Re: phpmyadmin

[Freddy Freeloader]

ArcticFox wrote:
Have you taken a look at the phpmyadmin site? I had some trouble 
getting it to work on my system too and their was a rather nice 
troubleshooting page there that helped me out.
Yeah, I have.  I've also read the documentation installed in 
/usr/share/phpmyadmin/Documentation.html, and spent quite a while with 
Google too. 

I just don't really understand what is going on as the same server will 
serve up other php pages, but phpmyadmin seems only able to serve html 
pages. 



On Aug 19, 2007, at 10:58 PM, Freddy Freeloader wrote:


Hi All,

I am having a problem with phpmyadmin that is just driving me nuts. 
(I've spent hours troubleshooting and Googling this and just cannot 
come up with a solution. I don't know if this problem is 
misconfiguration or

a bug so I didn't want to turn in a bug report.)

All phpmyadmin will serve is blank pages. (looking at page source in 
a browser shows there is nothing being sent from Apache.  The page 
source is blank.) There are no related errors in the apache2 logs and 
I have logging set to "debug" in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf.  In fact, 
calling http://server_name/phpmyadmin results in a 200 message in the 
access log.

Here is the output from apache2 -M:

Loaded Modules:
core_module (static)
log_config_module (static)
logio_module (static)
mpm_prefork_module (static)
http_module (static)
so_module (static)
alias_module (shared)
auth_basic_module (shared)
authn_file_module (shared)
authz_default_module (shared)
authz_groupfile_module (shared)
authz_host_module (shared)
authz_user_module (shared)
autoindex_module (shared)
cgi_module (shared)
dir_module (shared)
env_module (shared)
mime_module (shared)
python_module (shared)
negotiation_module (shared)
php5_module (shared)
setenvif_module (shared)
status_module (shared)
Syntax OK

Here is what /var/log/apache2/access.log shows to a call to the url 
http://server_name/phpmyadmin/: 127.0.0.1- - [18/Aug/2007:09:23:53 
-0700] "GET /phpmyadmin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X$en-US;$


Well, it line-wrapped and the end of the line is cut off from copying 
and pasting out of nano, but you can see what I mean. All calls to 
phpmyadmin have the same entry in the access log.  I can call 
/phpmyadmin/scripts/setup.php and I get exactly the same entry in the 
logs and a blank page.  In fact, I've called pretty much all the php 
files in /usr/share/phpmyadmin and I get exactly the same response. I 
have also enabled all levels of php error logging in php.ini and can 
find no errors there either.


However, if I manually call for 
http://server_name/phpmyadmin/Documentation.html (which is found in 
/usr/share/phpmyadmin/ along will the rest of the phpmyadmin files it 
will serve it up.


Starting up wireshark and sniffing packets on the client I see the 
client send the GET command for the appropriate page, I see the 
server acknowledge it with a 200 message, but nothing is ever sent 
from the server in response to calling any of the php files in 
phpmyadmin.
Permissions in /usr/share/phpmyadmin are world readable and all 
subdirectories are world browsable.  User and group are both root.
When connecting via a browser I am asked for a user name and password 
and they are accepted.  I also found a php script on the net that 
would connect directly to mysql-server from a browser page and it 
worked fine.  I was able to successfully connect to mysql.  I am 
running mysql 5 and have a sample database installed and can 
successfully query it from a bash prompt.
I am running sid and it is up-to-date as of last night.  So I am 
current with all packages.


Here is the output of dpkg -l | grep apache2, php5, and mysql:

ii  apache2  2.2.4-3Next generation, 
scalable, ext$
ii  apache2-mpm-prefork  2.2.4-3Traditional model 
for Apache H$
ii  apache2-utils2.2.4-3 utility programs 
for webservers
ii  apache2.2-common 2.2.4-3 Next generation, 
scalable, ext$
ii  libapache2-mod-auth-mysql4.3.9-4 Apache 2 module 
for MySQL auth$
ii  libapache2-mod-auth-pgsql2.0.3-4+b1  Module for 
Apache2 which provi$
ii  libapache2-mod-perl2 2.0.2-2.4   Integration of 
perl with the A$
ii  libapache2-mod-php5  5.2.3-1+b1  server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  libapache2-mod-python3.3.1-2 Apache 2 module 
that embeds Py$
ii  libapache2-mod-python-doc3.3.1-1 Apache 2 module 
that embeds Py$
ii  libapache2-mod-php5  5.2.3-1+b1  server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  php5 5.2.3-1 server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  php5-cgi 5.2.3-1+b1  server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  php5-common  5.2.3-1+b1  Common files for 
packages buil$

ii  php5-gd  5.2.3-1+b1  GD module for php5
ii  php5-mcrypt  5.2.3-1+b1

Re: RBL Lookups using Postfix or Spamassassin

[Bob Proulx]

Anthony M Simonelli wrote:
> I'm using Postfix with Amavisd-new, Spamassassin, etc.  I what to use
> RBL lookups to stop spam, but I am unsure as to whether to have Postfix
> perform the lookup or Spamassassin?  I know that if I enable it on
> Postfix, those emails will be rejected and possibly legitimate emails as
> well, but if I have Spamassassin perform it, my mail server will be
> accepting a lot more email which will be more taxing on the server...
> 
> Your opinions and insight are greatly appreciated.

You have a good handle on things.  I run "safe" RBLs in postfix
because rejections there are rejected.  I run less safe RBLs in
spamassassin just to add points.  It is a compromise.

Now you are going to ask what are the "safe" RBLs?  I am not going to
step into that one.  ;-)

Bob


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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[Anthony M Simonelli]

On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 14:35 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:

> Python + Tcl/Tk should be easier than Python + Gtk.
> 
> Even simpler would be bash + dialog or it's GUI companion gtkdialog.
> 

How about Zenity?  I've used it before to provide a GUI interface to
some of my simple bash scripts.


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Re: phpmyadmin

[ArcticFox]

Have you taken a look at the phpmyadmin site? I had some trouble 
getting it to work on my system too and their was a rather nice 
troubleshooting page there that helped me out.


On Aug 19, 2007, at 10:58 PM, Freddy Freeloader wrote:


Hi All,

I am having a problem with phpmyadmin that is just driving me nuts. 
(I've spent hours troubleshooting and Googling this and just cannot 
come up with a solution. I don't know if this problem is 
misconfiguration or

a bug so I didn't want to turn in a bug report.)

All phpmyadmin will serve is blank pages. (looking at page source in a 
browser shows there is nothing being sent from Apache.  The page 
source is blank.) There are no related errors in the apache2 logs and 
I have logging set to "debug" in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf.  In fact, 
calling http://server_name/phpmyadmin results in a 200 message in the 
access log.

Here is the output from apache2 -M:

Loaded Modules:
core_module (static)
log_config_module (static)
logio_module (static)
mpm_prefork_module (static)
http_module (static)
so_module (static)
alias_module (shared)
auth_basic_module (shared)
authn_file_module (shared)
authz_default_module (shared)
authz_groupfile_module (shared)
authz_host_module (shared)
authz_user_module (shared)
autoindex_module (shared)
cgi_module (shared)
dir_module (shared)
env_module (shared)
mime_module (shared)
python_module (shared)
negotiation_module (shared)
php5_module (shared)
setenvif_module (shared)
status_module (shared)
Syntax OK

Here is what /var/log/apache2/access.log shows to a call to the url 
http://server_name/phpmyadmin/: 127.0.0.1- - [18/Aug/2007:09:23:53 
-0700] "GET /phpmyadmin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X$en-US;$


Well, it line-wrapped and the end of the line is cut off from copying 
and pasting out of nano, but you can see what I mean. All calls to 
phpmyadmin have the same entry in the access log.  I can call 
/phpmyadmin/scripts/setup.php and I get exactly the same entry in the 
logs and a blank page.  In fact, I've called pretty much all the php 
files in /usr/share/phpmyadmin and I get exactly the same response. I 
have also enabled all levels of php error logging in php.ini and can 
find no errors there either.


However, if I manually call for 
http://server_name/phpmyadmin/Documentation.html (which is found in 
/usr/share/phpmyadmin/ along will the rest of the phpmyadmin files it 
will serve it up.


Starting up wireshark and sniffing packets on the client I see the 
client send the GET command for the appropriate page, I see the server 
acknowledge it with a 200 message, but nothing is ever sent from the 
server in response to calling any of the php files in phpmyadmin.
Permissions in /usr/share/phpmyadmin are world readable and all 
subdirectories are world browsable.  User and group are both root.
When connecting via a browser I am asked for a user name and password 
and they are accepted.  I also found a php script on the net that 
would connect directly to mysql-server from a browser page and it 
worked fine.  I was able to successfully connect to mysql.  I am 
running mysql 5 and have a sample database installed and can 
successfully query it from a bash prompt.
I am running sid and it is up-to-date as of last night.  So I am 
current with all packages.


Here is the output of dpkg -l | grep apache2, php5, and mysql:

ii  apache2  2.2.4-3Next generation, 
scalable, ext$
ii  apache2-mpm-prefork  2.2.4-3Traditional model 
for Apache H$
ii  apache2-utils2.2.4-3 utility programs 
for webservers
ii  apache2.2-common 2.2.4-3 Next generation, 
scalable, ext$
ii  libapache2-mod-auth-mysql4.3.9-4 Apache 2 module 
for MySQL auth$
ii  libapache2-mod-auth-pgsql2.0.3-4+b1  Module for 
Apache2 which provi$
ii  libapache2-mod-perl2 2.0.2-2.4   Integration of 
perl with the A$
ii  libapache2-mod-php5  5.2.3-1+b1  server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  libapache2-mod-python3.3.1-2 Apache 2 module 
that embeds Py$
ii  libapache2-mod-python-doc3.3.1-1 Apache 2 module 
that embeds Py$
ii  libapache2-mod-php5  5.2.3-1+b1  server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  php5 5.2.3-1 server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  php5-cgi 5.2.3-1+b1  server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  php5-common  5.2.3-1+b1  Common files for 
packages buil$

ii  php5-gd  5.2.3-1+b1  GD module for php5
ii  php5-mcrypt  5.2.3-1+b1  MCrypt module for 
php5
ii  php5-mysql   5.2.3-1+b1  MySQL module for 
php5
ii  php5-pgsql   5.2.3-1+b1  PostgreSQL module 
for php5
ii  libapache2-mod-auth-mysql4.3.9-4 Apache 2 module 
for MySQL auth$
ii  libdbd-mysql-perl4.005-1

phpmyadmin

[Freddy Freeloader]

Hi All,

I am having a problem with phpmyadmin that is just driving me nuts. 
(I've spent hours troubleshooting and Googling this and just cannot come 
up with a solution. I don't know if this problem is misconfiguration or

a bug so I didn't want to turn in a bug report.)

All phpmyadmin will serve is blank pages. (looking at page source in a 
browser shows there is nothing being sent from Apache.  The page source 
is blank.) There are no related errors in the apache2 logs and I have 
logging set to "debug" in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf.  In fact, calling 
http://server_name/phpmyadmin results in a 200 message in the access log. 


Here is the output from apache2 -M:

Loaded Modules:
core_module (static)
log_config_module (static)
logio_module (static)
mpm_prefork_module (static)
http_module (static)
so_module (static)
alias_module (shared)
auth_basic_module (shared)
authn_file_module (shared)
authz_default_module (shared)
authz_groupfile_module (shared)
authz_host_module (shared)
authz_user_module (shared)
autoindex_module (shared)
cgi_module (shared)
dir_module (shared)
env_module (shared)
mime_module (shared)
python_module (shared)
negotiation_module (shared)
php5_module (shared)
setenvif_module (shared)
status_module (shared)
Syntax OK

Here is what /var/log/apache2/access.log shows to a call to the url 
http://server_name/phpmyadmin/: 127.0.0.1- - [18/Aug/2007:09:23:53 
-0700] "GET /phpmyadmin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X$en-US;$


Well, it line-wrapped and the end of the line is cut off from copying 
and pasting out of nano, but you can see what I mean. All calls to 
phpmyadmin have the same entry in the access log.  I can call 
/phpmyadmin/scripts/setup.php and I get exactly the same entry in the 
logs and a blank page.  In fact, I've called pretty much all the php 
files in /usr/share/phpmyadmin and I get exactly the same response. I 
have also enabled all levels of php error logging in php.ini and can 
find no errors there either.


However, if I manually call for 
http://server_name/phpmyadmin/Documentation.html (which is found in 
/usr/share/phpmyadmin/ along will the rest of the phpmyadmin files it 
will serve it up.


Starting up wireshark and sniffing packets on the client I see the 
client send the GET command for the appropriate page, I see the server 
acknowledge it with a 200 message, but nothing is ever sent from the 
server in response to calling any of the php files in phpmyadmin. 

Permissions in /usr/share/phpmyadmin are world readable and all 
subdirectories are world browsable.  User and group are both root. 

When connecting via a browser I am asked for a user name and password 
and they are accepted.  I also found a php script on the net that would 
connect directly to mysql-server from a browser page and it worked 
fine.  I was able to successfully connect to mysql.  I am running mysql 
5 and have a sample database installed and can successfully query it 
from a bash prompt. 

I am running sid and it is up-to-date as of last night.  So I am current 
with all packages.


Here is the output of dpkg -l | grep apache2, php5, and mysql:

ii  apache2  2.2.4-3Next generation, 
scalable, ext$
ii  apache2-mpm-prefork  2.2.4-3Traditional model 
for Apache H$
ii  apache2-utils2.2.4-3 utility programs 
for webservers
ii  apache2.2-common 2.2.4-3 Next generation, 
scalable, ext$
ii  libapache2-mod-auth-mysql4.3.9-4 Apache 2 module for 
MySQL auth$
ii  libapache2-mod-auth-pgsql2.0.3-4+b1  Module for Apache2 
which provi$
ii  libapache2-mod-perl2 2.0.2-2.4   Integration of perl 
with the A$
ii  libapache2-mod-php5  5.2.3-1+b1  server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  libapache2-mod-python3.3.1-2 Apache 2 module 
that embeds Py$
ii  libapache2-mod-python-doc3.3.1-1 Apache 2 module 
that embeds Py$
ii  libapache2-mod-php5  5.2.3-1+b1  server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  php5 5.2.3-1 server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  php5-cgi 5.2.3-1+b1  server-side, 
HTML-embedded scr$
ii  php5-common  5.2.3-1+b1  Common files for 
packages buil$

ii  php5-gd  5.2.3-1+b1  GD module for php5
ii  php5-mcrypt  5.2.3-1+b1  MCrypt module for php5
ii  php5-mysql   5.2.3-1+b1  MySQL module for php5
ii  php5-pgsql   5.2.3-1+b1  PostgreSQL module 
for php5
ii  libapache2-mod-auth-mysql4.3.9-4 Apache 2 module for 
MySQL auth$
ii  libdbd-mysql-perl4.005-1 A Perl5 database 
interface to $
ii  libmysqlclient15off  5.0.45-1 MySQL database 
client library
ii  mysql-client-5.0 5.0.45-1 MySQL database 
client binaries
ii  mysql-common   

Re: Needed: spamtrap for...

[Bob Proulx]

Eric d'Alibut wrote:
> I'm sure anyone with responsibility for spam filtering has seen
> messages, many of them, which meet the following criteria:
> 
> HTML formatted
> empty body
> one attachment, which is a pdf file
> 
> Is there a spamassassin test which would score such messages very highly?

If you are not aware of 'sa-update' then that may be enough just like
this:

  sudo sa-update

Or to see what is happening:

  sudo sa-update -D

This installs updates in /var/lib/spamassassin/*/* under a versioned
subdirectory.  Beyond this if that is not enough then the general
advice from the SA list seems to be to install the PDFinfo plugin.

  http://www.rulesemporium.com/plugins.htm

For me the sa-update updated rules are sufficient.

Bob


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resolved: Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Marty]

I found a reference to the problem here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/81858

I tried the recommended solution and it seems to work:

  Potential Workaround (verified to help for some):
  Use Option "XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps"
  in your xorg.conf device section

It seems like a problem I hit before because I recalled reading this some months 
ago and may posted about it here.  I think it's the reason I initially avoided 
Firefox.  They call it a minor bug but it was a major problem for me.  I may 
have assumed at the time that Ubuntu bugs get passed upstream to Debian, but 
evidently not.



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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[Bob Proulx]

Manon Metten wrote:
> David Brodbeck wrote:
> > It certainly has its warts.  In particular, Bash's "test" (aka "[")
> > operator has pitfalls.

The test command was originally not a shell built-in.  It was an
external standalong /bin/test command.  For performance reasons it has
been incorporated into the shell but the interface can't change or it
would break compatibility.  That is a core reason why the shell single
bracket test operator has warts and why the new double bracket test
operator was created.

> > Testing for an empty variable, for example,
> > is awkward.  If you do:
> >
> > if [ $foo == "" ]
> >
> > Bash will complain about missing arguments.

Careful!  "==" is valid bash but is not valid POSIX sh.  In Bash the
double equal can be used as a synonym for the single equal but not in
POSIX shell.

> > Instead, you have to do something like this:
> >
> > if [ "x$foo" == "x" ]

But better to use the one = so that it is portable.  I prefer using an
underscore to hide it more but 'X' is the tradition.

  if [ _"$foo" = _"" ]

> > which works, but makes no sense the first time you see it.

Right.  I prefer using the test -n or -z options.  This is effectively
an external command so still needs to be quoted though.  But I find
this much more clear on casual reading.

  if [ -z "$foo" ]

Use double brackets to get the new internal to the shell test not
needing quoting.

  if [[ -z $foo ]]

However this does not actually say if the variable is set but only if
it is zero length.  If it is important if the variable is set but set
to an empty string then things get more obscure.

  if [[ ${foo+set} != set ]]; then echo foo is not set; fi

> Thanks. I copied this to my 'Bash-howto'.

I would hate to see you record this in your howto with "==" without
knowing that "==" is a bash specific feature.  :-)

Bob


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Re: libc6 kernel upgrade problem

[Bob Proulx]

Bill Wohler wrote:
> Robert Jerrard writes:
> > WARNING: POSIX threads library NPTL requires kernel version
> > 2.6.8 or later. If you use a kernel 2.4, please upgrade it
> > before installing glibc.
> 
> Does this imply that lenny will not support 2.4 at all?

Correct.  Linux 2.4 support has been dropped post Etch.

> Since the kernel for this particular system (a vserver) is not under
> my control and I don't expect it to be upgraded anytime soon if ever
> this would be bad.

That could be a problem.  The calls made by libc will in some cases
require a linux 2.6 kernel.

> Taking a quick look, I see that glibc isn't installed on this system
> either, so maybe I'm OK?

In Debian the glibc package name is libc6 or libc6.1 or libc0.1 or
possibly other things depending upon the architecture.  There are
probably many different ways to deduce this but these are useful.

  dpkg -S /lib/libc.*
  libc6: /lib/libc.so.6

  dpkg -l libc6'*' | grep ^ii

Bob


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Mumia W..]

On 08/19/2007 05:00 PM, Ken Irving wrote:

[...]
I haven't tried aptitude for some time, and apparently the problem I
had with it (where it wanted to remove a lot of stuff) has been fixed.
I think that, even before that fix, it would work reasonably (i.e., no
surprises)  as long as it was used exclusively.  [...]


And I think that's why I haven't had any problems with it.

I forgot to mention that I also usually start aptitude as a normal user, 
and I carefully select and deselect packages--examining what aptitude 
will do and why--before I consider installing. This allows me to back 
out of any changes without any danger of modifying the system until I'm 
ready.


In many cases, aptitude says to me the equivalent of "sorry bub, you'll 
have to compile from the source if you don't want to break your system." 
I've learned (from reading of other people's bad experiences) to take 
that advice :-)




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Re: User Name Not Allowed

[Nate Bargmann]

* Hal Vaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2007 Aug 19 21:10 -0500]:
> I admit that I do miss the obvious at times, but isn't Etch 4.0r0?

Last week 4.0r1 was released.  I don't know if updated CD/DVD images
are available, but with a properly configured sources.list aptitude
should upgrade the system.

- Nate >>

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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Marty]

Kelly Clowers wrote:

On 8/18/07, Marty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Hello:

I recently installed Etch on my new system and found X performance to be
sluggish, particularly when using Iceape.  It appears as if there is little or
no hardware acceleration, remeniscent of a K7 with a slow graphics card.  While
scrolling a web page down (but never up), or moving windows the display
sometimes freezes for about one second or more, with up to 100% CPU utilization.

My hardware is a K8M800 chipset motherboard with an Athlon64 X2 5000+ and Radeon
7500.  I have tested all recent kernels up to and including linux 2.6.23-rc3.
All kernel and enabled X performance options are enabled, e.g. DRI, GLX, AGP,
on-CPU GART, color tiling.  The same graphics card had much better performance
with Sarge even without acceleration.


Have you tried turning off some of the acceleration options?
For example turning off aiglx, or trying exe vs xaa vs noaccel.


Cheers,
Kelly


The main clue so far is that the problem disappears when I disable the loading 
of images in the browser.


I've tried many things so far with respect to driver options.  I removed the ATI 
graphics card and enabled onboard graphics. Using linux 2.6.22.3, I disabled a 
total of 117 drivers in three separate tests, but the problem remained.


At this point I suspect a wrong symlink or diversion, but I'm not sure how to 
test for those.



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Re: User Name Not Allowed

[Hal Vaughan]

On Sunday 19 August 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 08/19/07 20:23, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> > Since I started using Linux, I've used the same username, "hal",
> > for logging in.  With Sarge this was no problem since, somehow, it
> > adapted for the actual hal programs.  The first problem I had with
> > it was with Ubuntu, but I got by that by just upgrading my old
> > install instead of making a new one.
> >
> > I installed Etch on a computer for my Mother today and it wouldn't
> > allow me to use "hal."  On all my email accounts and other accounts
> > on all the systems I deal with, I've always used the name "hal,"
> > but now it's not allowed.
> >
> > Is there a way around this?  Can I get my name back?  It seems
> > shortsighted to create systems that create a username like this. 
> > It's not as common as john or jane, but it's a well known name that
> > it seems likely people would be using to log in with.
>
> $ grep hal /etc/passwd
> haldaemon:x:110:116:Hardware abstraction layer\
> ,,,:/var/run/hal:/bin/false
>
> But I just tried to add user "hal" on my Sid system and it let me.

I'll check on her system tomorrow and see what shows up.  Maybe they 
changed the name but didn't take it from the screening list in the 
install program.

If all else fails, maybe I'll just use hal9000 for everything.  Then my 
login name will match my license plates. ;-)


Hal


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Re: User Name Not Allowed

[Hal Vaughan]

On Sunday 19 August 2007, Franz Pletz wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:23:45PM -0400, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> > I installed Etch on a computer for my Mother today and it wouldn't
> > allow me to use "hal."  On all my email accounts and other accounts
> > on all the systems I deal with, I've always used the name "hal,"
> > but now it's not allowed.
>
> The hal user was previously used by the Hardware Abstraction Layer
> daemon. Since 0.5.7.1-1 it's called haldaemon and since 0.5.7.1-2 the
> old hal user is ensured to get removed in postinst of the package. So
> the system should allow you to create this user.
>
> > Is there a way around this?  Can I get my name back?  It seems
> > shortsighted to create systems that create a username like this. 
> > It's not as common as john or jane, but it's a well known name that
> > it seems likely people would be using to log in with.
>
> Please verify you're running Etch/stable and your version of hal is
> greater than 0.5.7.1-1, i.e. using dpkg -l hal. If it is, you can
> safely remove any existing hal system user using deluser --system hal
> and create your own.

I just downloaded the Etch Net install today and that was what I used.  
I can double check it, but I followed the links to it from the main 
page.  Here's the link to the full CD:

http://ftp.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/debian-cd/4.0_r0/i386/iso-cd/debian-40r0-i386-CD-1.iso

And here's the one to the net install:

http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/4.0_r0/i386/iso-cd/debian-40r0-i386-netinst.iso

I admit that I do miss the obvious at times, but isn't Etch 4.0r0?

> That user, however, shouldn't have existed in the first place...

I know it was on some other versions, but I'm glad to know it won't be a 
long term issue.

It may seem small, but I'm sure anyone with experience will know what 
kind of little niggling irritations can pop up in having to deal with a 
different account name on some systems or services than on others.

Hal


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Re: User Name Not Allowed

[Franz Pletz]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:23:45PM -0400, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> I installed Etch on a computer for my Mother today and it wouldn't allow 
> me to use "hal."  On all my email accounts and other accounts on all 
> the systems I deal with, I've always used the name "hal," but now it's 
> not allowed.

The hal user was previously used by the Hardware Abstraction Layer
daemon. Since 0.5.7.1-1 it's called haldaemon and since 0.5.7.1-2 the
old hal user is ensured to get removed in postinst of the package. So
the system should allow you to create this user.

> Is there a way around this?  Can I get my name back?  It seems 
> shortsighted to create systems that create a username like this.  It's 
> not as common as john or jane, but it's a well known name that it seems 
> likely people would be using to log in with.

Please verify you're running Etch/stable and your version of hal is
greater than 0.5.7.1-1, i.e. using dpkg -l hal. If it is, you can safely
remove any existing hal system user using deluser --system hal and
create your own.

That user, however, shouldn't have existed in the first place...

Cheers,
Franz

-- 
 .''`.   Franz Pletz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://franz-pletz.org/
: :' :   
`. `'Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be
  `- done, and why. Then do it. -- Robert A. Heinlein


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Re: User Name Not Allowed

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 08/19/07 20:23, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> Since I started using Linux, I've used the same username, "hal", for 
> logging in.  With Sarge this was no problem since, somehow, it adapted 
> for the actual hal programs.  The first problem I had with it was with 
> Ubuntu, but I got by that by just upgrading my old install instead of 
> making a new one.
> 
> I installed Etch on a computer for my Mother today and it wouldn't allow 
> me to use "hal."  On all my email accounts and other accounts on all 
> the systems I deal with, I've always used the name "hal," but now it's 
> not allowed.
> 
> Is there a way around this?  Can I get my name back?  It seems 
> shortsighted to create systems that create a username like this.  It's 
> not as common as john or jane, but it's a well known name that it seems 
> likely people would be using to log in with.

$ grep hal /etc/passwd
haldaemon:x:110:116:Hardware abstraction layer\
,,,:/var/run/hal:/bin/false

But I just tried to add user "hal" on my Sid system and it let me.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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User Name Not Allowed

[Hal Vaughan]

Since I started using Linux, I've used the same username, "hal", for 
logging in.  With Sarge this was no problem since, somehow, it adapted 
for the actual hal programs.  The first problem I had with it was with 
Ubuntu, but I got by that by just upgrading my old install instead of 
making a new one.

I installed Etch on a computer for my Mother today and it wouldn't allow 
me to use "hal."  On all my email accounts and other accounts on all 
the systems I deal with, I've always used the name "hal," but now it's 
not allowed.

Is there a way around this?  Can I get my name back?  It seems 
shortsighted to create systems that create a username like this.  It's 
not as common as john or jane, but it's a well known name that it seems 
likely people would be using to log in with.

Thanks for any ideas.

Hal


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2007 at 01:30:28AM +0200, Florian Kulzer wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 22:06:29 +, s. keeling wrote:
 
> The problem is this: If you install the "kde" (or "gnome") metapackage
> with aptitude then all the other KDE (Gnome) packages are marked as
> "automatically installed" because they were pulled in to satisfy the
> dependencies of the metapackage. (That is in fact the very purpose of
> these metapackages: To save you the trouble of installing all the parts
> of KDE/Gnome manually. With aptitude, this also gives you an easy way to
> remove all of KDE/Gnome again: Just remove the top-level metapackage and
> all the automatically installed dependencies will be uninstalled, too.)
> 
> Now, as long as you keep the whole set of packages, everything is fine.
> However, as soon as you remove one component you will get a domino
> effect: Let's say you want to remove knewsticker. This means that the
> kdenetwork metapackage has to be removed, too, because it depends on
> knewsticker. Unfortunately this kills the kde metapackage (since it
> depends on kdenetwork) and the whole house of cards collapses. With the
> kde package scheduled for removal, all its automatically installed
> dependencies are "unused" (as fas as aptitude knows) and therefore
> aptitude will try to remove them all at the next opportunity. This gets
> you into the dreaded "288 packages will be removed, do you want to
> continue?" situation.
> 
> The first thing to do in such a case is to run
> 
> aptitude keep-all
> 
> (or use "Actions -> Cancel pending actions" in interactive mode)

Or, if you've been using interactive all along, after the first 'g'o and
you get the surprising list, hit q to go back to the main screen, go to
the kde meta-package, go down the list of its dependancies and mark each
of them as manually installed, except those that you don't want (or at
least don't think you want).  Now mark the kde meta-package for removal.
Now tell aptitude to 'g'o, and it should only want to remove the
meta-package and anything else that you didn't select for manual
install.  Tell it to 'g'o ahead.

As for removing knewsticker, if the KDE meta-package depends on it,
aptiude should show some packages broken (see the second line of the
screen).  It doesn't go about resoving the breakage untill you tell it
to 'g'o the first time.  You can scroll to the first broken package with
'b' and it will tell you why that package is broken.

The point is that all this takes place within the interactive screen.
You can exit at any time and it will remember where you left off if you
need time to think/sleep.

Doug.


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Re: libc6 kernel upgrade problem

[Bill Wohler]

Robert Jerrard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> WARNING: POSIX threads library NPTL requires kernel version
> 2.6.8 or later. If you use a kernel 2.4, please upgrade it
> before installing glibc.

Does this imply that lenny will not support 2.4 at all? I know that
2.4 isn't recommended under etch, but since I'm not using udev, I was
able to get away with the upgrade to from sarge to etch.

Since the kernel for this particular system (a vserver) is not under
my control and I don't expect it to be upgraded anytime soon if ever
this would be bad.

Taking a quick look, I see that glibc isn't installed on this system
either, so maybe I'm OK?

-- 
Bill Wohler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD


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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Kelly Clowers]

On 8/18/07, Marty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I recently installed Etch on my new system and found X performance to be
> sluggish, particularly when using Iceape.  It appears as if there is little or
> no hardware acceleration, remeniscent of a K7 with a slow graphics card.  
> While
> scrolling a web page down (but never up), or moving windows the display
> sometimes freezes for about one second or more, with up to 100% CPU 
> utilization.
>
> My hardware is a K8M800 chipset motherboard with an Athlon64 X2 5000+ and 
> Radeon
> 7500.  I have tested all recent kernels up to and including linux 2.6.23-rc3.
> All kernel and enabled X performance options are enabled, e.g. DRI, GLX, AGP,
> on-CPU GART, color tiling.  The same graphics card had much better performance
> with Sarge even without acceleration.

Have you tried turning off some of the acceleration options?
For example turning off aiglx, or trying exe vs xaa vs noaccel.


Cheers,
Kelly


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Florian Kulzer]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 22:06:29 +, s. keeling wrote:

[...]

> For current stable/Etch, aptitude is recommended, but many still stick
> with apt-get.
> 
> The biggest problem I've noticed is "aptitude remove blah" where
> "blah" is some KDE or Gnome app, tends to want to blow away
> *everything* that's even remotely related to KDE or Gnome.  I use
> neither KDE or Gnome, so that's not a problem here.
> 
> There are tricks you can use to avoid this sort of thing, but I've not
> bothered to learn what they are.  Perhaps others can help.

The problem is this: If you install the "kde" (or "gnome") metapackage
with aptitude then all the other KDE (Gnome) packages are marked as
"automatically installed" because they were pulled in to satisfy the
dependencies of the metapackage. (That is in fact the very purpose of
these metapackages: To save you the trouble of installing all the parts
of KDE/Gnome manually. With aptitude, this also gives you an easy way to
remove all of KDE/Gnome again: Just remove the top-level metapackage and
all the automatically installed dependencies will be uninstalled, too.)

Now, as long as you keep the whole set of packages, everything is fine.
However, as soon as you remove one component you will get a domino
effect: Let's say you want to remove knewsticker. This means that the
kdenetwork metapackage has to be removed, too, because it depends on
knewsticker. Unfortunately this kills the kde metapackage (since it
depends on kdenetwork) and the whole house of cards collapses. With the
kde package scheduled for removal, all its automatically installed
dependencies are "unused" (as fas as aptitude knows) and therefore
aptitude will try to remove them all at the next opportunity. This gets
you into the dreaded "288 packages will be removed, do you want to
continue?" situation.

The first thing to do in such a case is to run

aptitude keep-all

(or use "Actions -> Cancel pending actions" in interactive mode)

to make aptitude forget all scheduled actions. (Watch out, if you used
"hold" to block buggy packages then this information will be erased,
too, I think.)

Then you have to figure out what is going on. The output of "aptitude
remove knewsticker" gives you a pretty good hint:

--

[...]

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  kdenetwork: Depends: knewsticker (>= 4:3.5.7-4) but it is not installable
Resolving dependencies...
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Remove the following packages:
kde
kdenetwork

Score is 188

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] q
Abandoning all efforts to resolve these dependencies.
Abort.

--

(Note: If you abort aptitude like this then you do not even have to use
 the "keep-all/cancel pending actions" step.)

Now you have to tell aptitude that the dependencies of the kde and
kdenetwork metapackages should be regarded as manually installed:

aptitude unmarkauto '~R^kde$'
aptitude unmarkauto '~R^kdenetwork$' 

After that you can remove knewsticker and keep the rest of the system in
place. The (empty) kdenetwork and kde metapackages still have to go, of
course, so you will miss the convenience that they offer. You have to
decide for yourself if being able to remove some component(s) is worth
that.

The whole thing should work the same for other metapackages (gnome,
xorg, etc.) Just walk down the chain of dependencies with "unmarkauto"
until you are able to perform your intended action without causing
collateral damage. For more complicated cases it can be helpful to use
aptitude in interactive mode because that gives you a quick way to
follow chains of dependencies, in both "forward" and "reverse"
direction.

-- 
Regards,| http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
  Florian   |


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Re: installing java plugin in browsers other than Iceweasel in amd64 etch

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 08:11:58PM +, Michael Fothergill wrote:
> 
> >To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> >Subject: Re: installing java plugin in browsers other than Iceweasel in 
> >amd64 etch
> >Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2007 15:06:24 -0400
 
> Thanks for the advice.  I went in Synaptic (I am using gnome) and installed 
> konqueror.  I also installed the konqueror-nsplugins package.
> 
> Is that enough to install java on the browser?  The applets don't work at 
> the moment in it but I can see web pages OK.  

Diff java and javascript.  I've never used java.

> How do I install mozilla plugins into it?  

Get the plug-in and install it as if you had iceweasel/mozilla/whatever.
They go in the mozilla plugins directory.  The nsplugins package ensures
that konq finds them.

> There is a konq-plugins deb package that I haven't installed yet.
> Should I install it?  What does it do that the nsplugins doesn't do?

The konq-plugins are extensions to the browser; read the package
description.

> 
> What does Knetattach do?  Do I need this or is it just a gimmick?
> 
Don't know.

> The settings page in Konqueror says that java is installed globally etc... 
> but it doesn't work yet.
 


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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 08/19/07 14:48, Manon Metten wrote:
> Hi Ron,
> 
> On 8/19/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> Python + Tcl/Tk should be easier than Python + Gtk.
> 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> 
> Even simpler would be bash + dialog or it's GUI companion gtkdialog.
> 
> 
> Could you mail me some examples you wrote, please?

I've never had to write any.

Google lists a lot of examples and tutorials, though.  Here are some
that I quickly found by searching for linux+dialog+command.


http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2460
http://www.freeos.com/guides/lsst/
http://www.freeos.com/guides/lsst/ch04sec6.html
http://www.freeos.com/guides/lsst/ch04sec7.html
https://cepserver.tce.edu/pipermail/glugot/2005-August/000393.html
http://www.linux.com/articles/55389
http://ayaz.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/dialog-using-dialog-boxes-to-interact-with-users-on-a-linux-console/


>> I find this much more comfortable than eg. typing:
>>> rx mp3conv.rexx 256kbps ~/mp3/work
>>> Even better: I run this script from within my dir util (DirOpus ==
>>> Konqueror), so I don't have to type anything.
>> Your geek cred just dropped.  Substantially.
> 
> 
> Why, just tell me why?

Because you want to point and click instead of run a script.

(Even if it's easier, that doesn't matter.)

> But that's ok.  Really.  Honestly, we won't snicker about you while
>> sipping pretentious and outrageously expensive microbrew.  I swear.
> 
> 
> Beware, Big Brother's watching you :-)

:)

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: nslookup from behing router/modem

[Wayne Topa]

michael([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is reported to have said:
> On Thu, 2007-08-16 at 13:17 -0400, Wayne Topa wrote:
> > michael([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is reported to have said:
> > > On Thu, 2007-08-16 at 15:40 +0100, michael wrote: 
> > > > On Thu, 2007-08-16 at 15:08 +0100, Liam O'Toole wrote:
> > > > > On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:47:30 +0100
> > > > > michael <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > > > 
> > <>
> > > > I'll investigate. thanks, Michael
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > okay, it's nothing to do with speedtouch (sorry steve) since I've
> > > update-rc.d remove speedtouch
> > > 
> > > but somehow /etc/ppp/resolv.conf is being created at boot time with
> > > correct nameservers but an empty search string...
> > > 
> > > any ideas? something to do with /etc/ppp/ip*d/usepeerdns
> > > but I've no idea how/when they are used and why?!?
> > 
> > Only one I can think of, do you have the resolvconf package installed?
> 
> I don't think so:
> manchester-campaigns:/etc/network# dpkg -l |grep resolv
> manchester-campaigns:/etc/network#

VT4 wtopa-dj-TESTING:~$ dpkg -l |grep resolv
i  resolvconf1.37 nameserver information handler

VT4 wtopa-dj-TESTING:~$ apt-cache show resolvconf
<>

Description: nameserver information handler
 Resolvconf is a framework for keeping track of the system's
 information about currently available nameservers. It sets
 itself up as the intermediary between programs that supply
 nameserver information and programs that use nameserver
 information. Examples of programs that supply nameserver
 information are: ifupdown, DHCP clients, the PPP daemon and
 local nameservers. Examples of programs that use this
 information are: DNS caches, resolver libraries and the
 programs that use them. 

> 
> manchester-campaigns:/etc/network# dpkg -l |grep dhcp
> ii  dhcp-client 2.0pl5-19.3   DHCP
> Client
> manchester-campaigns:/etc/network#

I use dhcp3-client which works with resolvconf, and also does dynamic
DNS.  I don't know about the older (?) dhcp-client.

Neither of which would have solved your, wrong DNS address, though.

Wayne

-- 
On-line, adj.:
  The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer.  
___


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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 02:40:19PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
> David Brodbeck wrote:
> > In particular, Bash's "test" (aka "[")
> >operator has pitfalls.  Testing for an empty variable, for example, is 
> >awkward.  If you do:
> 
> >if [ $foo == "" ]
Yeah, and the spaces between the [ $ and the " ] are critical too; I
just forget in what way.
> 
> Yeah, prefer:
> 
> if not foo:
> do something
> 
> >-- there are few languages where it's quite so easy to test conditions 
> >like, 'is this a directory?'.
> 
> Bash undoubtedly is more concise than this but I'd contend it is no 
> easier.
> 
> import os
> if os.path.isdir(somedir):
> print "It's a dir, Jim!"

Best of all, at 2:00 a.m. a year from now, its perfectly clear what
 if os.path.isdir(somedir): 

 means.

> 
> >Bash is great if you need to glue together a bunch of existing utilities 
> >to do something.  You can pipe output directly from one utility to 
> >another with an ease that doesn't exist in most other languages, which 
> >tend to make it complicated to launch other processes.  Doing complex 
> >tasks with a series of simple utilities is sort of what Unix is all about.

Right, but debugging a long piece of plumbing can take a while.  

> 
> I contend that is more a was than an is.  Shell filled a niche years 
> ago that now has largely shrunk to special cases.  So far in this thread 
> there have been two example total of where a shell script might be better 
> for more than 2 minutes over a proper scripting language.  Generally by the 
> time any shell script starts piping 2-3 things I just convert it to Python 
> and get it done far easier and far faster.  Mainly because I don't have to 
> jump through the hoops the warts above present.
> 
> >Besides, until operating systems start having init scripts written in 
> >Perl or Python, being able to write shell scripts is going to be an 
> >essential system administration skill. ;)

Anything after /usr is mounted (perhaps runlevel 2) could be in python.
The init scripts for rcS.d should be carefully written to be
understandable by non-bash gurus.

Check out the very first initscript, S01glibc.sh (exerpts below).  It
may as well be written in assembler for all I can understand how it
compares kernel versions.

Doug.



if [ "`uname -s`" = Linux ]; then
# glibc kernel version check: KERNEL_VERSION_CHECK
kernel_compare_versions () {
verA=$(($(echo "$1" | sed 's/\([0-9]*\)\.\([0-9]*\)\.\([0-9]*\).*/\1 \* 
1 + \2 \* 100 + \3/')))
verB=$(($(echo "$3" | sed 's/\([0-9]*\)\.\([0-9]*\)\.\([0-9]*\).*/\1 \* 
1 + \2 \* 100 + \3/')))

test $verA -$2 $verB
}

exit_check () {
sleep 5
exit 1
}

# Test to make sure z < 255, in x.y.z-n form of kernel version
# Also make sure we don't trip on x.y.zFOO-n form
#kernel_rev=$(uname -r | tr -- - . | cut -d. -f3 | tr -d '[:alpha:]')
kernel_rev=$(uname -r | sed 's/\([0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.\)\([0-9]*\)\(.*\)/\2/')
if [ "$kernel_rev" -ge 255 ]


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[s. keeling]

Mark Neidorff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> 
>  Recently I've set up a Debian Etch box which I'm nearly ready to
>  bring up full time (currently using a different distribution...been
>  a linux user for over 10 years).

Fourteen here.  :-)

>  Here's an example of what this message is about: I've been reading
>  the debian-user list for a bit, and I've noticed that suggestions
>  given are to use the apt-* suite or aptitude to managing packages.
>  While setting things up (and installing packages) I came across
>  synaptic in the KDE menus.  Tried it, and liked using it.  So now
>  I'm wondering according to Debian Wisdom (no disrespect intended to
>  anyone) which is the preferred way of installing software?

All of them work; dselect, apt-get, aptitude, and synaptic.  I prefer
not to use something which expects X to be there (synaptic) and
dselect is just pretty damned old and has a difficult interface (but
if you're willing to spend the time to learn it, it works).

apt-get and aptitude, at the command line, are very similar.  aptitude
provides a ((n)curses) GUI-ish interface if you want that.

aptitude logs what it does and (arguably) handles dependencies better.

>  More generally, is there a document/web page that explains what are
>  the preferred packages and what is the "Debian Way" of doing
>  things.

For current stable/Etch, aptitude is recommended, but many still stick
with apt-get.

The biggest problem I've noticed is "aptitude remove blah" where
"blah" is some KDE or Gnome app, tends to want to blow away
*everything* that's even remotely related to KDE or Gnome.  I use
neither KDE or Gnome, so that's not a problem here.

There are tricks you can use to avoid this sort of thing, but I've not
bothered to learn what they are.  Perhaps others can help.

I'd go with aptitude (or perhaps apt-get), but you probably need to
pore over the documentation before deciding.


-- 
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(*)http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html  Linux Counter #80292
- -http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.htmlPlease, don't Cc: me.


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Ken Irving]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 03:31:19PM -0500, Mumia W.. wrote:
> On 08/19/2007 02:25 PM, Manon Metten wrote:
>> Hi Douglas,
>> On 8/19/07, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Note that many of the horror stories about aptitude involved
>>> people using it as a CLI replacement for apt-get instead of using its
>>> curses interface.
>> Are you saying I should NOT use aptitude as a replacement for
>> apt-get, like this: "aptitude install new-package" ?
>> I've been using aptitude like this all the time ever since I installed 
>> etch
>> with no problems whatsoever.
>> What's the problem of doing so and not using it's user interface?
>> Manon.
>
> I almost exclusively use aptitude under Sarge. Both the curses and command 
> line interfaces work perfectly, and I've never had or heard of a horror 
> story involving aptitude*.
>
> And aptitude is clearly the most advanced interface to the packaging 
> system.
>
> I only use apt-get when I need to install from the source (which aptitude 
> cannot do).

I wonder why that is; the source packages are independent of binary ones.

> I'm also curious about what problems other people are having with aptitude.

I haven't tried aptitude for some time, and apparently the problem I
had with it (where it wanted to remove a lot of stuff) has been fixed.
I think that, even before that fix, it would work reasonably (i.e., no
surprises)  as long as it was used exclusively.  I normally use apt-get,
and tried aptitude after seeing that it was going to be the default,
but have since shied away from it.

> * However, I never do anything at the command line that hasn't been 
> verified as safe. I always use the curses interface to find out what is 
> going to happen before I enter a command at the command line.

I'm pretty sure that aptitude will provide a detailed list of packages
that it intends to remove, and unless you use the -y or --yes option
(assuming there is one), it was and is safe to at least try it out on
the command line.

Not sure I can explain why, but I prefer the command line interface over
an "environment" that you get into and navigate and control from within
(and sometimes may have trouble finding a way out of...).  I do use
and have learned vi/vim, so I'm not unwilling to do this kind of thing,
but plan to stick with apt-get on the command line until there's some
compelling reason to do so.

I also tried wajig, which is a wrapper around apt-get and some other
commands, but find that I prefer using the "real thing" directly.

Ken

-- 
Ken Irving, [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[Steve Lamb]

David Brodbeck wrote:
> In particular, Bash's "test" (aka "[")
operator has pitfalls.  Testing for an empty variable, for example, is 
awkward.  If you do:



if [ $foo == "" ]


Yeah, prefer:

if not foo:
do something

-- there are few languages where it's quite so easy to test conditions 
like, 'is this a directory?'.


Bash undoubtedly is more concise than this but I'd contend it is no easier.

import os
if os.path.isdir(somedir):
print "It's a dir, Jim!"

Bash is great if you need to glue together a bunch of existing utilities 
to do something.  You can pipe output directly from one utility to 
another with an ease that doesn't exist in most other languages, which 
tend to make it complicated to launch other processes.  Doing complex 
tasks with a series of simple utilities is sort of what Unix is all about.


I contend that is more a was than an is.  Shell filled a niche years ago 
that now has largely shrunk to special cases.  So far in this thread there 
have been two example total of where a shell script might be better for more 
than 2 minutes over a proper scripting language.  Generally by the time any 
shell script starts piping 2-3 things I just convert it to Python and get it 
done far easier and far faster.  Mainly because I don't have to jump through 
the hoops the warts above present.


Besides, until operating systems start having init scripts written in 
Perl or Python, being able to write shell scripts is going to be an 
essential system administration skill. ;)


Quite frankly they should now.  Any time I've had to throw something into 
init scripts I've done it in Python.  The last example was a script to 
determine whether my laptop was running Debian under VMWare or natively and if 
natively which dock it was plugged into.  That was 7 years ago.  :)



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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Mumia W..]

On 08/19/2007 02:25 PM, Manon Metten wrote:

Hi Douglas,

On 8/19/07, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Note that many of the horror stories about aptitude involved

people using it as a CLI replacement for apt-get instead of using its
curses interface.




Are you saying I should NOT use aptitude as a replacement for
apt-get, like this: "aptitude install new-package" ?

I've been using aptitude like this all the time ever since I installed etch
with no problems whatsoever.

What's the problem of doing so and not using it's user interface?

Manon.



I almost exclusively use aptitude under Sarge. Both the curses and 
command line interfaces work perfectly, and I've never had or heard of a 
horror story involving aptitude*.


And aptitude is clearly the most advanced interface to the packaging system.

I only use apt-get when I need to install from the source (which 
aptitude cannot do).


I'm also curious about what problems other people are having with aptitude.

--
* However, I never do anything at the command line that hasn't been 
verified as safe. I always use the curses interface to find out what is 
going to happen before I enter a command at the command line.



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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Steve Lamb]

Mark Neidorff wrote:
So now I'm 
wondering according to Debian Wisdom (no disrespect intended to anyonne)  
which is the preferred way of installing software?  


The one your comfortable with.  aptitude is recommended mainly because it 
is a best of breed of the CLI package tools.  The key is CLI.  While GUI tools 
work fine Debian often takes the view of what works everywhere, local and 
remote, since people often use Debian for more than the desktop.


More generally, is there a document/web page that explains what are the 
preferred packages and what is the "Debian Way" of doing things.


I'm not sure if there is.  I kind of picked it up along the way.  My 
first little bit after running Slackware was fun.  :)



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Re: Re^2: Lenny, X, dead mouse

[Florian Kulzer]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 23:32:26 +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 12:23:55PM -0700, Peter Easthope wrote:
> > Thanks Krzysztof and Andrei,
> >
> > I've changed both parameters; the mouse configuration
> > is now the same as in Etch where it works.
> 
> So I presume it's still not working?
> 
> > The Etch configuration ends with these three
> > lines, absent from Lenny.
> >
> > Section "DRI"
> >Mode0666
> > EndSection
> >
> > Perhaps I should add them.  Any ideas?
> 
> These are definitely not related. What xorg packages do you have 
> installed? (dpkg -l xorg*)

I would also like to know the result of

dmesg | grep input

(right after you boot the machine) and the output of

ls -l /dev/input/by-id

If the latter command does not list any mouse device then it might help
to "modprobe psmouse" (or "modprobe sermouse" if it is a really old
mouse).

-- 
Regards,| http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
  Florian   |


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Re: /sys/power/state question with sudoers!

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:53:20AM -0800, Ken Irving wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 07:56:07PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 07:09:29AM -0800, Ken Irving wrote:
> >  
> > > > > $ sudo sh -c "cd /home ; du -s * ??? sort -rn > USAGE"
> > > > > 
> > > > > So, you can do it in on command, sudo is lauching a shell, which is 
> > > > > responsible of redirections, pipes, chaining commands...
> > > > 
> > > > Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this defeats the purpose of 
> > > > restricting sudo to a certain set of commands.
> > > 
> > > The command here is 'sh', so this could be restricted as usual.
> > 
> > Of course you could, but if you're able to run sh what prevents you from 
> > using it to run anything else?
> 
> I'm probably misunderstanding something (not sure what the OP's question
> was), but my point was just that you can prevent someone from running
> sh in the first place -- i.e., they wouldn't be able to do the above
> operation.

Probably I misunderstood what you meant. The OP was asking for a method  
to use sudo to allow only certain operations.

> Any command/program that is allowed to be run under sudo could be misused
> if it allows the user to run a shell from within that program.

Yep

> I don't have much experience with using sudo to *carefully* grant
> privileges to untrusted users, but I would think one could put something
> like the above in a script which the user is allowed to run (as I think
> someone else may have suggested).

Yes, that should work, and seems to me like the best way to achieve the 
desired result.

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)


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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:12:52PM +0200, Manon Metten wrote:
 
> But I have a second question: Is there a programmable text editor
> available (with a nice GUI - not something like emacs where I have to
> remember all those ctrl+shift+left-alt+m commands) that I can
> completely control from within a Python script?

Hi Manon,

I've never needed an editor widget (I've only written one non-curses
app).  What does the python IDLE use since it is written in python.
wxPython probably has an editor widget that will work.  My Python bible
lists wxEditor and wxPyEditor, and more featured still is
wxStyledTextCtrl.  If you like KDE, you could look at the python-qt
widget set.

However, I don't understand the concept of compeletly controlling and
editor from a script.  Vim (and perhaps gVim) can probably do it but I
don't know.  I use vim so that I don't have to use emacs (poor memory
from learning disability) but I don't do scripts.

Doug.


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:25:15PM +0200, Manon Metten wrote:
> On 8/19/07, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> Note that many of the horror stories about aptitude involved
> > people using it as a CLI replacement for apt-get instead of using its
> > curses interface.
> 
> Are you saying I should NOT use aptitude as a replacement for
> apt-get, like this: "aptitude install new-package" ?
> 
> I've been using aptitude like this all the time ever since I installed etch
> with no problems whatsoever.
> 
> What's the problem of doing so and not using it's user interface?
> 

There's nothing wrong with it.  However, the first time you use
aptitude, everything will be marked as manually installed.  When you
tell it to install things, it will bring in what is needed to meet
dependencies.  Whether or not it considers 'recommends' as dependencies
is selectable from the interactive menu (or a config file in /etc).

Two common problems:

If you mix with apt-get, apt-get will work but all packages will be
marked as manually installed in aptitude (actually, the won't be marked
as Automatically installed).  This leads to the cruft buildup that
aptitude is suposed to help you prevent.

The other problem is this.  Install package A.  Aptitude brings in
package B to meet a dependancy.  Over time, you get attached to package
B in its own right.  Later, either package A changes and doesn't need B
or you remove A.  If you haven't told aptitude that you want to keep B,
it will go ahead and remove it too.

In interactive mode, you get a detailed preview (with reasons) of what
aptitude wants to do.  You can then edit that preview to fine-tune it
before telling aptitude to go ahead.  It really tries to protect you
from yourself without preventing you from shooting yourself in the foot
if that is really what you want to do.

When running stable, the problems don't show up too frequently.
However, when Etch was testing, many people were using aptitude for the
first time coincident with shifting package dependancies.  There were
frequent posts to the list like "Aptitude wants to remove 150
packages!!!".  They were using the CLI and didn't get the detailed
explanation from aptitude that they would from the curses interface.

Doug.


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Re: Re^2: Lenny, X, dead mouse

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 12:23:55PM -0700, Peter Easthope wrote:
> Thanks Krzysztof and Andrei,
>
> I've changed both parameters; the mouse configuration
> is now the same as in Etch where it works.

So I presume it's still not working?

> The Etch configuration ends with these three
> lines, absent from Lenny.
>
> Section "DRI"
>Mode0666
> EndSection
>
> Perhaps I should add them.  Any ideas?

These are definitely not related. What xorg packages do you have 
installed? (dpkg -l xorg*)

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)


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Re: DHCP renewal..

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 02:25:14PM -0400, ISHWAR RATTAN wrote:
>
> Running a liveCD system.

Which one?

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 02:35:18PM -0400, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
 
> The release notes state that aptitude is the preferred package
> management tool since it takes care of automatically installed pacakges

Nitpick: aptitude is recommended because it handles complex dependencies 
better. The automatic removal of packages is just a bonus.

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
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(Albert Einstein)


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:25:15PM +0200, Manon Metten wrote:
> Hi Douglas,
> 
> On 8/19/07, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> Note that many of the horror stories about aptitude involved
> > people using it as a CLI replacement for apt-get instead of using its
> > curses interface.

I was present also in interactive mode.

> Are you saying I should NOT use aptitude as a replacement for
> apt-get, like this: "aptitude install new-package" ?
> 
> I've been using aptitude like this all the time ever since I installed etch
> with no problems whatsoever.
> 
> What's the problem of doing so and not using it's user interface?

There was indeed a bug in aptitude BEFORE release of etch, where it 
would consider packages installed by apt-get as automatically installed, 
instead of manually. This was fixed a long ago.

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
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(Albert Einstein)


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Re: nslookup from behing router/modem

[michael]

On Fri, 2007-08-17 at 01:31 +0100, Jamin Davis wrote:
> Samuel Bächler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> >> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ less /etc/resolv.conf
> >> search
> >> nameserver 158.152.1.58
> >> nameserver 158.152.1.42
> > 
> > In Switzerland I would say "the dog is buried here" (how to
> > say in English?):
> 
> Here marks the spot? :)
> 
> I use Demon, the second entry from Michael's resolv.conf is the wrong
> IP.
> Should be 158.152.1.43 = cache-2.ns.demon.net and 158.152.1.58 =
> cache-1.
> 
> .42 is something else, not a public nameserver IAC. Just change .42
> to .43
> and it should be fine.
> 
> 

Jamie - thanks for spotting that typo. I've changed it and although the
empty 'search' is still in /etc/resolv.conf everything does now work
fine (and note that both MacOS and XP had worked fine with .42 or .43!):

DEBIAN BOX:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ less /etc/resolv.conf
search
nameserver 158.152.1.58
nameserver 158.152.1.43
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ nslookup www.bbc.co.uk
Server: 158.152.1.43
Address:158.152.1.43#53

Non-authoritative answer:
www.bbc.co.uk   canonical name = www.bbc.net.uk.
Name:   www.bbc.net.uk
Address: 212.58.227.76


Ta, M

Re: installing java plugin in browsers other than Iceweasel in amd64 etch

[Michael Fothergill]

From: "Douglas A. Tutty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: installing java plugin in browsers other than Iceweasel in 
amd64 etch

Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2007 15:06:24 -0400

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 06:56:08PM +, Michael Fothergill wrote:
[snip stuff I know nothing about]
> If this is the case, what other browsers are there available in etch 4.0
> amd64 land (Epiphany is one I think) and in particular which ones are
> different enough to Iceweasel in code and java display technology that I
> might expect to get different (maybe better) results with these applets 
in

> my case?

What about Konq with the konqueror-nsplugins package.  Konq isn't a
geko browser yet the nsplugins package allows you to use mozilla
plugins.



Thanks for the advice.  I went in Synaptic (I am using gnome) and installed 
konqueror.  I also installed the konqueror-nsplugins package.


Is that enough to install java on the browser?  The applets don't work at 
the moment in it but I can see web pages OK.  How do I install mozilla 
plugins into it?  There is a konq-plugins deb package that I haven't 
installed yet.  Should I install it?  What does it do that the nsplugins 
doesn't do?


What does Knetattach do?  Do I need this or is it just a gimmick?

The settings page in Konqueror says that java is installed globally etc... 
but it doesn't work yet.


Comments appreciated.

Regards

Michael Fothergill



If you don't use KDE otherwise, I know its a lot to drag in.  I don't
use KDE either but I like Konq (and k3b CD burner).

Doug.


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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[Manon Metten]

Hi David,

On 8/19/07, David Brodbeck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

It certainly has its warts.  In particular, Bash's "test" (aka "[")
> operator has pitfalls.  Testing for an empty variable, for example,
> is awkward.  If you do:
>
> if [ $foo == "" ]
>
> Bash will complain about missing arguments.  Instead, you have to do
> something like this:
>
> if [ "x$foo" == "x" ]
>
> which works, but makes no sense the first time you see it.  The file-
> testing features of "test" are quite powerful and extensive, though
> -- there are few languages where it's quite so easy to test
> conditions like, 'is this a directory?'.


Thanks. I copied this to my 'Bash-howto'.


Greetings, Manon.

Re: nslookup from behing router/modem

[michael]

On Thu, 2007-08-16 at 13:17 -0400, Wayne Topa wrote:
> michael([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is reported to have said:
> > On Thu, 2007-08-16 at 15:40 +0100, michael wrote: 
> > > On Thu, 2007-08-16 at 15:08 +0100, Liam O'Toole wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:47:30 +0100
> > > > michael <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > > 
> <>
> > > I'll investigate. thanks, Michael
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > okay, it's nothing to do with speedtouch (sorry steve) since I've
> > update-rc.d remove speedtouch
> > 
> > but somehow /etc/ppp/resolv.conf is being created at boot time with
> > correct nameservers but an empty search string...
> > 
> > any ideas? something to do with /etc/ppp/ip*d/usepeerdns
> > but I've no idea how/when they are used and why?!?
> 
> Only one I can think of, do you have the resolvconf package installed?

I don't think so:
manchester-campaigns:/etc/network# dpkg -l |grep resolv
manchester-campaigns:/etc/network#

but I do have DHCP:
manchester-campaigns:/etc/network# dpkg -l |grep dhcp
ii  dhcp-client 2.0pl5-19.3   DHCP
Client
manchester-campaigns:/etc/network#




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Re: nslookup from behing router/modem

[michael]

On Fri, 2007-08-17 at 09:49 +0200, Jörg-Volker Peetz wrote:
> michael wrote:
> [...]
> >> I have just replaced my USB modem with a router/modem and things seem
> >> to be working find on my Debian box behind the router, except for
> >> nslookup. Is there something I need to amend to get it to work. Note
> >> I can still access the e-World from my Debian box:
> [...]
> >>> but somehow /etc/ppp/resolv.conf is being created at boot time with
> >>> correct nameservers but an empty search string...
> >>>
> >>> any ideas? something to do with /etc/ppp/ip*d/usepeerdns
> >>> but I've no idea how/when they are used and why?!?
> >> Probably best to browse the various manpages and such, but another approach
> >> is to just look around for clues to the settings, e.g.,
> >>
> [...]
> > 
> > yeah i had a poke around, unsuccessfully. it must also get the actual
> > nameservers' IP nums from somewhere too...
> > 
> Are you using dhcp? How does your /etc/network/interfaces file look like?
> The dhcp client also manipulates /etc/resolv.conf.

Yeah, using DHCP: 
from /etc/network/interfaces:

# /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)

# The loopback interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The first network card - this entry was created during the Debian
installationauto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

iface dsl-provider inet ppp
 provider dsl-provider
# please do not modify the following line
 pre-up /sbin/ifconfig eth0 up # line maintained by pppoeconf


But I'm still unsure what I need to amend

Re: DHCP renewal..

[David Brodbeck]

On Aug 19, 2007, at 11:46 AM, Ken Irving wrote:
You can do what you want, but I think most DHCP servers expect the  
clients
to comply with periodically re-upping the lease.  I'm not sure, but  
I think
the lease period is probably specified by the server when the ip is  
granted.

Read the manpages for client and servers to find out more.


Yes, that's correct.  The server tells the client how long the lease  
is for, and the client is expected to renew at least that often.   
(Some renew more often.  Windows clients, for example, seem to renew  
a couple times an hour even if given an 8-hour lease.)


If you don't renew and hang on to the IP anyway, *most* servers will  
try to avoid re-assigning your IP to some other client, but I don't  
think this is guaranteed.  It's also generally considered bad form,  
since it can cause problems for other network users.


If you control the server, there are ways to make it always give a  
particular client the same IP.  Many servers try to do this anyway,  
if there are enough addresses in the pool.





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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[David Brodbeck]

On Aug 18, 2007, at 12:20 PM, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:

Also, I
find that some of the bash constructs are cryptic by their nature with
no clean work-arounds.  They are likely perfectly clear to a  
proficient

bash coder but the finer points are lost on me.


It certainly has its warts.  In particular, Bash's "test" (aka "[")  
operator has pitfalls.  Testing for an empty variable, for example,  
is awkward.  If you do:


if [ $foo == "" ]

Bash will complain about missing arguments.  Instead, you have to do  
something like this:


if [ "x$foo" == "x" ]

which works, but makes no sense the first time you see it.  The file- 
testing features of "test" are quite powerful and extensive, though  
-- there are few languages where it's quite so easy to test  
conditions like, 'is this a directory?'.


Bash is great if you need to glue together a bunch of existing  
utilities to do something.  You can pipe output directly from one  
utility to another with an ease that doesn't exist in most other  
languages, which tend to make it complicated to launch other  
processes.  Doing complex tasks with a series of simple utilities is  
sort of what Unix is all about.


Besides, until operating systems start having init scripts written in  
Perl or Python, being able to write shell scripts is going to be an  
essential system administration skill. ;)





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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[Manon Metten]

Hi Ron,

On 8/19/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Python + Tcl/Tk should be easier than Python + Gtk.


Thanks.


Even simpler would be bash + dialog or it's GUI companion gtkdialog.


Could you mail me some examples you wrote, please?



> I find this much more comfortable than eg. typing:
> > rx mp3conv.rexx 256kbps ~/mp3/work
> > Even better: I run this script from within my dir util (DirOpus ==
> > Konqueror), so I don't have to type anything.
>
> Your geek cred just dropped.  Substantially.


Why, just tell me why?



But that's ok.  Really.  Honestly, we won't snicker about you while
> sipping pretentious and outrageously expensive microbrew.  I swear.


Beware, Big Brother's watching you :-)

Greetings, Manon.

Re^2: Lenny, X, dead mouse

[Peter Easthope]

Thanks Krzysztof and Andrei,

I've changed both parameters; the mouse configuration
is now the same as in Etch where it works.

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier  "Configured Mouse"
   Driver  "mouse"
   Option  "CorePointer"
   Option  "Device""/dev/input/mice"
   Option  "Protocol"  "ImPS/2"
   Option  "Emulate3Buttons"   "true"
EndSection

The Etch configuration ends with these three
lines, absent from Lenny.

Section "DRI"
   Mode0666
EndSection

Perhaps I should add them.  Any ideas?

Thanks again,  ... Peter E.



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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 08/19/07 14:12, Manon Metten wrote:
[snip]
> 
> Here's an example: I've written a script in ARexx for creating mp3 files. It
> has a
> couple of modes: Scale - 192kbps - 256kbps - Cancel. So when I run this
> script,
> it opens a small window with these four options and I just have to pick the
> one I
> need. Then it opens another window to select the directory where I have my
> .aiff
> files stored (it defaults to ~/mp3/work).

Python + Tcl/Tk should be easier than Python + Gtk.

Even simpler would be bash + dialog or it's GUI companion gtkdialog.

> I find this much more comfortable than eg. typing:
> rx mp3conv.rexx 256kbps ~/mp3/work
> Even better: I run this script from within my dir util (DirOpus ==
> Konqueror), so I
> don't have to type anything.

Your geek cred just dropped.  Substantially.

But that's ok.  Really.  Honestly, we won't snicker about you while
sipping pretentious and outrageously expensive microbrew.  I swear.

> But I have a second question: Is there a programmable text editor available
> (with
> a nice GUI - not something like emacs where I have to remember all those
> ctrl+shift+left-alt+m commands) that I can completely control from within a
> Python script?


Complete control?  I don't know.  But gedit (sorry, a GNOME app)
lets you access at least some of the window and editor.

> 
> Greetings, Manon.
> 


- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Marty]

Douglas A. Tutty wrote:


Two things:  it appears that Xorg isn't multi-threaded, and that there
is a problem.  I don't know how to fix it.

Does the problem happen with Konqureror or iceweasel as well or only
with iceape?


Konqueror has almost identical symptoms, though slightly less severe.

  Do you need the all-in-one-mega-app approach of iceape or

would Konq or iceweasel work for you?


I wish it were that easy to resolve.  At this point it seems independent of the 
graphics hardware but related to web browsing and images (and not plugins, java 
or javascript).  I can't rule out other X apps at this point.  I've tried 
various browser configuration settings.  Nothing unusual appears in the system 
logs or boot up messages.  I will try a stripped down kernel and/or run a mirror 
of the system on another motherboard to eliminate most hardware related issues. 
 My guess is that I will find the problem this way and it will not turn out to 
be a user-space software issue.


If that doesn't isolate the problem, however, then I probably take a look at the 
libraries. Except for debian-multimedia and custom kernels, all binaries pass a 
debsums check against the latest debian archive. The following command lists the 
libs that are common to both Iceape and Konqueror:


$ echo "`apt-cache depends iceape-browser|grep ' lib'`"+"`apt-cache depends 
konqueror|grep ' lib'`"|sort|uniq -d

  Depends: libc6
  Depends: libfontconfig1
  Depends: libgcc1
  Depends: libjpeg62
  Depends: libpng12-0
  Depends: libstdc++6
  Depends: libx11-6
  Depends: libxcursor1
  Depends: libxext6
  Depends: libxft2
  Depends: libxi6
  Depends: libxinerama1
  Depends: libxrandr2
  Depends: libxrender1
  Depends: libxt6

Of these, the ones that look like they could be related to browser images are 
libjpeg62, libpng12-0, libxinerama1, libxrandr2 and libxrender1.  None are 
debian-multimedia replacements.  There was a big library upgrade a couple days 
ago but I've already overwritten my daily backup so I can't easily revert.


If and when I locate the problem I'll post the resolution here.


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Manon Metten]

Hi Douglas,

On 8/19/07, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Note that many of the horror stories about aptitude involved
> people using it as a CLI replacement for apt-get instead of using its
> curses interface.



Are you saying I should NOT use aptitude as a replacement for
apt-get, like this: "aptitude install new-package" ?

I've been using aptitude like this all the time ever since I installed etch
with no problems whatsoever.

What's the problem of doing so and not using it's user interface?

Manon.

Re: DHCP renewal..

[Ken Irving]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 03:04:34PM -0400, ISHWAR RATTAN wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Aug 2007, Ken Irving wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 02:25:14PM -0400, ISHWAR RATTAN wrote:
>>>
>>> Running a liveCD system.
>>>
>>> At the first boot ip-address is obtained via DHCP
>>> The ip-address is changed to a static ip-address
>>> (does work)
>>>
>>> After sometime, the system renews the DHCP lease,
>>> is there a way to stop this renewal?
>>
>> You can do what you want, but I think most DHCP servers expect the clients
>> to comply with periodically re-upping the lease.  I'm not sure, but I 
>> think
>> the lease period is probably specified by the server when the ip is 
>> granted.
>> Read the manpages for client and servers to find out more.
>>
>> You could, for instance, simply change your network to use a static 
>> address
>> with the ip you receive from the dhcp server -- but of course this would
>
> I did that but the client still goes for renewal. Temporary solution I have
> is to kill the DHCP client (not allow it to run). I am sure that there is
> a sane solution avaiilable in this group.

You are expected to comply and renew the lease; why not just do that?

What I (hesitantly) suggested is to change the network config to static,
not dynamic, at which point you'd have fixed (and stolen?) the IP you
were provided.  I'm not familiar with a Debian LiveCD system (I have
used Knoppix and Ubuntu, both based on debian), so not sure of the details,
but presumably /etc/network/interfaces would exist in a RAM filesystem
and could be edited as needed.   Alternatively, you could probably come up
with ifconfig commands to do this more directly.

Ken

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Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?

[Manon Metten]

Hi Douglas,

On 8/19/07, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> almost wrote:

Perhaps the OP can restate her needs and we can help her make a reasoned
> choice without it becoming a religious issue.
>


OK. I have a hard time to remember all those command line options. So
whenever
I have to accomplish a task multiple times, I write a script for it in
ARexx. Arexx
is also capable of opening windows to request user input, eg. a window with
some
options. I could not find this possibility in Linux/Rexx. So I was looking
for another
language and found Python capable of doing so.

Here's an example: I've written a script in ARexx for creating mp3 files. It
has a
couple of modes: Scale - 192kbps - 256kbps - Cancel. So when I run this
script,
it opens a small window with these four options and I just have to pick the
one I
need. Then it opens another window to select the directory where I have my
.aiff
files stored (it defaults to ~/mp3/work).

I find this much more comfortable than eg. typing:
rx mp3conv.rexx 256kbps ~/mp3/work
Even better: I run this script from within my dir util (DirOpus ==
Konqueror), so I
don't have to type anything.


But I have a second question: Is there a programmable text editor available
(with
a nice GUI - not something like emacs where I have to remember all those
ctrl+shift+left-alt+m commands) that I can completely control from within a
Python script?


Greetings, Manon.

Re: DHCP renewal..

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 10:46:59AM -0800, Ken Irving wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 02:25:14PM -0400, ISHWAR RATTAN wrote:
> >
> > Running a liveCD system.
> >
> > At the first boot ip-address is obtained via DHCP
> > The ip-address is changed to a static ip-address
> > (does work)
> >
> > After sometime, the system renews the DHCP lease,
> > is there a way to stop this renewal?
 
> You could, for instance, simply change your network to use a static address
> with the ip you receive from the dhcp server -- but of course this would 
> seriously violate the whole reason for having dynamic addresses.  I would 
> not recommend this; eventually the server would probably give that ip to 
> another system, and then you'll be screwing up that other user as well as
> yourself.

Or accept the dynamic IP on that interface and setup NAT on the box
(with, e.g. ipmasq if you want install-and-forget or shorewall if you
need tight controll) so you can use your own static IP on your network.

However, I don't know how to do this on a LiveCD system.  I only use a
liveCD system to tweak an already installed one and have never needed to
set up networking with one.

Doug.



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Re: Screensaver killed by some applications

[Barry Samuels]

On 19/08/07 14:58:05, Ralph Katz wrote:
> On 08/19/2007 07:46 AM, Barry Samuels wrote:
> > Is there a better way to restart the screensaver? I have tried 
> > resetting it in the KDE Control Centre but although screen blanking 
> > works power off of the screen after a set time does not work.
> 
> Don't know about Qemu or kde, but ~$ man xscreensaver-command  may
> help.
> 
> mplayer  sometimes fails to restart xscreensaver on this box (with
> openbox window manager).  The problem resolves when I invoke this
> script that I also use sometimes, so a full restart hasn't been 
> necessary:
> xscreensaver-command -activate
> sleep 7
> xset -display :0.0 dpms force  suspend

Thanks Ralph. I was using the built in KDE screensaver but I've now 
disabled that and installed xscreensaver. I'll see what happens with 
that.

-- 
Barry Samuels
http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk
The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

Re: installing java plugin in browsers other than Iceweasel in amd64 etch

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 06:56:08PM +, Michael Fothergill wrote:
[snip stuff I know nothing about] 
> If this is the case, what other browsers are there available in etch 4.0 
> amd64 land (Epiphany is one I think) and in particular which ones are 
> different enough to Iceweasel in code and java display technology that I 
> might expect to get different (maybe better) results with these applets in 
> my case?

What about Konq with the konqueror-nsplugins package.  Konq isn't a
geko browser yet the nsplugins package allows you to use mozilla
plugins.

If you don't use KDE otherwise, I know its a lot to drag in.  I don't
use KDE either but I like Konq (and k3b CD burner).

Doug.


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Re: DHCP renewal..

[ISHWAR RATTAN]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2007, Ken Irving wrote:


On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 02:25:14PM -0400, ISHWAR RATTAN wrote:


Running a liveCD system.

At the first boot ip-address is obtained via DHCP
The ip-address is changed to a static ip-address
(does work)

After sometime, the system renews the DHCP lease,
is there a way to stop this renewal?


You can do what you want, but I think most DHCP servers expect the clients
to comply with periodically re-upping the lease.  I'm not sure, but I think
the lease period is probably specified by the server when the ip is granted.
Read the manpages for client and servers to find out more.

You could, for instance, simply change your network to use a static address
with the ip you receive from the dhcp server -- but of course this would


I did that but the client still goes for renewal. Temporary solution I have
is to kill the DHCP client (not allow it to run). I am sure that there is
a sane solution avaiilable in this group.

-ishwar


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installing java plugin in browsers other than Iceweasel in amd64 etch

[Michael Fothergill]

Dear Debianists,

I use Debian Etch 4.0 r1 (amd64) on an amd64 box.  I use Iceweasel.  I 
installed the gcj java plugin that is available as a deb file into Iceweasel 
and it works after a fashion.


But not perfectly.  I have found that a number of distillation calculation 
applets I have used don't work at all or not properly.


I found this by comparing the results of running the applets in a WIndows 
environment that an IT manager I know uses..


They all work correctly for him.

I then went to the Blackdown site and replaced the gcj plugin with the amd64 
java plugin that Blackdown provide.


It took quite a bit of farting around to achieve this.

What is interesting (at least to me) is that the errors in the applets are 
identical whether I am using the gcj plugin or the Blackdown plugin..


I mentioned this to the IT guy.  He wondered whether the java I am using 
might actually be fine, but something in the browser is preventing the 
applets from being displayed properly.


He suggested trying a different browser.

I assume (and please could you confirm) that the code in for the gcj java 
plugin and the Blackdown plugin are different enough from each other that 
they wouldn't necessarily produce exactly the same errors in the display and 
functioning of these applets.


If that is true then perhaps it is indirect evidence that there is something 
not quite right with the browser in some way.


If this is the case, what other browsers are there available in etch 4.0 
amd64 land (Epiphany is one I think) and in particular which ones are 
different enough to Iceweasel in code and java display technology that I 
might expect to get different (maybe better) results with these applets in 
my case?


The gcj deb file seems to be automatically installed in Iceweasel.  How do 
you get apt to install it in e.g. Epiphany or other browsers?


Comments appreciated

Michael Fothergill

_
Got a favourite clothes shop, bar or restaurant? Share your local knowledge  
http://www.backofmyhand.com



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Re: DHCP renewal..

[Ken Irving]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 02:25:14PM -0400, ISHWAR RATTAN wrote:
>
> Running a liveCD system.
>
> At the first boot ip-address is obtained via DHCP
> The ip-address is changed to a static ip-address
> (does work)
>
> After sometime, the system renews the DHCP lease,
> is there a way to stop this renewal?

You can do what you want, but I think most DHCP servers expect the clients
to comply with periodically re-upping the lease.  I'm not sure, but I think
the lease period is probably specified by the server when the ip is granted.
Read the manpages for client and servers to find out more.

You could, for instance, simply change your network to use a static address
with the ip you receive from the dhcp server -- but of course this would 
seriously violate the whole reason for having dynamic addresses.  I would 
not recommend this; eventually the server would probably give that ip to 
another system, and then you'll be screwing up that other user as well as
yourself.

Ken

-- 
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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 02:10:27PM -0400, Mark Neidorff wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Recently I've set up a Debian Etch box which I'm nearly ready to bring up 
> full 
> time (currently using a different distribution...been a linux user for over 
> 10 years).  
> 
> Here's an example of what this message is about:
> I've been reading the debian-user list for a bit, and I've noticed that 
> suggestions given are to use the apt-* suite or aptitude to managing 
> packages.  While setting things up (and installing packages) I came across 
> synaptic in the KDE menus.  Tried it, and liked using it.  So now I'm 
> wondering according to Debian Wisdom (no disrespect intended to anyonne)  
> which is the preferred way of installing software?  
> 
> More generally, is there a document/web page that explains what are the 
> preferred packages and what is the "Debian Way" of doing things.

aptitude is the recommended APT frontend. And I think the document you 
are looking for is the Debian Reference (package debian-reference).  

Otherwise it is difficult to say there is one Debian Way (tm), as there 
are more ways to achieve the same task. My own policy has been to use 
the defaults as much as possible and find ways to make my customizations 
not interfere with the normal upgrade process.

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 02:10:27PM -0400, Mark Neidorff wrote:
> 
> Here's an example of what this message is about:
> I've been reading the debian-user list for a bit, and I've noticed that 
> suggestions given are to use the apt-* suite or aptitude to managing 
> packages.  While setting things up (and installing packages) I came across 
> synaptic in the KDE menus.  Tried it, and liked using it.  So now I'm 
> wondering according to Debian Wisdom (no disrespect intended to anyonne)  
> which is the preferred way of installing software?  
> 
> More generally, is there a document/web page that explains what are the 
> preferred packages and what is the "Debian Way" of doing things.

The release notes state that aptitude is the preferred package
management tool since it takes care of automatically installed pacakges
(those installed only to meet dependancies) and removes them when
nothing else needs them.  You can over-ride Automatic by marking them as
manual.  Note that many of the horror stories about aptitude involved
people using it as a CLI replacement for apt-get instead of using its
curses interface.

For reading: 

Release notes,
debian policy (not all, unless you're making packages),
the fhs that comes with the policy
debian-reference (a bit dated but still a must-read).
aptitude-doc

All but the release notes are available as debian packages.

As for 'preferred' packages, its all up to you.  However, some packages
are marked as 'base', 'required', 'important', 'standard', etc.

Ensure that you have all the base and required ones.  You can search
with aptitude.

The other advice is to go slow.  Once you have your base system
functional, just add one function at a time.  E.g. get X working as you
want, and then add a browser as a separate project.

Doug.


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Brad Rogers]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 14:10:27 -0400
Mark Neidorff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Hello Mark,

> More generally, is there a document/web page that explains what are
> the preferred packages and what is the "Debian Way" of doing things.

One of the reasons that the apt-* suite is recommended is that, should
the X windowing system get trashed, you can (re-)install software,
should it prove necessary.

Synaptic is fine (it's just a GUI for command line tools), but does
require that you can log in to a DE of some sort.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"

The public wants what the public gets
Going Underground - The Jam


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Re: Lenny, X, dead mouse

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 05:43:07PM +0200, Krzysztof Lubański wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 07:53 -0700, Peter Easthope wrote:
> > [...] mdetect output is this.
> > 
> > /dev/psaux
> > intellimouse
> > 
> > /etc/X11/xorg.conf snippet.
> > [...]
> > Option"Protocol""MouseManPlusPS/2"
> > [...]
> 
> Hello.
> 
> Try changing the protocol to "ImPS/2" (that's for Intellimouse PS/2).
 
You could also try the device /dev/input/mice

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)


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Syncing GPE PIM Data on a PDA With a Workstation

[Hal Vaughan]

I recently bought a Nokia 770, which is a Linux based PDA.  At this 
point the only reason I haven't been able to stop using my older Palm 
Tungsten is because I still haven't found a good system for syncing PIM 
data between the Nokia and my workstation.  I use KDE, including apps 
like Kontact, KMail, and so on, so ideally I want to sync it with KDE.  
I've found links that indicate there are ways to sync them, but I 
haven't found anything that actually explains what is needed or what to 
do.

Is anyone syncing GPE apps on PDAs with anything on Linux (preferably 
KDE)?  If so, what packages are you using on your workstation and what 
do you need on your PDA?

Thanks!

Hal


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DHCP renewal..

[ISHWAR RATTAN]

Running a liveCD system.

At the first boot ip-address is obtained via DHCP
The ip-address is changed to a static ip-address
(does work)

After sometime, the system renews the DHCP lease,
is there a way to stop this renewal?

-ishwar


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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Nyizsnyik Ferenc]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 14:10:27 -0400
Mark Neidorff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Recently I've set up a Debian Etch box which I'm nearly ready to
> bring up full time (currently using a different distribution...been a
> linux user for over 10 years).  
> 
> Here's an example of what this message is about:
> I've been reading the debian-user list for a bit, and I've noticed
> that suggestions given are to use the apt-* suite or aptitude to
> managing packages.  While setting things up (and installing packages)
> I came across synaptic in the KDE menus.  Tried it, and liked using
> it.  So now I'm wondering according to Debian Wisdom (no disrespect
> intended to anyonne) which is the preferred way of installing
> software?  
> 
> More generally, is there a document/web page that explains what are
> the preferred packages and what is the "Debian Way" of doing things.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mark
> 
> 

I use Synaptic for all the updates except kernels, X, libc and other
similar stuff. It is only a frontend for the apt package managent
system anyway.

-- 
Szia:
Nyizsa.

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Re: Source of Debian wisdom

[Orestes leal]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 14:10:27 -0400
Mark Neidorff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Recently I've set up a Debian Etch box which I'm nearly ready to bring up 
> full 
> time (currently using a different distribution...been a linux user for over 
> 10 years).  
> 
> Here's an example of what this message is about:
> I've been reading the debian-user list for a bit, and I've noticed that 
> suggestions given are to use the apt-* suite or aptitude to managing 
> packages.  While setting things up (and installing packages) I came across 
> synaptic in the KDE menus.  Tried it, and liked using it.  So now I'm 
> wondering according to Debian Wisdom (no disrespect intended to anyonne)  
> which is the preferred way of installing software?  
> 
> More generally, is there a document/web page that explains what are the 
> preferred packages and what is the "Debian Way" of doing things.
> 

Also for me seems that the best fast-configured packages are with  apt/synaptic
but (yeah!) for me the best aproach to install my most-used packages are
from source, compiled for my processor and run smooth than the normal
precompiled packages

-olr


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Source of Debian wisdom

[Mark Neidorff]

Hi all,

Recently I've set up a Debian Etch box which I'm nearly ready to bring up full 
time (currently using a different distribution...been a linux user for over 
10 years).  

Here's an example of what this message is about:
I've been reading the debian-user list for a bit, and I've noticed that 
suggestions given are to use the apt-* suite or aptitude to managing 
packages.  While setting things up (and installing packages) I came across 
synaptic in the KDE menus.  Tried it, and liked using it.  So now I'm 
wondering according to Debian Wisdom (no disrespect intended to anyonne)  
which is the preferred way of installing software?  

More generally, is there a document/web page that explains what are the 
preferred packages and what is the "Debian Way" of doing things.

Thanks,

Mark


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Re: /sys/power/state question with sudoers!

[Ken Irving]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 07:56:07PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 07:09:29AM -0800, Ken Irving wrote:
>  
> > > > $ sudo sh -c "cd /home ; du -s * ??? sort -rn > USAGE"
> > > > 
> > > > So, you can do it in on command, sudo is lauching a shell, which is 
> > > > responsible of redirections, pipes, chaining commands...
> > > 
> > > Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this defeats the purpose of 
> > > restricting sudo to a certain set of commands.
> > 
> > The command here is 'sh', so this could be restricted as usual.
> 
> Of course you could, but if you're able to run sh what prevents you from 
> using it to run anything else?

I'm probably misunderstanding something (not sure what the OP's question
was), but my point was just that you can prevent someone from running
sh in the first place -- i.e., they wouldn't be able to do the above
operation.

Any command/program that is allowed to be run under sudo could be misused
if it allows the user to run a shell from within that program.

I don't have much experience with using sudo to *carefully* grant
privileges to untrusted users, but I would think one could put something
like the above in a script which the user is allowed to run (as I think
someone else may have suggested).

Ken

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Re: /sys/power/state question with sudoers!

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 07:09:29AM -0800, Ken Irving wrote:
 
> > > $ sudo sh -c "cd /home ; du -s * ??? sort -rn > USAGE"
> > > 
> > > So, you can do it in on command, sudo is lauching a shell, which is 
> > > responsible of redirections, pipes, chaining commands...
> > 
> > Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this defeats the purpose of 
> > restricting sudo to a certain set of commands.
> 
> The command here is 'sh', so this could be restricted as usual.

Of course you could, but if you're able to run sh what prevents you from 
using it to run anything else?

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)


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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 12:01:03PM -0400, Marty wrote:
> Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> >On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 10:42:22AM -0400, Marty wrote:
> >>Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> >>>On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:04:13AM -0400, Marty wrote:
> >>> >
> >New observations after further testing: First, I think I was mistaken, 
> and >this problem does not occur in my other Etch system.  Secondly, 
> >>top >>shows >only one CPU pegged at 100%, while the overall CPU  
> >>utilization is >>50%, >suggesting that the other CPU is idle.  Taken 
> >>together these seem >>to >suggest a possible SMP or motherboard issue 
> >>(MSI K9MM-V).
> 
> I posted too soon. Apparently the image setting had not taken hold, and 
> when I did disable it the problem went away, both in Iceape and 
> Konqueror. This seems odd because the page is mostly text, with only a 
> few small images.  Now I am guessing there is some kind of image 
> >>library >>issue.
 
> Thanks.  I also found the threads option (H) in the man page.  Below is a 
> more complete top listing, with (1) and Irix mode off, and threads on.  It 
> shows only about one third of the total number of tasks.
> 
> Tasks: 173 total,   4 running, 169 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> Cpu0  :  1.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  
> 0.0%st
> Cpu1  :100.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,  0.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  
> 0.0%st
> Mem:   2073092k total,  2020192k used,52900k free, 3976k buffers
> Swap:  6434024k total,   56k used,  6433968k free,  1536972k cached
> 
>   PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
>  3353 root  14 -10  103m  33m 6608 R 49.9  1.6  15:35.94 Xorg
> 32185 marty 16   0  307m 249m  22m S  0.3 12.3   1:16.70 iceape-bin
> 32483 marty 16   0  2228 1172  856 S  0.2  0.1   0:04.79 top

Two things:  it appears that Xorg isn't multi-threaded, and that there
is a problem.  I don't know how to fix it.

Does the problem happen with Konqureror or iceweasel as well or only
with iceape?  Do you need the all-in-one-mega-app approach of iceape or
would Konq or iceweasel work for you?

Doug.


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Re: /sys/power/state question with sudoers!

[Gnu_Raiz]

>"Douglas A. Tutty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 
>Today 08:59:23
   
>On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 01:58:10PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 11:36:03AM +0200, Gilles Mocellin wrote:
>  
> > I've just read the manpage of sudo, and here's what it says :
> > 
> > To make a usage listing of the directories in the /home partition.  
Note that 
> > >this runs the commands in a sub-shell to make the cd and file 
>>>redirection 
> > >work.
> > 
> > >$ sudo sh -c "cd /home ; du -s * ??? sort -rn > USAGE"
> > 
> > >So, you can do it in on command, sudo is lauching a shell, which is 
> >> responsible of redirections, pipes, chaining commands...
> 
> >Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this defeats the purpose of 
>> restricting sudo to a certain set of commands.
> 

>You could put the command in a script, owned by root, executable by root
>only, then tell sudo to let you run that command.  This should then log
>that command being run.

I got that same answer in the channel last night, but as you so clearly 
stated you need to be root to run the command. Also the fine gentleman 
stated that cat takes standard output, from the user with the same 
permission the user has, passes it along. I really don't want to give cat 
higher privileges. That also raises the questions when a standard sudo 
user is presented with a password they assume it will be their password 
not roots. With the c option it presents a password, but does not tell 
you it needs root privileges. It also would not solve my problem, of 
getting a standard user the ability to hibernate.

Anyone have any other suggestions, can I have an alias, function, macro, 
in bash with root privileges that would run the command?

Gnu_Raiz


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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Marty]

Douglas A. Tutty wrote:

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 10:42:22AM -0400, Marty wrote:

Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
>On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:04:13AM -0400, Marty wrote:
> >
>>>New observations after further testing: First, I think I was mistaken, 
>>and >this problem does not occur in my other Etch system.  Secondly, top 
>>shows >only one CPU pegged at 100%, while the overall CPU  utilization is 
>>50%, >suggesting that the other CPU is idle.  Taken together these seem 
>>to >suggest a possible SMP or motherboard issue (MSI K9MM-V).

>>
>>I posted too soon. Apparently the image setting had not taken hold, and 
>>when I did disable it the problem went away, both in Iceape and 
>>Konqueror. This seems odd because the page is mostly text, with only a 
>>few small images.  Now I am guessing there is some kind of image library 
>>issue.

>
>Just to clarify what you're seeing in top: 0.0%wa ?

I'm not sure I understand myself.  I stopped it while scrolling and copied 
the first few lines below:


Tasks: 126 total,   2 running, 124 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 49.9%us,  4.8%sy,  0.0%ni, 45.1%id,  0.2%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  
0.0%st


You have the (1) toggle on so that all CPUs are aggregated into Cpu(s).
Turn off the toggle to get a separate line for each CPU.  According to
this your system is idle about half the time.  I suspect that one
processor (the one running Xorg) is going flat out and the other is
idle.  I don't know if Xorg is multi-threaded and able to run on
multiple CPUs or single threaded where SMP doesn't help.  Hopefully, the
application can use the other CPU to spread the load.



Mem:   2073092k total,  1917620k used,   155472k free,18832k buffers
Swap:  6434024k total,0k used,  6434024k free,  1631596k cached

  PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
 3353 root  15 -10 98128  24m 6460 R  100  1.2  10:36.02 Xorg



If you have Irix mode set, then Xorg is using 100% of the CPU on which
it is running.  If you have Solaris mode set, then Xorg is using 100% of
all CPUs, for the time period since the last refresh.

Doug.




Thanks.  I also found the threads option (H) in the man page.  Below is a more 
complete top listing, with (1) and Irix mode off, and threads on.  It shows only 
about one third of the total number of tasks.


Tasks: 173 total,   4 running, 169 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu0  :  1.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu1  :100.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,  0.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   2073092k total,  2020192k used,52900k free, 3976k buffers
Swap:  6434024k total,   56k used,  6433968k free,  1536972k cached

  PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
 3353 root  14 -10  103m  33m 6608 R 49.9  1.6  15:35.94 Xorg
32185 marty 16   0  307m 249m  22m S  0.3 12.3   1:16.70 iceape-bin
32483 marty 16   0  2228 1172  856 S  0.2  0.1   0:04.79 top
1 root  16   0  1948  644  552 S  0.0  0.0   0:24.81 init
2 root  RT   0 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.02 migration/0
3 root  34  19 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 ksoftirqd/0
4 root  RT   0 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.38 migration/1
5 root  34  19 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 ksoftirqd/1
6 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.10 events/0
7 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.40 events/1
8 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper
9 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthread
   12 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.21 kblockd/0
   13 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 kblockd/1
   14 root  13  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid
  105 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.02 khubd
  107 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kseriod
  234 root  20   0 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 pdflush
  235 root  15   0 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 pdflush
  236 root  15   0 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.54 kswapd0
  237 root  13  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/0
  238 root  13  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/1
  360 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ata/0
  361 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ata/1
  363 root  11  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
  364 root  11  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_eh_1
  404 root  11  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_eh_2
  405 root  10  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.04 usb-storage
  420 root  11  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kpsmoused
  483 root  15   0 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kirqd
  603 root  16  -4  2708 1152  348 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.03 udevd
  950 root  12  -5 000 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ivtv_vbi/0
  951 ro

Re: Lenny, X, dead mouse

[Krzysztof Lubański]

On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 07:53 -0700, Peter Easthope wrote:
> [...] mdetect output is this.
> 
> /dev/psaux
> intellimouse
> 
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf snippet.
> [...]
> Option"Protocol""MouseManPlusPS/2"
> [...]

Hello.

Try changing the protocol to "ImPS/2" (that's for Intellimouse PS/2).

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Lenny, X, dead mouse

[Peter Easthope]

Folk,

Sorry for the preceding defective message.

This weekend I installed Lenny and X on a machine
where Etch has worked for months.  The mouse is
a Logitech Model:M-S48 with a Compaq label.
I expected the configuration for X to be the same as
in Etch, yet the mouse is dead.  mdetect output is this.

/dev/psaux
intellimouse

/etc/X11/xorg.conf snippet.

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier"Configured Mouse"
   Driver"mouse"
   Option"CorePointer"
   Option"Device""/dev/psaux"
   Option"Protocol""MouseManPlusPS/2"
   Option"Emulate3Buttons""true"
EndSection

Thanks for any tips,  ... Peter E.


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Re: /sys/power/state question with sudoers!

[Ken Irving]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 01:58:10PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 11:36:03AM +0200, Gilles Mocellin wrote:
>  
> > I've just read the manpage of sudo, and here's what it says :
> > 
> > To make a usage listing of the directories in the /home partition.  Note 
> > that 
> > this runs the commands in a sub-shell to make the cd and file redirection 
> > work.
> > 
> > $ sudo sh -c "cd /home ; du -s * ??? sort -rn > USAGE"
> > 
> > So, you can do it in on command, sudo is lauching a shell, which is 
> > responsible of redirections, pipes, chaining commands...
> 
> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this defeats the purpose of 
> restricting sudo to a certain set of commands.

The command here is 'sh', so this could be restricted as usual.

Ken

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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 10:42:22AM -0400, Marty wrote:
> Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> >On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:04:13AM -0400, Marty wrote:
> > >
> >>>New observations after further testing: First, I think I was mistaken, 
> >>and >this problem does not occur in my other Etch system.  Secondly, top 
> >>shows >only one CPU pegged at 100%, while the overall CPU  utilization is 
> >>50%, >suggesting that the other CPU is idle.  Taken together these seem 
> >>to >suggest a possible SMP or motherboard issue (MSI K9MM-V).
> >>
> >>I posted too soon. Apparently the image setting had not taken hold, and 
> >>when I did disable it the problem went away, both in Iceape and 
> >>Konqueror. This seems odd because the page is mostly text, with only a 
> >>few small images.  Now I am guessing there is some kind of image library 
> >>issue.
> >
> >Just to clarify what you're seeing in top: 0.0%wa ?
> 
> I'm not sure I understand myself.  I stopped it while scrolling and copied 
> the first few lines below:
> 
> Tasks: 126 total,   2 running, 124 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> Cpu(s): 49.9%us,  4.8%sy,  0.0%ni, 45.1%id,  0.2%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  
> 0.0%st

You have the (1) toggle on so that all CPUs are aggregated into Cpu(s).
Turn off the toggle to get a separate line for each CPU.  According to
this your system is idle about half the time.  I suspect that one
processor (the one running Xorg) is going flat out and the other is
idle.  I don't know if Xorg is multi-threaded and able to run on
multiple CPUs or single threaded where SMP doesn't help.  Hopefully, the
application can use the other CPU to spread the load.


> Mem:   2073092k total,  1917620k used,   155472k free,18832k buffers
> Swap:  6434024k total,0k used,  6434024k free,  1631596k cached
> 
>   PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
>  3353 root  15 -10 98128  24m 6460 R  100  1.2  10:36.02 Xorg
> 

If you have Irix mode set, then Xorg is using 100% of the CPU on which
it is running.  If you have Solaris mode set, then Xorg is using 100% of
all CPUs, for the time period since the last refresh.

Doug.


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Lenny, xserver-xorg, dead mouse

[Peter Easthope]

Folk,

This mor


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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Marty]

Douglas A. Tutty wrote:

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:04:13AM -0400, Marty wrote:
 >
>New observations after further testing: First, I think I was mistaken, and 
>this problem does not occur in my other Etch system.  Secondly, top shows 
>only one CPU pegged at 100%, while the overall CPU  utilization is 50%, 
>suggesting that the other CPU is idle.  Taken together these seem to 
>suggest a possible SMP or motherboard issue (MSI K9MM-V).


I posted too soon. Apparently the image setting had not taken hold, and 
when I did disable it the problem went away, both in Iceape and Konqueror. 
This seems odd because the page is mostly text, with only a few small 
images.  Now I am guessing there is some kind of image library issue.


Just to clarify what you're seeing in top: 0.0%wa ?


I'm not sure I understand myself.  I stopped it while scrolling and copied the 
first few lines below:


Tasks: 126 total,   2 running, 124 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 49.9%us,  4.8%sy,  0.0%ni, 45.1%id,  0.2%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   2073092k total,  1917620k used,   155472k free,18832k buffers
Swap:  6434024k total,0k used,  6434024k free,  1631596k cached

  PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
 3353 root  15 -10 98128  24m 6460 R  100  1.2  10:36.02 Xorg



I've found that the browsers pre-render and store stuff in memory which
slows down the system when it starts to swap, or it saves stuff to the
disk cache with the same result.  Since I often access my browser via
ssh from my slow box, I've found that Konq stores rendered pages in the
Xorg server whereas iceweasel stores it locally.  My X terminal box only
has 64 MB ram so if I need to view a complex/graphical page or multiple
tabs I'll use iceweasel, otherwise I like Konq.


I don't know if those issues apply here.  I have some large applications running 
(e.g. mythbackend) but I also seem to have plenty of memory, and top indicates 
there is no swap memory used.




Doug.





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Multiple monitors with ATI/AMD Linux drivers 8.40.4

[Gyorgy Abraham]

Dear Debian users,

I'm trying to get working my VGA chip (ATI Technologies Inc ATI Radeon 
XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)) the following configuration:


- this laptop has an LCD screen with a recommended resolution of 
1280x800 @ 60 Hz
- this machine has a D-SUB connector for CRT monitor devices, I've 
attached there a CRT monitor (LG Flatron EZ T710P), I want

a resolution of 1024x768 @ 85 Hz

I own a manually compiled kernel (2.6.22.2) and ATI/AMD "fglrx" 8.40.4 
(installed from .deb packages generated with ati's

installer. The VGA/OpenGL works generally good.)

In the ATI Linux Control Center my external CRT monitor is discovered 
and powered on, but I can't seperately set their own
resolution and refresh rates. Sometimes I can (after pressing apply the 
CRT goes to [EMAIL PROTECTED]), but I assume configuration
is not saved because after rebooting, I get a resolution of 1280x800 on 
the CRT. I have to "move" the screen with the mouse

cursor.

My questions:

- Is it possible to set a custom resolution for the LCD and for the CRT 
device?

 Do I have to do this in xorg.conf ?
- Is it a bug of the fglrx driver? Should I install another version?


Thanks a lot!


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Re: my sound card does not work in etch

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 12:38:37PM -0400, qipaishi wrote:
> My sound card use cs4281 and it works in sarge
> but it does not work in etch
> xawtv has no sound
> xmix can't start, it says no such device
[snip lsmod output]

Do you have the alsa packages installed?  Etch switched from OSS to
alsa.  Once installed you need to either fiddle with udev or run
alsaconf which will set up the modules and devices corectly.

Doug.


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Re: change partitions

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 11:13:42PM +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> >that partition.  With it unmounted, run e2fsck -cc on it.  
> >
> >The -cc means that a non-distructive read/write badblocks test will run
> >on it.  With modern drives you should not actually find any bad blocks
> >unless the drive is at end-of-life and has used up its remapping space.
> >However, if it completes fine you'll know that writing beyond the 70%
> >range worked for the drive.  
> >
> >Which partition has the problem?
> 
> hda8 (12 G), it does not have any OS installed to it. It is an
> independent partition with /work on it.
> 
> >>Please see following partition information and the debian boot is in
> >>Master section.
> >>
> >>sudo fdisk -l
> >>
> >>Disk /dev/hda: 32.0 GB, 32003112960 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track,
> >>3890 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> >>
> >>  Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
> >>  /dev/hda1   1 255 20482567  HPFS/NTFS
> >>  /dev/hda2 2561275 8193150b  W95 FAT32
> >>  /dev/hda31276389021004987+   5  Extended
> >>  /dev/hda512761504 1839411   83  Linux
> >>  /dev/hda622962298   24066   83  Linux
> >>  /dev/hda722992364  530113+  82  Linux swap
> >>  / Solaris /dev/hda82365389012257563+  83
> >>  Linux /dev/hda9   *15051863 2883636   83  Linux
> >>  /dev/hda10   18642295 3470008+  83  Linux
> >>
> >
> > 
> >Since hda3 goes from cylinder 1276 to 3890 yet hda10 ends at 2295, there
> >should also be some free space at the end.
> 
> How can I use fdisk or other partition tools to display free space?
> 
> What command should I call to remove window partition and to 
> re-partition to ext3? Are following correct?
> 
> fdisk -s /dev/hda1 ?
> fdisk -s /dev/hda2 ?
> 

cfdisk /dev/hda

Then you'll see the partitions and free space.  You can scroll down the
list, delete what you want.  Once you are finished you "W"rite the
partition table and exit.  Then you need to format your new partition:

e2fsck -c /dev/hda8 (or whatever it ends up being).

Doug.


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Firehol Prevents Me From Joining Domain

[Anthony M Simonelli]

I'm running firehol on a Debian test server.  I have the winbind service
running to resolve NT domain user names.  I have the following services
defined for my LAN interface in the firehol.conf file.

lan_ips="192.168.0.0/24"

interface eth0 Lan src "${lan_ips}"
policy reject
server microsoft_ds accept
server samba accept
client all accept 

Whenever I try to join the domain "net rpc join -W DOMAIN -U
administrator"  I get a message saying "Unable to find a suitable
server" and I find the following in my logs:

Aug 19 08:55:51 server kernel: ''IN-Lan':'IN=eth0 OUT=
MAC=XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX SRC=192.168.0.9
DST=192.168.0.197 LEN=90 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=53787 PROTO=UDP
SPT=137 DPT=1033 LEN=70

Clearly the response is being blocked by my firewall and when I shut the
firewall down, I can easily join the domain.  I know that this relates
to a hack in the Samba service defined in Firehol
(http://firehol.sourceforge.net/services.html?#samba).  Is there a work
around that I can use in my configuration file?  Something that allows
responses only from a certain host, like the PDC?


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Re: /sys/power/state question with sudoers!

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 01:58:10PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 11:36:03AM +0200, Gilles Mocellin wrote:
>  
> > I've just read the manpage of sudo, and here's what it says :
> > 
> > To make a usage listing of the directories in the /home partition.  Note 
> > that 
> > this runs the commands in a sub-shell to make the cd and file redirection 
> > work.
> > 
> > $ sudo sh -c "cd /home ; du -s * ??? sort -rn > USAGE"
> > 
> > So, you can do it in on command, sudo is lauching a shell, which is 
> > responsible of redirections, pipes, chaining commands...
> 
> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this defeats the purpose of 
> restricting sudo to a certain set of commands.
> 

You could put the command in a script, owned by root, executable by root
only, then tell sudo to let you run that command.  This should then log
that command being run.

Doug.


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Re: Screensaver killed by some applications

[Ralph Katz]

On 08/19/2007 07:46 AM, Barry Samuels wrote:
> Is there a better way to restart the screensaver? I have tried 
> resetting it in the KDE Control Centre but although screen blanking 
> works power off of the screen after a set time does not work.

Don't know about Qemu or kde, but ~$ man xscreensaver-command  may help.

mplayer  sometimes fails to restart xscreensaver on this box (with
openbox window manager).  The problem resolves when I invoke this script
that I also use sometimes, so a full restart hasn't been necessary:
xscreensaver-command -activate
sleep 7
xset -display :0.0 dpms force  suspend

Regards,
Ralph


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Re: Firefox entry prediction crashes

[Ralph Katz]

On 08/19/2007 08:08 AM, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> Thanks.  That worked.  I conclude that the option
> browser.search.suggest.enabled gets its suggestions from elsewhere.  I
> wonder where?  perhaps some form of partial googling?

Google search first hit on browser.search.suggest.enabled will tell you. :)

Ralph


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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:04:13AM -0400, Marty wrote:
 >
> >New observations after further testing: First, I think I was mistaken, and 
> >this problem does not occur in my other Etch system.  Secondly, top shows 
> >only one CPU pegged at 100%, while the overall CPU  utilization is 50%, 
> >suggesting that the other CPU is idle.  Taken together these seem to 
> >suggest a possible SMP or motherboard issue (MSI K9MM-V).
> 
> I posted too soon. Apparently the image setting had not taken hold, and 
> when I did disable it the problem went away, both in Iceape and Konqueror. 
> This seems odd because the page is mostly text, with only a few small 
> images.  Now I am guessing there is some kind of image library issue.

Just to clarify what you're seeing in top: 0.0%wa ?

I've found that the browsers pre-render and store stuff in memory which
slows down the system when it starts to swap, or it saves stuff to the
disk cache with the same result.  Since I often access my browser via
ssh from my slow box, I've found that Konq stores rendered pages in the
Xorg server whereas iceweasel stores it locally.  My X terminal box only
has 64 MB ram so if I need to view a complex/graphical page or multiple
tabs I'll use iceweasel, otherwise I like Konq.

Doug.


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Re: Using USB Drives for a RAID

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 12:59:22AM -0400, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> On Saturday 18 August 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > On 08/18/07 20:35, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> > > On Saturday 18 August 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > >> On 08/18/07 19:39, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> > >>> Has anyone built a RAID out of USB drives?  I'm considering it
> > >>> but I'd rather hear from others who may have done the same thing
> > >>> first. I can see several possible problems.  Last time I was
> > >>> working with USG devices, if I unplugged the drives and did not
> > >>> plug them in using the same order /dev/sda could become /dev/sdb,
> > >>> so I could see that as an issue, for starters.
> > >>>
> > >>> If anyone has experience with this, I'd like to hear about it and
> > >>> if it's a good or bad idea.
> > >>
> > >> What's the problem that you are trying to solve?
> > >
> > > At this point I'm exploring several possibilities.
> >
> 
> Possibilities of using USB drives instead of internal drives for a RAID.  
> It would provide something close to hotplug and also 
> 
> > Are you trying to solve a portability problem using high-capacity
> > external drives, or a speed problem with USB thumb drives?
> 
> There's several reasons I'm looking into it.  I suspect one issue with 
> the box I've been using could be circulation, which I could solve with 
> separate drive enclosures.  It would make drive swapping easier and it 
> could also make it portable.  I don't know what else, which is why I 
> asked the question.  If people say, "Yeah, I've tried it and it doesn't 
> work," then I drop the idea.  If people tell me, "I've tried it and 
> found it was a benefit because of a, b, and c, then I know it's worth 
> looking into and perhaps worth using.
> 
> That's why the original question: Has anyone tried this and what kind of 
> experience did they have?  I find when I'm looking at a new 
> possibility, focusing on only my ideas can often close off discussion 
> about other possibilities or benefits I hadn't thought of.
> 
> > >If USB RAID is
> > > not practical or workable, then I'll just drop the possibility and
> > > stick with sata or pata drives.
> >
> > Many companies sell multi-drive USB & firewire enclosures, and lots
> > do RAID-5.  Get one with 5 slots, stuff 750GB drives in it, and get
> > 3TB of easily transportable storage in the size of a large shoebox.
> 
> That's an idea I might find useful!  Thanks!

Check out addonics.  

The other issue is throughput.  If you put multiple drives (3TB!?) that
have to interface via a single USB then it won't be fast.

Is portability an issue?  Get a big computer case with 5.15" bays.  Add
drive-bay adapters with integral fans.  Turn it into a file server;
decide what speed ethernet you need and from that decide how much
processing power you need and put in a decent MB to match.  Assuming
that you're using SATA drives, any MB with lots of SATA ports probably
will have enough oomph.  Depending on your needs, you may find a
cheap/free MB/CPU/ram combo even if it is in a dinky case.  You may find
a cheap box on eBay that will work, perhaps an old server.  In summary,
start with the case and work inward.

As for my personal experience, I've never used a USB hard drive.  People
give me their old computers and I turn them into firewalls, X-terminals,
or fileservers, adding fans ad lib.  As for portability, my big
mult-drive Athlon64 came with casters :)

Doug.


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Re: change partitions

[jupiter . hce]

Douglas A. Tutty wrote:


The 'partitions' are only numbers in a table that OS's refer to to see
what block starts the next partition and where it ends.  I'm assuming
that your problem with the partition is actually with the filesystem on
that partition.  With it unmounted, run e2fsck -cc on it.  


The -cc means that a non-distructive read/write badblocks test will run
on it.  With modern drives you should not actually find any bad blocks
unless the drive is at end-of-life and has used up its remapping space.
However, if it completes fine you'll know that writing beyond the 70%
range worked for the drive.  


Which partition has the problem?


hda8 (12 G), it does not have any OS installed to it. It is an
independent partition with /work on it.



Also, I have only one window OS, but I don't k now why both hda1 and 
hda2 are for window partitions, can I delete both of them? 



I haven't run an MS product since windows 3.1 so I don't know.  But
since you don't need windows and you know that neither partition is
needed, you should be able to remove them.  This may end up changing the
numbering of the extended partition from hda3 to either 1 or 2.
However, the partitions in it should still start at hda5.




Please see following partition information and the debian boot is in
Master section.

sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 32.0 GB, 32003112960 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track,
3890 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

  Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
  /dev/hda1   1 255 20482567  HPFS/NTFS
  /dev/hda2 2561275 8193150b  W95 FAT32
  /dev/hda31276389021004987+   5  Extended
  /dev/hda512761504 1839411   83  Linux
  /dev/hda622962298   24066   83  Linux
  /dev/hda722992364  530113+  82  Linux swap
  / Solaris /dev/hda82365389012257563+  83
  Linux /dev/hda9   *15051863 2883636   83  Linux
  /dev/hda10   18642295 3470008+  83  Linux



 
Since hda3 goes from cylinder 1276 to 3890 yet hda10 ends at 2295, there

should also be some free space at the end.

Good luck,

Doug.


How can I use fdisk or other partition tools to display free space?

What command should I call to remove window partition and to 
re-partition to ext3? Are following correct?


fdisk -s /dev/hda1 ?
fdisk -s /dev/hda2 ?

Thank you.

Jim




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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Marty]

Marty wrote:


I have removed all plugins, and disabled java, javascript and cookies.
I have also disabled images and link prefetching.  None of these changes fix the 
problem.


On the same site I found a page that scrolls even more slowly:
http://www.dailytech.com/German+Scientists+Declare+Speed+of+Light+Broken/article8487.htm

New observations after further testing: First, I think I was mistaken, and this 
problem does not occur in my other Etch system.  Secondly, top shows only one 
CPU pegged at 100%, while the overall CPU  utilization is 50%, suggesting that 
the other CPU is idle.  Taken together these seem to suggest a possible SMP or 
motherboard issue (MSI K9MM-V).


I posted too soon. Apparently the image setting had not taken hold, and when I 
did disable it the problem went away, both in Iceape and Konqueror. This seems 
odd because the page is mostly text, with only a few small images.  Now I am 
guessing there is some kind of image library issue.



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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Marty]

Andrei Popescu wrote:

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 07:04:32AM -0400, Marty wrote:

I'm not sure about it.  Now I think it's limited to opening and closing 
certain

web pages. not applications.


Try disabling javascript, flash, ... things like that.

Regards,
Andrei


I have removed all plugins, and disabled java, javascript and cookies.
I have also disabled images and link prefetching.  None of these changes fix the 
problem.


On the same site I found a page that scrolls even more slowly:
http://www.dailytech.com/German+Scientists+Declare+Speed+of+Light+Broken/article8487.htm

New observations after further testing: First, I think I was mistaken, and this 
problem does not occur in my other Etch system.  Secondly, top shows only one 
CPU pegged at 100%, while the overall CPU  utilization is 50%, suggesting that 
the other CPU is idle.  Taken together these seem to suggest a possible SMP or 
motherboard issue (MSI K9MM-V).



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Re: human engine ?

[Krzysztof Lubański]

On Tue, 2007-08-14 at 21:39 -0500, lostson wrote: 
> Is it possible to get the human style and engine on Debian ? [...]

Update:

There's a gtk2-engines-ubuntulooks package which contains the engine and
the Human GTK+ theme (just controls and colors, no window borders or
icons), but only in testing and experimental. The icons are in non-free
section (human-icon-theme).

-- 
Krzysztof Lubanski



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Re: Firefox entry prediction crashes

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 17:10:18 -0400, Ralph Katz wrote:

> 
> If you're seeing your own /past/ search entries, you can disable
> remembering form data in Preferences -> Privacy -> History 'Remember
> what I enter in forms and the search bar'
> 
> (This is in Firefox 2.0.0.6 from tarball.)

Thanks.  That worked.  I conclude that the option
browser.search.suggest.enabled gets its suggestions from elsewhere.  I
wonder where?  perhaps some form of partial googling?

-- hendrik

> Ralph


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Re: How to choose a mailer client

[Pete]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 12:34:17PM +0100, abdelkader belahcene wrote:
> 
> Hi, When I click on email address on the epiphaty browser,  evolution
> is called by defaut, I want to use thunderbird instead, when to change it
> 
> thanks a lot
> bela

Hi,

In Gnome, on Debian Etch (stable), I go to Desktop/Preferences/Preferred
Applications to change from the default Evolution, to my preferred Mutt.

Maybe you could try that ?

Regards,

Pete.


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How to choose a mailer client

[abdelkader belahcene]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hi, When I click on email address on the epiphaty browser,  evolution
is called by defaut, I want to use thunderbird instead, when to change it

thanks a lot
bela
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFGyCq5yRR4kg+ICMARAveQAKCOcVlu7RKK5Zl3Yd8eyUB5UZSUnQCg7HJN
cMKC4IU82gma15pePU9DEzo=
=fHem
-END PGP SIGNATURE-


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Screensaver killed by some applications

[Barry Samuels]

I'm running Debian Testing with KDM/KDE.

If I run Qemu it stops the screensaver from working and the only way 
I've found to get it working again is to stop and re-start X 
after I have closed Qemu.

Anyone else have this?

Is there a better way to restart the screensaver? I have tried 
resetting it in the KDE Control Centre but although screen blanking 
works power off of the screen after a set time does not work.

I have seen this happen occasionally when I'm not running Qemu and I 
suspect another application but I haven't been able to identify it yet.

Regards

-- 
Barry Samuels
http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk
The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 07:04:32AM -0400, Marty wrote:

> I'm not sure about it.  Now I think it's limited to opening and closing 
> certain
> web pages. not applications.

Try disabling javascript, flash, ... things like that.

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)


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Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Marty]

Andrei Popescu wrote:

On Sat, Aug 18, 2007 at 09:10:32PM -0400, Marty wrote:

Andrei Popescu wrote:


For 2D apps it should be very fast.  Its responsiveness seems normal under 
moderate graphics load, only a few percent of the CPU, but jumps to 100% 
under heavy load, such as scolling up a large web page (i.e. a blog), 


Can you give an example?


http://www.dailytech.com/PC+Manufacturers+Finally+Embracing+Linux+Sort+Of/article8326.htm

My crude test is to resize the browser to fit one half screen, open a bash
terminal window on the other half and run top -d .5 (.5s refresh interval).

Watching top, I scroll through the page with the scroll slider.  At low or
medium scroll rates I see about 20% CPU utilization or less.  While increasing 
the scroll rate I seem to cross a threshhold causing the CPU to peg, likewise by

dragging the top window quickly over the browser window.  Finally, I see it when
I open several such pages in different windows and cycle through them.  The
problem does not appear during similar tests on a Sarge system.

opening a web page, starting or stopping an X app.  When I enabled on 


It's normal to use 100% CPU, you do want the app started as soon as 
possible, don't you? ;) The question is for how long. Iceweasel takes 
about 4 seconds (counted) to start on my P4 1.6, Intel on-board, 512 MB 
RAM.


I'm not sure about it.  Now I think it's limited to opening and closing certain
web pages. not applications.


If I enable the frame buffer (which I did since my last post):

(EE) RADEON(0): MergedFB does not work with Option UseFBDev, MergedFB mode 
is disabled


I also get the following warnings:

(WW) RADEON(0): DRI init changed memory map, adjusting ...
(WW) RADEON(0):   MC_FB_LOCATION  was: 0x1fff is: 0x1fff
(WW) RADEON(0):   MC_AGP_LOCATION was: 0xffc0 is: 0xe07fe000
(WW) AIGLX: 3D driver claims to not support visual 0x23

The last one is followed by several similar lines.  The framebuffer does 
not seem to affect the freeze issue.


I'm not familiar with radeon cards, but if you suspect a driver issue 
you could try the generic vesa driver.


I think the evidence of this problem while using the onboard graphics and one
other Etch system tends to point away from the Radeon card.


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Re: any of netinstall can be used?

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 10:28:39AM +0100, abdelkader belahcene wrote:
> *Hi, 
> 
>   If  install debian testing with netinstall, can I use one from any date, or 
> only the last one. 
> 
> Can I use for example the debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso from 08/08/2007? 
> 
> *
> thanks for help
> bela

Of course you can use old images, but what's the purpose? Unless you 
know the newer one has issues, if you want testing you probably want 
newer software (and you have less to update after installing).

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)


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Re: /sys/power/state question with sudoers!

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 11:36:03AM +0200, Gilles Mocellin wrote:
 
> I've just read the manpage of sudo, and here's what it says :
> 
> To make a usage listing of the directories in the /home partition.  Note that 
> this runs the commands in a sub-shell to make the cd and file redirection 
> work.
> 
> $ sudo sh -c "cd /home ; du -s * │ sort -rn > USAGE"
> 
> So, you can do it in on command, sudo is lauching a shell, which is 
> responsible of redirections, pipes, chaining commands...

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this defeats the purpose of 
restricting sudo to a certain set of commands.

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)


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(solved) Re: my sound card does not work in etch

[qipaishi]

You're right. With "modprobe snd_pcm_oss", I can start xmix. After 
changing volume level, I can hear TV audio from xawtv. Thanks!


Florian Kulzer wrote:


On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 08:26:35 -0400, qipaishi wrote:
 


My sound card use cs4281 and it works in sarge
but it does not work in etch
xawtv has no sound
xmix can't start, it says no such device
   



Which device is missing, /dev/dsp? You need OSS emulation for that one
to be present. (OSS is the old sound system. ALSA, the new one, provides
legacy support for application which still expect the OSS-specific
devices to be present.)

 


below is output by lsmod:
   



[...]

 


snd_cs4281 2 0
gameport   14632  2 snd_cs4281
snd_rawmidi22560  1 snd_cs4281
snd_ac97_codec 83104  1 snd_cs4281
snd_ac97_bus2400  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm68676  2 snd_cs4281,snd_ac97_codec
snd_page_alloc  9640  1 snd_pcm
snd_opl3_lib9920  1 snd_cs4281
snd_seq_device  7820  2 snd_rawmidi,snd_opl3_lib
snd_timer  20996  2 snd_pcm,snd_opl3_lib
snd_hwdep   8836  1 snd_opl3_lib
snd47012  8 
snd_cs4281,snd_rawmidi,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_opl3_lib,snd_seq_device,snd_timer,snd_hwdep
   



[...]

 


soundcore   9248  2 btaudio,snd
   



[...]

Try to do (as root):

modprobe snd_pcm_oss

If that does not help then you should post the output of

cat /dev/sndstat

and the error messages that you get from running "amixer".

 




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