[arch-general] X keeps crashing

[Joshua Branson]

My Arch linux box keeps crashing on me.  I'm using the awesome wm,
and at least once every other day I have to forcibly shut down my
machine.   This usually happens when I am using emacs, chromium, and
filezilla. What happens is my screen locks up.  I can't move my mouse.
None of the awesome shortcuts work.  I'm unable to switch to another
virtual console.  What can I do in situations like this?  Does Arch
support a Ctl-Alt-Delete?

I found this article: 
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Keyboard_shortcuts

And I put " kernel.sysrq = 1"


 into   /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf

   I've rebooted, and I still can't get it to work.  I'm using an apple
macbook 7,1, which is a fairly old laptop (it has 4 gigs of ram), and I
can't get any of the *R*eboot *E*ven *I*f *S*ystem *U*tterly *B*roken 
to work.  I've read the article on wikipedia about the Magic SysRq key,
but I can't get any of it to work.  I'm using the dvorak keyboard layout
as well, but I'm not sure if that changes anything.  Also I've swapped
alt and control with this in my .~/xinitrc

  setxkbmap dvorak
  setxkbmap -option 'ctrl:swapcaps'



Thanks,

Joshua

Re: [arch-general] Virtualization accross hardware border

[Alexander Terry]

You might want to look into docker: https://www.docker.com/

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016, 12:59 AM Wolfgang Mader 
wrote:

> Dear list,
>
> if I understand the offering of Amazons cloud service correctly, there,
> you can install an OS, say arch, on a virtualized machine and scale CPU,
> RAM, etc. freely up and down just as you need it. While I can to this
> using e.g. KVM+qemu on a single machine, I want to be able to bind
> together a bunch of machines such that they appear as a single big
> machine. Is there a way to do this? I my question clear enought to be
> answered?
>
> Thanks,
> Wolfgang
>

Re: [arch-general] Alternative init system proposal

[Ivan]

On Sun, 07 Feb 2016, Leonid Isaev wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 08, 2016 at 06:02:34AM +0100, Ivan wrote:
> > Hypothetically, if Arch Linux was to adopt an alternative init, it's a
> > process that does not happen overnight. Through time, solutions will
> > surface. I'm not a magic lamp genie that has all the answers. 
> 
> Then you have to ask yourself, what defines a distribution. If you are going 
> to
> bring in ck, patch polkit, gnome, kde, xfce, etc, and introduce customizations
> to lots of other packages, isn't it easier to start from gentoo or alpine and
> maintain pacman for those distros? I am asking because you are going to
> duplicate a fair share of official repos...

Well, for starters, Arch isn't just about pacman. I get the feeling you
think it is. For me, the "killer" features of Arch are the AUR and its
huge, excellent community. I could just run off and start a new distro,
but this is not the point.

I realize, and I've talked about it in one of the previous emails where
I discussed the way packages could/should be built.


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Re: [arch-general] Alternative init system proposal

[Ivan]

On Mon, 08 Feb 2016, Yaro Kasear wrote:

> I still don't get what makes OpenRC so great. Doesn't it still depend
> entirely on SysV Init? That ALONE makes me want to keep it off my system.
> If it makes us fall back on an init system that is frankly backward and was
> badly in need of replacement then I don't see why it should be considered
> an alternative.
> 
> Systemd ain't perfect, but when the best alternative is something that
> relIes on dated components bona fide Unix systems don't even use anymore,
> then they simply aren't alternatives.

No, as a matter of fact, OpenRC works with any init. It's not necessary
to use sysvinit.


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[arch-general] Virtualization accross hardware border

[Wolfgang Mader]

Dear list,

if I understand the offering of Amazons cloud service correctly, there, 
you can install an OS, say arch, on a virtualized machine and scale CPU, 
RAM, etc. freely up and down just as you need it. While I can to this 
using e.g. KVM+qemu on a single machine, I want to be able to bind 
together a bunch of machines such that they appear as a single big 
machine. Is there a way to do this? I my question clear enought to be 
answered?


Thanks,
Wolfgang

Re: [arch-general] [arch-mirrors] pacman verify database

[Florian Pritz]

On 08.02.2016 00:22, João Miguel wrote:
>> >i've setup a mirror this week. one sync today synced an incomplete state
>> >from a tier1 mirror. is there a tool/script to determine if a/my mirror
>> >is in a consistent state?
>> 
> I've found this page: https://www.archlinux.org/mirrors/status/. It's
> available as a JSON file too. So you can just query it and off you go.

Thanks for trying, but our page only looks at the lastsync file. The
request was for a tool that looks at the repo databases (of the mirror)
and then check if all packages are available (in the correct versions)
and possibly checks their signatures/checksums.

I kind of doubt that something like this exists so I might write it at
some point, unless someone else beats me to it.

Florian



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Re: [arch-general] Alternative init system proposal

[Guus Snijders]

Op 8 feb. 2016 01:59 schreef "Ivan" :
>
> Hello, I have a proposal for Arch Linux developers and by mailing
> on this list I would also appreciate feedback from non-developers that
> use Arch Linux.
> Note: I am not here to hate on the current status, nor
> to disapprove of current Arch choices.
>
> So, to get to the point...
> I would like to propose development and official support of an
> alternative init system and service manager. My main preference would be
> OpenRC + sysvinit. The combination of those two has shown to work
> surprisingly well even with the current Arch's binary packages which are
> compiled with systemd support/dependencies.

I love the idea, even just from a technical pov.
However... It may be a bit much to ask from the developers to officially
support another init system.

That said, how about a archbang-like approach? Archbang is basically
Archlinux and uses the Arch packages. I could imagine the same sort of
approach, perhaps offering custom packages and/or add-ons where necessary.

This approach gives users a simple way to choose (and possibly switch!),
while giving developers an easier way to experiment with options.  Where
things work without too much overhead, they could be incorporated into
Arch, whereas packages with compatibility problems could be confined to
this specific projects repositories.

Perhaps I'm being ignorant here and has this approach already been tried.
If so, my apologies.

Mvg, Guus Snijders

Re: [arch-general] X keeps crashing

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi,

On Mon, 8 Feb 2016 11:41:51 -0500, Joshua Branson wrote:
>Does Arch support a Ctl-Alt-Delete?

Ctrl+Alt+Del
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Keyboard_shortcuts#Virtual_console

Ctrl+Alt+Backspace
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Keyboard_configuration_in_Xorg#Terminating_Xorg_with_Ctrl.2BAlt.2BBackspace

However, a shortcut doesn't solve the issue.

I would run

$ grep EE /var/log/Xorg.0.log
$ grep -v '^$' ~/.xsession-errors | grep -v GLib | grep -v WARN

and if not avoidable continue with

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/systemd#Journal

Regards,
Ralf

Re: [arch-general] [arch-mirrors] pacman verify database

[Dennis Börm]

On 2016-02-08 00:22, João Miguel wrote:
>>> i've setup a mirror this week. one sync today synced an incomplete state
>> >from a tier1 mirror. is there a tool/script to determine if a/my mirror
>>> is in a consistent state?
>> I am not aware of any such tool. I'm forwarding this to arch-general
>> in the hope that someone either knows or wants to create one.
>>
>> Florian
> I've found this page: https://www.archlinux.org/mirrors/status/. It's
> available as a JSON file too. So you can just query it and off you go.

my mirror is syncing from mirror A. Mirror A itself is syncing from
archlinux.org. maybe my mirror syncs an inconsistent (core.db updated,
but there are some packages missing -> bad) state. i don't know that.
this site could say '25 minutes ago all was ok' but what about now?

i only want to compare the {core, extra, ...}.db with the package files.
if all is okay i can move this version to production, else i wait and
sync again to the offline location.

Re: [arch-general] X keeps crashing

[João Miguel]

> My Arch linux box keeps crashing on me.  I'm using the awesome wm,
> and at least once every other day I have to forcibly shut down my
> machine.   This usually happens when I am using emacs, chromium, and
> filezilla. What happens is my screen locks up.  I can't move my mouse.
> None of the awesome shortcuts work.  I'm unable to switch to another
> virtual console.  What can I do in situations like this?  Does Arch
> support a Ctl-Alt-Delete?
I've had lots of problems with drivers. Maybe it was an update? Try to
downgrade some recent drivers or the X if you only started having this
problem recently.

If the X is stuck, you can try Alt-SysRq-r before switching to virtual
console (it makes keyboard input raw, instead of going through Xorg).

> I found this article: 
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Keyboard_shortcuts
> 
> And I put " kernel.sysrq = 1"
> 
> 
>  into   /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf
Note the following commands I've tried:

 # sysctl kernel.sysrq = 1 ; echo $?
kernel.sysrq = 1
sysctl: malformed setting "="
sysctl: cannot stat /proc/sys/1: No such file or directory
253
 # sysctl 'kernel.sysrq = 1' ; echo $?
sysctl: cannot stat /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq : No such file or directory
255
 # sudo sysctl kernel.sysrq=1 ; echo $?
kernel.sysrq = 1
0

I didn't know, but it seems there can't be any spaces. As it's the same
program processing /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf, there can't be any
spaces there either. It's like variables in bash I suppose: spacing
makes all the difference.

>I've rebooted, and I still can't get it to work.  I'm using an apple
> macbook 7,1, which is a fairly old laptop (it has 4 gigs of ram), and I
> can't get any of the *R*eboot *E*ven *I*f *S*ystem *U*tterly *B*roken 
> to work.  I've read the article on wikipedia about the Magic SysRq key,
> but I can't get any of it to work.  I'm using the dvorak keyboard layout
> as well, but I'm not sure if that changes anything.  Also I've swapped
> alt and control with this in my .~/xinitrc
> 
>   setxkbmap dvorak
>   setxkbmap -option 'ctrl:swapcaps'
> 
I'd try to use a rescue USB (with Xorg - from another distribution) and
see what drivers are loaded (lsmod output), and what X configuration is
being used.

> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Joshua
Hope this helps,
João Miguel

Re: [arch-general] Virtualization accross hardware border

[Damian Nowak]

> if I understand the offering of Amazons cloud service correctly, there, you 
> can install an
> OS, say arch, on a virtualized machine and scale CPU, RAM, etc. freely up and 
> down just as
> you need it. 

Well, yes and no. You can scale up resources (e.g. increase RAM) but this 
requires a full
restart of your virtual machine. See:
https://serverfault.com/questions/591533/can-ec2-instances-dynamically-add-ram-while-running

Moreover, adding more and more resources will stop working at some point. 
That's why you'd
be looking to add several independent virtual machine running your application 
(Amazon
EC2), which connect to one big database (another Amazon EC2), and put all of 
those
computing machines in from of a load balancer (Amazon ELB).

> While I can to this using e.g. KVM+qemu on a single machine, I want to be 
> able to bind
together a bunch of machines such that they appear as a single big machine. Is 
there a way
to do this?

You can achieve it with both solutions, is it Amazon (EC2+ELB), or your own 
dedicated
server(s) where you'll be likely to use KVM for virtualization and HAProxy, 
nginx or other
solutions for load balancing.

>From a technological point of view, both ways are the same.

-- 
Damian Nowak
CEO, Virtkick
www.virtkick.com