Installing a Firefox syncserver on my Jessie desktop computer. Need help...
h:/tmp/pip-build-IhZNaR/venusian/setup.py) egg_info for package venusian Downloading/unpacking translationstring>=0.4 (from pyramid==1.5->-r requirements.txt (line 3)) Downloading translationstring-1.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl Downloading/unpacking PasteDeploy>=1.5.0 (from pyramid==1.5->-r requirements.txt (line 3)) Downloading PasteDeploy-1.5.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl Downloading/unpacking zope.event (from zope.component==4.2.1->-r requirements.txt (line 9)) Downloading zope.event-4.0.3.tar.gz (390kB): 390kB downloaded Running setup.py (path:/tmp/pip-build-IhZNaR/zope.event/setup.py) egg_info for package zope.event warning: no previously-included files matching '*.dll' found anywhere in distribution warning: no previously-included files matching '*.pyc' found anywhere in distribution warning: no previously-included files matching '*.pyo' found anywhere in distribution warning: no previously-included files matching '*.so' found anywhere in distribution Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): argparse in /usr/lib/python2.7 (from konfig->mozsvc==0.8->-r requirements.txt (line 11)) Downloading/unpacking hawkauthlib>=0.1 (from pyramid-hawkauth->SyncStorage==1.5.11->-r requirements.txt (line 13)) Downloading hawkauthlib-0.1.1.tar.gz Running setup.py (path:/tmp/pip-build-IhZNaR/hawkauthlib/setup.py) egg_info for package hawkauthlib Downloading/unpacking tokenlib (from pyramid-hawkauth->SyncStorage==1.5.11->-r requirements.txt (line 13)) Downloading tokenlib-0.3.1.tar.gz Running setup.py (path:/tmp/pip-build-IhZNaR/tokenlib/setup.py) egg_info for package tokenlib Downloading/unpacking Paste (from wsgiproxy->SyncStorage==1.5.11->-r requirements.txt (line 13)) Downloading Paste-2.0.2-py2-none-any.whl (610kB): 610kB downloaded Downloading/unpacking six (from webtest->SyncStorage==1.5.11->-r requirements.txt (line 13)) Downloading six-1.10.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl Downloading/unpacking waitress>=0.8.5 (from webtest->SyncStorage==1.5.11->-r requirements.txt (line 13)) Downloading waitress-0.8.10-py2-none-any.whl (119kB): 119kB downloaded Downloading/unpacking beautifulsoup4 (from webtest->SyncStorage==1.5.11->-r requirements.txt (line 13)) Downloading beautifulsoup4-4.4.1-py2-none-any.whl (81kB): 81kB downloaded Installing collected packages: cornice, gunicorn, pyramid, WebOb, requests, simplejson, SQLAlchemy, unittest2, zope.component, configparser, konfig, mozsvc, PyBrowserID, testfixtures, tokenserver, pyramid-hawkauth, PyMySQL, pymysql-sa, umemcache, wsgiproxy, webtest, SyncStorage, repoze.lru, zope.interface, zope.deprecation, venusian, translationstring, PasteDeploy, zope.event, hawkauthlib, tokenlib, Paste, six, waitress, beautifulsoup4 Running setup.py install for cornice /usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/dist.py:267: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'paster_plugins' warnings.warn(msg) Compiling /tmp/pip-build-IhZNaR/gunicorn/gunicorn/workers/_gaiohttp.py ... File "/tmp/pip-build-IhZNaR/gunicorn/gunicorn/workers/_gaiohttp.py", line 64 yield from self.wsgi.close() ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax Running setup.py install for pyramid *And many more lines of warnings and errors messages *** The Makefile is available in the git download. I'm not good at finding finding errors at this level, and truth to tell this is the first time I've gotten some source code from a git repository. Please help. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net
where is mate-user-guide for jessie ?
I want to use mate for my desktop environment, but I'd like to do some minor tweeks to what I see. I think I need to read mate-user-guide, but it seems each distribution publishes its own version of this file. Where is the one for Debian/Jessie? Thanks -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net
Iceweasel/Firefox Sync
I am trying to establish a Mozilla-type Sync connection between my Debian Jessie (systemd) desktop host and my Apple MacBook Pro. I'm finding that password changes are being successfully transmitted from Apple to Jessie, but changes on Jessie are not going to Apple. I see a security fix for Iceweasel recently announced for a different issue. Would this have a newer version of Sync, or should I look for a backport? Or has anyone confronted this problem and found a fix? Please help, TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net
Re: Question about mv operation.
On 20150804_1611+0800, Magicloud Magiclouds wrote: Hi, Say I am moving a file between two harddisks. Both filesystems are Ext4. During the operation, I cut off the power. Then boot the host, and fix the filesystems. Now, I see in both locations, there are the file. My question is, is it safe to remove file in dest, and move to it again from src? No, it is NOT safe. The power interruption might have happened after the data transfer was completed, while the deletion of the source file was in progress. I think there is some way to protect against this possibility already built into the gnu coreutils version of mv, but I don't know for sure. Ask this question at: GNU coreutils online help: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ (near the bottom of man mv) I have found the people at that site helpful and polite. And, perhaps, OP can make this query and post the response here. HTH Thanks. -- 竹密岂妨流水过 山高哪阻野云飞 And for G+, please use magiclouds#gmail.com. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150804182230.ga19...@big.lan.gnu
Re: What package contains the time daemon? (CHRONY not approx vs ntp)
REPLACE approx with chrony in the following; Also years ago, and still today, there is approx which does a much more sophisticated analysis of the data stream of repeated queries of an ntp server. In addition to setting the local clock to the same time as the external reference clock as is done by both ntp and ntpdate, approx computes an estimate of *rate* of ticking of the local clock. Properly used, in a stable HVAC environment, it can keep the local clock synced with internet time with as few as one reading per week of the external internet time. It is my experience that internet time is vastly inferior to the precision of proper laboratory grade atomic clocks of a decade or two ago. Furthermore, no one really wants his computer clock to be scientifically correct to the point of being useful for running the data links to the space probe to Pluto. What everyone should want is just that their computer clock agrees with the computer clocks of the web sites with which they communicate. THAT is largely determined by social convention, which cares very little about logical scientific correctness. Here we see an example of a further meta-question concerning the socially correct words to use in covering up the underlying technical complexity. ;-) Best regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150726152128.gb8...@big.lan.gnu
Re: What package contains the time daemon? (approx vs ntp)
On 20150726_0252-0700, anxious...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday, 26 July 2015 05:30:04 UTC+1, CaT wrote: On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 11:32:53PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: It is, once ntpdate has slammed the correct time into the system at boot time, then ntp takes over. Unless I misremember, you don't even need ntpdate. Starting ntp with -g will do just fine (and it's the default config - I add -N). I don't even have ntpdate installed. -- A search of his car uncovered pornography, a homemade sex aid, women's stockings and a Jack Russell terrier. - http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/wacky/indeed/story-e6frev20-118083480 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150726040937.ga5...@zip.com.au Years ago, there was some concern about load on ntp servers. And we didn't all have always-on connections. I guess that is still the case. Ntpdate could be run from cron as often as necessary. It was usually good enough unless the computer's internal clock drifted alarmingly. anxiousmac Also years ago, and still today, there is approx which does a much more sophisticated analysis of the data stream of repeated queries of an ntp server. In addition to setting the local clock to the same time as the external reference clock as is done by both ntp and ntpdate, approx computes an estimate of *rate* of ticking of the local clock. Properly used, in a stable HVAC environment, it can keep the local clock synced with internet time with as few as one reading per week of the external internet time. It is my experience that internet time is vastly inferior to the precision of proper laboratory grade atomic clocks of a decade or two ago. Furthermore, no one really wants his computer clock to be scientifically correct to the point of being useful for running the data links to the space probe to Pluto. What everyone should want is just that their computer clock agrees with the computer clocks of the web sites with which they communicate. THAT is largely determined by social convention, which cares very little about logical scientific correctness. Here we see an example of a further meta-question concerning the socially correct words to use in covering up the underlying technical complexity. ;-) Best regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150726151406.ga8...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Fetchmail may almost be working in pop3.
On 20150708_2203-0500, Martin G. McCormick wrote: I am trying to get a debian squeeze system to pull mail from my cable provider's pop3 server. It appears they are not doing anything really out of the ordinary but I obviously have something set wrong. Here is a short snippet from their instructions for using pop: Incoming Mail Server: pop.suddenlink.net Incoming mail port: 110 Incoming mail port (SSL): 995 end of snippet It all starts out OK: fetchmail: 6.3.18 querying pop.suddenlink.net (protocol POP3) at Wed Jul 8 21:23:25 2015: poll started Trying to connect to 208.180.40.196/110...connected. ...snip Thanks for all constructive suggestions. Martin McCormick At the time of my posting there has developed a volumous branching thread about trying to configure exim that seems to be making progress only very slowly. I haven't read all of it, so if buried somewhere in there is information which renders my suggestion un-constructive, please accept my apology. I use msmtp, not exim, even though exim comes already installed by Debian. Msmtp has its own tiny config file which can be located at ~/.msmtprc You can put there whatever you need to satisfy you ISP and have no fear of exim mucking about with it. Of course, don't remove exim once you see msmtp working. That would break you Debian installation. Msmtp is a package in the main branch of all Debian repositories. HTH -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150712002323.ga2...@big.lan.gnu
Re: YAGF is a seriously screwed package
On 20150710_1208-0400, Miles Fidelman wrote: John Hasler wrote: Lisi writes: No, I disagree. Mesdames is now fully accepted, and I would say expected, giving: Dear Sirs/Mesdames or even dear Mesdames/Sirs. Duck includes drake and mankind includes women. Ok. Let's settle on Dear Peeps. Actually Dear when addressing strangers has always struck me as odd. I usually settle on Hi Folks, or just Folks, - that probably is inclusive enough to cover Martians and AIs Just Hi, is definitely more inclusive than Folks, in my opinion. If you want to be more formal/pompous use Honorable instead of Dear Really pompous and inclusive, consider Honorable Sentient Beings; --^ I was taught in high school in 1953, that for formal letters, the salutation is terminated with a semicolon, not a comma, which was thought to be only suitable for informal communications. Just Hi, has the benefit of fewer key strokes. (;-) And it's suitable even for an email addressed to single potted plant. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150711203849.ga2...@big.lan.gnu
Netatalk in Sid
I used Netatalk a few releases ago when Debian offered it in the then Stable release. I looked today at debian.org and there is a netatalk package in Sid. My limited ability to interpret the package information leads me to believe that it won't arrive in Testing soon. But someone who has been watching for it longer than I have, may have a better sense of how work on it is progressing. Thanks for any guesses, on- or off- list, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150702001758.ga7...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Gnome-terminal in Mate, How? (more info. and questions)
I looked at my post. I didn't like the words that I saw. I do need to study Mate documentation Please accept my appology. Thanks for your help. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150625151427.ga4...@big.lan.gnu
Re: systemd, headless, SSH, manual decryption (was: Re: Change systemd to not be default in Stretch)
to enqueue the stop of the units until after the transaction for decrypting is done - but then we have a deadlock again. Using Conflicts= here will simply tell systemd to always stop those services as part of the transaction to start decrypt.service, so nothing will deadlock. [2] One could also turn it around and NOT make decrypt.target depend on start-full-system.service, but the other way around (still with Requires=), then the ExecStartPre would not be necessary, and one could do systemctl start start-full-system.service... That's probably a matter of taste... [3] There are of course other options of overriding this; for example one could leave the standard target alone, just override the services for very few daemons and then hook those up with a new target. There are advantages and disadvantages with either method. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150624133311.ga3...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Gnome-terminal in Mate, How? (more info. and questions)
On 20150624_1151+0200, Sven Arvidsson wrote: On Tue, 2015-06-23 at 14:38 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: I'm running Jessie with Mate as desktop GUI. I notice that Mate terminal, which I use a lot, is very similar in function to Gnome-terminal. But Mate terminal does not have the function of repainting the text in a window when the window is resized. This is available when I run gnome-terminal under Xfce4. How can I get that feature in Mate? I already have Gnome-terminal installed and it works when I boot into Xfce4, but I can't invoke it when I am running Mate. Is this a feature, or a bug? It looks like Mate is hard-coded to use it's own terminal, at least from the menus, but you should have no trouble launching gnome -terminal, either from a shortcut or from an existing terminal. Do you get any errors? What is a shortcut in the context of Mate/Gnome? No errors are reported to me the user. You might also try removing the mate terminal and setting gnome -terminal as the default. I don't know how to remove mate terminal or how to set gnome-terminal as default. That is a rephrasing of my original question. ;-) Anyway, I thought the mate terminal was just a fork of the gnome one, me too. so if it can't repaint it's probably a bug. ^^^ well maybe there is some F-key magic that I don't know about... The repaint of text that I want is done by Bash and is already specified in my $HOME/.bashrc AND it works correctly in an Xfce4 boot. My current setup is: Jessie, and both MATE and Xfce4 tasks are installed. I select one or the other at boot-up. The real Gnome-terminal is installed and works properly when I run Xfce4. But I don't actually know which version of Gnome the terminal comes from. Aptitude points to Jessie with no pinning or other fancy stuff. I can get Gnome-terminal/Bash repaint if I open Gnome-terminal inside the Mate-terminal window. But that is not a solution, that is data collection for filing a bug report. Thanks to all, and Best regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150625013353.ga1...@big.lan.gnu
Gnome-terminal in Mate, How?
I'm running Jessie with Mate as desktop GUI. I notice that Mate terminal, which I use a lot, is very similar in function to Gnome-terminal. But Mate terminal does not have the function of repainting the text in a window when the window is resized. This is available when I run gnome-terminal under Xfce4. How can I get that feature in Mate? I already have Gnome-terminal installed and it works when I boot into Xfce4, but I can't invoke it when I am running Mate. Is this a feature, or a bug? I like it a lot. Best regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150623203817.ga1...@big.lan.gnu
Re: systemd equivalent
On 20150612_1753-0400, Bob Bernstein wrote: I need to steel myself to using systemd commands. What would be the systemd-correct form of this: $ ps ax | grep ssh I use that to check for the existence (or, as the case may be) demise) of an ssh tunnel I use for VNC. What should I use? Thanks all, Bob, and other posters on this thread; In another thread, Bob made reference to the Debian social contract. Here Bob is trying to discover some experiment that he can do to test, yes or no, whether his expectation about the answer to a simple query is still valid under systemd. He could have worded the question as: Does '$ ps ax | grep ssh' still work under systemd, and does it give results in same way, or a different way? But I don't think my suggested rewording is any better than his orginal wording, just different, with more words, which might have slowed some readers enough for their minds to keep up with there eyeballs, so they apprehend what the question really is. Everyone has expectations. All expectations are pre-conceptions. No one can know another person's expectations without a conversation. The flame wars over systemd have muddied the waters about systemd, as has been recently mentioned by another Bob in another thread on this list. HTH ;-) -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150615160931.gb15...@big.lan.gnu
Re: adding network printer
On 20150609_1553+0200, notoneofmy wrote: Hallo, I have spent hours on this, including the debian website. I have installed CUPS and have done apt-cache policy printer-driver all. I used localhost/631 to add the printer and I'm on Jessie with xfce. and so the uri for the wired canon printer is lpd: // (ip)/queue I can ping the printer's ip and get a response, using the machine with Jessie. But all print jobs sent produce different errors, from the printer is in use to not connected. I have checked /etc/cups/printers.conf file to ensure the uri is correct. I'm really upset. If you can help, this would be great. I am not an expert. I had a similar situation recently. I also was having trouble getting sound working. While working on sound, I made the irrational decision to try using Mate. I tried Mate for a while, but did not purge Xfce. Looking for clues in a different debugging/gui environment can make you notice things that you had not noticed before. Some things that you try can actually make the problem worse. Others give misleading information. Cups likes to remember things that are useless, and wrong. Be careful what you do try. My system is working now, both sound and Cups. The best I can offer is the suspicion that installing task-Mate, brought in some packages that were necessary for both problems, but were not installed by using task-xfce alone. Yes its crazy. YMMV Best regards. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150609153501.ga8...@big.lan.gnu
Re: CUPS default printer setting in Jessie
On 20150608_1040+0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: On Sun, Jun 07, 2015 at 08:43:28PM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: My printer was working a few weeks ago at printing files in Emacs, but now I get an error message that the default printer has not been set. [...] Questions: - the error message is coming from Emacs? - what happens if you try to print from the command line? (e.g. lpr some pdf file or something like that) The error message is in the bottom line of the Emacs window where the message 'Spooling...done' appears when the 'default print' has been properly set. Instead I see 'no default printer set' (typed from memory, may be slightly different exact words) 'lpr meds.pdf' produces a list of my prescription medications, as expected. As I said, evidence points to a minor problem in my understanding of 'default printer' configuration pertaining to Emacs. Thanks. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150608140102.gc6...@big.lan.gnu
Re: CUPS default printer setting in Jessie
On 20150607_2026-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: [snip] The can't be much wrong except for configuration because I can print documents from a modern MacBook Pro laptop running Mac OS X. In addition, I can print LibreOffice documents with no problems. But LibreOffice has a full function printer setup interface and doesn't use the default seletion. Is there a way to command LibreOffice to propagate the last user printer seletion to become the system default?? THNX -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150608030315.gb6...@big.lan.gnu
CUPS default printer setting in Jessie
My printer was working a few weeks ago at printing files in Emacs, but now I get an error message that the default printer has not been set. I don't recall having done any setting of the default when it was working. I had thought it happened automagically because of some special code in some package. But it seems not. I think I should use lpoptions to set the default, but I can't find any information about what a legitimate text string should look like. Where can I find some examples of what one actually types at the command prompt? And some discussion of how it works. My printer is an HP Laserwriter 5MP, which is a very old model that has centronix parallel and long distinct AppleTalk connector. The can't be much wrong except for configuration because I can print documents from a modern MacBook Pro laptop running Mac OS X. But that is more of a hope than a rational expection. Suggestions? Please help. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150608022609.ga6...@big.lan.gnu
Re: where to get testing version of jessie installer?
On 20150526_1829+0300, Juha Heinanen wrote: I'm back at trying to install Jessie on Acer C720 without going the long route via Wheezy. Just to recall, the problem is that current Jessie installer debian-8.0.0-i386-netinst.iso from April 24, does not boot on Acer ^^^ The netinst.iso images are special. They do not contain the copy of the kernel that they will install on HD of your target computer. They always download the latest version on the repository that you selected during the install process. During official release, words matter. Particularly the words wheezy, stable, jessie, testing, and stretch in what you specify for your sources.list. This can be viewed as a feature or a bug. For me, it is a feature. For you, it may be a bug, because you want to install the versions of packages that were available before the official release, which involve giving you something different from what you got when you last used that CD successfully. The repository at Debian Central changed and the change started propagating through the world wide web. The upcoming point release of 8.1 may make your netinst CD useful to you again. OTOH, it may not, YMMV. It certainly won't make the results of using in future, just like the results you got on Arp 24. Best regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150527011928.ga1...@big.lan.gnu
mixer.app ; how do i use it after installing it with aptitude?
I found a .deb package, named 'mixer.app' by accident in aptitude interactive mode. My current sound mixer is the one installed by xfce, which uses much to much area on my display screen for my taste. (about 20%) I think I need to learn how to create a 'launcher', which is something I have never done. Where can I find instructions for creating a launcher specific to xfce? I've already found a way of mouse clicking that pops up a small window with small text entry boxes in it, but I have no idea what to type into the boxes. And, for all I know, my mouse clicking is not at all any part of getting the mixer.app .deb to play nicely with xfce. Also, mixer.app may not be the best solution for my screen real estate problem. Alternatives for a smaller area mixer graphic will be happily entertained. TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150524204634.ga11...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Laptops, UEFI, Secure Boot and Debian
that might become the Next Big Thing out there, and it would be a shame if we were to limit hardware to not make that possible. I am also not sure MS really _wants_ to lock Linux/others out of the playing field. If they do, I assume the murmurs of class-action and anti-competition would rise in pitch, and someone might do something that could *really* hurt them. They really should work with the community to come up with a solution that works for everyone before someone forces them to. Microsoft wants to be the ONLY OS in the world. It's been their goal since Day One with MSDOS. However, they can't be and stay out of court. So there just needs to be an insignificant OS like Linux (and OSX) around -- a few % of the market? -- so legally they're not a monopoly. Insidious plan, huh? Unfortunately, Microsoft has screwed their customers too many times in the name of profits, and Linux and OSX are steadily gaining ground, particularly in the server, business and government markets. There will never NOT be a Microsoft, but they are scared and scrambling to correct poor market decision, if they can. And that's a good thing. True market capitalism does work, just slowly. B -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150524173908.0dcf6...@debian7.boseck208.net Two comments: 1) I saw a few days ago, an NewEgg.com advert. for a specialized HD/SSD combo. from Western Digital. It is a drop-in replacement for a SATA HD that combines in the same SATA physical outline, a 120GB SSD and a 1TB backing store on HD. This for just over $100 on Memorial Day sale. They must have figured out how to deal with UEFI. If they can figure it out, surely open/libre people can copy the WD approach. 2) Who among us would be willing to download and install software from the NSA that says it will protect you from Microsoft? Who doubts that NSA has the technology to break Microsoft's UEFI? ;~) -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150525022146.gc11...@big.lan.gnu
Re: a replacement for ssh packages in Jessie?
On 20150513_1117+0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 12:36:15PM -0400, Eike Lantzsch wrote: I put more trust into the OpenBSD/OpenSSH developers. Apparent and not-so- apparent bugs ought to be reported to them IMHO. That way an excellent product may become even better. I'd likewise stick with openssh personally, but if one is keen to try alternatives there's also dropbear - https://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html I agree with your reasoning, But I am having a problem on which I need help: I have three computers, Big, Dl2, and Gq. Big is the computer at which I sit when I reading this list and other user-type activities. The other two I use servers that I can't do on Big. I use ssh to log into them to maintain their software, and to adjust their service configuration. They are all running Jessie, fully up to date. Earlier, only Big and Gq were running and Dl2 was sitting idle. I installed Jessie on Dl2 after the release of Jessie. All three have both openssh-client and openssh-server installed. I go into this seeming unnecessary detail because the behavior ot ssh in this environment is very strange: Sitting at Big, logged in as user pec, I can: connect to pec@gq without giving any password connect to root@gq also without a password connect to pec@dl2 also without a password But I CANNOT connect to root@dl2. When I try I'm asked to type in password and when I type it in I get a response denied, please try again I know the root password to Dl2 and the password for the ssh key that I generated for /root/.ssh/id-rsa , and I carefully contrived to make it the same as system password to that of system user 'root'. Perhaps I am doing something really stupid. Maybe, but has anyone ever been able to establish ssh connections without passwords merely by being stupid? Also, ssh-copy-id doesn't seem to be working. But I've never used it before this episode, so maybe on this I'm misreading the man page. TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150513232852.ga24...@big.lan.gnu
Re: aptitude update errors for upgrade to Jessie on amd64
On 20150513_2054+0100, Lisi Reisz wrote: On Wednesday 13 May 2015 19:55:16 Bob Proulx wrote: Pierre Frenkiel wrote: I have still the same problem with Hash Sum mismatch Do you have any idea on how to fix it? Is your system behind a proxy cache of some sort? This problem is one sometimes seen when files of different ages are cached and served causing the entire set of files to be out of sync with each other. This is sometimes seen when behind a caching proxy server such as those on a large company network. There are various solutions. I think the simplest is to change the sources.list file to a different mirror. That will have the effect of asking for different URLs and will avoid the previously cached files and will cause the local copies of the old files to be expired. You are currently using: deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian jessie main That is okay. Good! But for the purpose of this task change that to a different but still valid mirror. This would be a good time to try out the new http redirector which has just recently become an official Debian resource.[1] deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian jessie main That httpredir.debian.org was previously known as http.debian.net for those on the list that are familiar with it. This is a good configuration for anyone geographically anywhere as it will redirect to the best known nearby mirror. The effect for you with this problem is that it will be a different appearing URL than the previously used ftp.fr.debian.org and will therefore ask for different files. The previously locally cached files on your disk in /var/lib/apt will be expired as no longer being in your sources.list file. If mismatched cached proxy files are your only remaining problem then this should fix it. Make sure to 'apt-get update' after changing the sources.list file. We need to be offered this during a netinstall. I did a netinstall yesterday, and as usual was offered my bhoice of mirror in the UK. I chose my usual because over the years it has been fast and reliable - though I have a regular second choice for when needed. I would more than happily have chosen httpredir.debian.org had I been offered it. Lisi At the very top of the pick-list of known mirrors in various parts of the world, there is a option to type in any URL and port number that you think will work for you (tm). I use it for accessing my approx proxy (with port# ), but it should work for a mirror set up by your neighbor across the street, or a honey pot set up by a certain spy agency, too. HTH -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150513235138.gb24...@big.lan.gnu
a replacement for ssh packages in Jessie?
By accident, while struggling with a number of problems in my pure Jessie home LAN, I came across some Debian packages which I had no clue existed. They are: lsh-client lsh-server lsh-utils The short descriptions in the aptitude display describes them as a new implementation of the whole ssh secure inter-host communications system. Since some of my problems with Jessie are manifest as apparent bugs in open-ssh, I am very interested in the recent experience in using these packages. To what extent are they direct, drop-in replacements? Can anyone recommend a HOW-TO for actually doing a switch? And has anyone tried them and decided they are not yet ready, in spite of the fact that Jessie is now blessed with the appellation, Stable. TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150512150436.gb3...@big.lan.gnu
Re: need help with approx-gc
On 20150509_1832-0600, Bob Proulx wrote: Paul E Condon wrote: The following is just a few examples from kern.log: May 8 11:32:49 cmn kernel: [4880283.861051] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 16136192 Ouch! You have a disk that is crying out for help. Oh the pain and suffering of it! All of them have the same sector number. This is the sda drive, which is formatted as ext4. Is there some way that the automatic reallocate could the repaired by a forced manual fsck? and is the rescue function on the netinst CD adequate for this? I have often been in your same situation. I would ensure that the backup is current and valid and then replace the disk. That is me. I have seen disks get worse very quickly after they have exhibited failures. Modern disk controllers keep internal spares. By the time the disk is showing errors externally the internal spares have probably all been consumed with other failures. Problems like this will quickly make you a believer in RAID. I pretty much raid everything these days just to avoid being in this situation. In a RAID the bad disk would have already been kicked out of the raid array. It would then be left running in degraded mode on the remaining drives. The system would keep running without problems. Replacing the failing drive and backfilling the raid array can all occur while the system is up and online. Not running SMART. What Debian package provides smartctl ? apt-get install smartmontools smartctl -l error /dev/sda I expect that to show errors. smartctl -t short /dev/sda sleep 120 smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda I expect that to show errors. I don't think the following tests will make the reallocation problem go away. Nope. Seems like a disk failure to me. I was planning to do something else this weekend, Oh well. RAID. I can't say enough good things about it in these situations. And backup. BTW... I have a low priority machine that is crying right now that SMART selftests are failing. It hasn't gotten to the actual I/O failure error stage yet but it is only a matter of time. It is a low priority machine so I haven't actually done anything yet. It is still up and running. But I have a disk and as soon as I get a few spare minutes this weekend I am going to go swap out the failing disk for another. But tomorrow looks pretty busy for me. I probably won't get to it until Monday. And I have no stress about it because it is a raid and the other disk is healthy. Plus backups are current. Bob Bob, I have no doubt that raid is the right way to go, but my personal situation is that I am working with old hardware, and I can't buy a state of the art new computer unless prices suddenly crash. I'm quite sure that I have daily backups going back to before I switched to Jessie well before its release. I won't be able to get replacement parts for the current box except by mail order, and I don't know if it can hold more than one drive (It is an old Dell packaged in one of their tiny desktop cases.) As I write, I am thinking I should turn off the failing machine, and learn to live without it for a few weeks. It has been running approx and cups (It is the old box with Centronix connector that figured in another thread here.) I have another old Dell with a slightly bigger case. How many independent HDrives are needed? Thanks -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150510042745.ga13...@big.lan.gnu
Re: need help with approx-gc
On 20150508_1446-0600, Bob Proulx wrote: Paul E Condon wrote: I run approx on one of my local jessie machines. The approx installation is strictly by using the approx deb, which includes a weekly run of approx-gc , which should just clean out the local repository of debs that are no longer useful. But approx-gc has started reporting I/O errors. It is reporting I/O errors as in the disk drive is failing types of errors? As in hardware errors outside of the software? What is reported? Are the errors in the /var/log/syslog or /var/log/kern.log files? What types of errors? The following is just a few examples from kern.log: May 8 11:32:49 cmn kernel: [4880283.861027] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] May 8 11:32:49 cmn kernel: [4880283.861032] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed May 8 11:32:49 cmn kernel: [4880283.861036] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: May 8 11:32:49 cmn kernel: [4880283.861038] Read(10): 28 00 00 f6 38 00 00 00 08 00 May 8 11:32:49 cmn kernel: [4880283.861051] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 16136192 May 8 11:32:10 cmn kernel: [4880244.912960] 00 f6 38 00 May 8 11:32:10 cmn kernel: [4880244.912967] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] May 8 11:32:10 cmn kernel: [4880244.912971] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed May 8 11:32:10 cmn kernel: [4880244.912975] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: May 8 11:32:10 cmn kernel: [4880244.912977] Read(10): 28 00 00 f6 38 00 00 00 08 00 May 8 11:32:10 cmn kernel: [4880244.912990] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 16136192 May 8 11:32:10 cmn kernel: [4880244.912990] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 16136192 All of them have the same sector number. This is the sda drive, which is formatted as ext4. Is there some way that the automatic reallocate could the repaired by a forced manual fsck? and is the rescue function on the netinst CD adequate for this? less /var/log/kern.log Are you running SMART? What do the SMART error logs say? Not running SMART. What Debian package provides smartctl ? I don't think the following tests will make the reallocation problem go away. I was planning to do something else this weekend, Oh well. Thanks ;-) smartctl -l error /dev/sda smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda Are you running selftests? If not try running a SMART selftest and seeing what is the result of it. smartctl -t short /dev/sda sleep 120 # or whatever is predicted above smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda If short is okay then try a 'long' test. If you are seeing I/O errors then I would be worried the disk is failing. In which case the SMART would confirm it. (SMART isn't a good predictor. But it can confirm a diagnosis.) Bob -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150509184055.ga7...@big.lan.gnu
need help with approx-gc
I run approx on one of my local jessie machines. The approx installation is strictly by using the approx deb, which includes a weekly run of approx-gc , which should just clean out the local repository of debs that are no longer useful. But approx-gc has started reporting I/O errors. I suppose I could just delete the repository and let my future use of aptitude refil it, but I'd like to start learning how to deal with this with a little more finesse. I suppose that I might be able to run approx-gc in some sort of debug mode, and discover what file or directory is giving it trouble. So far I have run manually which gives: root@cmn:~# approx-gc -s -v [ security/dists/jessie/updates/non-free/source/Sources.bz2 ] [ security/dists/jessie/updates/non-free/binary-i386/Packages.bz2 ] [ security/dists/jessie/updates/contrib/source/Sources.bz2 ] [ security/dists/jessie/updates/contrib/binary-i386/Packages.bz2 ] [ security/dists/jessie/updates/main/source/Sources.bz2 ] [ security/dists/jessie/updates/main/binary-i386/Packages.bz2 ] Input/output error root@cmn:~# I am running with a single large (160GB) root partition that is 7% in use. Is there a standard sysadmin procedure for diagnosing this? Best Regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150508174703.ga1...@big.lan.gnu
Re: question about jessie-backports Correction
On 20150430_0859-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: I'm rearranging my sources.list file to reflect the recent official release of Jessie. Some examples have entries for jessie-backports, others do not. There seems to be a difference of opinion within the Debian cognoscenti. Where can I read about the issues? Today, aptitude update does|find any file to download. Is this a /^\ NOT temporary glitch, or has a decision been made? Cheers to the Jessie release team! -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150430145938.ga22...@big.lan.gnu -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150430202959.ga26...@big.lan.gnu
question about jessie-backports
I'm rearranging my sources.list file to reflect the recent official release of Jessie. Some examples have entries for jessie-backports, others do not. There seems to be a difference of opinion within the Debian cognoscenti. Where can I read about the issues? Today, aptitude update does find any file to download. Is this a temporary glitch, or has a decision been made? Cheers to the Jessie release team! -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150430145938.ga22...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Is anyone else having trouble sending mail from Jessie? Am I?
On 20150429_2219+1200, Richard Hector wrote: On 29/04/15 19:31, Lisi Reisz wrote: On Wednesday 29 April 2015 01:04:47 Bob Holtzman wrote: On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 09:09:03AM +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote: On Tuesday 28 April 2015 01:23:41 John J. Boyer wrote: I did not have this problem with Ubuntu. Ubuntu, of course, is the solution to all ills. What I don't understand, is why people who think so, don't just use Ubuntu. How about Marvelous Mark's dictatorial attitude? That's reason enough for me. Yes, but you're not claiming that Ubuntu is marvellous, wonderful and the solution to all ills! Or are you? I don't think the OP did either. He just provided a point of comparison. Richard I have been using msmtp for several months. I think its still working for me. Best Regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150429181613.ga12...@big.lan.gnu
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie ... great progress
On 20150421_1930+0100, Brian wrote: On Tue 21 Apr 2015 at 10:38:03 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150421_1248+0100, Brian wrote: On Tue 21 Apr 2015 at 11:30:55 +, Bonno Bloksma wrote: Also 'Expert' doesn't really imply that that user is an expert. It does to me. Strange name choice if that is not the case. Would advanced setup be better? Ric Yeah it would, it implies access to finer grained features than to the skill level of the person installing. Could be just me that sees it that way though. :) Nope, I think you are absolutely right. I never selected Expert install as I am in no way an Expert, but it seems I should have. I definitely understand pretty much all that is offered there. I might not use it all but Advanced covers better what the option intends to offer. What does it offer that is more advanced than what is offered by partitioning and installing GRUB in the regular install? In my case it offered the option of manual entry of an IP address for the computer, as opposed to letting DHCP provide an IP address. The majority of people wouldn't know the difference between an address allocated by DHCP and a fixed address. Furthermore, they probably do not care. The installer does the right thing with the regular install. It caters for the most usual situation in which Debian is installed. Someone who does not realise that a fixed address is important for them can do corrections from the installer when it dawns on them. Its a win-win for the installer. For experts, 'Expert install' apparently offers a check-list of things to decide this time, like the pre-flight check-list for airplane pilots. Experts in any topic tend like and use check-list, IMHO. You are equating 'Expert install' with 'experts' rather than with 'more control'. Maybe we should have 'Debian Simulators ' to mimic the flight simulators for aeroplane pilots. Oh - we do?; its called 'Change debconf priority'. I learned that almost no one who has deep experience and real expertise regularly uses the non-expert path and thus can understand what a newbie is talking about when the newbie is asking for help with the most recent implementation of netinst. Knowing the context of a question is important to giving focused comment and help. I see this as a problem worth thinking about. I use the regular path frequently. Possibly more frequently than a preseeded install. I'd question the first sentence; it implies that that person has little idea about what they are doing. I have no idea for a realistic solution. I don't believe any newbie reads ALL the documentation that is available just a few mouse clicks away from www.debian.org. Everyone has a point where they decide they are ready to try it, and they stop reading and start doing. When should that be? Who is qualified to critisize a mistaken decision? Everyone is qualified; it is the way we make progress in any field of endeavour. 'ALL' documentation amounts to the manual and the Release Notes. I would I hope a budding aeroplane pilot would familiarise herself with what the machine can do before operating it. Thanks, for your comment. It is very revealing. Peace, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150421192726.ge6...@big.lan.gnu
Re: A question about deleting a big file structure from a big disk in Jessie: Why does this work? I'm really worried.
On 20150420_1252-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting David Wright (deb...@lionunicorn.co.uk): Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): On 20150402_2135-0500, David Wright wrote: I do get occasional I/O errors on USB transfers, which can make the disk readonly, but sometimes make it disappear altogether (ie it gets unmounted, not remounted). All of my file systems are journaled. Did you notice a delay in remount as the journal was replayed? No, but I wasn't watching for it. I will in future (though obviously I have adjusted my working practice to minimise the rare occurrences). ... and my current workaround is to use my little old laptop to copy files between USB drives. I just copied 120,000 files (45.5GB) without a peep on /var/log/kern.log, not even one of those interface reset messages that my desktop often logs. Cheers, David. Thanks for the report. I haven't had a I/O error event in quite a while, also. But I have become embroiled it other issues involving installing Jessie. I hope the problem is truly fixed, but I continue to have other problems, some of which preclude me running long I/O intencive jobs. Cheers, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150421151722.gb6...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Can't send mail with Jessie
On 20150421_1048-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150421_1137-0500, John J. Boyer wrote: I am using msmtp to send mail. However, I get the error Remote protocol errot. The log file shows TLS handshake filed. Operation timed out. There is no problem on an older Vinux system, which I am using to send this message. The author of msmtp tells me that the problem is most likely with the new version of the gnuTLS library that Jessie uses. If this is the case the same problem would occur with exim4 or nullmailer. Is there a way to get the older version of gnuTLS and protect it from updating? What else would you suggest? Thanks, If you see this reply, msmtp is working for me in Jessie. HTH Cheers, The above reads like a brush-off. I want to add a few more friendly words. I have been using msmtp for over a year. I started using it soon after qpopper was dropped from Debian. All through the time I have been struggling with my transition from Wheezy to Jessie, msmtp was one thing that worked without trouble or tweeking. If you are new to msmtp, post your .msmtprc. I do remember that when I first started using it I did have difficulty understanding the instructions. Maybe whatever it was that bothered me, is also the problem that you are having. Have you looked at .msmtp.log or whatever you chose to call its activity log? I think doing that helped me in my early days with it. HTH -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150421230913.ga2...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Can't send mail with Jessie
On 20150421_1137-0500, John J. Boyer wrote: I am using msmtp to send mail. However, I get the error Remote protocol errot. The log file shows TLS handshake filed. Operation timed out. There is no problem on an older Vinux system, which I am using to send this message. The author of msmtp tells me that the problem is most likely with the new version of the gnuTLS library that Jessie uses. If this is the case the same problem would occur with exim4 or nullmailer. Is there a way to get the older version of gnuTLS and protect it from updating? What else would you suggest? Thanks, If you see this reply, msmtp is working for me in Jessie. HTH Cheers, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150421164815.gd6...@big.lan.gnu
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie ... great progress
On 20150421_1248+0100, Brian wrote: On Tue 21 Apr 2015 at 11:30:55 +, Bonno Bloksma wrote: Also 'Expert' doesn't really imply that that user is an expert. It does to me. Strange name choice if that is not the case. Would advanced setup be better? Ric Yeah it would, it implies access to finer grained features than to the skill level of the person installing. Could be just me that sees it that way though. :) Nope, I think you are absolutely right. I never selected Expert install as I am in no way an Expert, but it seems I should have. I definitely understand pretty much all that is offered there. I might not use it all but Advanced covers better what the option intends to offer. What does it offer that is more advanced than what is offered by partitioning and installing GRUB in the regular install? In my case it offered the option of manual entry of an IP address for the computer, as opposed to letting DHCP provide an IP address. For experts, 'Expert install' apparently offers a check-list of things to decide this time, like the pre-flight check-list for airplane pilots. Experts in any topic tend like and use check-list, IMHO. I learned that almost no one who has deep experience and real expertise regularly uses the non-expert path and thus can understand what a newbie is talking about when the newbie is asking for help with the most recent implementation of netinst. Knowing the context of a question is important to giving focused comment and help. I see this as a problem worth thinking about. I have no idea for a realistic solution. I don't believe any newbie reads ALL the documentation that is available just a few mouse clicks away from www.debian.org. Everyone has a point where they decide they are ready to try it, and they stop reading and start doing. When should that be? Who is qualified to critisize a mistaken decision? Cheers, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150421163803.gc6...@big.lan.gnu
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie ... great progress
On 20150420_0911+0200, Petter Adsen wrote: On Sun, 19 Apr 2015 10:18:58 -0600 Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net wrote: On 20150419_0852-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150419_0826-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150419_0830+0200, Petter Adsen wrote: On your router, depending on make and model, there is usually a page in the web interface where you can map MAC addresses to IP addresses, if the router assigns those via DHCP. I am trying to setup DHCP assignment, but it doesn't seem to be working. Mostly the more things I try, the less things show up in the list of attached devices. I hope I can recover from this experiment. Another option you have, that I would file in the future experiments when everything else is stable and working category, would be to see if your router is supported by something like OpenWRT or DD-WRT. They both have a lot more features than most manufacturers firmware, and give you a greater degree of control. Also, on my router and the one I had before, the list of DHCP clients was frequently not listing all clients. It may have had something to do with the fact that I set really long lease times, but I'm not sure. See if your router has a log, on my router I can even filter on events, and DHCP is one of the filters I can choose. Then you will see the requests come in and the router sending replies. Good luck, Petter To all contributers to this thread: We have been snipping stuff that seemed to be no longer relevant, so I have to work from my own memory that I know is flawed. The starting point in getting control was to take note of exactly what Petter wrote in a earlier post. It was only for IP addresses that were managed by the router in its role as a DHCP server that the router box had any control. For some reason this triggered my memory of a something that *did*not* happen in what was then the most recent netinst of Jessie: I did not see a question about whether or not I wanted to use DHCP. I kept thinking that question would be later in the dialog, but it never came. I am sure it was not there because I had neglected to specify 'expert install', which years ago I had learned that I should always do. So I have done yet another netinst of Jessie using RC2 CD. And the results are very different, and much more successful in meeting my needs. After the most recent netinst, the fact, already pointed out by Petter, was obvious to me. The warning message was the same as always, but my response was to delete the offending line from the know_hosts file and try again. It took a while to remove enough cruft from various locations in memory of the various hosts to get the remaining data make sense. I don't think I am finished, but I am on my way. The lesson that I have for others who may find this email while trying to debug a small personal LAN in your home is: Always use 'Expert install' in doing netinst even if you know very well that you are not an expert. Cheers, and Thank you. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150420155709.ga6...@big.lan.gnu
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie
On 20150419_0830+0200, Petter Adsen wrote: On Sat, 18 Apr 2015 20:18:17 -0600 Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net wrote: On 20150418_1905-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): I was running as pec or as root. I forget. Since doing that, I realized that for many years I have been running with my own version of /etc/ssh/ssh.config. Confronted with the evidence, I recall that this was a place I found, through exhaustive search, to turn off the hashing of known_host. I like to be able to identify lines in known_host, because I think each line is a possible access path for a hacker and the sysadmin, namely me, should be able to trace the provenance of all such lines. In short hashing them opens a backdoor more serious than the one it closes, IMHO. I now know that I can put my edits in two places, /home/pec/.ssh/ssh_config and /root/.ssh/ssh_config, and have the same effect. If you're happy with not hashing, you need only put that in /etc/ssh/ssh_config (underscore, not dot) if you remove all other .ssh/ssh_config files. I can envision a different way, but I cannot envision one that does not impact of how Debian wants to configure Jessie. So be it. When upgrade runs, you'll need to keep your configuration and then run diff against the maintainer's version (suffixed .dpkg-new or .ucf-dist or some such) to fold in any changes they've made (likely to be few to none). I have not yet discovered a way to append new known host keys from newly configured hosts into the .ssh/known_hosts files on older computers. known_hosts and authorized_keys are both text files. Each line is independent. You can cat x y to append contents of x to y or insert with an editor. An editor's Insert File is safe, but make sure to reconstruct the lines if cut and paste does any line wrapping, ie ssh-rsa jhdgkhkkdjkjnskjn foo@bar needs to be made back into ssh-rsa jhdgkhkkdjkjnskjn foo@bar IIRC any line from one hosts's or user's known_hosts file will work for another user and/or host, and the same with authorized_keys (though don't mix them up!). I think the removed file was the one associated with either pec, or root, which ever was appropriate for a test. Since doing the tests, I have done a complete re-install. With that removing the appropriate known_hosts file gives me the old familiar option of accepting the risk of man-in-the-middle. There's never a problem with wiping out known_hosts and letting it gradually be rebuilt, particularly if you know the fingerprints thusly: $ ssh-keygen -l -v -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key.pub .../ssh-fingerprint As said before, I am working now with a new re-install on my main computer. It is the one on which I am composing this email. This is its /etc/hosts file: 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 big.lan.gnu big 192.168.1.1 rtr.lan.gnu rtr # LAN side of router 192.168.1.10 cmn.lan.gnu cmn 192.168.1.11 big.lan.gnu big 192.168.1.12 gq.lan.gnu gq [...] The top two lines were provided during the running of netinst CD RC2. The rest were provided by me, after I took the CD out of the computer and rebooted. Well I have tried to keep things as simple as possible and I recently decided to call exim's bluff... I don't think I have a problem with exim. I use msmtp to get emails out onto the web. I tried doing it with exim4 about 2yrs ago. It kept breaking so I found alternative for a previous stand-alone smtp agent that was being discontinued due to lack of upstream support at about the same time that Debian was moving from plain exim to exim4. I could try again, but after I get ssh working both directions, I hope. Starting MTA:hostname --fqdn did not return a fully qualified name, dc_minimaldns will not work. Please fix your /etc/hosts setup. exim4 ok ...and configure a null domain (ie no dots in /etc/hosts outside of the IP numbers). Everything still works. With this, I can ssh into 'gq' from 'big', which is my main computer with the big flat screen display. I can open and edit files on 'gq' and the edits will be saved. No problem. But, if I sit down the keyboard and screen connected to 'gq', I cannot do the reverse. On 'gq', the /etc/hosts file contains all the lines as on 'big', except for the first two. It should contain the first two lines exactly the same except substitute big→gq. Working on 'gq', I cannot ping ['big']. Can you tell be why, and what I can do to make the ping possible. It would be very educational for me, and maybe all other problems will fall away in my basement. From what you have posted, I would imagine
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie
On 20150419_0826-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150419_0830+0200, Petter Adsen wrote: On Sat, 18 Apr 2015 20:18:17 -0600 Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net wrote: On 20150418_1905-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): I was running as pec or as root. I forget. Since doing that, I realized that for many years I have been running with my own version of /etc/ssh/ssh.config. Confronted with the evidence, I recall that this was a place I found, through exhaustive search, to turn off the hashing of known_host. I like to be able to identify lines in known_host, because I think each line is a possible access path for a hacker and the sysadmin, namely me, should be able to trace the provenance of all such lines. In short hashing them opens a backdoor more serious than the one it closes, IMHO. I now know that I can put my edits in two places, /home/pec/.ssh/ssh_config and /root/.ssh/ssh_config, and have the same effect. If you're happy with not hashing, you need only put that in /etc/ssh/ssh_config (underscore, not dot) if you remove all other .ssh/ssh_config files. I can envision a different way, but I cannot envision one that does not impact of how Debian wants to configure Jessie. So be it. When upgrade runs, you'll need to keep your configuration and then run diff against the maintainer's version (suffixed .dpkg-new or .ucf-dist or some such) to fold in any changes they've made (likely to be few to none). I have not yet discovered a way to append new known host keys from newly configured hosts into the .ssh/known_hosts files on older computers. known_hosts and authorized_keys are both text files. Each line is independent. You can cat x y to append contents of x to y or insert with an editor. An editor's Insert File is safe, but make sure to reconstruct the lines if cut and paste does any line wrapping, ie ssh-rsa jhdgkhkkdjkjnskjn foo@bar needs to be made back into ssh-rsa jhdgkhkkdjkjnskjn foo@bar IIRC any line from one hosts's or user's known_hosts file will work for another user and/or host, and the same with authorized_keys (though don't mix them up!). I think the removed file was the one associated with either pec, or root, which ever was appropriate for a test. Since doing the tests, I have done a complete re-install. With that removing the appropriate known_hosts file gives me the old familiar option of accepting the risk of man-in-the-middle. There's never a problem with wiping out known_hosts and letting it gradually be rebuilt, particularly if you know the fingerprints thusly: $ ssh-keygen -l -v -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key.pub .../ssh-fingerprint As said before, I am working now with a new re-install on my main computer. It is the one on which I am composing this email. This is its /etc/hosts file: 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 big.lan.gnu big 192.168.1.1 rtr.lan.gnu rtr # LAN side of router 192.168.1.10 cmn.lan.gnu cmn 192.168.1.11 big.lan.gnu big 192.168.1.12 gq.lan.gnu gq [...] The top two lines were provided during the running of netinst CD RC2. The rest were provided by me, after I took the CD out of the computer and rebooted. Well I have tried to keep things as simple as possible and I recently decided to call exim's bluff... I don't think I have a problem with exim. I use msmtp to get emails out onto the web. I tried doing it with exim4 about 2yrs ago. It kept breaking so I found alternative for a previous stand-alone smtp agent that was being discontinued due to lack of upstream support at about the same time that Debian was moving from plain exim to exim4. I could try again, but after I get ssh working both directions, I hope. Starting MTA:hostname --fqdn did not return a fully qualified name, dc_minimaldns will not work. Please fix your /etc/hosts setup. exim4 ok ...and configure a null domain (ie no dots in /etc/hosts outside of the IP numbers). Everything still works. With this, I can ssh into 'gq' from 'big', which is my main computer with the big flat screen display. I can open and edit files on 'gq' and the edits will be saved. No problem. But, if I sit down the keyboard and screen connected to 'gq', I cannot do the reverse. On 'gq', the /etc/hosts file contains all the lines as on 'big', except for the first two. It should contain the first two lines exactly the same except substitute big→gq. Working on 'gq', I cannot ping ['big']. Can you tell be why, and what I can do to make the ping possible
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie ... another related question
On 20150419_0852-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150419_0826-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150419_0830+0200, Petter Adsen wrote: On Sat, 18 Apr 2015 20:18:17 -0600 Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net wrote: On 20150418_1905-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): I was running as pec or as root. I forget. Since doing that, I snip From what you have posted, I would imagine that big has come up as 192.168.1.X where X is not 11. /sbin/ifconfig will tell you the IP number of the machine it's run on. /usr/sbin/arp -n -a run on gq (during or soon after you have talked to gq on big) will tell you how gq sees big (recognised by its MAC address). On 'big' ifconfig gives: root@big:~# ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:26:18:3d:95:16 inet addr:192.168.1.16 Bcast:192.168.1.255 ^^ In your previous mail (the one with your /etc/hosts) 'big' had 192.168.1.11, and here it has .16 - edit your hosts files accordingly, or set the address on 'big' back to .11 and you should be fine :) I don't have a authoritative information as to whether or not these MAC addresses are correct. I'd like to know how to query each box and get the MAC address that it is actually using. I think we need that to go beyond pure theory and get to real practice. But how? Specific advice needed, please. The field HWaddr in the ifconfig output above gives you the MAC address for that interface. How are you making sure that your router uses the IP numbers that are in your hosts file? If I have been told how to make sure of this, I am too dense to realize it. Please, what tool or utility helps accomplish this? I await your reply anxiously ;-) On your router, depending on make and model, there is usually a page in the web interface where you can map MAC addresses to IP addresses, if the router assigns those via DHCP. I am trying to setup DHCP assignment, but it doesn't seem to be working. Mostly the more things I try, the less things show up in the list of attached devices. I hope I can recover from this experiment. Sorry for butting in on your discussion like this, but I was up early :) Thanks, Petter. No need to be sorry. But this router only displays the information that it has observed. It offers no edit facility that I can find. We now know that there is a disagreement on the IPv4 address of 'big', but the router didn't cause the disagreement and is unwilling to help in fixing it. There is a 'refresh' button which is intended for use after one thinks the problem is fixed. Once I learn where to fix it I think I will change it to 192.168.1.10 which I have been using for several years until the Should be 192.168.1.11 Oh well. Again a typo that makes a hash of what I really meant to say. advent of Jessie. Now it is 12:50am here, and I am going to bed. Thanks again for finding the exact cause of the problem. Cheers, -- -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150419161858.gd7...@big.lan.gnu
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie
On 20150417_1408-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): I have four desktop machines running Jessie. I try to keep them a;; upgraded on whenever new package versions are released. I thought it would be fast and simple. I was very wrong. This install behaves very differently in the following way: When I attempt to ssh into one of the computers that was not re-installed, I get a complaint that: @@@ @ WARNING: POSSIBLE DNS SPOOFING DETECTED! @ @@@ The RSA host key for gq has changed, and the key for the corresponding IP address 192.168.1.12 is unknown. This could either mean that DNS SPOOFING is happening or the IP address for the host and its host key have changed at the same time. This I do not receive, perhaps because my router knows my MAC and gives me my static IP number. @@@ @WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @ @@@ IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY! Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)! It is also possible that a host key has just been changed. The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is 51:cf:52:87:6f:13:43:50:73:29:2c:b4:34:11:cd:5c. Please contact your system administrator. Add correct host key in /home/pec/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message. Offending RSA key in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts:3 remove with: ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts -R gq RSA host key for gq has changed and you have requested strict checking. Host key verification failed. This one is very familiar, and is something I wanted to avoid when installing via ssh and network-console. You're presumably running ssh as pec. What I'm not sure about is why you're using /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts rather than /home/pec/.ssh/known_hosts , because you need root to maintain the former. I get this same complaint even after I remove the known_hosts file entirely. How can the software retain the information that the offending line is the third line? It must be doing more than the documentation that I have says its doing, There are potentially two files. the known_hosts file implies you've deleted one of them. This is a home lan. I use a hosts file to inform the several computers of the IP addresses of all the computers in the LAN. The file is identical on all computers and hasn't changed sine etch. Same here. The router doesn't have a resolver, so I type hostnames and hosts gives me the static IP numbers. In the past, I was given the option of typing the login password of the computer that I want to log into, but not now. I'm not sure why you call it an option. The default is to require typing a password (of the user, not the computer), and we avoid that by giving the remote host a question (our public key, placed it its authorized_keys file) to which only we know the answer (our private key, in our id_rsa file). I don't understand what I should do with the RSA 'fingerprint' doesn't look at all like a legitimate line in a known_host file. How is it used? On the odd occasion that I keep the newly-installed host keys (usually when I notice a new type of key in /etc/ssh/) I type, for example, $ ssh-keygen -l -v -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key.pub .../ssh-fingerprint where ... is the place you keep your configuration records. That's the remote hosts's fingerprint you check when you get the warning. (I don't know how to get a host to send the randomart.) Where is the source of this occult knowledge? man ssh-keygen is your friend. Why does the author of the WARNING presume that there is a different person, other than the person reading the message who is the actual 'your system administration'? Has someone in NSA or CIA been assigned to monitor me, and this message breaches global security because I should not be allowed to know that I am being watch? Because if you were logging in to your unix account at work, say, you'd pick up the phone and ask the operators what in h*ll's name are they up to! In other words, ssh assumes the remote host really is remote. You (local) get the warning, but the host that might have been compromised (if it's not man-in-the-middle) is the remote one. Cheers, David. Thanks, David I'm replying here to your post that was earlier than one that I have already replied to. It is 4:30am for me, and I woke up way before I usually do and couldn't go back to sleep. Now after about an hour of wakefulness, I'm beginning to need more sleep. I haven't pieced together all your comments in logical order because their order was driven by the order to statements in my meandering description. This email
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie
On 20150417_1408-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): I have four desktop machines running Jessie. I try to keep them a;; upgraded on whenever new package versions are released. I thought it would be fast and simple. I was very wrong. This install behaves very differently in the following way: When I attempt to ssh into one of the computers that was not re-installed, I get a complaint that: @@@ @ WARNING: POSSIBLE DNS SPOOFING DETECTED! @ @@@ The RSA host key for gq has changed, and the key for the corresponding IP address 192.168.1.12 is unknown. This could either mean that DNS SPOOFING is happening or the IP address for the host and its host key have changed at the same time. This I do not receive, perhaps because my router knows my MAC and gives me my static IP number. @@@ @WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @ @@@ IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY! Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)! It is also possible that a host key has just been changed. The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is 51:cf:52:87:6f:13:43:50:73:29:2c:b4:34:11:cd:5c. Please contact your system administrator. Add correct host key in /home/pec/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message. Offending RSA key in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts:3 remove with: ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts -R gq RSA host key for gq has changed and you have requested strict checking. Host key verification failed. This one is very familiar, and is something I wanted to avoid when installing via ssh and network-console. You're presumably running ssh as pec. What I'm not sure about is why you're using /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts rather than /home/pec/.ssh/known_hosts , because you need root to maintain the former. I was running as pec or as root. I forget. Since doing that, I realized that for many years I have been running with my own version of /etc/ssh/ssh.config. Confronted with the evidence, I recall that this was a place I found, through exhaustive search, to turn off the hashing of known_host. I like to be able to identify lines in known_host, because I think each line is a possible access path for a hacker and the sysadmin, namely me, should be able to trace the provenance of all such lines. In short hashing them opens a backdoor more serious than the one it closes, IMHO. I now know that I can put my edits in two places, /home/pec/.ssh/ssh_config and /root/.ssh/ssh_config, and have the same effect. I can envision a different way, but I cannot envision one that does not impact of how Debian wants to configure Jessie. So be it. I have not yet discovered a way to append new known host keys from newly configured hosts into the .ssh/known_hosts files on older computers. I envision that, before I die, all traffic on the web will be monitored by at least one spy organization of another. Maybe it is already so. The job of personal sysadmin will be to allow monitoring by agencies one knows and trusts, and disallows monitoring by others. Frankly I trust the CIA more that the FBI, but both are more trustworthy than Facebook ;-\ Debian has a much bigger problem than I have. But all this comment is just policy without effective implementation. I get this same complaint even after I remove the known_hosts file entirely. How can the software retain the information that the offending line is the third line? It must be doing more than the documentation that I have says its doing, There are potentially two files. the known_hosts file implies you've deleted one of them. I think the removed file was the one associated with either pec, or root, which ever was appropriate for a test. Since doing the tests, I have done a complete re-install. With that removing the appropriate known_hosts file gives me the old familiar option of accepting the risk of man-in-the-middle. This is a home lan. I use a hosts file to inform the several computers of the IP addresses of all the computers in the LAN. The file is identical on all computers and hasn't changed sine etch. Same here. The router doesn't have a resolver, so I type hostnames and hosts gives me the static IP numbers. In the past, I was given the option of typing the login password of the computer that I want to log into, but not now. I'm not sure why you call it an option. The default is to require typing a password (of the user, not the computer), and we avoid that by giving the remote host a question (our public key, placed it its authorized_keys file) to which only we know the answer (our private key, in our id_rsa file). I don't
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie
On 20150418_1222-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150417_1408-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): I have four desktop machines running Jessie. I try to keep them a;; upgraded on whenever new package versions are released. I thought it would be fast and simple. I was very wrong. This install behaves very differently in the following way: When I attempt to ssh into one of the computers that was not re-installed, I get a complaint that: @@@ @ WARNING: POSSIBLE DNS SPOOFING DETECTED! @ @@@ The RSA host key for gq has changed, and the key for the corresponding IP address 192.168.1.12 is unknown. This could either mean that DNS SPOOFING is happening or the IP address for the host and its host key have changed at the same time. This I do not receive, perhaps because my router knows my MAC and gives me my static IP number. @@@ @WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @ @@@ IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY! Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)! It is also possible that a host key has just been changed. The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is 51:cf:52:87:6f:13:43:50:73:29:2c:b4:34:11:cd:5c. Please contact your system administrator. Add correct host key in /home/pec/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message. Offending RSA key in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts:3 remove with: ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts -R gq RSA host key for gq has changed and you have requested strict checking. Host key verification failed. This one is very familiar, and is something I wanted to avoid when installing via ssh and network-console. You're presumably running ssh as pec. What I'm not sure about is why you're using /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts rather than /home/pec/.ssh/known_hosts , because you need root to maintain the former. I was running as pec or as root. I forget. Since doing that, I realized that for many years I have been running with my own version of /etc/ssh/ssh.config. Confronted with the evidence, I recall that this was a place I found, through exhaustive search, to turn off the hashing of known_host. I like to be able to identify lines in known_host, because I think each line is a possible access path for a hacker and the sysadmin, namely me, should be able to trace the provenance of all such lines. In short hashing them opens a backdoor more serious than the one it closes, IMHO. I now know that I can put my edits in two places, /home/pec/.ssh/ssh_config and /root/.ssh/ssh_config, and have the same effect. I can envision a different way, but I cannot envision one that does not impact of how Debian wants to configure Jessie. So be it. I have not yet discovered a way to append new known host keys from newly configured hosts into the .ssh/known_hosts files on older computers. I envision that, before I die, all traffic on the web will be monitored by at least one spy organization of another. Maybe it is already so. The job of personal sysadmin will be to allow monitoring by agencies one knows and trusts, and disallows monitoring by others. Frankly I trust the CIA more that the FBI, but both are more trustworthy than Facebook ;-\ Debian has a much bigger problem than I have. But all this comment is just policy without effective implementation. I get this same complaint even after I remove the known_hosts file entirely. How can the software retain the information that the offending line is the third line? It must be doing more than the documentation that I have says its doing, There are potentially two files. the known_hosts file implies you've deleted one of them. I think the removed file was the one associated with either pec, or root, which ever was appropriate for a test. Since doing the tests, I have done a complete re-install. With that removing the appropriate known_hosts file gives me the old familiar option of accepting the risk of man-in-the-middle. This is a home lan. I use a hosts file to inform the several computers of the IP addresses of all the computers in the LAN. The file is identical on all computers and hasn't changed sine etch. Same here. The router doesn't have a resolver, so I type hostnames and hosts gives me the static IP numbers. In the past, I was given the option of typing the login password of the computer that I want to log into, but not now. I'm not sure why you call it an option. The default is to require typing a password (of the user, not the computer), and we avoid that by giving the remote
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie
On 20150418_1905-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): I was running as pec or as root. I forget. Since doing that, I realized that for many years I have been running with my own version of /etc/ssh/ssh.config. Confronted with the evidence, I recall that this was a place I found, through exhaustive search, to turn off the hashing of known_host. I like to be able to identify lines in known_host, because I think each line is a possible access path for a hacker and the sysadmin, namely me, should be able to trace the provenance of all such lines. In short hashing them opens a backdoor more serious than the one it closes, IMHO. I now know that I can put my edits in two places, /home/pec/.ssh/ssh_config and /root/.ssh/ssh_config, and have the same effect. If you're happy with not hashing, you need only put that in /etc/ssh/ssh_config (underscore, not dot) if you remove all other .ssh/ssh_config files. I can envision a different way, but I cannot envision one that does not impact of how Debian wants to configure Jessie. So be it. When upgrade runs, you'll need to keep your configuration and then run diff against the maintainer's version (suffixed .dpkg-new or .ucf-dist or some such) to fold in any changes they've made (likely to be few to none). I have not yet discovered a way to append new known host keys from newly configured hosts into the .ssh/known_hosts files on older computers. known_hosts and authorized_keys are both text files. Each line is independent. You can cat x y to append contents of x to y or insert with an editor. An editor's Insert File is safe, but make sure to reconstruct the lines if cut and paste does any line wrapping, ie ssh-rsa jhdgkhkkdjkjnskjn foo@bar needs to be made back into ssh-rsa jhdgkhkkdjkjnskjn foo@bar IIRC any line from one hosts's or user's known_hosts file will work for another user and/or host, and the same with authorized_keys (though don't mix them up!). I think the removed file was the one associated with either pec, or root, which ever was appropriate for a test. Since doing the tests, I have done a complete re-install. With that removing the appropriate known_hosts file gives me the old familiar option of accepting the risk of man-in-the-middle. There's never a problem with wiping out known_hosts and letting it gradually be rebuilt, particularly if you know the fingerprints thusly: $ ssh-keygen -l -v -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key.pub .../ssh-fingerprint As said before, I am working now with a new re-install on my main computer. It is the one on which I am composing this email. This is its /etc/hosts file: 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 big.lan.gnu big 192.168.1.1 rtr.lan.gnu rtr # LAN side of router 192.168.1.10 cmn.lan.gnu cmn 192.168.1.11 big.lan.gnu big 192.168.1.12 gq.lan.gnu gq [...] The top two lines were provided during the running of netinst CD RC2. The rest were provided by me, after I took the CD out of the computer and rebooted. Well I have tried to keep things as simple as possible and I recently decided to call exim's bluff... I don't think I have a problem with exim. I use msmtp to get emails out onto the web. I tried doing it with exim4 about 2yrs ago. It kept breaking so I found alternative for a previous stand-alone smtp agent that was being discontinued due to lack of upstream support at about the same time that Debian was moving from plain exim to exim4. I could try again, but after I get ssh working both directions, I hope. Starting MTA:hostname --fqdn did not return a fully qualified name, dc_minimaldns will not work. Please fix your /etc/hosts setup. exim4 ok ...and configure a null domain (ie no dots in /etc/hosts outside of the IP numbers). Everything still works. With this, I can ssh into 'gq' from 'big', which is my main computer with the big flat screen display. I can open and edit files on 'gq' and the edits will be saved. No problem. But, if I sit down the keyboard and screen connected to 'gq', I cannot do the reverse. On 'gq', the /etc/hosts file contains all the lines as on 'big', except for the first two. It should contain the first two lines exactly the same except substitute big→gq. Working on 'gq', I cannot ping ['big']. Can you tell be why, and what I can do to make the ping possible. It would be very educational for me, and maybe all other problems will fall away in my basement. From what you have posted, I would imagine that big has come up as 192.168.1.X where X is not 11. /sbin/ifconfig will tell you the IP number of the machine it's run on. /usr/sbin/arp -n -a run on gq (during or soon after you have talked to gq on big) will tell you how gq sees big (recognised by its MAC address). On 'big' ifconfig gives: root@big:~# ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie
On 20150416_0100-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: I have installed various releases of debian many times. I have a local proxy using approx that makes it very fast. After posting about a lockup of my desktop Jessie computer, I realized that whatever advice I got would I got would surely be more snip to monitor me, and this message breaches global security because I should not be allowed to know that I am being watch? Help, please. Tell me what to read. I've calmed down a bit, back to my usual level of volatility. I've found Chapter 5 of The Debian Reference. Unfortunately, it presumes that all desktop computers are operated as stand-alone hosts. For a variety of reasons, my basement computer system has not grown that way. Instead It has two other computers, also running Jessie, that serve as print server and a local mirror of Debian software, using approx. Plus a home grown system for taking daily backups of it all, automatically. All this had been tied together by ssh and rsync. And, I am coming to realize that the re-install, not upgrade, of Jessie from RC2 has done something that makes it ignore my /etc/hosts file and go its own way. I can't find the trick to make my desktop computer use the /etc/hosts that I have loaded onto it and to respond to messages from the two 'server' hosts whose demons try to query it. Is it there? or should I be looking in a different Chapter or a different document? The re-install using RC2 did go flawlessly. So my alarums about Jessie, post release are probably alarmist. I look forward to good things to come, if I could get my three computer to talk with each other again. When I went to spell check this, I discovered that the 'Spell check region' selection is grayed out in Emacs. Does anyone have any idea how I can get that back? (So not 'flawlessly', but close.) Cheers, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150417185441.ga16...@big.lan.gnu
Re: I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie
On 20150417_1730-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): I am coming to realize that the re-install, not upgrade, of Jessie from RC2 has done something that makes it ignore my /etc/hosts file and go its own way. I can't find the trick to make my desktop computer use the /etc/hosts that I have loaded onto it and to respond to messages from the two 'server' hosts whose demons try to query it. Yes, a re-install would change the host keys, hence the ssh warning. Has the IP number of your machine(s) changed? If so, your hosts file may now be out-of-date (or the router needs to be told to restore the old IP number). (By chance we both posted at about the same time.) Cheers, David. RC2 netinst created an /etc/hosts with only two lines: 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 big.lan.gnu big Big and lan.gnu are names that I gave it to use for local host and local lan. As part of my completing the config. I added the lines that had been in /etc/hosts before doing the netinst, and are in the /etc/hosts file on the other computers. And I remember from years of use, carefully preserving /etc/hosts during previous netinst episodes. At first I thought I had done something wrong because it wasn't working, but now I'm convinced something is definitely different. I have never before seen messages about 'no path to host' unless I had unplugged a cable, and never before messages about refusing a connection. The behovior is as if a new layer ot security has been introduced in order to protect against a new kind of threat, but with no announcement or how the user should deal with it, the threat, and it the countermeasure.. At this late date, I think this won't be resolved until after official release. Cheers, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150418023903.ga2...@big.lan.gnu
I need guidance about how to configure a newly installed Jessie
I have installed various releases of debian many times. I have a local proxy using approx that makes it very fast. After posting about a lockup of my desktop Jessie computer, I realized that whatever advice I got would I got would surely be more complicated than just reinstalling from a backup that had been made shortly after 5am yesterday morning using a CD of netinst rc2 that I made shortly after it was announced. It is now 15min past midnight local time. I have four desktop machines running Jessie. I try to keep them a;; upgraded on whenever new package versions are released. I thought it would be fast and simple. I was very wrong. This install behaves very differently in the following way: When I attempt to ssh into one of the computers that was not re-installed, I get a complaint that: @@@ @ WARNING: POSSIBLE DNS SPOOFING DETECTED! @ @@@ The RSA host key for gq has changed, and the key for the corresponding IP address 192.168.1.12 is unknown. This could either mean that DNS SPOOFING is happening or the IP address for the host and its host key have changed at the same time. @@@ @WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @ @@@ IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY! Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)! It is also possible that a host key has just been changed. The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is 51:cf:52:87:6f:13:43:50:73:29:2c:b4:34:11:cd:5c. Please contact your system administrator. Add correct host key in /home/pec/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message. Offending RSA key in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts:3 remove with: ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts -R gq RSA host key for gq has changed and you have requested strict checking. Host key verification failed. I get this same complaint even after I remove the known_hosts file entirely. How can the software retain the information that the offending line is the third line? It must be doing more than the documentation that I have says its doing, This is a home lan. I use a hosts file to inform the several computers of the IP addresses of all the computers in the LAN. The file is identical on all computers and hasn't changed sine etch. In the past, I was given the option of typing the login password of the computer that I want to log into, but not now. I know about openssh-known-hosts. I think it has changed from last I used it. Now there are plugins that have to be configured. I want to use the rsync plugin because I know rsync rather well, but what is the procedure for plugging a plugin into openssh-known-hosts? I can't find a man page. I don't understand what I should do with the RSA 'fingerprint' doesn't look at all like a legitimate line in a known_host file. How is it used? Where is the source of this occult knowledge? Why does the author of the WARNING presume that there is a different person, other than the person reading the message who is the actual 'your system administration'? Has someone in NSA or CIA been assigned to monitor me, and this message breaches global security because I should not be allowed to know that I am being watch? Help, please. Tell me what to read. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150416065013.ga13...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Subject: network-console installation and ssh keys
On 20150414_2134+, Liam O'Toole wrote: On 2015-04-14, David Wright da...@lionunicorn.co.uk wrote: I like the new Network Console option in the installer. However, when I reinstall Debian onto a machine called, say, desk select the necessary options, type in the password for the installer session, and then sit back with a machine called, lap, when I type ssh installer@desk I get the usual @@@ @WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @ @@@ IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY! Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)! It is also possible that a host key has just been changed. The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is because the installer has generated and is running with fresh keys. (I frequently connect from lap to desk and vice versa and so have authorised_keys as well as know_hosts there.) What do most people do here? On this one, I think *most*people* are like me. I ignore the warning. Unless I am doing the install in a coffee shop with 'free' internet access that I have never used before. But at home, if I am using an ISP that I have been using for several years, and that has a good reputation in my part of the world, I know the warning does not apply to me, in my particular situation. HTH, YMMY, etc., etc. Cheers, David. Put the following in ~/.ssh/config: Host desk UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null StrictHostKeyChecking no See the man page of ssh_config for details. I think this will silence the warning forever, or at least until you think to delete those lines from your ~/.ssh/config. I do not want to do that, because I am too cautious to commit, long term, to such a departure from what Debian gurus consider to be best practice. ;-) YMMV, Cheers, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150415202628.ga16...@big.lan.gnu
Need help with a broken Jessie/Xfce4 desktop box
I was trying to get sound working again. It last worked many wks ago, but I hardly ever use it. So I don't know when it became broken (again). Current problem is that aptitude feels that it needs to install a libuuid-perl in order to install linux-base (which somehow became uninstalled, or needs to be upgraded, I can't tell which) but libuuid-perl needs a different kernel than I am currently running and aptitude advises not replacing the running kernel. And doesn't suggest any alternative. I think I am running kernel 3.16.0-4-686-pae That is the number string on both initrd.img and vmlinuz. How can I break this deadlock? Until very recently, I have been following all the upgrades to Jessie on a daily basis, may not have in the last few days. The system rebooted in its current condition, with the deaklock still there. (How can a linux system boot without a working version of linux-base?) Thanks, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150415233913.ga1...@big.lan.gnu
Re: md5sums and shasums
On 20150404_2240+0200, deloptes wrote: Paul E Condon wrote: This is a place where Debian is really not newbie friendly. I think it never aimed to be - therefore you have ubuntu ... at least my feeling In the present, Debian relies on Ubuntu, but there are still short passages of text in our web site that remind me of a earlier time. A time before Ubuntu existed. Oh, well ... Best regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150405133318.ga8...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Trailing ms at the end of every line when viewing man pages
On 20150405_0201-0600, Bob Proulx wrote: Stephen Powell wrote: I am experiencing a very strange phenomenon. I have an old IBM 3151 ASCII display terminal that has been lying around the house; and today I decided to see if I could get it connected up to one Fun! I never used one of those models and am unfamiliar with it in Yes! particular. -- snip -- Then at least you would know it is the CR that isn't handled like in a standard terminal. Times change. If one waits even a short while, they can change a lot. When this terminal was new, a 'standard' terminal was a mechanical teletype manufactured by Teletype Corp. in Skokie, IL. The generic name for this 'terminal' was, I think, a 'glass teletype' Each computer company had its own special glass teletypes that interfaced to its computer. All proprietary. None of the glass teletypes had the very useful scroll back feature of the real teletype that they were trying to emulate. Teletype paper came in rolls. A single roll was a many meters long. It would pile up behind the teletype as one worked. It could always be pulled out and reviewed back to initial login at the beginning of the session. Some people left the paper behind for someone else to clear away. Others saved it, rolled up and labeled at their desks. It took 0.1 sec. to mechanically process one character, except for carriage return. That took up to 0.2 sec. The placement of the carriage return character before the non-printing line feed character allowed the carriage to get all the back to the left before a printing character arrived. It was in the design of teletype that this cr/lf feature was baked into our history. Cheers, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150405155949.gb8...@big.lan.gnu
Re: A question about deleting a big file structure from a big disk in Jessie: Why does this work? I'm really worried.
On 20150403_1501-0600, Bob Proulx wrote: Paul E Condon wrote: David Wright wrote: I'm not so unlucky as Bob appears to be (he says, touching wood), but I think Bob came to his conclusion during a previous period of instability in Debian, It could also be that I was unlucky in my purchase of cheap USB disk enclosures. Which is why I was careful to relate my experience but not cast blame. Your experiences and others may very well be different! You will have different hardware at the least. That will make a big difference. I encourage everyone to generate their own experience and collect and report the data from it. It is obvious what I am thinking but that doesn't mean it is correct. I am simply communicating in what I hope to be a helpful way. Also I know the USB interface is terrible. I have had the fortune not to need to develop on it directly but I have worked with others who have had to deal with it in great detail. Everyone always says the same thing. People who work at the low level USB always report that it is a terrible standard. And yet it has arrived as the defacto interconnect used everywhere. Sigh. We are going to need to be using it for many years. I do pause for thought when people talk about file system and usb problems in Debian as if Debian is the upstream for it. For the most part this would be in Linux (unless one was a kfreebsd user). Although Debian does have patches for the Linux kernel as far as I can see every attempt is made to stick with upstream for the main functionality as much as possible. No one wants to fork and maintain critical functionality such as this. If I had read a previous period of instability in Linux I think that would have been more accurate. Yet the Debian Stable kernels have been selected versions of the Linux kernel selected for their stability. And I had no other flakiness noticed. That is why I blame my cheap hardware. And I emphasize cheap because literally I can't remember spending more than $20 for any one of my USB disk enclosures. It is a Market for Lemons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons but rather than start an argument that can only degenerate trying to score debating point, I want to gather more date. I hope we have a pleasant discourse concerning it. Out of the collected experience I hope we can deduce the best ways to deal with these problems. Hopefully no arguments between us. Bob has already helped me by making a truly useful suggestion, for which I thank him. You are most welcome for the hints! Small and insignificant though they may be. Bob Bob, On rereading my message, I can see why you are unhappy and offended. My intent in specifying Debian was to single it out as a place on the web where rational and knowledgeable people are found, yourself especially. Between making ill advised posts here, I have been searching the web. I found two sources that I wish had known about, but didn't. One is the Backblaze.com web site. Their marketing actually contains some real technical information on modern HD technology. And an article in Wikipedia on the history of disk storage: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive) and other articles that are linked from there. I learned things that you might think everyone knows, but I didn't. For instance, it is known that HDD failure rates do not have 'infant mortality' (tendency to fail when first put into service) nor 'senility' (a tendency to fail late in life, after a long period of reliable service). And, the newer high information density drives all have a supply of reserve sectors which they use to automatically replace sectors that are showing signs of incipient failure. All of the disks in USB packaging that I have had are ones for which these facts apply. If one is gathering the right data while using them, one can predictably when they cannot continue to serve, that is when, for each disk individually, its supply of reserve sectors runs out. Other random failures can shorten the life to something less can cause failure when there is still a supply of 'reserve' sectors. The technical basis of the Backblaze business monitoring all the spinning reserve (which is a borrowed technical term from the electrical power industry where it means a dynamo that is already spinning but is not actually delivering power to the grid). I certainly wasn't keeping records of HD performance the way Backblase says they do. I am rethinking. I think I need to be quiet for awhile. Best regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150404171055.gb17...@big.lan.gnu
Re: md5sums and shasums
On 20150403_2316+0100, Lisi Reisz wrote: Can any kind soul take pity on my less than perfect sight and tell me where to find the md5sums and shasums for these downloads? A URL would be great. I just can't find them. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/? Thanks Lisi I asked that a not long ago, when RC 2 was announced. It's right in sight and very inconvenient to use: You click of the hot link for the cpu type the you want and up pops a pup-up. Look at it carefully. There is a url of a web site in Sweden, I think. clicking on it is not effective. You enter the url displayed inside to popup manually into the menubar, one key stroke at a time. If you get it right, you will see a list of hot links. Third one, 'cdimage' will take you to the md5 sha sums. This is a place where Debian is really not newbie friendly. If one is a conscientious newbie, you have read all the fine words about using wget and *never* using a browser to download .iso files, but not a word about what to type at the command line to make wget go to where the goodies are. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150404035154.ga17...@big.lan.gnu
Re: [solved securely now??] What is the correct way to set encrypted swap with systemd?
On 20150402_1142-0500, David Wright wrote:
Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net):
I read the prior discussion as taking for granted the idea that one
must have only one method of identifying individual partitions,
^^^ ^^
If you're referring to my post (which you quoted), then the opposite
is true. The opening paragraphs argues against LABELs as a panacea,
but later ones (and another posting in this thread) reveal that I use
them routinely in what are the right circumstances for me.
(With top-posting, it can be difficult to tell precisely what you're
commenting on.) It applied to the whole conversation. At least that
was my intent.
and
that that method must be the latest to have arrived on the scene. For
example, if everyone else in the world accepts your idea that
LABEL=sda1 on the partition that was /dev/sda1 when Debian was
installed is something that should *not*be*done*, *then* I can be very
confident that my disk will not cause problems *because*of*an*identity*
*clash*.
That may be true for you personally, but your idea scales up to just
one computer. I have several. So do many others. Any time your LABEL is
correct, it's redundant, and when it's made incorrect by changing
circumstances, it's confusing.
The whole scenario is false anyway. Who would let a disk
arrives at his facility in the hands of a stranger be *mount*ed
without first putting it in a USB disk carrier and using some system
tools to take a look at what is recorded on it? And why would I offer
my disk to anyone without *telling* them how it is labeled?
Facility? Stranger? In my post I suggested that any one person, who
had taken your advice and LABELled their root partition as sda1,
might take said drive out of that computer and put it into another one
of theirs, whereupon /dev/disk/by-label will have an entry like this:
/dev/disk/by-label:
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 31 13:44 sda1 - ../../sdb1
Confusing, unnecessary, avoidable.
To me, very informative of a situation that badly needs fixing by
other means.
I see the argument here, mine as well as yours, as a clash of wildly
imaginative false scenarios.
Summarising: names/labels are important. Advising sda1 as a LABEL is
not a good idea.
If you want a reference, take a look at RFC1178, page 2:
Don't overload other terms already in common use.
Like, for instance, 'window' ? When was the first use of the word,
window, in English according to the OED? How many years was it in
common use as referring to a common architectural feature of human
habitations? And earlier than OED, there is Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
of the English Language, which provides a definition of 'window' that
was current in 1755, over two centuries before the UNIX epoch.
And then there's Humpty Dumpty's Rule for the definition of any word
to consider. ;-)
Cheers, and
Peace,
--
Paul E Condon
pecon...@mesanetworks.net
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A question about deleting a big file structure from a big disk in Jessie: Why does this work? I'm really worried.
For several years I have been making daily backups of my four Debian computers using Rsync and a small script of my own devising. The data has been accumulating on an external USB drive in a partition with the label, gfx5. Some time ago I decided to a make a copy of these data, so I would have more than one copy. I had to use Rsync to do this because it I were to use cp the copies of files labeled by different dates and hard-link together on gfx5 would exceed the capacity on the target disk (which was/is labeled gfx2). This is a simple one line command to Rsync. When I tried, the job would always crash well before completion. Sometimes, a simple repeat invocation would make further progress, sometimes not. I became curious. As I tried different variations of how to observe the progress of transfer as it happened, I acquired copies of failed transfers, and then discovered that I could not reliably delete a failed copy by using the obvious, 'rm -rfv ... ' I discovered that the command 'find -depth -print -delete' sometimes worked when 'rm -rfv ...' did not. But in both cases the deletion failed because 'gfx2' has been remounted read-only, which makes it impossible to update the target directory tree. I have not tried it, but from my investigation I'm sure that a massive delete of some obsolete file structure from the HD that was /dev/sda1 during Debian install would trigger a remount-ro, which surely would lead to a system crash in short order. I investigated further. These investigations were done on a computer which I call 'gq'. I set up experiments on 'gq' by using ssh to issue commands in 'gq' from my main desktop computer, 'big'. I set up several ssh windows into 'gq'. My first discovery was that after a crash while attempting to delete with 'find -depth -print -delete ', there was a long delay in remounting 'gfx2' while the mount command emptied the journal (ext4) on 'gfx2'. Next I tried 'find -depth -print -delete ', with some extra windows into 'gq' in which I issued the command 'sync'. The return from 'sync' was delayed, sometimes as much as a minute, and if I didn't issue 'sync' commands frequently enough, there was never a return from 'sync', just the crash of the 'find' command. So frequent sync commands delayed the crash. I found two other ways to delay the crash: 1) using nice as in: ' nice -n 19 find -depth -print -delete' (this, I think, slows down the main running job in relation to the running of the kernel.) 2) using cntrl-Z to pause the 'find' job for a while (which I think also allows the kernel to catch up with the journal) I could also monitor the progress of the journal run, by issuing a sync command in a separate ssh window. I'm worried about what I found. I want to interest someone who has far more knowledge about how the kernel actually works internally to look into this. I done other experiments more complicated to report, I can't find anything comforting about this situation. If you think it's OK, you probably don't understand, IMHO. Kind regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150402232106.gb3...@big.lan.gnu
Re: A question about deleting a big file structure from a big disk in Jessie: Why does this work? I'm really worried.
On 20150402_2135-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): [...] Some time ago I decided to a make a copy of these data, so I would have more than one copy. [...] Is the copying between a USB disk and an internal, or between two partitions on the same USB disk, or between two USB disks? (Ranked in decreasing reliability in my own experience.) When I tried, the job would always crash well before completion. What are the symptoms of a crash? (Hang, segfault, write-failure as readonly, etc) Switch of target disk to read-only mount. [...] But in both cases the deletion failed because 'gfx2' has been remounted read-only, which makes it impossible to update the target directory tree. Do you watch /var/log/kern.log which this is going on. I find that quite useful. For example, messages like usb 1-8: reset high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd are accompanied by a pause of anything up to a minute in file transfer. I get these quite frequently if I do massive copies between two USB disks, so I now stage such copies through the internal disk. Thanks. I do watch my own capture of the file descriptors 1 and 2 into a file in /var/pec/ (sub-dir name, pec, is my initials). This will be a useful addition, I'm sure. In my system, most of my hypothesizing is from observing coincident changes in two or more of the nine (soon to be ten) windows that I monitor on system 'big' I'm not so unlucky as Bob appears to be (he says, touching wood), but I think Bob came to his conclusion during a previous period of instability in Debian, but rather than start an argument that can only degenerate trying to score debating point, I want to gather more date. Bob has already helped me by making a truly useful suggestion, for which I thank him. It's getting late here. I won't get anything useful done tonight. I'll just start making mistakes, if I start something new now. May you both have a good night, Paul I do get occasional I/O errors on USB transfers, which can make the disk readonly, but sometimes make it disappear altogether (ie it gets unmounted, not remounted). All of my file systems are journaled. Did you notice a delay in remount as the journal was replayed? I have not tried it, but from my investigation I'm sure that a massive delete of some obsolete file structure from the HD that was /dev/sda1 during Debian install would trigger a remount-ro, which surely would lead to a system crash in short order. You get streams of error messages (like when the disk fills up) but it shouldn't actually crash. (OTOH when you get a kernel error, there can be circumstances where the system will panic and *not* sync/write to the disk because to do so could cause corruption.) So it helps to know about data that can be ignored for a legitimate reason. [...] I'm worried about what I found. I want to interest someone who has far more knowledge about how the kernel actually works internally to look into this. I done other experiments more complicated to report, I can't find anything comforting about this situation. If you think it's OK, you probably don't understand, IMHO. My prejudices, based on no more than observations of my system, make me, like Bob, suspect the interface rather than the kernel. My wife, running windows, sees similar external symptoms (pauses, errors), though neither of us would know how to observe them in like manner to linux. I like to play the scientist in my old age. All theories begin with curiosity about a random observation. A classic case is the observation of a pocket watch lieing on the path during a walk in a park. In our case of hypotheses about the design of the kernel, it is unacceptable to me to invoke the idea of a universal creator, and perfectly OK to contemplate the possibility of a flaw in the design. Just in passing, if clamav wakes up and spots the USB drive, file clamav is terra incognita to me. transfers can stop for 10 or 15 minutes; the USB disk heads will still be very active. I keep an xterm running top so I can spot that (and other cpu-guzzlers like xulrunner). Oh, and to David C, this happens irrespective of wheezy or jessie (for me). Cheers, David. Cheers, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150403053937.gf3...@big.lan.gnu
Re: A question about deleting a big file structure from a big disk in Jessie: Why does this work? I'm really worried.
On 20150402_1746-0700, David Christensen wrote: On 04/02/2015 04:21 PM, Paul E Condon wrote: For several years I have been making daily backups of my four Debian computers using Rsync and a small script of my own devising. The data has been accumulating on an external USB drive in a partition with the label, gfx5. Some time ago I decided to a make a copy of these data, so I would have more than one copy. I had to use Rsync to do this because it I were to use cp the copies of files labeled by different dates and hard-link together on gfx5 would exceed the capacity on the target disk (which was/is labeled gfx2). This is a simple one line command to Rsync. When I tried, the job would always crash well before completion. You're using a Testing operating system distribution (Jessie), not a Stable operating system distribution (Wheezy): 1. If you want to help debug Jessie, then you should create a script that demonstrates the undesired behavior on a fresh install of a specific snapshot of Jessie and post your script and console session. (E.g. the script should not depend upon your data, systems, or networks; it should produce similar results on equivalent machines.) Until I discovered a pattern in failures, my default assumption was that the problems were inattention to detail on my part and frequent upgrades of Jessie, which can happen almost daily. Does someone have a stable of i386 computers each one with a particular weekly build on it? I don't. 2. If you want reliable operations, then you should use Wheezy. If that doesn't do what you want, post your console session. I got into this thinking I want to follow Jessie development, and tinker with a pet project while exercising Jessie to see if I could notice any bugs. I don't want to be running Wheezy when Jessie is released, and I don't want to explain openly why. The evidence that made me write was gathered from nine windows of ssh sessions on 'gq' being displayed on 'big'. I would have to make a video 'movie' of the nine together to show what I saw. I can't do that. I don't have the knowledge, skill, or equipment. It was gleaned for which windows changed in coincidence, and which changed singly. If anyone does have several computers that can be dedicated for a short while, and the curiosity to see if my observations can be reproduced, I think it would be nice if they would contact me for more details. I don't want to write a great treatise that nobody will read or understand. I've been criticized for the way I write. The basic list is two computers, two USB hard disks 3TB or maybe larger. The computer to which the 3TB disks are plugged in should have 12GB or more of swap space to accomodate Rsync of this big tranfer as one go. (the Rsync options are -aHvv ). And a copious source of structured data (a local GIT server, perhaps) Maybe someone who knows about Clouds could do the whold test with Clouds and virtualization, about which I also know nothing practical. In either case, you will want to check the source and destination file systems before invoking 'rsync': $ man fsck I know about man fsck. I have read it many times. I have already eliminated many hypotheses thru careful readings of man fsck. And careful examination of the source and destination file systems. I know how little chance I have of convincing this audience that I have seen what I believe I have seen. Offering to help qualified people to develop their own independent tests of my hypothesis is the way I want to go. At some point this will be decided. If I'm right, I really won't be happy, because it will be very bad for Debian. Best regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150403053855.ge3...@big.lan.gnu
Re: A question about deleting a big file structure from a big disk in Jessie: Why does this work? I'm really worried.
On 20150402_1803-0600, Bob Proulx wrote: Paul E Condon wrote: For several years I have been making daily backups of my four Debian computers using Rsync and a small script of my own devising. The data has been accumulating on an external USB drive in a partition with the ... I'm worried about what I found. I want to interest someone who has far more knowledge about how the kernel actually works internally to look into this. I done other experiments more complicated to report, I can't find anything comforting about this situation. If you think it's OK, you probably don't understand, IMHO. I often have problems with USB mounted file systems. I believe the cheap nature of the USB hardware all around to be the major contributor. I do use USB for a big floppy all of the time. But whenever I keep a USB disk mounted for a long time it has always failed after a while. A month. Six months. I find the USB file system subsystem unreliable. I would never trust it for critical data such as backups. I think you are seeing the same unreliable mounted USB disk problems that I have seen for a long time. If you remove the disk from your USB container and mount it directly with its native SATA (or IDE) connector then you will find that it is as reliable as the rest of the native storage. I blame the cheap USB controller electronics. Although perhaps the kernel driver is also to blame in there too. [On the converse I find USB network adapters and USB sound cards to have been rock solid. Meaning that while I avoid USB disks I actively use USB networking on several machines to add additional NICs. I am planning another site using additional USB NICs. It is probably hardware dependent but they have been working great for me regardless of seeing the opposite for disks. And I have three sites using USB sound cards very robustly. Since I disparaged USB disk I felt I needed to clarify that it was only disk and not other USB.] I found two other ways to delay the crash: 1) using nice as in: ' nice -n 19 find -depth -print -delete' (this, I think, slows down the main running job in relation to the running of the kernel.) Read the man page for ionice. You might consider using it instead of nice. Nice works with cpu usage. But ionice works with I/O usage and is directly what you are fighting. You might try: ionice -c 3 find -depth -print -delete Thanks for this suggestion. If I am deleting an entire file system I will usually simply mkfs on top and reset it to empty that way. On a file system with millions of files that will be much faster than deleting them individually. Obviously only works if it is the entire file system. Bob About long term mounts of USB being a problem: On the same computer there is mounted a USB labeled 'sgt1' which is a 1 TB external USB. It is the disk that is currently collecting daily backups using the same script as was mentioned in my first email. Day in, day out, if that computer is on, cron takes a full backup a little before 630 AM and sends an email to me if there is anything written to file descriptor 2. There is nothing, unless investigation reveals a cause, like I unplugged the power supply while vacuuming the area and forgot to plug it back in. I know you have had a different experience. I have been running this script unchanged since before 2009 and only since I have been running Jessie and running copies of massive file structure have I been having problems. The script uses the Rsync option --link-dest=DIR and really a very small amount of data is actually transferred in each daily run. Rsync regularly reports Speedup of over 1000 times. I had been making quite a lot of progress on organizing these file in a more useful way, until I made the decision to move to Jessie, for reasons that I am sure will turn out to be justified. For me, every failure of an external USB HD turned out, after the fact to be attributable to my not already knowing something like the transition to larger sector size. I've learned a lot. And I don't want to imply that 'sgt1' has been in service since 2009, just that one HD was connected to that computer with its spindle motor running, and always responding wnen crontab called for it. So I'm skeptical. You may be right. But we are mostly all running Jessie, now, and will all be running Jessie soon. Thanks, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150403053739.gd3...@big.lan.gnu
Re: [solved securely now??] What is the correct way to set encrypted swap with systemd?
I read the prior discussion as taking for granted the idea that one must have only one method of identifying individual partitions, and that that method must be the latest to have arrived on the scene. For example, if everyone else in the world accepts your idea that LABEL=sda1 on the partition that was /dev/sda1 when Debian was installed is something that should *not*be*done*, *then* I can be very confident that my disk will not cause problems *because*of*an*identity* *clash*. The whole scenario is false anyway. Who would let a disk arrives at his facility in the hands of a stranger be *mount*ed without first putting it in a USB disk carrier and using some system tools to take a look at what is recorded on it? And why would I offer my disk to anyone without *telling* them how it is labeled? I see the argument here, mine as well as yours, as a clash of wildly imaginative false scenarios. Peace. On 20150401_1619-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): You can also use disk LABEL=. As implemented, the LABEL is actually applied to individual partition. As long as every partition has a different LABEL values there is no ambiguity. You only need to have unique values for partitions that you feel you will be mounting and umounting. Partitions with no LABEL value set never get compared by LABEL value. That may be a problem for anyone using wheezy as it only appears to have UUIDs and LABELs, and not PARTUUIDs and PARTLABELs available. As discussed, only PARTXXXs are persistent. (If ever I let the Debian installer loose on my labelled swap partition, I have to relabel it afterwards.) The system has always insisted on setting a unique UUID value on every partition. Its done that way because of a design decision of Debian developers. The world has decided that, not just DDs. But it has a tiny flaw that you can avoid by using LABEL values, which YOU can be sure are unique because you didn't do repeats, whereas UUIDs are randomly generated and there is a tiny, but non-zero chance of repeats for UUIDs. Oh, please. Assuming uniform probability for simplicity, the probability of one duplicate would be about 50% if every person on earth as of 2014 owned 600 million GUIDs. (Wikipedia) What if you're running a disk farm of several thousand drives? No, LABELs don't scale well. If I read your message above, you are having trouble understanding how to use the UUID/PARTUUID system for identifying partitions on disks. I suggest that you don't need to use it, and if you don't use it you don't need to understand it. That's ok until Debian does something behind your back that catches you out. For example, GRUB uses UUIDs, whereas I prefer LABELs. But I have to understand what GRUB/Debian Installer/Upgrade is doing so I can mitigate the effects. I was once troubled by a similar situation when Debian first started to use UUID, until I realized that for some disks, I had no intention of ever changing the partion structure that was put there initially. Hm. Never say never. Yes. For disks that I did have some special use and some ideas about how that special use might change in the future, I put LABEL=... on their partitions and used LABEL= paradigm to identify the partitions. This is what I do with all my external drives. And I put sticker on the outside of the drive enclosure with the LABEL= value written with a ball point pen on it. It is my personal responsibility to myself that I never put the same LABEL= value on two different disks. I agree. All my disks, internal and external are named and labelled just so. But I have so few, and all in different rôles. If I had lots, I wouldn't bother. You can even put a LABEL= value on the root system disk that is always /dev/sda1 during installation. I suggest that you use LABEL=sda1. Bad idea. The names should not be loaded with extra meaning. My partition labelling *is* overloaded: mama01, 02 ... but I'm prepared to live with the necessary constraints: creating them in the correct order, and not resizing/creating new partitions afterwards unless I make a clean sweep of it. What if you/(s)he were to take a disk labelled sda1 and put it in another computer to clone/recover/whatever it. Now it sits in a box where there's a /dev/sda1 and a /dev/sdb1 but the latter is called sda1. A recipe for disaster. As I see it, the only benefit that you the user get from using the UUID/PARTUUID system is that if some Linux user is browsing through the internals of what is written on your disk, he may wonder where you got the software to do that and treat you with a little more respect. Let me assure you, you are not Rodney Dangerfield Eh? A very wild scenario, not to be taken seriously Cheers, David. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact
Re: [solved securely now??] What is the correct way to set encrypted swap with systemd?
On 20150331_1923-0500, ~Stack~ wrote: On 03/29/2015 07:06 AM, Sven Hartge wrote: ~Stack~ i.am.st...@gmail.com wrote: One more question if you don't mind: I understand why the encrypted partition UUID is going to change every time, but the physical partition UUID for my /dev/sda3 shouldn't change though. If they are the same systemd.fsck shouldn't have a problem with the physical partition UUID of /dev/sda3, but yet it does (at least for me). So what is the difference between the UUID pointing to /dev/sda3 and the /dev/disk/by-id pointing to /dev/sda3? Please provide an example of such an UUID and the way you obtained it. Greetings Sven, So something odd has happened... # blkid |grep sda3 /dev/sda3: PARTUUID=0003efe2-03 /dev/mapper/sda3_crypt: UUID=f4aad427-3462-4dcf-a40d-617e90a7b1cb TYPE=swap # grep sda3 /etc/crypttab sda3_crypt /dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_MK3259GSXP_42K5CE0TT-part3 /dev/urandom cipher=aes-xts-plain64,size=256,swap That PARTUUID is odd because it used to be a UUID...huh...really not sure what happened...but I have a guess (below)... But on my not-yet-updated-to-an-OS-with-systemd boxes they are either configured for keys or use the UUID from blkid and that UUID is what is in /etc/crypttab. In my first email this UUID=ef2496cd-ca4d-43aa-8c90-dba084029f6e was taken from blkid. Clearly that is no longer the case and would explain why UUID doesn't work. :-) So off I went to read about UUID vs PARTUUID. Short notes: UUID == filesystem PARTUUID == partition Thus, I would want to point to the partition PARTUUID because (as you pointed out to me earlier) the swap filesystem is going to change every time due to urandom and thus the UUID should be changing on every boot...blkid is probably seeing that this is a ever changing swap partition and just returning the PARTUUID for me. But putting that PARTUUID in my /etc/crypttab didn't work and I ended up with the systemd.fsck timing out and not mounting swap. Hrm. Well, I guess the disk-by-id works so I will just use that for now. ~Stack~, You can also use disk LABEL=. As implemented, the LABEL is actually applied to individual partition. As long as every partition has a different LABEL values there is no ambiguity. You only need to have unique values for partitions that you feel you will be mounting and umounting. Partitions with no LABEL value set never get compared by LABEL value. The system has always insisted on setting a unique UUID value on every partition. Its done that way because of a design decision of Debian developers. But it has a tiny flaw that you can avoid by using LABEL values, which YOU can be sure are unique because you didn't do repeats, whereas UUIDs are randomly generated and there is a tiny, but non-zero chance of repeats for UUIDs. Thanks again! I have learned a ton about cryptab, swap, UUID/PARTUUID, and the boot process. :-) ~Stack~ ~Stack~, If I read your message above, you are having trouble understanding how to use the UUID/PARTUUID system for identifying partitions on disks. I suggest that you don't need to use it, and if you don't use it you don't need to understand it. It can be there because it has been put there during the initalization of Debian, and it won't hurt anything until you try to use it and make a mistake in trying to use it. I was once troubled by a similar situation when Debian first started to use UUID, until I realized that for some disks, I had no intention of ever changing the partion structure that was put there initially. For disks that I did have some special use and some ideas about how that special use might change in the future, I put LABEL=... on their partitions and used LABEL= paradigm to identify the partitions. This is what I do with all my external drives. And I put sticker on the outside of the drive enclosure with the LABEL= value written with a ball point pen on it. It is my personal responsibility to myself that I never put the same LABEL= value on two different disks. You can even put a LABEL= value on the root system disk that is always /dev/sda1 during installation. I suggest that you use LABEL=sda1. LABEL= settings can be any string of alphnumeric characters = sixteen long. As I see it, the only benefit that you the user get from using the UUID/PARTUUID system is that if some Linux user is browsing through the internals of what is written on your disk, he may wonder where you got the software to do that and treat you with a little more respect. Let me assure you, you are not Rodney Dangerfield -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150401051932.ga31...@big.lan.gnu
e2fsck.conf and ssh_known_hosts: where?
e2fsck.conf: While attempting to debug a flaky HDD under Jessie, I had occasion to inspect the conf file /etc/e2fsck.conf, and found that it doesn't exist on any of my computers. But the man e2fsck mentions file e2fsck.conf and man e2fsck.conf states that the default location is /etc/e2fsck.conf . Has support for site specific configuration been abandoned? Or where is it kept? (open)ssh-known-hosts: While searching in /var to see if I could find e2fsck.conf without asking I found an empty directory, /var/cache/openssh-known-hosts . The Debian wiki has an article about how to use ssh-keyscan to build a small database of known hosts for use on a LAN. The article says the file (not directory) of known hosts should placed in /etc/ssh. Is Debian's plan to move to using /var for a known-hosts DB? or is the empty directory just some cruft? I think a directory is a better way than a file, because it is easier to make atomic changes in directory structure than adding/removing individual lines in a file. Both /var and /etc are OK as a location, for me. Does the software that implements known-host checking at ssh-login-time look in both places? Does it look for both names (hyphens vs. underscores)? Kind regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150331160944.gb20...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Is this an April Fool joke running early ? (Systemd to fork the kernel)
On 20150330_1433-0400, Ric Moore wrote: On 03/30/2015 12:40 PM, Andrew McGlashan wrote: On 31/03/2015 3:18 AM, Andrew McGlashan wrote: On 31/03/2015 1:00 AM, Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI wrote: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20150330#community It's too early for an April fools joke, no matter where you live. Or is it serious ? Lennart Linux lives on give us back Linus Linux, please! Enough of this systemd nonsense already before it really is too late. A. https://github.com/systemdaemon/systemd/issues Clearly an early April Fools but it is very plausible, this is where Linux IS going :( If you cock your head to one side, close one eye and squint, it actually makes sense. Unpopular? Maybe so, but it still makes sense, if only to make Linux less of a moving target for people to develop on. I'd LOVE to see one unified directory structure to rule them all, for instance. Imagine nVidia could deliver it's driver and have only one spot to install to across all of the distros. Yes, I would love to get rid of network manager as long as something BETTER replaces it. There's the rub as well. It's a lack of portability that keeps the Linux Desktop down there with the bottom feeders. One thing is for sure, systemd BETTER work as advertised, for all the controversy they have created. :/ Ric When I first heard about systemd, which was not so long ago, the decision for Debian to actually switch to systemd seemed to me to have already been made. I'm not responsible for some computer systems in some large organization, so my major concern was can I understand this new stuff? I noticed the new word 'cgroup'. I soon found out (from Wikipedia) that this was a major new feature that, after a long development, was finally a part of the Linux kernel, and differentiated it from other OS kernels. It seems to me there are many other ways of using cgroups than just systemd. They were not invented for the purpose of a disruptive departure from the Unix/Posix tradition, but for solving problems that were entirely within the kernel, or so it seemed at the time. If there is any reality to systemd people forking the kernel, I'm sure there will be plenty of kernel developers who will be happy to see them go, so that they can get on with the fun of applying cgroups to the problems for which they were developed, so it seems. There may be kernel developers who are interested in forking systemd and cleaning out the cruft brought on by a rushed development. ;-) -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150330224359.ga20...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Need help with CUPS printing
On 20150329_1814+0100, Lisi Reisz wrote: On Sunday 29 March 2015 17:58:11 Brian wrote: Browsing On BrowseOrder allow,deny BrowseAllow all BrowseRemoteProtocols CUPS BrowseAddress @LOCAL BrowseLocalProtocols CUPS dnssd This is almost the standard Wheezy, It will not suffice on Jessie. The BrowseOrder, BrowseAllow, BrowseAddress and BrowseRemoteProtocols directives are no longer part of cups. cups also know nothing about 'CUPS'. Yes, Gene is using Wheezy. Lisi Lisi, Thanks for pointing this out, but I think my proble is gone. CUPS is behaving much better than I've ever seen. Its OK with me if 'my' thread is hijacked now. Happy camper, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150330032439.ga19...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Need help with CUPS printing [solved?]
On 20150329_1421+0100, Lisi Reisz wrote: On Sunday 29 March 2015 13:36:28 Curt wrote: On 2015-03-29, deloptes delop...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi long mails are not easy to read and understand. Most important is the quality of information in it ... like model number or chipset in the hardware you use etc. +1 I'm afraid that I gave up trying to read it. Made worse from my point of view by longish blocks of text. Lisi Thanks to all, especially the ones with candid remarks about my writing. I will try to improve. The problem must have been fixed in some package in the last batch of bug fix packages from the release team. Now I can't reproduce the malfunction that I was seeing a few days ago. It was software, because the only hardware that I changed during that time was Memorex PS3 mouse and there are some explanations I cannot abide. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150330014406.gc15...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Need help with CUPS printing
On 20150327_0237-0400, ken wrote: On 03/26/2015 07:38 PM, Paul E Condon wrote: I'm running Jessie, as close to plain vanilla as my hardware allows. I have a HP Laserjet 5MP. This is an ancient device. It has built-in firmware for Level 2 Postscript printing and a special socket for Apple Localtalk connection, but no USB. It is a sturdy old beast and was running nicely until quite recently. But in a special configuration that needs to be understood in order to give help: My main desktop computer on which I receive email, and create my own documents has *only* USB. I bought a special cable that has a USB to Centronics conversion dongle at one end. But I can't use it because the socket for Centronics on the printer is in recessed place in the printer where the dongle won't fit and I can't enlarge the place without sawing away parts of the printer framework that are necessary for the paper feed system to work. So, instead, I put into service an old micro-mini Dell (now running Jessie) and put CUPS on it, and configured it to be a print server. But all this was well before I had any idea that there would ever be anything like Jessie in my future. At first, after some fiddling, the print server worked under Jessie, but now it has stopped working. The printer continues to produce test pages when requesting them from the old Dell keyboard and in self-test mode by pushing buttons on the printer itself, not by typing at the computer keyboard. After installing the most recent upgrades to Jessie on both computers this morning, I tried to print a few pages from iceweasel and printing worked. But I also want to be able to print from Emacs, which I use to compose my emails, such as this one. Emacs told be that there was no default printer even though I had just selected the printer on the old Dell from a pick-list presented to be by the print user interface presented to me by the Emacs user interface. I think I should configure the Cups server on my desktop computer to indicate that that printer over on the old Dell is the one for Emacs. But how do I do that? I can't trust my own investigations to determine if there have been any recent changes in the Jessie CUPS packages in the recent past. I know there was a new version of CUPS at the time that Jessie entered pre-release freeze, and I pretty sure my system was working then and not something that I lost in my transition from Wheezy. And, of course, I'd like a more foreword looking suggestion than to re-install Wheezy. I'd like this fixed before Jessie release because I have a bad feeling that the longer I wait the further from the main-stream I will be. I need, with my old hardware, to be as close to the middle of the herd of users as I can be. The print driver for the HPLj-5MP that I have been using in recent years is the one with (recommended) in its listing in the pick-list of all HP print drivers in the localhost:631 web site on both computers. Beyond that I can't think of anything people might need to know about my set-up. I'd be glad to answer any questions about things that I haven't realized might be important. Please help The first thing to do is to set up printing from the machine you set up as a print server. Can you do that? That is, can you bring up cups from its keyboard and print a test page? This is more a proof a connectivity than a test of the print server's cups setup, as the print server can serve simply as a network node through which you connect from other machines on your network to the printer. Once you can do that, you should be able to print from whatever other printer(s) permitted on your network by configuring it/them for that print server's IP address. You first need to ensure you can ping the print server from your other machine(s). Once you can do that, then set up cups on the print client(s). I just had the experience of having composed a long email and loosing it. Thanks for the response. There is more to say if my computer is stable enough to get it sent. Thanks very much. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150328195747.ga10...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Planning a new Debian box!
On 20150326_2355-0400, Bob Bernstein wrote: On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 09:09:28PM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: ...some BIOS code that blocks copying a backup copy of Win7 in a hidden partition on HD... Now, see? That's some hardcore M$ crap right there! Thas what I'm talkin 'bout! To get rid of this hidden partition, you will have to use dd to overwrite it with zero bytes. I don't see (yet) that I must get rid of it. I don't care a fig about pure Debian. Am I wrong? BUT, if it (said nefarious hidden partition) is going to come back and bite me my grubs later, then I might begin to feel differently about that crummy old no-good M$ hidden partition. Will it do that? After that, you have a pure Debian box or...if you don't succeed in getting Debian installed you have a oddly shaped boat anchor. I am already well stocked with odd boat anchors thank you very much. It takes a small act of congress for me to convince my local town recycling mafiosi to actually pick them up if I manage to heave them onto the sidewalk. IMHO, it is definitely *not* a no-brainer. If there's anything that can be said about this Friday night's debian-user crowd, it is that there are very few no-brainers among us. I detect rather a few big brains out there. You know who you are! You might, instead, investigate buy a new SATA drive, maybe larger than the one containing Win7 and install the new SATA. How soon can you get a check to me? I may be wrong in all these points... Now, sir, you are clearly an honest man for saying that. Mencken was reputed to sign off on letters in which he had no particular interest (nor in their authors) like so: You may be right, (Thanks *all*) -- Bob Bernstein Bob, I was playing with the role of paranoid, sorry. The fact is that Microsoft does not make it easy to convert old Dells to beneficial use. It took dd about 30 hours to wipe the disk in my old Dell. I don't recall having to do that a few years ago. I do recall lots of writings of how easy it is to put Linux on Windows computers a few years ago, and not so much now. The internal HD in the Dells are skimpy compared with new computers sold at Costco. You have convinced me that I needn't have warned you on any of the points that I mentioned. Kind regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150327203046.ga1...@big.lan.gnu
Re: trouble installing Debian testing/jessie
On 20150325_1530-0400, mizuki wrote: Hi, Since Mar 10th, I seem to have trouble installing Debian testing on a virtual machine or a physical machine, always fails at step 'Partition disk' with partman, it complains: The attempt to mount a file system with type ext4 in SCSI1(0,0,0), partition #1 (sda) at / failed. You may resume partitioning from the partitioning menu. This happens during a netboot through a manual installation or preseed, using 'regular' or 'raid' method with partman-auto, and doesn't matter what recipe I'm using, 'atomic' or expert-recipe, always hit this error, Does anyone have the same experince, can anyone advice? Thanks! Mizuki HI, Mizuki, I also have experienced this problem, but in a different environment. The most recent version of netinst that I have used successfully is: debian-jessie-DI-b1-i386-netinst.iso CDs since then have allowed me to go through the motions of setting up partitions, but fail repeatedly to actually write the new stuff onto the physical HD, for me. My research of this problem has not been exhaustive, and I couldn't believe I hadn't done something wrong, and I intended to go back and check on the more recent CD after I fixed the problem that forced me to try installing from scratch. Until reading your email, I was pretty sure I would discover some mistake that I had been making with the newer CDs. I haven't completed rebuild of my system, yet, So all I can say is 'I feel your pain.' Kind regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150327021643.gb15...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Planning a new Debian box!
On 20150326_1551-0400, Bob Bernstein wrote: Shortly I will become the owner of a refurbished Dell with Win7 already on its 160g sata hard drive. I have no need or use for a multi-OS multi-boot machine. I only want wheezy on this for now. Question: can I entrust to the Debian installer the task of repartitioning and formatting the HD with all that Windoze cruft already on it? Or, are there steps I ought to take prior to launching the installer, perhaps involving other disk tools? I don't trust what M$ puts on hard drives! TIA Debian peeps! -- These are not the droids you are looking for. Others have already advised making a restore disk of Win7. My experience is that refurb Dells with Win7 installed come with a restore disk. *BUT a big caveat: The supplied 'restore disk' does not actually contain a copy of the system. What it does is bypass some BIOS code that blocks copying a backup copy of Win7 in a hidden partition on HD and also patch into the newly restored Win7 certain things that are looked for by code in the boot RAM that let a normal, to the Microsoft world, boot. To get rid of this hidden partition, you will have to use dd to overwrite it with zero bytes. After that, you have a pure Debian box, or as a friend of mine who told me about this, it you don't succeed in getting Debian installed you have a oddly shaped boat anchor. IMHO, it is definitely *not* a no-brainer. You might, instead, investigate buy a new SATA drive, maybe larger than the one containing Win7 and install the new SATA. Check the facts, as best you can. Low price larger SATA drives that I have seen on the web seem all to be refurb HDD. I may be wrong in all these points: Caveat Emptor. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150327030928.gc15...@big.lan.gnu
Need help with CUPS printing
I'm running Jessie, as close to plain vanilla as my hardware allows. I have a HP Laserjet 5MP. This is an ancient device. It has built-in firmware for Level 2 Postscript printing and a special socket for Apple Localtalk connection, but no USB. It is a sturdy old beast and was running nicely until quite recently. But in a special configuration that needs to be understood in order to give help: My main desktop computer on which I receive email, and create my own documents has *only* USB. I bought a special cable that has a USB to Centronics conversion dongle at one end. But I can't use it because the socket for Centronics on the printer is in recessed place in the printer where the dongle won't fit and I can't enlarge the place without sawing away parts of the printer framework that are necessary for the paper feed system to work. So, instead, I put into service an old micro-mini Dell (now running Jessie) and put CUPS on it, and configured it to be a print server. But all this was well before I had any idea that there would ever be anything like Jessie in my future. At first, after some fiddling, the print server worked under Jessie, but now it has stopped working. The printer continues to produce test pages when requesting them from the old Dell keyboard and in self-test mode by pushing buttons on the printer itself, not by typing at the computer keyboard. After installing the most recent upgrades to Jessie on both computers this morning, I tried to print a few pages from iceweasel and printing worked. But I also want to be able to print from Emacs, which I use to compose my emails, such as this one. Emacs told be that there was no default printer even though I had just selected the printer on the old Dell from a pick-list presented to be by the print user interface presented to me by the Emacs user interface. I think I should configure the Cups server on my desktop computer to indicate that that printer over on the old Dell is the one for Emacs. But how do I do that? I can't trust my own investigations to determine if there have been any recent changes in the Jessie CUPS packages in the recent past. I know there was a new version of CUPS at the time that Jessie entered pre-release freeze, and I pretty sure my system was working then and not something that I lost in my transition from Wheezy. And, of course, I'd like a more foreword looking suggestion than to re-install Wheezy. I'd like this fixed before Jessie release because I have a bad feeling that the longer I wait the further from the main-stream I will be. I need, with my old hardware, to be as close to the middle of the herd of users as I can be. The print driver for the HPLj-5MP that I have been using in recent years is the one with (recommended) in its listing in the pick-list of all HP print drivers in the localhost:631 web site on both computers. Beyond that I can't think of anything people might need to know about my set-up. I'd be glad to answer any questions about things that I haven't realized might be important. Please help -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150326233800.ga15...@big.lan.gnu
A discussion on this list a few ago
I remember reading a thread on this list in which OP was asking about software that would tag files on his computer, text files, pictures, emails, etc. All sorts of thing, automatically so that he, or maybe she could find retrieve things that are stored on it. I remember someone suggesting a computer program that was already packaged and a .deb. I want to look at that .deb, but I can't remember its name, precisely the problem for which the .deb was designed and implemented. Does anyone reading this remember the discussion that I'm describing, and the name of the .deb? Please help be find it. Thanks, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150317024224.ga17...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Installing Jessie on a computer that current has Windows 7 on it - Progress! Questions?
On 20150312_2255-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): I realized that I had not tried dd from VC2 just before entering the ... snip ... 2) A problem that I really want to fix: The window in which Iceweasel is displayed does not have toolbar across top of the window. ( line containing File Edit View History ...) There might be some key stoke combination the serves as a substitute, but I have trouble remembering such things. Where is this configured in Xfce? NOT in Settings-Window_Manager or Settings-Window_Manager_Tweeks. I've looked there. Press Left-Alt and the menu bar will appear. You can also press, say, It seems we are using different versions of iceweasel, or different versions of Jessie. On my computer pressing Left-Alt *alone* does nothing. In this respect (on my machine) it acts similarly to the Shift keys, in that it modifies the action of the following key press while the Alt key is being held down. Unlike the Shift key, there seems not to be an Alt-Lock, paralleling the Shift-Lock. Left-Alt-B and get the bookmarks, if you know the appropriate letters, F, E, V, S, B etc. For me, the whole point of a GUI is that it allows the interface designer to sprinkle about the screen various visual cues and hot spots that allow the user to instruct the computer without having to a set of appropriate keys. Oh well, live and learn. But I did discover a way to get the toolbar that works for my computer: On the far right end of the line that contains the text box for entering the URL, there is and icon containing three short think horizontal lines. If I click on that, it opens a configuration menu. If I click on the last item in that menu, it opens another menu in the lower LEFT corner of the iceweasel window. In this lower left menu, there are some check boxes. Checking a box appears not to do anything, but after you exit from the menu on the RIGHT side, the Toolbar and/or Menu bar is/are displayed. The trouble with this as a definitive solution is that I am pretty sure that the icon with three horizontal bars in it is a configurable item. I wouldn't know what to do if my iceweasel were configured to leave out that icon. Sorry for the cranky tone. I get cranky when I'm not in control of my computer. Best regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150315163331.gb12...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Installing Jessie on a computer that current has Windows 7 on it
On 20150311_0406+, Dan Purgert wrote: On Tue, 10 Mar 2015 15:00:13 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150310_1410+, Dan Purgert wrote: On Mon, 09 Mar 2015 22:07:17 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: [ ... snip ... ] suggestion of running CHKDSK wasn't tried in the manner that I'm sure was intended because by the time I got it, I knew that it didn't boot Windows off the hard disk anymore. Try chkdsk off the boot CD then (assuming you have a Win boot disk. NTFS tends to do awful things to drives wherein they get weird locks in them. Or just use the windows disk to quick format the drive ... and stop it there. Alternatively, see if there's a low-level format utility (from the drive manufacturer) that you can run on its own. I used to have one from Western Digital that worked nicely for writing all zeroes to the drive. I have two windows recovery CDs. One from the distant past, and the one that came with this machine. It will take a while. Something to keep track of today... Thanks, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150311190447.gc6...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Installing Jessie on a computer that current has Windows 7 on it - Progress! Questions?
On 20150311_1304-0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150311_0406+, Dan Purgert wrote: On Tue, 10 Mar 2015 15:00:13 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20150310_1410+, Dan Purgert wrote: On Mon, 09 Mar 2015 22:07:17 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: [ ... snip ... ] suggestion of running CHKDSK wasn't tried in the manner that I'm sure was intended because by the time I got it, I knew that it didn't boot Windows off the hard disk anymore. Try chkdsk off the boot CD then (assuming you have a Win boot disk. NTFS tends to do awful things to drives wherein they get weird locks in them. Or just use the windows disk to quick format the drive ... and stop it there. Alternatively, see if there's a low-level format utility (from the drive manufacturer) that you can run on its own. I used to have one from Western Digital that worked nicely for writing all zeroes to the drive. I realized that I had not tried dd from VC2 just before entering the partitioner section of weekly build (Jessie) installer. It didn't allow successful write, so I tried Wheezy 7.7 which had failed before the dd write. This time for 7.7, the partition write succeeded, and I proceeded to a successfully reboot after install. But the Wheezy that it installed was largely useless to me because I use gnome-terminal frequently and all the virtual terminal programs had a serious flaw: They didn't have a command prompt in the window. While looking for some config setting to get a command prompt, I noticed that I had actually installed 7.8, which I hadn't known existed. Maybe the version conflict could be causing problems. So I downloaded Wheezy 7.8 CD. tried it, and it had the same flaw. But I realized that I could use VC1 to dist-upgrade to Jessie, and sort out the picky details in the release that I would like to use in Jessie, and beyond. The dist-upgrade went about as well as expected in that the Wheezy install had placed both Xfce and Gnome-desktop on the computer. The trick that finally allowed a conflict free was to select task-mate-desktop for installation. That allowed the aptitude conflict resolver to let go of all the gnome packages that were in conflict with required Xfce packages. Which is the whole point of writing the above: Asking for Mate does a world of good for this particular dist-upgrade path which is one that we all hope a lot of people will be attempting soon. I really don't feel that want to be locked into the sequence LTS - LLTS - RLLTS - RRLLTS (ReallyReallyLongLongTermSupport ;-) while Debian leaves me in its more and more distant past. But still a few issues. First two are below, more are likely to follow: 1) In Xfce, the Settings-Preferred_Applications-Web_Browser window offers Mozilla_Firefox in its pick list. This might be treatable as a release critical bug. When I do select it, I do actually get Iceweasel, so maybe the problem can be handled by a phone call by our lawyers to Mozilla's lawyers. ;-) 2) A problem that I really want to fix: The window in which Iceweasel is displayed does not have toolbar across top of the window. ( line containing File Edit View History ...) There might be some key stoke combination the serves as a substitute, but I have trouble remembering such things. Where is this configured in Xfce? NOT in Settings-Window_Manager or Settings-Window_Manager_Tweeks. I've looked there. All the various virtual terminals now have command prompts in them, but some of them lack a toolbar line, like Iceweasel. Fortunately for me, the ones lacking toolbars are ones I have never really liked. Best regards, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150312213954.ga12...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Installing Jessie on a computer that current has Windows 7 on it
On 20150310_1157-0500, David Wright wrote: Quoting Paul E Condon (pecon...@mesanetworks.net): I have NO interest in dual boot. I simply want to wipe the disk and install Jessie. I have last weeks weekly build of debian-testing-i3k6-xfce-CD-1.iso. I starts nicely like I have seen many times before, but when I get to partitoning the HD there is trouble. It won't overwrite the NTFS partitions that contain Windows 7. I think I have read about this and there is some special trick, but I can't find it. Please, someone. Help. Point me to the directions. I'd love to help but don't understand where your problem is. The installer's partitioner does more than just partition disks. Do you use expert install? If so, what messages do you see on VC4? Yes, I use expert install because I want to have static IP addresses. I have been doing that since Etch or Sarge. I did not look at VC4 when this happened. In the past, I had always seen a list of package names scrolling by. It didn't occur to me that it was for error messages. I've learned something valuable. Thanks. One can hardly spend time diagnosing every possible error that might have occurred, or try to imagine every trick that you might have read about somewhere. Besides, you may have hardware or firmware that I know nothing about! Cheers, David. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150310165737.ga11...@alum.home -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150311190339.gb6...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Installing Jessie on a computer that current has Windows 7 on it
On 20150310_1410+, Dan Purgert wrote: On Mon, 09 Mar 2015 22:07:17 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: I have NO interest in dual boot. I simply want to wipe the disk and install Jessie. I have last weeks weekly build of debian-testing-i3k6-xfce-CD-1.iso. I starts nicely like I have seen many times before, but when I get to partitoning the HD there is trouble. It won't overwrite the NTFS partitions that contain Windows 7. I think I have read about this and there is some special trick, but I can't find it. Please, someone. Help. Point me to the directions. I ran into that myself with a couple of installs. Turned out the NTFS partition was shot, and needed a run through chkdsk (-r?). Once that completed, a reboot back to the liveCD allowed me to deal with the drives using gparted. Matt and Dan, Thanks for the suggestions. The suggestions didn't work when I tried them, but they did suggest some further things to try, which also didn't work. Telling you what I tried might help me think more clearly and maybe get you to make further suggestions. When I got this refurbed Dell Optiplex GX620, it came with Windows 7 already installed from a reseller on the web. Soon after getting it I had complications in my health and the project I bought got delayed. That was in 2013. I did take it out of the shipping box, power it up, and see Windows 7 running. But I only used it to verify that no way was I going to abandon Debian for Windows. My home computer set up is three old computers (all Debian Jessie). The Dell was never put to use. But now after all the trying to install Jessie, the computer can only boot from a CD. Its Windows 7 stuff has been damage to the point where the Windows 7 recovery CD reported that Windows 7 can't be recovered. The suggestion of running CHKDSK wasn't tried in the manner that I'm sure was intended because by the time I got it, I knew that it didn't boot Windows off the hard disk anymore. I was able to use fdisk from the netinst CD. I have used fdisk before so I pretty comfortable with its clumsy user interface. It responded to my commands as wanted up until the w (write) command. The version of fdisk on the netinst was slightly different from my memory. On some other version it had been uppercase W. And the first indication of a problem was that after messaging that it had written the changes to disk, it messages that it could not read them back into memory and that they computer should be re-booted. I had also seen this before, so I wasn't totally devastated by the need for yet another reboot. After reboot, I used fdisk on the netinst disk again and got the disappointing news that the format on disk had not been changed. Does fdisk (which is Open software) actually read some secret flag on the HD and abort the write to HD and then not abort the 'success' message to the user? This seems a bit duplicious to me. But the fact of the matter is that the same behavior is similar in the partitions section of netinstCD. It responds to all commands that intend actual writing to HD as if it really going to do it, and then another message that the write failed. My Knoppix disk has a program on it whose name is 'fsck.ntfs', but the manpage on the disk say it is a dummy that always reports success, and that it was put there so that live-disk the demonstration would actually work nicely. My suspicion is that the bios rom actually contains a flag that disables something in the data path between the softlevel and the electronic inside the HD. But that doesn't make sense because there has got to be a way for end-user (owner) to replace a HD that is too small, or has failed. Everything that I can think of fails to explain what is happening. Maybe there is a no-write flag and a no-report-of-write-failure flag, and the bios hides them both when the bios edit code is invoke with the F-key they tell you to use. And only a very few people really know. Of course, I don't actually believe that, but I'm at a loss for an explanation of that doesn't make be sound like a crazy paranoid. Comments? Suggestions of things to try? -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150310210013.ga6...@big.lan.gnu
Installing Jessie on a computer that current has Windows 7 on it
I have NO interest in dual boot. I simply want to wipe the disk and install Jessie. I have last weeks weekly build of debian-testing-i3k6-xfce-CD-1.iso. I starts nicely like I have seen many times before, but when I get to partitoning the HD there is trouble. It won't overwrite the NTFS partitions that contain Windows 7. I think I have read about this and there is some special trick, but I can't find it. Please, someone. Help. Point me to the directions. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150310040717.gb2...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Question about GRUB recovery using Debian 7.x LiveCD
On 20150228_1557-0500, Ric Moore wrote: On 02/28/2015 03:42 PM, Brian wrote: On Sat 28 Feb 2015 at 15:14:19 -0500, Ric Moore wrote: On 02/28/2015 03:06 PM, Brian wrote: Relenting, somewhat. I cannot stand the pain which comes from watching someone struggle. :) e2label(8). I often trust the opinion of our hive-mind more than I do a man page. I hate to blow up something working. :) Ric Very understandable. I do not think adding LABEL to your system would particularly give you anything which do not have already. I use it with USB sticks which move from machine to machine, The UUID may change but the LABEL doesn't. Debian always boots. Having said that, I do not think labelling with e2label would cause your system to go into blow up mode and the UUID is is still there. Changing means trusting my judgement. Ignoring the advice means you can sleep well at nights. There is that to consider as well. Next time I install fresh might be a better time to play with labels! :) Ric I can't recall for sure, but I think OP is concerned about LABELing the swap partition. A swap partition is NOT an extN formatted region of the block-special device. e2label fails to find a superblock on a swap partition on my jessie machine and I'm not a bit surprised at learning that ;-O Also blkid displays a PARTUUID in addition to the familiar UUID for all the partitions on the internal hard drive on my jessie machine. This PARTUUID has fewer hex digits than a the 'real' UUID. It looks as if there is a lot of new conventional to be learn by people who have learned on Linux internals long ago. Or maybe I'm the last to learn about this innovation. Cheers, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150304053055.ga6...@big.lan.gnu
Re: File transfer
On 20150226_2246-0500, Maureen L Thomas wrote: On 02/26/2015 09:55 PM, David Christensen wrote: On 02/25/2015 11:06 PM, Maureen L Thomas wrote: I bought a new Toshiba lap top and want to copy the files from my old Toshiba lap top to the new one. They both have Debian, the latest version, so can I just hook up usb to usb and copy that way? If so would I need a certain command to do it? Just a thought to make it easier since the old one's dvd burner no longer works. I suggest that you start with a full back up of both computers (with an extra archival set stored off site). Do you know how to do this? David The second machine is a clean install, actually a new install. I have not yet done it but ran into a problem getting to the CMOS on the new toshiba. I do know how to do a back up but why back up a new install? You asked for help at this list because you didn't know, for sure, how to move data from the old computer to the new. It's clear to me that you have gotten clear, step-by-step instructions, so ... something that you do may be wrong for the very special case of a broken compute connected to a brand new compute, which *MAY* allow the broken computer to clobber the system files on the new computer. Do you have a way of re-installing on the new computer if this happens? Are you sure? Or do you expect to take a damaged computer back to the retailer who sold it to you and get a replacement. Maybe check out that expectation with the retailer. You asked for advice. I think you got some good advice that maybe you don't want to hear. Maybe? The sad fact is that you cannot install Debian on a computer that won't boot from an install CD because some drivers or whatever have been damaged. YMMV -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150227054951.gb24...@big.lan.gnu
Re: filesystem questions
On 20150223_1014+0100, Petter Adsen wrote: I hope someone can help me out a bit with this, I'm not an expert on filesystems. I want to set up a small (~300G) drive for online backups, taken with backintime from a nightly cron job. backintime uses rsync/hard links to take the backups, so there will be a lot of links. The source of the backup is mainly small files, and many of them don't change that frequently. What I'm wondering is this: what should I set blocksize, inode count and inode ratio etc to? Also, would ext4 be a good fs to choose, or are there better alternatives? I don't use Backintime. I use Rsync directly with a tiny Bash script that I have written. A snapshot of a 100 Gigabyte file system captures a snapshot in about 5minutes, once an initial backup has been done, all because of the smart use of hard links. There is no special tweeking needed to get this speed. Just use Rsync, or a front-end the uses Rsync as its back-end. I use ext4 in Jessie. It just works. A quick read of Backintime web site leads me to believe that Backintime doesn't expose the full power of the file selection control that is available in Rsync. If you find yourself wishing to have some very special rules, it will probably be worth your while to do it directly in Rsync. For example, it is easy to backup selected portions of a Approx Debian package proxy. But Rsync is fast enough and makes compact enough backups that it is hardly worthwhile writing the selection rules. A few years ago, Rsync seemed to have a memory leak that caused it to crash on really if you tried to copy your backup disk for a second, off-site, copy. But not any more. Ext4 avoids the long fsck of your backup drive. My system has recovered from computer crashes due to nearby lightening strikes, once the power is restored by the electric company. About your specific questions: the default selection of partition format parameters works just fine, With ext4 allowing 65000 hard links per inode, one can make a snapshot every hour, 24x7 for over 7 yrs (with ext3 you are limited to 'only' 3.5 yrs) As always, YMMV. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150224055133.ga7...@big.lan.gnu
Re: 3rd new wheezy install
On 20150208_0029-0500, Gene Heskett wrote: On Sunday, February 08, 2015 12:12:32 AM Chris Bannister wrote: On Thu, Feb 05, 2015 at 01:14:56PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: I have been down that graden path so many times I think I could do it in my sleep. I had that drive setup with a hair over a gig for the /boot, and all that, it did write a new table giving boot only 300 megs, and all the other partitions were either too small or way too big. So you're saying that you think the sizes are wrong? I think I'd tend to agree with you here, but I just use entire disk for my installs. I do remember though that the default offering if you didn't use the entire disk was not good, I ran out of room in one partition although I think you can change the sizes afterwards. Are you saying that if you do, then the alignment is incorrect shown by other tools? The alignment seems to be bad on every partition if you do it by hand, but if you just let it use the whole disk, the first parttition is good, but the swap seems out of kilter and probably slow if and when I ever get into swap. You could use a file in your first partition for swap instead of a separate partion (that is badly configured) for swap. Having swap on its own partition seems to have lost some of its technical advantage due to changes in how modern drives are designed, or so I have heard somewhere. (Hoping to generate some informed responses...) That I can likely fix live by doing a swapoff before I send gparted to adjust its start a mebibyte at a time. Thanks Chris. 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 http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/201502080029.49836.ghesk...@wdtv.com -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150209191333.ga9...@big.lan.gnu
Sound in Jessie
Today, for the first time in many weeks, my computer, running Jessie, started to have sound. It must have something to do with last night install of updates of .deb packages. But there are problems. I have no software control over the volume. Only way to turn done the volume is to turn anti-clockwist the physical knob on the loud speaker box. And, the audio mixer, which has been installed during the many weeks, has developed a new curious symptom: Instead of doing nothing, it now displays a message that GStreamer was unable to find any sound devices. Of course there are working sound devices, its just that Jessie sound software is not yet working. I'd welcome tips on how to make it fully functional faster than just waiting for the full release of Jessie Note: some of you may remember my asking for help getting my sound to work. I got some help. I got help. I spent hours trying different things and suddenly it started working, but a few hours later, it stopped working again. I don't understand software sound. I think loading and removing various packages with various conflicting bugs somehow made it work for awhile, and decided to let it lie fallow. I noticed that there are two packages on the Xfce4 desktop that I don't believe were there the last time I paid attention to computer sound: Ex Falso and Quod Libet. I have never felt the need for computer mediated music, so that fact that there is broken sound now, rather than no sound might be related to these packages. Anyway, it would be nice to have fully functional sound. My compute is a HP Pentium desktop several years old, nothing special, but it is the best computer I have ever had, so I expect to be keeping it thru the life of Jessie, and beyond. For now, I can, with adequate guidance, do testing of the new sound for today. Is there anything of interest to the developers who are working the sound system issues? The GStreamer message goes on to suggest: Some sound system specific GStreamer packages may be missing. It may also be a permissions problem. What is the package set that should be installed in Jessie? Maybe now is a good time to find out. Where should I look? Cheers. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150201020304.ga25...@big.lan.gnu
making sound work in Jessie - how?
I've been running Jessie on my deaktop from some time before the end of September. The last time a checked, which was quite a while ago, sound was working. But it might have been before I migrated from Wheezy to Jessie. Now realize I don't know what to do to get sound working in Jessie. I got Jessie by doing a netinst. The first thing I tried to do when I noticed sound not working was to install flashplayer-nonfree and run it. This had worked in Wheezy but either I missed an important step or that's not the way to do in under systemd. I am *not* knocking systemd. But flashplayer-nonfree was/is something kluge and I would be glad to let it rest in peace. What packages should I make sure are properly installed? Where can I find a check list of what needs to be done. While I'm typing this I realize I might need to become a member of a special access group, but what is the name of the group? These are things about which I need up-to-date info, and there is mostly stale info on google (By stale, I mean from the dark ages before the coming of Pulse.) But maybe my problem has nothing to do with Pulse or systemd. Please suggest test to make and information to give. The computer runs the latest i686 32bit kernel (latest for Jessie) It is HP desktop that's a few years old. I'll be re-installing flashplayer again while waiting for suggestions... TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141213234102.ga7...@big.lan.gnu
Re: making sound work in Jessie - how?
On 20141213_1643-0700, Paul E Condon wrote: I've been running Jessie on my deaktop from some time before the end of September. The last time a checked, which was quite a while ago, sound was working. But it might have been before I migrated from Wheezy to Jessie. Now realize I don't know what to do to get sound working in Jessie. I got Jessie by doing a netinst. The first thing I tried to do when I noticed sound not working was to install flashplayer-nonfree and run it. This had worked in Wheezy but either I missed an important step or that's not the way to do in under systemd. I am *not* knocking systemd. But flashplayer-nonfree was/is something kluge and I would be glad to let it rest in peace. What packages should I make sure are properly installed? Where can I find a check list of what needs to be done. While I'm typing this I realize I might need to become a member of a special access group, but what is the name of the group? These are things about which I need up-to-date info, and there is mostly stale info on google (By stale, I mean from the dark ages before the coming of Pulse.) But maybe my problem has nothing to do with Pulse or systemd. Please suggest test to make and information to give. The computer runs the latest i686 32bit kernel (latest for Jessie) It is HP desktop that's a few years old. I'll be re-installing flashplayer again while waiting for suggestions... Yes, I know its flashplugin . My bad. I was reminded of that when I couldn't get aptitude to find under the wrong name. TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141213235358.ga7...@big.lan.gnu
Re: change subject of emails on ISP's IMAP server
On 20141213_1034-0500, Rob Owens wrote: On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 09:47:55PM -0500, The Wanderer wrote: On 12/12/2014 at 08:53 PM, Rob Owens wrote: When my ISP encounters an email that it cannot scan for viruses, it prepends ***UNCHECKED*** to the subject. This occurs on every encrypted email I receive. It's highly annoying, and the ISP refuses to fix this. What tools can I use to detect this tag and delete it? I'd prefer to modify the subject of the email as it resides on my ISP's IMAP server. But if I have to rely on my email client (mutt) to do that, that's ok too I guess. Any suggestions would be welcome. The last time I mentioned wanting to do something like this, what was recommended to me was procmail, which would sit between the upstream server and your mail client. I thought procmail wouldn't work, because the mail doesn't actually reside on my system. But I'll look into it. Like you said, it may lead me down the path to alternatives. -Rob In addition to procmail, you need a remote login account on which you can execute command line programs on your ISP's computer. (It is very unlikely that they offer this service given their attitude about messing with the headers in your email.) You can run procmail on your ISP's computer. In the procmailrc, write a filter that passes the incoming email through program, formail, which is a general purpose email reformatter, which you use to send each email through the program, sed, the stream editor and have sed apply the 'sed s command', 's|***UNCHECKED***||' to each email. If you can string all this together on your ISP's computer, it will delete *all* instances of ***UNCHECKED*** wherever thet occur in emails. In theory, it can be done but it seems like an awful lot of work with very little payoff ;-) -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141214042814.gb1...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Skipping fsck during boot with systemd?
On 20141211_1257+0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote: On Mi, 10 dec 14, 15:32:55, Jape Person wrote: But that information plus the linked items (in the info output) grub-reboot and grub-editenv may get me started toward a solution. I just thought of a different approach, using the fact that one can manipulate the Maximum mount count without having to umount the filesystem: write a script that always sets the Maximum mount count to '0' or '-1' late during the boot (e.g. via rc.local or @reboot in the crontab). With this one can easily trigger a manual check on the next reboot with a simple: tune2fs -c 1 /dev/sdXY Andrei: If one were to put the following line into /etc/rc.local: tune2fs -l /dev/sdXY where whould the output go? In particular could it be directed to a place that is easily noticed by the owner/user of the computer? TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141212160854.ga6...@big.lan.gnu
fsck on boot in Jessie
After contributing some comments to the thread on aborting fsck during boot, I thought to try Andrei's /etc/rc.local suggestion. While rebooting, I discovered something quite unexpected (to me at least): The computer on which I did my test is running Jessie. Jessie was installed on it on Sept 26, 2014 at 14:40:58, and has been rebooted ten times since that date. It has been regularly upgraded with all the new versions of debs since then. During boot the screen displayed a message for too short a time for me to memorize it entirely, but it started with: [ systemd-fsck ] and continues with something about clean and /dev/sda1. Was there no one in the group discussion who was aware of systemd-fsck ?? Surely, if there was (s)he would have enlighten the rest of us as to this fact and the discussion would have been far less looong. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141213020837.ga9...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Skipping fsck during boot with systemd?
On 20141211_1332+, Brian wrote: On Wed 10 Dec 2014 at 14:22:59 -0700, Paul E Condon wrote: On 20141210_1830+, Brian wrote: On Wed 10 Dec 2014 at 19:23:07 +0300, tv.deb...@googlemail.com wrote: On 10/12/2014 14:04, Andrei POPESCU wrote: Of course, there's also the option of completely disabling automatic fsck (there are several ways to do this), as I understand is the default for new enough filesystems. This would make more sense for me on systems with bad power (you'd still get the bad shutdown check). Yes, disabling and doing manual checks from time to time is a possibility, but you'd have to convince all users to hand their gears to an admin outside of business hours. The said admin (who might just bee a teacher in fact) might not be happy with the idea of a week-end spent at fsck'ing the world out of the compulab, just because of systemd. With the conditions I mentioned earlier running a fsck regularly is a good thing, just not being able to interrupt it in case of emergency isn't. Ever since Wheezy automatic fsck has been disabled on new installs. For ^^ Until I read the above, I had not realized that automatic fsck had been gone for so long -- and without me noticing. I suppose it is true, but I have no way of verifying. I know Wheezy and Jessie were both new installs for me because I had a very poor track record of doing successful dist-upgrades. This paragraph constitutes data. It says that you have gone without an fsck for x years without noticing anything untoward that you can ascribe to a lack of one. It may be less detailed than a dedicated study might want but they are valid data. You assume too much. I did not say my system was utterly stable. In fact, there was something seriously wrong that required me to repeatedly re-install from backups. Only when I read your post did I think that the maybe your claim of forced fsck being dropped might be true. But as Bob Proulx said much better than I, we have no data. I had so many occasions on which I needed to re-install that I developed a semi-automated re-install procedure that works so nicely that I think I will be using it instead of dist-upgrade in the future. It does get rid of cruft on the disk. Multiply your experience by 10,000 or 100,000 similar accounts and a picture begins to emerge and you can decide on how much confidence you can place in a conclusion based on the accumulated data. I did not contribute data to a growing pool of data on this situation, and a billion similar accounts from other users is ( 0 * 0 == 0 ) *no* data. Of course, there might have been some disastrous loss of data out there somewhere on someone else's computer. And that someone might not have realized that his data might have been saved if there had been a automatic fsck. If he thought about it at all, he probably just supposed that the disk failed 'between file checks', which had always been a possibility. These are also data. It is also conjecture. It is very doubtful that 10,000 or 100,000 similar accounts would see any useful conclusion formed. So the fact that there is no record of complaints proves nothing, one way or the other. We have no valid data, IMHO. We have no data (valid or not) about failure. We do have data relating to I reject the concept of invalid data.;-) We do have some anecdotal information about user behavior, or about how users write anecdotes. But users write in very different styles. It is, IMHO, seldom true that an anecdote is worthy of careful textual analysis. success; you added to it above. :) One single, well-substantiated No. See above augmentation of my account. failure would be enough to cause a conclusion drawn from the record of success to be re-examined. I commend Bob for his clear statement of the objection to your reasoning. Peace. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141212050456.ga3...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Skipping fsck during boot with systemd?
On 20141211_1223+0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote: On Jo, 11 dec 14, 18:16:05, Joel Rees wrote: snip but I'm considering how to implement a forced fsck every now and then, including an xfs partition, which wouldn't be checked at boot anyway. insert fsck reminder into to-do list using crontab? boot from a live CD, manual action to actually start the fsck? ;-) -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141212053111.gb3...@big.lan.gnu
Re: How is typical home computer used today?
On 20141208_1214-0600, Richard Owlett wrote: In a thread titled Re: 9p/plumber to replace D-Bus? berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote: [https://lists.debian.org/3d6a00a1c8bddc88b517b4e19cc68...@neutralite.org] Le 08.12.2014 14:18, Marty a écrit : [SNIP] Multi-seat PC and other anachronisms probably have to go away. Exactly what is meant by Multi-seat PC? I was thinking about a similar question while reading the Plan 9 postings: What is meant by 'PoC'? Let me try to answer your question. 1. 'PC' is, I believe, an abreviation for 'Personal Computer' 2. 'Multi-seat' is several seats, which could only imply several persons occupying those (several) seats. Ergo, a confused expression open to multiple interpretations, and no exact meaning whatsoever. Can you help me with 'PoC'? I'm working on defining a heavily customized personal installation of Debian. One of the *STRONG* underlying assumptions is the the machine would only ever be used by a specific individual. One of the underlying motivations is personally understanding the the guts of Linux. [snip] Peace. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141210193941.ga10...@big.lan.gnu
Re: 9p/plumber to replace D-Bus?
On 20141208_1643+0100, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote: Le 08.12.2014 14:18, Marty a écrit : I almost tagged this off-topic but it's directed toward ordinary Debian users (with developer backgrounds). I first raised this on modular-debian but I want to get some ideas from a wider audience. I'm starting to get familiar with Plan 9 and D-Bus, to compare how they try to solve the same set of problems. Plan 9 concepts attempt to solve Unix problems in a very different way than Opendesktop.org. For people wanting to return to the original Unix concepts, 9p/plumber (or an updated version) seems like a natural fit going forward, for basic IPC purposes. 9p is already in Linux, and probably could be ported to the other Debian ports. I realize I just have to convince millions of people to re-plumb their core OS in a short period of time, but recent history teaches us that it that this is entirely feasible! Thus emboldened, I would even deign to give users a choice in the matter, but realistically, this would probably be an experimental project. You won't convince anyone if you do not build a PoC. Especially developers giving their time literally for free. Asking questions is a nice way to learn how you could do that PoC, anyway. Asking and trying. What is 'PoC'? Probably will be blindly obvious once I've been told. TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141210202721.gb10...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Skipping fsck during boot with systemd?
On 20141210_1830+, Brian wrote: On Wed 10 Dec 2014 at 19:23:07 +0300, tv.deb...@googlemail.com wrote: On 10/12/2014 14:04, Andrei POPESCU wrote: Of course, there's also the option of completely disabling automatic fsck (there are several ways to do this), as I understand is the default for new enough filesystems. This would make more sense for me on systems with bad power (you'd still get the bad shutdown check). Yes, disabling and doing manual checks from time to time is a possibility, but you'd have to convince all users to hand their gears to an admin outside of business hours. The said admin (who might just bee a teacher in fact) might not be happy with the idea of a week-end spent at fsck'ing the world out of the compulab, just because of systemd. With the conditions I mentioned earlier running a fsck regularly is a good thing, just not being able to interrupt it in case of emergency isn't. Ever since Wheezy automatic fsck has been disabled on new installs. For ^^ Until I read the above, I had not realized that automatic fsck had been gone for so long -- and without me noticing. I suppose it is true, but I have no way of verifying. I know Wheezy and Jessie were both new installs for me because I had a very poor track record of doing successful dist-upgrades. Of course, there might have been some disastrous loss of data out there somewhere on someone else's computer. And that someone might not have realized that his data might have been saved if there had been a automatic fsck. If he thought about it at all, he probably just supposed that the disk failed 'between file checks', which had always been a possibility. So the fact that there is no record of complaints proves nothing, one way or the other. We have no valid data, IMHO. Even the computer facilities run in support of Debian servers don't provide valid data because they are surely kept cleaner than the vast majority of self administered home office setups. As to what to do now that this issue is being discussed: Install, as part of a normal Debian install, a crontab that issues a reminder message to the user that it is time to do an fsck, with a hot link to a wiki page on how to do it, and suggestions agout vacuuming the dust bunnies from around the fan vents. Implementing this idea is surely NOT release critical for Jessie, IMHO. Peace. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141210212259.gc10...@big.lan.gnu
Question about an attempt to upgrade CUPS and cups-filters
I'm using Jessie, and attempting to do frequent update/upgrades. I use aptitude. Computer is HP with dual core pentium cpu. The most recent upgrade left cups and cups-filters only partially installed with the following report: T A cups W A cups-filters cups is only partly installed; its installation will be completed. But re-running does not complete the installation. What action can I take to get these new(er) packages to be completely installed? Or what further information should I provide to help diagnose this? TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141130185544.gb25...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Question about ... cups-filters [SOLVED]
Actually I have three Jessie machines. All had the same symptoms, so I could try *both* magic commands, and *both* worked. Thankyou, both. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141130202128.ga15...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Qt version of gnuplot strange message
On 20141118_0932+, Darac Marjal wrote: On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 11:03:41PM -0700, Paul E Condon wrote: The newer version of gnuplot is issuing a warning that I have never seen before: Qt: Session management error: Authentication Rejected, reason : None of the authentication protocols specified are supported and host-based authentication failed Apparently Qt believes it has to 'authenticate' the data which I am feeding to gnuplot. I had always thought that the authenticity of the data was the responsibility of me, the human user, and not something that a could possibly be done by an artificial intelligence. Where can I read about this crazy new feature? and how I can disable and silence it? It's not the data you're feeding to gnuplot that QT is trying to authenticate, but it is trying to authenticate your access to the session manager. If you're not running KDE as your desktop (or rather, if the KDE session manager isn't running), then this error can be ignored. If you're running KDE, but not running gnuplot as the same user, then this error can either be ignored, or use sudo to start gnuplot. Thanks for the very informative explanation. It provokes another question: I'm not running KDE. I'm running Xfce4. I do use a few packages from Gnome, e.g. gnome-terminal, but not the full blown most recent version. Should I install a different version/flavor of gnuplot that would be a better match to my way of working? Advice? TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141121001649.ga23...@big.lan.gnu
What backport of gnuplot should I use in Jessie?
I'm currently using Jessie on my personal, home computer, i.e. the one I use to ask for help on this list. I hope to keep it running with only brief intervals of outage. I also track some daily stock prices using gnuplot. I want to keep that going, generating a new plot every time I download new data. Of the several backports, I think one is intended to be the survivor when Jessie is actually released. Which one is that? Or is there a dark horse that might be a better choise? Also, a few words of reasons for your answer would be helpful in assessing its value to me. TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141117215436.ga28...@big.lan.gnu
Qt version of gnuplot strange message
The newer version of gnuplot is issuing a warning that I have never seen before: Qt: Session management error: Authentication Rejected, reason : None of the authentication protocols specified are supported and host-based authentication failed Apparently Qt believes it has to 'authenticate' the data which I am feeding to gnuplot. I had always thought that the authenticity of the data was the responsibility of me, the human user, and not something that a could possibly be done by an artificial intelligence. Where can I read about this crazy new feature? and how I can disable and silence it? TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141118060341.ga30...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Installing an Alternative Init?
On 2014_0733-0500, Miles Fidelman wrote: Brian wrote: On Tue 11 Nov 2014 at 02:02:07 +0100, Michael Biebl wrote: Am 11.11.2014 um 01:58 schrieb Miles Fidelman: Michael Biebl wrote: Sorry, but that is not what I asked for. I asked for specifics. Your answer doesn't contain any specific problem which would make me able to reproduce any problem. I've tested various use cases and apt-get install -y sysvinit-core always did the right thing. Please show me an example where it doesn't. Frankly, no. 40 years of experience administering various kinds of systems gives me some perspective. I've had enough experience with dependency hell on Debian (apt is phenomenal, expect when it isn't), and ^^ I think you meant 'except', rather than 'expect'. Right? If one could absolutely rely on apt-get always getting it right, then apt-get install -y sysvinit-core could always be used to remove systemd even from a system that has been booted into systemd and running, and not just in the context of a pre-seed. Right? But if that that apt-get command doesn't work on an installation of systemd, *that* is a bug in apt-get that *should* be fixed in Jessie *before* it is released. Right? And the apt-get command, apt-get install -y systemd should switch a host that is running sysvinit or upstart, to running systemd. If not that is *another* bug in apt-get that must be fixed before release of Jessie. If the release team were to accept that *both* these (hypothesized) bugs are release critical, and have them tested and fixed before release, then there might be peace once again in Debian. HTH -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141115225444.ga27...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Installing an Alternative Init?
On 2014_1200-0500, Tanstaafl wrote: On 11/11/2014 11:38 AM, The Wanderer wande...@fastmail.fm wrote: Other people subscribe to a meaning of default which, e.g., assumes only that systemd will get installed as PID 1 unless some action is taken to prevent it from getting so installed. That seems like an entirely reasonable interpretation, at least to me. Absolutely correct. The concept 'Default' implies that there are *alternatives*. Systemd can be installed, and yet not functioning, if the address of some other piece of code is planted in PID 1. Of course, much more than a simple storing of an address value in a specific location in RAM is involved in a successful switch of the *running* init system. Tanstaafl's argument is faulty, IMO. Apt-get can be made to modify the information on disk so that the next boot will install in RAM an init system that is different from the init system under which apt-get was run. This is 'inefficient' but much less 'inefficient' than trying to convince intelligent people of a falsehood thru right reason, which is, in the end, a total waste of eveybody's time. I suggest that the word 'default' not be used any more in this discussion. It serves only to obfuscate the nature of the problem. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141115233738.gb27...@big.lan.gnu
Re: Installing an Alternative Init?
On 2014_1807+0100, Laurent Bigonville wrote: Le Tue, 11 Nov 2014 07:42:33 -0500, Tanstaafl tansta...@libertytrek.org a écrit : On 11/10/2014 6:18 PM, Michael Biebl bi...@debian.org wrote: Am 11.11.2014 um 00:14 schrieb Miles Fidelman: Ok, then explain to me the procedure for running the installer in such a way that systemd is never installed, thus avoiding any potential problems that might result from later uninstallation all the dependencies that systemd brings in with it. Please be specific. What problems of of dependencies are you talking about? Please stop bring up irrelevant questions and address the question being asked. This does require you to at least understand and acknowledge the difference between a *clean* install, and installing something one way, then having to uninstall a primary piece and replace it with something else. The two are not the same, and no amount of you trying to act as if they are will change the fact that they are not. There are no functional differences between an installation with sysvinit-core out of the box or an install where sysvinit-core is installed later, this is a fact. Theory tells us this should be true, but it would be nice if there were experimental evidence. For instance, a demonstration that the files on two hardware-identical computers, with software installed in the two different ways, are bit-for-bit identical. But this can't be done, as I understand the situation, because *clean* install of sysvinit-core is impossible until the dbootstrap bug is fixed. I predict that the initial 'fix' of that bug will fail to achieve your predicted result. Naturally, I hope I'm wrong, but I would like proof. Another topic: My reading of the man page for apt-get seems to say that there is no way to purge the configuration file of packages that were pulled in to satisfy a dependency and subsequently autoremoved. I hope this is an artifact of poor use of English. But if true, it should be fixed. Yet another topic: It should be possible to install systemd on a system that already has some other init system installed on it. This should be tested, but how? -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141116002122.gc27...@big.lan.gnu
Need help setting up printing in Jessie
I'm running Jessie on an HP Pentium host that's a several years old. Desktop software is Xfce4 and CUPS from a Debian repository, as is all software on the box. Printing works for the LibreOffice suite, but not for Emacs23-lucid, or for plain text files. What do I need to do to get them configured? I particularly want to get working the Emacs23 Postscript Print Buffer, as I use Emacs for my Bash script and email writing. Is there some debug mode that I can turn on to get more information? What happens is basically nothing. I select the B+W print buffer from the file menu in the Emacs23-lucid window, and... nothing comes out of my printer, and nothing is added to the jobs list in CUPS. TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141027214119.gb24...@big.lan.gnu
SCSI driver for use with Jessie: which one?
I found today that I don't have a scsi driver on my Jessie install. I search for 'scsi' in aptitude and see several competing packages. Which one is most likely to enable burning a new debian netinst CD today or tomorrow? I need to reinstall Jessie on a different host before this one crashes. I'm running xfce4 and xorg. To my knowledge, othing exotic. But always willing to answer questions about obivious essential details that I have left out. TIA -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141027013344.gc11...@big.lan.gnu
