Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 17:56:58, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> Because you don't want to inextricably drag a giant monolith into your
> Desktop Environment just to do a few things.

If you compare systemd with a Desktop Environment I'm not quite sure 
who's the giant ;)

> And how were they handling
> this task before systemd? It's not like Desktops, Window Managers and
> whatever things like lightdm are called didn't exist before systemd.

ConsoleKit, unmaintained.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 22:56:15, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
> Not to mention that just offhand I'm not sure I'd even know how to turn
> off basic tab completion - whereas turning off programmable tab
> completion is pretty much just a matter of not sourcing the
> tab-completion files in the effective bash environment, IIRC. (Though I
> always have to look up where to do it, every time I build a new system.)

Removing the package bash-completion (package name verified by courtesy 
of programmable tab completion) should do it ;)

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. Surprise,
> surprise. 

Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe betide any
company that actually gets us there...


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Re: debian-advocacy?

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 18:11:31, Anders Wegge Keller wrote:
> 
>  I'll never hear from you again, as you are clearly getting a kick out of
> fuelling the flames.

I can assure you it is not my intention to fuel the flames, though this 
doesn't mean I couldn't be doing it anyway, inadvertently.

I hereby apologise to the list if (some of) my posts have fueled the 
flames, I'll try to be more careful about it.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: debian-advocacy?

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 15 oct 14, 15:34:22, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
> 
> I'm not so sure that squeeze-lts will be supported well enough for long
> enough.  Hopefully wheezy gets good support with a wheezy-lts.

From https://wiki.debian.org/LTS

Companies using Debian who are interested in aiding this effort 
should help directly (see LTS Development below).

Importantly, the success of Squeeze-LTS will be used to judge the 
viability of LTS support for Debian 7 (wheezy) and Debian 8 
(jessie).

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: how to identify reverse dependencies?

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 15 oct 14, 15:00:22, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
> 
> At a later date, everything changes ... some things later than other
> things.  I guess that gnome's version for 7.6 is too old to /need/ systemd.

As I've already said in another post, Gnome (the Desktop Environment) 
doesn't need systemd, but some interfaces that are currently only 
provided by systemd-logind (currently part of package systemd).

Using Debian package dependencies this is expressed as
Depends: libpam-systemd by those packages that actually require those 
interfaces

$ aptitude search '?depends(libpam-systemd)'
p   gdm3- GNOME 
Display Manager
p   gnome-bluetooth - GNOME 
Bluetooth tools
p   gnome-settings-daemon   - 
daemon handling the GNOME session settings
i   lightdm - 
simple display manager
i A network-manager - 
network management framework (daemon and userspace tools)
i A policykit-1 - 
framework for managing administrative policies and privileges
i A udisks2 - D-Bus 
service to access and manipulate storage devices

These are all desktop (related) packages, one should need any of these 
on a typical server.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: Persistent hash sum mismatch in aptitude

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 21:57:30, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> Whenever I do an
>aptitude update
> it seems to work OK, except for a series of messages at the end:
... 
> Notice that this happens with *two* mirrors.
> 
> Is there something I should do to stop this?

You could try reporting this to debian-mirrors.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: debian-advocacy?

[Anders Wegge Keller]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 04:07:25 +1100
Scott Ferguson  wrote:

> Given that your only contribution to the list is outright and offensive
> hypocrisy why should you not be rightfully dismissed as an abusive and
> offensive poster who contributes nothing to the subject. I do know you
> and your work - and sadly in one post you've changed your name to mud.

 Go ahead and do that, if that makes you feel better. Just remember that it
proves my point. Suppressing dissent will not work.
-- 
//Wegge


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Martin Read]

On 14/10/14 22:56, Steve Litt wrote:

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:15:40 +0300
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

As far as I understand none of the upstreams are actually requiring
systemd itself (or more accurately systemd-logind), but the
interfaces it is providing.


I fail to see the distinction.


As long as the interface is there (and works), they don't care how it's 
implemented. The interface is defined, and it certainly *looks* 
externally reimplementable.



And it also seems to make sense (why
should every Desktop Environment implement it's own solution for
this?).


Because you don't want to inextricably drag a giant monolith into your
Desktop Environment just to do a few things.


"If I have seen further than other men, it is by standing on the 
shoulders of giants."


The alleged monolith does a bunch of (probably mostly neither 
interesting nor trivial) stuff for me. That means I don't have to do 
that stuff myself, and can concentrate on doing the things that are 
either interesting or trivial.


Besides, the average DE is pretty beefy itself.


And how were they handling this task before systemd?


They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time after 
systemd-logind came along.



It's not like Desktops, Window Managers and whatever things like
lightdm are called didn't exist before systemd.


(For reference: things like lightdm, xdm, slim, gdm3, etc. are called 
"display managers", and have been since 1988.)



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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[berenger . morel]

Le 15.10.2014 09:11, Jonathan Dowland a écrit :

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:

Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. Surprise,
surprise.


Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe 
betide any

company that actually gets us there...


Maybe you want.
But I think that most users just want it to work fine and efficiently, 
which does not necessarily imply being sold massively around the world.


The fact is, that linux is actually a success, but it has never been 
it's objective. It's a consequence of what we like in it: freeness, 
efficiency, and stability.
Market share should not be the objective, it should stay a simple 
secondary effect.



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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 15 oct 14, 10:41:12, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:
> 
> Maybe you want.
> But I think that most users just want it to work fine and efficiently, which
> does not necessarily imply being sold massively around the world.
> 
> The fact is, that linux is actually a success, but it has never been it's
> objective. It's a consequence of what we like in it: freeness, efficiency,
> and stability.
> Market share should not be the objective, it should stay a simple secondary
> effect.

Well said. See also this:

http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/journal/2012-01/004.html

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: [sendmail] outgoing mail leaves dead letter

[Brian]

On Tue 14 Oct 2014 at 19:10:05 -0400, Harry Putnam wrote:

> OK, here we go.
> 
> mailx -v -s "TEST "141014_184452" 2xd1 rea...@jtan.com < /tmp/tstmsg.txt

Two mails are being sent.

> 550 5.1.1 <2...@2xd1.local.lan>... User unknown

This one didn't make it.
 
>  Why does it go to a dead letter? 

So it was saved in dead letter.


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Re: debian-advocacy?

[Scott Ferguson]

On 15/10/14 18:43, Anders Wegge Keller wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 04:07:25 +1100 Scott Ferguson 
>  wrote:
> 
>> Given that your only contribution to the list is outright and 
>> offensive hypocrisy why should you not be rightfully dismissed as 
>> an abusive and offensive poster who contributes nothing to the 
>> subject. I do know you and your work - and sadly in one post
>> you've changed your name to mud.
> 
> Go ahead and do that,

Do what? Dismiss your post as a pointless criticism just as you accuse
Andrei? Your post-event permission is redundant.

> if that makes you feel better.

That claim says nothing of me and speaks volumes of you. If I felt that
way I'd just ignore you (though I draw the line at childish kill-filing).

> Just remember that it proves my point.

You conflate "point" with "pointless".

> Suppressing dissent will not work.

You'd do well to study history instead of throwing rocks at yourself and
claiming persecution.
Do you truly believe that Andrei is being abusive and stifling
discussion? If so I hope it due to lack of sleep, and that you get some
soon, and return to being the non-misguided obnoxious Anders. I truly
believe you've serious misjudged him and your offence is pure illusion -
you have my sympathy, just short of the pity that would recommend a
biblical solution for the offence to your eye.
My sarcasm meter works well and I detect none in his postings - I don't
agree with all his views, but I can't fault the patient, polite, and
dignified way he deals with deliberate malcontents (yourself included) -
nor can I think of single occasion where he treated a poster
disrespectfully - despite more than ample justification. Perhaps you
could benefit from studying his style instead of posing as a model for
how *not* to act (effectively, if not intentionally).

Without sarcasm (lest those intolerant of humour and above critique
claim offence) - Kind regards


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Brian]

On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 10:41:12 +0200, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:

> Le 15.10.2014 09:11, Jonathan Dowland a écrit :
> >On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> >>Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. Surprise,
> >>surprise.
> >
> >Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe
> >betide any
> >company that actually gets us there...
> 
> Maybe you want.
> But I think that most users just want it to work fine and
> efficiently, which does not necessarily imply being sold massively
> around the world.

He's doing some of the work on Debian; others work with different
distributions. They get what they want. Users get what they want.
Everyone's a winner. :)


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Re: OT: Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Tanstaafl]

On 10/14/2014 1:58 PM, Miles Fidelman  wrote:
> Well, this really is OT for debian-users, but  Turns out that SMTP 
> WAS/IS intended to be reliable.

Reliable, absolutely. 100% reliable? That simply isn't possible when
people are involved in the equation (people mis-configure servers -
whether accidentally, through ignorance, or intentionally (just because
that is the way they want it).

> I'd always lumped SMTP in the category of unreliable protocols, w/o 
> guaranteed delivery

The protocol itself is extremely reliable. It is what people *do* with
it that can cause it to become less reliable/resilient.


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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Tanstaafl]

On 10/14/2014 12:03 PM, Tanstaafl  wrote:
> The 'silly statements' reference was about your suggestion
> that it is in any way shape or form 'ok' to *accept* mail to invalid
> recipients then send it to dev/null.

Incidentally, yes there may be some circumstances where this could be
considered ok... a hobby server, or your own, personal server.

Your server, your rules.

But I'm talking about mail servers with lots of users who expect to be
able to communicate via email effectively and reliably with others on
the internet.


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How to set up services depending on encrypted filesystems with systemd (was Re: How to do this ?)

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

Jonathan Dowland:
> Next step, adjust the daemon to depend on this. In my example,
> transmission-daemon supplies a .service file in the package. Copy this to
> /etc/systemd/system, and add a line (the line prefixed +):
>
> >  [Unit]
> >  Description=Transmission BitTorrent Daemon
> >  After=network.target
> > +Requires=torrents.mount
> >
> >  [Service]
> >  User=debian-transmission

That's certainly the case for Debian 7, but in Debian 8 I believe that
the systemd package will have this later growth of the mechanism:

cat > /etc/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service.d/requires-mount.conf
<< EOT
[Unit]
Requires=torrents.mount
EOT
systemctl daemon-reload

Obvious intended advantage: If the transmission-daemon changes its
service unit, you'll get the change in your next package upgrade
without further explicit work updating your private local copy of the
unit file.

* https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/systemd#Editing_provided_unit_files
* 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Systemd#How_do_I_customize_a_unit_file.2F_add_a_custom_unit_file.3F
* ... and, of course, the (up-to-date) manual page for systemd.unit .


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[berenger . morel]

Le 15.10.2014 12:09, Brian a écrit :
On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 10:41:12 +0200, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org 
wrote:



Le 15.10.2014 09:11, Jonathan Dowland a écrit :
>On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>>Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. 
Surprise,

>>surprise.
>
>Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe
>betide any
>company that actually gets us there...

Maybe you want.
But I think that most users just want it to work fine and
efficiently, which does not necessarily imply being sold massively
around the world.


He's doing some of the work on Debian; others work with different
distributions. They get what they want. Users get what they want.
Everyone's a winner. :)


Maybe. But, when someone tries to sell stuff a lot, to have a big 
market share, then that guy must take a large target, which leads to 
systems which might become less stable or less efficient. And if that 
guy want to keep his market, then he'll have to avoid people escaping 
his stuff, this is why vendor locks exists.
Definitely, I hope that Debian won't take that road. It it does, then, 
I'll switch. I'm taking a look at netBSD, even if I guess that I'll have 
a hard time being successful in feeling as comfortable with it than with 
Debian.



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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Scott Ferguson]

On 15/10/14 22:08, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:
> 
> 
> Le 15.10.2014 12:09, Brian a écrit :
>> On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 10:41:12 +0200, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Le 15.10.2014 09:11, Jonathan Dowland a écrit :
>>> >On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>>> >>Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. Surprise,
>>> >>surprise.
>>> >
>>> >Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe
>>> >betide any
>>> >company that actually gets us there...
>>>
>>> Maybe you want.
>>> But I think that most users just want it to work fine and
>>> efficiently, which does not necessarily imply being sold massively
>>> around the world.

I would have 'thought' all users want "it" to be "useful" - but surely I
miss your point? (was there a point? I can only work with the words you
write and it reads like sophist rhetoric, assume the first nonsense is
not and it follows that neither is the second). As far as I'm aware
Debian has *never* been sold anywhere, nor are there plans to - did I
miss another meeting down the docks?

>>
>> He's doing some of the work on Debian; others work with different
>> distributions. They get what they want. Users get what they want.
>> Everyone's a winner. :)
> 
> Maybe. But, when someone tries to sell stuff a lot, to have a big market
> share, then that guy must take a large target, which leads to systems
> which might become less stable or less efficient. And if that guy want
> to keep his market, then he'll have to avoid people escaping his stuff,
> this is why vendor locks exists.

I could quote you Adam Smith on commerce and conspiracy - though I
seriously doubt he ever meant there are no non-business conspiracies. He
was smarter than that.

But it'd be more pertinent to note that servers cost money to run and
Debian (and the FSF) do a good job of not allowing any contributions in
labour or money to control it's production or direction. To allow the
former would be both foolish and ignore the nature of Free Open Source
Software. I can't think of any distro that doesn't accept assistance
from business.
With the possible exception of Hairshirtix (forked from
SelfFlagellantOS) but I'm pretty sure they haven't produced any actual
working code. ;)

> Definitely, I hope that Debian won't take that road. 

Likewise, and I'm sure Intel don't want RedHat driving anymore than
RedHat want Google in control - even if IBM was prepared to let them,
and in the end it's still down to the programmers. And can only buy so
much with a paycheck. (last time I checked Linus gets paid to work on
the kernel).

> It it does, then,
> I'll switch. I'm taking a look at netBSD, even if I guess that I'll have
> a hard time being successful in feeling as comfortable with it than with
> Debian.

Here's a good place to start your "looking":-
http://www.netbsd.org/contrib/org/

Kind regards


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Re: OT: Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Miles Fidelman]

Tanstaafl wrote:

On 10/14/2014 1:58 PM, Miles Fidelman  wrote:

Well, this really is OT for debian-users, but  Turns out that SMTP
WAS/IS intended to be reliable.

Reliable, absolutely. 100% reliable? That simply isn't possible when
people are involved in the equation (people mis-configure servers -
whether accidentally, through ignorance, or intentionally (just because
that is the way they want it).


I'd always lumped SMTP in the category of unreliable protocols, w/o
guaranteed delivery

The protocol itself is extremely reliable. It is what people *do* with
it that can cause it to become less reliable/resilient.



There is a technical distinction between "best efforts" (unreliable) 
protocols, such as IP ('fire and forget' if you will), and "reliable" 
protocols, such as TCP (with explicit acks and retransmits).


At least in the technical circles I run in (BBN - you know, we built the 
ARPANET; Ray Tomlinson, who coined use of the @ sign in email nominally 
worked for me, for a short period - in a matrixy version of "worked 
for"), SMTP is usually discussed as providing a "best efforts" 
(unreliable) service -- which, in reality, it is (particularly in real 
world configurations where mail often gets relayed through multiple 
servers).


So.. I was just a bit surprised to go back and read the RFC and discover 
that SMTP is explicitly intended to provide a reliable service.


As to "100% reliable" - nothing is 100% reliable.

Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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preseeding question (yes, re. systemd / sysvinit-core)

[Miles Fidelman]

Folks,

So, it's been suggested here that one might write a preseed file to 
install sysvinit-core instead of systemd - but for the life of me, I 
can't figure out how to do that.


What I've been able to determine so far:

1. There is now an essential metapackage called init that depends on one 
of systemd-sysv, or sysvinit-core, or upstart.   (parenthetical 
question: What distinguishes a metapackage from a virtual package? Or 
perhaps, more precisely, why is init defined as a metapackage rather 
than a virtual package?)


2. In order to default to systemd, priorities have been set to:

sysvinit:admin/optional
sysvinit-core:admin/extra

(see Bug Report #757650 override: sysvinit:admin/optional 
sysvinit-core:admin/extra)


What I can't seem to figure out, after perusing what documentation I can 
find for the installer, including some code spelunking is:


3. Where during installation are init related packages actually 
installed (as close as I can figure out, it's during tasksel, as part of 
base packages that are installed regardless for all answers to the 
tasksel questions, including no packages).


4. How, in a preseed file, does one identify one's preferred choice for 
meeting the dependencies of a virtual package or metapackage (in this 
case, specifically installing sysvinit-core to satisfy init's 
dependencies) - either by:

a. over-riding package priorities, or,
b. making an explicit selection of the real package to meet a dependency

Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks!

Miles Fidelman

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrew McGlashan]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On 15/10/2014 6:02 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> ConsoleKit, unmaintained.

But fixed, for kFreeBSD

A.

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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Tanstaafl]

On 10/14/2014 3:28 PM, Jerry Stuckle  wrote:
> On 10/14/2014 12:03 PM, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 10/14/2014 11:17 AM, Jerry Stuckle  wrote:
>>> On 10/14/2014 8:05 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
 If you think I'm kidding, please by all means go make these silly
 statements on the postfix list and I'll just sit and watch the fun.
>>
>>> You don't read very well.  This has nothing to do with emails to a valid
>>> address.  A large amount of that spam goes to invalid addresses.  I see
>>> them go through the logs regularly.
>>
>> I read fine. The 'silly statements' reference was about your suggestion
>> that it is in any way shape or form 'ok' to *accept* mail to invalid
>> recipients then send it to dev/null.

> But you just said it was OK to delete emails.

Please don't misquote me. I said it was the *worst case*, meaning, only
marginally better than *bouncing* them, which you should never do.

I certainly did not say it was 'OK'.

>>> Wrong.  Rejecting garbage sends a message back to the originator,

>> No, it doesn't. It closes the connection with a response code.



> I know how it works.

Apparently not, since you keep saying that the RECEIVING server 'sends a
message back to the originator' - unless maybe you simply have a hard
time saying what you really mean, which always causes confusion.

> Now how often do you get an email of 1MB?

Like a large percentage of businesses, we get mail *all the time* that
is many MB's in size. Even all of the freemailers have very large max
sizes they accept now (I think gmail is up to 25MB or 30MB?).

But, I'd say 10-15% of our email traffic consists of messages that are 1MB+

And yes, even lots of spam now has larger attachments (even seen them
over 2MB, though not very often).

>> If I reject the mail at the RCPT-TO stage, then I only accepted a few
>> bytes of traffic before terminating the connection with an SMTP response
>> (error) code. The connecting machine then decides whether to pass the
>> response back or not (again, a few bytes at most).

> That's your option.

No, it is the right thing to do.

>> If you *accept* the mail, then you accepted the entire 1MB of traffic.
>>
>> So, who is responsible for more traffic in such a case?

> Sure.

Thank you for acknowledging that at least this argument in support of
breaking recipient validation (that rejecting emails results in more
traffic than accepting/deleting them) is wrong. We're making progress.

> But spammers don't know whether it is a good address or not.

Nor do they if I reject the transaction way before the RCPT-TO stage,
which postscreen does *very* well, which is what happens most of the time.

Also, my understanding is that there the vast majority of spammers no
longer engage in dictionary attacks to harvest valid email addresses.

> I said NOTHING about security.  I just don't want them to know what the
> valid email addresses are.

In my mind saying 'I am doing this because I don't want them to know
what the valid email addresses are' is the exact same thing as saying 'I
am doing this for security purposes.'.

> That way they don't send more SPAM to the good addresses.

It isn't about how much spam is targeted at your users, it is about how
much gets through, and an effective anti-spam solution block 99+% of it
- *without* breaking SMTP. And again, my understanding is that there the
vast majority of spammers no longer engage in dictionary attacks to
harvest valid email addresses, so you are continuing to break smtp for
your users and getting very little to no real world value out of it.

>> Passwords, by their very nature, are intended to be
>> difficult/impossible to 'guess'.
>>
>> To suggest that this is even in the same universe as 'security through
>> obscurity' is ludicrous.

> Then what is that if it isn't "obscurity"?

I didn't say it wasn't 'obscurity', I said it wasn't "*security through
obscurity*". The first is a simple word that has a very broad and
general meaning. The second has a very specific and limited meaning.

>> You don't necessarily need to explictly violate any give RFC to 'break
>> SMTP', Jerry.
>>
>> Breaking recipient validation defacto breaks SMTP. It tells the sending
>> server that everything is OK, when it isn't. It allows someone who

> Tell me what RFC I am violating.  Unless I am violating an RFC, there is
> no "breaking" of SMTP.

Objection: asked and answered (see directly above).

>> No one should. What I do care about is if the President of NBC typos an
>> email address to our President when sending an important email, I want
>> him to know the email didn't make it.

> And what if he sends a letter, but misaddresses the letter?

He'll (hopefully) know about it when it gets returned, because his
secretary (hopefully) isn't stupid and puts the correct return address
on it.

>> Please explain what is *Seriously Fraudulent* or *otherwise
>> inappropriate* about a typo in the recipient address of an otherwise
>> perfectly legitimate email, Jerry.

> How many valid email

Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Tanstaafl]

On 10/14/2014 3:20 PM, Jerry Stuckle  wrote:
> On 10/14/2014 11:24 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> However, once a message has been accepted - ie, *after* the DATA phase
>> is complete, it should never be bounced, it should be delivered - or,
>> worse, quarantined, or worst case, deleted (ie, itf it is later found to
>> contain a malicious payload).
>> 
>> But I was speaking mainly toward the botnet junk that postscreen is so
>> good at rejecting now, and that is the vast majority...

> And that is exactly what I do - I delete the email.

Right... the 'worst case' (with the exception of bouncing) I mentioned
above.


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Mike McGinn]

Comments inline below:

On Wednesday, October 15, 2014 06:37:57 Scott Ferguson wrote:
> On 15/10/14 22:08, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:
> > Le 15.10.2014 12:09, Brian a écrit :
> >> On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 10:41:12 +0200, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org
> >> 
> >> wrote:
> >>> Le 15.10.2014 09:11, Jonathan Dowland a écrit :
> >>> >On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> >>> >>Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. Surprise,
> >>> >>surprise.
> >>> >
> >>> >Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe
> >>> >betide any
> >>> >company that actually gets us there...
> >>> 
> >>> Maybe you want.
> >>> But I think that most users just want it to work fine and
> >>> efficiently, which does not necessarily imply being sold massively
> >>> around the world.
> 
> I would have 'thought' all users want "it" to be "useful" - but surely I
> miss your point? (was there a point? I can only work with the words you
> write and it reads like sophist rhetoric, assume the first nonsense is
> not and it follows that neither is the second). As far as I'm aware
> Debian has *never* been sold anywhere, nor are there plans to - did I
> miss another meeting down the docks?
> 
> >> He's doing some of the work on Debian; others work with different
> >> distributions. They get what they want. Users get what they want.
> >> Everyone's a winner. :)
> > 
> > Maybe. But, when someone tries to sell stuff a lot, to have a big market
> > share, then that guy must take a large target, which leads to systems
> > which might become less stable or less efficient. And if that guy want
> > to keep his market, then he'll have to avoid people escaping his stuff,
> > this is why vendor locks exists.
> 
> I could quote you Adam Smith on commerce and conspiracy - though I
> seriously doubt he ever meant there are no non-business conspiracies. He
> was smarter than that.
> 
I used to run Red Hat on some of my servers. We paid RH for support. Years ago 
when I worked for Philips T & M we sold service contracts. The economic 
incentives for the seller are much the same as when you sell support. You make 
the most money when you supply the least support. That would give RH an 
economic incentive to make sure things are as reliable as possible. Businesses 
buy these contracts because they can not afford downtime. The upside for the 
business is they have a contract specifying a response. It is expensive to 
send folks out to fix stuff. Red Hat contributes a lot of patches. They pay 
people to work on the kernel. IBM employs the author of Postfix who provides 
support on the Postfix list. These companies are investing in Linux because it 
makes economic sense for them to have Linux as solid and reliable as possible.

We all benefit from these investments.

> But it'd be more pertinent to note that servers cost money to run and
> Debian (and the FSF) do a good job of not allowing any contributions in
> labour or money to control it's production or direction. To allow the
> former would be both foolish and ignore the nature of Free Open Source
> Software. I can't think of any distro that doesn't accept assistance
> from business.
> With the possible exception of Hairshirtix (forked from
> SelfFlagellantOS) but I'm pretty sure they haven't produced any actual
> working code. ;)
> 
> > Definitely, I hope that Debian won't take that road.
> 
> Likewise, and I'm sure Intel don't want RedHat driving anymore than
> RedHat want Google in control - even if IBM was prepared to let them,
> and in the end it's still down to the programmers. And can only buy so
> much with a paycheck. (last time I checked Linus gets paid to work on
> the kernel).

Another thing to note is that people have to eat. If companies like IBM and RH 
did not pay developers to work on Linux those people would have to work 
somewhere else. Maybe they would be at Google, Microsoft or Facebook. I have 
been hearing a lot of unwarranted chatter about the evils of the PID 1 
replacement because Red Hat used. I do not hear so much about people pulling 
the patches contributed by Red Hat out of the kernel.

All you people are accomplishing is raising the price of tinfoil.


> 
> > It it does, then,
> > I'll switch. I'm taking a look at netBSD, even if I guess that I'll have
> > a hard time being successful in feeling as comfortable with it than with
> > Debian.

> 
> Here's a good place to start your "looking":-
> http://www.netbsd.org/contrib/org/
> 
> Kind regards
-- 
Mike McGinn KD2CNU
Be happy that brainfarts don't smell.
No electrons were harmed in sending this message, some were inconvenienced.
** Registered Linux User 377849

Re: preseeding question (yes, re. systemd / sysvinit-core)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 07:49:08AM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> 1. There is now an essential metapackage called init that depends on
> one of systemd-sysv, or sysvinit-core, or upstart.   (parenthetical
> question: What distinguishes a metapackage from a virtual package?
> Or perhaps, more precisely, why is init defined as a metapackage
> rather than a virtual package?)

A virtual package doesn't exist, but is listed in Provides: or Requires: fields
in other packages.

A metapackage does exist, but doesn't contain any files, so only it's metadata
is relevant.

You may need a metapackage rather than a virtual package for upgrade
situations. A metapackage can provide: something else, can Replaces: something
else, etc.; whereas a virtual package can't (because it doesn't exist.)

> 4. How, in a preseed file, does one identify one's preferred choice
> for meeting the dependencies of a virtual package or metapackage (in
> this case, specifically installing sysvinit-core to satisfy init's
> dependencies) - either by:
> a. over-riding package priorities, or,
> b. making an explicit selection of the real package to meet a dependency

I *think* that if the dependency is already satisfied by another package
selection, the resolver won't go out and try to satisfy it with another, as of
yet unmarked package.  So if you have "d-i pkgsel/include string sysvinit-core
systemd-shim" or similar, the resolver shouldn't then select systemd to satisfy
the init dependency, as it is already satisfied.


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[berenger . morel]

Le 15.10.2014 12:37, Scott Ferguson a écrit :

On 15/10/14 22:08, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:



Le 15.10.2014 12:09, Brian a écrit :

On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 10:41:12 +0200, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org
wrote:


Le 15.10.2014 09:11, Jonathan Dowland a écrit :
>On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>>Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. 
Surprise,

>>surprise.
>
>Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe
>betide any
>company that actually gets us there...

Maybe you want.
But I think that most users just want it to work fine and
efficiently, which does not necessarily imply being sold massively
around the world.


I would have 'thought' all users want "it" to be "useful" - but 
surely I
miss your point? (was there a point? I can only work with the words 
you
write and it reads like sophist rhetoric, assume the first nonsense 
is

not and it follows that neither is the second). As far as I'm aware
Debian has *never* been sold anywhere, nor are there plans to - did I
miss another meeting down the docks?


I have never seen Debian sold either. But I was replying to a mail 
speaking about linux (which is, indirectly, sold with a lot of devices).
My point is that there is no need to linux to have commercial 
sex-appeal to work fine and efficiently, or to make it useful. The fact 
that companies uses it in their products is simply because it suits 
their needs better than the alternatives they have checked.






He's doing some of the work on Debian; others work with different
distributions. They get what they want. Users get what they want.
Everyone's a winner. :)


Maybe. But, when someone tries to sell stuff a lot, to have a big 
market
share, then that guy must take a large target, which leads to 
systems
which might become less stable or less efficient. And if that guy 
want
to keep his market, then he'll have to avoid people escaping his 
stuff,

this is why vendor locks exists.


I could quote you Adam Smith on commerce and conspiracy - though I
seriously doubt he ever meant there are no non-business conspiracies. 
He

was smarter than that.

But it'd be more pertinent to note that servers cost money to run and
Debian (and the FSF) do a good job of not allowing any contributions 
in

labour or money to control it's production or direction. To allow the
former would be both foolish and ignore the nature of Free Open 
Source

Software. I can't think of any distro that doesn't accept assistance
from business.


I never said that Debian, or whatever free software, should refuse 
contributions because the contributor is financially interested by the 
quality of the project. I simply said that big companies' input is not 
necessary (not that it's not useful), and I think I can argue that, 
AFAIK, either linux or debian, started without such inputs. If there is 
now that kind of input, it's good, but it's not because those projects 
wanted to "seduce" those big companies.



Here's a good place to start your "looking":-
http://www.netbsd.org/contrib/org/

Kind regards


Indeed.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[The Wanderer]

On 10/15/2014 at 04:08 AM, Martin Read wrote:

> On 14/10/14 22:56, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:15:40 +0300 Andrei POPESCU
>>  wrote:

>>> And it also seems to make sense (why should every Desktop
>>> Environment implement it's own solution for this?).

>> And how were they handling this task before systemd?
> 
> They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
> after systemd-logind came along.

And how were they handling it (or an analogous / equivalent task) before
ConsoleKit, and the other *kit thingies, became a thing?

I suspect that the answer is "they just didn't provide the functionality
which ConsoleKit, and later systemd-logind, now enable them to provide",
but I'm not aware - in a clear-understanding, defined-boundaries sense -
of exactly what that functionality is, or of why it would be necessary
or otherwise valuable, or of what the problem is which that
functionality was intended to address.

I have a similar lack of awareness and/or understanding about all of the
*kit packages / projects / tools / what-have-you, actually; I'm not
positive I even know how many there are, much less all of their names.
This has probably contributed to the lack of that awareness /
understanding, since any partial explanation I see for one of them gets
partly conflated with and/or applied to the other(s?), and the whole
thing gets muddied by that mire.

-- 
   The Wanderer

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



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[The Wanderer]

On 10/14/2014 at 04:15 PM, Olav Vitters wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 06:18:01PM +0200, lee wrote:
> 
>> Considering that the users are Debians' priority, couldn't this
>> issue be a case in which significant concerns from/of the users
>> about an issue might initiate a GR?  Wouldn't it speak loudly for
>> Debian and its ways and for what it stands for, or used to stand
>> for, if it was established procedure that issues arising
>> significant concerns amongst the users can lead to a GR?
>> 
>> I'm sure we could find quite a few supporters for having a GR
>> amongst the users (here).  And after all, we're all kinda stuck in
>> the same boat.  A GR might have the potential to make the gap
>> between users and devs/maintainers a lot smaller.  Otherwise, this
>> gap will only continue to become wider and wider.
> 
> Debian is known for focussing a lot on focussing on quality.
> Upgrading from one version to the next is expected to be utterly
> smooth. Any bug encountered is exceptional.

Definitions of what constitutes "utterly smooth" may vary, however.


The "should upgrading from wheezy to jessie automatically switch the
init system to systemd, unless the admin has taken some sufficiently
clear action to prevent it?" question is one possible example. One side
of that debate seems to think that a properly smooth upgrade requires
that such an automatic switch take place (because otherwise the init
system doesn't get upgraded to what would be put in place by a new
install, so the upgrade can't be said to have actually completed);
another seems to think that a properly smooth upgrade requires that such
an automatic switch *not* take place (because of the chance of breaking
existing local configuration, among possibly other things).


For another example: some time ago, on debian-devel, the question arose
of whether it's reasonable to expect people to reboot promptly after
installing e.g. a new kernel, or a new init system. While of course you
can't expect to gain any functionality advantage from the
newly-installed software until the reboot in those cases, it still seems
reasonable to me to expect that no previously-existing functionality
will be *lost* in the window between such an upgrade and the next reboot.

However, at least one of the systemd Debian maintainers stated in that
discussion that while having a "keep going as normal and reboot at
leisure" scenario work smoothly would be nice, he does not consider it a
hard requirement. (The functionality at hand apparently included, but
was not necessarily limited to, power-management functionality - such as
the "reboot" button. I think that particular piece of functionality may
have been addressed since then, but the larger principle still exists.)

I think that for such a scenario to not work would place the upgrade
outside the bounds of what constitutes "utterly smooth", and I would
consider any such functionality loss to be a bug - quite possibly an RC
bug. The maintainer in question, at least, does not appear to think
that; he does appear to agree that it would be a bug, but a minor one at
best. Thus, definitions vary, Q.E.D..

-- 
   The Wanderer

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



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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[The Wanderer]

On 10/14/2014 at 03:28 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:

> On 10/14/2014 12:03 PM, Tanstaafl wrote:
> 
>> On 10/14/2014 11:17 AM, Jerry Stuckle 
>> wrote:

>>> Wrong on two counts.  First of all, the false notion "Security
>>> through obscurity *never* works".  This has nothing to do with
>>> security.

>>> And BTW, that statement is also wrong - why do you think people
>>> are encouraged to use obscure passwords if it doesn't work? But
>>> that's another subject.
>> 
>> Lol! Not even in the same ballpark, Jerry. Passwords, by their
>> very nature, are intended to be difficult/impossible to 'guess'.
>> 
>> To suggest that this is even in the same universe as 'security
>> through obscurity' is ludicrous.
> 
> Then what is that if it isn't "obscurity"?

"Security by obscurity" isn't "no one knows the password" or "no one
knows the account name"; it's something more like "no one knows there's
a place to enter an account name or a password".

It isn't "no one knows how to unlock the door"; it's "no one knows where
the door is", or even closer, "no one knows that there even is a door".

(There's a mall near where I live which has an out-of-the-way door which
is never locked at any hour, and which does not appear to be covered by
security cameras. As far as I can tell, the after-hours security there
relies entirely on the fact that the general public does not know the
door exists. That's security by obscurity.)

I'm not entirely positive on which side of that distinction this
situation falls, overall. Keeping passwords secret is definitely not
"security by obscurity", but concealing the fact that a given account
exists may arguably be.

-- 
   The Wanderer

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



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Re: OT: Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Joel Rees]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Miles Fidelman
 wrote:
> Tanstaafl wrote:
>>
>> On 10/14/2014 1:58 PM, Miles Fidelman  wrote:
>>>
>>> Well, this really is OT for debian-users, but  Turns out that SMTP
>>> WAS/IS intended to be reliable.
>>
>> Reliable, absolutely. 100% reliable? That simply isn't possible when
>> people are involved in the equation (people mis-configure servers -
>> whether accidentally, through ignorance, or intentionally (just because
>> that is the way they want it).
>>
>>> I'd always lumped SMTP in the category of unreliable protocols, w/o
>>> guaranteed delivery
>>
>> The protocol itself is extremely reliable. It is what people *do* with
>> it that can cause it to become less reliable/resilient.

There are three ways in which machines can be unreliable.

One, they can break.

Two, they can do what they are told to do, but what they are told to
do can be wrong.

Three, they can operate in a context in which they were not designed to operate.

Unfortunately, most machines operated outside the context in which
they were designed to operate. It's a limitation of design. We are the
designers, and we can't think of everything, therefore we cannot
really design for a real context.

Put another way, any context we can design for is necessarily more
constrained than reality.

Fortunately, most of the contexts we design for are "close enough" to
be useful under many real contexts. But we have to quit being taken by
surprise when our machines hit corner cases, or we end up wasting our
energy being surprised.

That's one of the reasons the Requests For Comments were RFCs and not
standards dictated from on high (like many of the earlier network
definitions that ended up too inflexible).

> There is a technical distinction between "best efforts" (unreliable)
> protocols, such as IP ('fire and forget' if you will), and "reliable"
> protocols, such as TCP (with explicit acks and retransmits).
>
> At least in the technical circles I run in (BBN - you know, we built the
> ARPANET; Ray Tomlinson, who coined use of the @ sign in email nominally
> worked for me, for a short period - in a matrixy version of "worked for"),
> SMTP is usually discussed as providing a "best efforts" (unreliable) service
> -- which, in reality, it is (particularly in real world configurations where
> mail often gets relayed through multiple servers).
>
> So.. I was just a bit surprised to go back and read the RFC and discover
> that SMTP is explicitly intended to provide a reliable service.

If it is, that has changed.

Elsewhere from the part you quoted, there used to be an explanation of
the self-contradictory nature of the requirements.

Specifically, machines cannot actually (the illusions of PKI becoming
widely accepted notwithstanding) certify delivery. That requires a
human at both ends of the chain, in addition to the possibly human
sender and recipient. RFC 821 messages were intended not to require
any human in the chain.

If that has changed, it would be the unreasoning demands of people who
want e-mail to perfect in ways snail mail only almost could be in the
best of times: people who want to be able to do things like sue other
people for not complying with obscure rules when informed of those
rules by e-mail.

> As to "100% reliable" - nothing is 100% reliable.
>
> Miles Fidelman
>
> --
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra

-- 
Joel Rees

Be careful when you see conspiracy.
Look first in your own heart,
and ask yourself if you are not your own worst enemy.
Arm yourself with knowledge of yourself.


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Who is systemd-gpt-auto-generator, and why does s/he not like my partition table?

[Jape Person]

Hi, folks!

Sorry about the title. I'm just addicted to movie titles from the 60s.

(-:

I am seeing this during the boot sequence on a Debian testing 
installation. Sometimes it is actually left showing on TTY1 after the DM 
(lightdm in this case) comes up, and sometimes not.


From TTY1
...
systemd-gpt-auto-generator[152]: Failed to determine partition table 
type of /dev/sda: Input/output error

...

So, I checked dmesg:

From dmesg
...[4.853751] systemd-gpt-auto-generator[154]: Failed to determine 
partition table type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
[4.854298] systemd[151]: 
/lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-gpt-auto-generator failed with 
error code 1.

... and later on ...
[12650.204616] systemd-gpt-auto-generator[7555]: Failed to determine 
partition table type of /dev/sda: Input/output error

...

I looked in the BTS and couldn't even find a package named 
systemd-gpt-auto-generator, much less a bug that had been filed for it. 
I guess it's a routine or function name?


The drive came originally from Lenovo (T520i) with and MSDOS parititon 
table. I just used the standard partition scheme provided by the netinst 
d-i (testing), so there are only /dev/sda1 and the swap partition 
present. I used ext4 as the file system.


I'm also having the drive checked by smartmontools at boot time and have 
received no warnings. In addition, I run "fsck -Cfat ext4" on the drive 
at boot time every week with no untoward signs.


This has been happening for a couple of weeks, and I haven't seen any 
odd behaviors from the system. Nevertheless, I thought I ought to check 
to see if anyone thinks this is likely to indicate that I'm about to get 
bit in the butt.


It would also be nice to know why I'm seeing this only on this 
particular system and not on any of the other three systems with very 
similar Debian testing installations on them.


Thanks!

Jape


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[John Hasler]

Steve Litt writes:
> Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. Surprise,
> surprise.

Better Red Hat than just about anybody else.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Joel Rees]

2014/10/15 1:47 "Brian" :
>
> On Tue 14 Oct 2014 at 12:06:11 -0400, Henning Follmann wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 11:02:10AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > > On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 08:05:06 -0400
> > > Henning Follmann  wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 07:56:40AM -0400, Marty wrote:
> > > > > It seems like free software employment and market share come with
> > > > > increasing risk to objectivity and technical quality. It's my main
> > > > > concern as a Debian user, as I consider recent trends.
> > > > >
> > > > > I hope that Debian members consider an amendment to restrict voting
> > > > > rights for members who have a financial interest in Debian or in any
> > > > > project used by Debian, to promote and protect the public interest.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Why, what is the reason for that? Explain why they are less objective
> > > > or anyone having no financial interest is more objective.
> > >
> > > You know darn well, Henning. In anything, not just Linux, not just
> > > Debian, not just systemd, when somebody has the responsibility of doing
> > > the best thing for the community or other entity, but they also have a
> > > financial stake in which way the thing goes, they have a huge incentive
> > > to vote in a way detrimental to the community or other entity. This is
> > > why bribery is a crime.
> > >
> >
> > Well thanks for pointing that out. But this effort can be seen as a way to
> > tilt the voting based on one aspect. And this being _systemd_. Now a group
> > has identified that another group with "financial interest" is more likely
> > to vote for sytemd. So lets disenfranchise those. That is equally bad.
> >
> > And second "financial interest" != bribery. This is a very distorted view.
> > My work is based on debian as a development platform. So I do have a
> > financial interest in debian being a stable platform. So I shall be
> > disenfranchised?
>
> The depths are really beginning to be plumbed. We have a proposer of an
> resolution linking financial gain with the work people do in their free
> time to give us a free OS. This is rapidly followed by a seconder who
> has found another bandwaggon to jump on. All this is supposed to be for
> the benefit of Debian.
>
> Give me swearing in posts rather than innuendo and attempted character
> assassination of a group dedicated workers.

Do you realize that a lot of your posts, jumping on anti-systemd
topics, might appear, to casual examination, to be innuendo and/or
character assassination?

Any time people believe strongly in something, it becomes difficult to
examine their own position carefully. (That's part of the meaning of
my other sig.)

You need to understand. We have a bunch of old fogies, including
myself, whose training included the KISS mantra, Murphy's laws, the
proverb, "Fast, correct, delivered on time, pick any two.", another
proverb about how computers excel at making mistakes at high speed,
another about how the computer could only do exactly what you told it
to, so that bug is your fault, and many other metaphors that helped us
understand the limits of the machine that is easy to see as a magic
box.

That last one is no longer true. You often don't know who wrote the
compilers or libraries you use or how they interpreted the standards,
so the best you can do is try to avoid corner cases and areas of known
disagreement.

Looking at the architecture and goals of systemd is, for me, like
seeing the world turned upside down. (I could be more explicit, but
I'm fully aware by now how it would be received here.) I look at the
code and it does not reassure me in the slightest, even though,
superficially, the code has significantly improved over the last year.

You have to understand that. For people who were trained the way I
was, systemd proves itself completely wrong by design. Any attempt to
defend it is already tainted, and it's hard to work around that point
of view.

I know that we have a different set of expectations. Nanosecond
instruction timings and multi-gigabytes of main memory make some
things that were impossible to even consider when I was in college
something in the way of commonplace now. Cellphones? My "feature
phone" has more raw horsepower and more memory than any of the
computers I used in college.

(Unfortunately, I can't run a C compile on it, and sometimes the irony
of that is a bit painful. Maybe that pain is part of why systemd gets
my back up.)

Some things become possible. Some do not. Instructions still take
time, and they just basically aren't going to get any faster with any
of the technology that we have any Moore.

systemd tries to do too much, and fixing the corner cases will kill it
eventually. Processors aren't going to get faster and save the day
like they have with so many formerly impossible things.

Hopefully, by that point, Poettering will cease to believe he's
Supercoder and start having systemd delegate the hard stuff. Or
someone will fork the code and fix what he 

Re: how to identify reverse dependencies?

[Miles Fidelman]

Thanks to those who've provided scripts and pointers to apt- 
capabilities.  But...  both out of curiosity and practicality - to the 
Debian developers out there - are there any tools on the SCM or build 
servers that run dependency graphs across the package database?


Miles Fidelman

Andrew McGlashan wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On 14/10/2014 8:09 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

aptitude search '?depends(^systemd$)'

# aptitude search '?depends(^systemd$)'
Wednesday 15 October 14:54:30 EST 2014 -- search ?depends(^systemd$)
p   libpam-systemd
   - system and service manager - PAM module
p   lighttpd
   - fast webserver with minimal memory footprint
p   live-config-systemd
   - Live System Configuration Scripts (systemd backend)
p   systemd-gui
   - system and service manager - GUI
p   systemd-sysv
   - system and service manager - SysV links


That's on a standard wheezy 7.6 system at this time.

I don't have gnome installed, but on wheezy, systemd is not a depend for
gnome:

# aptitude show gnome
Wednesday 15 October 14:56:38 EST 2014 -- show gnome
Package: gnome
State: not installed
Version: 1:3.4+7+deb7u1
Priority: optional
Section: gnome
Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers

Architecture: amd64
Uncompressed Size: 53.2 k
Depends: gnome-core (= 1:3.4+7+deb7u1), desktop-base,
network-manager-gnome (>= 0.9.4), aisleriot (>= 1:3.4), cheese (>= 3.4),
evolution (>= 3.4), evolution-plugins (>= 3.4),
  file-roller (>= 3.4), gedit (>= 3.4), gnome-color-manager (>=
3.4), gnome-documents (>= 0.4), gnome-games (>= 1:3.4), gnome-nettool
(>= 3.2), nautilus-sendto (>= 3.0),
  gnome-orca (>= 3.4), rygel-preferences (>= 0.14), seahorse (>=
3.4), totem (>= 3.0), vinagre (>= 3.4), alacarte (>= 0.13.4),
avahi-daemon, gimp (>= 2.8), gnome-media (>=
  3.4), gnome-tweak-tool (>= 3.4), hamster-applet (>= 2.91.3),
inkscape (>= 0.48), libreoffice-gnome, libreoffice-writer | abiword (>=
2.8), libreoffice-calc | gnumeric (>=
  1.10), libreoffice-impress, rhythmbox (>= 2.96), shotwell,
simple-scan, sound-juicer (>= 3.4), tomboy (>= 1.10) | gnote,
tracker-gui, transmission-gtk, xdg-user-dirs-gtk,
  cups-pk-helper (>= 0.2), gedit-plugins (>= 3.4), gnome-applets
(>= 3.4), gnome-shell-extensions (>= 3.4), gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg (>=
0.10.13), gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly (>=
  0.10.19), rhythmbox-plugins, rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder,
rygel-playbin, rygel-tracker, telepathy-gabble, telepathy-rakia,
telepathy-salut, totem-plugins, libgtk2-perl (>=
  1:1.130)
Recommends: browser-plugin-gnash, gdebi, gnome-games-extra-data (>=
3.0), nautilus-sendto-empathy, telepathy-idle
Suggests: dia-gnome, gnome-boxes, gnucash, libreoffice-evolution,
planner, iceweasel-l10n-all, xul-ext-adblock-plus, xul-ext-gnome-keyring
Description: Full GNOME Desktop Environment, with extra components
  This is the GNOME Desktop environment, an intuitive and attractive
desktop, with extra components.

  This meta-package depends on the standard distribution of the GNOME
desktop environment, plus a complete range of plugins and other
applications integrating with GNOME and Debian,
  providing the best possible environment to date.


At a later date, everything changes ... some things later than other
things.  I guess that gnome's version for 7.6 is too old to /need/ systemd.

A.

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--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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Re: Who is systemd-gpt-auto-generator, and why does s/he not like my partition table?

[Sven Joachim]

On 2014-10-15 16:14 +0200, Jape Person wrote:

> I am seeing this during the boot sequence on a Debian testing
> installation. Sometimes it is actually left showing on TTY1 after the
> DM (lightdm in this case) comes up, and sometimes not.
>
> From TTY1
> ...
> systemd-gpt-auto-generator[152]: Failed to determine partition table
> type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
> ...
>
> So, I checked dmesg:
>
> From dmesg
> ...[4.853751] systemd-gpt-auto-generator[154]: Failed to determine
> partition table type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
> [4.854298] systemd[151]:
> /lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-gpt-auto-generator failed with
> error code 1.
> ... and later on ...
> [12650.204616] systemd-gpt-auto-generator[7555]: Failed to determine
> partition table type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
> ...
>
> I looked in the BTS and couldn't even find a package named
> systemd-gpt-auto-generator, much less a bug that had been filed for
> it. I guess it's a routine or function name?

It's a program that is part of the systemd package.  See the manpage for
what it does.

> It would also be nice to know why I'm seeing this only on this
> particular system and not on any of the other three systems with very
> similar Debian testing installations on them.

Can you please show your /etc/fstab file and the output of
"fdisk -l /dev/sda" ?

Cheers,
   Sven


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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Jerry Stuckle]

On 10/15/2014 8:14 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 10/14/2014 3:28 PM, Jerry Stuckle  wrote:
>> On 10/14/2014 12:03 PM, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>> On 10/14/2014 11:17 AM, Jerry Stuckle  wrote:
 On 10/14/2014 8:05 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
> If you think I'm kidding, please by all means go make these silly
> statements on the postfix list and I'll just sit and watch the fun.
>>>
 You don't read very well.  This has nothing to do with emails to a valid
 address.  A large amount of that spam goes to invalid addresses.  I see
 them go through the logs regularly.
>>>
>>> I read fine. The 'silly statements' reference was about your suggestion
>>> that it is in any way shape or form 'ok' to *accept* mail to invalid
>>> recipients then send it to dev/null.
> 
>> But you just said it was OK to delete emails.
> 
> Please don't misquote me. I said it was the *worst case*, meaning, only
> marginally better than *bouncing* them, which you should never do.
> 
> I certainly did not say it was 'OK'.
> 

You said it was OK.  You may try to attack conditions to it - but you
still said it was OK.

 Wrong.  Rejecting garbage sends a message back to the originator,
> 
>>> No, it doesn't. It closes the connection with a response code.
> 
> 
> 
>> I know how it works.
> 
> Apparently not, since you keep saying that the RECEIVING server 'sends a
> message back to the originator' - unless maybe you simply have a hard
> time saying what you really mean, which always causes confusion.
> 

Yes, I do.  And it does send a message back to the originator - it may
only be a status code, but it is still a message.

>> Now how often do you get an email of 1MB?
> 
> Like a large percentage of businesses, we get mail *all the time* that
> is many MB's in size. Even all of the freemailers have very large max
> sizes they accept now (I think gmail is up to 25MB or 30MB?).
> 

Provide figures for your claim of "a large percentage of businesses".
Seldom do I see messages that big on ANY of my systems.  Additionally,
often times ISPs will limit the size of messages users can send.  And
many systems have limits on how much storage email can take up.  Just
because a couple of free email services accept larger messages does not
mean EVERYONE does.

> But, I'd say 10-15% of our email traffic consists of messages that are 1MB+
> 

For my systems, it is < 1%.  And the average email size is around 20-30K.

> And yes, even lots of spam now has larger attachments (even seen them
> over 2MB, though not very often).
> 

Yes, spam with trojans and viruses often have large attachments.  But
those are quickly taken care of by the antivirus routines.

>>> If I reject the mail at the RCPT-TO stage, then I only accepted a few
>>> bytes of traffic before terminating the connection with an SMTP response
>>> (error) code. The connecting machine then decides whether to pass the
>>> response back or not (again, a few bytes at most).
> 
>> That's your option.
> 
> No, it is the right thing to do.
> 

According to which RFC?  Until you can point me to what RFC I am
violating, it is just your opinion.

>>> If you *accept* the mail, then you accepted the entire 1MB of traffic.
>>>
>>> So, who is responsible for more traffic in such a case?
> 
>> Sure.
> 
> Thank you for acknowledging that at least this argument in support of
> breaking recipient validation (that rejecting emails results in more
> traffic than accepting/deleting them) is wrong. We're making progress.
> 

You don't recognize sarcasm very well.

>> But spammers don't know whether it is a good address or not.
> 
> Nor do they if I reject the transaction way before the RCPT-TO stage,
> which postscreen does *very* well, which is what happens most of the time.
> 

Sure they do.  They get a status message back indicating the message was
rejected and why it was rejected.  The fact they DON'T get that message
indicates they have found a valid EMAIL address.

And validated EMAIL addresses are a spammer's dream.

> Also, my understanding is that there the vast majority of spammers no
> longer engage in dictionary attacks to harvest valid email addresses.
> 

Your understanding is incorrect.  I see it regularly.

>> I said NOTHING about security.  I just don't want them to know what the
>> valid email addresses are.
> 
> In my mind saying 'I am doing this because I don't want them to know
> what the valid email addresses are' is the exact same thing as saying 'I
> am doing this for security purposes.'.
> 

It has nothing to do with security, no matter is in your mind.

>> That way they don't send more SPAM to the good addresses.
> 
> It isn't about how much spam is targeted at your users, it is about how
> much gets through, and an effective anti-spam solution block 99+% of it
> - *without* breaking SMTP. And again, my understanding is that there the
> vast majority of spammers no longer engage in dictionary attacks to
> harvest valid email addresses, so you are continuing to break smtp for
> your users and

Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Slavko]

Ahoj,

Dňa Wed, 15 Oct 2014 11:09:53 +0100 Brian 
napísal:

> On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 10:41:12 +0200, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org
> wrote:
> 
> > Le 15.10.2014 09:11, Jonathan Dowland a écrit :
> > >On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > >>Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers.
> > >>Surprise, surprise.
> > >
> > >Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe
> > >betide any
> > >company that actually gets us there...
> > 
> > Maybe you want.
> > But I think that most users just want it to work fine and
> > efficiently, which does not necessarily imply being sold massively
> > around the world.
> 
> He's doing some of the work on Debian; others work with different
> distributions. They get what they want. Users get what they want.
> Everyone's a winner. :)

I get systemd. Are you sure, that i want it? Or am i not a user?

regards

-- 
Slavko
http://slavino.sk


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Description: PGP signature

Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Jerry Stuckle]

On 10/15/2014 10:17 AM, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 10/14/2014 at 03:28 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> 
>> On 10/14/2014 12:03 PM, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/14/2014 11:17 AM, Jerry Stuckle 
>>> wrote:
> 
 Wrong on two counts.  First of all, the false notion "Security
 through obscurity *never* works".  This has nothing to do with
 security.
> 
 And BTW, that statement is also wrong - why do you think people
 are encouraged to use obscure passwords if it doesn't work? But
 that's another subject.
>>>
>>> Lol! Not even in the same ballpark, Jerry. Passwords, by their
>>> very nature, are intended to be difficult/impossible to 'guess'.
>>>
>>> To suggest that this is even in the same universe as 'security
>>> through obscurity' is ludicrous.
>>
>> Then what is that if it isn't "obscurity"?
> 
> "Security by obscurity" isn't "no one knows the password" or "no one
> knows the account name"; it's something more like "no one knows there's
> a place to enter an account name or a password".
>

You're limiting it too much.  From Dictionary.com:

obscurity
noun, plural obscurities.
1. the state or quality of being obscure.
2. the condition of being unknown:
...

A complex password is, by definition, obscure according to #2.  And
easily guessable password is not obscure, nor is it secure.


> It isn't "no one knows how to unlock the door"; it's "no one knows where
> the door is", or even closer, "no one knows that there even is a door".
>

See above.

> (There's a mall near where I live which has an out-of-the-way door which
> is never locked at any hour, and which does not appear to be covered by
> security cameras. As far as I can tell, the after-hours security there
> relies entirely on the fact that the general public does not know the
> door exists. That's security by obscurity.)
>

That's one example.

> I'm not entirely positive on which side of that distinction this
> situation falls, overall. Keeping passwords secret is definitely not
> "security by obscurity", but concealing the fact that a given account
> exists may arguably be.
> 

See above.

Jerry


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Re: OT (Sorta): Pepperflash Now Working on Wheezy 64-bit

[Hugo Vanwoerkom]

Patrick Bartek wrote:

Just got latest upgrade of Chrome Stable (38.0.2125.104-1) for my Wheezy
64-bit (Openbox WM only) directly from Google repo.  Pepperflash player
(15.0.0.189) now working.

And it only took a month and a half. ;-)

B




with libc6 from Jessie?

Hugo


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Re: Who is systemd-gpt-auto-generator, and why does s/he not like my partition table?

[Don Armstrong]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014, Jape Person wrote:
> From dmesg
> ...[4.853751] systemd-gpt-auto-generator[154]: Failed to determine
> partition table type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
> [4.854298] systemd[151]:
> /lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-gpt-auto-generator failed with error
> code 1.
> ... and later on ...
> [12650.204616] systemd-gpt-auto-generator[7555]: Failed to determine
> partition table type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
> ...
> 
> I looked in the BTS and couldn't even find a package named
> systemd-gpt-auto-generator, much less a bug that had been filed for
> it. I guess it's a routine or function name?

It's part of systemd; it generates rules to mount partitions from GPT
partition tables without needing to express them in /etc/fstab. [See man
systemd-gpt-auto-generator for details.]

> The drive came originally from Lenovo (T520i) with and MSDOS parititon
> table. I just used the standard partition scheme provided by the
> netinst d-i (testing), so there are only /dev/sda1 and the swap
> partition present. I used ext4 as the file system.

> I'm also having the drive checked by smartmontools at boot time and
> have received no warnings.

You're basically not supposed to get I/O errors on drives like that. I'd
try running smartctl -a /dev/sda; or similar just to see whether any
errors have occured on the drive. It's possible that there's a bad
sector early on which is only exposed when something tries to find a gpt
partition table, or it could be a bug in systemd-gpt-auto-generator
which your particular setup is triggering.

You might be able to trigger it with gdisk -l /dev/sda; or similar, too.

If that doesn't turn up anything useful, file a bug against systemd, and
ask the maintainers what additional debugging information you can
provide. [It's probably severity minor, since this particularly failure
isn't going to hurt anything.]

> I thought I ought to check to see if anyone thinks this is likely to
> indicate that I'm about to get bit in the butt.

I'd make sure that I had my backups in order, but that's really just out
an abundance of caution.
 

-- 
Don Armstrong  http://www.donarmstrong.com

I stared at the mountain rising over me. Empty. It was a pointless
thing to have done -- climb up it, across it, and down it. Stupid! It
looked perfect; so clean and untouched, and we had changed nothing.
[...] I had been on it too long, and it had taken everything.
 -- Joe Simpson "Touching the Void" p117


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Re: how to identify reverse dependencies?

[Slavko]

Ahoj,

Dňa Wed, 15 Oct 2014 10:31:02 +0300 Andrei POPESCU
 napísal:

> Using Debian package dependencies this is expressed as
> Depends: libpam-systemd by those packages that actually require those 
> interfaces
> 
> $ aptitude search '?depends(libpam-systemd)'

Not always right results:

aptitude search -w 60 -F "%c%a %p %v" '~i?depends(libsystemd0)'
ih cups-daemon1.7.5-1
ih dbus   1.8.8-1sla1   
ih fcgiwrap   1.1.0-2   
ih gvfs-daemons   1.20.3-1  
ih libpolkit-backend-1-0  0.105-6.1 
ih libpolkit-gobject-1-0  0.105-6.1 
ih libpulse0  5.0-6 
ih php5-fpm   5.6.0+dfsg-1  
ih systemd204-14
ih udisks22.1.3-3   

But e.g. my dbus package doesn't depends on systemd at all:

LANG=en aptitude show dbus | grep Depends -A2
Depends: libaudit1 (>= 1:2.2.1), libc6 (>= 2.17), libcap-ng0, libdbus-1-3 (>=
 1.7.6), libexpat1 (>= 2.0.1), libselinux1 (>= 2.0.65), adduser,
 lsb-base (>= 3.2-14)

regards

-- 
Slavko
http://slavino.sk


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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[The Wanderer]

On 10/15/2014 at 12:11 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:

> On 10/15/2014 10:17 AM, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
>> On 10/14/2014 at 03:28 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:

>>> Then what is that if it isn't "obscurity"?
>> 
>> "Security by obscurity" isn't "no one knows the password" or "no
>> one knows the account name"; it's something more like "no one knows
>> there's a place to enter an account name or a password".
> 
> You're limiting it too much.  From Dictionary.com:
> 
> obscurity
> noun, plural obscurities.
> 1. the state or quality of being obscure.
> 2. the condition of being unknown:
> ...

That's a definition of "obscurity", which is indeed fairly broad.

It's not a definition of "security by obscurity", which is considerably
more narrow than the generic definition of "obscurity" would indicate.

In many contexts, the use of the jargon phrase "security by obscurity"
occurs specifically in order to draw on that more narrow definition. I
believe that this is one such context.

(I think that I also believe that using "security by obscurity" with a
broader sense than that narrow one is inappropriate, because it
introduces ambiguity as to which meaning is intended, and is therefore
likely to be confusing to a potential reader. But that's a bit of a
tangent.)

Invoking the generic definition of "obscurity" in the face of a use of
the jargon phrase "security by obscurity" is completely missing the
intent, and the sense of that phrase.

-- 
   The Wanderer

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



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Re: Who is systemd-gpt-auto-generator, and why does s/he not like my partition table?

[Jape Person]

On 10/15/2014 11:34 AM, Sven Joachim wrote:

On 2014-10-15 16:14 +0200, Jape Person wrote:


I am seeing this during the boot sequence on a Debian testing
installation. Sometimes it is actually left showing on TTY1 after the
DM (lightdm in this case) comes up, and sometimes not.

 From TTY1
...
systemd-gpt-auto-generator[152]: Failed to determine partition table
type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
...

So, I checked dmesg:

 From dmesg
...[4.853751] systemd-gpt-auto-generator[154]: Failed to determine
partition table type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
[4.854298] systemd[151]:
/lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-gpt-auto-generator failed with
error code 1.
... and later on ...
[12650.204616] systemd-gpt-auto-generator[7555]: Failed to determine
partition table type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
...

I looked in the BTS and couldn't even find a package named
systemd-gpt-auto-generator, much less a bug that had been filed for
it. I guess it's a routine or function name?


It's a program that is part of the systemd package.  See the manpage for
what it does.



Ah, thanks for that! Looking in the systemd manpage hadn't occurred to 
me. Duh!



It would also be nice to know why I'm seeing this only on this
particular system and not on any of the other three systems with very
similar Debian testing installations on them.


Can you please show your /etc/fstab file and the output of
"fdisk -l /dev/sda" ?



/etc/fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
#
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=7ffec658-3f62-4b7c-b944-bb60bc257b83 /   ext4 
errors=remount-ro 0   1

# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=e44c4b27-a764-4fcc-b4f8-a1d1d7542fd7 noneswapsw 
  0   0

/dev/sr0/media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0   0

Hmm. I haven't edited this file on this system. I have usually removed 
references to optical drives in the past. Maybe that entry (/dev/sr0) is 
why I've been hearing the optical drive get activated once-in-a-while on 
this system.


output of "# fdisk -l /dev/sda":

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe553ae0a

   Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *2048   943697919   471847936   83  Linux
/dev/sda2   943699966   976771071165355535  Extended
/dev/sda5   943699968   97677107116535552   82  Linux swap / Solaris


Cheers,
Sven




Thank you for taking an interest!

Jape


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 10:02:03 +0300
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

> On Ma, 14 oct 14, 17:56:58, Steve Litt wrote:
> > 
> > Because you don't want to inextricably drag a giant monolith into
> > your Desktop Environment just to do a few things.
> 
> If you compare systemd with a Desktop Environment I'm not quite sure 
> who's the giant ;)

Yeah, I wasn't clear. I meant giant relative to what needed to be done.
In other words, you need to verify passwords, so you bring in the
entirety of systemd to do it, instead of just writing the code yourself.

I completely understand not reinventing the wheel, but if all you need
is a spoke, you don't construct an interface to a whole wheel just to
get your spoke.

> 
> > And how were they handling
> > this task before systemd? It's not like Desktops, Window Managers
> > and whatever things like lightdm are called didn't exist before
> > systemd.
> 
> ConsoleKit, unmaintained.

Pre-cisely. I see Red Hat's fingerprints all over that unmaintained
status. If not for Red Hat, somebody would have picked up ConsoleKit.
After all, as shown in
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/whos-writing-linux ,
there's plenty of money floating around to pay for free software
development.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[The Wanderer]

On 10/15/2014 at 12:06 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:

> On 10/15/2014 8:14 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
> 
>> On 10/14/2014 3:28 PM, Jerry Stuckle 
>> wrote:

>>> But you just said it was OK to delete emails.
>> 
>> Please don't misquote me. I said it was the *worst case*, meaning,
>> only marginally better than *bouncing* them, which you should never
>> do.
>> 
>> I certainly did not say it was 'OK'.
> 
> You said it was OK.  You may try to attack conditions to it - but
> you still said it was OK.

In a quick search, I haven't been able to find a mail from him which
uses the term "OK", prior to the quoted one which is responding to your
use of that term.

He did say (in close paraphrase) that there are circumstances in which
silently deleting received mails can be barely acceptable. That's a far
cry from saying that it's "OK", either in the modern colloquial sense or
in the literal original sense of "all correct".

>>> I said NOTHING about security.  I just don't want them to know
>>> what the valid email addresses are.
>> 
>> In my mind saying 'I am doing this because I don't want them to
>> know what the valid email addresses are' is the exact same thing as
>> saying 'I am doing this for security purposes.'.
> 
> It has nothing to do with security, no matter is in your mind.

What is the non-security-related reason why you don't want them to know
what the valid E-mail addresses are?

I suspect that the reason is something which Tanstaafl would classify as
falling under "security purposes".

Even if you don't come to agreement on whether that reason is a security
reason, it might still be easier to "agree to disagree" if there's a
clear understanding about exactly what you're disagreeing over, rather
than just conflicting assertions about some consequence of that
underlying point.

 Please explain what is *Seriously Fraudulent* or *otherwise
 inappropriate* about a typo in the recipient address of an
 otherwise perfectly legitimate email, Jerry.
>> 
>>> How many valid emails do you get to a bad email address?
>> 
>> Please answer the question.
> 
> Any email to a bad email address is fraudulent and/or inappropriate.

That's just repeating the assertion, not answering the question. It does
not provide the requested explanation.

What is fraudulent about a typo?

What is inappropriate about a typo?

-- 
   The Wanderer

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



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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Tanstaafl]

On 10/15/2014 12:25 PM, The Wanderer  wrote:
> On 10/15/2014 at 12:11 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
>> You're limiting it too much.  From Dictionary.com:
>>
>> obscurity
>> noun, plural obscurities.
>> 1. the state or quality of being obscure.
>> 2. the condition of being unknown:
>> ...

> That's a definition of "obscurity", which is indeed fairly broad.

Thanks, saved me the trouble - although I don't expect Jerry to 'get
it', so this is probably a waste of everyones time to pursue.


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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Tanstaafl]

On 10/15/2014 12:06 PM, Jerry Stuckle  wrote:
> On 10/15/2014 8:14 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 10/14/2014 3:28 PM, Jerry Stuckle  wrote:
>>> But you just said it was OK to delete emails.

>> Please don't misquote me. I said it was the *worst case*, meaning, only
>> marginally better than *bouncing* them, which you should never do.
>>
>> I certainly did not say it was 'OK'.

> You said it was OK.  You may try to attack conditions to it - but you
> still said it was OK.

Easy enough to prove. By all means, quote the actual text of me saying
this was 'OK'...

>> you keep saying that the RECEIVING server 'sends a message back to
>> the originator' - unless maybe you simply have a hard time saying
>> what you really mean, which always causes confusion.

> it does send a message back to the originator - it may only be a
> status code, but it is still a message.

The status code is not *sent* anywhere - it is a response directly to
the connecting machine.

It is then the responsibility of that machine that was talking to your
server to pass the response code back to the originating *server* (not
the sender of the email - there is a difference).

It is then the responsibility of the 'originating server' to generate
the NDR (non-delivery response) email that the sender then receives in
their Inbox.

So, again, no, *your* server doesn't 'send anything back to the
originating server'.

I'm done with this thread, since Jerry is free to believe whatever he
wants and run his servers however he wants.

Thankfully the vast majority of other mail admins use best practices...


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 08:11:10 +0100
Jonathan Dowland  wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. Surprise,
> > surprise. 
> 
> Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe
> betide any company that actually gets us there...

Hi Jonathan,

Parse the preceding sentence. We want *Linux* to be successful, but woe
betied any *company* ...

I want *Linux* to succeed, and it would be nice for that success to
float the boats of the companies making Linux succeed, but not the
companies trying to completely change the Linux that attracted most of
us to it.

We've actually been in this place before. Wonderful Linux company
Caldera became SCO (oversimplification, but you know what I mean).
Wonderful Linux company Corel changed their CEO, and promptly accepted
money from Microsoft and dropped all their Windows software.

No doubt, mid 1990's to mid 2000's, Red Hat got us there, and I thanked
and celebrated them. What Red Hat is doing now is anti-Linux, as
demonstrated by timestamps 1:35 and 2:20 in the following:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdRmnSHHVw4

SteveT

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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 09:08:26 +0100
Martin Read  wrote:

> On 14/10/14 22:56, Steve Litt wrote:

> > And how were they handling this task before systemd?
> 
> They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
> after systemd-logind came along.

I rest my case.

SteveT

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Re: preseeding question (yes, re. systemd / sysvinit-core)

[Miles Fidelman]

Jonathan Dowland wrote:

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 07:49:08AM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:

1. There is now an essential metapackage called init that depends on
one of systemd-sysv, or sysvinit-core, or upstart.   (parenthetical
question: What distinguishes a metapackage from a virtual package?
Or perhaps, more precisely, why is init defined as a metapackage
rather than a virtual package?)

A virtual package doesn't exist, but is listed in Provides: or Requires: fields
in other packages.

A metapackage does exist, but doesn't contain any files, so only it's metadata
is relevant.

You may need a metapackage rather than a virtual package for upgrade
situations. A metapackage can provide: something else, can Replaces: something
else, etc.; whereas a virtual package can't (because it doesn't exist.)


Thanks for the clarification!

Re. 



4. How, in a preseed file, does one identify one's preferred choice
for meeting the dependencies of a virtual package or metapackage (in
this case, specifically installing sysvinit-core to satisfy init's
dependencies) - either by:
a. over-riding package priorities, or,
b. making an explicit selection of the real package to meet a dependency

I *think* that if the dependency is already satisfied by another package
selection, the resolver won't go out and try to satisfy it with another, as of
yet unmarked package.  So if you have "d-i pkgsel/include string sysvinit-core
systemd-shim" or similar, the resolver shouldn't then select systemd to satisfy
the init dependency, as it is already satisfied.


any thoughts re. conflicts between what's in, say

tasksel tasksel/first standard, web-server
and
d-i pkgsel/include string sysvinit-core systemd-shim


If I understand the installer, tasksel, the definition of the "standard" task 
description
--
Task: standard
Section: user
Description: standard system utilities
 This task sets up a basic user environment, providing a reasonably
 small selection of services and tools usable on the command line.
Packages: standard
Test-new-install: mark skip
---
properly, then the line "tasksel tasksel/first standard, web-server" is going to install 
all packages with priority "standard."

Which leads to a couple of questions:

1. Since the priorities for sysvinit and sysvinit-core are
sysvinit:admin/optional
sysvinit-core:admin/extra

and I assume that the priority for systemd is set to standard, does the 
installer do:
a. install systemd as part of the tasksel phase, the uninstall systemd and 
install sysvinit when it hits the pkgsel step, or,
b. configure the list of packages for both the tasksel step and the pkgsel step 
before actually doing any installs?

2. If b., all is copacetic.  If a., then are there any directives that might 
adjust the operation of the tasksel step, other
than to either create a custom task description or bypass this step and 
designate all packages manually? [There's a line
in the tasksel documentation that says "Debian derived distributions can add a 
new .desc file to /usr/share/tasksel/ to add
additional tasks, or modify/divert debian-tasks.desc to remove tasks" but how 
one might do that at install time is not discussed anywhere
that I can find.]


3. Is there a way to list all packages with priority "standard" - preferably 
via the package repo or one of the staging servers rather than
having to first setup up a jessie installation and pulling in the source list?

Thanks,

Miles



--
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In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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Re: OT: Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Miles Fidelman]

Joel Rees wrote:

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Miles Fidelman
 wrote:

Tanstaafl wrote:

On 10/14/2014 1:58 PM, Miles Fidelman  wrote:

Well, this really is OT for debian-users, but  Turns out that SMTP
WAS/IS intended to be reliable.

Reliable, absolutely. 100% reliable? That simply isn't possible when
people are involved in the equation (people mis-configure servers -
whether accidentally, through ignorance, or intentionally (just because
that is the way they want it).


I'd always lumped SMTP in the category of unreliable protocols, w/o
guaranteed delivery

The protocol itself is extremely reliable. It is what people *do* with
it that can cause it to become less reliable/resilient.

There are three ways in which machines can be unreliable.

One, they can break.

Two, they can do what they are told to do, but what they are told to
do can be wrong.

Three, they can operate in a context in which they were not designed to operate.


Oh come on, there are lots more ways that PROTOCOLS can be unreliable.

We're talking about an environment plagued with noise, congestion, bit 
errors, routing errors, filtering - all kinds of things that are 
probabilistic in nature.


"Unreliable" protocols are generally 'fire-and-forget' in nature (e.g., 
UDP) and promise, at most, "best efforts."


"Reliable" protocols are those that include end-to-end (or, more 
accurately, peer-to-peer) error checking, ACKs and NACKs, 
retransmission, and so forth.  In a protocol context, "reliable" means, 
essentially, 'once I get an ACK, I can assume that my PDU has been 
delivered to my peer' - and has nothing to do with what happens beyond that.




That's one of the reasons the Requests For Comments were RFCs and not
standards dictated from on high (like many of the earlier network
definitions that ended up too inflexible).


Ummm no.  RFCs were RFCs because that's how the early ARPANET R&D 
community, and its leadership decided to conduct their business, and the 
model stuck.



There is a technical distinction between "best efforts" (unreliable)
protocols, such as IP ('fire and forget' if you will), and "reliable"
protocols, such as TCP (with explicit acks and retransmits).

At least in the technical circles I run in (BBN - you know, we built the
ARPANET; Ray Tomlinson, who coined use of the @ sign in email nominally
worked for me, for a short period - in a matrixy version of "worked for"),
SMTP is usually discussed as providing a "best efforts" (unreliable) service
-- which, in reality, it is (particularly in real world configurations where
mail often gets relayed through multiple servers).

So.. I was just a bit surprised to go back and read the RFC and discover
that SMTP is explicitly intended to provide a reliable service.

If it is, that has changed.


Umm no.  The goal statement hasn't changed.  Limitations to that 
goal have been elaborated on - i.e., specific limits and exceptions to 
that reliability have been elaborated on.  But, on the whole, the notion 
of peer-to-peer transmission of email, as a reliable service, with 
acks/nacks/retransmission/error messages/etc/, remains unchanged.


Elsewhere from the part you quoted, there used to be an explanation of
the self-contradictory nature of the requirements.

Specifically, machines cannot actually (the illusions of PKI becoming
widely accepted notwithstanding) certify delivery. That requires a
human at both ends of the chain, in addition to the possibly human
sender and recipient. RFC 821 messages were intended not to require
any human in the chain.

If that has changed, it would be the unreasoning demands of people who
want e-mail to perfect in ways snail mail only almost could be in the
best of times: people who want to be able to do things like sue other
people for not complying with obscure rules when informed of those
rules by e-mail.

Exactly.  RFC 821 and its successors do not address human-to-human 
communications, they specify a reliable protocol for MTA-to-MTA 
communication.  Period.


I'll close by noting that this branch of discussion started with a focus 
on silently dropping spam, and whether that's a violation of standards.  
It used to be a clear violation of the various MUST statements re. 
sending non-delivery messages.  It looks like more recent standards now 
allow for dropping spam as a specific exception case.


Miles Fidelman


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 23:37:37 +0900
Joel Rees  wrote:

> 2014/10/15 1:47 "Brian" :
> >

> > Give me swearing in posts rather than innuendo and attempted
> > character assassination of a group dedicated workers.
> 
> Do you realize that a lot of your posts, jumping on anti-systemd
> topics, might appear, to casual examination, to be innuendo and/or
> character assassination?

Yes. Let's get rid of the innuendo.

It is my belief that Red Hat is foisting systemd on Linux for the
purpose of making Linux harder to repair and manage, and have hired
clever Rube Goldberg software creator Leonart Poettering to create
something that works, but in the long term will be a house of cards
only specialists (primarily Red Hat specialists, they hope) can work on.

Well, that's certainly character assassination (and well deserved in my
opinion), but I think I got rid of the innuendo :-)

SteveT

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Re: Who is systemd-gpt-auto-generator, and why does s/he not like my partition table?

[Jape Person]

On 10/15/2014 11:53 AM, Don Armstrong wrote:

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014, Jape Person wrote:

 From dmesg
...[4.853751] systemd-gpt-auto-generator[154]: Failed to determine
partition table type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
[4.854298] systemd[151]:
/lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-gpt-auto-generator failed with error
code 1.
... and later on ...
[12650.204616] systemd-gpt-auto-generator[7555]: Failed to determine
partition table type of /dev/sda: Input/output error
...

I looked in the BTS and couldn't even find a package named
systemd-gpt-auto-generator, much less a bug that had been filed for
it. I guess it's a routine or function name?


It's part of systemd; it generates rules to mount partitions from GPT
partition tables without needing to express them in /etc/fstab. [See man
systemd-gpt-auto-generator for details.]



Now that's weird, or maybe it's just me. I tried to look for manpages 
for systemd-gpt-auto-generator, and I'd swear I was told "No manual 
entry for..."


Sven Joachim told me to check the manpages, and I looked at man systemd, 
which gave me an online reference for "Generators Specifications" which 
wasn't helpful at all.


But I'm now seeing documentation when I type "man 
systemd-gpt-auto-generator", so I'm guessing I made a typo earlier on 
and didn't even notice in the output from the man request.



The drive came originally from Lenovo (T520i) with and MSDOS parititon
table. I just used the standard partition scheme provided by the
netinst d-i (testing), so there are only /dev/sda1 and the swap
partition present. I used ext4 as the file system.



I'm also having the drive checked by smartmontools at boot time and
have received no warnings.


You're basically not supposed to get I/O errors on drives like that. I'd
try running smartctl -a /dev/sda; or similar just to see whether any
errors have occured on the drive. It's possible that there's a bad
sector early on which is only exposed when something tries to find a gpt
partition table, or it could be a bug in systemd-gpt-auto-generator
which your particular setup is triggering.

You might be able to trigger it with gdisk -l /dev/sda; or similar, too.



I checked with smartctl and was told the test completed without error. 
There were no errors in the log at all.


However, the output from the gdisk command was:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10

Partition table scan:
  MBR: MBR only
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: not present


***
Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format
in memory.
***

Disk /dev/sda: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 43493272-B516-4A14-95E5-BF0E895243CB
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 6125 sectors (3.0 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)End (sector)  Size   Code  Name
   12048   943697919   450.0 GiB   8300  Linux filesystem
   5   943699968   976771071   15.8 GiB8200  Linux swap

I can see the words "invalid GPT and valid MBR" in that report, but -- 
save for the sizes and locations pertinent to the different disks -- 
this is exactly the same output that command gives me on my other systems.


Do you see anything significant?

If not, I'll try my hand at filing a severity minor bug against systemd 
to see if the maintainers think anything of it.



If that doesn't turn up anything useful, file a bug against systemd, and
ask the maintainers what additional debugging information you can
provide. [It's probably severity minor, since this particularly failure
isn't going to hurt anything.]


I thought I ought to check to see if anyone thinks this is likely to
indicate that I'm about to get bit in the butt.


I'd make sure that I had my backups in order, but that's really just out
an abundance of caution.



Yup. I'm meticulous about backup strategy and practice. I'm retired, so 
I have plenty of time to implement it. I never allow myself any excuses.


Thank you for your suggestions.

Jape


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Re: Who is systemd-gpt-auto-generator, and why does s/he not like my partition table?

[Sven Joachim]

On 2014-10-15 17:53 +0200, Don Armstrong wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Oct 2014, Jape Person wrote:
>
>> I'm also having the drive checked by smartmontools at boot time and
>> have received no warnings.
>
> You're basically not supposed to get I/O errors on drives like that. I'd
> try running smartctl -a /dev/sda; or similar just to see whether any
> errors have occured on the drive. It's possible that there's a bad
> sector early on which is only exposed when something tries to find a gpt
> partition table, or it could be a bug in systemd-gpt-auto-generator
> which your particular setup is triggering.

I don't think there is actually an I/O error here, looking at the code
systemd-gpt-auto-generator makes this error up:

,
| errno = 0;
| r = blkid_probe_lookup_value(b, "PTTYPE", &pttype, NULL);
| if (r != 0) {
| if (errno == 0)
| errno = EIO;
| log_error("Failed to determine partition table type of %s: 
%m", node);
| return -errno;
`

Somebody who is familiar with libblkid (i.e. not me) might explain why
blkid_probe_lookup_value() apparently failed but did not set errno.

Cheers,
   Sven


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Re: OT: Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Tanstaafl]

On 10/15/2014 12:50 PM, Miles Fidelman  wrote:
> I'll close by noting that this branch of discussion started with a focus 
> on silently dropping spam, and whether that's a violation of standards.

Actually, no, this branch started with a focus on whether or not it is a
good idea to break SMTP by accepting email from *invalid recipients*
then silently deleting them, as opposed to rejecting them at the RCPT-TO
stage.

> It used to be a clear violation of the various MUST statements re. 
> sending non-delivery messages.  It looks like more recent standards now 
> allow for dropping spam as a specific exception case.

My position is that:

1. email to invalid recipients should be rejected at the RCPT-TO stage,

2. under *no* circumstances should mail to invalid recipients be
accepted for delivery then silently deleted based solely on that one
criteria,

and

3. once an email has been accepted for final delivery, every effort
should be taken to deliver the message to the recipient, whether to
their Inbox clean or tagged as spam (if a spam threshhold is met), or to
a spam quarantine,

I allow for the very rare 'clear-and-present-danger' exceptional
circumstance that, if an after-queue content scanner determines with a
very high probability that something contains a malicious payload, an
admin might want to not deliver it to the recipient. But, I would also
argue that it should go into a quarantine that only the admin has access
to, and never just silently deleted.

But, as Jerry says, that is just my opinion...


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Re: Who is systemd-gpt-auto-generator, and why does s/he not like my partition table?

[Don Armstrong]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014, Sven Joachim wrote:
> I don't think there is actually an I/O error here, looking at the code
> systemd-gpt-auto-generator makes this error up:
> 
> ,
> | errno = 0;
> | r = blkid_probe_lookup_value(b, "PTTYPE", &pttype, NULL);
> | if (r != 0) {
> | if (errno == 0)
> | errno = EIO;
> | log_error("Failed to determine partition table type of %s: 
> %m", node);
> | return -errno;
> `
> 
> Somebody who is familiar with libblkid (i.e. not me) might explain why
> blkid_probe_lookup_value() apparently failed but did not set errno.

Great catch. Yeah, blkid_probe_lookup_value apparently just returns -1
on all errors, regardless of what the error was.

This is probably a bug in systemd-gpt-auto-generator, but upstream (and
the maintainer) would know much more than I.

-- 
Don Armstrong  http://www.donarmstrong.com

We want 6. 6 is the 1.
 -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)" _Checkmate_


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Re: how to identify reverse dependencies?

[Andrew McGlashan]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On 16/10/2014 3:22 AM, Slavko wrote:
> But e.g. my dbus package doesn't depends on systemd at all:
> 
> LANG=en aptitude show dbus | grep Depends -A2
> Depends: libaudit1 (>= 1:2.2.1), libc6 (>= 2.17), libcap-ng0, libdbus-1-3 (>=
>  1.7.6), libexpat1 (>= 2.0.1), libselinux1 (>= 2.0.65), adduser,
>  lsb-base (>= 3.2-14)

Okay, the following are on a couple of my systems.


squeeze-lts ...

# LANG=en aptitude show dbus | grep Depends -A4
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.9), libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.0.2), libexpat1 (>= 1.95.8),
 libselinux1 (>= 1.32), adduser, lsb-base (>= 3.2-14)
Suggests: dbus-x11
Breaks: dbus-1-utils (< 1.0.2-5)
Replaces: dbus-1-utils (< 1.0.2-5)



wheezy

# LANG=en aptitude show dbus | grep Depends -A3
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.10), libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.0.2), libexpat1 (>= 2.0.1),
 libselinux1 (>= 1.32), libsystemd-login0 (>= 31), adduser,
lsb-base (>=
 3.2-14)
Suggests: dbus-x11



A.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (MingW32)

iF4EAREIAAYFAlQ+u5cACgkQqBZry7fv4vsimAEAvsSOhc/2ILiQGSk3Nf9i89hU
ZiUeJN1RQsLbequa6SwBAKEog+bofSEMAUP6ehOhQ5i3nDj/Rt25xAyDvDtzrNj1
=R1B2
-END PGP SIGNATURE-


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:42:58PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
> > after systemd-logind came along.
> 
> I rest my case.

There's nothing at all (not even Red Hat) preventing anyone (even you!) from
stepping up and taking over development of ConsoleKit. It's a considerably
smaller proposition than taking over GNOME 2, a vastly more complex suite of
software and libraries, and that actually did happen
(). 


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Re: preseeding question (yes, re. systemd / sysvinit-core)

[Brian]

On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 12:29:23 -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:

> any thoughts re. conflicts between what's in, say
> 
> tasksel tasksel/first standard, web-server
> and
> d-i pkgsel/include string sysvinit-core systemd-shim

I don't believe there are any. I think what happens is that standard
and web-server get installed first (after any updates are done). The
second command is then carried out.

> If I understand the installer, tasksel, the definition of the
> "standard" task description
> --
> Task: standard
> Section: user
> Description: standard system utilities
>  This task sets up a basic user environment, providing a reasonably
>  small selection of services and tools usable on the command line.
> Packages: standard
> Test-new-install: mark skip
> ---
> properly, then the line "tasksel tasksel/first standard, web-server"
> is going to install all packages with priority "standard."

Ok.

> Which leads to a couple of questions:
> 
> 1. Since the priorities for sysvinit and sysvinit-core are
> sysvinit:admin/optional
> sysvinit-core:admin/extra
> 
> and I assume that the priority for systemd is set to standard, does the 
> installer do:

The priority of systemd is 'important'.

> a. install systemd as part of the tasksel phase, the uninstall systemd
> and install sysvinit when it hits the pkgsel step, or,

systemd-sysv is installed as part of installing the base system. systemd
is there when tasksel is called.

> b. configure the list of packages for both the tasksel step and the
> pkgsel step before actually doing any installs?

This.


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Brian]

On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 12:53:52 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 23:37:37 +0900
> Joel Rees  wrote:
> 
> > 2014/10/15 1:47 "Brian" :
> > >
> 
> > > Give me swearing in posts rather than innuendo and attempted
> > > character assassination of a group dedicated workers.
> > 
> > Do you realize that a lot of your posts, jumping on anti-systemd
> > topics, might appear, to casual examination, to be innuendo and/or
> > character assassination?
> 
> Yes. Let's get rid of the innuendo.
> 
> It is my belief that Red Hat is foisting systemd on Linux for the
> purpose of making Linux harder to repair and manage, and have hired
> clever Rube Goldberg software creator Leonart Poettering to create
> something that works, but in the long term will be a house of cards
> only specialists (primarily Red Hat specialists, they hope) can work on.
> 
> Well, that's certainly character assassination (and well deserved in my
> opinion), but I think I got rid of the innuendo :-)

Can one detect a bit of 'tongue in cheek' here? A modicum of reason
being supressed for a laugh?

These are your beliefs. They are to be respected. If you also believed
that the Earth was flat and the Sun rotated around it, or Elvis was
alive and well and living in Barnsley we would also treat those beliefs
with the respect they deserved.

The practical outcome of having beliefs is not that they have to be
advanced time after time and on every conceivable occasion in -user.


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Re: Who is systemd-gpt-auto-generator, and why does s/he not like my partition table?

[Jape Person]

On 10/15/2014 01:38 PM, Don Armstrong wrote:

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014, Sven Joachim wrote:

I don't think there is actually an I/O error here, looking at the code
systemd-gpt-auto-generator makes this error up:

,
| errno = 0;
| r = blkid_probe_lookup_value(b, "PTTYPE", &pttype, NULL);
| if (r != 0) {
| if (errno == 0)
| errno = EIO;
| log_error("Failed to determine partition table type of %s: 
%m", node);
| return -errno;
`

Somebody who is familiar with libblkid (i.e. not me) might explain why
blkid_probe_lookup_value() apparently failed but did not set errno.


Great catch. Yeah, blkid_probe_lookup_value apparently just returns -1
on all errors, regardless of what the error was.

This is probably a bug in systemd-gpt-auto-generator, but upstream (and
the maintainer) would know much more than I.



Thank you, both!

I'll see if I can file a cogent bug report.

Please let me know if you have particular suggestions about that.

Jape


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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Jerry Stuckle]

On 10/15/2014 12:34 PM, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 10/15/2014 at 12:06 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> 
>> On 10/15/2014 8:14 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/14/2014 3:28 PM, Jerry Stuckle 
>>> wrote:
> 
 But you just said it was OK to delete emails.
>>>
>>> Please don't misquote me. I said it was the *worst case*, meaning,
>>> only marginally better than *bouncing* them, which you should never
>>> do.
>>>
>>> I certainly did not say it was 'OK'.
>>
>> You said it was OK.  You may try to attack conditions to it - but
>> you still said it was OK.
> 
> In a quick search, I haven't been able to find a mail from him which
> uses the term "OK", prior to the quoted one which is responding to your
> use of that term.
> 
> He did say (in close paraphrase) that there are circumstances in which
> silently deleting received mails can be barely acceptable. That's a far
> cry from saying that it's "OK", either in the modern colloquial sense or
> in the literal original sense of "all correct".
> 
 I said NOTHING about security.  I just don't want them to know
 what the valid email addresses are.
>>>
>>> In my mind saying 'I am doing this because I don't want them to
>>> know what the valid email addresses are' is the exact same thing as
>>> saying 'I am doing this for security purposes.'.
>>
>> It has nothing to do with security, no matter is in your mind.
> 
> What is the non-security-related reason why you don't want them to know
> what the valid E-mail addresses are?
>

Spammers buy and sell lists of email addresses.  "Clean lists" - that
is, ones with few invalid email addresses, are worth more and are used
more than "dirty lists".

Spammers often test email servers by sending email to garbage addresses,
to see if they get a bounce.  If they don't, they know the server does
not drop emails, and any address in that domain is suspect.  So the
domain doesn't make a lot of the "clean" lists.

> I suspect that the reason is something which Tanstaafl would classify as
> falling under "security purposes".
> 

There is no security involved here.  Simply another means of
discouraging SPAM.

> Even if you don't come to agreement on whether that reason is a security
> reason, it might still be easier to "agree to disagree" if there's a
> clear understanding about exactly what you're disagreeing over, rather
> than just conflicting assertions about some consequence of that
> underlying point.
> 

He thinks what I am doing "breaks SMTP" - but he can't point to any RFC
I am violating.

> Please explain what is *Seriously Fraudulent* or *otherwise
> inappropriate* about a typo in the recipient address of an
> otherwise perfectly legitimate email, Jerry.
>>>
 How many valid emails do you get to a bad email address?
>>>
>>> Please answer the question.
>>
>> Any email to a bad email address is fraudulent and/or inappropriate.
> 
> That's just repeating the assertion, not answering the question. It does
> not provide the requested explanation.
> 
> What is fraudulent about a typo?
> 
> What is inappropriate about a typo?
> 

Nothing.  But if you get a lot of typos, then you should be looking for
better quality customers.  I don't see that at all in our logs.

All I see are fraudulent and/or inappropriate emails to addresses which
aren't even close to the ones on the servers.

Jerry



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Re: OT: Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Miles Fidelman]

Tanstaafl wrote:

On 10/15/2014 12:50 PM, Miles Fidelman  wrote:

I'll close by noting that this branch of discussion started with a focus
on silently dropping spam, and whether that's a violation of standards.

Actually, no, this branch started with a focus on whether or not it is a
good idea to break SMTP by accepting email from *invalid recipients*
then silently deleting them, as opposed to rejecting them at the RCPT-TO
stage.


It used to be a clear violation of the various MUST statements re.
sending non-delivery messages.  It looks like more recent standards now
allow for dropping spam as a specific exception case.

My position is that:

1. email to invalid recipients should be rejected at the RCPT-TO stage,


Easier said then done - at least when a server does relaying, but 
clearly ideal when possible.




2. under *no* circumstances should mail to invalid recipients be
accepted for delivery then silently deleted based solely on that one
criteria,

and

3. once an email has been accepted for final delivery, every effort
should be taken to deliver the message to the recipient, whether to
their Inbox clean or tagged as spam (if a spam threshhold is met), or to
a spam quarantine,

I allow for the very rare 'clear-and-present-danger' exceptional
circumstance that, if an after-queue content scanner determines with a
very high probability that something contains a malicious payload, an
admin might want to not deliver it to the recipient. But, I would also
argue that it should go into a quarantine that only the admin has access
to, and never just silently deleted.

But, as Jerry says, that is just my opinion...



Generally agree with you in principle.  And that's certainly the 
standards-compliant policy.


In practice I support a few dozen mailing lists - operational 
necessity dictates dropping a lot of stuff silently.


Cheers

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Jerry Stuckle]

On 10/15/2014 12:40 PM, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 10/15/2014 12:06 PM, Jerry Stuckle  wrote:
>> On 10/15/2014 8:14 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>> On 10/14/2014 3:28 PM, Jerry Stuckle  wrote:
 But you just said it was OK to delete emails.
> 
>>> Please don't misquote me. I said it was the *worst case*, meaning, only
>>> marginally better than *bouncing* them, which you should never do.
>>>
>>> I certainly did not say it was 'OK'.
> 
>> You said it was OK.  You may try to attack conditions to it - but you
>> still said it was OK.
> 
> Easy enough to prove. By all means, quote the actual text of me saying
> this was 'OK'...
> 

You said:

"However, once a message has been accepted - ie, *after* the DATA phase
is complete, it should never be bounced, it should be delivered - or,
worse, quarantined, or worst case, deleted (ie, itf it is later found to
contain a malicious payload)."

It is either OK to delete an email or it is not.  You can't have it both
ways.  If, as according to your other statements, it is not OK to delete
emails, then you are violating your own rules by deleting mails - for
ANY reason.

Your reason is "i.e. if it is later found to contain a malicious
payload".  My reason is "It is addressed to a non-existent user".
Either both are OK or neither is OK.

>>> you keep saying that the RECEIVING server 'sends a message back to
>>> the originator' - unless maybe you simply have a hard time saying
>>> what you really mean, which always causes confusion.
> 
>> it does send a message back to the originator - it may only be a
>> status code, but it is still a message.
> 
> The status code is not *sent* anywhere - it is a response directly to
> the connecting machine.
> 

Then how does it get back to the sending server?  Magic?

> It is then the responsibility of that machine that was talking to your
> server to pass the response code back to the originating *server* (not
> the sender of the email - there is a difference).
> 

I didn't say the sender of the email.

> It is then the responsibility of the 'originating server' to generate
> the NDR (non-delivery response) email that the sender then receives in
> their Inbox.
>

I never said otherwise.

> So, again, no, *your* server doesn't 'send anything back to the
> originating server'.
> 

So how does it get back to the sending server?  Magic?

> I'm done with this thread, since Jerry is free to believe whatever he
> wants and run his servers however he wants.
> 
> Thankfully the vast majority of other mail admins use best practices...
> 
> 

And you still can't quote an RFC which indicates what I am doing "breaks
SMTP".  That's because there isn't one and I am NOT breaking SMTP.
Properly addressed email still gets to its destination.

BTW - what happened to all those statistics you quoted?  Where are your
references for them?


Jerry


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Jonathan Dowland wrote:

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:42:58PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:

They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
after systemd-logind came along.

I rest my case.

There's nothing at all (not even Red Hat) preventing anyone (even you!) from
stepping up and taking over development of ConsoleKit. It's a considerably
smaller proposition than taking over GNOME 2, a vastly more complex suite of
software and libraries, and that actually did happen
().



In theory.  But in practice, folks make practical decisions as to 
expenditure of time and resources.  For example, once Debian committed 
to systemd, Ubuntu followed suit - I expect that upstart will promptly 
whither and die.


Whether a conspiracy or not, decisions by big players (in this case the 
Debian TC), can have serious and widespread impacts.


Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Martin Read]

On 15/10/14 17:30, Steve Litt wrote:

Pre-cisely. I see Red Hat's fingerprints all over that unmaintained
status. If not for Red Hat, somebody would have picked up ConsoleKit.
After all, as shown in
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/whos-writing-linux ,
there's plenty of money floating around to pay for free software
development.


A question for you:

Which funder of free software development do you believe would 
realistically stand to make a measurably-greater-than-unity return on 
investment (either in "reasonably foreseeable losses averted" or 
"reasonably foreseeable new profits obtained") by choosing to underwrite 
(or assign employees to) resumed development of ConsoleKit?


I have a couple of observations which I think may be relevant:

* The set of people hostile to systemd seems to include a lot of people 
who don't see much need for the likes of ConsoleKit either.


* ConsoleKit isn't, in terms of its size, particularly intimidating; the 
actual C source code is only about 20% larger than the 
autotools-associated shell scripts.




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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Keith Peter]

On 14 October 2014 17:10, Don Armstrong  wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Oct 2014, Marty wrote:
>> It seems like free software employment and market share come with
>> increasing risk to objectivity and technical quality.
>
> People have to eat. Almost everyone who works on Debian has someone who
> pays them.
>
>> It's my main concern as a Debian user, as I consider recent trends.
>
> It really shouldn't be. The biggest concern that I have is getting new
> contributors into Debian and keeping existing contributors from burning
> out. Companies paying people to work on Debian is one way of getting
> more contributors and keeping existing contributors happy.
>
>> I hope that Debian members consider an amendment to restrict voting
>> rights for members who have a financial interest in Debian or in any
>> project used by Debian, to promote and protect the public interest.
>
> Everyone who contributes to Debian has an interest in what the project
> does, whether or not its financial. There's a reason why we're
> contributing, after all.
>
> People who are in positions of power in Debian are relatively open about
> what those interests are and who their employers are. But expecting
> people not to vote or participate just because they happen to be paid to
> work on Debian isn't healthy or sustainable.
>
> That said, if despite my counter-arguments, this is something you feel
> strongly about, find a DD who agrees with you, write up a constitutional
> amendment, and get it proposed on -vote or discussed -project.
>
> It's not on topic here.
>
> --
> Don Armstrong  http://www.donarmstrong.com
>
> I learned really early the difference between knowing the name of
> something and knowing something
>  -- Richard Feynman "What is Science" Phys. Teach. 7(6) 1969
>
>
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>

In the UK we have rules about benefiting from being part of a charity
or in my case being involved in a housing cooperative. We solve the
problem by setting up 'secondary' organisations with which the first
has a contract that allows them to purchase services.

I'm just thinking that this could help small orgs who can't afford a
whole or half a salary as well. Debian Developer Services (?) could
take money from companies, issue invoices and pay developers and
publish accounts.

Just a thought
-- 
Keith Burnett
http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 03:16:38PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> In theory.  But in practice, folks make practical decisions as to
> expenditure of time and resources.  For example, once Debian
> committed to systemd, Ubuntu followed suit - I expect that upstart
> will promptly whither and die.

You're right (and I agree re upstart. Having said that I really
resent having to fix upstart bugs at work, now, and it will live
on a while in LTS Ubuntu releases. I'm starting to think that
reported bugs will get less attention nowtoo). But the consolekit
deprecation happened a long time before the tech-ctte decision
about systemd. Some one/people could have picked it up long ago.
If they had, the context in which the tech-ctte decision was made
could have been very different.


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Re: preseeding question (yes, re. systemd / sysvinit-core)

[Miles Fidelman]

Thanks Brian.

See follow-up question embedded below.

Brian wrote:

On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 12:29:23 -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:


any thoughts re. conflicts between what's in, say

tasksel tasksel/first standard, web-server
and
d-i pkgsel/include string sysvinit-core systemd-shim

I don't believe there are any. I think what happens is that standard
and web-server get installed first (after any updates are done). The
second command is then carried out.


If I understand the installer, tasksel, the definition of the
"standard" task description
--
Task: standard
Section: user
Description: standard system utilities
  This task sets up a basic user environment, providing a reasonably
  small selection of services and tools usable on the command line.
Packages: standard
Test-new-install: mark skip
---
properly, then the line "tasksel tasksel/first standard, web-server"
is going to install all packages with priority "standard."

Ok.


Which leads to a couple of questions:

1. Since the priorities for sysvinit and sysvinit-core are
sysvinit:admin/optional
sysvinit-core:admin/extra

and I assume that the priority for systemd is set to standard, does the 
installer do:

The priority of systemd is 'important'.


a. install systemd as part of the tasksel phase, the uninstall systemd
and install sysvinit when it hits the pkgsel step, or,

systemd-sysv is installed as part of installing the base system. systemd
is there when tasksel is called.


So where in base system is systemd installed?

This is the list of packages in base (from the source for the jessie 
version of debian-installer/build/pkg-lists/base as of yesterday):

busybox-udeb
anna
archdetect
cdebconf-udeb
cdebconf-priority
di-utils
di-utils-reboot
di-utils-shell
libdebconfclient0-udeb
libdebian-installer4-udeb
libnss-dns-udeb
lowmemcheck
main-menu
rootskel
udpkg
rescue-check
env-preseed
pciutils-udeb

#include "udev"

libkmod2-udeb [linux]
kldutils-udeb [kfreebsd]


Any idea which of those installs systemd, and if that can be modified 
through a preseed command?


The only entry in there that looks like it might include systemd would 
be a dependency of the #include udev line, but udev just loads 
udev-udeb, and systemd isn't in any of its dependencies.


Thoughts?



b. configure the list of packages for both the tasksel step and the
pkgsel step before actually doing any installs?

This.




Thanks,

Miles

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Re: segfaults and error 4 in ld-2.13.so with soffice.bin and kate (SOLVED)

[Gary Roach]

On 10/12/2014 09:30 AM, Gary Roach wrote:

On 10/11/2014 06:28 PM, Don Armstrong wrote:

On Tue, 07 Oct 2014, Gary Roach wrote:

After cloning my bad drive to a new one and installing the new drive
(see previous messages titled excessive CPU usage) i am left with the
following problem:

Kate and libreoffice.writer refuse to open and give the errors

I would reinstall libreoffice, kate, and all of their dependencies
before going too far into this.

It's quite possibly that your bad drive had a bad sector or similar in
one or more of these programs... especially since you didn't experience
these segfaults before, and no one else has either.

Something like:

aptitude reinstall '?reverse-Depends(libreoffice)~i';
aptitude reinstall '?reverse-Depends(kate)~i';

will do that for you.

If they still occur, enable coredumps, and get a backtrace of the
coredump using gdb or similar. [You'll also want to install all of the
-dbg packages you can for the libraries referenced in the backtrace.]

Thanks for your help. As suggested, I first ran debsum on kate and 
libreoffice. All check sums were OK. I then ran the reverse-Depends as 
suggested above on kate. This cleared the problem. Kate now works 
fine. The reverse-Depends run on Libreoffice returned - E: Couldn't 
configure pre-depend dpkg:amd64 for libreoffice-common:amd64, probably 
a dependency cycle.


{{{Sorry about the prior message being cut short. I hit the wrong 
button.}}}


In conclusion, I tried re-running the reverse-Depends on 
libreoffice-common:amd64 but got the usual - 0 packages upgraded, 0 
newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded - message when there 
is nothing to do. Libreoffice still doesn't work. Same error of 
soffice.bin segfault error4 ld-2.13.so


Gary R


I finally purged libreoffice from my system and then, using locate, 
removed every LO file left. I then re-installed libreoffice from 
wheezy-backport  to get the amd64 version. This cleared the problem.


Thanks for all of the help you gave.

Gary R.


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Ric Moore]

On 10/15/2014 07:08 AM, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:



Le 15.10.2014 12:09, Brian a écrit :

On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 10:41:12 +0200, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org
wrote:


Le 15.10.2014 09:11, Jonathan Dowland a écrit :
>On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>>Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. Surprise,
>>surprise.
>
>Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe
>betide any
>company that actually gets us there...

Maybe you want.
But I think that most users just want it to work fine and
efficiently, which does not necessarily imply being sold massively
around the world.


He's doing some of the work on Debian; others work with different
distributions. They get what they want. Users get what they want.
Everyone's a winner. :)


Maybe. But, when someone tries to sell stuff a lot, to have a big market
share, then that guy must take a large target, which leads to systems
which might become less stable or less efficient. And if that guy want
to keep his market, then he'll have to avoid people escaping his stuff,
this is why vendor locks exists.
Definitely, I hope that Debian won't take that road. It it does, then,
I'll switch. I'm taking a look at netBSD, even if I guess that I'll have
a hard time being successful in feeling as comfortable with it than with
Debian.


I don't know what you all do to get paid in order to pay bills and/or 
raise a family, but working for Red Hat is not a bad gig. Not a bad gig 
at all. I'm sure some soreheads think that we debated WORLD DOMINATION 
during lunch, or how to screw over Debian, but sadly we mostly discussed 
what was the "Right Thing" to do there just as we do on this list. 
After all, everyone at RedHat had been a user first, before landing a 
paying job.


So, to everyone heaping scorn on RedHat, go here: http://jobs.redhat.com/
...and here:
http://jobs.redhat.com/life-at-red-hat/

If you really know your stuff and/or you fit a need, they might hire 
you. Secretly, I knew they paid me more than I was worth, which 
encouraged me to work my butt off in the support center. It was the 
saddest day of my life to have to quit for personal family concerns. Any 
of you should get paid to do what you love. :) Ric




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..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
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Linux user# 44256


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrew McGlashan]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On 16/10/2014 6:49 AM, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> reported bugs will get less attention nowtoo). But the consolekit
> deprecation happened a long time before the tech-ctte decision
> about systemd. Some one/people could have picked it up long ago.
> If they had, the context in which the tech-ctte decision was made
> could have been very different.

ConsoleKit has been fixed for kFreeBSD build, I expect fixing it in
normal Debian/GNU wouldn't have been harder than choosing systemd.

A.

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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 07:22:55AM +1100, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
> ConsoleKit has been fixed for kFreeBSD build, I expect fixing it in
> normal Debian/GNU wouldn't have been harder than choosing systemd.

It really needs (needed) adopting upstream, not just in Debian, because it's
upstream where people make decisions about what their software will support; so
that's where people have made the move to systemd, and that's the context which
I'm talking about.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Mark Carroll]

Martin Read  writes:
(snip)
> * The set of people hostile to systemd seems to include a lot of people 
> who don't see much need for the likes of ConsoleKit either.
(snip)

This is actually a rather good point. The machines I am most
conservative about, and wanting to make sure that they boot well and can
easily be repaired when not, are pretty much exactly those I wouldn't
exactly have a heavyweight desktop environment on either.

And, indeed, even on the laptop from which I'm writing this message,
there's no consolekit or policykit or suchlike. So long as I can keep it
minimal and tractable, I'm happy: what I like about Linux is getting to
understand and control much of what goes on under the hood, and with
luck I'll get to continue being able to do exactly that. (This is one
nice thing about init systems that make heavy use of shell scripts: at
least I can easily read and understand and adjust them!)

I assume others have different desires, and in its present form systemd
may well support them better, with apparently having been designed with
different goals in mind.

-- Mark


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Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Joe]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 15:15:24 -0400
Jerry Stuckle  wrote:


> 
> It is either OK to delete an email or it is not.  You can't have it
> both ways.  

It is *not* OK to silently delete an already accepted email, it does
indeed break SMTP as a reliable protocol ('reliable' as in: 'either we
deliver it or we tell you we didn't').

However, if the Reply-To: is forged, i.e. if it is spam, the
alternative is considerably less OK. Bouncing a spam message simply
delivers *the* *entire* *message* to an innocent third party, having
been laundered through your (presumably legitimate and respectable) mail
server.

So it isn't OK, but there's no alternative to doing it. That's how you
have it both ways.

-- 
Joe


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Ric Moore]

On 10/15/2014 12:39 PM, Steve Litt wrote:


We've actually been in this place before. Wonderful Linux company
Caldera became SCO (oversimplification, but you know what I mean).
Wonderful Linux company Corel changed their CEO, and promptly accepted
money from Microsoft and dropped all their Windows software.


If you knew Caldera, then you would know that it started with 
capitalization and focus by the retired CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda. What 
he did was to try to shoehorn Linux into the proprietary world, in order 
for Linux to become more widely acceptable as the base OS. I installed 
the base version around 1995 when there was a promo cost of slightly 
less than $200. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldera_OpenLinux
It went into the deep end when Ray suffered from Alzheimer's and stepped 
down.


The best thing I can say about Ray is this quote from wikipedia:
"Under Noorda's watch, Novell acquired several companies and products 
with the goal of countering Microsoft's rapid spread into new markets, 
including Digital Research, Unix System Laboratories, WordPerfect, and 
Borland's Quattro Pro. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates claimed that Noorda had 
a "tremendous vendetta" against Microsoft and that Noorda had supported 
the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust investigations of Microsoft in 
the early 1990s that led to a consent decree restricting its operating 
system licensing practice."


Now that is my kinda guy, as he knew that Linux would grow to be more 
than a desktop hobby toy. And, he put his own money where his mouth was. 
He was not responsible for what happened after. I still have a copy of 
the Caldera install CD and it worked like a charm on an aging ThinkPad. 
But it was too pitiful to watch Netscape try to update itself. :) Ric



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..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
Linux user# 44256


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Re: preseeding question (yes, re. systemd / sysvinit-core)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 03:34:40PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Thoughts?

I'm drawing blanks at the moment, but I'm glad you are looking at this.
I'll see if I can poke about a bit Tomorrow.


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Re: OT: Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Joe]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 15:13:27 -0400
Miles Fidelman  wrote:

> Tanstaafl wrote:

> > My position is that:
> >
> > 1. email to invalid recipients should be rejected at the RCPT-TO
> > stage,
> 
> Easier said then done - at least when a server does relaying, but 
> clearly ideal when possible.
> 
It's worth some effort, at the moment it is the single most effective
anti-spam measure. If you outsource your mail, it's worth going to some
trouble to find a hosting company who will hold and accept updates for
a list of valid recipients.

> >
> > 2. under *no* circumstances should mail to invalid recipients be
> > accepted for delivery then silently deleted based solely on that one
> > criteria,

Not on that alone, no, it could be a typo, in which case the sender
needs to be informed. But if it is spam, there's nobody to tell, and
you don't want to send a copy of the spam to the forged Reply-To:
address.
> >
> > and
> >
> > 3. once an email has been accepted for final delivery, every effort
> > should be taken to deliver the message to the recipient, whether to
> > their Inbox clean or tagged as spam (if a spam threshhold is met),
> > or to a spam quarantine,

Which shouldn't be a problem if there's a valid recipient.

> >
> > I allow for the very rare 'clear-and-present-danger' exceptional
> > circumstance that, if an after-queue content scanner determines
> > with a very high probability that something contains a malicious
> > payload, an admin might want to not deliver it to the recipient.
> > But, I would also argue that it should go into a quarantine that
> > only the admin has access to, and never just silently deleted.
> >
Yes, and a log kept. *And* the postmaster address monitored, and a
request to know the disposition of a vanished email should be
answered, along with the reason. Especially if the request is
accompanied by one of your message IDs...

> > But, as Jerry says, that is just my opinion...

Indeed. Within his domain, the email admin is king...
> >
> 
> Generally agree with you in principle.  And that's certainly the 
> standards-compliant policy.
> 
> In practice I support a few dozen mailing lists - operational 
> necessity dictates dropping a lot of stuff silently.

Of course. Already-accepted spam *must* be silently dropped.

-- 
Joe


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 15 oct 14, 09:46:47, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
> I suspect that the answer is "they just didn't provide the functionality
> which ConsoleKit, and later systemd-logind, now enable them to provide",
> but I'm not aware - in a clear-understanding, defined-boundaries sense -
> of exactly what that functionality is, or of why it would be necessary
> or otherwise valuable, or of what the problem is which that
> functionality was intended to address.

A problem that ConsoleKit and logind is trying to address is handling 
permissions to access devices.

Traditionally on *nix machines this was done with user groups, e.g. 
members of 'audio' would have full (read/write) access to all audio 
devices and members of 'video' would have full access to video cards or 
web-cams.

The problem with this approach is that it's not fine-grained enough, 
i.e. it can't distinguish between users logged in locally or via ssh. 
This means Mallory could easily spy on Alice remotely, just by being a 
member of 'audio' and 'video'.

Hope this explains,
Andrei
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Re: debian-advocacy?

[Bob Holtzman]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 09:43:00AM +0200, Anders Wegge Keller wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 04:07:25 +1100
> Scott Ferguson  wrote:
> 
> > Given that your only contribution to the list is outright and offensive
> > hypocrisy why should you not be rightfully dismissed as an abusive and
> > offensive poster who contributes nothing to the subject. I do know you
> > and your work - and sadly in one post you've changed your name to mud.
> 
>  Go ahead and do that, if that makes you feel better. Just remember that it
> proves my point. Suppressing dissent will not work.

What I read of your post wasn't dissent. It was character
assassination.

-- 
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Giant intergalactic brain-sucking hyperbacteria 
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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Joel Rees]

2014/10/16 5:46 "Ric Moore" :
>
> On 10/15/2014 12:39 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
>
>> We've actually been in this place before. Wonderful Linux company
>> Caldera became SCO (oversimplification, but you know what I mean).
>> Wonderful Linux company Corel changed their CEO, and promptly accepted
>> money from Microsoft and dropped all their Windows software.
>
> [...]

> If you knew Caldera, then you would know that it started with
capitalization and focus by the retired CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda.
> Now that is my kinda guy, as he knew that Linux would grow to be more
than a desktop hobby toy. And, he put his own money where his mouth was. He
was not responsible for what happened after. I still have a copy of the
Caldera install CD and it worked like a charm on an aging ThinkPad. But it
was too pitiful to watch Netscape try to update itself. :) Ric
>

Yes, Noorda was a good guy.

I think Steve was talking about a later CEO.

Re: Recipient validation - WAS: Re: Moderated posts?

[Brad Rogers]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 21:44:30 +0100
Joe  wrote:

Hello Joe,

>It is *not* OK to silently delete an already accepted email, it does

Unfortunately, it happens;  Send an email with a large attachment(1) and
there are quite a few servers that will silently drop it.  The worst of
it is you can never know for certain if you're going to get "bitten"
because routing can vary.

(1) 4Meg or so used to do the trick.  Things might be different now as
more and more messages contain massive amounts of HTML and imagery.

-- 
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 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
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Re: how to identify reverse dependencies?

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 15 oct 14, 18:22:28, Slavko wrote:
> Dňa Wed, 15 Oct 2014 10:31:02 +0300 Andrei POPESCU
>  napísal:
> 
> > Using Debian package dependencies this is expressed as
> > Depends: libpam-systemd by those packages that actually require those 
> > interfaces
> > 
> > $ aptitude search '?depends(libpam-systemd)'
> 
> Not always right results:
> 
> aptitude search -w 60 -F "%c%a %p %v" '~i?depends(libsystemd0)'

This is not the same thing. Admittedly the package description could be 
improved, but as far as I understand the library is meant for programs 
that want to take advantage of some of the more advanced features of 
systemd, like socket activation or the readiness protocol.

You could compare it with libselinux. Just because a particular program 
builds against libselinux doesn't mean SELinux is in use in any way on 
your system.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Bob Holtzman]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:42:58PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 09:08:26 +0100
> Martin Read  wrote:
> 
> > On 14/10/14 22:56, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> > > And how were they handling this task before systemd?
> > 
> > They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
> > after systemd-logind came along.
> 
> I rest my case.

That's along the lines of what I was wondering, re: the sysv 
option being maintained for more than a short period.

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Re: debian-advocacy?

[Ric Moore]

On 10/15/2014 12:34 AM, Andrew McGlashan wrote:


That's a problem in itself.  There should be room for real discussion as
is taking place here on the debian-user list, without fear of having
posts filtered.


I agree, but they (the moderators) have a vested interest when someone 
posts something considered "illegal" and have to ban such posts with 
notice to the OP. They HAVE to do that. Otherwise, they (Debian) get 
sued. Quite a few of the anti-systemd remarks have brushed up against 
those boundaries. Red Hat has lawyers on retainers, sitting in rocking 
chairs, being paid even while doing nothing. So, damn skippy moderators 
can not let things get out of hand. I wouldn't have that job, as it's 
damned if you do, damned if you don't.


In that light, what would you have moderators do? What they could do is 
shut down public list support, so they are 100% safe legally, and let 
others provide that from their kitchen table server. There is that 
option. Ubuntu moderates the stuffings out of their support lists now.


So, I hope everyone keeps this in mind before hitting "send" while 
passionately debating a topic. Ric



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"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
Linux user# 44256


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 15 oct 14, 21:37:57, Scott Ferguson wrote:
> As far as I'm aware Debian has *never* been sold anywhere, nor are 
> there plans to - did I miss another meeting down the docks?

http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/

No, that's not meant as a joke. As far as I understand, this is about 
the only way one can "sell" FLOSS software.

Of course, the Author(s) can always sell commercial licenses, but other 
that's about the only exception I'm aware. It is my understanding that 
revenue with FLOSS is made from service contracts (e.g. consultancy, 
installation, support, etc.).

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Lisi Reisz]

On Wednesday 15 October 2014 22:44:18 Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Mi, 15 oct 14, 21:37:57, Scott Ferguson wrote:
> > As far as I'm aware Debian has *never* been sold anywhere, nor are
> > there plans to - did I miss another meeting down the docks?
>
> http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/
>
> No, that's not meant as a joke. As far as I understand, this is about
> the only way one can "sell" FLOSS software.
>
> Of course, the Author(s) can always sell commercial licenses, but other
> that's about the only exception I'm aware. It is my understanding that
> revenue with FLOSS is made from service contracts (e.g. consultancy,
> installation, support, etc.).

And burning and seling CDs. ;-)

Lisi


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Ric Moore]

On 10/15/2014 05:06 PM, Joel Rees wrote:

2014/10/16 5:46 "Ric Moore" mailto:wayward4...@gmail.com>>:
 >
 > On 10/15/2014 12:39 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
 >
 >> We've actually been in this place before. Wonderful Linux company
 >> Caldera became SCO (oversimplification, but you know what I mean).
 >> Wonderful Linux company Corel changed their CEO, and promptly accepted
 >> money from Microsoft and dropped all their Windows software.
 >
 > [...]

 > If you knew Caldera, then you would know that it started with
capitalization and focus by the retired CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda.
 > Now that is my kinda guy, as he knew that Linux would grow to be more
than a desktop hobby toy. And, he put his own money where his mouth was.
He was not responsible for what happened after. I still have a copy of
the Caldera install CD and it worked like a charm on an aging ThinkPad.
But it was too pitiful to watch Netscape try to update itself. :) Ric
 >

Yes, Noorda was a good guy.

I think Steve was talking about a later CEO.


Ransom Love and the rest did raise some valid points in the beginning, 
namely MSdos was full of trap doors to kill off competition from DRdos. 
They deserved to win the court contest. But, Caldera was Ray's 
intellectual child, and it was the "The "SCO Group" that formed after 
Ray had to leave, that went to the dark side. So, I tend to think of 
them as two completely different entities. Just about the entire 
original staff of Caldera was shown to the curb, when SuSe sauntered in 
to lord over it all. Oh yeah, they knew BEST! You, go!


Everything Caldera stood for ~left with them~. There are a few of us who 
email each other about once a year, to check to see who is still alive 
and what they are doing. There was one with a painful divorce after 
falling on unstable hard times, etc. So, these good people with good 
hearts and even better minds do not deserve to be lumped in with the 
utter BS later on that followed. I can't let that one pass. :) Ric


p/s I thought YaST sucked.
--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
Linux user# 44256


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Re: debian-advocacy?

[Miles Fidelman]

Ric Moore wrote:

On 10/15/2014 12:34 AM, Andrew McGlashan wrote:


That's a problem in itself.  There should be room for real discussion as
is taking place here on the debian-user list, without fear of having
posts filtered.


I agree, but they (the moderators) have a vested interest when someone 
posts something considered "illegal" and have to ban such posts with 
notice to the OP. They HAVE to do that. Otherwise, they (Debian) get 
sued. Quite a few of the anti-systemd remarks have brushed up against 
those boundaries. Red Hat has lawyers on retainers, sitting in rocking 
chairs, being paid even while doing nothing. So, damn skippy 
moderators can not let things get out of hand. I wouldn't have that 
job, as it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.


In that light, what would you have moderators do? What they could do 
is shut down public list support, so they are 100% safe legally, and 
let others provide that from their kitchen table server. There is that 
option. Ubuntu moderates the stuffings out of their support lists now.


So, I hope everyone keeps this in mind before hitting "send" while 
passionately debating a topic. Ric




Actually, it's the other way around.  As I understand the case law, if 
you don't do ANY moderation, the rules of free speech arise - they only 
person who might be liable for anything is a poster.  On the other and, 
as soon as you do ANY moderation, the moderator and his/her organization 
become liable for slander, libel, etc. -- the same way a newspaper 
becomes liable for such things when posted in a letters to the editor 
column.  The exception has to do with taking down copyrighted material 
if you get a takedown notice - there's a "safe haven" provision in one 
of the laws.


(I support a bunch of lists on our server, and did some research into 
this way back when.  I believe the case law involves some AOL moderated 
forums.  Mind you things may have changed since I last looked.)


Miles Fidelman



--
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In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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Re: preseeding question (yes, re. systemd / sysvinit-core)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 15 oct 14, 12:29:23, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> 
> 3. Is there a way to list all packages with priority "standard" - 
> preferably via the package repo or one of the staging servers rather 
> than having to first setup up a jessie installation and pulling in the 
> source list?

You don't need a full Jessie install, only to update (not upgrade) 
against Jessie sources. It should be enough to set APT::Default-Release 
to your release to prevent apt wanting to upgrade you to Jessie, but you 
could also pin it to -1 or just add the source only to do the query and 
then remove it again.

Other than that I can only think of parsing the Packages file, which is 
easily obtainable from any mirror. grep-dctrl from dctrl-tools would be 
one tool to do that.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Joel Rees]

2014/10/16 5:59 "Andrei POPESCU" :
>
> On Mi, 15 oct 14, 09:46:47, The Wanderer wrote:
> >
> > I suspect that the answer is "they just didn't provide the functionality
> > which ConsoleKit, and later systemd-logind, now enable them to provide",
> > but I'm not aware - in a clear-understanding, defined-boundaries sense -
> > of exactly what that functionality is, or of why it would be necessary
> > or otherwise valuable, or of what the problem is which that
> > functionality was intended to address.
>
> A problem that ConsoleKit and logind is trying to address is handling
> permissions to access devices.
>
> Traditionally on *nix machines this was done with user groups, e.g.
> members of 'audio' would have full (read/write) access to all audio
> devices and members of 'video' would have full access to video cards or
> web-cams.
>
> The problem with this approach is that it's not fine-grained enough,
> i.e. it can't distinguish between users logged in locally or via ssh.
> This means Mallory could easily spy on Alice remotely, just by being a
> member of 'audio' and 'video'.
>
> Hope this explains,
> Andrei

Two thoughts that this problem brings to mind --

(1) Why should it matter? Local? Remote? A hole is a hole.

(1.5) How does ssh deal with making connections private? Any clues there?

(2) There are times when I don't want to have to be logged in as an admin
user to be able to make an ephemeral group. I've understood that for ten
years. When am I going to make the time to construct the package to manage
it within the standard unix permissions model?

:-(

Joel Rees

Computer memory is just fancy paper,
CPUs just fancy pens.
All is a stream of text
flowing from the past into the future.

Re: preseeding question (yes, re. systemd / sysvinit-core)

[Brian]

On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 15:34:40 -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:

> So where in base system is systemd installed?
> 
> This is the list of packages in base (from the source for the jessie
> version of debian-installer/build/pkg-lists/base as of yesterday):

[A little snipping]

I'd suggest that the principal udeb package to consider as responsible
for installing the base system is bootstrap-base. It runs debootstrap.
Debian Policy specifies the base packages as being of Priority: required
and Priority: important.

You can get lists of these packages with

  aptitude search ~prequired -F"%p"
  aptitude search ~pimportant -F"%p"

> Any idea which of those installs systemd, and if that can be
> modified through a preseed command?

The init package is Priority: required. It pre-depends on

   systemd-sysv | sysvinit-core | upstart

The first alternative is systemd-sysv, which pre-depends on systemd.

There is no preseed command which can alter this.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Chris Bannister]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:30:26PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> I completely understand not reinventing the wheel, but if all you need
> is a spoke, you don't construct an interface to a whole wheel just to
> get your spoke.

A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?

-- 
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Joel Rees]

2014/10/16 8:14 "Chris Bannister" :
>
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:30:26PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> >
> > I completely understand not reinventing the wheel, but if all you need
> > is a spoke, you don't construct an interface to a whole wheel just to
> > get your spoke.
>
> A wise old owl lived in an oak
> The more he saw the less he spoke
> The less he spoke the more he heard.
> Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?

There are "generalisms" like "monolithic is a problem".

And then there are generalisms like "Engage brain, then engage mouth."

I might wonder which is more on-topic here.

> --
> "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
> who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the
> oppressing." --- Malcolm X

--
Joel Rees

Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Marty]

On 10/15/2014 04:19 PM, Ric Moore wrote:

On 10/15/2014 07:08 AM, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:



Le 15.10.2014 12:09, Brian a écrit :

On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 10:41:12 +0200, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org
wrote:


Le 15.10.2014 09:11, Jonathan Dowland a écrit :
>On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>>Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. Surprise,
>>surprise.
>
>Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe
>betide any
>company that actually gets us there...

Maybe you want.
But I think that most users just want it to work fine and
efficiently, which does not necessarily imply being sold massively
around the world.


He's doing some of the work on Debian; others work with different
distributions. They get what they want. Users get what they want.
Everyone's a winner. :)


Maybe. But, when someone tries to sell stuff a lot, to have a big market
share, then that guy must take a large target, which leads to systems
which might become less stable or less efficient. And if that guy want
to keep his market, then he'll have to avoid people escaping his stuff,
this is why vendor locks exists.
Definitely, I hope that Debian won't take that road. It it does, then,
I'll switch. I'm taking a look at netBSD, even if I guess that I'll have
a hard time being successful in feeling as comfortable with it than with
Debian.


I don't know what you all do to get paid in order to pay bills and/or
raise a family, but working for Red Hat is not a bad gig.


This is fortuitous!

 Not a bad gig

at all. I'm sure some soreheads think that we debated WORLD DOMINATION
during lunch, or how to screw over Debian, but sadly we mostly discussed
what was the "Right Thing"


Do you mean, job-related ethics?

 to do there just as we do on this list.

I'm glad you replied because you're just the person to query.

When you discussed job-related ethics at lunchtime, did the subject of 
conflict of interest ever come up, regarding voting in Debian?


If it's impossible to imagine, then consider a purely hypothetical case. 
A developer is working on a package that could get widespread adoption 
within Debian, but some kind of technicality stands in the way, 
requiring a vote. As an employee, is there a conflict if he votes? I 
know I'm the joker on this list but now I'm serious. would go here>



After all, everyone at RedHat had been a user first, before landing a
paying job.

So, to everyone heaping scorn on RedHat, go here: http://jobs.redhat.com/


So you mean, the place for people with inferiority complexes? :)



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

wande...@fastmail.fm:

I have a similar lack of  awareness and/or understanding about all of

> the *kit packages / projects / tools / what-have-you, actually; I'm
> not positive I even know how many there are, much less all of their
> names.

This should help:

Put yourself in the position of someone writing a "desktop" system for 
Linux and the BSDs.  You've reached the part where you're writing a 
"control panel" gadget for allowing system administrators (and 
appropriately privileged users) to manage things like the system time, 
the hostname, the default locale, and so forth; and another "computer 
management" gadget for letting the desktop user see who is logged on 
where and suchlike.  It's a right old mess. You have to determine not 
only what kernel you are running on but what distribution you are 
running on, and access different things in different places.  You could 
find yourself variously having to make your programs read and parse 
/etc/locale.conf, /etc/default/locale, /etc/sysconfig/i18n, 
/etc/sysconfig/language, or /etc/sysconf/i18n, for just one example.  
Then there are things like fundamental differences in the utmpx binary 
logs (The BSDs have revamped theirs and got rid of some stuff.), the 
system account database (It's an actual database on most BSDs.), the 
naming systems for virtual console devices, subtle differences in 
configuration file syntax (to some, a configuration file may be a shell 
script that sets shell variables, to others, it's a list of key=value 
pairs), ...


Enter the "kits", twice since renamed.

Skipping a lot of history, such as where ConsoleKit begat systemd-logind 
became logind for one, what we have now is a suite of remote procedure 
calls that your gadgets can call.  There's a "hostname" API, a 
"timedate" API, a "locale" API, and a "login" API.  They're a whole 
bunch of RPC calls that are made using an inter-process communication 
system known as the "desktop bus", D-Bus.  (D-Bus, in its turn, is built 
on top of sockets.  It has all of the usual RPC "stuff" that has been 
done several times before, such as marshalling and unmarshalling, 
mechanisms for rendezvous between clients and servers, and API 
definitions.  It incorporates a security system to allow servers to 
restrict access to certain RPC functions to only suitably privileged 
clients.)


* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/hostnamed/
* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/timedated/
* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/localed/
* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/logind/

These RPCs are supplied by server daemons, that communicate with client 
programs (e.g. the aforementioned gadgets) over D-Bus.  The operating 
system specific stuff, such as exactly what configuration file contains 
the static hostname on the system, is intended to be contained within 
these server daemons.  All that a client knows is that it makes the "set 
the static hostname" RPC call, and some server does the necessary work 
whatever that is. The Debian systemd package comes with its own 
implementation of these server daemons. Contrary to the recommendation 
of the GNOME people almost three years ago, but in line with what the 
systemd people prefer, on Debian they aren't packaged separately and are 
indivisible from the remainder of the package.


* 
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/distributor-list/2012-January/msg3.html


This is what three years' worth of hoo-hah has, at its root, all been 
about: a packaging decision.  I'm not going to summarize or re-hash the 
hoo-hah here.  Suffice it to say that there are both engineering 
rationales and socio-political rationales for the decision, and the 
major problem is logind, the systemd server daemon that provides the 
"login" API.  Even though the other three somewhat are (modulo the fact 
that they all pick the particular choices of configuration file 
locations that match what other programs in the systemd package, such as 
systemd-machine-id-setup, use), logind is not at all severable from the 
rest of the systemd package, because the operating-system specific 
underpinnings of it (These daemons are intended to be abstracting a 
whole bunch of operating-system-specific non-portable stuff, remember.) 
target a Linux system that is running the systemd daemon and its 
ancillary daemons and utilities.  Naturally enough.


The systemd versions of these daemons are not the only ones in 
existence.  A chap with the unlikely name of Ian Kremlin, for one, is in 
the process of writing his own implementations of these four daemons, 
speaking the same RPC APIs over D-Bus but having the operating-system 
specific underpinnings that are suitable for the BSDs.  This a good 
thing from the point of view of keeping the protocol specifications 
honest (as a heterogeneous set of implementations often does), and it is 
an example of what the GNOME people and the systemd people expected: a 
separate suite of operating-system-specific daemo

Re: how to identify reverse dependencies?

[Chris Bannister]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 11:34:05AM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Thanks to those who've provided scripts and pointers to apt- capabilities.
> But...  both out of curiosity and practicality - to the Debian developers
> out there - are there any tools on the SCM or build servers that run
> dependency graphs across the package database?

I think so, using graphvis ...
apt-cache show debtree

-- 
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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Re: Moderated posts?

[lee]

Andrei POPESCU  writes:

> On Du, 12 oct 14, 18:47:09, lee wrote:
>> Andrei POPESCU  writes:
>> 
>> > On Mi, 08 oct 14, 16:01:37, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> The tech-ctte exploration was extremely thorough, entirely transparent 
>> >> and I
>> >
>> > In addition, the tech-ctte took special precautions to make sure their 
>> > decision is over-ridable by simple majority (50% + 1), despite the 
>> > Constitution requiring a 2:1 majority.
>> 
>> So they weren't entirely sure about their decision?
>
> It's all in the debate, but I'll spare you reading it all just for this: 
> they wanted to avoid a situation where more than half of the developers 
> might vote against their decision (whatever it would be), but not enough 
> to reach the majority required by the constitution.

Thank you.  And why did they want this?


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Re: Conflict of interest in Debian

[Scott Ferguson]

On 16/10/14 00:14, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:
> 
> 
> Le 15.10.2014 12:37, Scott Ferguson a écrit :
>> On 15/10/14 22:08, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Le 15.10.2014 12:09, Brian a écrit :
 On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 10:41:12 +0200, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org
 wrote:

> Le 15.10.2014 09:11, Jonathan Dowland a écrit :
> >On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:51:07AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> >>Check out what single company has 30% of the gatekeepers. Surprise,
> >>surprise.
> >
> >Damned for their success. We want Linux to be successful, but woe
> >betide any
> >company that actually gets us there...
>
> Maybe you want.
> But I think that most users just want it to work fine and
> efficiently, which does not necessarily imply being sold massively
> around the world.
>>
>> I would have 'thought' all users want "it" to be "useful" - but surely I
>> miss your point? (was there a point? I can only work with the words you
>> write and it reads like sophist rhetoric, assume the first nonsense is
>> not and it follows that neither is the second). As far as I'm aware
>> Debian has *never* been sold anywhere, nor are there plans to - did I
>> miss another meeting down the docks?
> 
> I have never seen Debian sold either. But I was replying to a mail
> speaking about linux (which is, indirectly, sold with a lot of devices).
> My point is that there is no need to linux to have commercial sex-appeal
> to work fine and efficiently, or to make it useful. The fact that
> companies uses it in their products is simply because it suits their
> needs better than the alternatives they have checked.

Agreed - I'm not one of those people who believe in "desktop wars"
(which smacks of foolish fanboism). In most case (embedded and server)
the end-user has no idea about the OS.
As I stated - I can only work with the words that are written - not with
what is now, apparently, "what you meant to say". Call it clarification
if you like. Nor did I believe you said it.

> 
>>

 He's doing some of the work on Debian; others work with different
 distributions. They get what they want. Users get what they want.
 Everyone's a winner. :)
>>>
>>> Maybe. But, when someone tries to sell stuff a lot, to have a big market
>>> share, then that guy must take a large target, which leads to systems
>>> which might become less stable or less efficient. And if that guy want
>>> to keep his market, then he'll have to avoid people escaping his stuff,
>>> this is why vendor locks exists.
>>
>> I could quote you Adam Smith on commerce and conspiracy - though I
>> seriously doubt he ever meant there are no non-business conspiracies. He
>> was smarter than that.
>>
>> But it'd be more pertinent to note that servers cost money to run and
>> Debian (and the FSF) do a good job of not allowing any contributions in
>> labour or money to control it's production or direction. To allow the
>> former would be both foolish and ignore the nature of Free Open Source
>> Software. I can't think of any distro that doesn't accept assistance
>> from business.
> 
> I never said that Debian, 

Please - there's no need to be so defensive. I carefully inserted my
response *below* what I'm responding to. Just because your name is in
the thread doesn't mean every response is about what you said. I can
follow who said what - can't you?

> or whatever free software, should refuse
> contributions because the contributor is financially interested by the
> quality of the project. I simply said that big companies' input is not
> necessary (not that it's not useful), and I think I can argue that,
> AFAIK, either linux or debian, started without such inputs. If there is
> now that kind of input, it's good, but it's not because those projects
> wanted to "seduce" those big companies.

And now you're just lugging goal posts. Sad. You did say you had a
problem with Debian using commercially sponsored code - and therefore
were considering NetBSD - I simply pointed out that so does NetBSD. I
note that you removed my point that all distros use commercially
sponsored code.

> 
>> Here's a good place to start your "looking":-
>> http://www.netbsd.org/contrib/org/
>>
>> Kind regards
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> 


Kind regards


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