[gentoo-user] Re: 32GB RAM and Swap

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 02/05/2020 05:06, tu...@posteo.de wrote:

as far as I know, the hibernation mechanism of the kernel uses swap
as storage place for an RAM image.

If you plan to use hibernation, I think you need swap space in the
size of your RAM.


For this case you can set vm.swappiness=0 and still have a swap 
partition. This disables swap for normal use but still has a swap 
partition available for things like hibernation. Just create a .conf 
file in /etc/sysctl.d/ (I use "/etc/sysctl.d/local.conf") with this in it:


  vm.swappiness=0

This will apply the setting during boot. To set it for the currently 
running session as well without having to reboot, execute:


  sysctl vm.swappiness=0

as root.

[gentoo-user] Re: 32GB RAM and Swap

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 01/05/2020 22:50, Raphael MD wrote:

Could I turn my Linux swap off.
I have 32 GB of RAM memory, I suppose my system don’t need swap, because 
I’vea lot of RAM, is this true?


I've been on 16GB RAM for about 10 years. I've been using a 4GB swap 
partition for about 8 years. Two years ago, I disabled swap. This fixed 
a long standing problem where running applications that I didn't touch 
for a while would take *ages* to start operating at normal speeds again. 
Setting the vm.swappiness=10 sysctl didn't help either. Only 
vm.swappiness=0 got rid of those issues (which basically means disable 
swap.)


I don't know how common this problem is in general, but for me it 
happened a lot because I use virtual machines to do work on Windows 10, 
Ubuntu and macOS running in Gentoo. This always resulted in applications 
that I didn't touch for a while getting swapped out even though there 
was plenty of RAM free. Since I disabled swap, everything stays nice and 
snappy all the time instead of becoming a sluggish nightmare after a while.

Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[tuxic]

On 05/01 04:50, Raphael MD wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> Could I turn my Linux swap off.
> I have 32 GB of RAM memory, I suppose my system don’t need swap, because
> I’vea lot of RAM, is this true?
> 
> Thanks
> -- 
> M.S. Raphael Mejias Dias
> ​Nuclear Engineer | Reactors
> 
> Secure e-mail: raphael.mejias.d...@protonmail.com
> PGP Key for raph...@gmail.com:
> https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get=0x87BC5A746072F951

Hi Raphael,

as far as I know, the hibernation mechanism of the kernel uses swap
as storage place for an RAM image.

If you plan to use hibernation, I think you need swap space in the
size of your RAM.

Cheers!
Meino

Re: [gentoo-user] Trouble with backup harddisks

[tuxic]

On 05/01 05:32, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Friday, 1 May 2020 17:00:56 BST Andrea Conti wrote:
> 
> > GPT is fine too, but for a 1TB disk with a single partition it has 
> > absolutely
> > zero advantage over MBR.
> 
> I can think of one or two people who might demur there.
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Peter.
> 
> 
> 
> 

Hi Wolf, hi Andrea, hi Peter,

*Partition type '83':
I changed the type to 83 using fdisk and this worked fine. Now
/dev/sdb1 is recognized again.
Just to confirm this...
I think, I feel better if I repartitioning/reformat both drives,
though.

*GPT/MBR
>From a discussion based on a "GPT or MBR for my system drive" in
conjunction with UEFI it was said, that GPT is more modern and
save.
My question was meant not so much as "MBR or GPT?" 
but more whether there are some variants of GPT (with 
protected MBR for example -- which was completly new to me),
which I should use or avoid.

But: Are rescue systems for USB-stick more UEFI/GPT aware nowadays
or "traditionally" based on MBR/BIOS-boot?

One thing I found is really handy: An USB-stick with an rEfind
installation. As long as your PC supports UEFI (or can switched to it)
rEfind is able to boot "everything" without prior configuration.

Some rescue-system which really shines and with which you have made good
experiences?

Cheers!
Meino

Re: [gentoo-user] Trouble with backup harddisks

[tuxic]

On 05/01 09:27, antlists wrote:
> On 01/05/2020 09:03, tu...@posteo.de wrote:
> > Hi Wol,
> > 
> > data copied !:)
> > 
> > I did a
> > 
> >  mdadm --examine /dev/sdb
> 
> Except I pointed you at a utility called lsdrv, not mdadm ... :-)
> 
> Cheers,
> Wol
> 

Hi Wol,

Ouuouud...oh damn! Sorry, Wol...

I donwloaded the lsdrv from github and this is, what it prints

  File "./lsdrv", line 323
os.mkdir('/dev/block', 0755)
  ^
SyntaxError: leading zeros in decimal integer literals are not permitted; use 
an 0o prefix for octal integers
[1]4367 exit 1 ./lsdrv


Seems a little buggy...

Cheers!
Meino

Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Michael]

On Saturday, 2 May 2020 00:08:24 BST Raphael MD wrote:
> On Fri, 1 May 2020 at 18:49 J. Roeleveld  wrote:
> > On 1 May 2020 21:50:02 CEST, Raphael MD  wrote:
> > >Hello!
> > >
> > >Could I turn my Linux swap off.
> > >I have 32 GB of RAM memory, I suppose my system don’t need swap,
> > >because
> > >I’vea lot of RAM, is this true?
> > >
> > >Thanks
> > 
> > This question keeps getting asked every time people go past some imaginary
> > large figure of RAM.
> > 
> > First time I encountered it was somewhere in the 1990s. A friend had a
> > machine with 64MB ram, a massive amount at that time, and disabled all
> > swap. He was surprised his machine crashed because of memory issues,
> > until I asked what he was running. The list included several memory
> > intensive applications.
> > He never asked that again and adds it to all his machines.
> > 
> > My desktop has 32GB and also has some swap. I do regularly see it used and
> > not because of memory leaks like Dale is mentioning, although those do
> > appear on occasion. On my desktop it's mostly because I have a lot of
> > stuff
> > running the whole time.
> > 
> > So, yes, you still need swap and always will. Unless you put about 10
> > times the current magical figure in a desktop. In my view, that would be
> > 320GB for now, and in another 5 years, that would be around 640GB.
> > When you have that level of overkill in a desktop, I will not consider OOM
> > to be likely.
> > 
> > 
> > --
> > Joost
> > 
> > --
> > Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
> 
> Well, it’s figuring that some sort of swap space is necessary, but
> regarding pressure level on kernel, can I setup it to zero or I’m obligated
> to put some number because I’ve a swap file?
> 
> Thanks

Only you know how you're using your PC and if the 32G of RAM can/will be used 
up at some point.  I can assure you if you decide to compile chromium with 
some silly --jobs number, you *will* run out of memory and wish you had set 
some swap at the time.  I don't think I have ever regretted having swap in 
place and still revisit old systems I should have retired years ago to add 
some more swap to make sure a memory hungry application or compilation can run 
and complete without OOM errors.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Getting rid of unwanted languages (Was: Re: gimp help not available, even with USE doc)

[Frank Steinmetzger]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 10:15:54AM -0500, Dale wrote:

> These settings are from AGES ago.  I think they are still in use tho. 
>
> root@fireball / # cat /etc/make.conf | grep lang
> LANG="en_US"
> root@fireball / # cat /etc/make.conf | grep L10N
> L10N="en en-US"

Just to scratch an itch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_(Unix)#Useless_use_of_cat

;-)

-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Save the whales, eat more Japanese!


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Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Michael]

On Saturday, 2 May 2020 00:09:47 BST Wols Lists wrote:
> On 01/05/20 21:29, Dale wrote:
> > It gets really slow to respond when it uses swap but it beats crashing.
> > Just set swapiness to a low number.  I think mine is set to 10.
> > 
> > Given the cheapness of hard drives, I'm not sure why having several
> > gigabytes of swap space is of much concern.  I have the same amount of
> > ram as you and I have a 12GB swap space.  I use LVM so I can grow it if
> > needed or just add another swap space.  I might add, I've seen times
> > where it gets used.
> 
> That first paragraph is why too much swap space is bad - if an app goes
> rogue it can kill system response and make regaining control of the
> system a nightmare.
> 
> Accidentally or on purpose, if a system runs out of ram and starts
> thrashing, you're in big trouble if it's an app eating memory like no
> tomorrow.
> 
> Cheers,
> Wol

This may help responsiveness when it happens:

echo bfq > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

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Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Wols Lists]

On 01/05/20 21:29, Dale wrote:
> It gets really slow to respond when it uses swap but it beats crashing. 
> Just set swapiness to a low number.  I think mine is set to 10.
> 
> Given the cheapness of hard drives, I'm not sure why having several
> gigabytes of swap space is of much concern.  I have the same amount of
> ram as you and I have a 12GB swap space.  I use LVM so I can grow it if
> needed or just add another swap space.  I might add, I've seen times
> where it gets used.

That first paragraph is why too much swap space is bad - if an app goes
rogue it can kill system response and make regaining control of the
system a nightmare.

Accidentally or on purpose, if a system runs out of ram and starts
thrashing, you're in big trouble if it's an app eating memory like no
tomorrow.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Raphael MD]

On Fri, 1 May 2020 at 18:49 J. Roeleveld  wrote:

> On 1 May 2020 21:50:02 CEST, Raphael MD  wrote:
> >Hello!
> >
> >Could I turn my Linux swap off.
> >I have 32 GB of RAM memory, I suppose my system don’t need swap,
> >because
> >I’vea lot of RAM, is this true?
> >
> >Thanks
>
> This question keeps getting asked every time people go past some imaginary
> large figure of RAM.
>
> First time I encountered it was somewhere in the 1990s. A friend had a
> machine with 64MB ram, a massive amount at that time, and disabled all swap.
> He was surprised his machine crashed because of memory issues, until I
> asked what he was running. The list included several memory intensive
> applications.
> He never asked that again and adds it to all his machines.
>
> My desktop has 32GB and also has some swap. I do regularly see it used and
> not because of memory leaks like Dale is mentioning, although those do
> appear on occasion. On my desktop it's mostly because I have a lot of stuff
> running the whole time.
>
> So, yes, you still need swap and always will. Unless you put about 10
> times the current magical figure in a desktop. In my view, that would be
> 320GB for now, and in another 5 years, that would be around 640GB.
> When you have that level of overkill in a desktop, I will not consider OOM
> to be likely.
>
>
> --
> Joost
>
> --
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>

Well, it’s figuring that some sort of swap space is necessary, but
regarding pressure level on kernel, can I setup it to zero or I’m obligated
to put some number because I’ve a swap file?

Thanks

>
> --
M.S. Raphael Mejias Dias
​Nuclear Engineer | Reactors

Secure e-mail: raphael.mejias.d...@protonmail.com
PGP Key for raph...@gmail.com:
https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get=0x87BC5A746072F951

Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[J. Roeleveld]

On 1 May 2020 21:50:02 CEST, Raphael MD  wrote:
>Hello!
>
>Could I turn my Linux swap off.
>I have 32 GB of RAM memory, I suppose my system don’t need swap,
>because
>I’vea lot of RAM, is this true?
>
>Thanks

This question keeps getting asked every time people go past some imaginary 
large figure of RAM.

First time I encountered it was somewhere in the 1990s. A friend had a machine 
with 64MB ram, a massive amount at that time, and disabled all swap.
He was surprised his machine crashed because of memory issues, until I asked 
what he was running. The list included several memory intensive applications.
He never asked that again and adds it to all his machines.

My desktop has 32GB and also has some swap. I do regularly see it used and not 
because of memory leaks like Dale is mentioning, although those do appear on 
occasion. On my desktop it's mostly because I have a lot of stuff running the 
whole time.

So, yes, you still need swap and always will. Unless you put about 10 times the 
current magical figure in a desktop. In my view, that would be 320GB for now, 
and in another 5 years, that would be around 640GB.
When you have that level of overkill in a desktop, I will not consider OOM to 
be likely.


--
Joost

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[tedheadster]

Here is an article suggesting to have a _tiny_ bit of swap. They say
as recently as 2019 that Linux under memory pressure acts poorly with
_zero_ swap.

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2019/08/08/swap/

- Matthew

Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Neil Bothwick]

On Fri, 1 May 2020 15:04:12 -0500, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:

> I have 3 desktop machines with 32 GB of memory. In all 3 I still have
> swap (32 GB, I stopped using the "twice the amount of RAM" rule years
> ago). I don't think I have ever used one single byte from the swap; it
> always sits with "0 bytes used" when I check top.

% free -h
  totalusedfree  shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:   31Gi   3.2Gi 9Gi   5.3Gi18Gi22Gi
Swap: 8.0Gi   8.0Mi   8.0Gi

Something's using a little of it here.
 
> So I don't think you need the swap; I keep using it in case I need to
> ever hibernate the machines, bit I never do. Also, it's always on the
> mechanical disks, so it's dirty cheap.

As you say, it's cheap and you're hardly going to noting a few GB out of
a multi-TB disk.

The question was about *needing* swap, to which the answer is generally
no. But the more important question is whether you are better off with or
without it, which is a much more complex problem, although I see no good
reason to not have it and reasonable reasons to leave it there.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

WORM: (n.) acronym for Write Once, Read Mangled. Used to describe a
  normally-functioning computer disk of the very latest design.


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Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Dale]

Raphael MD wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Could I turn my Linux swap off.
> I have 32 GB of RAM memory, I suppose my system don’t need swap,
> because I’vea lot of RAM, is this true?
>
> Thanks
> -- 
> M.S. Raphael Mejias Dias
> ​Nuclear Engineer | Reactors
>
> Secure e-mail: raphael.mejias.d...@protonmail.com
> 
> PGP Key for raph...@gmail.com :
> https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get=0x87BC5A746072F951


As some know, I've had occasions where some program would eat up a lot
of memory.  I've had a time or two where I had to shutdown or it crashed
itself.  The offender varies.  Once it was Firefox, huge problem there
but seems OK now.  Right now, sddm is going off the end.  For that
reason, I actually increased my swap space.  It gets really slow to
respond when it uses swap but it beats crashing.  Just set swapiness to
a low number.  I think mine is set to 10.

Given the cheapness of hard drives, I'm not sure why having several
gigabytes of swap space is of much concern.  I have the same amount of
ram as you and I have a 12GB swap space.  I use LVM so I can grow it if
needed or just add another swap space.  I might add, I've seen times
where it gets used.

If you have not had swap touched in a very long time, maybe it is safe
enough.  Just keep in mind that if some package consumes way more than
it should, it can end badly.  The kernel's OOM tool isn't that great in
my experience.  Sometimes it does OK, sometimes not.  A couple times, it
seemed to not do anything and I got a reboot.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Trouble with backup harddisks

[antlists]

On 01/05/2020 09:03, tu...@posteo.de wrote:

Hi Wol,

data copied !:)

I did a

 mdadm --examine /dev/sdb


Except I pointed you at a utility called lsdrv, not mdadm ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Fri, May 1, 2020, 14:50 Raphael MD  wrote:

> Hello!
>
> Could I turn my Linux swap off.
> I have 32 GB of RAM memory, I suppose my system don’t need swap, because
> I’vea lot of RAM, is this true?
>
> Thanks
>

I have 3 desktop machines with 32 GB of memory. In all 3 I still have swap
(32 GB, I stopped using the "twice the amount of RAM" rule years ago). I
don't think I have ever used one single byte from the swap; it always sits
with "0 bytes used" when I check top.

So I don't think you need the swap; I keep using it in case I need to ever
hibernate the machines, bit I never do. Also, it's always on the mechanical
disks, so it's dirty cheap.

Regards.
--
Dr. Canek Peláez Valdés
Profesor de Carrera Asociado C
Departamento de Matemáticas
Facultad de Ciencias
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Matt Connell (Gmail)]

On 2020-05-01 14:50, Raphael MD wrote:

Could I turn my Linux swap off.
I have 32 GB of RAM memory, I suppose my system don’t need swap, because
I’vea lot of RAM, is this true?


As long as you're only running Linux on the machine, I would say yes, 
you're safe to do that.


If you're going to dual-boot or use Windows, you might want to reserve a 
small swap partition just in case.  Some Windows applications get crabby 
when there is no swap available, in my experience.

Re: [gentoo-user] USB sound

[Steve Evans]

On Fri, 1 May 2020 19:42:54 +0100
Steve Evans  wrote:

> On Fri, 1 May 2020 09:34:56 -0700
> Mark Knecht  wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 12:33 AM Peter Humphrey
> >  wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:37:23 BST Michael wrote:  
> > > > On Wednesday, 29 April 2020 16:24:31 BST Peter Humphrey wrote:  
> > >  
> > > > > Have I to go the PulseAudio route after all?  
> > > >
> > > > You do not *have to*, but if you find the PulseAudio server and
> > > >  
> > associated
> > > > GUI/CLI tools are convenient for you, then you can set up  
> > USE=pulseaudio and
> > > > use that to mix your sound sinks and sources devices with.
> > > >
> > > > As Canek has already posted in most cases it just works.
> > > > However, I  
> > must
> > > > confess I had a spate of pa processes racing up to 100% CPU and
> > > >  
> > annoyingly
> > > > respawning each time I tried to kill it.  An update eventually
> > > > fixed  
> > this
> > > > problem and it worked fine ever since.  
> > >
> > > Well, after setting USE=pulseaudio and emerging uaDvN @world,
> > > sound has reappeared. I haven't tried multiple sources yet, but -
> > > one thing at a  
> > time.
> > > Web-cam next, in between recommissioning other boxes with my new  
> > display-port
> > > KVM. I'm getting too old and stiff for this.  :(
> > >  
> > 
> > I'm glad you made forward progress!
> > 
> > QUESTION: I'm curious as to whether your Gentoo and my Kubuntu
> > systemsettings are more similar. Did adding the pulseaudio flag
> > create the Sound->Multimedia section with an 'Audio volume' area? If
> > so that area, if working like mine, would show where you can send
> > sound, allow you to enable/disable individual devices and set
> > relative volumes, etc. Also, did it build pavucontrol or some
> > version of it? If so that app is almost identical to my Multimedia
> > section but adds VU meters so you can watch multiple apps
> > generating audio, etc. I find it helpful when things don't go
> > exactly as I expected.
> > 
> 
> On my Gentoo system the KDE System Settings->Multimedia used to have
> the device priority section, but no longer does. However a search
> found another application called "Phonon Audio and Video" which
> displays the device priority. So maybe it has been moved from the
> System Settings in a recent version of KDE. This is with Plasma
> version 5.17.5.
> 
> Further investigation reveals that Kmix has an option "Audio Setup..."
> that does nothing, but examining xorg-session.log it outputs the
> error 
> 
>Could not find module 'kcm_phonon'. See kcmshell5 --list for the
>full list of modules.
> 
> which suggests a bug where either kcm_phonon should exist or kmix
> should not use it.
> 

I found some more information. The Phonon KCM module was removed on
July 21st 2019, see https://phabricator.kde.org/D22616. It is replaced
by plasma-pa, which is a pulseaudio applet. Documentation at
https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kde-workspace/kcontrol/plasma-pa/index.html#plasmoid
suggests that it supplies a control module that has devices in it. So I
suspect that rebuilding KDE with pulseaudio enabled will result in the
resurrection of the ability to select devices in KDE.

Steve
-- 

Steve EvansE-mail: mailto:ste...@gorbag.com
Registered Linux user #217906: http://counter.li.org
Public Encryption Key: http://www.gorbag.com/public-key.html


5.4.28-gentoo Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz GNU/Linux

 20:48:55 up 7 days, 12:07,  4 users,  load average: 0.10, 0.48, 0.43

You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.

Re: [gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Alexandru N. Barloiu]

> Could I turn my Linux swap off.
> I have 32 GB of RAM memory, I suppose my system don’t need swap,
> because I’vea lot of RAM, is this true?


yes.

[gentoo-user] 32GB RAM and Swap

[Raphael MD]

Hello!

Could I turn my Linux swap off.
I have 32 GB of RAM memory, I suppose my system don’t need swap, because
I’vea lot of RAM, is this true?

Thanks
-- 
M.S. Raphael Mejias Dias
​Nuclear Engineer | Reactors

Secure e-mail: raphael.mejias.d...@protonmail.com
PGP Key for raph...@gmail.com:
https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get=0x87BC5A746072F951

Re: [gentoo-user] USB sound

[Mark Knecht]

On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 11:43 AM Steve Evans  wrote:
>
> On Fri, 1 May 2020 09:34:56 -0700
> Mark Knecht  wrote:
>

> > QUESTION: I'm curious as to whether your Gentoo and my Kubuntu
> > systemsettings are more similar. Did adding the pulseaudio flag
> > create the Sound->Multimedia section with an 'Audio volume' area? If
> > so that area, if working like mine, would show where you can send
> > sound, allow you to enable/disable individual devices and set
> > relative volumes, etc. Also, did it build pavucontrol or some version
> > of it? If so that app is almost identical to my Multimedia section
> > but adds VU meters so you can watch multiple apps generating audio,
> > etc. I find it helpful when things don't go exactly as I expected.
> >
>
> On my Gentoo system the KDE System Settings->Multimedia used to have
> the device priority section, but no longer does. However a search found
> another application called "Phonon Audio and Video" which displays the
> device priority. So maybe it has been moved from the System Settings in
> a recent version of KDE. This is with Plasma version 5.17.5.
>
> Further investigation reveals that Kmix has an option "Audio Setup..."
> that does nothing, but examining xorg-session.log it outputs the error
>
>Could not find module 'kcm_phonon'. See kcmshell5 --list for the
>full list of modules.
>
> which suggests a bug where either kcm_phonon should exist or kmix
> should not use it.
>
> Steve

I guess I'd better get ready for some changes then. My desktop is Kubuntu
19.10, the laptop is Kubuntu 18.04 LTS. They both have the 3 tabs (device,
applications, advanced) which I'm very used to. There's a new Kubuntu 20.??
LTS out but I'm giving it a few weeks before I upgrade. It will be
interesting (to me anyway) as to whether this is a KDE driven arrangement
or possibly chosen by the distro. I'll report back when I know. Assuming
pavucontrol doesn't disappear we still have that.

Still love Gentoo and would certainly consider running it again if I was to
buy a new PC but on my older machines it was just too much time trying to
keep up with packages changing every day. After maybe 14-15 years I ran out
of energy doing this on 4 machines at home. Binary-stable distros have
their place.

Thanks for the info!

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] USB sound

[Steve Evans]

On Fri, 1 May 2020 09:34:56 -0700
Mark Knecht  wrote:

> On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 12:33 AM Peter Humphrey 
> wrote:
> >
> > On Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:37:23 BST Michael wrote:  
> > > On Wednesday, 29 April 2020 16:24:31 BST Peter Humphrey wrote:  
> >  
> > > > Have I to go the PulseAudio route after all?  
> > >
> > > You do not *have to*, but if you find the PulseAudio server and  
> associated
> > > GUI/CLI tools are convenient for you, then you can set up  
> USE=pulseaudio and
> > > use that to mix your sound sinks and sources devices with.
> > >
> > > As Canek has already posted in most cases it just works.
> > > However, I  
> must
> > > confess I had a spate of pa processes racing up to 100% CPU and  
> annoyingly
> > > respawning each time I tried to kill it.  An update eventually
> > > fixed  
> this
> > > problem and it worked fine ever since.  
> >
> > Well, after setting USE=pulseaudio and emerging uaDvN @world, sound
> > has reappeared. I haven't tried multiple sources yet, but - one
> > thing at a  
> time.
> > Web-cam next, in between recommissioning other boxes with my new  
> display-port
> > KVM. I'm getting too old and stiff for this.  :(
> >  
> 
> I'm glad you made forward progress!
> 
> QUESTION: I'm curious as to whether your Gentoo and my Kubuntu
> systemsettings are more similar. Did adding the pulseaudio flag
> create the Sound->Multimedia section with an 'Audio volume' area? If
> so that area, if working like mine, would show where you can send
> sound, allow you to enable/disable individual devices and set
> relative volumes, etc. Also, did it build pavucontrol or some version
> of it? If so that app is almost identical to my Multimedia section
> but adds VU meters so you can watch multiple apps generating audio,
> etc. I find it helpful when things don't go exactly as I expected.
> 

On my Gentoo system the KDE System Settings->Multimedia used to have
the device priority section, but no longer does. However a search found
another application called "Phonon Audio and Video" which displays the
device priority. So maybe it has been moved from the System Settings in
a recent version of KDE. This is with Plasma version 5.17.5.

Further investigation reveals that Kmix has an option "Audio Setup..."
that does nothing, but examining xorg-session.log it outputs the error 

   Could not find module 'kcm_phonon'. See kcmshell5 --list for the
   full list of modules.

which suggests a bug where either kcm_phonon should exist or kmix
should not use it.

Steve
-- 

Steve EvansE-mail: mailto:ste...@gorbag.com
Registered Linux user #217906: http://counter.li.org
Public Encryption Key: http://www.gorbag.com/public-key.html


5.4.28-gentoo Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz GNU/Linux

 19:28:29 up 7 days, 10:47,  4 users,  load average: 0.17, 0.39, 0.35

Re: [gentoo-user] USB sound

[Mark Knecht]

On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 12:33 AM Peter Humphrey 
wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:37:23 BST Michael wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 29 April 2020 16:24:31 BST Peter Humphrey wrote:
>
> > > Have I to go the PulseAudio route after all?
> >
> > You do not *have to*, but if you find the PulseAudio server and
associated
> > GUI/CLI tools are convenient for you, then you can set up
USE=pulseaudio and
> > use that to mix your sound sinks and sources devices with.
> >
> > As Canek has already posted in most cases it just works.  However, I
must
> > confess I had a spate of pa processes racing up to 100% CPU and
annoyingly
> > respawning each time I tried to kill it.  An update eventually fixed
this
> > problem and it worked fine ever since.
>
> Well, after setting USE=pulseaudio and emerging uaDvN @world, sound has
> reappeared. I haven't tried multiple sources yet, but - one thing at a
time.
> Web-cam next, in between recommissioning other boxes with my new
display-port
> KVM. I'm getting too old and stiff for this.  :(
>

I'm glad you made forward progress!

QUESTION: I'm curious as to whether your Gentoo and my Kubuntu
systemsettings are more similar. Did adding the pulseaudio flag create the
Sound->Multimedia section with an 'Audio volume' area? If so that area, if
working like mine, would show where you can send sound, allow you to
enable/disable individual devices and set relative volumes, etc. Also, did
it build pavucontrol or some version of it? If so that app is almost
identical to my Multimedia section but adds VU meters so you can watch
multiple apps generating audio, etc. I find it helpful when things don't go
exactly as I expected.

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] sddm-helper and high memory usage

[Dale]

Michael wrote:
> On Thursday, 30 April 2020 21:14:05 BST Dale wrote:
>> Dale wrote:
>>> Howdy,
>>>
>>> <<>>
>>> When it did this the other day, I closed all my programs so I could
>>> logout, reset and log back in again.  After I hit logout, I noticed the
>>> little memory usage meter on the bottom of my screen was down to a more
>>> normal level.  It was already logging me out so to late to stop it.  It
>>> seems that it dropped after I closed Firefox.  I tend to have two
>>> profiles running and they use quite a bit of memory on their own.  The
>>> new thing is sddm using this much as well.  Could Firefox have some
>>> effect on this??
>>>
>>> <<>>
>>> Any ideas? 
>>>
>>> Dale
>>>
>>> :-)  :-) 
>> Ignore the part about Firefox.  I noticed it was up to about 4.3GBs or
>> 13.5% again and closed all my browsers.  After that was done and it
>> settled a bit, it was using the same amount of memory.  Closing my
>> browsers has no effect on it's memory usage.  Logging out and back in
>> again, back to normal.  I'm sure it will start rising again tho.
>>
>> Still curious to see if anyone else has this issue or has a idea on how
>> to fix it. 
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-) 
> I'm running stable here and have not noticed sddm eating up much memory on a 
> single user PC with 16G RAM.  I'm not running FF at this moment, but Kmail, 
> plus a tonne of akonadi sql processes, plus gkrellms.  However, sddm 
> shouldn't 
> be consuming much RAM beyond passing authentication credentials to X and 
> starting a session, dynamically pulling in dbus & syslog.
>
> My sddm config has not been changed from defaults, but I have switched the 
> theme to Elarun via Plasma's SystemSettings.  I use no icon for avatar.  The 
> X 
> session memory usage changes, but sddm is pretty much stable from what I 
> observed.
>
> USER   PID %CPU %MEMVSZ   RSS TTY  STAT START   TIME COMMAND
> root  3822  0.0  0.0 136480 15324 ?Ssl  15:37   0:00 /usr/bin/sddm
> root  3888  4.1  0.5 1384204 85148 tty7Ssl+ 15:37   1:42 /usr/bin/X -
> nolisten tcp -auth /var/run/sddm/{long_string_here} -background none -noreset 
> -displayfd 17 -seat seat0 vt7
> sddm  3961  0.0  0.0   4552  2264 ?S15:37   0:00 dbus-launch 
> --autolaunch long_string_here --binary-syntax --close-stderr
> sddm  3962  0.0  0.0   3868  1948 ?Ss   15:37   0:00 /usr/bin/
> dbus-daemon --syslog-only --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session
> root  4030  0.0  0.0  54516 14020 ?S15:38   0:00 /usr/libexec/
> sddm-helper --socket /tmp/sddm-auth0472070a-360a-4d6f-9715-b06b8f18b464 --id 
> 1 
> --start /usr/bin/startplasma-x11 --user michael
> michael  1  0.0  0.0   7964   752 pts/1S+   16:18   0:00 /bin/grep -E 
> --colour=auto --color=auto USER|sddm
>


What you post is about what it used to do.  Last night I rebuilt
everything equery d sddm returned plus a couple extra packages as well. 
I logged out, logged back in and while better, it is still using to much
memory.  This is the current usage and it has been steady for a few
hours now.


USER   PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY  STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root 20325  0.2  1.2 458860 418280 ?   S    05:20   0:53
/usr/libexec/sddm-helper --socket
/tmp/sddm-auth09e6b5a4-8a3d-42d5-9068-eefeecc22458 --id 1 --start
/usr/bin/startplasma-x11 --user dale


While it is better, it should be a lot less than that.  I have 32GBs
here so even 1.2% is a good bit.  I'm starting to run revdep-rebuild as
I type.  I'll see if it catches anything.  If not and it keeps doing
this, I may do a emerge -e world which should catch any sort of
linking/depends problems. 

I wonder if this has anything to do with my wallpapers??  That caused
other issues a while back but surely not. 

Thanks for the info.  At least it seems to just be me. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Trouble with backup harddisks

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday, 1 May 2020 17:00:56 BST Andrea Conti wrote:

> GPT is fine too, but for a 1TB disk with a single partition it has absolutely
> zero advantage over MBR.

I can think of one or two people who might demur there.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Trouble with backup harddisks

[Andrea Conti]

A very *#BIG THANK YOU#* for all the great help, the research and
the solution. I myself am back in "normal mode" :)


You're welcome!


What is the most reasonable setup here:
GPT without any hybrid magic and ext4 because it is so common?


I would go with MBR and a single ext4 partition. GPT is fine too, but for a 1TB 
disk with a single partition it has absolutely zero advantage over MBR.

andrea

Re: [gentoo-user] sddm-helper and high memory usage

[Michael]

On Thursday, 30 April 2020 21:14:05 BST Dale wrote:
> Dale wrote:
> > Howdy,
> > 
> > <<>>
> > When it did this the other day, I closed all my programs so I could
> > logout, reset and log back in again.  After I hit logout, I noticed the
> > little memory usage meter on the bottom of my screen was down to a more
> > normal level.  It was already logging me out so to late to stop it.  It
> > seems that it dropped after I closed Firefox.  I tend to have two
> > profiles running and they use quite a bit of memory on their own.  The
> > new thing is sddm using this much as well.  Could Firefox have some
> > effect on this??
> > 
> > <<>>
> > Any ideas? 
> > 
> > Dale
> > 
> > :-)  :-) 
> 
> Ignore the part about Firefox.  I noticed it was up to about 4.3GBs or
> 13.5% again and closed all my browsers.  After that was done and it
> settled a bit, it was using the same amount of memory.  Closing my
> browsers has no effect on it's memory usage.  Logging out and back in
> again, back to normal.  I'm sure it will start rising again tho.
> 
> Still curious to see if anyone else has this issue or has a idea on how
> to fix it. 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

I'm running stable here and have not noticed sddm eating up much memory on a 
single user PC with 16G RAM.  I'm not running FF at this moment, but Kmail, 
plus a tonne of akonadi sql processes, plus gkrellms.  However, sddm shouldn't 
be consuming much RAM beyond passing authentication credentials to X and 
starting a session, dynamically pulling in dbus & syslog.

My sddm config has not been changed from defaults, but I have switched the 
theme to Elarun via Plasma's SystemSettings.  I use no icon for avatar.  The X 
session memory usage changes, but sddm is pretty much stable from what I 
observed.

USER   PID %CPU %MEMVSZ   RSS TTY  STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root  3822  0.0  0.0 136480 15324 ?Ssl  15:37   0:00 /usr/bin/sddm
root  3888  4.1  0.5 1384204 85148 tty7Ssl+ 15:37   1:42 /usr/bin/X -
nolisten tcp -auth /var/run/sddm/{long_string_here} -background none -noreset 
-displayfd 17 -seat seat0 vt7
sddm  3961  0.0  0.0   4552  2264 ?S15:37   0:00 dbus-launch 
--autolaunch long_string_here --binary-syntax --close-stderr
sddm  3962  0.0  0.0   3868  1948 ?Ss   15:37   0:00 /usr/bin/
dbus-daemon --syslog-only --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session
root  4030  0.0  0.0  54516 14020 ?S15:38   0:00 /usr/libexec/
sddm-helper --socket /tmp/sddm-auth0472070a-360a-4d6f-9715-b06b8f18b464 --id 1 
--start /usr/bin/startplasma-x11 --user michael
michael  1  0.0  0.0   7964   752 pts/1S+   16:18   0:00 /bin/grep -E 
--colour=auto --color=auto USER|sddm



signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.

[gentoo-user] Repository metadata in sqlite

[Alessandro Barbieri]

I want to get rid of the files found in the metadata/md5-cache of every
repository. Is it possible to have the metadata put in an sqlite database?
I tried setting both OVERLAY_CACHE_METHOD="sqlite*" in /etc/eixrc and
portdbapi.auxdbmodule = cache.sqlite.database in /etc/portage/modules
but emerge --metadata still regenerate the files in metadata/md5-cache
Portage sqlite files are now in /var/cache/edb but I don't know where eix
is putting his sqlite files

Re: [gentoo-user] Trouble with backup harddisks

[Wynn Wolf Arbor]

On 2020-05-01 09:18, tu...@posteo.de wrote:

A very *#BIG THANK YOU#* for all the great help, the research and
the solution. I myself am back in "normal mode" :)


Glad it helped!


One thing remains...
I want to prevent this kind of hassle in the future... ;)


The most important thing to keep in mind here is to _always_ partition 
and format a drive yourself. That way, you know what is on there and how 
it was partitioned.



Perhaps it is a good idea to re-partitions the disk to get rid of
any bogus bit, format the partition and copy back the data then.


Whilst you can definitely just change the partition type from EE to 83, 
now that you can move the data around safely, I'd probably repartition 
the drives fully, yeah.



What is the most reasonable setup here:
GPT without any hybrid magic and ext4 because it is so common?
Any other, possible more robust configuration, which is also
common with rescue tools and -distributions?


For external backup disks like these I'd go with GPT and ext4. Seems to 
be the most robust configuration for that use case.


If by "hybrid magic" you mean the Protective MBR, that is not something 
you can simply disable. The standard includes the Protective MBR, and 
tools adhere to that.


Bottom line: Repartition the disks with GPT, then create the necessary 
file systems. Don't turn on any special knobs, the tool's defaults are 
all decent.


--
Wolf

Re: [gentoo-user] Trouble with backup harddisks

[tuxic]

On 05/01 03:59, tu...@posteo.de wrote:
> On 04/30 08:32, antlists wrote:
> > On 30/04/2020 18:04, tu...@posteo.de wrote:
> > > I copied the first 230GB of that disk to an empty partition of my new
> > > system and run "testdisk" on itafter the analysis it came back
> > > with "this partition cannot be recovered" but did not sau. whether the
> > > reason is a partition table, which is broken beyond repair, or simply
> > > due to the incomplete image file...
> > 
> > Just come up with another idea that will hopefully give us some clues...
> > 
> > https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Asking_for_help#lsdrv
> > 
> > Ignore the fact that it's the raid wiki - this tool basically delves into
> > the drive and tries to find mbr, gpt, superblock, lvm and raid signatures,
> > everything ...
> > 
> > So run that and see what it tells us ...
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Wol
> > 
> 
> Hi Wol,
> 
> thank you for the link! I have installed mdadm (its on portage) but I
> have not used it, since there is another soultion for this, which I
> tried first. 
> 
> Andrea posted this wonderful line:
> 
> mount -o ro,offset=512 /dev/sdb /mnt/xxx
> 
> which mounts the filesystem by skipping the partitiontable completly.
> 
> Currently I am rescueing the data. If all is safed, I will tru
> mdadm...
> 
> Thank you very much for your help!
> 
> As soon as there are more information, I will report back.
> Maybe this can also help others with similiar problems.
> 
> Cheers!
> Meino
> 
> 
> 

Hi Wol,

data copied ! :)

I did a 

mdadm --examine /dev/sdb

on one of the damaged partitions and this was print
on the console

host:/root>mdadm --examine /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
   MBR Magic : aa55
Partition[0] :   1953458175 sectors at1 (type ee)


Cheers!
Meino

Re: [gentoo-user] USB sound

[Peter Humphrey]

On Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:37:23 BST Michael wrote:
> On Wednesday, 29 April 2020 16:24:31 BST Peter Humphrey wrote:

> > Have I to go the PulseAudio route after all?
> 
> You do not *have to*, but if you find the PulseAudio server and associated
> GUI/CLI tools are convenient for you, then you can set up USE=pulseaudio and
> use that to mix your sound sinks and sources devices with.
> 
> As Canek has already posted in most cases it just works.  However, I must
> confess I had a spate of pa processes racing up to 100% CPU and annoyingly
> respawning each time I tried to kill it.  An update eventually fixed this
> problem and it worked fine ever since.

Well, after setting USE=pulseaudio and emerging uaDvN @world, sound has 
reappeared. I haven't tried multiple sources yet, but - one thing at a time. 
Web-cam next, in between recommissioning other boxes with my new display-port 
KVM. I'm getting too old and stiff for this.  :(

[OT] Fully in accordance with Murphy, yesterday's upgrade of ICU had already 
caused rebuilds of all the big packages (rust, qt-core, llvm, clang, 
virtualbox, libreoffice, firefox, both web kits ...). What with those, 
remerging 
everything took half the day.
[/OT]

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Trouble with backup harddisks

[tuxic]

On 05/01 08:52, Andrea Conti wrote:
> 
> > does my posting from this morning reached you ?
> > ...I did not received anything back from the mailinglist...
> 
> Nope. Just this night's response to Wol.
> 
> 

(hmmm...ok, two send good news two times is not
that bad in this times, I think... ;)

Hi Andrea, hi Wolf,

this magic one liner does the trick indeed!  I have my data back and
copied it to my new system spread over four separate partitions, which
are currently still empty. No error while copuing and both disk
matched.

A very *#BIG THANK YOU#* for all the great help, the research and
the solution. I myself am back in "normal mode" :)

Wol has suggested to run mdadm on the bad harddisk to see, whether
this tool is able to fix it -- which I will next. Since I have
my data back on the PC internal disk, this is no problem at all.

One thing remains...
I want to prevent this kind of hassle in the future... ;)

Perhaps it is a good idea to re-partitions the disk to get rid of
any bogus bit, format the partition and copy back the data then.

What is the most reasonable setup here:
GPT without any hybrid magic and ext4 because it is so common?
Any other, possible more robust configuration, which is also
common with rescue tools and -distributions?

I have to say it once again: Thank you very much for solving
the hassle puzzle! :)

Cheers!
Meino

Re: [gentoo-user] Trouble with backup harddisks

[Andrea Conti]

does my posting from this morning reached you ?
...I did not received anything back from the mailinglist...


Nope. Just this night's response to Wol.