Re: Can someone explain containers, pods, docker, etc. please

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 07 November 2024 08:19:55 am Chris Green wrote:
> I'm trying to get my mind round the various ways of wrapping/isolating
> collections of code and programs in Debian (well in any Linux I
> suppose) and I'm really not understanding them very well.  When you go
> to the home of any particular one it seems to think you know what it
> is already and thus goes from there to tell you how to install it but
> doesn't really explain what it does.
> 

This is one of my biggest gripes about software packages.  As in,  "WTF does 
this DO?!"  Too often they seem to leave that out for some reason...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: battery tester

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 24 October 2024 03:26:06 pm to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 24, 2024 at 03:21:24PM -0400, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > On Wednesday 23 October 2024 09:38:04 pm Max Nikulin wrote:
> > > On 23/10/2024 21:25, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > > > Connecting the device with a USB cable I see it wake up,  at which point
> > > > there's a menu on its screen.
> > > 
> > > Start "journalctl -f" as root before connecting the device. Logs may 
> > > contain some hints how to communicate with it. Perhaps "udevadm monitor" 
> > > with some options may provide more low level info.
> > 
> > I did find some info in one of the log files:
> > 
> > Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.140032] usb 7-1.4.4: new 
> > full-speed USB device number 13 using ehci-pci
> > Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.249009] usb 7-1.4.4: New USB 
> > device found, idVendor=1a86, idProduct=7523
> > Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.249012] usb 7-1.4.4: New USB 
> > device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
> > Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.249014] usb 7-1.4.4: Product: 
> > USB Serial
> > Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.249308] ch341 7-1.4.4:1.0: 
> > ch341-uart converter detected
> > Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.251232] usb 7-1.4.4: 
> > ch341-uart converter now attached to ttyUSB0
>   
> ^^^
> 
> There it is. Now you can try "cat /dev/ttyUSB0" and wiggle your
> tester. Perhaps it just dumps measurements out the serial?

Tried that,  and when I plug the device in and it lights up,  I select the 
print option.  Then it displays "print wait" on the screen and after a few 
seconds goes back to the menu.  Nothing comes through on the terminal.  Perhaps 
a baud rate mismatch?  I'll have to fiddle with it some more...
 
> (More involved tests might offer better success chances, of course :)
> 
> Cheers



-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: battery tester

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Wednesday 23 October 2024 09:38:04 pm Max Nikulin wrote:
> On 23/10/2024 21:25, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > Connecting the device with a USB cable I see it wake up,  at which point
> > there's a menu on its screen.
> 
> Start "journalctl -f" as root before connecting the device. Logs may 
> contain some hints how to communicate with it. Perhaps "udevadm monitor" 
> with some options may provide more low level info.

I did find some info in one of the log files:

Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.140032] usb 7-1.4.4: new 
full-speed USB device number 13 using ehci-pci
Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.249009] usb 7-1.4.4: New USB 
device found, idVendor=1a86, idProduct=7523
Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.249012] usb 7-1.4.4: New USB 
device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.249014] usb 7-1.4.4: Product: USB 
Serial
Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.249308] ch341 7-1.4.4:1.0: 
ch341-uart converter detected
Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 kernel: [1915052.251232] usb 7-1.4.4: ch341-uart 
converter now attached to ttyUSB0
Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 mtp-probe: checking bus 7, device 13: 
"/sys/devices/pci:00/:00:1a.7/usb7/7-1/7-1.4/7-1.4.4"
Oct 24 15:14:28 Workstation1 mtp-probe: bus: 7, device: 13 was not an MTP device
Oct 24 15:14:29 Workstation1 org.xfce.FileManager[1332]: thunar-volman: 
Unsupported USB device type "usb".
Oct 24 15:14:29 Workstation1 org.xfce.FileManager[1332]: thunar-volman: 
Unsupported USB device type "ch341".

I don't recognize that mtp stuff,  and don't know how thunar-volman gets into 
the picture...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: battery tester

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Wednesday 23 October 2024 11:14:52 am Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 22, 2024 at 6:38 AM George at Clug  wrote:
> >
> > I have been following the comments on this topic.  From what I can tell, 
> > the company does not provide Linux drivers or software.
> >
> > A friend of mine managed to access a heart rate monitor by using DOS 
> > emulation and the original DOS software.
> >
> > Maybe you could use Wine to run the Windows "Printer_boxed.exe" software 
> > (see download page URL below) ?
> >
> > Not having Ancel BA101 battery tester, I am not able to test.
> >
> > https://www.anceltech.com/product/detail?id=1086074596467142656
> >
> > https://www.anceltech.com/Public/Uploads/filetxt/20211007/6638733e-2053-4706-b775-e85cc12931ed.pdf
> >
> > Here are a few words from the later (BA201) model's manual says:
> >
> > https://www.anceltech.com/Public/Uploads/filetxt/20211007/8f5feaf1-3a4d-4090-89cd-d655de60c21d.pdf
> >
> > This function allows you to update the tool software.
> > To update the tool, you need the following items.
> > 1. ANCEL BA201 Battery tester tool
> > 2. A windows PC or laptop with USB ports
> > 3. A USB cable
> >
> > 1) downloading the applications from ANCEL website.
> > www.anceltech.com
> > 2) run btlink.exe in your computer(Mac OS and linux does not compatible)
> >
> > 3.5 Print
> > The Print Data function allows printing out testing data recorded by the 
> > testing tool for or customized test reports.
> > To print out retrieved data, you need the following tools:
> > 1.The tester tool
> > 2.A windows PC or Iaptop with USB ports
> > 3.A USB cable
> > 1) download the applications from ANCEL website.
> > www.anceltech.com
> > 2) connect the tester tool to computer with the USB cable supplied
> > 3) run btlink.exe in your computer, as below
> 
> Installing software from a Chinese vendor does not give me a warm and
> fuzzy feeling.
> 
> Jeff

Just so.

Looking at log files,  the computer _does_ see the device when I plug it in,  
telling me that it's seeing a CH340 chip.  In some messing around a while back, 
 I had two of these visible in terminal windows when I was playing with an 
ESP32 a while back.  I can't recall how I did that,  though.  Which is why I 
asked how one might do that in here...

I did hear from the company,  who gave me the very unhelpful advice to try the 
software on a windows box.  I informed them that there was no windows box at 
all here,  and that they were not addressing my question,  which was asking for 
technical details of what the device wanted.

When I plug it in to a USB port,  it does liight up.  I can scroll down to the 
print option and select that.  What it does at that point I don't know,  as I 
don't have anything looking at that port at the moment,   I just need a bit of 
refreshing my memory as to how...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: battery tester

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 22 October 2024 02:39:36 am George at Clug wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have been following the comments on this topic.  From what I can tell, the 
> company does not provide Linux drivers or software. 
> 
> A friend of mine managed to access a heart rate monitor by using DOS 
> emulation and the original DOS software.
> 
> Maybe you could use Wine to run the Windows "Printer_boxed.exe" software (see 
> download page URL below) ?

That's way more complicated than I care to get here...
 
(...)
> Here are a few words from the later (BA201) model's manual says:
> 
> https://www.anceltech.com/Public/Uploads/filetxt/20211007/8f5feaf1-3a4d-4090-89cd-d655de60c21d.pdf

I did look that over,  and from what I can see it's a pretty similar device,  
the major difference being that the display is very graphic,  where on the one 
I have it's all text.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: battery tester

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Monday 21 October 2024 07:47:39 am Darac Marjal wrote:
> 
> On 20/10/2024 18:51, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > I have here an Ancel BA101 battery tester,  discovered by way of a YT 
> > video,  and it's proved to be a handy gadget to have.  In the "user manual" 
> > for this device (available online) it talks about the ability to print the 
> > data.  Which requires you to connect it to a computer by way of a USB cable 
> > plugged into the tester's USB port.  The documentation further refers to 
> > inserting a CD into the computer (it didn't come with any CD),  making sure 
> > a driver was installed,  then "open the print software" and select the 
> > appropriate COM port.
> >
> > I'm pretty sure that I don't need to install a driver,  since I can connect 
> > all sorts of USB stuff to this computer with no problems.  I'm not sure 
> > what print software they refer to here --  the illustration seems to refer 
> > to "PrintCOM v1.50421" which appears to have print, clear,  and COM port 
> > selection options but also appears to be some kind of windoze software.
> >
> > How would I address accessing this device under linux and getting its info 
> > out to my printer?
> 
> COM ports are serial ports and are a very basic method of communication. 
> Linux supports COM ports (the ports themselves) really well. 

Having had to configure modems and such back when,  I understand this...

> You can  use, say, minicom or screen to communicate with a device on the COM 
> port. 

For some reason neither of those seems to be installed on this machine.

> However, there are a number of challenges to overcome before  
> you'll be able to use the tester.
> 
> Firstly, the parameters of the communication are rather complex (what 
> speed, do you need parity bits / stop bits, who controls the flow of 
> data). 

Been there,  done that.

> If you can find this information, you can tell the computer how  
> to communicate with the other device. As a start, though, you can try 
> "9600 8n1" (9600 bits per second, 8 bits per byte, NO parity, 1 stop 
> bit) as this is the most common setting.

Yup.  Or sometimes faster.
 
> Next, you need to find out what data to send/receive over the port. If 
> you're lucky, the device will be really simple and will just print 
> battery results in plain text when you communicate. But if you're 
> unlucky, you'll need to send it commands to tell it to do things. This 
> communication protocol could be plain text, there could be a menu, it 
> could be binary.. there are even some protocols (APC UPSes, I'm looking 
> at you) which just consist of sending a single character to activate a 
> function - if you happen to send the wrong character, something untoward 
> might happen (in this case, turning off the UPS).

Connecting the device with a USB cable I see it wake up,  at which point 
there's a menu on its screen.  One selection there is to print,  so I'm 
guessing that it might be that simple.  What I need is to somehow redirect 
what's coming from the device to where I can use it.
 
> As another poster advised, only Ancel /really/ know the right way to use 
> their device.
 
Contacting them involved setting up an account,  a bit cumbersome.  I haven't 
seen any reply yet.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

battery tester

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

I have here an Ancel BA101 battery tester,  discovered by way of a YT video,  
and it's proved to be a handy gadget to have.  In the "user manual" for this 
device (available online) it talks about the ability to print the data.  Which 
requires you to connect it to a computer by way of a USB cable plugged into the 
tester's USB port.  The documentation further refers to inserting a CD into the 
computer (it didn't come with any CD),  making sure a driver was installed,  
then "open the print software" and select the appropriate COM port.

I'm pretty sure that I don't need to install a driver,  since I can connect all 
sorts of USB stuff to this computer with no problems.  I'm not sure what print 
software they refer to here --  the illustration seems to refer to "PrintCOM 
v1.50421" which appears to have print, clear,  and COM port selection options 
but also appears to be some kind of windoze software.

How would I address accessing this device under linux and getting its info out 
to my printer?


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Bookworm: Mouse cursor issues after upgrading to FireFox v128?

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 06 October 2024 05:28:26 am Michael Kjörling wrote:
> The only other simultaneous package upgrades in my case are the libgsf
> and oath-toolkit security upgrades, which seem unlikely to be relevant
> to this.
> 

I just got a notice about libgsf in a security mailing list:

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/libgsf

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Change file picker in browsers

[J]

My bad. See now. I will try thx

"Each setting can have the following values:

   - 0 – Never
   - 1 – Always
   - 2 – Auto (typically depends on whether Firefox is run from within
   Flatpak <https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Flatpak> or whether the
   GDK_DEBUG=portals environment is set)"




сб, 28 сент. 2024 г. в 14:01, J :

> Thx all for the replies!
>
> Why is it 2 and 1, and not 0 and 1, is it not binary?
>
> Have a look at:
>>
>> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#XDG_Desktop_Portal_integration
>>
>> Changing widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker in about:config from 2
>> to 1 gives me the kde file picker.
>>
>

Re: Change file picker in browsers

[J]

Thx all for the replies!

Why is it 2 and 1, and not 0 and 1, is it not binary?

Have a look at:
>
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#XDG_Desktop_Portal_integration
>
> Changing widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker in about:config from 2
> to 1 gives me the kde file picker.
>

Re: Change file picker in browsers

[J]

I am not a clever person, so most of these options are not for me : )

I have already given up on that subject.

But

I read about something similar for KDE and it was solved.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=256289

сб, 28 сент. 2024 г. в 02:30, George at Clug :

>
>
> On Saturday, 28-09-2024 at 08:59 J wrote:
> > Thanks for your reply! But i am sorry, you completely missed the point. I
> > know what a file manager is.
> >
> > "Then i understood that it is not Nautilus, but Gtk File chooser.
> >
> > Now i wonder if there is a way to use "native" Thunar and not this GTK
> file
> > chooser?"
> >
> > The question was if there is a way to make *browsers *use default *file
> > manager *and *not *the *GTK file chooser*?
>
> No, there is no way to "make *browsers *use default *file  manager*".
>
> The File Manager is just a program, not something that a web Browser can
> call to manage files.
>
> >
> > Or at least where are the GTK file chooser configs to make changes to it?
>
> A very clever person could take the source code of the web browser and
> write their own file open/save code. That is theoretically speaking, but
> practically I cannot see anyone doing this.
> Web Browsers are designed to use the system calls of the Desktop
> Environment and Desktop environments are designed to enforce certain look
> and feel constraints.
>
> Or a very clever person could take the source code of Gnome and rewrite it
> to do whatever they want. Again theoretically speaking, but practically I
> cannot see anyone doing this.
> Desktop Environments are specifically written in a way to provide a
> certain look and feel, and sadly not to give users a way to change this.
>
> I recommend to accept this as just the way it is. Way too much effort for
> something that is not easily attainable.
>
> I do not really like the way KDE presents the file system to the user, but
> I realise the only way I can change this is to use a different Desktop
> Environment, or just accept the way KDE presents it.
>
> I am hopeful that someone knows how to use themes to give a different look
> and feel to file management (e.g. Open/Save files dialog boxes), but I have
> yet to find any information of people having achieved this.
>
> George.
>
>
> >
> > Point 3  - Sad news. Taking Point 1 and Point 2 into consideration, you
> are
> > > stuck with applications using whatever the Desktop Environment's look
> and
> > > feel for opening and closing flies. This is what the Desktop
> Environment is
> > > designed to do. To provide a consistent look and feel across all
> > > applications.
> > >
> >
>

Re: Change file picker in browsers

[J]

Thanks for your reply! But i am sorry, you completely missed the point. I
know what a file manager is.

"Then i understood that it is not Nautilus, but Gtk File chooser.

Now i wonder if there is a way to use "native" Thunar and not this GTK file
chooser?"

The question was if there is a way to make *browsers *use default *file
manager *and *not *the *GTK file chooser*?

Or at least where are the GTK file chooser configs to make changes to it?

Point 3  - Sad news. Taking Point 1 and Point 2 into consideration, you are
> stuck with applications using whatever the Desktop Environment's look and
> feel for opening and closing flies. This is what the Desktop Environment is
> designed to do. To provide a consistent look and feel across all
> applications.
>

Change file picker in browsers

[J]

Hello!

So, is there a way to change the file picker in browsers?

Recently i have switched from Gnome Files (Nautilus) to Thunar.

Yes, i use Gnome.

I have used the command

xdg-mime default thunar.desktop inode/directory

So.

$ xdg-mime query default inode/directory
thunar.desktop

But then i noticed that file opener in browsers (Firefox-stable and Chrome)
both are "Gnomish". I thought that it is Nautilus.

I went full speed and added

xdg-mime default thunar.desktop x-directory/normal

xdg-mime default thunar.desktop inode/directory

to

/.config/mimeapps.list

.local/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache

.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list

/usr/share/applications/mimeapps.list

Then i understood that it is not Nautilus, but Gtk File chooser.

Now i wonder if there is a way to use "native" Thunar and not this GTK file
chooser?

I tried

GTK_USE_PORTAL=1 google-chrome-stable

No help.

I tried for Firefox

ui.allow_platform_file_picker=true

widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal=true

in
*about:config *
(i did not know how to make it correctly so it looks like this)

https://i.ibb.co/6NfVH3X/Screenshot-from-2024-09-26-21-48-19.png

https://i.ibb.co/WsHwzCJ/Screenshot-from-2024-09-26-21-47-21.png
[image: Image]  [image: Image]

Also no help.

I read there is some bug with it in FF, but what about Chrome then?

I use Firefox-stable as a main browser.

Found this solution but dont know how to implement it here

https://github.com/hyprwm/Hyprland/discussions/4988

Any ideas?

Re: Matching grub data in the MBR with the installed grub-pc package

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 10 September 2024 08:39:59 pm Andy Smith wrote:
> This does leave me wondering however, if the boot code in the mBR of
> sdb is now set to believe that this is "the second drive", I suppose
> (hd1) in grub terms? With the implication that should sda fail or be
> removed, this machine may still not boot because its boot code looks
> for something on a drive that no longer exists (sdb now being (hd0))?
> 

Simple enough to test by unplugging a cable...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: printer replacement

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 30 August 2024 06:33:46 pm e...@gmx.us wrote:
> On 8/30/24 09:50, Loris Bennett wrote:
> > Gerard ROBIN  writes:
> >
> > However, I print so little these days that when I do, the nozzles have
> > always dried up and I have to go through the whole maintenance rigmarole
> > and use up half a dozen sheets just to print a single page :-/
> 
> Yeah, that's why I swore off inkjets.  Laser printers don't care how long
> they sit.

I have one old IBM laser printer where the pickup roller seems to have turned 
into goo...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: printer replacement

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 30 August 2024 09:50:58 am Loris Bennett wrote:
> However, I print so little these days that when I do, the nozzles have
> always dried up and I have to go through the whole maintenance rigmarole
> and use up half a dozen sheets just to print a single page :-/
 
That's a lot of why I don't for the most part bother with inkjet printers and 
stick with my old HP 1320.  Love that duplexer,  too!  :-)


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: laptop installs

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 27 August 2024 10:01:07 pm Andy Smith wrote:
> That is the correct way to deal with Debian's ISO images. Whether
> your BIOS supports booting from that is a bit hit and miss. It's
> worth a try as it works a lot of the time.
> 
> Also look in the BIOS settings for boot order priority. If that
> mentions USB as an option then it's very likely to work.

Found that,  finally,  and it's odd.  There's a selection for "Legacy" which 
can be switched to UEFI,  and under the boot order stuff they mention USB 
floppy (!) and USB CDROM.  I've fiddled with it.
 
(...)
 
> I'd try the USB media approach as it'll probably work. If the laptop
> was never designed to have an internal optical media drive then it
> was probably also designed to boot off of USB for installation
> purposes.

It has no place for an optical drive.
 
> If that doesn't work, would it be possible to take the HDD/SSD out
> of the laptop and put it in another machine? You could then install
> onto that and put it back in the laptop afterwards.

I don't think that I'd end up with the proper drivers if I did that...

Digging a bit further and looking at the specs for this thing,  it's a 
not-very-fast celeron dual core processor,  only 2G of RAM,  and 32G of SSD in 
there.  I'm a bit less inclined to bother with it than I was.  Maybe I'll try 
the memory stick and see how it goes...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

laptop installs

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

In the case of two of the three laptops I have here to play with,  it's simply 
a matter of telling it to boot off the DVD drive and then inserting the 
appropriate disc and going on from there.  In the case of this other one,  
things get a little weird.

On powerup I see messages referring to PXE,  which if I remember correctly 
involves booting off a network connection?  There's "Media test failure, check 
cable" followed by "Exiting PXE ROM" and then I get "No bootable device -- 
insert boot disk and press any key.

The thing is,  this machine doesn't have a DVD drive.  What it does have is a 
couple of USB ports (two different color connectors so I assume different 
speeds?).  I am also assuming that simply putting an iso file on to a USB stick 
won't quite do it.  No idea about how to implement anything to do with PXE,  
though I can probably safely assume that I have what I need on the LAN here.

Any thoughts on how best to deal with this?

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Laptop keeps powering off

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 24 August 2024 03:36:28 pm Joe wrote:
> Not trivial,
> laptops don't come apart easily, but actual component failure is going
> to be very difficult to diagnose and maybe impossible to fix.

Yup.  I have three laptops over there that I was given,  waiting for me to do 
something with them.  I'm in no particular hurry.

The last laptop I used,  left it plugged in all the time and eventually the 
battery deteriorated,  something went wrong and it wouldn't charge up any more. 
 After that I ended up with a "system board error" at which point I gave up on 
it.  I did get 6-7 years of use out of it,  amyhow...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: dot internal and mDNS

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 04 August 2024 09:54:07 am George at Clug wrote:
> 
> 
> I have been traumatised by things changing. Just when I think I know 
> something, someone goes and changes it.
> 

Yeah,  I keep seeing things changed to something new,  and wonder why the heck 
I need that...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: System time/timezone, was Re: Maximum size .bash_aliases file

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Monday 24 June 2024 05:53:00 pm The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2024-06-24 at 09:41, Erwan David wrote:
> 
> > AM/PM would not be so strange if between 11AM and 1 PM it was 12 AM
> > ...
> 
> Although I don't think anything or anyone actually does it this way, I
> think strictly speaking the correct 12-hour notation for that time would
> be "12:00 M" - followed by 12:00:01 PM, and preceded by 11:59:59 AM.
> 
> AM stands for "ante meridiem", i.e., before the midpoint; PM stands for
> "post meridiem", i.e., after the midpoint. The only correct term for the
> time that is exactly the midpoint would be "meridiem", and therefore, M.
> 
> (Similar logic could be used for 11:59:59 PM, 12:00 M, and 12:00:01 AM,
> where the standalone M would stand for "midnight". That does expose one
> unfortunate weakness of this system: unless you introduce an additional
> layer of complexity, e.g. using "00:00 M", the notations for noon and
> midnight would be identical.)
 
So I have this digital clock up there in my panel,  and in the virtual machine 
here running Slackware I also have one.  The one under Debian shows 00:00 when 
it hits midnight,  while the one under Slackware shows 12:00...

I wonder what decisions were made to give this result?


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Please help me identify package so I can report an important bug

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Wednesday 12 June 2024 06:54:54 am Richard wrote:
> But also, just
> searching the web for this topic, you should have come across this
> answering your questions: https://wiki.debian.org/NetworkInterfaceNames
> 

Wow.  Just wow...

That sort of thing just drives me crazy!  :-)

I can see sticking with older versions of some things.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: "Repeaters", etc.

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 28 May 2024 01:49:52 pm Paul M Foster wrote:
> I've never see a 3 phase in a house. Common in commercial/industrial,
> though.
 
Residential installations (talking in the US here) typically involve *one* 
transformer tapping a single phase out of the three that are up there on the 
pole.  The secondary is center-tapped,  and it's that point which is grounded 
at the service entrance.  Running 3-phase power requires *three* transformers 
up on the pole,  much more in the way of expense if you want that for some 
reason,  and I don't know of anybody that does that.  Even those who are into 
having some nontrivial machinery around seem these days to use a VFD to give 
them multiple phases at the machine,  rather than going through the expense of 
having it run in from the pole...


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: tbird troubles

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Monday 15 April 2024 10:13:06 am Charles Curley wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Apr 2024 08:28:24 -0400
> gene heskett  wrote:
> 
> > I am supposedly running xfc4 as a desktop, but htop says I have a
> > heck of a lot of kde5 running. How do I get rid of the kde stuff? 
> > Dependencies seem to be protecting it from being removed.
> 
> You probably are running one or more programs that use KDE rather than
> gnome libraries. They cohabit nicely. I use XFCE and routinely run
> several KDE programs. Don't worry about it unless you are constrained
> by memory or other resources.
 
For whatever it's worth,  I too am running xfce as a desktop environment,  and 
do have some KDE stuff installed so therefore am seeing some of those files in 
place as well.  It's not been a problem for me so far...


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: What use can i give to linux?

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 06 April 2024 11:05:52 am Curt wrote:
> On 2024-04-05, John Hasler  wrote:
> > Desktop Linux is widely used in physics and mathematics.  NASA uses
> > Linux extensively, including on Mars and on the ISS.  SpaceX uses Linux
> > on their rockets and spacecraft.  Over 90% of the top 1 million Web
> > servers run Linux, including Yahoo, X, and Ebay.  Almost all
> > supercomputers use Linux. Linux has a large and growing share of the
> > automotive market.  Your router almost certainly runs Linux.
> 
> Yeah, but Grandma's still using Windows XP.

Don't believe the stereotypes...

My lady,  now 79,  was running XP until there was a hard drive crash some few 
years back.  After I dealt with that but before I did the re-install I stuck an 
Ubuntu CD in the machine and said "Try this" and it was apparently okay enough 
to go ahead and install it and run it for several years.  The only regret was 
one game that wouldn't load,  but we couldn't get a clean read off of that 
install medium anyhow.  Not all that long ago that machine got replaced by one 
running linux Mint,  which she's still happily running today.  I offered 
Debian,  by putting it on a second drive in that earlier machine and pointing 
out the boot options,  but she never did get that much of a handle on the idea 
of selecting different desktop environments.  Not a big deal,  at least the 
house is an M$-free zone still,  and I know that she's a damn smart lady.  :-)

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Bookworm Fasttrack and Virtualbox

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 17 March 2024 08:48:29 am Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 12:35:33PM +0100, Miguel A. Vallejo wrote:
> > Well... it seems my brain can't distinguish Bookworm from Bullseye.
> 
> It's not just you.  The use of three "b" names in a row (buster,
> bullseye, bookworm) was in my opinion a poor decision.  I've taken
> to calling the releases by their numbers (10, 11, 12) instead of
> their codenames to avoid confusion wherever possible.
 
The use of those codenames drives me nuts...

I don't,  for the most part,  have any idea what numeric version is being 
referred to,  and would far prefer to see those numbers used instead,  myself.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: strange time problem with bullseye

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 07 March 2024 02:44:42 pm Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 02:33:05PM -0500, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > On Thursday 07 March 2024 09:02:44 am Teemu Likonen wrote:
> > > systemctl status systemd-timesyncd.service
> > 
> > This got me some interesting results:
> > 
> > ● systemd-timesyncd.service - Network Time Synchronization
> >Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service; enabled; 
> > vendor preset: enabled)
> >   Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service.d
> >└─disable-with-time-daemon.conf
> >Active: inactive (dead)
> > Condition: start condition failed at Wed 2024-02-14 16:17:31 EST; 3 weeks 0 
> > days ago
> >└─ ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/usr/sbin/VBoxService was not met
> >  Docs: man:systemd-timesyncd.service(8)
> > 
> > Hmm.
> 
> Are you running that on a virtualbox client, or a virtualbox host?

That was on the host.  The client is running an older version of Slackware.
 
> In any case, you might find it interesting to read the unit file in
> question ("systemctl cat systemd-timesyncd.service").  It looks like
> you've got one of the slightly older kind, where the service is always
> installed, but is prevented from running if any of several different
> programs is found.
 
Yes,  I'm running older software here.  I did that and see those listed near 
the end of it.  The system does seem to do okay with keeping the right time,  
though,  for the most part.  The only rough spot was the RTC was way off,  but 
that's now been fixed... 


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: strange time problem with bullseye

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 07 March 2024 09:02:44 am Teemu Likonen wrote:
> systemctl status systemd-timesyncd.service

This got me some interesting results:

● systemd-timesyncd.service - Network Time Synchronization
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service; enabled; 
vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service.d
   └─disable-with-time-daemon.conf
   Active: inactive (dead)
Condition: start condition failed at Wed 2024-02-14 16:17:31 EST; 3 weeks 0 
days ago
   └─ ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/usr/sbin/VBoxService was not met
 Docs: man:systemd-timesyncd.service(8)

Hmm.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: strange time problem with bullseye

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Wednesday 06 March 2024 12:42:12 pm Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > How do I get the RTC to agree with the right time?
> 
> "hwclock -w" to copy the system clock to the hardware clock (RTC).  This
> should also be done during shutdown, but it doesn't hurt to do it now.
 
That seemed to do what I needed.

I don't ordinarily shut this machine down for the most part.  Every once in a 
while all of my swap partition gets filled up,  and then there's this 
continuous hard drive activity that I'm assuming is what they mean by 
"thrashing". The only option at that point is to get its attention with the 
power switch.  And then I need to go through a whole routing with bringing up 
what I had going,  including re-starting virtualbox and the stuff that runs in 
it,  etc.  If I'm lucky then I can get back the windows I had going before,  
sometimes I'm not so lucky.  A system monitor I run on desktop 4 always comes 
up,  but on the wrong desktop and I have to move it.

The "eat all available memory" culprit seems to be firefox.  I just need to 
look at that system monitor every once in a while and when things start getting 
excessive shut firefox down and restart it.  Then I don't have the problem...

I'm not sure if I have ntp or something else running here.  (Looking...)  I 
don't see it in my process list.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: strange time problem with bullseye

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Wednesday 06 March 2024 12:37:09 am Teemu Likonen wrote:
> * 2024-03-06 02:47:06+0800, hlyg wrote:
> 
> > my newly-installed deb11 for amd64 shows wrong time,  it lags behind
> > correct time by 8 hours though difference between universal and local
> > is ok.
> 
> It seems that you have solved the problem but here is another hint.
> "timedatectl" is a good high-level tool for querying and adjusting time
> settings. Without command-line arguments it prints a lot of useful info:
> 
> $ timedatectl
>Local time: ke 2024-03-06 07:33:00 EET
>Universal time: ke 2024-03-06 05:33:00 UTC
>  RTC time: ke 2024-03-06 05:33:00
> Time zone: Europe/Helsinki (EET, +0200)
> System clock synchronized: yes
>   NTP service: active
>   RTC in local TZ: no
> 
> See "timedatectl -h" or manual page for more info.
> 

Mine shows:

  Local time: Wed 2024-03-06 12:09:44 EST
  Universal time: Wed 2024-03-06 17:09:44 UTC
RTC time: Wed 2024-03-06 17:20:53
   Time zone: America/New_York (EST, -0500)
 Network time on: yes
NTP synchronized: no
 RTC in local TZ: no

How do I get the RTC to agree with the right time?  I don't reboot this often,  
but when I do the time displayed on the onscreen clock is typically off by 
several minutes.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: medically smart watches

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 25 February 2024 06:33:26 pm gene heskett wrote:
> On 2/25/24 14:19, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > On Sunday 25 February 2024 05:16:21 am gene heskett wrote:
> >> I have no idea how many EE's there are here in the states,
> >> 10,000+ probably. There are only around 130 CET's.
> > 
> > More than that.  My certificate number is PA-230...
> 
> Mine is NB-116, so they must go by state, NB being Nebraska. Assuming an 
> average of 150/state, that would be 7500 of us. Where the heck are they 
> hiding? You are the only other one I have met since I got mine in '72. 
> Something doesn't add up.
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.

Dunno,  maybe ask ISCET?  (Apologies to the rest of you guys for the OT...)

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: medically smart watches

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 25 February 2024 05:16:21 am gene heskett wrote:
> I have no idea how many EE's there are here in the states, 
> 10,000+ probably. There are only around 130 CET's.

More than that.  My certificate number is PA-230...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: SMART Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt rising - should I be worried?

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 16 February 2024 04:42:12 pm Gremlin wrote:
> On 2/16/24 13:56, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > On Friday 16 February 2024 04:52:22 am David Christensen wrote:
> >> I think the Raspberry Pi, etc., users on this list live with USB storage
> >> and have found it to be reliable enough for personal and SOHO network use.
> >   
> > I have one,  haven't done much with it.  Are there any alternative ways to 
> > interface storage?  Maybe add SATA ports or something?
> > 
> On raspberry Pi 1 to 4 No, you have a choice of USB 2 or USB 3

Looks like I'll have to go with a USB - SATA adapter,  then.  It's a 4,  I 
bought the "Canakit" package that included an enclosure,  keyboard,  mouse,  
and a small touch screen (4"?).
 
> Raspberry Pi 5 Yes with and NVME hat interfaced to the pcie "port"
> 
> I am using a Pi 5 (desktop) with USB 3 port hooked to an NVME external 
> drive and it works just fine.
> 
> It is much faster than the Pi 4 I was using because of the new "south 
> bridge"

I'm aware of the 5 having come out,  but haven't explored the possibility of 
getting one of those yet.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: SMART Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt rising - should I be worried?

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 16 February 2024 04:52:22 am David Christensen wrote:
> I think the Raspberry Pi, etc., users on this list live with USB storage 
> and have found it to be reliable enough for personal and SOHO network use.
 
I have one,  haven't done much with it.  Are there any alternative ways to 
interface storage?  Maybe add SATA ports or something?


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Home UPS recommendations (Was Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after)

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 09 February 2024 04:41:37 pm hw wrote:
> On Fri, 2024-02-09 at 11:34 -0500, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > On Friday 09 February 2024 06:07:16 am hw wrote:
> > > What other manufacturers could we buy UPSs from?
> >  
> > I have a Tripp-Lite sitting next to me here that replaced an APC and
> > has 2-1/2 times the capabiliity.  Been in service several weeks and
> > so far I'm pretty happy with it...
> 
> They seem to be extremely rare here.  

Where's "here"?  I ordered mine from Home Depot,  online.  The wait until it 
arrived didn't seem excessive.

> Are they any good, and how's the battery availability?

It seems okay,  and I haven't checked on the battery availability,  no need at 
this point and if I did it'd probably change by the time I needed them anyhow. 



-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Home UPS recommendations (Was Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after)

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 09 February 2024 06:07:16 am hw wrote:
> What other manufacturers could we buy UPSs from?
 
I have a Tripp-Lite sitting next to me here that replaced an APC and has 2-1/2 
times the capabiliity.  Been in service several weeks and so far I'm pretty 
happy with it...


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 25 January 2024 09:03:36 am Anssi Saari wrote:
> Western Digital at least claims to have solved the leaking
> problem with helium and since they've been making those drives for over
> a decade, I think it's solved.

Your source for this?

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"Printing

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 20 January 2024 07:56:16 pm gene heskett wrote:
> We may even already 
> have a POS system you could use. I know for a fact one of the local 
> grocery stores here in this village of around 6000 is running something 
> on linux in the checkout lanes, I saw it boot up after a power failure 
> before the actual app was auto-started.  What that app was, no one had 
> been instructed as it was totally auto starting.  Typical of the 
> checkout lanes I suspect.

Without naming the rather large company involved,  I had some similar 
experience -- I ran a service call to do some updates on one of those checkout 
lane systems,  and they were running a customized version of RH7!  I was 
instructed to bring a keyboard and a monitor because the POS screen and 
keyboard wouldn't show all that needed to be seen or to key in the necessary 
stuff...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: counting commas

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 19 January 2024 09:48:01 pm Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 2:07 PM Thomas Schmitt  wrote:
> 
> > .
> 
> (Ok, C causes scars on the programmer's self esteem. But what does not
> > kill me makes me just stronger. I'm a vim user.)
> >
> 
> OK I'll mention that to my psychiatrist :-)
> But the C programmers I knew were either really nice guys if they wrote C
> on unix, or real toads if they wrote C for DOS/Windows. YMMV

Where does that leave those of us that wrote c for CP/M?   :-)

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: playing CDROM music questions

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Monday 08 January 2024 03:49:17 pm Haines Brown wrote:
> where can find an inexpensive drive to hold about 1000 cds and find 
> the time do all the converting? ㋡ 
 
The 4TB drive in my server has about 77GB roughly holding a similar amount of 
stuff.  The time was over a rather lengthy period of time,  not all done at 
once.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Firefox Warning

[Alexander J Martinez]

On Tue, Dec 26, 2023 at 04:38:04PM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 26, 2023 at 12:38:44PM -0600, Alexander J Martinez wrote:
> > out of curiosity...did you upgrade using
> > 
> > sudo apt upgrade firefox-esr
> > or apt-get or synaptic.
> 
> That apt command isn't valid.  "apt upgrade" does not take package
> names as additional arguments.  It upgrades ALL the packages (except
> the ones it can't).
> 
> If you want to upgrade a single packge, use "apt[-get] install pkgname"
> and note that this may mark the package as manually installed, if it's
> not already.
> 

You're correct...my bad...then it is
sudo apt-get firefox-esr

thanks,
-- 
Alexander J. Martinez

Re: how to clone apt repository to newest only?

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 26 December 2023 09:34:00 am Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> Living offline is not really feasible anymore - there are too many security
> updates needed.
(snip)
> Linux distributions do update and you should ideally be running the latest
> most up to date security patches. 

I must be missing something here.  If one is running a system that's NOT 
net-connected,  why is security so important an issue?

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Firefox Warning

[Alexander J Martinez]

On Sat, Dec 23, 2023 at 06:19:33PM -0600, Mike McClain wrote:
> On my RPI4b bookworm system as I was browsing, Firefox stopped me
> demanding to update and I couldn't continue to use FF until I accepted
> its demand and let it update. It did so then restarted FF at which
> point it became almost totally unusable the menu bars had come to
> black background with very dark grey text. I have tried
> 'apt-get update; apt-get upgrade' hoping restore FF to usability also
> 'apt-get reinstall firefox' with no luck.
> FF was very difficult to read and it took hours and going back to my
> buster install on another PI before I figured out how to get it back
> to a usable state.
> 
> When I loaded LibreOffice calc to record stock quotes I found that
> calc had, too, inherited the same problem with the top menu bars, as
> well as the side bars and bottom status bars are black with nearly
> illegible text.
> I've not yet gotten calc straightened out.
> 
> If anyone can point me to what in the system Firefox update could have
> changed to affect other programs I'd appreciate the help.
> 
> Frankly I'm aghast at the arrogance of the FF group to force an update
> on their users and quite peeved that they would do so and screw up my
> system as well.
> 
> Merry Christmas everyone,
> Mike
> --
> Silence & smile are two powerful tools.
> Smile is the way to solve many problems
> & Silence is the way to avoid many problems.
> 

out of curiosity...did you upgrade using

sudo apt upgrade firefox-esr
or apt-get or synaptic.

I have never had FF force me to upgrade. Hope you find a fix to  your problem.

-- 
Alexander J. Martinez

Re: GRUB -- Debian overrides? Or maybe I just don't understand it well...

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 19 December 2023 09:40:19 pm Felix Miata wrote:
> I suspect few if any regulars here spend much time with Slackware. 

I,  for one,  have been running Slackware since 1999.  It's what's running in 
this virtualbox where I do my email,  and it's also what's running on my file 
server...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: IMAP vs POP was Thunderbird vs Claws Mail

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Monday 20 November 2023 11:15:56 am Mike McClain wrote:
>  Seeing several messages complaining about fetching messages from
> gmail.com I'd like to point out that gmail can be set to forward all
> messages to a gmail account to another account on a different server.

That's exactly what I'm doing here...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: locate question

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 07 November 2023 11:32:21 am gene heskett wrote:
> so locate isn't working as I think it should.
> try find but it finds the whole my whole local net:
> gene@coyote:~$ find .scad .  |wc -l
> find: ‘.scad’: No such file or directory

Try putting a * before the period in that find command?

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: [Bookworm] collecting sensors data

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 28 October 2023 07:25:39 am gene heskett wrote:
> On 10/28/23 00:14, Max Nikulin wrote:
> > On 28/10/2023 01:39, Greg wrote:
> >> I just noticed that there is no rrdcollect in Bookworm. What is the 
> >> "proper" way of collecting sensors readings?
> > 
> > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1029995 :
> >> please consider removing rrdcollect. Its a tool/daemon to collect
> >> metrics from the local system into RRD files. There are quite a number
> >> of alternatives in Debian to do the same, better (munin, et al).
> > 
> I just looked at munin in synaptic, But while there lots of parts to it, 
> there is not a single word that indicates what it does? Absolutely 
> nothing that tells me it can monitor the system fans or measure the 
> systems voltages.  What does it actually DO?

I've seen that fairly often,  particularly with software packages.  It's a real 
aggravation at times.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: homebrew for debian or ubuntu

[Sijmen J. Mulder]

Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> Homebrew only supports the last release or two on MacOS. Today, you
> might see support for Version 13: "Ventura" and Version 12:
> "Monterey". Anything else and you had to use MacPorts.

Or pkgsrc*, which isn't quite as popular but supports (or can be made to
support) pretty much everything and it's a good citizen. Sticks to its
own prefix.

On Debian I use it to use newer versions of a handful of command-line
tools and libraries (for development and testing). I don't have it added
to my PATH by default so it doesn't get in the way. It doesn't work so
well for GUI apps though, doesn't pick op fonts and themes so it's tofu
everywhere. Possibly something that can be fixed by tweaking some
configuraton somwhere..

*) for disclosure, I maintain some packages on pkgsrc

Sijmen

Re: chrome web browser worthless

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 01 August 2023 05:33:55 am gene heskett wrote:
> Google seems to have high jacked port 80, I cannot use it as a browser 
> to run klipper as a google search intercepts port 80, so localhost:80 
> cannot be used for troubleshooting or for running a 3d printer with 
> klipper..
> 
> FF has no such problems.
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett.

I would never consider using chrome,  what with all of the "phone home" 
nonsense that's in it.  Chromium is supposed to be an open-source (?) variant 
of that without all of that stuff included.  You might consider giving that a 
try.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Recommendations for a UPS?

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Monday 31 July 2023 07:47:14 pm Charles Curley wrote:
> Replacement batteries from APC are expensive compared to buying
> elsewhere, but they come with return shipping for the exhausted battery
> so they can recycle it.
 
OTOH local recycling places give me cash for exhausted lead-acid batteries...


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: package managers problem

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Wednesday 21 June 2023 08:54:46 am Maurice Heskett wrote:
> mc for a file manager since my original 
> install from floppies of redhat 5.0 in the late '90's. I am well aware 
> of what it CAN do. There is no gui file manager that can touch it for 
> utility, and it pisses me off that F10 has been stolen by the window 
> managers to bring up a useless menu, making me find the mouse to quit it 
> when I'm done.

That *is* annoying...

But I find that 0 works for this.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Cable colors and urban legends (was: Error Messages)

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 02 June 2023 04:03:48 pm gene heskett wrote:
> And I'll repeat, I am a CET, something that probably less than 5% of the 
> working EE's could pass that test. CET's are a bit rare, I've yet to 
> meet another on the net.

Uh,  yes you have...

(Certificate PA-230 issued in 1981.)

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: "Bug" in Debian Installer?

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 18 April 2023 12:47:44 am David Wright wrote:
> > I have never seen a document that completely and accurately explains,
> > in computer engineering and science terms, the design and
> > implementation of the boot processes for Debian (or FreeBSD, or
> > Windows, or macOS) for all the possible combinations of BIOS, UEFI,
> > MBR, and GPT; including work-arounds such as "protective MBR", "BIOS
> > Boot Partition", etc..  If anyone knows of such, please provide a
> > citation.
> 
> You might start with:
> 
>   https://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/whatsgpt.html
> 

Thanks for that...

It's clarified some things that I've been wondering about.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Virtual machine affects client screen resolution

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 24 February 2023 10:03:31 pm Max Nikulin wrote:
> On 25/02/2023 00:55, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > On Wednesday 22 February 2023 09:24:17 pm Max Nikulin wrote:
> >> On 19/02/2023 01:01, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> >>> So this got me curious,  and I tried it out.  In the terminal that's
> >>> running inside of the virtualbox instance where I'm doing emails,  it
> >>> comes back with:
> >>>
> >>> :0
> >>
> >> Have you tried to emulate multiple monitors in virtualbox?
> > 
> > I'm not sure what I need to do with the computer to make this happen.
> 
> VirtualBox can emulate multiple monitors, they may be represented as 
> several windows on the same physical device. It is convenient to test 
> behavior of applications in the configuration with multiple monitors. 
> There is an option in VM configuration UI.

I don't recall seeing that,  I'll have another look...
 
> >>> But in a terminal which is running on the host Debian system,  it comes 
> >>> back with:
> >>>
> >>> :0.0
> >>>
> >>> I wonder why the difference?
> >>
> >> My guess is that it may depend on graphics adapter and its driver.
> > 
> > It's an older machine with a VGA output being used.  I assume that I'll
> > need to get some kind of a card with an HDMI output and a cable to make
> > that happen.  No idea what the driver is,  probably nothing special.
> 
> It does not matter if it is special or not. My guess (that may be wrong) 
> that even noveau vs. nvidia may behave differently. I have never gone 
> deeper, since I do not remember any problem with setting DISPLAY=:0 when 
> it was necessary. Driver in use should appear in Xorg.0.log, e.g.
> 
> (II) modeset(0): [DRI2]   DRI driver: i965

Only thing I'm finding that resembles that is these lines:

[ 13041.620] (II) modeset(0): [DRI2]   DRI driver: i965
[ 13041.620] (II) modeset(0): [DRI2]   VDPAU driver: i965
 
> >> I have heard that a display may have several screens (it is not the same 
> >> as multiple monitors that show
> >> different regions of the same display and screen). I have never tried such 
> >> configuration.
> > 
> > Are you referring to multiple desktops?  I have that going,  for sure.
> 
> My impression is that multiple screens of a display is not the same as 
> virtual desktops (and not the same as multiple monitors). I am not 
> familiar with X11 protocol so closely. Frankly speaking, I has a hope 
> that somebody will post a proper link. My curiosity is not strong enough 
> yet to filter search engine results myself.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Virtual machine affects client screen resolution

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Wednesday 22 February 2023 09:24:17 pm Max Nikulin wrote:
> 
> On 19/02/2023 01:01, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > On Saturday 18 February 2023 12:17:20 am Max Nikulin wrote:
> >> echo "$DISPLAY"
> > 
> > So this got me curious,  and I tried it out.  In the terminal that's
> > running inside of the virtualbox instance where I'm doing emails,  it
> > comes back with:
> > 
> > :0
> 
> Have you tried to emulate multiple monitors in virtualbox?

Not yet.  I would like to go to multiple monitors at some point,  particularly 
once I get going with some of the CAD stuff I have installed that I really 
haven't done anything much with yet.  I'm not sure what I need to do with the 
computer to make this happen.
 
> > But in a terminal which is running on the host Debian system,  it comes 
> > back with:
> > 
> > :0.0
> > 
> > I wonder why the difference?
> 
> My guess is that it may depend on graphics adapter and its driver. 

It's an older machine with a VGA output being used.  I assume that I'll need to 
get some kind of a card with an HDMI output and a cable to make that happen.  
No idea what the driver is,  probably nothing special.

> I have heard that a display may have several screens (it is not the same as 
> multiple monitors that show
> different regions of the same display and screen). I have never tried such 
> configuration.

Are you referring to multiple desktops?  I have that going,  for sure.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Virtual machine affects client screen resolution

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 18 February 2023 12:17:20 am Max Nikulin wrote:
> echo "$DISPLAY"

So this got me curious,  and I tried it out.  In the terminal that's running 
inside of the virtualbox instance where I'm doing emails,  it comes back with:

:0

But in a terminal which is running on the host Debian system,  it comes back 
with:

:0.0

I wonder why the difference?

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: OT: repair/replace cell in Li-ion battery?

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 05 February 2023 06:29:12 pm local10 wrote:
> 5 Feb 2023, 20:28 by y...@masson-informatique.fr:
> > Does anybody knows trusted manufacturers / brands I could find on the 
> > Internet? I am really disappointed by this battery (brand "vhbw") partially 
> > broken after only two years…
> >
> 
> 
> Find out the exact battery model you laptop uses and then buy a replacement 
> battery of that exact model (on Ebay or whatever). Other batteries may be 
> better or worse but they may also be incompatible with your laptop.
> 
> Regards,

I wouldn't recommend ebay for this.  Bought a battery for a smartphone some 
years back,  apparently identical to the one that was in there,  and apparently 
having the exact same limit for capacity as the one that I was trying to 
replace...

Look at warranty and return policy for whoever you buy from.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: How to use bridge-utils to enable connection sharing?

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 05 February 2023 12:30:42 pm Dan Ritter wrote:
> RJ45 is a physical connector with 8 pairs of twisted wires.

Eight wires,  _four_ twisted pairs.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Vulnerable git in bullseye - what's the process?

[Sijmen J. Mulder]

Hi all,

I was surprised to find that the recent git vulnerability hasn't yet
been addressed in Bullseye:

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2022-41903

My question isn't about the situation of this package per se but about
the process. I found this diagram:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases#Workflow

It shows how packages go from unstable to testing, stable, etc. with
'security' having a direct route from the security team. 

Now what I wonder is, is that part of the process visible somewhere?
Can I see if there are yet patches submitted, if there are builds
failing, etc? Generally just interested in seeing what's going on
there. Perhaps contribute.

(Let me be clear - I am NOT demanding support from anyone or
complaining.)

Sijmen

Re: How can I check (and run) if an *.exe is a DOS or a Windowsprogram?

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 07 January 2023 03:27:31 pm gene heskett wrote:
> That DOS was not the least bit 
> entertaining. :(> That was the best reason to skip it, I went from 
> amigados 3.9 to rh5.0, never regretted missing the DOS experience, I got 
> my fill of it as the CE at a tv station back in the day.
> 

I remember getting a mailing (don't know how I ended up on that mailing list) 
where they wanted to sell me a development kit for windoze,  which at that time 
hadn't even been released yet,  or if it had it was a very buggy and clunky 
preliminary version.

They wanted me to pay something like $3000.00 for the privilege of developing 
software for their new platform.

I found this most entertaining,  and laughed like hell before I got around to 
tossing that mailing in the trash.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: t-bird vs filters to sort msgs

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 11 December 2022 09:51:05 am gene heskett wrote:
> Greetings all;
> 
> Nov 22 is the last time that about half my filters stopped working. I 
> have recreated 3 or 4, putting them at the top of filter list displayed, 
> but they don't work either.
> 
> Is it time to learn a new to me but more stable emailer, like
> alpine or such?
> 
> The error log claims the messages were properly sorted, but the targeted 
> local folder remains empty and the message remains in the inbox. Most of 
> the errors it does log are swahili to me.
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett.

Gene,

I prefer the maildir rather than mbox format,  which narrows my choices 
somewhat.  What I ended up doing was running virtualbox with a rather early 
version of Slackware in there,  with the correspondingly early version of KDE,  
and use kmail to do all of my mail.  Filters are rather extensive,  since I 
keep on adding spammers to that list,  and haven't given me any trouble,  so 
far.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: MUD

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 13 October 2022 11:13:49 am Maude Summerside wrote:
> I've found out that WWIV got ported to POSIX compatible OS and now runs 
> completely under Linux, same goes for Synchronet BBS.
> 
> There's Mystic BBS but didn't find source code.
> And there's the closed source BBBS (made in Finland).
> 

I used to run Maximus BBS under dos/desqview.  I believe that there is a linux 
version of it out there.  I did try to run it once,  but apparently the changes 
I made in the setup broke it pretty good, and I lost interest...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: digikam import fails

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 16 June 2022 09:45:21 pm gene heskett wrote:
> > I must be missing something here...
> >
> > When I plug in my camera to a US port,  it shows up on the desktop,  at 
> > which point I can mount it.  Then I can access it and copy/move stuff to 
> > wherever,  using mc or whatever utility you like.  Why is some special 
> > program needed for this?
> Probably the desktop Roy, I'm using xfce4.
> 

So am I...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: digikam import fails

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 16 June 2022 03:19:38 pm gene heskett wrote:
> Greetings all;
> 
> I just took a pix of one of my projects to send to a friend, but
> when I had installed digikam to download the pix from my camera,
> going thru the usual steps to access the camera, which it did as
> usual, but when I had selected the pix, and tried o dl it, the album
> selector window was blanked, empty and even when I typed in the
> full path to the desired directory, which has around 20G of pix
> already in /home/gene/Pictures, there was no response to the
> return key aother than the search bar being blacked, the album
> window remains blanked and the ok on the lower right of that
> album window remains ghosted.
> 
> IOW, I cannot download from the camera. How do I go about
> troubleshooting this?
> 
> The shell I ran digikam from is reporting screens full of
> missing this and that despite the installation of digikam
> pulling in:
>   0 upgraded, 261 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> Need to get 273 MB of archives.
> After this operation, 726 MB of additional disk space will be used.
> 
> Then when I run it, there are hundred of missing that and than lines
> spit out in the shell I launched it from.  Its obvious to me there are
> more kde dependencies missing, that just the 261 listed. I've tried to
> install some of them by the names reported, but that universally does
> not exit. And I'd druther not install the rest of kde, its not stable
> for me.
> 
> Thanks all.
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett.

I must be missing something here...

When I plug in my camera to a US port,  it shows up on the desktop,  at which 
point I can mount it.  Then I can access it and copy/move stuff to wherever,  
using mc or whatever utility you like.  Why is some special program needed for 
this?

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: 26th pass at installing 11-3, fails

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 11 June 2022 08:17:26 pm gene heskett wrote:
> I tried to do that in gimp before I sent it, but all the menu's are 
> changed from what I am used to, I could select and save what I wanted, 
> clear the frame and paste what I'd outlined and saved, but I got the 
> whole thing back when I pasted, several times so I'm going to have to 
> learn gimp all over again.
 
That sort of wholesale rearranging of a user interface,  for no reason that's 
apparent to me,  is a lot of why I'm often not in any big hurry to upgrade...

Dunno why they think they need to do that.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: xterm. Was Re: 26th pass at installing 11-3, fails

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 12 June 2022 12:54:19 pm mick crane wrote:
> As mentioned before, if it was me, I'd remove everything except the disk 
> thing you want to boot with that has the OS on it and add and get things 
> working one at a time afterwards.
 
Were I running into these kinds of hassles,  that would be my approach as well.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: updatedb.mlocate

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 09 April 2022 05:11:39 pm Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 09, 2022 at 04:59:04PM -0400, gene heskett wrote:
> > On Saturday, 9 April 2022 16:35:26 EDT Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > grep daily /etc/crontab
> > 
> > Matches mine too Greg, so I expect thats default, but why is Roy's going 
> > off at about midnight?
> 
> We'd have to see what his /etc/crontab contains, 

Trying to paste it in here,  but after opening it,  copying it,  paste seems to 
have no effect?

> and what his system clock is set to.

UTC.



-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: updatedb.mlocate

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 09 April 2022 01:22:08 pm Charles Curley wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Apr 2022 11:04:18 -0500
> "Roy J. Tellason, Sr."  wrote:
> 
> > How do I find out where this is invoked,  so I can get rid of it?
> 
> You may not want to get rid of it. That's the process that updates the
> database for the locate utility, which is very useful.

Yeah,  it's useful if you change things on the system.  I don't do that all 
that often,  though.
 
> I was about to add, think instead about adding a nice value to its cron
> entry. 

There is some stuff about that in the script in question,  but rather than 
working my way through all that I just made that script not executable.

> However it look like mlocate is now handled by systemd, and I 
> don't know enough to advise you on how to do that.
 
I don't understand the reason for so many things getting pushed in that 
direction.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: updatedb.mlocate

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 09 April 2022 12:39:45 pm Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 09, 2022 at 11:04:18AM -0500, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > So around midnight I am seeing a burst of activity,  which sometimes 
> > interferes with whatever else I happen to be doing at the time.  Looking at 
> > the process list,  I see the above-referenced come and go.  I didn't want 
> > this,  and it's not apparent to me how to deal with it.
> > 
> > How do I find out where this is invoked,  so I can get rid of it?
> > 
> You can uninstall the mlocate package.  Or, you can edit
> /etc/cron.daily/mlocate and comment out the cron entry.  That would
> leave the package installed, but you would need to keep the database
> updated manually.

Okay,  I found the script by that name and made it not executable.  We'll see 
if that works.

What I'd really like to know is,  why is this happening now when it wasn't 
happening before?  It probably changed after my last round of updating things...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

updatedb.mlocate

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

So around midnight I am seeing a burst of activity,  which sometimes interferes 
with whatever else I happen to be doing at the time.  Looking at the process 
list,  I see the above-referenced come and go.  I didn't want this,  and it's 
not apparent to me how to deal with it.

How do I find out where this is invoked,  so I can get rid of it?


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Memory leak

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 12 February 2022 09:21:00 am rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> The version of Firefox used in Jessie (and presumably later versions) creates 
> (typically mutlitple) files named "Web Content".  I don't know how Firefox 
> decides what to put in each of those (e.g., content from how many tabs), but 
> ...
> 
> I keep top running in a VT and check it every once in a while, and when too 
> much memory is used, I kill one or more of those files, usually the largest 
> first.
> 
> My tabs remain as tabs (with the associated URL), but the content is gone, 
> but 
> I can get it back by reloading the tab.
 
Interesting!  I see a few of files named "web" in the process table,  probably 
a slight version difference there. I'll have to keep that in mind next time 
things reach that point.  Right now each one is using 2-3% of CPU and a 
nontrivial amount of space.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Memory leak

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 11 February 2022 11:06:01 am Celejar wrote:
> I seem to have a serious memory leak on my system (Lenovo W550s) - the
> memory usage seems to slowly but more or less steadily keep increasing.
> 
> This is a more or less normal (I think) desktop installation of Sid,
> running Xfce4. Typical applications used are Firefox (currently with
> just one extension: uBlock Origin), LibreOffice Writer, Sylpheed, Xfce4
> Terminal, and Liferea, all from the official repos.
 
I have noticed similar behavior here,  and the culprit seems to be firefox.  If 
I ignore it things get sluggish, and then the machine starts to thrash,  until 
the only recourse is the power switch.  If I notice it in time,  close firefox 
and restart it,  the memory used after I do that is significantly less than it 
was before.

Somewhere in their help or documentation they even say that you shouldn't leave 
it running for extended periods of time.

I wish they'd fix it!


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: Debian 11: Tuning kernel parameters swappiness and watermark_boost_factor to stop SWAP Storm

[Steven J. West]

Thanks, Nicholas :D  I mainly posted this problem with a solution here for
reference to other Debian users ;)

Yes, my processing memory requirements (typically ~30GB) are borderline to
my current physical memory limit (~32GB), and as my images sometimes are a
little bigger, this can push it into swapping, which indeed is not ideal..

I am modifying my code to batch this procedure to lower the gargantuan
memory requirements of my image registration task, but in the meantime, for
processes with large memory requirements that may occasionally need to
swap, I found this kernel tuning at least allows the process to complete.

Cheers!

Steve.


On Fri, 28 Jan 2022 at 23:56, Nicholas Geovanis 
wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:33 AM Steven J. West 
> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> TL;DR/summary:
>>
>>- Tuning vm.watermark_boost_factor to 0 (disable) on Debian
>>significantly improves performance on memory-intensive tasks that utilise
>>SWAP space, by stopping preemptive kswapd freeing of memory, and
>>subsequent page thrashing.
>>- I suggest that Debian should tune vm-watermark_boost_fact=0 by
>>default to prevent this problem
>>
>> I'm not a Debian maintainer, but this has got to be the best problem
> report I ever saw :-)
>
> But for years I have adopted the philosophy at home which is demanded in
> every data center I've worked in: If your Linux system is swapping, you
> have configured it wrong. In the server farms there is no swapping. You
> make sure you have enough RAM to prevent swapping. EOS.
>
>
> I have recently installed Debian 11 on a HP Z8 G4 Workstation (Z3Z16AV) -
>> 32GB RAM, installed with ~120GB SWAP on a 2TB solid state drive (specs at
>> end of this message).
>>
>> I have been running some compute-intensive image processing tasks (CPU-
>> and memory- intensive), which has on occasion had to dip into SWAP space,
>> depending on image sizes (the processing I am running is image registration
>> using elastix/transformix).
>>
>> I had benchmarked the code on my Ubuntu laptop (similar spec) without any
>> problems, but when running on Debian, whenever SWAP was needed, the system
>> processing significantly slowed down/essentially froze.
>>
>> After much debugging, I have traced this to the vm.watermark_boost_factor
>> kernel parameter:
>>
>> Comparing the Ubuntu and Debian kernel parameters using sudo sysctl -a
>> showed two key differences in virtual memory (vm) management parameters.
>>
>>- Ubuntu:
>>   - vm.swappiness=60
>>   - vm.watermark_boost_factor=0
>>   - Debian:
>>   - vm.swappiness=10
>>   - vm.watermark_boost_factor=150
>>
>>
>> I identified what these two parameters control:
>>
>>
>>- vm.swappiness : a parameter used to calculate the swap tendency (
>>https://access.redhat.com/solutions/103833)
>>- vm.watermark_boost_factor : controls the level of reclaim when
>>memory is being fragmented.. A boost factor of 0 will disable the 
>> feature. (
>>
>> https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/8.4_release_notes/kernel_parameters_changes
>>)
>>
>>
>> I changed swappiness and then watermark_boost_factor sequentially, to
>> see whether tuning these parameters to match my Ubuntu system prevented the
>> system from freezing under my memory-intensive task.
>>
>>
>>- sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=60 on my Debian system did not prevent
>>the freezing behaviour.
>>- sudo sysctl vm.watermark_boost_factor=0 (disabling it) on my Debian
>>system prevented the freezing behaviour.
>>
>>
>> I then set these permanently by adding the following to /etc/sysctl.conf
>>
>> vm.swappiness=60
>> vm.watermark_boost_factor=0
>>
>>
>> Further searching revealed this Ubuntu bug report:
>>
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1861359
>>
>> swap storms kills interactive use
>> With this key entry:
>>
>> Sultan Alsawaf (kerneltoast) wrote on 2020-03-27: #56
>>
>> This problem is caused by an upstream memory management feature called
>> watermark boosting. Normally, when a memory allocation fails and falls back
>> to the page allocator, the page allocator will wake up kswapd to free up
>> pages in order to make the memory allocation succeed. kswapd tries to free
>> memory until it reaches a minimum amount of memory for each memory zone
>> called the high watermark.
>>
>> What watermark boosting does is try to preemptively fire u

Fwd: Debian 11: Tuning kernel parameters swappiness and watermark_boost_factor to stop SWAP Storm

[Steven J. West]

er core:  2
Core(s) per socket:  10
Socket(s):   1
NUMA node(s):1
Vendor ID:   GenuineIntel
CPU family:  6
Model:   85
Model name:  Intel(R) Xeon(R) Silver 4210R CPU @ 2.40GHz
Stepping:7
CPU MHz: 2511.149
CPU max MHz: 3200.
CPU min MHz: 1000.
BogoMIPS:4800.00
Virtualization:  VT-x
L1d cache:   320 KiB
L1i cache:   320 KiB
L2 cache:10 MiB
L3 cache:13.8 MiB
NUMA node0 CPU(s):   0-19
Vulnerability Itlb multihit: KVM: Mitigation: VMX disabled
Vulnerability L1tf:  Not affected
Vulnerability Mds:   Not affected
Vulnerability Meltdown:  Not affected
Vulnerability Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass
disabled via prctl and seccomp
Vulnerability Spectre v1:Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and
__user pointer sanitization
Vulnerability Spectre v2:Mitigation; Enhanced IBRS, IBPB
conditional, RSB filling
Vulnerability Srbds: Not affected
Vulnerability Tsx async abort:   Mitigation; TSX disabled
Flags:   fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic
sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm
pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc art arch_perfmon
  pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology
nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx
est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid dca sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic mov
 be popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx
f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch cpuid_fault epb cat_l3 cdp_l3
invpcid_single intel_ppin ssbd mba ibrs ibpb stibp ibrs_enhanced tp
 r_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid ept_ad
fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid cqm mpx rdt_a avx512f
avx512dq rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb intel_pt avx512cd a
 vx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1
xsaves cqm_llc cqm_occup_llc cqm_mbm_total cqm_mbm_local dtherm ida arat
pln pts hwp hwp_act_window hwp_epp hwp_pkg_req pku ospke avx512_
 vnni md_clear flush_l1d arch_capabilities


  $ free -h
   totalusedfree  shared  buff/cache
available
Mem:31Gi   3.6Gi24Gi   160Mi   3.2Gi
 26Gi
Swap:  119Gi   242Mi   118Gi




Steven J. West
 BSc DPhil FRMS
_
International Brain Lab Histology Research Fellow
Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour
University College London
25 Howland St, Fitzrovia, London W1T 4JG
+44 (0) 203 108 8197
steven.w...@internationalbrainlab.org
https://www.internationalbrainlab.com/
https://www.sainsburywellcome.org/

Re: Future of "his" packages in Debian

[P J]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 8:05 AM Curt  wrote:

> On 2022-01-21, Andrew M.A. Cater  wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Can someone post what Norbert Preining actually wrote without omissions
> and rather frivolous additions by other parties?
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >
> >>From Norbert's blog, aggregated on Planet Debian:
> >
> > https://www.preining.info/blog/2022/01/future-of-my-packages-in-debian/
> >
> > With every good wish, as ever,
> >
> > Andrew Cater
> >
> >
>
> If only he had the Internet to look these things up.


Information is available and so so many wants to be spoon fed.  People have
to learn to help themselves.

>
>

Re: Usenet access.

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Monday 17 January 2022 03:09:27 pm pe...@easthope.ca wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Can anyone suggest an alternative to Google Groups for access to 
> sci.electronics.repair.  I'd be happy to pay a small subscription for 
> access without tedious complications.
> 
> Thx,   ... P.
> 

They're on groups.io:

https://groups.io/g/Sci-Electronics-Repair/

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: OT: Recommendation for a new Debian laptop

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Saturday 15 January 2022 11:13:49 am Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Mi, 12 ian 22, 08:54:50, john doe wrote:
> > Debians,
> > 
> > i've been using a laptop for a fiew years now and before this laptop
> > dies on me I would like to buy a new laptop.
> > 
> > I'm thinking about two options:
> > - Buying something of the shelph and installing Debian on it
> > - Buying a pine64 or alike
> > - Any other alternative?
> > 
> > The only requirement is to have virtualisation available.
> > 
> > Basically, I'm looking for some feedback to have a laptop with Debian on it.
> > 
> > Any suggestion is appreciated.
> 
> Since you didn't mention any kind of budget constraints, you might want 
> to consider Thinkpads (previously IBM, now Lenovo).
> 
> The build quality is generally high (especially for the more expensive 
> series, like T) and you get detailed manuals on how to take it apart for 
> upgrades or repairs.
> 
> Compatibility with Linux is also generally very good and there are even 
> some models that come with Linux pre-installed.
> 
> Many Linux developers like them as well (not least because of the very 
> good keyboards) which only helps with compatibility.
> 
> If price is a concern, even second-hand / refurbished Thinkpads usually 
> provide good value for the money.
> 
> 
> Hope this helps,
> Andrei

I'll second this.

I had a "refurbished" Thinkpad that I used rather extensively for _six years_ 
before something went wrong with it and gave me a "system board error".  No 
issues with running linux on it at all,  though I was running Slackware at the 
time.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Bullseye Installer Fails to find soundcard

[David J. J. Ring, Jr.]

I'm just a user.  I've been trying to install Bullseye since the Release 
Candidates, no luck.

The accessible text installer fails to find my sound card.  I think my sound 
card is the 
second one that Debian finds, so I select that.

I do get sound in console once installed, but a blind person would not be able 
to install
as there is no sound, unless they had a braille device.

I've contacted debian-accessibility and debian-boot, but I just don't know 
where the problem
is, Samual from debian-accessibility says it's alsa, but I'm not a programmer, 
or developer, I'm
just a user.

I've spent hundreds of hours trying to install Debian Bullseye.  The last 
release of Debian Buster
installs perfectly, it detects my sound card, I have sound during installation, 
and upon reboot.

But suddenly in Debian Bullseye, something has changed. No sound during 
accessible text installtion.

I don't know who to report this bug to.

Best wishes,

David


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: freeing up some space

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Wednesday 12 January 2022 12:48:38 am David Wright wrote:
> And now you want to aimlessly zap a few more directories for no better
> reason than the fact that they look unused. Well, take a look at
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/10/msg00308.html
> where I measured how much disk space I might reclaim by purging all
> the non-English localization files on the system: a measly 358MB.

I've seen some of that stuff in there,  too...

And yes,  I remember that post.
 
> Is it worth the hassle and potential future trouble. I was under the
> impression that you wanted to get your out-of-date system in order,
> ready for the next upgrade step. Why would you want to prejudice the
> smooth running of your upgrade path just for a few hundred MB.
 
This is funny,  I remember when an 80MB drive was *huge*.   :-)

I'm aiming to clean things up a bit so that I don't end up downloading stuff I 
don't need,  and never use.  Save myself some time.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: freeing up some space

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 11 January 2022 11:02:56 pm David Christensen wrote:
> On 1/11/22 10:25 AM, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > So I'm poking around with mc,  and happened across /var/cache/apt/archives 
> > which has a LOT of *.deb files in it, and which seems to include many 
> > versions of the same package,  some of them many years old,  going all the 
> > way back to 2013.  I guess I've been running debian a little longer than 
> > I'd thought...
> > 
> > Is it okay to just delete older versions of these files?  Or should I be 
> > doing something using one of the package management tools?  I've mostly 
> > used synaptic,  but am also aware of apt-get,  apt,  aptitude,  and am not 
> > real clear on their comparative capabilities.
> > 
> > I'm looking at over 7500 files amounting to over 9.5GB.
> > 
> > I also see /var/cache/dictionaries-common,  which appears to be tied to a 
> > spelling checker,  which I don't use here.  And /var/cache/samba,  which I 
> > also don't use -- there isn't a windoze machine around here at all.
> > 
> > What's the best way to get all of this excess stuff out of the system?
> 
> 
> Move data to RAID, backup system configuration files, remove system 
> drive, install blank SSD, do a fresh install, and configure by hand 
> (using backups for reference).

Yeah,  I could do that if I had those resources,  but I don't.  In the meantime 
I'm finding aptitude to be a useful tool for the job...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 11 January 2022 02:52:10 pm Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > > What version of Debian?
> > 
> > According to /etc/debian_version 9.3...
> > 
> 
> I hope that's 9.13 - so updated as at 2020-07-18. 

You're correct.  I have a pair of glasses here that are "for the computer" and 
in general I am avoiding wearing them unless I really feel like I have to...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: freeing up some space

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 11 January 2022 02:25:47 pm Cindy Sue Causey wrote:
> On 1/11/22, Roy J. Tellason, Sr.  wrote:
> > So I'm poking around with mc,  and happened across /var/cache/apt/archives
> > which has a LOT of *.deb files in it, and which seems to include many
> > versions of the same package,  some of them many years old,  going all the
> > way back to 2013.  I guess I've been running debian a little longer than I'd
> > thought...
> >
> > Is it okay to just delete older versions of these files?  Or should I be
> > doing something using one of the package management tools?  

Apparently the info about what's in this directory is also stored in some 
database somewhere,  so just going in there and deleting a bunch of stuff will 
probably break something...

> > I've mostly used synaptic,  but am also aware of apt-get,  apt,  aptitude,  
> > and am not real
> > clear on their comparative capabilities.

Time to read some man pages and some of the docs that also got installed on my 
system...   :-)

> > I'm looking at over 7500 files amounting to over 9.5GB.
> >
> > I also see /var/cache/dictionaries-common,  which appears to be tied to a
> > spelling checker,  which I don't use here.  And /var/cache/samba,  which I
> > also don't use -- there isn't a windoze machine around here at all.
> >
> > What's the best way to get all of this excess stuff out of the system?
> 
> Just chiming in until someone can respond with recent firsthand
> experience. If you go to e.g. "man apt" or "man apt-get", you'll see
> flag options that are about cleaning up downloaded files. I did this
> once a couple years ago and so can't remember which one worked for
> what you're asking, but it does work. Whichever option it is, it
> leaves the currently installed deb in place and cleanses out anything
> that's no longer in use.

Somebody (maybe more than one somebody) suggested a "clean" option,  but 
apparently that will get rid of *ALL* of those files.  I'd kinda prefer to keep 
the most recent of any of them that are still being used.  In perusing the docs 
for aptitude,  I see that there's an option in there to "clean obsolete files", 
 which sounds like it'll do just that.  I don't see such an option in apt-get,  
or elsewhere (so far).
 
> Thank you to the Developers who have left this as a User CHOICE that
> must be manually addressed if a different option is desired. Users
> have their various reasons for maintaining older install debs. It's
> nice to know they're always safe from sudden, silent deletion.

Yes,  it is nice having a choice about these things.
 
> Afterthought as I write that because of an experience that I
> encountered. There's additionally a value you can define that
> automatically performs the above function every time you update and
> then upgrade your system's packages.

I think that the default for aptitude is to not do what I mention above,  but 
it also appears that it's possible to make it do that by default by fiddling 
with a config file.  This would appear to be detailed in the section of the 
docs entitled "Configuraton File Reference",  which talks about what files are 
used (and their locations),  and then lists all of the options that are or can 
be in those files.
 
> Remembering that detail led to a search that didn't find a tip on
> which file contains that changeable value, but I did find the
> following (might need fixed to be one usable line):
> https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch02.en.html#_basic_package_management_operations_with_the_commandline
> 
> If that link doesn't bounce partway down the page to the appropriate
> section, CTRL+F (or similar browser find feature) on that "operations
> with the commandline" part of the link should help. It's Section 2.2.2
> that contains those various interesting values.

Yeah.  But the detailed docs for aptitude are a whole lot more interesting and 
more detailed/explicit.
 
> If anyone test drives those for the first time, especially without
> fully understanding what the notes are saying the options do, PLEASE
> make sure to back up your system first. Been there, done that without
> backing up in the past. It's not pretty..
> 
> Cindy :)

From what I understand I should be able to get the software to show me what 
it's planning on doing before it actually goes ahead and does it.   :-)

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

freeing up some space

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

So I'm poking around with mc,  and happened across /var/cache/apt/archives 
which has a LOT of *.deb files in it, and which seems to include many versions 
of the same package,  some of them many years old,  going all the way back to 
2013.  I guess I've been running debian a little longer than I'd thought...

Is it okay to just delete older versions of these files?  Or should I be doing 
something using one of the package management tools?  I've mostly used 
synaptic,  but am also aware of apt-get,  apt,  aptitude,  and am not real 
clear on their comparative capabilities.

I'm looking at over 7500 files amounting to over 9.5GB.

I also see /var/cache/dictionaries-common,  which appears to be tied to a 
spelling checker,  which I don't use here.  And /var/cache/samba,  which I also 
don't use -- there isn't a windoze machine around here at all.

What's the best way to get all of this excess stuff out of the system?


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 11 January 2022 12:27:39 pm Dan Ritter wrote:
> Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: 
> > On Tuesday 11 January 2022 11:20:22 am Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > > > I still would like to know why the one instance of pulseaudio works and 
> > > > the other one doesn't.  And why some things seem to be included in what 
> > > > gets started up that I don't see any need for -- things like exim,  
> > > > bluetooth stuff (there is _no_ bluetooth hardware on this machine),  
> > > > and some other stuff.  Any recommendations as to where I might poke at 
> > > > this to clean things up would be appreciated also.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Exim: because "something" needs to deliver mail locally for cron jobs 
> > > etc. 
> > > Maybe not the best - others remove exim and install another MTA - but its
> > > a start.
> > 
> > I don't see the need for this.  Deliver mail locally where?  And to who?
> 
> To you.
> 
> The primary method of telling you, the systems administrator,
> that something went wrong when you weren't looking at it, is
> mail. That tells you to go look at the logs.

Right.  I don't see any mail that seems to be pointed at root,  though I do see 
a /var/mail/roy file,  I should probably see if there's some way that I can get 
kmail in the virtualbox to import this stuff.  Suggestions as to how to do that 
would be welcomed.
 
> If you don't want exim, nullmailer or ssmtp will send all email to some
> smarter machine. 

It doesn't seem terribly useful.  The latest ones in there are referring to 
/var/log/exim4/paniclog as having a non-zero length,  and quotes some lines 
from it.  Which refer to something that didn't go right in September of 2017!

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 11 January 2022 11:24:27 am Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 11:03:55AM -0500, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > What I'm not clear on at this point is why the instance of it that's 
> > started by the system doesn't seem to work, while the one that I start 
> > manually at some point later on does.
> 
> Pulse Audio is still quite mysterious to me as well.  In fact, I have
> the exact opposite experience: if I start Pulse Audio from my .xsession
> file (the way I expected it should be done), that one always fails to
> work.  Consistently.  100%, every time.  Killing it and restarting it
> always gave a working instance.  Again, 100%, every time.

What's puzzling to me is why it worked okay before my most recent upgrade,  and 
doesn't work now,  until I fire up another instance of it.
 
> But if I let it start itself automatically on demand, then it works
> straight out of the gate with no issues.  So far, anyway!

How does that "on demand" thing work?
 
> This is with Debian 11 (and, I think, 'twas the same on version 10
> as well), starting X with "startx" from a console, with fvwm and no
> desktop environment.

This was 8,  moved to 9,  and I will (eventually) progress all the way to 11.  
But not just yet.
 
> The symptom of the non-working Pulse Audio was a complete lack of
> response to everything.  Running "pavucontrol" would give me some
> message about not being able to contact the daemon, but I could see it
> running in "ps".  Kill, restart, pavucontrol again, and it was all
> happy.

I don't do anything much under debian that needs to have sound working,  so I 
hadn't noticed a problem until the virtualboxed Slackware didn't have sound any 
more,  and there are a few things I do in there where I *do* want sound 
working.  Firing up another instance of it at somebody's suggestion took care 
of that problem,  though I did have to reboot the virtualbox in order for it to 
see it.
 
> Sadly, I don't know enough to offer any helpful advice.  All I can give
> you are some questions that you might ask yourself to try to gather
> more information about the issue:
> 
> What version of Debian?

According to /etc/debian_version 9.3...

> How do you log in?

I often log in as root.

> How do you start your graphical session, if you use one?

The initial login screen is graphical,  from which I can select different 
desktop environments.  At the moment (and for quite a long time) I'm running 
Xfce.

> Which graphical session, if any, are you using?

I'm not sure I understand the question here.

> How does Pulse Audio get started (if you know)?  What do you see in "ps"?

Looking at it in System Monitor,  I see two instances of it.  One has the user 
name "Debian-gdm" and when I mouse over it shows "parent = systemd".  This is 
the one that the system starts up.  The other one is the one that I started 
from a command line,  which is otherwise the same.  Right-clicking on either of 
these and selecting "show detailed memory information" shows very different 
results for the two of them,  more memory being used for the second instance.

> What are the exact symptoms?

I'm not seeing any symptoms on the debian side of things,  but haven't tried to 
do much with sound there.  The sound _does_ work when,  ferinstance,  I view a 
video on youtube or similar.  When booting the virtualbox,  I'd get an error 
message from Slackware that it wasn't able to connect to the pulseaudio daemon 
and was going to use the "null" audio device instead,  meaning that sound 
didn't work in there at all.  After invoking pulseaudio in a terminal on the 
debian side of things and rebooting the virtual box sound in there works fine.

> Are there any error messages?  If so, what do they say, and how do you
> see them?

See the above paragraph about during the boot process of the virtualbox.

> What steps do you perform when you restart Pulse Audio?

I haven't tried restarting it,  just firing it up as someone suggested,  using 
pulseaudio --start in a terminal window.

> What does "ps" show after that?

Not using ps here,  for the most part.  I'm looking at stuff in System Monitor.
 
> The answers to those might help someone else help you.  We can hope, anyway.

I'll get a handle on this sooner or later...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 11 January 2022 11:20:22 am Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > I've run nothing but linux since 1999,  starting with Slackware 4.0,  and 
> > upgrading to newer versions from time to time.  Early on I had no sound 
> > card in the machine that I was using,  and did not implement a GUI to start 
> > with either.  Adding those manually was a real interesting exercise,  one 
> > that I'm happy to not have to repeat with newer hardware and software.  
> > Debian came a little later,  only in the past few years,  and in many 
> > respects I'm still getting to know it.
> > 
> > I still would like to know why the one instance of pulseaudio works and the 
> > other one doesn't.  And why some things seem to be included in what gets 
> > started up that I don't see any need for -- things like exim,  bluetooth 
> > stuff (there is _no_ bluetooth hardware on this machine),  and some other 
> > stuff.  Any recommendations as to where I might poke at this to clean 
> > things up would be appreciated also.
> > 
> 
> Exim: because "something" needs to deliver mail locally for cron jobs etc. 
> Maybe not the best - others remove exim and install another MTA - but its
> a start.

I don't see the need for this.  Deliver mail locally where?  And to who?

> "Remove stuff" - start with a bare install of Debian text mode - standard
> packages only - then remove the stuff you want to. Don't be surprised if
> there may be a metapackage or two which appears to remove more than you
> think.

I've been surprised at that more than once already.  I suggest to synaptic that 
I might want to remove something,  and it comes back with a *huge* list of 
stuff that's going to be removed,  if I do.  I can't quite make sense out of 
that.
 
> The idea of a distribution is to make it relatively easy to install a 
> subset of common packages that people want: that doesn't mean that everybody
> gets exactly what they want first time, but Debian's fairly flexible to 
> allow you to change elements.

Still working on that...
 
> If you think that the distribution is entirely wrong - that's a different
> matter, I think. 

Not necessarily wrong,  but definitely different.  I like the management of 
dependencies,  one of the reasons I chose it.  Some of the other stuff I'm not 
so sure about,  though.

> If you started with Slackware 4.0 and that was your first 
> Linux, then you may well find Debian different enough that it's bothersome
> because it "isn't Slackware" - but there's any amount of individual 
> customisation you can do.

Oh,  it's different all right.  Bothersome?  Sometimes.  I've been dealing with 
it for some years now,  and haven't given up on it yet.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Tuesday 11 January 2022 08:18:27 am Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 01:15:05PM +0100, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > On Lu, 03 ian 22, 14:02:05, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > > In the one that was running to start with,  the command line shown to 
> > > me in system monitor includes "daemonize=no".  I would guess that to 
> > > be the problem,  but why is that in there?
> 
> You need to rewind quite a few years of history for a full answer to
> this.

(Much interesting reading snipped for brevity...)

> If you'd like more details on this, I recommend JDEBP's web site.  You
> can start at <http://jdebp.info/FGA/system-5-rc-problems.html>.

Much interesting reading there,  too...
 
(snip)

> In some cases, you simply stop using the -bd option, or its equivalent.
> In other cases, maybe you have to patch the daemon to offer a new
> option which says *don't* create a child process -- just run normally.
> 
> That's what you're seeing here with Pulse Audio.

What I'm not clear on at this point is why the instance of it that's started by 
the system doesn't seem to work, while the one that I start manually at some 
point later on does.
 
(snip)
 
> Welcome to Unix.

I've run nothing but linux since 1999,  starting with Slackware 4.0,  and 
upgrading to newer versions from time to time.  Early on I had no sound card in 
the machine that I was using,  and did not implement a GUI to start with 
either.  Adding those manually was a real interesting exercise,  one that I'm 
happy to not have to repeat with newer hardware and software.  Debian came a 
little later,  only in the past few years,  and in many respects I'm still 
getting to know it.

I still would like to know why the one instance of pulseaudio works and the 
other one doesn't.  And why some things seem to be included in what gets 
started up that I don't see any need for -- things like exim,  bluetooth stuff 
(there is _no_ bluetooth hardware on this machine),  and some other stuff.  Any 
recommendations as to where I might poke at this to clean things up would be 
appreciated also.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: still fixing stuff the upgrade broke...

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 07 January 2022 03:03:25 pm Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> On Friday 07 January 2022 12:30:55 pm Dan Ritter wrote:
> > Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: 
> > > On Thursday 06 January 2022 11:46:33 am Dan Ritter wrote:
> > > > Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: 
> > > > > Not sure what I'm looking at here...
> > > > 
> > > > No processes with a suitable name.
> > > > 
> > > > Is the "screensaver" showing pictures, or just going black after
> > > > a while?
> > > 
> > > It just goes black.  The inside of the window that virtualbox uses,  that 
> > > is.  Nothing of the sort happening on the host machine.
> > 
> > Ah-hah.
> > 
> > Inside the virtualbox, run 
> > 
> > xset s off
> > 
> > which will turn off the built-in X11 screen blanker. 
> > 
> > man xset for details.
> > 
> > -dsr-
>  
> Okay,  tried that and we'll see what happens.
> 
> My question,  then,  is what would have turned this on?  It wasn't on 
> before...

That didn't do it,  but apparently xset -dpms did.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: still fixing stuff the upgrade broke...

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 07 January 2022 12:30:55 pm Dan Ritter wrote:
> Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: 
> > On Thursday 06 January 2022 11:46:33 am Dan Ritter wrote:
> > > Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: 
> > > > Not sure what I'm looking at here...
> > > 
> > > No processes with a suitable name.
> > > 
> > > Is the "screensaver" showing pictures, or just going black after
> > > a while?
> > 
> > It just goes black.  The inside of the window that virtualbox uses,  that 
> > is.  Nothing of the sort happening on the host machine.
> 
> 
> Ah-hah.
> 
> Inside the virtualbox, run 
> 
> xset s off
> 
> which will turn off the built-in X11 screen blanker. 
> 
> man xset for details.
> 
> -dsr-
 
Okay,  tried that and we'll see what happens.

My question,  then,  is what would have turned this on?  It wasn't on before...

And,  please don't cc to my direct address,  I do get the list here and I do 
read all of the messages.  Doing so only results in me getting the message 
twice,  which is not necessary or desirable.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: still fixing stuff the upgrade broke...

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 06 January 2022 12:05:38 pm David wrote:
> > I did an upgrade from 8 -> 9,  and that's where things are sitting at the 
> > moment.
> > I've been encouraged to get with current stable,  which is what,  11 at 
> > this point?
> 
> > I'll get there, but slowly, so I can see what's changed at each step of the 
> > process
> > and fix that which ends up broken.

So.
 
> My two cent opinion (after reading all your messages about this process):
> This is not the best approach. A waste of your time, and a waste of our time
> reading, and slightly unpleasant if we have to filter out your dissatisfaction
> at each hurdle.

If you find my posts unpleasant to deal with,  feel free to skip them,  or 
filter them out completely.  There is that option listed at the bottom of every 
groups.io message that says "mute this topic"...
 
> Many of the people here who advised you to migrate 8..9..10..11
> (because that is the only way to migrate) are professional system
> administrators whose livelihood depends on keeping complex
> services available to their clients.
> 
> For a home user (I am one), this stepwise upgrade seems like a waste
> of time, unless your hobby is complaining about things that don't work.

You are of course entitled to your opinion of my choices.  In terms of system 
administration,  *I* am that person here,  and there is a level of 
functionality and a workflow that I want to have continuously maintained during 
the upgrade process.  My circumstances are obvously not yours.  And my choices 
are not yours as well.
 
> In your situation, I would keep the previous system untouched and runnable
> somewhere, and create a fresh Debian 11 somewhere else, and migrate
> the desired workflow, tools and configuration onto it at my leisure.

Right.  That's one way to do it,  all right.  Not my choice here,  for a number 
of reasons.
 
(snip)
> complaining about old software looks ridiculous,
> and risks alienating people from caring or wanting to help you.

Then feel free to ignore and to not respond to my posts,  if you feel that way.
 
> Some info on how Debian expects to be used:
>   https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

Read that,  yesterday or the day before.
 
> > I've been nudged more than once to continue with my upgrades to
> > bring things up to the current stable version,  but am still not sure
> > I want to go there in one swell foop. Too many changes, and things
> > that aren't right.
> 
> People aren't nudging you to go through a tortuous 8..9..10..11
> upgrade process. People are simply recommending that, if you
> want to use Debian, that you use the latest stable, 11.
> How you get there is your choice.

Just so.  I've made my choice,  and am proceeding on that basis.

All:  Please don't cc replies to me to my direct email.  I *do* have this list 
flowing in here,  and I *do* read the messages...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: still fixing stuff the upgrade broke...

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 06 January 2022 11:46:33 am Dan Ritter wrote:
> Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: 
> > On Thursday 06 January 2022 07:24:47 am Dan Ritter wrote:
> > > ps -auwx|grep -e screen -e lock
> > 
> > That gets me this:
> > 
> > Warning: bad ps syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See 
> > http://procps.sf.net/faq.html
> > root   110  0.0  0.0  0 0 ?S<2021   0:15 [kblockd/0]
> > root   295  0.0  0.0  0 0 ?S<2021   0:00 
> > [glock_workqueue]
> > root  1114  0.0  0.0  0 0 ?S<2021   0:00 
> > [block-osm/0]
> > root 11332  0.0  0.1   2088   668 pts/0S+   10:41   0:00 grep -e 
> > screen -e lock
> > 
> > Not sure what I'm looking at here...
> 
> No processes with a suitable name.
> 
> Is the "screensaver" showing pictures, or just going black after
> a while?

It just goes black.  The inside of the window that virtualbox uses,  that is.  
Nothing of the sort happening on the host machine.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: still fixing stuff the upgrade broke...

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 06 January 2022 07:24:47 am Dan Ritter wrote:
> ps -auwx|grep -e screen -e lock

That gets me this:

Warning: bad ps syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See http://procps.sf.net/faq.html
root   110  0.0  0.0  0 0 ?S<2021   0:15 [kblockd/0]
root   295  0.0  0.0  0 0 ?S<2021   0:00 
[glock_workqueue]
root  1114  0.0  0.0  0 0 ?S<2021   0:00 [block-osm/0]
root 11332  0.0  0.1   2088   668 pts/0S+   10:41   0:00 grep -e screen 
-e lock

Not sure what I'm looking at here...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: still fixing stuff the upgrade broke...

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Thursday 06 January 2022 07:20:43 am Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 06, 2022 at 01:01:07AM -0500, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > So I downloaded the current version of the program.  This gets incremental
> > upgrades all the time,  and the latest one is chirp20220103,  which I
> > downloaded.  When I went to invoke it directly,  there was an error about
> > some missing python bit.  Going into synaptic,  I didn't see chirp listed at
> > all,  though it did show up when I did a search,  and installing that 
> > package
> > got me a version from 2018!  (Why the repository can't be more up to date
> > than that I don't know.)  This also provided the missing python bit.  So I
> > edited the application menu entry to point to the new version,  and it now
> > works.
> 
> It would help if you would be more specific.  Give us the actual names
> of things, and the actual version numbers.
> 
> For example:
> 
> unicorn:~$ apt-cache search --names-only chirp
> chirp - Configuration tool for amateur radios
> unicorn:~$ apt-cache show chirp | head
> Package: chirp
> Version: 1:20200227+py3+20200213-3
> Installed-Size: 4206
> Maintainer: Debian Hamradio Maintainers 
> Architecture: all
> Depends: python3-future, python3-serial, python3-six, python3-wxgtk4.0, 
> python3:any
> Description-en: Configuration tool for amateur radios
>  CHIRP is a free, open-source tool for programming your amateur radio. It
>  supports a large number of manufacturers and models, as well as provides a 
> way
>  to interface with multiple data sources and formats.
> 
> Going by the version number, that looks like it's from 2020.  Are you
> not running the current stable release of Debian?

No,  I'm not.  I had been updating packages from time to time using synaptic,  
under the mistaken impression that this would keep things current,  and then I 
found that not to be the case.  I did an upgrade from 8 -> 9,  and that's where 
things are sitting at the moment.  I've been encouraged to get with current 
stable,  which is what,  11 at this point?  I'll get there,  but slowly,  so I 
can see what's changed at each step of the process and fix that which ends up 
broken.
 
> As far as running your chirp20220103 version, seeing the errors might be
> helpful.  I'm not a python expert myself, but I'd be willing to bet that
> someone on this list would be able to advise you if we could see the
> actual error message.

It was missing the python-serial package,  which installing the older version 
in synaptic got me,  so it's working now.  But the version that synaptic 
installed was from 2018!  That one isn't going to support this radio,  which is 
a tri-bander,  hence my move to the current version...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

still fixing stuff the upgrade broke...

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

So in my Xfce applications menu I have a top-level entry "Ham radio",  and 
there was exactly _one_ program to invoke under that,  called "chirp".  (I use 
this to program radios.)  I don't run this too often,  but having recently 
acquired a new radio I went to fire it up,  and got a "file not found" error.  
WTF?  I've no idea where this menu stores its data,  but there was no entry 
there when I went into the menu option to edit thing.  It just showed *no* 
entry in there at all.  Why an upgrade would screw with this I have no idea...

So I downloaded the current version of the program.  This gets incremental 
upgrades all the time,  and the latest one is chirp20220103,  which I 
downloaded.  When I went to invoke it directly,  there was an error about some 
missing python bit.  Going into synaptic,  I didn't see chirp listed at all,  
though it did show up when I did a search,  and installing that package got me 
a version from 2018!  (Why the repository can't be more up to date than that I 
don't know.)  This also provided the missing python bit.  So I edited the 
application menu entry to point to the new version,  and it now works.

I've been nudged more than once to continue with my upgrades to bring things up 
to the current stable version,  but am still not sure I want to go there in one 
swell foop.  Too many changes,  and things that aren't right.

I'm stilll trying to figure out what's invoking a screensaver in my virtualbox 
slackware install,  which I don't want but can't quite figout out how to turn 
off...



-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 02 January 2022 09:56:14 pm David Wright wrote:
> On Sat 18 Dec 2021 at 11:24:34 (-0500), Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > On Friday 17 December 2021 11:53:20 am David Wright wrote:
> > Yeah,  except that I don't run KDE.  I do have it installed,  to be able to 
> > access certain programs that come with it,  but my desktop environment of 
> > choice is currently Xfce.
> 
> My understanding is that when you install a package like KDE,
> there's an assumption that you'll probably want to run it, and
> so it configures the system on that basis.

When I first installed I selected multiple different desktop environments,  so 
I could try them out.  I did not expect that ones that I was not running would 
have any effect in the one that I was running...
 
(snip)
> > There remains the sound issue in the virtualbox.  Could it be that Debian 
> > isn't running PulseAudio but something else?  That would account for the 
> > guest OS not being able to talk to it...
> 
> No idea; you'd have to check this for yourself. ISTR there may be
> issues with pulseaudio if it's running as a system daemon rather
> than for the logged-in user, but I don't know the details.

Running pulseaudio --start fixed that problem,  but now I show two instances of 
it runninng.

In the one that was running to start with,  the command line shown to me in 
system monitor includes "daemonize=no".  I would guess that to be the problem,  
but why is that in there?  And where do I fix it?  I also see "parent systemd" 
and after a bit of poking around in there I'm rather thoroughly confused,  not 
at all sure where I'd have to fix this.  Although 
/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudioi.service seems pertinent.  Why would that have 
"daemonize=no" in there?

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Wednesday 22 December 2021 11:21:47 am Dan Ritter wrote:
> Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: 
> > On Monday 20 December 2021 10:09:56 am Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > > > > Suggestions as to where I might look for the problem?
> > > > 
> > > > In general, that message means that even if there is a copy of
> > > > the pulseaudio daemon running, it is not running with the right
> > > > userid and the X11 session you are running in doesn't know about
> > > > it.
> > > > 
> > > > Run "pulseaudio --start" and try again.
> > > 
> > > That did get the volume control as invoked from the Xfce applications 
> > > menu working,  all right.  Looking in the process table that I see under 
> > > KDE System Monitor (what I usually use to keep track of system loading) I 
> > > now see pulseaudio in there twice.  One shows the command you mention 
> > > here,  and the other one doesn't,  and says "daemonize=no".  I'm guessing 
> > > that's the problem,  where to fix it is another question.  Mousing over 
> > > it I also see "parent=systemd" for both of them...
> > > 
> > > Looking at "man systemd",  nothing jumps out at me with regard to where I 
> > > want to go from here.

?

> > With this having been done,  after restarting the virtualbox instance,  
> > sound is now working there also.  What I might need to fiddle with in terms 
> > of systemd is not at all clear to me,  though.  I don't know why this would 
> > have changed with the upgrade.

Yes,  it's things changing when I upgrade that bother me about all of this...

> > Any further thoughts on this? 
> 
> Since it just happened... I'll say that pulseaudio is easily on
> the same level of reliability as Windows 95. I decided to test
> out the advertised capability of a music player as a USB DAC. As
> soon as I got things plugged in, the pulseaudio daemon crashed.
> After I restarted it, the pulseeffects equalizer service froze. 
> After I restarted that, pulseeffects decided that it would be a
> good idea to use the USB microphone as both default input and
> output...

I don't know enough about what you're dealing with there to comment on this.
 
> It's currently working. But I'd so much rather have systems that
> didn't think that they should switch configurations
> automatically, since PA is so terrible at reading my mind.
> 
> Anyway, upgrade to bullseye.

I'll get there.  But before I continue with upgrades,  I intend to fix what's 
broken,  and maybe trim some of the fat out of the system as it stands,  so I 
don't end up having to download and upgrade stuff I don't use or don't want.

In my initial install,  I selected multiple desktop environments,  so I could 
try them out.  While I was fine with real early versions of KDE,  I don't like 
where they've gone with it so I don't use it as a desktop,  though I do use a 
few of the utilities.  I seem to be seeing bits of stuff running,  though,  
that shouldn't be.  And also from some of the other choices.  I need to clean 
that up a bit,  I think,  in addition to the above...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Monday 20 December 2021 10:09:56 am Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > > Well,  sound on the Debian side of things works,  as in playing youtube 
> > > videos and such.  It doesn't work in the Slackware virtualbox,  which is 
> > > apparently trying to connect to Pulseaudio.  Going through the Xfce 
> > > application menus just now I see very little that would tell me what it 
> > > is that's actually running here,  so I figure I probably need to typs 
> > > something on the command line in a terminal,  but I don't know what.
> > > 
> > > One thing that shows up in the Xfce application menu under multimedia is 
> > > "Pulseaudio Volume Control".  When I invoke this  a small window pops up, 
> > >  with the text "Establishing connection to Pulseaudio.  Please wait" and 
> > > then nothing happens,  even if I let it sit there for quite a while.
> > > 
> > > Suggestions as to where I might look for the problem?
> > 
> > In general, that message means that even if there is a copy of
> > the pulseaudio daemon running, it is not running with the right
> > userid and the X11 session you are running in doesn't know about
> > it.
> > 
> > Run "pulseaudio --start" and try again.
> 
> That did get the volume control as invoked from the Xfce applications menu 
> working,  all right.  Looking in the process table that I see under KDE 
> System Monitor (what I usually use to keep track of system loading) I now see 
> pulseaudio in there twice.  One shows the command you mention here,  and the 
> other one doesn't,  and says "daemonize=no".  I'm guessing that's the 
> problem,  where to fix it is another question.  Mousing over it I also see 
> "parent=systemd" for both of them...
> 
> Looking at "man systemd",  nothing jumps out at me with regard to where I 
> want to go from here.
 
With this having been done,  after restarting the virtualbox instance,  sound 
is now working there also.  What I might need to fiddle with in terms of 
systemd is not at all clear to me,  though.  I don't know why this would have 
changed with the upgrade.

Any further thoughts on this? 



-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 19 December 2021 05:48:12 pm Dan Ritter wrote:
> Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: 
> > On Sunday 19 December 2021 03:18:46 am Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > > On Sb, 18 dec 21, 11:24:34, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > There remains the sound issue in the virtualbox.  Could it be that 
> > > > Debian isn't running PulseAudio but something else?  That would 
> > > > account for the guest OS not being able to talk to it...
> > > 
> > > As far as I'm aware there is no default sound server in Debian, it's 
> > > whatever the corresponding Desktop Environment depends on. Usually this 
> > > is PulseAudio, but it seems PipeWire is becoming more popular.
> > 
> > Well,  sound on the Debian side of things works,  as in playing youtube 
> > videos and such.  It doesn't work in the Slackware virtualbox,  which is 
> > apparently trying to connect to Pulseaudio.  Going through the Xfce 
> > application menus just now I see very little that would tell me what it is 
> > that's actually running here,  so I figure I probably need to typs 
> > something on the command line in a terminal,  but I don't know what.
> > 
> > One thing that shows up in the Xfce application menu under multimedia is 
> > "Pulseaudio Volume Control".  When I invoke this  a small window pops up,  
> > with the text "Establishing connection to Pulseaudio.  Please wait" and 
> > then nothing happens,  even if I let it sit there for quite a while.
> > 
> > Suggestions as to where I might look for the problem?
> 
> In general, that message means that even if there is a copy of
> the pulseaudio daemon running, it is not running with the right
> userid and the X11 session you are running in doesn't know about
> it.
> 
> Run "pulseaudio --start" and try again.

That did get the volume control as invoked from the Xfce applications menu 
working,  all right.  Looking in the process table that I see under KDE System 
Monitor (what I usually use to keep track of system loading) I now see 
pulseaudio in there twice.  One shows the command you mention here,  and the 
other one doesn't,  and says "daemonize=no".  I'm guessing that's the problem,  
where to fix it is another question.  Mousing over it I also see 
"parent=systemd" for both of them...

Looking at "man systemd",  nothing jumps out at me with regard to where I want 
to go from here.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

Thinkpad acpi_call not working on Debian Sid

[Apurv J]

Hi,

I've been trying use certain features offered by tlp (like discharging 
and re-calibration) but getting an error. Did a little digging and found 
out some clues as to what's going on.


output of "tlp-stat -b":
> tpacpi-bat (acpi_call)  = inactive (kernel error)

searching in the logs using journalctl I got:
> acpi_call: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
> 440 kernel: acpi_call: module verification failed: signature and/or 
required key missing - tainting kernel


I'm using a Thinkpad T440, secureboot disabled. Kernel: /5.15.0-2-amd64./

Is this a bug?
//

Regards,
Apurv

Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Sunday 19 December 2021 03:18:46 am Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Sb, 18 dec 21, 11:24:34, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > 
> > There remains the sound issue in the virtualbox.  Could it be that 
> > Debian isn't running PulseAudio but something else?  That would 
> > account for the guest OS not being able to talk to it...
> 
> As far as I'm aware there is no default sound server in Debian, it's 
> whatever the corresponding Desktop Environment depends on. Usually this 
> is PulseAudio, but it seems PipeWire is becoming more popular.

Well,  sound on the Debian side of things works,  as in playing youtube videos 
and such.  It doesn't work in the Slackware virtualbox,  which is apparently 
trying to connect to Pulseaudio.  Going through the Xfce application menus just 
now I see very little that would tell me what it is that's actually running 
here,  so I figure I probably need to typs something on the command line in a 
terminal,  but I don't know what.

One thing that shows up in the Xfce application menu under multimedia is 
"Pulseaudio Volume Control".  When I invoke this  a small window pops up,  with 
the text "Establishing connection to Pulseaudio.  Please wait" and then nothing 
happens,  even if I let it sit there for quite a while.

Suggestions as to where I might look for the problem?



-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin