 'firmware-realtek' is installed on my system and is required for 
my wireless interface.  I'm not sure how it got installed, as I did not 
explicitly install it. 'firmware-linux-nonfree' is also required on my 
system, however that package appears to be needed only for the Radeon 
graphics.


My apologies for the error.
  I suspect that package would probably work for you as well.  Check 
the information associated with this package and others discussed on 
this thread to see exactly which one is needed for you nic.


As noted by other posts, in your situation, it appears that the 
firmware is optional, providing extra functionality which you will 
probably never notice (though the OS may well use it behind the 
scenes). Ultimately, the question to answer is do you care about the 
possible optimizations provided by the firmware and/or do you care 
about the message popping up at boot time.  If you don't need the 
optimizations and don't care about the message, then you don't need 
the firmware.




--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

Re: Which driver for RealTek RTL8168 ethernet interface card?

[Michael Milliman]

On 01/14/2017 04:13 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:

Le 14/01/2017 à 10:18, M.A. Perry a écrit :


On boot-up, the monitor briefly shows a message to the
effect "... failed to load rtl_nic/rtl8168g-2.fw firmware".
Running "dmesg | tail" shows much the same in more detail.

Nevertheless, the wired ethernet connection to internet
seems to work fine.(...)

The above suggests that other software takes over the
function of the missing Non-Free RealTek driver.


No.
1) The missing file is a firmware, not a driver.
2) No other software takes over the function of a missing firmware. 
The function just won't be used. Some firmware functions are optional, 
such as offload optimizations.


While I do not have a RealTek ethernet nic, the wireless interface on my 
laptop is RealTek and it has a similar situation, though without the 
firmware, the wireless interface will not run at all. The required 
firmware for my interface is contained in 'firmware-linux-nonfree' 
package.  I suspect that package would probably work for you as well.  
Check the information associated with this package and others discussed 
on this thread to see exactly which one is needed for you nic.


As noted by other posts, in your situation, it appears that the firmware 
is optional, providing extra functionality which you will probably never 
notice (though the OS may well use it behind the scenes). Ultimately, 
the question to answer is do you care about the possible optimizations 
provided by the firmware and/or do you care about the message popping up 
at boot time.  If you don't need the optimizations and don't care about 
the message, then you don't need the firmware.


--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

Re: Cannot autostart apps after boot

[Michael Milliman]

It would help quite a bit if you would let us know which version of 
debian you are using (i.e. wheezy, jessie, stretch, etc.). Personally, I 
have not had this problem at all running jessie. Also, check your log 
files to see if there is anything in them that might explain the problem.



On 01/12/2017 03:41 PM, Вадим Колчев wrote:

Hello,

Cannot autostart apps after boot. Tried 3 methods:

1) used gnome-tweak-tool and added app to autostart there - no luck;
2) used /etc/rc.local to provide path to app I need to autostart - no 
luck;
3) used .config/autostart - put myprogram.destop file there - still no 
luck.


What could I be doing wrong?

Best regards,
Vadim


--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

Re: Python Alternatives?

[Michael Milliman]

It sounds like the status of the /usr/bin/python link is really a mess 
with some people/distros doing one thing and others doing something 
else.  I imagine it will settle down eventually to a commonly accepted 
standard.  For now, though, it looks like using either a python2 or 
python3 shebang, as necessary, is the way to be compatible with most 
systems, not using a python shebang at all, as you don't know where that 
is really pointing for sure.



On 12/15/2016 09:51 AM, Kushal Kumaran wrote:

Jonathan Dowland  writes:


On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 10:39:27AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:

That would violate Debian Python policy. You are free to do it on your
own system, but it will likely break many Python packages on Debian, and
you get to keep all the pieces :-)

 From what I recall the upstream Python community does not suggest calling
Python 3 'python' either.

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/ recommends that the python
name be used for python2, but notes that some distributions have
switched it to point to python3.  So the suggestion is that python2-only
scripts should have an explicit python2 shebang, and only scripts that
support both should have the python shebang.

--
regards,
kushal



--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

Python Alternatives?

[Michael Milliman]

I currently have both Python 2.7 and Python 3.4 installed on my debain 
8.5 (jessie) system.  The default Python interpreter on the system is 
Python 2.7 (as linked by /usr/bin/python).  I would prefer this default 
to be Python 3.4.  I can, of course manually change the link in /usr/bin 
to point to Python 3.4, however, I am concerned that doing this may 
defeat some other available method for making this change. I note that 
update-alternatives does not have a group for the Python interpreter, 
and so cannot be used for this change.  Is there some other more 
acceptable method for making this change other than just manually 
changing the line /usr/bin/python to point to python3.4 instead of 
python2.7?



--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

Re: Desktop notifications?

[Michael Milliman]

On 11/17/2016 10:09 AM, Teemu Likonen wrote:

I have a backup script that runs once a day with root privileges. It's
handled by systemd timer and service units. I would like to have a
desktop notification text when the backup is ready.

What I have tried so far: I don't use normal desktop, only i3 window
manager. I installed notify-osd package and started its daemon as a
normal user. Running a command "notify-send foo" shows "foo" text like I
expected. But when "notify-send" runs as root no notification text
appear anywhere.

How can I get notifications working in plain window manager setup? And
hopefully not only this backup script example but for other programs
too, like Network Manager's notifications. I'm not really interested in
work-arounds like "DISPLAY=:0 xmessage -timeout 5 foo".
I don't know whether this qualifies as a work around that you are not 
interested in, but I have found that this works.  From you script use 
the following:


   sudo -u  notify-send foo

Since the script is running with root privileges, sudo will not need a 
password to run the notify-send command as a lesser privileged user.  I 
haven't tried this from a script, but did do it from the keyboard.  I 
verified that notify-send would not send a notification to me when 
sudo'ed as root, and then used the above command.  It did indeed work.  
The  that you use is the username that you are normally logged 
in as.


--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX

Re: iptables question

[Michael Milliman]

On 11/12/2016 06:19 PM, deloptes wrote:

Joe wrote:


On Sat, 12 Nov 2016 22:15:45 +0100
deloptes  wrote:


Hi,
I need some help and I'll appreciate it.

I have a firewall with iptables behind the modem.
on this firewall I have
 eth0 with ip 10..1 to the modem ip: 10..12
 eth1 with ip 192..1 to the intranet

iptables is doing SNAT from 192..1 to 10..1

I wonder how I can ssh from 192..NN to 10..NN
What magic should I apply to make it happen?

Thanks in advance



Can we take it that this does not work now? If that is the case, are
you sure that iptables is preventing it? There are other possible
reasons for a new ssh link not to work.


Yes, it is not working and yes it might be a different issue. So here is
some additional information, if you wish.

>From one computer ip 10..6 I can ssh to 10..7 and vv.
I also see that iptables forwards to the output, but in the output nothing
happens. So it is either in the output chain, or the back route blocks.


A typical simple iptables script will allow what you want to do to
happen already, so there must either be some iptables restriction in
place now, or there is some other reason for ssh not working. Are you
able to connect to the modem web configuration page from the 192.
network?


Yes I forgot to mention that I can connect from 192..NN to the modem ip via
ssh lets say 10..200.
Ok, this confuses me a little.  I thought the modem was 10..12? 
Nevertheless, it sounds like you have the ability to connect to 
_something_ on the 10. network.  Therefore, I would suspect the settings 
on the 10. machine that you are not able to communicate with.  Also, the 
192. machine could be blocking (on the input chain) all communications 
from 10. except from the specific ip address of the modem.  One of the 
other respondents indicated that posting a (sanitized) copy of your 
ruleset would help, this is indeed the case.

On the modem there is also firewall. I tried disableing it but it did not
help.
The firewall on the modem should not affect the communications between 
192. and 10. from what I understand of your setup.  You have a firewall 
machine with two NICs one on the 192. network and one on the 10. 
network.  The modem is on the 10. network along with some other machines 
(presumably with a switch or router) and the firewall is acting as a 
bridge between the 192. and the 10.


And you can bet there is restriction - basically it is pretty tight and is
opened only what is needed to intranet and basically all to modem net


The SNAT should not be an issue, it can handle all protocols
transparently, and ssh uses the same tcp protocol as http.

If there are iptables restrictions on outgoing protocols, you need to
find the rule permitting tcp/80 to be forwarded, copy it and replace 80
with 22. Once this is working, we can restrict the destination to the
10. network, as presumably any existing port 80 rule allows connection
to anywhere and you may not want that for ssh.

there is nothing regarding the output - no rules based on ports

thanks

Again, posting the exact ruleset would be helpful.

Re: Gparted will not label an existing FAT32 partition

[Michael Milliman]

On 11/11/2016 09:47 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
Several years ago I purchased an external 1 TB USB connected drive for 
backups.

The base of the enclosure says it is a Seagate drive.
Partitions:
  #1 is ntfs 293 GiB [146 GiB used] labeled "FreeAgent GoFlex Drive"
  #2 is extended partition for remainder of drive
  #5 is fat32 62.5 GiB [31.5 GiB used] with no label


I successfully mounted partitions 1 and 5.  Both are readable and 
contain files from unknown Windows machines. On my Windows Desktop 
hardware C:\Documents and Settings\user\Recent indicates that it had 
been used on that machine back in 2011. There is similar evidence that 
it had been used on my Windows Laptop in 2012. Neither machine reports 
files with "goflex" in filename {case insensitive search}.


I attempted to label partition 5 with Gparted, but the "Label" menu 
option was greyed out.
The "Label" option was available for partition 1. I had no problem 
creating partition 6 as fat32 and labeling it.


It has been some time since I have had to do anything similar. However, 
as I recall, if the partition is mounted, gparted will not add/change 
the label.  You have to unmount the partition first, which gparted will 
do (with a different command).  Once unmounted, gparted is then willing 
to modify the partition.  I know this sounds obvious, but then sometimes 
it is the most obvious things we overlook:-)



Any suggestions as to what the problem is?
Is there another option that would allow me to label the partition 
with no other effects on that partition?




TIA



--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX

Re: Error Manual del Administrador de Debian

[Michael Milliman]

On 11/10/2016 10:00 AM, Marcos Aviles Luque wrote:
Muy buenas soy Marcos Avilés, he detectado un error o una errata en el 
ebook (Manual del Administrador de Debian), en el capítulo:



  6.2.4. Opciones de configuración

cuando tratamos de configuar el proxy para APT, y modificamos o 
creamos el archivo apt.conf la estructura de Acquire es la siguiente:


- Acquire::http::proxy::"http://su-proxy:3128;

Si consultamos el man de apt.conf en la sección de grupos ACQUIRE 
(línea 232) podemos verificar esta estructura.


Un coordial Saludo.



Gracias para esta informacion.  Pero, esta lista es para ellos que habla 
Engles.  El mayor de ellos que leyen esta lista no pueden leyer 
Espanol.  Hay una lista (debian-user-spanish) en Espanol.  Y tambien si 
es un error verdadero esta bien si reporte Usted un Bug con reportbug.


Por favor a escusar me Espanol, no he hablado (o escribido) Espanol in 
muchos anos.



--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX

Re: Strange Problem with 'alias'

[Michael Milliman]

On Tue, 2016-11-08 at 15:04 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 02:37:34PM -0500, Henning wrote:
> > Put your aliases into .bash_ptofile
> 
> No, don't do that.  Make your login shell profile source or dot in
> ~/.bashrc instead.
> 
Ok, now I have to ask the queston, maybe a tangent and maybe not
important to OP, but why is it better to source in .bashrc from .profile
rather than putting the commands in .bash_profile??

-- 
73s de WB5VQX

Re: reportbug and GMail SMTP servers

[Michael Milliman]

On Sat, 2016-11-05 at 09:30 -0700, emetib wrote:
> On Saturday, November 5, 2016 at 9:50:04 AM UTC-5, Sophoklis Goumas wrote:
> > Hello.
> > 
> > Anybody else having troubles when using GMails' SMTP servers?
> >
> no
It would help to know exactly what the problem is that you are having.
What email client are you using?  What is happenning?  It is impossible to give 
you any real information without knowing what the problem is  with what 
software.

>  
> > Does one need to to enable adjust appropriately the "Allow less secure
> > apps" setting [1] ?
> >
> yes
> 
> https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/configure-postfix-to-use-gmail-as-a-mail-relay/
> 

-- 
73s de WB5VQX

-- 
73s de WB5VQX

Re: new pc and swap

[Michael Milliman]

On 10/30/2016 06:56 AM, Pol Hallen wrote:

Good sunday to all :-)

I bought a new notebook: i7 2.2Ghz, 8Gb ram and ssd 256Gb.

Consider that small disk, can I install debian without swap? Does swap 
still useful?
Yes, debian can be installed without swap.  Whether swap is useful 
depends on the usage you are planning on putting the machine to.  In 
some cases, swap is of great benefit; in others, not much use at all.  I 
load my machine up pretty heavy, and rarely use the swap space I have 
set up, and usually when I do get into swap space, I can slim down what 
I've got running and get back out of swap.  If you are planning on using 
hibernate, then swap is needed (I almost never use that; I usually just 
suspend to ram).  If you are planning on using several memory intensive 
applications all at the same time, then swap can be useful.  If not, not 
so much.


Hope this helps some.:-)


thanks for advices! :)

Pol



--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX

Stretch Installation

[Michael Milliman]

Hey, guys and gals.  I have been a Debian user since about 7.6 or so, 
and currently am running jessie (8.6), and am satisfied with Debian and 
the Debian philosophy.  The only quibble I have had is with the slow 
schedule for getting newly updated/released software into the 
distribution.  I understand the reasoning, and for the most part have 
been content with waiting.


So, I decided to try an installation of Stretch to get a little ahead of 
the curve.  I had/have several problems with that installation, so much 
so that the installation is basically minimally or unusable. This is not 
a big surprise, which is why I installed Stretch on a separate 
partition, retaining my Jessie installation completely intact.


The first of the problems with the Stretch installation rendered it 
unbootable, though I had a fair idea as to what that problem was and was 
able to get the system to the point where it will boot and allow 
logins.  What I would like to do is get in touch (probably off-list) 
with the various people working on Stretch and help work on solving the 
issues I have and am experiencing.  This, of course, will involve filing 
bug reports, but I want to make sure that those reports are filed on the 
appropriate packages and with sufficient information to help in tracking 
down the problems.  I would also be interested in checking/testing any 
proposed solutions to those problems.  I do not have a lot of time, 
unfortunately, to actually do much debugging and/or patch developing, 
though I do have the programming skill necessary to do such had I had 
the time and familiarity with the packages involved.  So, the question 
is, who do I need to be in touch with and in what forum to participate 
in the development process as outlined above?



--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX

SOLVED: Re: Bluetooth problem

[Michael Milliman]

I guess I should have done this first, but I searched the Debian list 
archives and came up with the following: 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/03/msg00164.html


Upon following this solution, my problem was also solved.

This leaves the question: Should this be reported as a bug (probably 
against the gdm3 package) in order to have the client.conf file added to 
the package as a default?



On 08/29/2016 09:08 AM, Michael Milliman wrote:


Additional information, I grep'ed the device address in all log files 
and got the following for one instance of a connection attempt:


kern.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 kernel: [ 2899.476316] input:
30:21:48:DD:53:44 as /devices/virtual/input/input26

messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 kernel: [ 2899.476316] input:
30:21:48:DD:53:44 as /devices/virtual/input/input26
messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II)
config/udev: Adding input device 30:21:48:DD:53:44
(/dev/input/event13)
messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) Using input
driver 'evdev' for '30:21:48:DD:53:44'
messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
30:21:48:DD:53:44: always reports core events
messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Device: "/dev/input/event13"
messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Vendor 0 Product 0
messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Found keys
messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Configuring as keyboard
messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) XINPUT:
Adding extended input device "30:21:48:DD:53:44" (type: KEYBOARD,
id 13)

syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 kernel: [ 2899.476316] input:
30:21:48:DD:53:44 as /devices/virtual/input/input26
syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) config/udev:
Adding input device 30:21:48:DD:53:44 (/dev/input/event13)
syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) Using input
driver 'evdev' for '30:21:48:DD:53:44'
syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
30:21:48:DD:53:44: always reports core events
syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Device: "/dev/input/event13"
syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Vendor 0 Product 0
syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Found keys
syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Configuring as keyboard
syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) XINPUT:
Adding extended input device "30:21:48:DD:53:44" (type: KEYBOARD,
id 13)

user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II)
config/udev: Adding input device 30:21:48:DD:53:44
(/dev/input/event13)
user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) Using input
driver 'evdev' for '30:21:48:DD:53:44'
user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
30:21:48:DD:53:44: always reports core events
user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Device: "/dev/input/event13"
user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Vendor 0 Product 0
user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Found keys
user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) evdev:
30:21:48:DD:53:44: Configuring as keyboard
user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) XINPUT:
Adding extended input device "30:21:48:DD:53:44" (type: KEYBOARD,
id 13)

Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (II) config/udev: Adding input device
30:21:48:DD:53:44 (/dev/input/event13)
Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (**) 30:21:48:DD:53:44: Applying
InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for
'30:21:48:DD:53:44'
Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (**) 30:21:48:DD:53:44: always reports
core events
Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (**) evdev: 30:21:48:DD:53:44: Device:
"/dev/input/event13"
Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (--) evdev: 30:21:48:DD:53:44: Vendor 0
Product 0
Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (--) evdev: 30:21:48:DD:53:44: Found keys
Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (II) evdev: 30:21:48:DD:53:44: Configuring
as keyboard
   

Re: Bluetooth problem

[Michael Milliman]

Additional information, I grep'ed the device address in all log files 
and got the following for one instance of a connection attempt:


   kern.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 kernel: [ 2899.476316] input:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44 as /devices/virtual/input/input26

   messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 kernel: [ 2899.476316] input:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44 as /devices/virtual/input/input26
   messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) config/udev:
   Adding input device 30:21:48:DD:53:44 (/dev/input/event13)
   messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
   messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) Using input
   driver 'evdev' for '30:21:48:DD:53:44'
   messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: always reports core events
   messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Device: "/dev/input/event13"
   messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Vendor 0 Product 0
   messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Found keys
   messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Configuring as keyboard
   messages:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) XINPUT:
   Adding extended input device "30:21:48:DD:53:44" (type: KEYBOARD, id 13)

   syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 kernel: [ 2899.476316] input:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44 as /devices/virtual/input/input26
   syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) config/udev:
   Adding input device 30:21:48:DD:53:44 (/dev/input/event13)
   syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
   syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) Using input
   driver 'evdev' for '30:21:48:DD:53:44'
   syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: always reports core events
   syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Device: "/dev/input/event13"
   syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Vendor 0 Product 0
   syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Found keys
   syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Configuring as keyboard
   syslog:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) XINPUT: Adding
   extended input device "30:21:48:DD:53:44" (type: KEYBOARD, id 13)

   user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) config/udev:
   Adding input device 30:21:48:DD:53:44 (/dev/input/event13)
   user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
   user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) Using input
   driver 'evdev' for '30:21:48:DD:53:44'
   user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**)
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: always reports core events
   user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (**) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Device: "/dev/input/event13"
   user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Vendor 0 Product 0
   user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (--) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Found keys
   user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) evdev:
   30:21:48:DD:53:44: Configuring as keyboard
   user.log:Aug 29 08:39:38 lap-02 gdm-Xorg-:0[617]: (II) XINPUT:
   Adding extended input device "30:21:48:DD:53:44" (type: KEYBOARD, id 13)

   Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (II) config/udev: Adding input device
   30:21:48:DD:53:44 (/dev/input/event13)
   Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (**) 30:21:48:DD:53:44: Applying InputClass
   "evdev keyboard catchall"
   Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for
   '30:21:48:DD:53:44'
   Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (**) 30:21:48:DD:53:44: always reports core
   events
   Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (**) evdev: 30:21:48:DD:53:44: Device:
   "/dev/input/event13"
   Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (--) evdev: 30:21:48:DD:53:44: Vendor 0
   Product 0
   Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (--) evdev: 30:21:48:DD:53:44: Found keys
   Xorg.0.log:[  2898.563] (II) evdev: 30:21:48:DD:53:44: Configuring
   as keyboard
   Xorg.0.log:[  2898.564] (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device
   "30:21:48:DD:53:44" (type: KEYBOARD, id 13)

Clearly, the majority of this is redundant, but I included it for the 
sake of completeness.


On 08/29/2016 08:48 AM, Michael Milliman wrote:
I am running Debian 8.5 on a Toshiba Satellite L755D-S5106 laptop and 
having the following problem:


When trying to connect my bluetooth speakers to the machine, I get all 
indications that the device is paired and connected.  The speaker 
gives its indication that it is

Bluetooth problem

[Michael Milliman]

I am running Debian 8.5 on a Toshiba Satellite L755D-S5106 laptop and 
having the following problem:


When trying to connect my bluetooth speakers to the machine, I get all 
indications that the device is paired and connected.  The speaker gives 
its indication that it is paired and connected as well.  However, the 
speaker never shows up in PulseAudio.  Upon further investigation, I 
find in the Xorg.log.o file that it has been configured as a keyboard, 
not as a speaker (which would explain why it didn't show up in 
PulseAudio).  The speaker is most definitely not a keyboard!! Any ideas 
as to how to solve this problem?  It is worth noting that this does not 
happen every time.  On occasion, everything works just fine.  However, 
the vast majority of the time, I cannot get it to work properly.


Will be glad to post additional information as necessary.


--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX

Re: networking

[Michael Milliman]

On 08/26/2016 06:19 AM, Nicolas George wrote:

Le decadi 10 fructidor, an CCXXIV, Pol Hallen a écrit :

I suggests him to separate each networks:

floor1 - 192.168.1.0/24
floor2 - 192.168.2.0/24
floor3 - 192.168.3.0/24
floor4 - 192.168.4.0/24

Why?

You give way too few information about the needs of your friend to allow
anyone to give relevant advice. If someone did, it was just by exercising
supernatural divination powers.

(Also, I wonder why people always fiddle with the cumbersome 192.168 instead
of going for simply 10.)
And the difference?? Both are designated for private use.  192.168 
simply has less address space.  10. can certainly be used, as can 
192.168, either in a number of configurations.  Neither is really more 
cumbersome than others.  Its all in how you define your network space.

Regards,



--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX

Re: reasons to ditch LILO before upgrading to jessie?

[Michael Milliman]

On 07/07/2016 05:47 PM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

I'll take advantage of this thread to ask a question / express my frustration
with grub:

The thing that always frustrated me about grub is that, iirc, they counted
disks / partitions different than lilo and the rest of Linux--they start
counting at 1 (like Windows, iirc), and lilo and Linux start counting at 0--is
that still the case?

OTOH, I haven't touched either lilo or grub in a long time--I don't even know
which I'm using--I installed whatever Debian 7 offered, and, since it is a
single boot system, (and I haven't booted in ~85 days), I don't really have an
issue.
Yes, the partitions are counted differently, and that can be a little 
frustrating.  However, with Grub, you can refer to the partitions by 
label or by UUID (Grub usually defaults to using UUID) rather than 
drive/partition numbers, which makes it a little easier.  Lilo cannot 
refer to the partitions in this way, so you must know what 
drive/partition you are referring to.  This is not a big deal in many 
installations, however, in situations where the drive/partition number 
may change (e.g. usb sticks that on one boot may be /dev/sdb on one boot 
and /dev/sdc on another depending on how/when the bios enumerates them) 
this comes in very handy, as you don't have to know which 
drive/partition will be the root partition, you only have to know either 
the UUID of the partition or a label you have assigned to it, and these 
things don't change regardless of how/where a usb device is enumerated.


On Thursday, July 07, 2016 03:37:12 PM Michael Milliman wrote:

On 07/07/2016 01:55 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Thu 07 Jul 2016 at 14:39:51 (-0400), Gary Dale wrote:


--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX

Re: reasons to ditch LILO before upgrading to jessie?

[Michael Milliman]

On 07/07/2016 05:47 PM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

I'll take advantage of this thread to ask a question / express my frustration
with grub:

The thing that always frustrated me about grub is that, iirc, they counted
disks / partitions different than lilo and the rest of Linux--they start
counting at 1 (like Windows, iirc), and lilo and Linux start counting at 0--is
that still the case?

OTOH, I haven't touched either lilo or grub in a long time--I don't even know
which I'm using--I installed whatever Debian 7 offered, and, since it is a
single boot system, (and I haven't booted in ~85 days), I don't really have an
issue.
Yes, the partitions are counted differently, and that can be a little 
frustrating.  However, with Grub, you can refer to the partitions by 
label or by UUID (Grub usually defaults to using UUID) rather than 
drive/partition numbers, which makes it a little easier.  Lilo cannot 
refer to the partitions in this way, so you must know what 
drive/partition you are referring to.  This is not a big deal in many 
installations, however, in situations where the drive/partition number 
may change (e.g. usb sticks that on one boot may be /dev/sdb on one boot 
and /dev/sdc on another depending on how/when the bios enumerates them) 
this comes in very handy, as you don't have to know which 
drive/partition will be the root partition, you only have to know either 
the UUID of the partition or a label you have assigned to it, and these 
things don't change regardless of how/where a usb device is enumerated.


On Thursday, July 07, 2016 03:37:12 PM Michael Milliman wrote:

On 07/07/2016 01:55 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Thu 07 Jul 2016 at 14:39:51 (-0400), Gary Dale wrote:


--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX

Re: reasons to ditch LILO before upgrading to jessie?

[Michael Milliman]

On 07/07/2016 01:55 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Thu 07 Jul 2016 at 14:39:51 (-0400), Gary Dale wrote:

The big selling feature of Grub over Lilo was that it didn't need to
updated each time you changed something. That fell by the wayside
with Grub 2. Now the big selling feature is that it works with more
than just Linux.

I guess I don't know what you mean by "update".
If I change the contents of grub.cfg, the effect is immediate:
the changes will be seen at the next boot. I don't do anything more.
With LILO any time you change the configuration, you have to re-install 
the LILO boot loader for those changes to take effect. With Grub, you 
make a change to the configuration file and it is immediately available 
on the next boot without having to re-install the Grub boot loader.  
Grub understands the file systems and so can read the configuration 
directly, whereas LILO does not understand the file system, and so the 
configuration must be provided as data directly in the loader itself 
(hence the re-install step).



It also has a "rescue shell" that I've never been able to do
anything useful with. When grub fails, I boot from a rescue cd
instead. That way I get a real working environment.

Horses for courses.

Cheers,
David.



--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX

Re: The Dreaded 'canberra-gtk-module' !

[Michael Milliman]

On 06/23/2016 03:02 PM, Alan McConnell wrote:

My mutt will no longer put my text/html mail up on my iceweasel.
The error message is:
   Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
The difficulty seemed to occur after I had done some alterations
to my system, trying to get my _printer_(sic) to work.

I can't find this module on my system, presumably because it is hidden in
some sub-directory.  I think that I'm actually looking for
libcanberra-gtk-module.

Has anyone else had this difficulty? do you know where
libcanberra-gtk-module is hiding?
Check the installed files tab of the properties window for 
libcanberra-gtk-module.  If the module is not installed, Synaptic will 
tell you that, if it is, the Installed Files tab will tell you were 
pretty much everything is.


TIA for assistance!

Alan



--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX

Re: Strange Email Bounce

[Michael Milliman]

On 06/21/2016 09:24 AM, John Hasler wrote:

Charlie writes:

Also no longer use that address or Gmail for the list, as The address
is obviously toxic...

No it isn't.
No it is not my email address that is "toxic."  I may be able to make 
some changes to improve such situations in the future, but the problem 
is most definitely not on my end, or at gmail.  My system, and google 
mail's are working pretty much as they are supposed to. My posts go 
through gmail to the debian-user list server, which then "re-broadcasts" 
those posts to the subscribed email addresses.  One of those addresses 
were generating bounce messages which should have gone back to the 
debian-user list server, but instead, due to the "misconfiguration" were 
sent directly to the originator of the message.  The fact that those 
messages showed up for some of us and didn't for others could be 
accounted for by a number of differing possibilities.  In the future, 
that server will be blacklisted on my system, so any messages showing up 
from it will simply be refused or ignored.


Also, it is worth noting that the bounce messages that I and some others 
have experience are no longer happening, at least not with my posts.


--
73's
Mike, WB5VQX