Re: pointless systemd dependencies

[David Griffith]

On Mon, 7 May 2018, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:


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On Mon, May 07, 2018 at 01:47:51AM +, David Griffith wrote:


Could we start the process of identifying packages that have
dependencies on systemd in some way that is are not actually
required?


David,

I understand your concerns. I, myself don't like systemd. But *if*
you actually want something changed, you'll have to pick up some
legwork yourself, like, for example, understand what libsystemd
is actually doing in some package of your choice.

But first of all, you'll have to accept that there are folks out
there (who are at least as smart as you and me) who do like systemd,
and that packagers want to cater to those folks as well. So if some
binary wants to be able to work with systemd when it's there, perhaps
linking against libsystemd is the right thing to do. A package
maintainer won't keep around two versions of her package, one compiled
against libsystemd and another without it. Especially because that
doesn't scale well: someone might not like libdbus, someone else
quibbles about libselinux -- and we are already at eight binary
versions for one executable.

Sometimes binary distributions do have a cost, convenient as they
are.

If "no systemd" purism is your thing, there's Devuan. There are
pretty smart folks over there too.


How many packages are there that could possibly need to be linked against 
systemd?


--
David Griffith
d...@661.org

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Re: Removing libsystemd0 from a non-systemd system

[David Griffith]

On Sun, 6 May 2018, The Wanderer wrote:


On 2018-05-06 at 21:25, David Griffith wrote:


What's the point of allowing libsystemd0 to exist when systemd has
been purged?


So that programs which interface with systemd can detect whether or not
systemd is present, and fall back to alternate code paths when it's not.

As I understand matters (without having actually dug into the code),
that detection code literally is what libsystemd0 *is*; when systemd is
present, it passes through function calls to be handled in appropriate
places, and when systemd is not present, it returns an appropriate
default or failure value.


I was under the impression that systemd-shim provided this functionality. 
When I look at https://packages.debian.org/stretch/systemd-shim and 
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/libsystemd0, their functions appear to 
be identical except that the latter actually does talk to systemd if 
systemd is present.


--
David Griffith
d...@661.org

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[deloptes]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> FWIW, its been 55 of those years since I last saw a Telefunken radio so I
> have no clue what safety pressure release mechanism is used by the
> German speakers electrolytics today, but on our side of the small pond
> that laps at out right coast, the cans are scored on top so that they
> can finish the crack and relieve the pressure in a more or less
> non-destructive manner, but the tops will often visibly bulge quite a
> bit in the earlier stages of such a failure, so we look for domed tops
> as an indicator that *ESR is raising its ugly head in the power circuits
> and trouble is not far off.

Germans are faking a lot of things recently to keep the economy running. We
personally avoid buying German stuff, unless proven that is 100% German.
The introduced a law, that allows them to write "made in Germany" if only
1/3 or 2/3 of it is made in Germany. So that's why it works so well - they
produce in China, package or add some few parts in Germany and voilla -
they sell it as made in Germany.

Regarding the elcos I recall 2005 in the company, I was at that time, the
PCs started dieing. Few PCs even caught fire. We found out the reason were
few of the elcos. One sales person was working with Japanese companies and
he reported that there was a huge scandal regarding elcos. The Chinese have
stolen the formula from the Japanese, but did not translate the receipt
properly. A huge amount of elcos already sold were affected :D

regards
 

Re: pointless systemd dependencies

[tomas]

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On Mon, May 07, 2018 at 01:47:51AM +, David Griffith wrote:
> 
> Could we start the process of identifying packages that have
> dependencies on systemd in some way that is are not actually
> required?

David,

I understand your concerns. I, myself don't like systemd. But *if*
you actually want something changed, you'll have to pick up some
legwork yourself, like, for example, understand what libsystemd
is actually doing in some package of your choice.

But first of all, you'll have to accept that there are folks out
there (who are at least as smart as you and me) who do like systemd,
and that packagers want to cater to those folks as well. So if some
binary wants to be able to work with systemd when it's there, perhaps
linking against libsystemd is the right thing to do. A package
maintainer won't keep around two versions of her package, one compiled
against libsystemd and another without it. Especially because that
doesn't scale well: someone might not like libdbus, someone else
quibbles about libselinux -- and we are already at eight binary
versions for one executable.

Sometimes binary distributions do have a cost, convenient as they
are.

If "no systemd" purism is your thing, there's Devuan. There are
pretty smart folks over there too. 

Cheers
- -- tomás
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Re: Chinese file name problem in xterm

[tomas]

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On Mon, May 07, 2018 at 09:40:38AM +1200, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:
> On 07/05/18 09:26, Long Wind wrote:
> >some Chinese file names are properly shown in xterm in stretch, but other 
> >are not
> >all Chinese characters can be properly shown in firefox
> >how to solve it? Thanks!
> 
> What characters? What is shown? What did you expect?
> 
> xterm uses fixed-size bitmap fonts which typically support only
> limited character ranges; both xterm and bitmap fonts are considered
> legacy technologies and have been replaced since by the development
> of scalable fonts and terminals supporting them in the 1990s. Can
> you use a terminal that supports scalable fonts? Examples include
> gnome-terminal and xfce4-terminal.

XTerm does support scalable fonts.

Cheers
- -- tomás
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Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 06 May 2018 23:10:54 Cindy-Sue Causey wrote:

> On 5/6/18, rhkra...@gmail.com  wrote:
> > On Sunday, May 06, 2018 04:57:13 PM to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> >> On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 09:19:24PM +0200, Hans wrote:
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> > Check also the elkos, if they are blown thick, they are also a
> >> > problem.
> >>
> >>  ^ electrolytic capacitors, for you non-German
> >> speakers
> >>
> >> :)
> >
> > Thank you!
>
> Ditto because a quick Internet search is primarily bringing up pens.
> That would have been a head scratcher where I'd have been wondering
> what inference was being missed. :)
>
> Cindy :)

Same here Cindy, and I've been chasing electrons to make them do usefull 
things for very close to 70 years.

FWIW, its been 55 of those years since I last saw a Telefunken radio so I 
have no clue what safety pressure release mechanism is used by the 
German speakers electrolytics today, but on our side of the small pond 
that laps at out right coast, the cans are scored on top so that they 
can finish the crack and relieve the pressure in a more or less 
non-destructive manner, but the tops will often visibly bulge quite a 
bit in the earlier stages of such a failure, so we look for domed tops 
as an indicator that *ESR is raising its ugly head in the power circuits 
and trouble is not far off.

Because these capacitors can get rid of heat thru the leads soldered to 
the mainboard as the majority of is it generated by the other end of the 
lead inside the capacitor, those areas of copper are often huge in 
comparison to a normal pcb trace so they can act as a heat sink.  And it 
can take enough heat to physically damage the board to actually free the 
failed capacitors from the board, get the thru holes cleaned out and new 
capacitors re-installed. IBM's mainboards are famously difficult to 
rework in that area.  And they got burnt by the bad caps a few years 
back just as badly as the cheap boards.

ESR*, Equivalent Series Resistance, the resistance of a capacitor when 
measured by a high frequency AC signal, typically 50 to 100 kilohertz.

This is very important in modern switching supplies, and a reading above 
2.5 ohms for a 100 u-f capacitor is enough to give it a new home in the 
trash can. Correspondingly lower for the larger capacitors.

Your trivia factoid for the evening. :)
-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: What needs to improve in KDE 4?

[Felix Miata]

rhkra...@gmail.com composed on 2018-05-06 21:28 (UTC-0400):

> @Martin Steigerwald

> What a clever idea--security by obscurity, by setting your clock 8 years 
> off...

> On Monday, May 10, 2010 05:58:42 PM Martin Steigerwald wrote:
>> Am Montag 10 Mai 2010 schrieb Nate Bargmann:
>> > * On 2010 10 May 11:50 -0500, Dotan Cohen wrote:

Martin & I have been communicating about this offlist. These are apparently some
kind of new Beijing China spam we both have been seeing. Check the originating
IP address in the headers.
-- 
"Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you
get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation)

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

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

Re: pointless systemd dependencies

[Andy Smith]

Hello,

On Mon, May 07, 2018 at 01:47:51AM +, David Griffith wrote:
> Could we start the process of identifying packages that have dependencies on
> systemd in some way that is are not actually required?

Nothing has been stopping anyone from doing this since the day the
first package in Debian required systemd. Have at it. Report bugs in
the Debian bug tracker. Use the "reportbug" tool.

However…

I don't think that you will find that many packages that currently
depend upon systemd where this is a real bug.

Do you have examples of such packages where the bugs have not been
filed yet?

Several issues:

- If a package works better/differently in the presence of systemd
  then a depend on systemd may be appropriate, if upstream doesn't
  want to support other inits. You can't generally expect Debian to
  deviate very far from upstream.

- A lot of packages depend upon libsystemd0 just to detect the
  presence of systemd but work fine without systemd-as-pid1. A
  dependency on libsystemd0 here is appropriate; it doesn't mean you
  have to run systemd-as-pid1.

- Some upstreams don't implement a sysV init script or have removed
  the ones they had, because they only want to support systemd init
  scripts. While it might be nice for Debian to expend effort to go
  further than the upstream author does, it's not always feasible or
  desirable, so a bug to (re-)add sysV init script support may end
  up as wontfix or wishlist for an indefinite period.

Between this and more complications I'd be surprised if there are
many packages which directly depend upon systemd-as-pid1 for no good
reason. But do report bugs for those that do!

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

Re: A long rant on Debian 9

[Dan Norton]

On Sun, 6 May 2018 18:09:12 -0400
Felix Miata  wrote:

> John composed on 2018-05-06 21:51 (UTC+0100):
> 
> > How do I get a working computer?  I can ssh in from elsewhere but
> > that is not what I need.  And I need wifi.  
> 
> My Debian installations are all net installs that include
> 
>   tasks=standard base-installer/install-recommends=false
> 
> on the kernel cmdline. I get nothing I don't need installed that way.
> Xorg and whatever else I need I get with apt* once booted normally.
> 

How do you get that on the kernel cmdline? My guess is that when the
net-install medium boots, showing the menu which grub displays, you
edit and append "tasks=..." to the line that starts "linux" right?

 - Dan

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[Cindy-Sue Causey]

On 5/6/18, rhkra...@gmail.com  wrote:
> On Sunday, May 06, 2018 04:57:13 PM to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
>> On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 09:19:24PM +0200, Hans wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> > Check also the elkos, if they are blown thick, they are also a problem.
>>
>>  ^ electrolytic capacitors, for you non-German
>> speakers
>> :)
>
> Thank you!


Ditto because a quick Internet search is primarily bringing up pens.
That would have been a head scratcher where I'd have been wondering
what inference was being missed. :)

Cindy :)
-- 
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA

* runs with ability to play favored movie WAY too many times k/t
Debian and SMPlayer *

Re: Removing libsystemd0 from a non-systemd system

[The Wanderer]

On 2018-05-06 at 21:25, David Griffith wrote:

> What's the point of allowing libsystemd0 to exist when systemd has
> been purged?

So that programs which interface with systemd can detect whether or not
systemd is present, and fall back to alternate code paths when it's not.

As I understand matters (without having actually dug into the code),
that detection code literally is what libsystemd0 *is*; when systemd is
present, it passes through function calls to be handled in appropriate
places, and when systemd is not present, it returns an appropriate
default or failure value.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: What needs to improve in KDE 4?

[Matthew Crews]

On Sunday, May 6, 2018 6:28:07 PM MST rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> @Martin Steigerwald
> 
> What a clever idea--security by obscurity, by setting your clock 8 years
> off...
> On Monday, May 10, 2010 05:58:42 PM Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> > Am Montag 10 Mai 2010 schrieb Nate Bargmann:
> > > * On 2010 10 May 11:50 -0500, Dotan Cohen wrote:

I was gonna say, I'm pretty sure KDE 4 was EOL'd several years ago when Plasma 
5 and everything came out.

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[rhkramer]

On Sunday, May 06, 2018 04:57:13 PM to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 09:19:24PM +0200, Hans wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > Check also the elkos, if they are blown thick, they are also a problem.
> 
>  ^ electrolytic capacitors, for you non-German speakers
> :)

Thank you!

pointless systemd dependencies

[David Griffith]

Could we start the process of identifying packages that have dependencies 
on systemd in some way that is are not actually required?


--
David Griffith
d...@661.org

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Re: Removing libsystemd0 from a non-systemd system

[David Griffith]

On Sun, 6 May 2018, Patrick Bartek wrote:


On Sun, 6 May 2018 02:44:16 + (UTC) David Griffith 
wrote:

Have any advances been made in figuring out just how to remove 
libsystemd0 from a Debian 9 machine that's running sysvinit?  The 
ongoing presence of libsystemd0 has caused slowly-progressing trouble 
with several machines of mine culminating in complete failure a couple 
days ago.  Initially I thought this was unrelated to systemd, but now I 
tracked it down to systemd's remnants and the problem is progressing 
much faster with freshly-installed machines.


First, how exactly did you convert to sysvinit, etc? And what kind of
trouble?

I've been running Stretch with sysvinit for almost a year -- as
a personal machine, not a server -- and have had absolutely NO
problems.  Here's the link I used:

http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_remove_systemd_from_a_Debian_Stretch_installation

I used the very first conversion steps, the simplest one, and none
of the optional ones.  No pinning.  No third-party systemdless repos,
etc. I still have systemd libraries including libsystemd0 for those apps
that have systemd as a dependenciy.  No problems.  Totally removing
systemd is a pain requiring third-party systemdless repos and keeping a
wary eye out for problems. I did it a couple times as part of my
experiments, and always had glitches.

One thing did just occur to me: Are you using the GNOME desktop?  I've
heard stories about it and systemd.  It is VERY dependent on it. I
haven't used GNOME whatever version for about 7 years. I use only a
window manager Openbox.


I followed that same thing you did as soon as the machine was installed. 
I also did optional steps 2 and 3.  I didn't do 1 because all the machines 
in question are headless.  I stopped using GNOME when version 3 came out 
and switched to MATE for most of my desktop needs.


One of the symptoms that made me think libsystemd0 had something to do 
with it was the output of "apt-get upgrade".  It would always report "1 
not upgraded" or "2 not upgraded".


The trouble manifested in dependency hell and networking that would 
mysteriously stop for no readily apparent reason (on reboot after kernel 
upgrade or out of the blue).  Usually networking could be regained by 
doing a LISH login and manually turning on the network interfaces.  Then 
interface names started changing randomly.  This was after names like 
"eth0" and friends were abandoned.  Servers died by way of networking only 
working halfway, no matter what I did.  I was able to ssh in and do scp 
and rsync transfers, but that was about it.


What's the point of allowing libsystemd0 to exist when systemd has been 
purged?


Is anyone working on a mechanism to allow for install-time selection of a 
desired init?  I brought this up a few times since systemd came to Debian, 
but I've never heard anything more on this.



--
David Griffith
d...@661.org

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Re: What needs to improve in KDE 4?

[rhkramer]

@Martin Steigerwald

What a clever idea--security by obscurity, by setting your clock 8 years off...


On Monday, May 10, 2010 05:58:42 PM Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Am Montag 10 Mai 2010 schrieb Nate Bargmann:
> > * On 2010 10 May 11:50 -0500, Dotan Cohen wrote:

Re: A long rant on Debian 9

[Rick Thomas]

Hi John,

Take a look at the relevant section of the installation manual at:
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch06s04.html.en
and then download the unofficial non-free installer iso at:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/

You can put the iso on a USB and install from there directly.  It already 
contains the missing firmware so you don’t need to mess with separate USBs and 
tarballs, etc.

Rick

On May 6, 2018, at 1:51 PM, John  wrote:

> I have been a user of debian for many years on a number of computers
> as well as other GNU/Linux systems.  Recently I discovered that my
> i686 32bit machine was out of support and they were not supporting
> 32bit machines any longer.  After some bad experiences with Tumbleweed I
> decided that I would install stretch so I could get experience of it
> when I am forced to upgrade my firewall (running jessie with a whezzy
> kernel).
> 
> So today I d/loaded the net-install iso for debian 9.4 and wrote it to
> a usb stick. Then tried to install on the target (Thinkpad x40).
> Nice idea but it refused to use the wifi, so I proceeded via wired
> ethernet hoping I could resolve the issue later.  In the process I
> think I determined the wifi problem was the need for firmware for the
> Intel ipw2200 hardware.
> 
> After rather a long time it said it was installed so I rebooted -- a
> big mistake!  I was hoping for a computer where I could write
> programs, mainly with xterm, emacs (with elisp) and C.  I had asked
> for no gnome no kde no xfce...  I usually run fvwm on X but I got a
> screen with nothing obvious to do.  I did get icons (spit!) offering
> games and firefox but no xterm -- I was expecting to install emacs
> myself as I use a very recent system -- but it was in effect not a
> computer but some kind of toy. I do not play computer games and
> thought I had said not to install any
> 
> Since then I have failed to get wifi although I have got the firmware
> -- but no instructions on how to install.  Got aptitude installed and
> discovered load of gnome stuff cluttering up the disk (which is
> limited) and memory (ditto).
> 
> How do I get a working computer?  I can ssh in from elsewhere but that
> is not what I need.  And I need wifi.
> 
> I have never had this problem in 35 years on unix and linux, and am
> very disappointed.  I suppose I can install things like csh and
> possibly xdm, exim from source etc but without an xterm.
> 
> I also noticed eventually that the duff screen came from tty2 rather
> that tty7 that I was expecting.
> 
> Sorry for the rant but I really was expecting simplicity as before.
> 
> ==John ffitch
> 

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[Thomas George]

I remember changing the cmos battery some years ago. Maybe time to do it 
again.


No storms preceding, during and after the described failure. Ups shuts 
down system after 30 seconds if there is a power failure.



On 05/06/2018 05:02 PM, songbird wrote:

Thomas George wrote:
...

Box is between two tables but managed to remove side cover and with
mirror confirmed green light on motherboard. Unplugged power cord, green
light goes out, reconnected power, green light on and power switch
works, BIOS message Asus surge protection shut system down because of
unstable power supply..

My records show I assembled this box from components in 2008. Should I
be worried? Expected lifetimes of cpu, mb, power supply?

   when is last time you changed cmos battery for it?

   otherwise how is the system connected to house power
supply?  have there been any storms lately?  around
here we've had some power failures lately and the UPS
has let me shut down ok.


   songbird

Re: A long rant on Debian 9

[Felix Miata]

John composed on 2018-05-06 21:51 (UTC+0100):

> How do I get a working computer?  I can ssh in from elsewhere but that
> is not what I need.  And I need wifi.

My Debian installations are all net installs that include

tasks=standard base-installer/install-recommends=false

on the kernel cmdline. I get nothing I don't need installed that way. Xorg and
whatever else I need I get with apt* once booted normally.

I don't use WiFi.
-- 
"Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you
get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation)

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

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

Re: Backup problem using "cp"

[David Wright]

On Sun 06 May 2018 at 13:55:32 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 05/06/2018 10:38 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> >Le 06/05/2018 à 16:22, Richard Owlett a écrit :
> >>I'm attempting to backup current partition  to a USB connected 1
> >>TB drive.
> >>
> >>I get:
> >>
> >>>root@debian-jan13:/home/richard# cp -ax / "/media/richard/MISC
> >>>backups/dev_sda14/"
> >>>cp: cannot stat '/media/richard/MISC 
> >>>backups/dev_sda14/home/richard/.local/share/Trash/expunged/73080846/grub2
> >>>problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2
> >>>problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2
> >>>problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13': File name
> >>>too long
> >
> >
> >The same pattern "grub2 problem-2018-02-13" seems to be repeated
> >endlessly in the path. Could there be a loop ?
> >
> >
> 
> Obviously ;/
> I thought I had broken the loop by specifying -x.

The looping has nothing to do with -x, and I see nothing that
indicates -x has failed in its desired effect.

The loop is generating a source filename
/home/richard/.local/share/Trash/expunged/73080846/grub2 
problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13
which is likely within length limits, and resides on the correct
filesytem. However, the destination filename is lengthened by
prefixing it with /media/richard/MISC backups/dev_sda14 which
takes it over the pathname's limit, which is what the error
message states.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Chinese file name problem in xterm

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

On 07/05/18 09:26, Long Wind wrote:

some Chinese file names are properly shown in xterm in stretch, but other are 
not
all Chinese characters can be properly shown in firefox
how to solve it? Thanks!


What characters? What is shown? What did you expect?

xterm uses fixed-size bitmap fonts which typically support only limited 
character ranges; both xterm and bitmap fonts are considered legacy 
technologies and have been replaced since by the development of scalable 
fonts and terminals supporting them in the 1990s. Can you use a terminal 
that supports scalable fonts? Examples include gnome-terminal and 
xfce4-terminal.


If the characters are shown in in Firefox, I expect that you have 
installed fonts that support Chinese characters with a command like:


apt-get install fonts-noto

It might also be useful to know your locale. I hope your system and 
filesystem are using UTF-8. What is your filesystem type (ext4? vfat?) 
and what is its filename encoding?


Kind regards,

--
Ben Caradoc-Davies 
Director
Transient Software Limited 
New Zealand

Re: A long rant on Debian 9

[Forest Dean Feighner]

On Sun, May 6, 2018 at 4:51 PM, John  wrote:

> I have been a user of debian for many years on a number of computers
> as well as other GNU/Linux systems.  Recently I discovered that my
> i686 32bit machine was out of support and they were not supporting
> 32bit machines any longer.  After some bad experiences with Tumbleweed I
> decided that I would install stretch so I could get experience of it
> when I am forced to upgrade my firewall (running jessie with a whezzy
> kernel).
>
> So today I d/loaded the net-install iso for debian 9.4 and wrote it to
> a usb stick. Then tried to install on the target (Thinkpad x40).
> Nice idea but it refused to use the wifi, so I proceeded via wired
> ethernet hoping I could resolve the issue later.  In the process I
> think I determined the wifi problem was the need for firmware for the
> Intel ipw2200 hardware.
>
> After rather a long time it said it was installed so I rebooted -- a
> big mistake!  I was hoping for a computer where I could write
> programs, mainly with xterm, emacs (with elisp) and C.  I had asked
> for no gnome no kde no xfce...  I usually run fvwm on X but I got a
> screen with nothing obvious to do.  I did get icons (spit!) offering
> games and firefox but no xterm -- I was expecting to install emacs
> myself as I use a very recent system -- but it was in effect not a
> computer but some kind of toy. I do not play computer games and
> thought I had said not to install any
>
> Since then I have failed to get wifi although I have got the firmware
> -- but no instructions on how to install.  Got aptitude installed and
> discovered load of gnome stuff cluttering up the disk (which is
> limited) and memory (ditto).
>
> How do I get a working computer?  I can ssh in from elsewhere but that
> is not what I need.  And I need wifi.
>
> I have never had this problem in 35 years on unix and linux, and am
> very disappointed.  I suppose I can install things like csh and
> possibly xdm, exim from source etc but without an xterm.
>
> I also noticed eventually that the duff screen came from tty2 rather
> that tty7 that I was expecting.
>
> Sorry for the rant but I really was expecting simplicity as before.
>
> ==John ffitch
>
>
Since you have proprietary driver I believe you need to use the non-free
installer.

Try: https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi since you already have the firmware.

Also, since, forever, desktop environments tend to install a lot of stuff.

HTH
Forest

A long rant on Debian 9

[John]

I have been a user of debian for many years on a number of computers
as well as other GNU/Linux systems.  Recently I discovered that my
i686 32bit machine was out of support and they were not supporting
32bit machines any longer.  After some bad experiences with Tumbleweed I
decided that I would install stretch so I could get experience of it
when I am forced to upgrade my firewall (running jessie with a whezzy
kernel).

So today I d/loaded the net-install iso for debian 9.4 and wrote it to
a usb stick. Then tried to install on the target (Thinkpad x40).
Nice idea but it refused to use the wifi, so I proceeded via wired
ethernet hoping I could resolve the issue later.  In the process I
think I determined the wifi problem was the need for firmware for the
Intel ipw2200 hardware.

After rather a long time it said it was installed so I rebooted -- a
big mistake!  I was hoping for a computer where I could write
programs, mainly with xterm, emacs (with elisp) and C.  I had asked
for no gnome no kde no xfce...  I usually run fvwm on X but I got a
screen with nothing obvious to do.  I did get icons (spit!) offering
games and firefox but no xterm -- I was expecting to install emacs
myself as I use a very recent system -- but it was in effect not a
computer but some kind of toy. I do not play computer games and
thought I had said not to install any

Since then I have failed to get wifi although I have got the firmware
-- but no instructions on how to install.  Got aptitude installed and
discovered load of gnome stuff cluttering up the disk (which is
limited) and memory (ditto).

How do I get a working computer?  I can ssh in from elsewhere but that
is not what I need.  And I need wifi.

I have never had this problem in 35 years on unix and linux, and am
very disappointed.  I suppose I can install things like csh and
possibly xdm, exim from source etc but without an xterm.

I also noticed eventually that the duff screen came from tty2 rather
that tty7 that I was expecting.

Sorry for the rant but I really was expecting simplicity as before.

==John ffitch

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown.

[songbird]

Thomas George wrote:

> Selected shutdown from the window manager and the operating system 
> turned off the computer as usual. Tried to restart the computer from the 
> switch on the desktop box but it was totally dead.

  try holding the power button down for a while 
and see if that restarts it.


> Where to look for the failure? CPU, motherboard, power supply or 
> mechanical switch?

  if i didn't see smoke or hear strange noises
i usually assume it's not too serious.  :)

  always check fuse panel for that circuit,
power strip, plugs, then power supply connection.
usually there's at least one LED somewhere lit
along the way to say how far power might be.


> I never thought before about how the operating system shuts down the 
> computer. I know there are two wires from the power supply which the 
> desktop switch connects to turn on the power supply. How does the 
> operating system turn it off?

  there are settings in various places which can
affect how a system starts up and restarts after
previous shutdown.  hard to know for sure without
system in front of me.


  songbird

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[songbird]

Thomas George wrote:
...
> Box is between two tables but managed to remove side cover and with 
> mirror confirmed green light on motherboard. Unplugged power cord, green 
> light goes out, reconnected power, green light on and power switch 
> works, BIOS message Asus surge protection shut system down because of 
> unstable power supply..
>
> My records show I assembled this box from components in 2008. Should I 
> be worried? Expected lifetimes of cpu, mb, power supply?

  when is last time you changed cmos battery for it?

  otherwise how is the system connected to house power
supply?  have there been any storms lately?  around
here we've had some power failures lately and the UPS
has let me shut down ok.


  songbird

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 09:19:24PM +0200, Hans wrote:

[...]

> Check also the elkos, if they are blown thick, they are also a problem.
 ^ electrolytic capacitors, for you non-German speakers :)

- -- t
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAlrvbCkACgkQBcgs9XrR2kZhcACeIe8t8K2xSVeGEi5DPt32vhh1
IPgAn1mCisyUdNr/+CljcMERUUM5VnX3
=TaeE
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[Matthew Crews]

Concur with this statement. Anything older than 7 years is on borrowed time for 
consumer-grade hardware.

Sent from [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com), Swiss-based encrypted email.

 Original Message 
On May 6, 2018, 12:44, Dan Purgert wrote:

> Thomas George wrote:
>> [...]
>> My records show I assembled this box from components in 2008. Should I
>> be worried? Expected lifetimes of cpu, mb, power supply?
>>
>
> 10 years is a good long time. Most bits you can figure 7-10 years on
> average.
>
> --
> |_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
> |_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
> |O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5 4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Sun, 06 May 2018, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 05/06/2018 06:23 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> > Anyway, it looks like it is giving you "unmount" when it thinks it is an
> > unremovable device, and the two others when it thinks either the device
> > or the media might be removable.
> 
> I'm running Debian 9 with MATE.
> My observed symptoms were initially observed related to what choices given
> when right clicking on the icon associated with a partition.

Ok, so it is the "device/partition is registered as removable" thing, as
hinted by the kernel plus whatever overrides udev/udisks2/MATE has for a
particular device / device type.

> I suspect the underlying probably is related to how/when something is
> "auto-magically" mounted. YES, a vague statement. This afternoon I plan to
> run some tests.

Indeed.  Anyway, FWIW, there are ways (through udev or equivalent) to
change the system's notion of whether a device is removable or not.
Unfortunately, it has been half a decade I needed to mess with this, so
I don't recall the incantations.

As for removable *media* (cdroms, etc), the kernel will return an error
when the eject IOCTL is issued and the operation cannot be performed for
any reason (e.g., you tried it on a SSD/HDD, or the optical drive tray
was locked, or the media is mounted and in use).  I *assume* that
userspace (MATE, udisks, whatever) _might_ decide to (in some
situations), attempt to "safely remove" when the eject IOCTL fails with
an "ioctl innapropriate for this device" error.

-- 
  Henrique Holschuh

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[Felix Miata]

Thomas George composed on 2018-05-06 14:36 (UTC-0400):

> Box is between two tables but managed to remove side cover and with 
> mirror confirmed green light on motherboard. Unplugged power cord, green 
> light goes out, reconnected power, green light on and power switch 
> works, BIOS message Asus surge protection shut system down because of 
> unstable power supply..

> My records show I assembled this box from components in 2008. Should I 
> be worried? Expected lifetimes of cpu, mb, power supply?

Inferior quality capacitors in power supplies were *very* common 10 years ago.
New or rebuild PS likely all you need. Every PS I bought back around then (at
least 4, all 300W or more), different brands every time, and not el-cheapos,
needed cap replacement within 3-5 years.
-- 
"Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you
get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation)

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

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

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[Dan Purgert]

Thomas George wrote:
> [...]
> My records show I assembled this box from components in 2008. Should I 
> be worried? Expected lifetimes of cpu, mb, power supply?
>

10 years is a good long time. Most bits you can figure 7-10 years on
average.


-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[Hans]

Am Sonntag, 6. Mai 2018, 20:36:50 CEST schrieb Thomas George:
Check the BIOS-Battery. It might be low of voltage and might thus have 
interferes with the bios, so that the "start" command was not correctly seen.

Check also the elkos, if they are blown thick, they are also a problem.

If there is something causing too much drain (failure on a component on the 
mainboard), then the power supply switches off at once. Sometimes memory makes 
trouble.

Good luck

Hans


> Box is between two tables but managed to remove side cover and with
> mirror confirmed green light on motherboard. Unplugged power cord, green
> light goes out, reconnected power, green light on and power switch
> works, BIOS message Asus surge protection shut system down because of
> unstable power supply..
> 
> My records show I assembled this box from components in 2008. Should I
> be worried? Expected lifetimes of cpu, mb, power supply?
> 
> On 05/06/2018 12:14 PM, Thomas George wrote:
> > Selected shutdown from the window manager and the operating system
> > turned off the computer as usual. Tried to restart the computer from
> > the switch on the desktop box but it was totally dead.
> > 
> > Where to look for the failure? CPU, motherboard, power supply or
> > mechanical switch?
> > 
> > I never thought before about how the operating system shuts down the
> > computer. I know there are two wires from the power supply which the
> > desktop switch connects to turn on the power supply. How does the
> > operating system turn it off?

Re: Backup problem using "cp"

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/06/2018 10:38 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:

Le 06/05/2018 à 16:22, Richard Owlett a écrit :
I'm attempting to backup current partition  to a USB connected 1 TB 
drive.


I get:

root@debian-jan13:/home/richard# cp -ax / "/media/richard/MISC 
backups/dev_sda14/"
cp: cannot stat '/media/richard/MISC 
backups/dev_sda14/home/richard/.local/share/Trash/expunged/73080846/grub2 
problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2 
problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2 
problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13': File name too long



The same pattern "grub2 problem-2018-02-13" seems to be repeated 
endlessly in the path. Could there be a loop ?





Obviously ;/
I thought I had broken the loop by specifying -x.

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown. - Resolved for Now

[Thomas George]

Box is between two tables but managed to remove side cover and with 
mirror confirmed green light on motherboard. Unplugged power cord, green 
light goes out, reconnected power, green light on and power switch 
works, BIOS message Asus surge protection shut system down because of 
unstable power supply..


My records show I assembled this box from components in 2008. Should I 
be worried? Expected lifetimes of cpu, mb, power supply?



On 05/06/2018 12:14 PM, Thomas George wrote:
Selected shutdown from the window manager and the operating system 
turned off the computer as usual. Tried to restart the computer from 
the switch on the desktop box but it was totally dead.


Where to look for the failure? CPU, motherboard, power supply or 
mechanical switch?


I never thought before about how the operating system shuts down the 
computer. I know there are two wires from the power supply which the 
desktop switch connects to turn on the power supply. How does the 
operating system turn it off?

[solved]Re: anacron mysteriously not working

[Michael Lange]

On Sun, 6 May 2018 10:14:54 +0100
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard 
wrote:

> Michael Lange:
> 
> > [...] I discovered that the syslog had become rather huge, so 
> > apparently logrotate had not been performed for months.
> >
> 
> See the thread started by John Cunningham on this very mailing list on 
> this topic 6 days before you did.

I had read this before, but the problem reported there seemed to be quite
different from mine.

As I said, anacron refused to do anything when started manually. I tried
to start anacron -fnd via strace, which showed that anacron loaded the
locale configuration files and then stopped for no apparent reason
without really doing anything. I suspected that it didn't like something
about my locale settings or maybe some environment variable. Hard to tell
though if you don't get any error message.
Anyway, I found out about the systemd-cron package, purged cron and
anacron and installed systemd-cron, which seems to do its job properly.

Regards

Michael

.-.. .. ...- .   .-.. --- -. --.   .- -. -..   .--. .-. --- ... .--. . .-.

It would seem that evil retreats when forcibly confronted.
-- Yarnek of Excalbia, "The Savage Curtain", stardate
   5906.5

Re: Removing libsystemd0 from a non-systemd system

[Patrick Bartek]

On Sun, 6 May 2018 02:44:16 + (UTC) David Griffith 
wrote:

> 
> Have any advances been made in figuring out just how to remove
> libsystemd0 from a Debian 9 machine that's running sysvinit?  The
> ongoing presence of libsystemd0 has caused slowly-progressing trouble
> with several machines of mine culminating in complete failure a
> couple days ago.  Initially I thought this was unrelated to systemd,
> but now I tracked it down to systemd's remnants and the problem is
> progressing much faster with freshly-installed machines.
> 
> 
> -- 
> David Griffith
> d...@661.org

First, how exactly did you convert to sysvinit, etc? And what kind of
trouble?

I've been running Stretch with sysvinit for almost a year -- as
a personal machine, not a server -- and have had absolutely NO
problems.  Here's the link I used:

http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_remove_systemd_from_a_Debian_Stretch_installation

I used the very first conversion steps, the simplest one, and none
of the optional ones.  No pinning.  No third-party systemdless repos,
etc. I still have systemd libraries including libsystemd0 for those apps
that have systemd as a dependenciy.  No problems.  Totally removing
systemd is a pain requiring third-party systemdless repos and keeping a
wary eye out for problems. I did it a couple times as part of my
experiments, and always had glitches.

One thing did just occur to me: Are you using the GNOME desktop?  I've
heard stories about it and systemd.  It is VERY dependent on it. I
haven't used GNOME whatever version for about 7 years. I use only a
window manager Openbox.

B

Re: Jessie: No logrotate since October 2016?

[Boyan Penkov]

--
Boyan Penkov
www.boyanpenkov.com

> On May 6, 2018, at 05:10, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard 
>  wrote:
> 
> John Cunningham:
> 
>> I hate to wade into the pool of systemd hate, but is this systemd's fault? I 
>> noticed anacron doesn't exist on this system. Is it supposed to anymore? Or 
>> is that one of the things that have been deprecated? If so, how are the 
>> /etc/cron.daily jobs getting run these days?
>> 
> You'll have to check the timeframe of when these changes happened with 
> respect to Debian 8, but a Debian 9 system does not use cron to run anacron 
> and various other things like phpsessionclean, nor use anacron itself to run 
> various further things.  You'll find [ ! -d /run/systemd/system ] in various 
> places in Debian Linux nowadays that turns stuff off when systemd is running, 
> as well as reliance on the fact that systemd ignores non-native stuff if it 
> has native stuff of the same name (such as anacron.timer).
> 
> * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/438379/5132

Thanks for the pointer, particularly here...

> 
> * https://sources.debian.org/src/anacron/2.3-24/debian/anacron.timer/
> 
> * https://sources.debian.org/src/apt/1.6.1/debian/apt.apt-compat.cron.daily/
> 
> * https://sources.debian.org/src/man-db/2.8.3-2/debian/cron.daily/
> 
> Moreover, you will find the similar [ -x /usr/sbin/anacron ] in various 
> places to control what happens when anacron is not installed.
> 
> * https://sources.debian.org/src/cron/3.0pl1-130/debian/crontab.main/
> 
> So bear in mind that your learned ideas about what runs what are no longer 
> true.
> 

Re: Sid in virtualbox: vbox drivers not built?

[Patrick Bartek]

On Sun, 06 May 2018 15:04:28 +0200 Felix Natter  wrote:

> hello Debian-users,
> 
> I am using virtualbox-guest-x11 5.2.10-dfsg-6, but when starting X11,
> "vboxvideo" cannot be found. The other utils ("copy and paste") do not
> work either.
> 
> I notice that when installing "virtualbox-guest-utils
> virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-dkms", no modules are built.
> 
> There have been many changes lately:
> http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/contrib/v/virtualbox/virtualbox_5.2.10-dfsg-6_changelog
> --> so is it just broken temporarily (I've seen this before)?

Have you installed dkms, appropriate kernel headers, gcc, etc?

And have you RTFM?

B

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown.

[Felix Miata]

Thomas George composed on 2018-05-06 12:14 (UTC-0400):

> Selected shutdown from the window manager and the operating system 
> turned off the computer as usual. Tried to restart the computer from the 
> switch on the desktop box but it was totally dead.

> Where to look for the failure? CPU, motherboard, power supply or 
> mechanical switch?

If it was made between 2001 and 2004, good chance it's failed motherboard
capacitors. Otherwise, most likely candidate is PS failure, typically also from
failed caps. Overheating from dust accumulation can kill other components, CPU
in particular. Sometimes it can be the switch, and quickly repeated attempts or
stronger presses will eventually start it.

What brand and model PC or motherboard?

Cap replacement can often fix, but isn't necessarily worth the trouble and
expense unless you want to do the repair yourself. See http:://www.badcaps.net/

> I never thought before about how the operating system shuts down the 
> computer. I know there are two wires from the power supply which the 
> desktop switch connects to turn on the power supply. How does the 
> operating system turn it off?
> 
Software call to BIOS.
-- 
"Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you
get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation)

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

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

Re: Dead computer after system shutdown.

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

Thomas George wrote:
> Tried to restart the computer from the switch on the desktop box but
> it was totally dead. [...]
> Where to look for the failure? CPU, motherboard, power supply or mechanical
> switch?

If it does not make any noise and lets not shine any light then the power
supply is the first suspect. (Including the classic: "Is it plugged in ?")


> How does the operating system turn it off?

My best guess is
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Dead computer after system shutdown.

[Thomas George]

Selected shutdown from the window manager and the operating system 
turned off the computer as usual. Tried to restart the computer from the 
switch on the desktop box but it was totally dead.


Where to look for the failure? CPU, motherboard, power supply or 
mechanical switch?


I never thought before about how the operating system shuts down the 
computer. I know there are two wires from the power supply which the 
desktop switch connects to turn on the power supply. How does the 
operating system turn it off?

Re: Backup problem using "cp"

[Pascal Hambourg]

Le 06/05/2018 à 16:22, Richard Owlett a écrit :

I'm attempting to backup current partition  to a USB connected 1 TB drive.

I get:

root@debian-jan13:/home/richard# cp -ax / "/media/richard/MISC 
backups/dev_sda14/"
cp: cannot stat '/media/richard/MISC 
backups/dev_sda14/home/richard/.local/share/Trash/expunged/73080846/grub2 
problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2 
problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2 
problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13': File name too long



The same pattern "grub2 problem-2018-02-13" seems to be repeated 
endlessly in the path. Could there be a loop ?

Re: Backup problem using "cp"

[Cindy-Sue Causey]

On 5/6/18, Thomas Schmitt  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Richard Owlett wrote:
>> Thought I was doing that by specifying -x.
>
> Either cp -x has a bug or the target directory is not in a different
> filesystem than "/" and not a mount point of such a filesystem.
>
> Check the device numbers of "/" and "/media/richard/MISC...".
> E.g. like this
>
>   $ stat / | fgrep Device
>   Device: 803h/2051d  Inode: 2   Links: 25
>   $ stat /bkp | fgrep Device
>   Device: 814h/2068d  Inode: 2   Links: 7
>
> Here "/bkp" has a different device number (2068) than "/" (2051).
> So it (its inode, to be exacting) is in a different filesystem.
>
> As contrast see a directory in the same filesystem as "/":
>
>   $ stat /home | fgrep Device
>   Device: 803h/2051d  Inode: 2228225 Links: 60
>
>
>> Any way to accomplish that without explicitly listing all directories
>> except
>> /media ?
>
> If it is indeed a bug with cp -x, then you could use some archiver like
> "tar" which has options to exclude a file.
>
> Totally untested fantasy:
>
>   $ tar cf - --exclude=/media / | (cd /media/.../dev_sda14 ; tar xf - )
>
> Get inspiration from googling "tar pipe for copying".


I use "--exclude" with rsync so I tried a quick search with that, too.
It's a handy keyword to throw into the search mix.

"tar" and "file" have been coming up for me for specific copy needs
lately, primarily related to plucking via time stamps within large,
single directories. :)

Cindy :)
-- 
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA

* runs with duct tape *

Re: backports on kernel 4.15 and nvidia-driver 390 crashes x

[Boyan Penkov]

--
Boyan Penkov
www.boyanpenkov.com

> On May 4, 2018, at 17:19, Francisco M Neto  wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
>   I had a similar problem when I upgraded from Stretch (4.9) to
> Buster (4.15). The nvidia driver stopped working but after reinstalling
> it started to work again, supposedly because it needed to rebuild the
> kernel module with headers from the new kernel. Maybe you're having a
> similar issue?

I don’t think so, as the experiment matrix I tried above involved rebuilding 
the module using the correct headers every time.

Updating sources to buster and pulling in kernel-image, kernel-headers, then 
restarting to 4.16 to recovery mode, uninstalling nvidia-driver and then 
reinstalling the nvidia-driver package seems to have worked…. However, this 
cannot be the orthodox approach to solve this…..

> 
>   Which nvidia card are you using?

GTX 560 Ti, which is Fermi, which is indeed old — wikipedia says it’s going to 
legacy after 390 — is that where I may be getting in trouble?  Should I try 
nvidia-legacy in debian?

> 
> --
> Francisco
> 
> On Thu, 2018-05-03 at 20:24 -0400, Boyan Penkov wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I have upgraded to the current stretch backports nvidia-driver, and
>> this crashes on the current stretch backports kernel.  Have folks seen
>> this combination work?
>> 
>> I see the following:
>> 
>> kernel — nvidia — status
>> 4.15 — 390 — fail
>> 4.15 — 370 — untested
>> 4.9 — 390 — fail
>> 4.9 — 375 — success
>> 
>> Anything I can do to help debug? What’s annoying is that the fails on
>> 390 print a blank screen with no X cursor and a prompt to log out, so
>> I don’t know where to look for logs or traces….
>> 
>> Cheers!
>> --
>> Boyan Penkov
>> www.boyanpenkov.com
>> 
> -- 
> --
> []'s,
> 
> Francisco M Neto
> Institut für Anorganische Chemie
> Universität Duisburg-Essen
> 

Re: Backup problem using "cp"

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

Richard Owlett wrote:
> Thought I was doing that by specifying -x.

Either cp -x has a bug or the target directory is not in a different
filesystem than "/" and not a mount point of such a filesystem.

Check the device numbers of "/" and "/media/richard/MISC...".
E.g. like this

  $ stat / | fgrep Device
  Device: 803h/2051d  Inode: 2   Links: 25
  $ stat /bkp | fgrep Device
  Device: 814h/2068d  Inode: 2   Links: 7

Here "/bkp" has a different device number (2068) than "/" (2051).
So it (its inode, to be exacting) is in a different filesystem.

As contrast see a directory in the same filesystem as "/":

  $ stat /home | fgrep Device
  Device: 803h/2051d  Inode: 2228225 Links: 60


> Any way to accomplish that without explicitly listing all directories except
> /media ?

If it is indeed a bug with cp -x, then you could use some archiver like
"tar" which has options to exclude a file.

Totally untested fantasy:

  $ tar cf - --exclude=/media / | (cd /media/.../dev_sda14 ; tar xf - )

Get inspiration from googling "tar pipe for copying".


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: What needs to improve in KDE 4?

[Martin Steigerwald]

Am Montag 10 Mai 2010 schrieb Nate Bargmann:
> * On 2010 10 May 11:50 -0500, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > Yes, 4.2 and now 4.4 seem to behave badly without a clean ~/.kde. I
> > find that very disturbing and unstable.
> 
> For the record, I had a clean ~/.kde for 4.2 when it hit Sid about a
> year ago and upgraded the offered KDE packages through 4.3.4, IIRC, and
> then started with a clean ~/.kde for Sid's new 4.4.3.
> 
> - Nate >>

IMHO when a config setting is not handled properly on upgrade of KDE its a 
bug.

I migrated configuration from KDE 3.5.10 and just pressed on "Reset to 
defaults" for quite some appearance related settings in order to switch 
them to Oxygen. There have been issues, but I mostly didn't file them as 
bugs.

Only one I triaged and filed: The separator "58" for colon for web 
shortcuts in kuriikwsrc or something like that it was is not recognized by 
KRunner, only by Konqueror. ":" instead works with both. Unfortunately 
Konqueror saved it as "58" not as ":".

Anyway I suggest to file those issues as concrete as possible as bugs as 
you manage to take time for it.

-- 
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA  B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7


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

Re: Backup problem using "cp"

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/06/2018 09:33 AM, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

Richard Owlett wrote:

cp -ax / "/media/richard/MISC
backups/dev_sda14/"
cp: cannot stat '/media/richard/MISC
...
File name too long


You tell cp to copy / including its sub tree /media/richard/... which is
the target of the copy process. So as soon as reading reaches that tree
it begins to copy itself into itself endlessly until it bonks against
a filesystem limit.

You need to exclude the target directory from being copied.
E.g. by not giving "/" as copy source but rather all its files and
directories except "/media".



Thought I was doing that by specifying -x.
Any way to accomplish that without explicitly listing all directories 
except /media ?

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/06/2018 09:26 AM, Brian wrote:

On Sun 06 May 2018 at 15:53:05 +1200, Richard Hector wrote:


On 06/05/18 07:35, Brian wrote:

On Sat 05 May 2018 at 11:06:25 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:


What are the distinguishing features of unmount, Safely Remove Drive, and
Eject?


There are none. The device is either unmounted or it isn't. It cannnot
be half-unmounted.


Hmm. Is there not a point where it's been made inaccessible to the
filesystem, but caches are not yet flushed?


I don't know but I've always thought that unmounting a USB stick led to
a sync action and buffers were flushed. Anyway, in the light of Henrique
de Moraes Holschuh's enlightening post I'll back away a little from my
previous mail and give a restructured response.

Although it is from a few years ago, the material at

   https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=598690

could still be useful. Safely Remove Drive and Eject are associated
with DEs, although Xfce seems to manage without them and has unmount as
an only option.

udisks2 is the software involved. A test (as an unprivileged user) after
plugging in a USB stick:

  lsblk(To get the device)
  udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdg1
  udisksctl unmount -b /dev/sdg1   (Must be done before the next command).
  udisksctl power-off -b /dev/sdg1 (Observe indicator light on the stick).

The stick needs detaching and re-inserting to get mounting to work again.


From udisksctl(1):


  power-off
   Arranges for the drive to be safely removed and powered off. On the
   OS side this includes ensuring that no process is using the drive,
   then requesting that in-flight buffers and caches are committed to
   stable storage. The exact steps for powering off the drive depends
   on the drive itself and the interconnect used. For drives connected
   through USB, the effect is that the USB device will be deconfigured
   followed by disabling the upstream hub port it is connected to.
  
   Note that as some physical devices contain multiple drives (for

   example 4-in-1 flash card reader USB devices) powering off one drive
   may affect other drives. As such there are not a lot of guarantees
   associated with performing this action. Usually the effect is that
   the drive disappears as if it was unplugged.

I'm still pondering why I would need power-off with a USB device.



That explains a lot. Will have to wait till this afternoon to read your 
reference.

Re: Backup problem using "cp"

[Dan Purgert]

Richard Owlett wrote:
> I'm attempting to backup current partition  to a USB connected 1 TB drive.
>
> I get:
>
>> root@debian-jan13:/home/richard# cp -ax / "/media/richard/MISC
>> backups/dev_sda14/"
>> cp: cannot stat '/media/richard/MISC
>> backups/dev_sda14/home/richard/.local/share/Trash/expunged/73080846/grub2
>> problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2
>> problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2
>> problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13': File name too long
>
> After multiple re-readings of man page for cp I suspect:
>
> -t, --target-directory=DIRECTORY
>  copy all SOURCE arguments into DIRECTORY
>
> -T, --no-target-directory
>  treat DEST as a normal file
>
> but am actually quite lost.
> HELP please.
> TIA

the filename (including path) is too long for 'cp' to handle.  Might
also hold true for other tools (e.g. rsync).  perhaps just completely
empty the trash? 
-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/06/2018 09:19 AM, Reco wrote:

Hi.

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 09:07:50AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 05/06/2018 08:30 AM, Reco wrote:

Hi.

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 09:05:19AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, May 06, 2018 08:11:25 AM Reco wrote:

Hi.

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 07:51:24AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, May 06, 2018 07:10:53 AM Reco wrote:

Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even say
that it's "dumbing down things".


For the *uninitiated (or old)* among us, care to enlighten us?


Easy. Does it look like it's designed for a tablet?
Does it look pretty yet likes to crash often?
Or maybe it has a rodent on a logo?


Doesn't help me--see *emphasized" part in my first response.

I guess I'm not using one, but I'd like to know what to avoid in the future.


This list is known for shadowbanning its users if certain words are
mentioned. I'd like to avoid it.

I propose a techincal criteria then.
If it can be run via Wayland - it's Modern.
If still it requires X to run - it's not.



Does that gibberish have any thing to do with Debian 9 installed from then
current repository via netinst?


No. Should it? Hint - please read the e-mail topic.



 I be OP and never requested Wayland, but just 
discovered that Synaptic reports I have *FOUR* of its modules installed.

Re: Backup problem using "cp"

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

Richard Owlett wrote:
> cp -ax / "/media/richard/MISC
> backups/dev_sda14/"
> cp: cannot stat '/media/richard/MISC
> ...
> File name too long

You tell cp to copy / including its sub tree /media/richard/... which is
the target of the copy process. So as soon as reading reaches that tree
it begins to copy itself into itself endlessly until it bonks against
a filesystem limit.

You need to exclude the target directory from being copied.
E.g. by not giving "/" as copy source but rather all its files and
directories except "/media".


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Brian]

On Sun 06 May 2018 at 15:53:05 +1200, Richard Hector wrote:

> On 06/05/18 07:35, Brian wrote:
> > On Sat 05 May 2018 at 11:06:25 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > 
> >> What are the distinguishing features of unmount, Safely Remove Drive, and
> >> Eject?
> > 
> > There are none. The device is either unmounted or it isn't. It cannnot
> > be half-unmounted.
> 
> Hmm. Is there not a point where it's been made inaccessible to the
> filesystem, but caches are not yet flushed?

I don't know but I've always thought that unmounting a USB stick led to
a sync action and buffers were flushed. Anyway, in the light of Henrique
de Moraes Holschuh's enlightening post I'll back away a little from my
previous mail and give a restructured response.

Although it is from a few years ago, the material at

  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=598690

could still be useful. Safely Remove Drive and Eject are associated
with DEs, although Xfce seems to manage without them and has unmount as
an only option.

udisks2 is the software involved. A test (as an unprivileged user) after
plugging in a USB stick:

 lsblk(To get the device)
 udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdg1
 udisksctl unmount -b /dev/sdg1   (Must be done before the next command).
 udisksctl power-off -b /dev/sdg1 (Observe indicator light on the stick).

The stick needs detaching and re-inserting to get mounting to work again.

>From udisksctl(1):

 power-off
  Arranges for the drive to be safely removed and powered off. On the
  OS side this includes ensuring that no process is using the drive,
  then requesting that in-flight buffers and caches are committed to
  stable storage. The exact steps for powering off the drive depends
  on the drive itself and the interconnect used. For drives connected
  through USB, the effect is that the USB device will be deconfigured
  followed by disabling the upstream hub port it is connected to.
 
  Note that as some physical devices contain multiple drives (for
  example 4-in-1 flash card reader USB devices) powering off one drive
  may affect other drives. As such there are not a lot of guarantees
  associated with performing this action. Usually the effect is that
  the drive disappears as if it was unplugged.

I'm still pondering why I would need power-off with a USB device.

-- 
Brian.

Backup problem using "cp"

[Richard Owlett]

I'm attempting to backup current partition  to a USB connected 1 TB drive.

I get:


root@debian-jan13:/home/richard# cp -ax / "/media/richard/MISC 
backups/dev_sda14/"
cp: cannot stat '/media/richard/MISC 
backups/dev_sda14/home/richard/.local/share/Trash/expunged/73080846/grub2 
problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2 
problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13/grub2 problem-2018-02-13': File 
name too long


After multiple re-readings of man page for cp I suspect:

-t, --target-directory=DIRECTORY
copy all SOURCE arguments into DIRECTORY

-T, --no-target-directory
treat DEST as a normal file

but am actually quite lost.
HELP please.
TIA

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Reco]

Hi.

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 09:07:50AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 05/06/2018 08:30 AM, Reco wrote:
> > Hi.
> > 
> > On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 09:05:19AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, May 06, 2018 08:11:25 AM Reco wrote:
> > > > Hi.
> > > > 
> > > > On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 07:51:24AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > On Sunday, May 06, 2018 07:10:53 AM Reco wrote:
> > > > > > Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
> > > > > > its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even say
> > > > > > that it's "dumbing down things".
> > > > > 
> > > > > For the *uninitiated (or old)* among us, care to enlighten us?
> > > > 
> > > > Easy. Does it look like it's designed for a tablet?
> > > > Does it look pretty yet likes to crash often?
> > > > Or maybe it has a rodent on a logo?
> > > 
> > > Doesn't help me--see *emphasized" part in my first response.
> > > 
> > > I guess I'm not using one, but I'd like to know what to avoid in the 
> > > future.
> > 
> > This list is known for shadowbanning its users if certain words are
> > mentioned. I'd like to avoid it.
> > 
> > I propose a techincal criteria then.
> > If it can be run via Wayland - it's Modern.
> > If still it requires X to run - it's not.
> > 
> 
> Does that gibberish have any thing to do with Debian 9 installed from then
> current repository via netinst?

No. Should it? Hint - please read the e-mail topic.

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/06/2018 08:30 AM, Reco wrote:

Hi.

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 09:05:19AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, May 06, 2018 08:11:25 AM Reco wrote:

Hi.

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 07:51:24AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, May 06, 2018 07:10:53 AM Reco wrote:

Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even say
that it's "dumbing down things".


For the *uninitiated (or old)* among us, care to enlighten us?


Easy. Does it look like it's designed for a tablet?
Does it look pretty yet likes to crash often?
Or maybe it has a rodent on a logo?


Doesn't help me--see *emphasized" part in my first response.

I guess I'm not using one, but I'd like to know what to avoid in the future.


This list is known for shadowbanning its users if certain words are
mentioned. I'd like to avoid it.

I propose a techincal criteria then.
If it can be run via Wayland - it's Modern.
If still it requires X to run - it's not.



Does that gibberish have any thing to do with Debian 9 installed from 
then current repository via netinst?

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Reco]

Hi.

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 09:05:19AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, May 06, 2018 08:11:25 AM Reco wrote:
> > Hi.
> > 
> > On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 07:51:24AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, May 06, 2018 07:10:53 AM Reco wrote:
> > > > Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
> > > > its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even say
> > > > that it's "dumbing down things".
> > > 
> > > For the *uninitiated (or old)* among us, care to enlighten us?
> > 
> > Easy. Does it look like it's designed for a tablet?
> > Does it look pretty yet likes to crash often?
> > Or maybe it has a rodent on a logo?
> 
> Doesn't help me--see *emphasized" part in my first response.
> 
> I guess I'm not using one, but I'd like to know what to avoid in the future.

This list is known for shadowbanning its users if certain words are
mentioned. I'd like to avoid it.

I propose a techincal criteria then. 
If it can be run via Wayland - it's Modern.
If still it requires X to run - it's not.

Reco

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[rhkramer]

On Sunday, May 06, 2018 08:11:25 AM Reco wrote:
>   Hi.
> 
> On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 07:51:24AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, May 06, 2018 07:10:53 AM Reco wrote:
> > > Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
> > > its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even say
> > > that it's "dumbing down things".
> > 
> > For the *uninitiated (or old)* among us, care to enlighten us?
> 
> Easy. Does it look like it's designed for a tablet?
> Does it look pretty yet likes to crash often?
> Or maybe it has a rodent on a logo?

Doesn't help me--see *emphasized" part in my first response.

I guess I'm not using one, but I'd like to know what to avoid in the future.

For the record, I don't enjoy guessing games, or whatever we're playing here.

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Reco]

Hi.

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 10:29:41PM +1000, Charlie S wrote:
> On Sun, 6 May 2018 15:11:25 +0300 Reco sent:
> 
> > Hi.
> > 
> > On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 07:51:24AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, May 06, 2018 07:10:53 AM Reco wrote:  
> > > > Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
> > > > its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even
> > > > say that it's "dumbing down things".  
> > > 
> > > For the uninitiated (or old) among us, care to enlighten us?  
> > 
> > Easy. Does it look like it's designed for a tablet?
> > Does it look pretty yet likes to crash often?
> > Or maybe it has a rodent on a logo?
> > 
> > If any of those is true, you're using a Modern Desktop Environment™.
> > 
> > Reco
> > 
>   After contemplation, my reply is:
> 
>   I have to admit to reading your post that, a "Desktop
>   Environment" dumbs things down.

Was not my intention, just in case. Back in the day they designed
Desktop Environments to enhance users' productivity (GNOME1 comes to
mind), now all they seem to care about are the needs of a mythical
"clueless user".

So let's keep it PG-13 clean, and call it "simplifying".


> I also read the question, as referring to, why does a Desktop
> Environment dumbs things down?

Who knows? Martians send their mind-controlling rays, certain corporate
entities are plotting to take the world - the possibilities are endless.
And of course there are They.

Reco

Sid in virtualbox: vbox drivers not built?

[Felix Natter]

hello Debian-users,

I am using virtualbox-guest-x11 5.2.10-dfsg-6, but when starting X11,
"vboxvideo" cannot be found. The other utils ("copy and paste") do not
work either.

I notice that when installing "virtualbox-guest-utils
virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-dkms", no modules are built.

There have been many changes lately:
http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/contrib/v/virtualbox/virtualbox_5.2.10-dfsg-6_changelog
--> so is it just broken temporarily (I've seen this before)?

Thanks and Best Regards,
-- 
Felix Natter
debian/rules!

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/06/2018 06:51 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, May 06, 2018 07:10:53 AM Reco wrote:

Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even say that
it's "dumbing down things".


For the uninitiated (or old) among us, care to enlighten us?


As one for whom three-score-and-ten is past:

Various Linux distros appear to compete for the worst combination of 
"mother hen" and "papa knows best" of Unix and Windows. Debian offends 
least.


A less opinionated description should be appear in my reply later today 
to Henrique's post.

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Charlie S]

On Sun, 6 May 2018 15:11:25 +0300 Reco sent:

>   Hi.
> 
> On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 07:51:24AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, May 06, 2018 07:10:53 AM Reco wrote:  
> > > Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
> > > its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even
> > > say that it's "dumbing down things".  
> > 
> > For the uninitiated (or old) among us, care to enlighten us?  
> 
> Easy. Does it look like it's designed for a tablet?
> Does it look pretty yet likes to crash often?
> Or maybe it has a rodent on a logo?
> 
> If any of those is true, you're using a Modern Desktop Environment™.
> 
> Reco
> 
After contemplation, my reply is:

I have to admit to reading your post that, a "Desktop
Environment" dumbs things down.

I also read the question, as referring to, why does a Desktop
Environment dumbs things down?

My error.

Charlie

-- 
Registered Linux User:- 329524
***

A dream grants what one covets when awake. - German proverb

***

Debian GNU/Linux - Magic indeed.

-

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/06/2018 06:23 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:

On Sat, 05 May 2018, Richard Owlett wrote:

What are the distinguishing features of unmount, Safely Remove Drive, and
Eject?


Usually it goes like this:

unmount: exactly what it says.  Likely operates only on a single
filesystem (device may have many, if it is partitioned, etc).  Will
flush caches related to that filesystem, and will issue device cache
flushes or write barriers as required, but only related to that
filesystem.

safely remove: unmount all partitions/filesystems; quiesce the device
(flush all caches, plug all read/write queues); issue device quiesce
commands (spin down HDDs, prepare-for-power-off notification for SSDs,
etc); delete it from the kernel (so that it can be physically
hot-removed by the operator, etc).

eject: unmount all partitions/filesystems, issue "media eject" IOCTL
command to device (some card readers, cdrom/cdrw/dvdrom/dvdrw and other
media-tray based devices, etc).  Might or not end up doing nearly the
same as "safely remove", depending on just what the kernel decides to do
when it gets that ioctl (or if some lower level userspace is intelligent
enough to map it to "safely remove", etc).  Does *not* delete the device
from the kernel.


The question is prompted by observing that for partitions on USB flash
drives which have been auto-mounted, one or both of the last two are listed
when clicking on the icon associated with a partition. For a hard disk
partition, only the first is given.


Next time, give us the name of the DE and application in question.

Anyway, it looks like it is giving you "unmount" when it thinks it is an
unremovable device, and the two others when it thinks either the device
or the media might be removable.



I'm running Debian 9 with MATE.
My observed symptoms were initially observed related to what choices 
given when right clicking on the icon associated with a partition.


I suspect the underlying probably is related to how/when something is 
"auto-magically" mounted. YES, a vague statement. This afternoon I plan 
to run some tests.


Thanks all for feed back received.

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Reco]

Hi.

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 07:51:24AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, May 06, 2018 07:10:53 AM Reco wrote:
> > Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
> > its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even say that
> > it's "dumbing down things".
> 
> For the uninitiated (or old) among us, care to enlighten us?

Easy. Does it look like it's designed for a tablet?
Does it look pretty yet likes to crash often?
Or maybe it has a rodent on a logo?

If any of those is true, you're using a Modern Desktop Environment™.

Reco

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[rhkramer]

On Sunday, May 06, 2018 07:10:53 AM Reco wrote:
> Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
> its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even say that
> it's "dumbing down things".

For the uninitiated (or old) among us, care to enlighten us?

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Sat, 05 May 2018, Richard Owlett wrote:
> What are the distinguishing features of unmount, Safely Remove Drive, and
> Eject?

Usually it goes like this:

unmount: exactly what it says.  Likely operates only on a single
filesystem (device may have many, if it is partitioned, etc).  Will
flush caches related to that filesystem, and will issue device cache
flushes or write barriers as required, but only related to that
filesystem.

safely remove: unmount all partitions/filesystems; quiesce the device
(flush all caches, plug all read/write queues); issue device quiesce
commands (spin down HDDs, prepare-for-power-off notification for SSDs,
etc); delete it from the kernel (so that it can be physically
hot-removed by the operator, etc).

eject: unmount all partitions/filesystems, issue "media eject" IOCTL
command to device (some card readers, cdrom/cdrw/dvdrom/dvdrw and other
media-tray based devices, etc).  Might or not end up doing nearly the
same as "safely remove", depending on just what the kernel decides to do
when it gets that ioctl (or if some lower level userspace is intelligent
enough to map it to "safely remove", etc).  Does *not* delete the device
from the kernel.

> The question is prompted by observing that for partitions on USB flash
> drives which have been auto-mounted, one or both of the last two are listed
> when clicking on the icon associated with a partition. For a hard disk
> partition, only the first is given.

Next time, give us the name of the DE and application in question.

Anyway, it looks like it is giving you "unmount" when it thinks it is an
unremovable device, and the two others when it thinks either the device
or the media might be removable.

-- 
  Henrique Holschuh

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Reco]

Hi.

On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 10:15:11AM +0200, Felix Dietrich wrote:
> Reco  writes:
> 
> > But, considering *who* designed DE in question, it may be for the best
> > that users are oblivious about this particular feature ;).
> 
> What is „DE” referring to?

"Desktop Environment". Certain Modern Desktop Environment™ is known for
its effort to "simplify the things for the user". Some may even say that
it's "dumbing down things".

Reco

Re: Debian 9 t: Update Gstreamer Base plugins package to resolve a Gstreamer bug

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Sat, 05 May 2018, Liam O'Toole wrote:
> On 2018-05-05, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh  wrote:
> > On Fri, 04 May 2018, Dinesh Iyer wrote:
> >> "You'll have to talk to whoever is providing you your older version of
> >> GStreamer. They will have to backport the fix to that old version, but it
> >> should just cleanly apply to the older versions."
> >> 
> >> The patch that needs to be applied is:
> >> https://github.com/GStreamer/gst-plugins-base/commit/9f9000e693694ea33c21607140ffc29aa1734062#diff-acf6f1abae3d918458c7a91ce8a0b3ad
> >> 
> >> Is this something that would be possible to do? This would really help me
> >> as this stall is a show stopper for my application.
> >
> > Talking in the general way, yes, it is possible.  I am not one of the
> > DDs responsible for gstream, though.  So all I can tell you is how it
> > would go for one of the packages I am responsible for:
> >
> > Since a stable update is needed, one has to go the long way to get the
> > Debian stable release manager to approve it (it doesn't depend only on
> > the DD responsible for the package).
> >
> > First, you get the fix into unstable (either through a patch, or by
> > ensuring an already fixed version is present).  And wait for it to
> > migrate to testing (usually, five-seven days).
> 
> [...]
> 
> At this point wouldn't it be easier to get the fix into
> stretch-backports?

Yes, backports is alwasy easier.  But it reaches a lot less people.
Your choice, really.

-- 
  Henrique Holschuh

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[songbird]

Felix Dietrich wrote:
> Reco  writes:
>
>> But, considering *who* designed DE in question, it may be for the best
>> that users are oblivious about this particular feature ;).
>
> What is „DE” referring to?

  i'm guessing Desktop Environment...


  songbird

Re: anacron mysteriously not working

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

Michael Lange:

[...] I discovered that the syslog had become rather huge, so 
apparently logrotate had not been performed for months.




See the thread started by John Cunningham on this very mailing list on 
this topic 6 days before you did.

Re: Jessie: No logrotate since October 2016?

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

John Cunningham:

I hate to wade into the pool of systemd hate, but is this systemd's 
fault? I noticed anacron doesn't exist on this system. Is it supposed 
to anymore? Or is that one of the things that have been deprecated? If 
so, how are the /etc/cron.daily jobs getting run these days?


You'll have to check the timeframe of when these changes happened with 
respect to Debian 8, but a Debian 9 system does not use cron to run 
anacron and various other things like phpsessionclean, nor use anacron 
itself to run various further things.  You'll find [ ! -d 
/run/systemd/system ] in various places in Debian Linux nowadays that 
turns stuff off when systemd is running, as well as reliance on the fact 
that systemd ignores non-native stuff if it has native stuff of the same 
name (such as anacron.timer).


* https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/438379/5132

* https://sources.debian.org/src/anacron/2.3-24/debian/anacron.timer/

* https://sources.debian.org/src/apt/1.6.1/debian/apt.apt-compat.cron.daily/

* https://sources.debian.org/src/man-db/2.8.3-2/debian/cron.daily/

Moreover, you will find the similar [ -x /usr/sbin/anacron ] in various 
places to control what happens when anacron is not installed.


* https://sources.debian.org/src/cron/3.0pl1-130/debian/crontab.main/

So bear in mind that your learned ideas about what runs what are no 
longer true.

Re: Debian glossary?

[Felix Dietrich]

David Wright  writes:

> I can't understand why Debian would involve itself in writing
> tutorials for commands like mount, ls, and so on, or glossaries
> of terms like strictatime and device file.
>
> All this is standard linux/unix information, well catered for by
> libraries of books from several well-known publishers, O'Reilly
> being one of the best known. I spent 1997/8 immersing myself in such
> texts, at a time when these books had to be bought. (Public libraries
> only had Idiots' guides to W95, etc.) Now there are a wealth of
> free PDFs at every level of expertise on the web, there for the
> downloading.

The Debian project actually hosts some documentation efforts at
.  Among these are the book-like „The
Administrator's Handbook” [1] and the „Debian Reference” [2].  They
contain information on Debian-specific as well as general *nix usage.

[1] 
[2] 

--
Felix Dietrich

Re: Distinguishing among [unmount, Safely Remove Drive, Eject]

[Felix Dietrich]

Reco  writes:

> But, considering *who* designed DE in question, it may be for the best
> that users are oblivious about this particular feature ;).

What is „DE” referring to?

--
Felix Dietrich