Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Project:Installer
On 25 July 2015 11:09:36 PM AEST, lee l...@yagibdah.de wrote: Matthew Marchese maffblas...@gentoo.org writes: Hi all, I see that you've found stager. I'd like you to share your thoughts on what a perfect installer Gentoo could do. The Debian installer is the best one I've seen so far. If you're thinking towards Redhat, the Fedora installer can't even do partitioning, and the Centos 7 one was just the like. They suck horribly, and they don't give you choices. In my opinion, there's really 3 parts to the install process, and I think it helps to distinguish between them. I think a complete installer program has to address all 3, but each task could be modularised. 1. The low level decisions, like disk partitioning, raid and disk mirroring, filesystem choices like ext4, btrfs, zfs, or some other. For a VM, the choices here might include creating a new LVM volume or btrfs subvolume 2. Installing system files, which is not much more than untaring the stage3, and low level system configuration of make.conf settings, choice of profile, locale timezone settings, users passwords, networking, choice of syslog from, etc 3. Higher level system configuration to get to a finalised state (Of course, there's quite a bit of blurring between the stages.) I'm not so interested in 1, but gentoo really shines here because there are no restrictions. But there are so many options that it makes it a big task to tackle, unless you pare it down and focus on a few typical use cases like a standard desktop install Part 2 is where it would be good to have a standardised approach, along the lines of debian's debootstrap utility. Something that takes a target directory and installs all the files needed to build a bare-bones system inside it. Its actually not that difficult to write a shell script to achieve this, which is probably why there are so many posted around the interests. But something standardised could be the basis of a gui installer, or the center of a container installer such as the lxc-gentoo script or whatever the docker equivalent is. The 3rd task is more in the realm of tools such as ansible or puppet. Having that said, and having done few Gentoo installations: I'm merely wishing installing Gentoo wasn't such a lengthy process. It's lengthy in that you have to do the steps manually while browsing the excellent handbook. If there was an installer that would guide you through these steps and bring up the files you need to edit in an editor, that could save a lot of time already. It could reduce the possibility for error, as in overlooking that you need to do some step. Which is what part 2 is about. I started writing my own installer based on using ebuild files for the configuration. But I like your idea of an interactive mode for configuration. Otoh, I have to come to like how Gentoo is installed. You can do whatever you like, and the process is pretty straightforward. I don't see how an installer could give you that, yet a perfect installer would need to. And that is the difficulty inherent in a gentoo installer... If its too restrictive, its not really gentoo anymore; if its flexible to cover all the options, you may as well just stick with typing commands in a shell... How about support for booting from ZFS? I'd really like to see that; it should be as easy as booting from other file systems. Without it, we have to do ugly things. -- :b
Re: [gentoo-user] Qucik and (not so) dirty WLAN setup
On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 04:25:34 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Hi, since the topic WLAN/Wifi is a wide area and I am only a pedestrian (and a not native english speaker too), I want to ask for a keyword or terminus technicus, what I need to search for... Wanted setup: I Wifi connection between a tablet PC (android) and Gentoo Linux PC. I definitely dont want any other to access neither the tablet nor the PC. So...do I need a 'Hotspot' or what name does the setup has, which I need to build on my Gentoo Linux PC? Thank you very much in advance for any help! Best regards, Meino You need to set up a wireless Host Access Point on your PC and secure it with WPA2. If you are really paranoid about attacks of the wireless connection, you can set up more advanced (enterprise) authentication between the access point and the tablet using SSL certificates and/or a RADIUS server. This would probably be an overkill for a domestic environment with a single device. As alternative, if more than WPA2 network security is a must, it would be easier to set up a VPN tunnel between the two devices, or SSH SOCKS5 server on the PC and something like proxychains on the client. For setting up hostapd have a look here: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hostapd -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The state of public relations?
On Fri, 24 Jul 2015 13:07:20 -0600, Justin Findlay wrote: Gentoo does not need an 'installer'. We have way too many people not being able to read simple instructions already or spending 5minutes on googlethinking for themselves. Just look at this mailing list. We really don't need more of them. I disagree. There are always going to be people who don't read instructions or who don't even share your intuition about things. They are called Ubuntu users - they and Ubuntu are welcome to one another. Are you saying you would want on influx of people who can't be bothered to read or think for themselves? -- Neil Bothwick Few women admit their age. Few men act theirs. pgpVVMbFmB6_K.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The state of public relations?
On Fri, 24 Jul 2015 15:01:20 -0400, Alec Ten Harmsel wrote: Gentoo does not need an 'installer'. We have way too many people not being able to read simple instructions already or spending 5minutes on googlethinking for themselves. Just look at this mailing list. We really don't need more of them. Hahahahahaha. This made me laugh. The old argument about the installer filter still stands up :) Anyways, on a serious note, we should have an installer. I don't really care if there's an automated installer for my desktop, but it's essential for servers/clusters that as much as possible is automated and repeatable. Absolutely. If you want a pointy-clicky installer for a single desktop system, there are hundreds out there. Something along the lines of Red Hat's Kickstart would be far more useful. -- Neil Bothwick c:Press Enter to Exit pgpBD1fbP9sN0.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The state of public relations?
On Fri, 24 Jul 2015 19:42:29 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote: Heh, if Gentoo cared about distrowatch we'd probably stick Gentoo somewhere in our user agent strings for all our browsers. I look at it maybe once a year at most, and when I do it doesn't count as a Gentoo visitor. IIRC the DistroWatch rankings are based on the visitor counts to the pages for individual distros. Since the main reason people visit the pages is probably to check for updates, and Gentoo is a rolling release, it is never going to maintain a high ranking, even if it had ten times the users. I read DistroWatch quite a lot, about the only distro I never look at is Gentoo - blame me for the low ranking if you like :) -- Neil Bothwick Drink varnish and you'll have a lovely finish. pgp3Q5khWtJxE.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The state of public relations?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: Gentoo does not need an 'installer'. We have way too many people not being able to read simple instructions already or spend 5 min on Google thinking for themselves. Just look at this mailing list. We really don't need more of them. I'm not sure we do have many such users, if any : they don't stay around. However, I strongly agree that lack of an installer provides a form of initiation which ensures new users belong here. Gentoo is not for the masses. It's for people who customise their systems typically who build their own machines to begin with. It's more like owning a horse than using a TV (popular binary distros). It isn't difficult, but it does demand attention + some work sometimes : the reward is a computer which does exactly what you want it to. Professionals who manage large server farms may want a means of cloning an existing system onto new machines, but that's a different problem, which sb solvable, if it isn't already. -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The state of public relations?
On 25/07/2015 10:28, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Fri, 24 Jul 2015 13:07:20 -0600, Justin Findlay wrote: Gentoo does not need an 'installer'. We have way too many people not being able to read simple instructions already or spending 5minutes on googlethinking for themselves. Just look at this mailing list. We really don't need more of them. I disagree. There are always going to be people who don't read instructions or who don't even share your intuition about things. They are called Ubuntu users - they and Ubuntu are welcome to one another. Are you saying you would want on influx of people who can't be bothered to read or think for themselves? Please good lord no. Let's not have that again. Once a year or so this list gets flooded by a new bunch of folks who spew forth an unending stream of simple questions and can't be bothered to look further than their nose. And these folks never contribute back. Gentoo requires that the user has a decent amount of clue and has a good idea of what they want. Plus a healthy dose of ah fuck it, I can figure this out for myself. It's not elitism to say that, it's a simple statement of fact about who the target market is. Folks looking for pointy-click installers are not it. Neither are ricers. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Qucik and (not so) dirty WLAN setup
Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com [15-07-25 09:52]: On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 04:25:34 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Hi, since the topic WLAN/Wifi is a wide area and I am only a pedestrian (and a not native english speaker too), I want to ask for a keyword or terminus technicus, what I need to search for... Wanted setup: I Wifi connection between a tablet PC (android) and Gentoo Linux PC. I definitely dont want any other to access neither the tablet nor the PC. So...do I need a 'Hotspot' or what name does the setup has, which I need to build on my Gentoo Linux PC? Thank you very much in advance for any help! Best regards, Meino You need to set up a wireless Host Access Point on your PC and secure it with WPA2. If you are really paranoid about attacks of the wireless connection, you can set up more advanced (enterprise) authentication between the access point and the tablet using SSL certificates and/or a RADIUS server. This would probably be an overkill for a domestic environment with a single device. As alternative, if more than WPA2 network security is a must, it would be easier to set up a VPN tunnel between the two devices, or SSH SOCKS5 server on the PC and something like proxychains on the client. For setting up hostapd have a look here: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hostapd -- Regards, Mick Hi Mick, thank you for the translation Meino=Wifi and Wifi=Meino :) :) Short second question: Is it possible to limit the devices, which could connect to the access point, to some MACs ? (I know, this is not 100% secure, since even those could be faked, but the average script kiddy may be block for a while.) Best regards, Meino
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The state of public relations?
On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 03:12:27 + (UTC), James wrote: I attend a LUG monthly and the only sponsorship it gets is the building space it meets in - and it doesn't have trouble finding them. So many LUGs died in many cities because anyone can download an installer and put buntu or whatever distro on a box themselves. Now building a cluster, running btrfs in raid1, yubikey setup and usage, encrypted file systems using TOR and such as those advance features are what would attract folks back to a LUG, imho. That's not a LUG, it's an installfest. LUGs survive by keeping their members' interest. Attendance at my LUG varies according to the advertised topics, so it's very much about keeping people interested. -- Neil Bothwick Oxymoron: Clearly Misunderstood. pgpvXN76nxEJY.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[gentoo-user] Firefox-31.8.0 build fails on no-multilib PC
Any idea how I can fix the errors it mentions below:
===
creating cache ./config.cache
checking host system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking target system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
checking build system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
checking for mawk... no
checking for gawk... gawk
Using Python from environment variable $PYTHON
Creating Python environment
New python executable in /var/tmp/portage/www-
client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-esr31/obj-x86_64-pc-linux-
gnu/_virtualenv/bin/python2.7
Also creating executable in /var/tmp/portage/www-
client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-esr31/obj-x86_64-pc-linux-
gnu/_virtualenv/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip...
Complete output from command /var/tmp/portage/www...ualenv/bin/python2.7 -c
import sys, pip; sys...d\] + sys.argv[1:])) setuptools pip:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File string, line 1, in module
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/virtualenv/virtualenv_support/pip-1.5.4-py2.py3-none-
any.whl/pip/__init__.py, line 10, in module
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/virtualenv/virtualenv_support/pip-1.5.4-py2.py3-none-
any.whl/pip/util.py, line 18, in module
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/virtualenv/virtualenv_support/pip-1.5.4-py2.py3-none-
any.whl/pip/_vendor/distlib/version.py, line 14, in module
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/virtualenv/virtualenv_support/pip-1.5.4-py2.py3-none-
any.whl/pip/_vendor/distlib/compat.py, line 31, in module
ImportError: cannot import name HTTPSHandler
...Installing setuptools, pip...done.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/virtualenv/virtualenv.py, line 2338, in module
main()
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/virtualenv/virtualenv.py, line 824, in main
symlink=options.symlink)
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/virtualenv/virtualenv.py, line 992, in create_environment
install_wheel(to_install, py_executable, search_dirs)
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/virtualenv/virtualenv.py, line 960, in install_wheel
'PIP_NO_INDEX': '1'
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/virtualenv/virtualenv.py, line 902, in call_subprocess
% (cmd_desc, proc.returncode))
OSError: Command /var/tmp/portage/www...ualenv/bin/python2.7 -c import sys,
pip; sys...d\] + sys.argv[1:])) setuptools pip failed with error code 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/mozbuild/mozbuild/virtualenv.py, line 473, in module
manager.ensure()
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/mozbuild/mozbuild/virtualenv.py, line 128, in ensure
return self.build()
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/mozbuild/mozbuild/virtualenv.py, line 371, in build
self.create()
File /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/python/mozbuild/mozbuild/virtualenv.py, line 147, in create
raise Exception('Error creating virtualenv.')
Exception: Error creating virtualenv.
-- config.log --
This file contains any messages produced by compilers while
running configure, to aid debugging if configure makes a mistake.
configure:1212: checking host system type
configure:1233: checking target system type
configure:1251: checking build system type
configure:1326: checking for mawk
configure:1326: checking for gawk
*** Fix above errors and then restart with\
make -f client.mk build
/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-esr31/client.mk:344:
recipe for target 'configure' failed
make[2]: *** [configure] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory '/var/tmp/portage/www-
client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-esr31'
/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-esr31/client.mk:358:
recipe for target '/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/obj-x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/Makefile' failed
make[1]: *** [/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-
esr31/obj-x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/Makefile] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/var/tmp/portage/www-
client/firefox-31.8.0/work/mozilla-esr31'
client.mk:168: recipe for target 'build' failed
make: *** [build] Error 2
* ERROR: www-client/firefox-31.8.0::gentoo failed (compile phase):
* emake failed
*
* If you need support, post the output of `emerge --info '=www-
client/firefox-31.8.0::gentoo'`,
* the complete build log and the output of `emerge -pqv '=www-
client/firefox-31.8.0::gentoo'`.
* The complete build log is located at '/var/tmp/portage/www-
[gentoo-user] Wifi: Hardware out of luck ?
Hi, I bought a Wifi USB dongle, on which box was stated: Linux cpmpatible, driver available. As it seams, it was an advertising: The driver is a source code archive of the vendor - last updated for kernel ... 2.6.x. lsusb reports: Bus 001 Device 004: ID 148f:7601 Ralink Technology, Corp. MT7601U Wireless Adapter lspci does not say anything about this device. I compiled everything Ralink into the kernel (4.1.3, vanilla), but still get only lsusb recognizing this. Any hope to get it running nonetheless somehow? Best regards, Meino
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The state of public relations?
2015-07-25 8:18 GMT-06:00 Jc García jyo.gar...@gmail.com: That said I'm all for an installer graphical and remote (as a previous post said, automation comes handy at times) * I clicked send before I was finished editing.
Re: [gentoo-user] Testing SSD? (Somewhat OT)
On 07/25/2015 05:12 AM, lee wrote: Daniel Frey djqf...@gmail.com writes: Well, I sure haven't had much luck with SSDs. This will be the third one I've lost. + Buy good hardware. + Never store anything on only a single disk (with very few exceptions). + Do not put swap partitions on single disks, either. + Disks always come in pairs at least. SSDs, I'd currently buy Samsung 850 pro or evo, depending on how they are going to be used. Samsung firmware is glitchy. When I bought the replacement I read that the firmware in the 840/850 may be glitchy causing random blocks of valid data to be erased during TRIM operations. (Reported June 2015.) I was going to get a Samsung until I read of this new firmware glitch, as the store I went to had them in stock. I was originally going to get an Intel SSD but nobody here had stock. yesterday bought a new SSD, this time a SanDisk model. It was cheap and I hope I don't regret this in the future. Well, you get what you pay for. To me, all the hassle a failed disk (or other hardware) will give me isn't worth saving a bit of money on it. I maintain full backup images (or stage4, is that what they call them?) so I just unpack, reinstall grub, and reboot. This is for a remote mythtv frontend so there are no other files on it. The databases and everything it needs are run on a server with RAID and backups of the database on said server to a NAS nightly. Since you got it cheap, why not buy another one and use RAID-1 (and/or zfs)? When one fails, shutdown, replace the failed disk, restart --- no hassle involved. That aside, the drive that failed is a Crucial m4. I have done some searching as how to run diagnostics on an SSD. When you get sector errors reported in the log file when accessing the disk, the disk has failed (provided that the cabling and power supply are ok). This goes for hard disks --- are SSDs any different in that? I wasn't getting sector errors from the disk itself. I was experiencing random kernel panics and apparently scrambled data. From reviews, Crucial seems to make decent SSDs. I've lost Crucial and Kingston SSDs in the past, all in this machine (and one in the server, now I find they're too unreliable for that use so I don't use them in my server anymore.) Other than that, I don't need any more diagnostics. It would only tell me what I already know. Well, after lots of scratching head, I decided to -run smartctl tests (no real info) -I used shred on it, then used fstrim, checked results -Updated the firmware, another shred and fstrim I guess for SSDs there's really no actual check. Best you can do is shred/fstrim using smartctl (check drive stats before and after operations so you can compare them.) My SSD with the new firmware didn't trip any more errors. I usually send them back for warranty, but this time I'm curious. Without physically destroying it, I won't give any disk out of hand which has had my data on it. Unfortunately, that probably means that there is no warranty on disks. I only take the duration of the warranty as some indicator of what the manufacturer entrusts the disk with, as in 5 years may be better than 3. There's no data on it that I care about, as I said, it's a remote mythtv frontend. For drives in my main workstation I destroy them. In practice, hard disks either fail not long after new, or after about 3 years, or virtually never because they are replaced for other reasons before they fail. SSDs might be different; I don't have much experience with them yet. In my experience SSDs just randomly fail with no warning whatsoever. Random issues/crashes/segfaults, kernel panics. smartctl reports nothing. I'd actually forgotten I'd posted this. What happened in the end is that I called the manufacturer and they asked me to leave the SSD plugged in without a SATA cable attached to do manual garbage collection. That got me thinking, I checked the machine and the discard option wasn't set in fstab. I do recall reading newer kernels are supposed to use TRIM automatically and so I didn't explicitly set it, but maybe that's with other distros. I suspect it was a configuration error on my part. I have added the discard option and am going to convert /boot to ext4 so I can use the discard option there too, and install grub2 to take care of the booting. I also set up anacron with fstrim to run weekly as I found recommended elsewhere to try to resolve the problem. I'm going to convert vixie-cron and anacron to cronie with the anacron USE set as well, so I can set the MAILFROM var in crontab as when machines email me I can't figure out which machine it came from. I don't have another machine to try this Crucial drive in yet, but I'll find something. It'll probably be fine now.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The state of public relations?
On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 10:44:19AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: On 25/07/2015 10:28, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Fri, 24 Jul 2015 13:07:20 -0600, Justin Findlay wrote: Gentoo does not need an 'installer'. We have way too many people not being able to read simple instructions already or spending 5minutes on googlethinking for themselves. Just look at this mailing list. We really don't need more of them. I disagree. There are always going to be people who don't read instructions or who don't even share your intuition about things. They are called Ubuntu users - they and Ubuntu are welcome to one another. Are you saying you would want on influx of people who can't be bothered to read or think for themselves? Please good lord no. Let's not have that again. Once a year or so this list gets flooded by a new bunch of folks who spew forth an unending stream of simple questions and can't be bothered to look further than their nose. And these folks never contribute back. Gentoo requires that the user has a decent amount of clue and has a good idea of what they want. Plus a healthy dose of ah fuck it, I can figure this out for myself. It's not elitism to say that, it's a simple statement of fact about who the target market is. Folks looking for pointy-click installers are not it. Neither are ricers. To a point I agree with this, however I am also reluctant to discourage new users who are coming from *buntu or Mandriva/Mandrake or other distros from joining our community because of being scared of from their first kernel panic. I think an installer, for lack of a better term, could be a good thing - something to help guide new users through the process, or like the suggested check things likely to be missed would help prevent new users being scared off. I still think the Handbook is an invaluable resource, and consider it a hallmark of Gentoo. I also agree that going through a build using the handbook is akin to a right of passage; but perhaps the handbook could be delivered as part of the installer (I'm just spit-balling, here). I'm not saying something like kickstart or similar that does everything to a predefined config since that would defeat the key goal of Gentoo; but something to make it just that little bit easier for new users to *see* if their system is good or not. Additionally, it could be expanded with an answers-file like mechanism to allow experienced users (or anyone else, I guess) to set up an automated rollout. On the topic of Gentoo public relations; I agree that it would be beneficial to increase the visibility of Gentoo alongside Fedora or *buntu. Granted the resources of Gentoo Foundation aren't limitless, this would also be alleviated to some extent with an increase in users - more users, more donations, and more potential attention from other entities, etc. That's my two cents, anyway. -- wraeth wra...@wraeth.id.au GnuPG Key: B2D9F759
Re: [gentoo-user] Wifi: Hardware out of luck ?
On Sat, 25 Jul 2015, meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: ...under which name/config option? If I grep through 4.1.3 sources I dont find anything, which is named 'mtu760*' or which contains that... You have the answer here: Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com [15-07-25 15:12]: Which apparently was merged into mainline kernel from 4.2 onwards. you can try it by emerging git-sources-4.2_rc3, you should then find it under: - Device Drivers - Network device support - Wireless LAN - Mediatek Wireless LAN support - MediaTek MT7601U (USB) support
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On 07/25/2015 06:09 AM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: Unfortunately, I must start over. After successfully installing linux, I proceeded to install windows. The result was an unbootable system invalid partition table (thank you windows installer). I rebooted the linux installation disk and re-executed the grub2-install. I also entered fdisk and wrote out the result. Still unbootable. Now I remember why I always install windows (which is basically pushing a button) before installing linux. Next time I will run wipefs. I've installed Windows on a machine that had linux already multiple times, and while I've had to reinstall grub I've never had problems with the partition table like you mention. Is Windows writing a hybrid partition table? Maybe use something like parted to check. Dan
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 16:32:19 Daniel Frey wrote: Is Windows writing a hybrid partition table? Maybe use something like parted to check. Dan MSwindows these days installs a separate boot partition. The MSWindows boot manager can be chainloaded from there, but then it needs to be able to read the (GPT) partition table of the main OS, which in this case seems to be having trouble with. However, I am thinking that the URL I posted may refer to the bootloader (as in the MBR boot code) having trouble booting from a GPT table, rather than the MSWindows boot manager itself hmmm ... this needs some testing. Allan, have you tried first creating the partitions and FAT32/NTFS filesystems, BEFORE you attempted to install MSWindows? -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Wifi: Hardware out of luck ?
Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com [15-07-25 15:12]: On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 12:49:52 Nils Larsson wrote: I've always found USB wifi dongles to be hit-n-miss on linux. But you could try the sources here: https://github.com/porjo/mt7601 Ah! Good find! This is the latest driver: https://github.com/kuba-moo/mt7601u Which apparently was merged into mainline kernel from 4.2 onwards. -- Regards, Mick ...under which name/config option? If I grep through 4.1.3 sources I dont find anything, which is named 'mtu760*' or which contains that... Best regards, Meino
Re: [gentoo-user] The state of public relations?
On Fri, 24 July 2015, at 3:35 pm, J.Rutkowski j...@pancakebungalow.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 24, 2015, at 07:56 AM, James wrote: Rich, I'll be practical. Gentoo needs an installer program, like most other distros if you want your rank_n_file users to entice new users. … I absolutely think that an installer is necessary to attract newcomers and keep them. I recall similar discussions back around 2004. Gentoo was fashionable for a while then, and we had plenty of new users. It wasn't for the lack of installer that they went away - fashions change, but at the end of the day it's only a certain kind of niche user who finds Gentoo suits them long term. If you create a slick GUI installer, then users will only be disappointed with they finish installing their KDE-Gentoo desktop and are told oh, package installs and system upgrades must be done in a terminal, and sometimes you have to do stuff to work around these Portage blocks. Why doesn't Gentoo have a nice graphical package manager? the n00bs will cry, just like all the other distros! What will happen when you meet that request? Complaints that, after clicking the button in the GUI package manager, Gentoo takes much longer to install Firefox that Ubuntu does. If you want to attract to Gentoo the kind of people for whom a graphical installer is important, then IMO these are the first things you need to address. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The state of public relations?
2015-07-25 2:44 GMT-06:00 Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com: Once a year or so this list gets flooded by a new bunch of folks who spew forth an unending stream of simple questions and can't be bothered to look further than their nose. And these folks never contribute back. I haven't been that long on this list to see that, but I definitely have seen what you are talking when I adventured to try funtoo. If anyone wants to see what making it easier to get installed the distro does, advice you to go on the funtoo forums, and see what 'user centric' does to a source-based distro, (Funtoo has some good ideas but it's community is rather disappointing) although I attribute the influx of these 'I want free support' users mostly because the anti-systemd stance of funtoo, really useful to driver ignorant emotional people to be your users. That said I'm all for an installer graphical and remote(as I read in so), that gives advanced user options, and has a big notice that says RTFM.
Re: [gentoo-user] Wifi: Hardware out of luck ?
Jeremi Piotrowski jeremi.piotrow...@gmail.com [15-07-25 16:24]: On Sat, 25 Jul 2015, meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: ...under which name/config option? If I grep through 4.1.3 sources I dont find anything, which is named 'mtu760*' or which contains that... You have the answer here: Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com [15-07-25 15:12]: Which apparently was merged into mainline kernel from 4.2 onwards. you can try it by emerging git-sources-4.2_rc3, you should then find it under: - Device Drivers - Network device support - Wireless LAN - Mediatek Wireless LAN support - MediaTek MT7601U (USB) support Hi Jeremi, ok, sorry...need more coffee ... ;) Thanks for pointing this out. Best regards, Meino
Re: [gentoo-user] SOLVED xen hvm USE flag disabled (xen: How to enable a non-existant USE flag? (xen doesn't work))
On Wed, 15 Jul 2015, hw wrote: Hm, I'm not sure what to make of this bug. I switched profile to one that doesn't say 'no-multilib', and the flag became available. However, I could not compile xen-tools with hvm because stub-32.h was missing. FWIW, it is not enough to change the profile to activate it, you have to also adjust your existing packages by re-emerging under the new profile. So what you should've tried is: emerge --update --ask --deep --newuse @world I don't know how well switching from no-multilib to multilib is supported, but this would've required atleast a recompilation of glibc (which provides stub-32.h), and gcc, probably not much more than that (but I could be wrong). Also, a multilib profile doesn't automatically mean your system starts building two binaries, for that you have the ABI_X86 flags which you can control on a per-package basis. So I ended up re-installing the server to a different profile and finally got it to work. Since rebuilding gcc and glibc takes a while, it's possible that this was actually the best (quickest) way out.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 14:09:57 gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: On Fri, Jul 24 2015, Paul Tobias wrote: On 23 Jul 2015 16:18, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: On Thu, Jul 23 2015, Paul Tobias wrote: On 23 Jul 2015 02:31, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: My new installation is running well, in particular it boots fine. However the grub2-mkconfig seems odd. It finds linux (all kernels) and the stub windows partition. But then I get messages that both ext4-fs and FAT-fs have trouble with /dev/sda4, which is the extended partition. Perhaps the fact that the windows partitions sda[23] don't really have windows on them yet is part of the answer?? Has anyone else seen something like this? thanks, allan Maybe there was another partition on the disk around that location before and the file system signature is still lurking around? Run `wipefs /dev/sda4`, that will show you which signatures are there. Wow what a command name! When I first read your msg I had a double take, since wiping (i.e., erasing) /dev/sda4 would erase my entire linux installation. Reading the man page helped, but I would like one more piece of assurance. Am I correct in believing/hoping that when the man page says When used without options -a or -o, it lists all visible filesystems and the offsets of their basic signatures. it means When used without options -a or -o, it lists all visible filesystems and the offsets of their basic signatures *and erases nothing*. I really don't want to damage any signature on the extended partition that is needed to access the sub-partitions it contains. As I said my newly installed gentoo resides on those sub-partitions. thanks. allan yes, wipefs doesn't actually write anything if ran without options. I use it when I suspect blkid doesn't show me all the signatures. but my message was a shot in the dark because I didn't actually see the exact error message you are getting. please send the output of wipefs /dev/sda4 and the error message you are getting together with the actual commands you are running to get the output. that way there will be more helpful replies (and hopefully less flame). Thank you. Unfortunately, I must start over. After successfully installing linux, I proceeded to install windows. The result was an unbootable system invalid partition table (thank you windows installer). I rebooted the linux installation disk and re-executed the grub2-install. I also entered fdisk and wrote out the result. Still unbootable. Now I remember why I always install windows (which is basically pushing a button) before installing linux. Next time I will run wipefs. allan PS I checked and the gentoo installation guide says that gpt without uefi prevents dual booting windows. I'm afraid you're right: Can Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008 read, write, and boot from GPT disks? Yes, all versions can use GPT partitioned disks for data. Booting is only supported for 64-bit editions on UEFI-based systems. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn640535(v=vs.85).aspx#gpt_faq_xp64_boot Unless you have a good reason for dual booting, why don't you install MSWindows in a VM? -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Testing SSD? (Somewhat OT)
On Saturday 25 July 2015 08:49:35 Daniel Frey wrote: I'm going to convert vixie-cron and anacron to cronie with the anacron USE set as well, so I can set the MAILFROM var in crontab as when machines email me I can't figure out which machine it came from. That's odd. When vixie-cron is run as root on one of my boxes, the e-mail I get says who it's from, thus: ---8 From: Cron Daemon root@serv.prhnet To: prh@serv.prhnet Subject: Cron root@serv /sbin/fstrim -av ---8 That's on the box named serv on my LAN, prhnet. -- Rgds Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] Packaging ASL
On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 07:18:58 -0600 Jc García wrote: 2015-07-21 5:41 GMT-06:00 Zeev Pekar zeev.pe...@avtechscientific.com: Dear Gentoo Developers, We have just released the version 0.1.4 of ASL - Advanced Simulation Library http://asl.org.il. May I ask somebody to volunteer to package it for Gentoo? Packaging efforts for other distros are underway and probably can be helpful for Gentoo [1]. Really interesting library, but I doubt you will get what you expect in this list, neither in the -dev list because as it is a library and AFAIK there's no applications requiring it, I doubt they'll want to add it to the main repository, but sure there's a place in gentoo for the library, the gentoo-science project[1], you can try create a github issue[2] requesting the add of the library there. You could also find more folks interested in it, this list I would say is mostly sysadmin/troubled-user stuff. If I find time I might try to make the ebuild and send pull request to the science repo, but I haven't learned much about CMake, so I would have to learn a bit more about it first. Regards, and thank you for the spread of such Important type software in a FOSS way. [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Science [2] https://github.com/gentoo-science/sci (If you check the commits log you'll see that it is a very alive repo) I added sci-libs/asl-0.1.4 to the science overlay. Enjoy! Best regards, Andrew Savchenko pgpxlzvN6OU2s.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] The state of public relations?
In my opinion the installer is the last reason people do not use Gentoo. Look at the other distros out there without a graphical installer. One of them is one of the most popular distros out there. Gentoo experiences a difficulty pulling in more users for many reasons. Firstly there is a large majority that do not understand Gentoo's package system. They know they have to compile things. They may not even be aware that emerge exists. On top of this, they feel it takes an exorbitant amount of time to install things. Then, they ask what the benefits to this method are. They do not understand the benefits that use flags provide or the time they save. They see it as not worthwhile. I often hear that makes sense in an embedded environment but that's it. People need to understand the benefits of Gentoo more clearly. A clear depiction of the philosophy and goals (which in my mind is fairly evident already) helps with this. We need to as users explain the benefits of Gentoo vs the so called perceived cons. On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 2:57 PM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 17:35:51 Stroller wrote: On Fri, 24 July 2015, at 3:35 pm, J.Rutkowski j...@pancakebungalow.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 24, 2015, at 07:56 AM, James wrote: Rich, I'll be practical. Gentoo needs an installer program, like most other distros if you want your rank_n_file users to entice new users. … I absolutely think that an installer is necessary to attract newcomers and keep them. I recall similar discussions back around 2004. Gentoo was fashionable for a while then, and we had plenty of new users. It wasn't for the lack of installer that they went away - fashions change, but at the end of the day it's only a certain kind of niche user who finds Gentoo suits them long term. If you create a slick GUI installer, then users will only be disappointed with they finish installing their KDE-Gentoo desktop and are told oh, package installs and system upgrades must be done in a terminal, and sometimes you have to do stuff to work around these Portage blocks. Why doesn't Gentoo have a nice graphical package manager? the n00bs will cry, just like all the other distros! What will happen when you meet that request? Complaints that, after clicking the button in the GUI package manager, Gentoo takes much longer to install Firefox that Ubuntu does. If you want to attract to Gentoo the kind of people for whom a graphical installer is important, then IMO these are the first things you need to address. Stroller. Others mentioned it and Stroller finessed it: There are different use cases and Gentoo does not fit nicely in all of them. A GUI installer, or automated install script will suit noobs for some of whom Gentoo is not an appropriate distro, leading to disappointment and potentially bad press. In any case, I think that Sabayon would probably suit them nicely if they want to quickly dip their toes into a Gentoo-based distro. A GUI installer, or automated but configurable install script, will also suit people who need a quick VM, or cloud set up. Arguably, they should already know how to create their own VM image to suit their requirements - it's the first off that will take some time to think through, thereafter they will have their own stage-4 VM image. Nevertheless, I accept that it will offer some convenience in terms of speed. Then it is all other Gentoo users for whom the current handbook is what they learn or expect as the norm. If they are new to Gentoo, the handbook acts both as a filter for users to whom Gentoo is unsuitable and as an educational experience for those that stick with it. I am not entirely sure that people who click on three buttons to get a RHL cluster going would be flocking to Gentoo. I mean, fine they got their Gentoo cluster up running. What then? Will they be compiling software on the cluster for each and every update? Or will they be running the updates on a test/pre-prod server and then update the cluster using the precompiled binaries? Ultimately, as Rich suggested, whoever has an itch will scratch it and scratch it in a way to provide the tools they need for their specific use case(s). As long as Gentoo does not try to imitate and duplicate the *buntu RHL's of this world I would have nothing to complain about. Personally I am rather happy for Gentoo being as it is and this the reason I've been using it for 12 happy years. :-) -- Regards, Mick -- The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world. -- seen on the net
Re: [gentoo-user] Testing SSD? (Somewhat OT)
On 07/25/2015 09:43 AM, Peter Humphrey wrote: On Saturday 25 July 2015 08:49:35 Daniel Frey wrote: I'm going to convert vixie-cron and anacron to cronie with the anacron USE set as well, so I can set the MAILFROM var in crontab as when machines email me I can't figure out which machine it came from. That's odd. When vixie-cron is run as root on one of my boxes, the e-mail I get says who it's from, thus: ---8 From: Cron Daemon root@serv.prhnet To: prh@serv.prhnet Subject: Cron root@serv /sbin/fstrim -av ---8 That's on the box named serv on my LAN, prhnet. I should've been more specific, I'm using ssmtp to forward to gmail and gmail seems to change the FROM header as if I sent it from the gmail account. I do this so I can get notifications to my phone without having to deal with setting up local mail infrastructure and dealing with routing around port blocking issues with my ISP. However, you can set MAILFROM=b...@whatever.net and google shows this in the headers, which is all I need to identify the box it came from. When I view it with my phone or Thunderbird all it says is (Cron Daemon). But the headers actually identify the box which is all I need. In the GMail headers I see: X-Google-Original-From: (Cron Daemon) root@coreserver I don't know if I can change the displayed name with cronie. I haven't tried that yet. I have changed the full name on all root accounts to identify the box it came from, but alas, cron seems to ignore it. If I send mail using `echo Hah | mail -s Testing myaddr...@gmail.com` it works fine (picking up the full name set with chfn.) Dan
Re: [gentoo-user] The state of public relations?
On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 17:35:51 Stroller wrote: On Fri, 24 July 2015, at 3:35 pm, J.Rutkowski j...@pancakebungalow.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 24, 2015, at 07:56 AM, James wrote: Rich, I'll be practical. Gentoo needs an installer program, like most other distros if you want your rank_n_file users to entice new users. … I absolutely think that an installer is necessary to attract newcomers and keep them. I recall similar discussions back around 2004. Gentoo was fashionable for a while then, and we had plenty of new users. It wasn't for the lack of installer that they went away - fashions change, but at the end of the day it's only a certain kind of niche user who finds Gentoo suits them long term. If you create a slick GUI installer, then users will only be disappointed with they finish installing their KDE-Gentoo desktop and are told oh, package installs and system upgrades must be done in a terminal, and sometimes you have to do stuff to work around these Portage blocks. Why doesn't Gentoo have a nice graphical package manager? the n00bs will cry, just like all the other distros! What will happen when you meet that request? Complaints that, after clicking the button in the GUI package manager, Gentoo takes much longer to install Firefox that Ubuntu does. If you want to attract to Gentoo the kind of people for whom a graphical installer is important, then IMO these are the first things you need to address. Stroller. Others mentioned it and Stroller finessed it: There are different use cases and Gentoo does not fit nicely in all of them. A GUI installer, or automated install script will suit noobs for some of whom Gentoo is not an appropriate distro, leading to disappointment and potentially bad press. In any case, I think that Sabayon would probably suit them nicely if they want to quickly dip their toes into a Gentoo-based distro. A GUI installer, or automated but configurable install script, will also suit people who need a quick VM, or cloud set up. Arguably, they should already know how to create their own VM image to suit their requirements - it's the first off that will take some time to think through, thereafter they will have their own stage-4 VM image. Nevertheless, I accept that it will offer some convenience in terms of speed. Then it is all other Gentoo users for whom the current handbook is what they learn or expect as the norm. If they are new to Gentoo, the handbook acts both as a filter for users to whom Gentoo is unsuitable and as an educational experience for those that stick with it. I am not entirely sure that people who click on three buttons to get a RHL cluster going would be flocking to Gentoo. I mean, fine they got their Gentoo cluster up running. What then? Will they be compiling software on the cluster for each and every update? Or will they be running the updates on a test/pre-prod server and then update the cluster using the precompiled binaries? Ultimately, as Rich suggested, whoever has an itch will scratch it and scratch it in a way to provide the tools they need for their specific use case(s). As long as Gentoo does not try to imitate and duplicate the *buntu RHL's of this world I would have nothing to complain about. Personally I am rather happy for Gentoo being as it is and this the reason I've been using it for 12 happy years. :-) -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Wifi: Hardware out of luck ?
On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 12:02:56 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Hi Mick, THAT helps me! I already did download the driver sources...for kernel 2.6.x...ieeekkks! The driver may still work fine with current kernels. I will look for something with an Atheros chipset. I already found some product names... Thanks a lot again! :) Best regards Meino Before you buy something else, if you have installed the driver then try: modprobe -v mt7601Usta and keep an eye in the log to see if it loads successfully. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Wifi: Hardware out of luck ?
I've always found USB wifi dongles to be hit-n-miss on linux. But you could try the sources here: https://github.com/porjo/mt7601 lör 25 jul 2015 13:11 Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com skrev: On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 12:02:56 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Hi Mick, THAT helps me! I already did download the driver sources...for kernel 2.6.x...ieeekkks! The driver may still work fine with current kernels. I will look for something with an Atheros chipset. I already found some product names... Thanks a lot again! :) Best regards Meino Before you buy something else, if you have installed the driver then try: modprobe -v mt7601Usta and keep an eye in the log to see if it loads successfully. -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] Qucik and (not so) dirty WLAN setup
On Saturday 25 July 2015 11:19:39 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Short second question: Is it possible to limit the devices, which could connect to the access point, to some MACs ? It depends on the device you choose for your access point. Some allow you to filter MACs, others may not. Sorry I can't help you choose - it seems to be hard to find real information before you buy. (I know, this is not 100% secure, since even those could be faked, but the average script kiddy may be block for a while.) As you say, MACs are supposedly prone to being spoofed. I only say supposedly because I haven't seen any reports of its happening. Much depends on what you perceive the threat to be: are you in a city with any number of unknown people passing by daily, or like me in a village where you know your neighbours? Of course, you'll also have an effective firewall on each machine that can be reached from the wireless network. -- Rgds Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] Wifi: Hardware out of luck ?
On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 10:16:39 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Hi, I bought a Wifi USB dongle, on which box was stated: Linux cpmpatible, driver available. As it seams, it was an advertising: The driver is a source code archive of the vendor - last updated for kernel ... 2.6.x. lsusb reports: Bus 001 Device 004: ID 148f:7601 Ralink Technology, Corp. MT7601U Wireless Adapter I don't mean to sound pessimistic but my experience of fighting to get a Ralink USB dongle working many years ago left me disappointed. I was trying to use an opensource driver back then and it was terribly unstable. If you can, I recommend to go back to the shop and buy something with an atheros chipset which worked for me every time with in-kernel drivers. lspci does not say anything about this device. You need the correct driver, which I understand is not in the kernel tree yet. I compiled everything Ralink into the kernel (4.1.3, vanilla), but still get only lsusb recognizing this. Any hope to get it running nonetheless somehow? Go the the MediaTek website and download the appropriate linux driver. Then follow instructions here to install it manually: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2206873 Finally modprobe the newly built mt7601Usta module and the device should hopefully show up. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Qucik and (not so) dirty WLAN setup
On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 11:23:39 Peter Humphrey wrote: On Saturday 25 July 2015 11:19:39 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Short second question: Is it possible to limit the devices, which could connect to the access point, to some MACs ? It depends on the device you choose for your access point. Some allow you to filter MACs, others may not. Sorry I can't help you choose - it seems to be hard to find real information before you buy. I think that Meino wants to implement a MAC ACL on his hostapd settings, rather than on a separate router appliance. Have a look in the configuration file hostapd.conf. You can define your own accept/deny files and list in there any devices you want to explicitly allow or deny from connecting to the hostapd. (I know, this is not 100% secure, since even those could be faked, but the average script kiddy may be block for a while.) As you say, MACs are supposedly prone to being spoofed. I only say supposedly because I haven't seen any reports of its happening. Much depends on what you perceive the threat to be: are you in a city with any number of unknown people passing by daily, or like me in a village where you know your neighbours? Of course, you'll also have an effective firewall on each machine that can be reached from the wireless network. Unless you have your AP running 24-7, WPA2 should be secure enough for most purposes. If you are in the middle of a city, next to a university with a known branch of script kiddies, then set up a VPN between the two devices. You do understand that MAC ACLs will not deter anyone who can use kismet and aircrack-ng. With regards to setting up your firewall on the PC, it would not harm to set up two VLANs, seperating the PC LAN subnet from the wireless. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Wifi: Hardware out of luck ?
Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com [15-07-25 12:32]: On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 10:16:39 meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: Hi, I bought a Wifi USB dongle, on which box was stated: Linux cpmpatible, driver available. As it seams, it was an advertising: The driver is a source code archive of the vendor - last updated for kernel ... 2.6.x. lsusb reports: Bus 001 Device 004: ID 148f:7601 Ralink Technology, Corp. MT7601U Wireless Adapter I don't mean to sound pessimistic but my experience of fighting to get a Ralink USB dongle working many years ago left me disappointed. I was trying to use an opensource driver back then and it was terribly unstable. If you can, I recommend to go back to the shop and buy something with an atheros chipset which worked for me every time with in-kernel drivers. lspci does not say anything about this device. You need the correct driver, which I understand is not in the kernel tree yet. I compiled everything Ralink into the kernel (4.1.3, vanilla), but still get only lsusb recognizing this. Any hope to get it running nonetheless somehow? Go the the MediaTek website and download the appropriate linux driver. Then follow instructions here to install it manually: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2206873 Finally modprobe the newly built mt7601Usta module and the device should hopefully show up. -- Regards, Mick Hi Mick, THAT helps me! I already did download the driver sources...for kernel 2.6.x...ieeekkks! I will look for something with an Atheros chipset. I already found some product names... Thanks a lot again! :) Best regards Meino
Re: [gentoo-user] Wifi: Hardware out of luck ?
On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 12:49:52 Nils Larsson wrote: I've always found USB wifi dongles to be hit-n-miss on linux. But you could try the sources here: https://github.com/porjo/mt7601 Ah! Good find! This is the latest driver: https://github.com/kuba-moo/mt7601u Which apparently was merged into mainline kernel from 4.2 onwards. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Fri, Jul 24 2015, Paul Tobias wrote: On 23 Jul 2015 16:18, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: On Thu, Jul 23 2015, Paul Tobias wrote: On 23 Jul 2015 02:31, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: My new installation is running well, in particular it boots fine. However the grub2-mkconfig seems odd. It finds linux (all kernels) and the stub windows partition. But then I get messages that both ext4-fs and FAT-fs have trouble with /dev/sda4, which is the extended partition. Perhaps the fact that the windows partitions sda[23] don't really have windows on them yet is part of the answer?? Has anyone else seen something like this? thanks, allan Maybe there was another partition on the disk around that location before and the file system signature is still lurking around? Run `wipefs /dev/sda4`, that will show you which signatures are there. Wow what a command name! When I first read your msg I had a double take, since wiping (i.e., erasing) /dev/sda4 would erase my entire linux installation. Reading the man page helped, but I would like one more piece of assurance. Am I correct in believing/hoping that when the man page says When used without options -a or -o, it lists all visible filesystems and the offsets of their basic signatures. it means When used without options -a or -o, it lists all visible filesystems and the offsets of their basic signatures *and erases nothing*. I really don't want to damage any signature on the extended partition that is needed to access the sub-partitions it contains. As I said my newly installed gentoo resides on those sub-partitions. thanks. allan yes, wipefs doesn't actually write anything if ran without options. I use it when I suspect blkid doesn't show me all the signatures. but my message was a shot in the dark because I didn't actually see the exact error message you are getting. please send the output of wipefs /dev/sda4 and the error message you are getting together with the actual commands you are running to get the output. that way there will be more helpful replies (and hopefully less flame). Thank you. Unfortunately, I must start over. After successfully installing linux, I proceeded to install windows. The result was an unbootable system invalid partition table (thank you windows installer). I rebooted the linux installation disk and re-executed the grub2-install. I also entered fdisk and wrote out the result. Still unbootable. Now I remember why I always install windows (which is basically pushing a button) before installing linux. Next time I will run wipefs. allan PS I checked and the gentoo installation guide says that gpt without uefi prevents dual booting windows.
Re: [gentoo-user] xen doesn't work
hydra hydrapo...@gmail.com writes: However, you don't have hvm/qemu enabled so that's why your HVM guests won't start up. Indeed that was the problem. Once I found that out, I finally was able to get it to work. It's quite frustrating when you follow the documentation and yet things just don't work for unknown reasons. Maybe try to modify the wiki for others to know? Yes, I did a couple days ago. Actually PV guests are not that hard at all.br /blockquote br/span Well, how do you do that?=C2=A0 Soon I want to do some Gentoo installations= on this server.=C2=A0 Can I just start with HVM and switch over to PV once= the installation is done?/blockquotedivbr/divdivFrom a running s= ystem lvm partitions are created for the virtual machine, then you mount th= ose partitions, unpack stage3 on them, chroot and follow the same way as wi= th installing a normal machine. You need to enable this when compiling the = kernel. Thanks, that sounds really easy and makes sense; I'll try that :) -- Again we must be afraid of speaking of daemons for fear that daemons might swallow us. Finally, this fear has become reasonable.
Re: [gentoo-user] Testing SSD? (Somewhat OT)
Daniel Frey djqf...@gmail.com writes: Well, I sure haven't had much luck with SSDs. This will be the third one I've lost. + Buy good hardware. + Never store anything on only a single disk (with very few exceptions). + Do not put swap partitions on single disks, either. + Disks always come in pairs at least. SSDs, I'd currently buy Samsung 850 pro or evo, depending on how they are going to be used. yesterday bought a new SSD, this time a SanDisk model. It was cheap and I hope I don't regret this in the future. Well, you get what you pay for. To me, all the hassle a failed disk (or other hardware) will give me isn't worth saving a bit of money on it. Since you got it cheap, why not buy another one and use RAID-1 (and/or zfs)? When one fails, shutdown, replace the failed disk, restart --- no hassle involved. That aside, the drive that failed is a Crucial m4. I have done some searching as how to run diagnostics on an SSD. When you get sector errors reported in the log file when accessing the disk, the disk has failed (provided that the cabling and power supply are ok). This goes for hard disks --- are SSDs any different in that? Other than that, I don't need any more diagnostics. It would only tell me what I already know. I usually send them back for warranty, but this time I'm curious. Without physically destroying it, I won't give any disk out of hand which has had my data on it. Unfortunately, that probably means that there is no warranty on disks. I only take the duration of the warranty as some indicator of what the manufacturer entrusts the disk with, as in 5 years may be better than 3. In practice, hard disks either fail not long after new, or after about 3 years, or virtually never because they are replaced for other reasons before they fail. SSDs might be different; I don't have much experience with them yet. -- Again we must be afraid of speaking of daemons for fear that daemons might swallow us. Finally, this fear has become reasonable.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Project:Installer
Matthew Marchese maffblas...@gentoo.org writes: Hi all, I see that you've found stager. I'd like you to share your thoughts on what a perfect installer Gentoo could do. The Debian installer is the best one I've seen so far. If you're thinking towards Redhat, the Fedora installer can't even do partitioning, and the Centos 7 one was just the like. They suck horribly, and they don't give you choices. Having that said, and having done few Gentoo installations: I'm merely wishing installing Gentoo wasn't such a lengthy process. It's lengthy in that you have to do the steps manually while browsing the excellent handbook. If there was an installer that would guide you through these steps and bring up the files you need to edit in an editor, that could save a lot of time already. It could reduce the possibility for error, as in overlooking that you need to do some step. Otoh, I have to come to like how Gentoo is installed. You can do whatever you like, and the process is pretty straightforward. I don't see how an installer could give you that, yet a perfect installer would need to. How about support for booting from ZFS? I'd really like to see that; it should be as easy as booting from other file systems. Without it, we have to do ugly things. -- Again we must be afraid of speaking of daemons for fear that daemons might swallow us. Finally, this fear has become reasonable.
Re: [gentoo-user] xen: How to enable a non-existant USE flag? (xen doesn't work)
Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk writes: On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 12:42:00 +0200, hw wrote: Of course, there may be a very good reason why this flag is masked on no-multilib profiles, in which case you will not only see why but get to keep the resulting shrapnel. I would say it is wrong to disable this flag in the first place, especially so without giving any warning, like when emerging xen-tools, that that flag is required for hardware virtualisation. The same goes for other flags which are alike as well. If it doesn't work without multilib, it doesn't work without multilib - adding a USE flag will not change that. I think it doesn't need anything multilib other than for compiling some parts. Why can't the missing stuff, like stub-32.h, be pulled in as a dependency, perhaps with a warning that some package(s) need to be installed which you otherwise would only have with a multilib installation? In any case, I think equery should show masked use flags. If it did, we could see right away that we need to do something to enable something. Wouldn't that be preferable over being left in the dark? But masking the USE flag will at least stop you trying to use it without multilib. Not really: You can change the profile to one that doesn't contain 'no-multilib' and enable the flag. When you do that, what speaks against installing the missing packages which you do not have in a no-multilib installation and need for xen with hvm? (After all, having to switch to a multilib installation just for xen is a rather harsh requirement ...) ebuilds are only shell scripts, not magic spells. Knowledge is volatile and fluid; software is power. Anyway, I made a note about it on the wiki a couple days ago so ppl can know that they need multilib. How about a feature request/bug report on equery so that it will show the masked use flags? An 'equery uses ...' is supposed to show the flags, yet it doesn't show them all. -- Again we must be afraid of speaking of daemons for fear that daemons might swallow us. Finally, this fear has become reasonable.
