Re: How to disable USB automounts

[Scott Ferguson]

On 14/09/11 20:59, Brian wrote:
> On Wed 14 Sep 2011 at 10:46:44 +1000, Scott Ferguson wrote:
> 
>> With the greatest respects to the previous posters and there
>> suggestions... this has nothing to do with membership of plugdev, custom
>> udev rules to try and over-ride existing hal fdi, udev, and policykit
>> rules won't work.
> 
> I'd agree that the OP's KDE specific issue should be tackled from within
> KDE, but if the desire is to disable automounting for all users then
> surely udev is the route to take? Furthermore, udev should not be used to
> make up for any failure to solve the problem from within the DE.
> 


Have you looked at /etc/hal/fdi/policy/preferences.fdi??
What about "Device Notifier Settings" ??

Why bark when you've got a dog? ;-p

Cheers

P.S. the changes to what constitutes an "external drive" is long overdue
- should always have been "removable" rather than "external" - which
should allow for almost any storage device.

-- 
"I ascribe to Mark Twain's theory that the last person who should be
President is the one who wants it the most. The one who should be picked
is the one who should be dragged kicking and screaming into the White
House."
— Bill Hicks


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Re: debian-user-digest Digest V2011 #1691

[Ian Martin]

Hi,
I bought myself a Dell L502X recently with Optimus technology (= dual graphics 
card).  After a lot of playing, I discovered the latest edition of Mint Debian 
Edition (the iso came out mid- August) will install and run on it without any 
hitches.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of benefit buying the card if running Linux, 
but this is the first distro I found where the dual card didn't result in 
loss of output.  I suspect if you get any distro running a kernel more recent 
than 2.39 you should be fine (which is probably why your Ubuntu iso is OK).
I did try to change to the proprietary Nvidia driver a few days back; ended up 
reinstalling.  I'm sure it's possible, but didn't have time or 
energy to chase it up.

The basic idea (in my understanding) is not that you run 2 separate graphics 
cards.  The secondary ( more featureful/ expensive/ power hungry) card is not 
directly linked to your main display; if the primary(basic) card can't 
handle graphics demand, it passes it on to the secondary, which then writes 
back to to graphics buffer of the first, _not_ to the display.  Just to make it 
fun, apparently MS has access to the API for that, but nobody else has.  

The theory is that the OS can shut off the second graphics card or turn it on 
as requested by programs which know to pass info on their graphics 
demand.  Alternatively, the OS can ask for the card to activate if it 
recognises a demanding program or if the user has specified that graphics 
mode.  Ignoring the technology won't help; it looks like it may be the 
defacto standard in most new laptops soon.

The problem is when you install an OS, it's got to recognise Optimus (the 
name for the graphics switching) technology is on the motherboard; if not, it 
seems to assume the display is on the high end card output and you end up with 
a blinking cursor.  With some laptops you can turn off the high end card in the 
BIOS; not much of a solution, but you do get a working display.  The low end 
card _has_ to be working; it does the actual drawing of the buffer on the 
screen, even if the high end card does the processing to fill the buffer.

The relevant Linux projects are bumblebee (you need to have watched 
Transformers to appreciate the name) and ironhand.  They're both currently 
in development+++, have a look 
http://www.martin-juhl.dk/2011/08/reassemble-of-the-bee/ at that for the back 
story.
Ian



From: "debian-user-digest-requ...@lists.debian.org" 

To: debian-user-dig...@lists.debian.org
Sent: Thursday, 15 September 2011 1:53 PM
Subject: debian-user-digest Digest V2011 #1691



undefineddebian-user-digest Digest                Volume 2011 : Issue 1691

Today's Topics:
  USB ACM vs USB memory device conflic  [ "Thomas H. George" 
 ]
  Re: Free drivers for AMD Radeon (Vai  [ Dan  ]
  Re: Console access using F1 etc       [ John Foster 
 ]
  Re: 'apt-get dist-upgrade' from Lenn  [ Alex 
 ]
  Re: Console access using F1 etc       [ Whit Hansell 
 I recently had to do a new installation of squeeze on a production server.

Excellent!

> Its been a LONG time since I did that and I see a few things are different
> since my last time. I can not access the consoles by hitting ctrl,alt,
> delete.

You mean Control-Alt-F1 instead.  Or Control-Alt-F2 and similar for
other function keys.

After 

Re: Non functioning D-Link Ethernet adapter card

[Bob Proulx]

John Foster wrote:
> I installed a D-Link DGE-530T 10/100/1000 Gigabit Desktop PCI
> Adapterethernet card. Based on the RTL8169xx chip. The thing is not
> recognized by any flavor of linux. Mint, Ubuntu, or Debian
> (squeeze).

What does 'lspci' say?  (Thinking it might not be a RTL8169 after all.)

  lspci | grep Ethernet

What does the kernel's dmesg say about firmware?

  dmesg | grep firmware

For example my 3945 says something like this:

  ... iwl3945 ... firmware: requesting iwlwifi-3945-2.ucode

Knowing exactly what the kernel is looking for may lead directly to
the right firmware.

> Worked in Windows 7pro after installing the drivers from
> the setup disc.

Yes, yes.  But that is with probably closed source drivers.  Which
isn't very helpful.

> As these chips have been around at least since 2003 I was very
> surprised to find no mods precompiled in any distro.

That is why I suspect that it is actually a different chipset.

> Any suggestions? Not stranded as I have a working old 3com horse in
> there also. Just the new one is supposed to be twice as fast.

Hopefully the lspci and dmesg output will show more detail.

You say you also have a 3com card in the machine?  Are you changing
network cards?  Are you aware that the ordering of the cards are
cached in the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file?  You may
need to edit (or remove) that file in order to change the device name
for it.  Often people add change cards but do not know that the udev
file has frozen their previous configuration and needs to be
modified.  It has been a long running source of confusion.

Bob


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Re: Hard drive bad sector warning

[yudi v]

Got a reply back from WD asking me to return the drive, I wiped the drive
and tested the drive to see if it will throw up errors.

Again, both the WD tool and the Debian disk utility do not report any bad
sectors.

Can anyone explain what's going on?


-- 
Kind regards,
Yudi

Re: RAR/ apt-get Question

[Umarzuki Mochlis]

2011/9/15 Greg Madden 

>
>
>
>  It is in non-free.
>
>
> aptitude install unrar

-- 
Regards,

Umarzuki Mochlis
http://debmal.my

Re: RAR/ apt-get Question

[Greg Madden]

On Wednesday 14 September 2011 06:00:53 pm RiverWind wrote:
> Hey There,
>
> Whilst trying to get and install the rar file compression utility,
> I encountered a bit of an interesting  obstacle. It seems that this
> file is either obsolete and hence no longer supported by Linux, or
> something else of that nature has made this application unavailable
> via mainstream measures. I have several radio plays, books and
> documentaries that have been compressed using rar, so I therefore
> don't quite know what to do in order to process these particular
> files so they can be played by my media utilities. Here is the
> error message that the "apt" command returned.
>
> Quote On:
> apt-get install rar
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> Package rar is not available, but is referred to by another
> package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been
> obsoleted, or is only available from another source
>
> E: Package 'rar' has no installation candidate
> Quote Off:

 It is in non-free.


-- 
Peace,

Greg


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Re: RAR/ apt-get Question

[Bob Proulx]

RiverWind wrote:
> Whilst trying to get and install the rar file compression utility,
> I encountered a bit of an interesting  obstacle. It seems that this
> file is either obsolete and hence no longer supported by Linux, or
> something else of that nature has made this application unavailable
> via mainstream measures.

The 'rar' program is nonfree.  The program is shareware and you must
register it after 40 days of use.  Because it is nonfree it cannot be
part of any free software distribution.  In particular it cannot be
part of Debian because it does not meet the Debian Free Software
Guidelines.  The problem is legal not technical.

> I have several radio plays, books and documentaries that have been
> compressed using rar, so I therefore don't quite know what to do in
> order to process these particular files so they can be played by my
> media utilities. Here is the error message that the "apt" command
> returned.

It was compiled and packaged in the Lenny timeframe in the nonfree
section.  You can still install the Lenny version.  Here is a URL for
the Lenny package page.

  http://packages.debian.org/lenny/rar

You can download the package for Debian 32-bit i386 from one of the
mirror locations listed at this following URL.

  http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/rar/download

Then install the deb file using this command:

  dpkg -i rar_3.8b3-1_i386.deb

And similarly for the "unrar" package.

Due to the licensing issues as soon as possible I suggest that you
move all of your content out of the problematic rar files and into
different containers.

Since you say media and since most media formats are already
compressed then there is no need to try to compress them again.  Being
a free software advocate I suggest using a free software container
such as a tar file.

Bob


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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Andrew Reid]

> I had a case where it had snowed, and instead of driving 50 miles in snow
> and ice with dodgy DC drivers, I'd work from home. Had my laptop, was doing
> work. Well, they scheduled a meeting for that afternoon (at about lunch
> time), so I got ready and headed in to the office. I typed halt in a window
> on my machine, and went to get my stuff together. Came back a few minutes
> later and found the laptop was still up. Had inadvertantly (I blame
> focus-follows-mouse) shut down a remote box, our production webserver...

  You can use "molly-guard" to protect against this -- installed on the
remote system, it prompts for confirmation if a shutdown, reboot, halt, 
or poweroff command is entered in a remote shell.



  There's a legend that the name comes from an actual little girl named
Molly, who was visiting the workplace and tried out the shiny red button.

-- A.
--
Andrew Reid / rei...@bellatlantic.net


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Re: Console access using F1 etc

[Bob Proulx]

John Foster wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> > John Foster wrote:
> > > Any idea what I need to edit to get my system back to what I like. I
> > > will probably figure it out sooner or later, but sooner will be
> > > better.
> >
> > Probably.  But please do tell us on the mailing list what it is that
> > you are trying to accomplish.  You asked about how to drop from X
> > Windows to the text console and I replied with Control-Alt-F1.  As far
> > as I can tell that should have completely and totally answered your
> > question.  But I guess not.  I and others on the mailing list will be
> > happy to help but we are not mind readers.  Tell us something.
>
> Sorry I thought I made it plain. I can NOT use CTRL/ALT/F1 to get to the
> basic console.

Uhm... no.  You said:

> > > I can not access the consoles by hitting ctrl,alt,delete.

That is a different key sequence.  To get to the console you need
CTRL-ALT-F1 through CTRL-ALT-F6 or so.

  
The /etc/inittab defines the following line:

  # What to do when CTRL-ALT-DEL is pressed.
  ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t1 -a -r now

And is documented in the 'man inittab' man page:

   ctrlaltdel
  The process will be executed when init receives the
  SIGINT signal.  This means that someone on the system
  console has pressed the CTRL-ALT-DEL key
  combination. Typically one wants to execute some sort of
  shutdown either to get into single-user level or to
  reboot the machine.
  

> I have noticed that in the last 2 systems I have built & installed
> linux on that this was the standard installation with xwindows.

Sorry but your words are ambiguous.  I can't tell if you are saying
that you found CTRL-ALT-F1 standard and working or if you are saying
that it has not been working for you the last few installs.

Let me assure you that a stock Debian installation with X Windows on
most normal supported hardware that CTRL-ALT-F1 will get you to the
text console.  If it doesn't then there may be a hardware support
problem.  Especially as related to the newer KVM and framebuffer
console.  Blech!  I hate that the Linux kernel dropped support for
much of the older hardware when they turned on that system.

> This function is disabled. I had to edit some file in /etc/ X11 or
> Xorg to get this to work. Its been a couple of years & I forgot what
> I had to edit & where it was. Sorry for the confusion. Not a rookie,
> just don't do this often.

Okay.  But how do you know it is disabled?  Don't jump to conclusions.
Instead describe exactly what you are seeing.

You are in X11, right?  Is this a gdm (gnome display manager) login
screen?  You press CTRL-ALT-F1 and nothing happens and you are still
left at the gdm login screen?  Or does something happen such as does
the screen go black?

Did you try Whit's suggestion to try setting vga=785 on the boot
command line to set to a 640x480 64k color framebuffer?

If you say the type of hardware you have then someone on the list may
have the same hardware and be able to suggest the correct solution.

Bob


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Re: 'apt-get dist-upgrade' from Lenny to Squeeze crashes

[Bob Proulx]

Alex wrote:
>* Since I am working from a partimage backup of the Debian system
>  partition (S.O.E. that can be transferred from one machine to
>  another in case of emergency), it is not a problem to restore that
>  and start again, if you think that would be the best course and
>  then check the extra packages, circular dependencies and lint
>  etc..  I presume that all that would be done BEFORE adding the
>  DVD's to /etc/apt/sources.list.

Hmm...  Very interesting!  I don't know but yes that /might/ be
easiest.  Because then you would have a completely working Lenny
system and can resolve the issues there before the upgrade.  But at
the same time if I were doing it I would probably just work the
current problem and push through it.  If the problem is caused by
obsolete packages left behind then I think it can be solved through
judicious application of force using 'dpkg --force-depends' and
'apt-get -f install'.  But restoring to the checkpoint before is a
good idea!  You will have to be the judge of things since you are
handling the equipment.  I would hit it for a bit first before giving
up and going back to the checkpoint.

>* The full distro. set, is as a result of "old habits die hard"  ;-) :-
>  o  From my old days in the industry working on DEC PDP's
>(RSX/RT11/RSTS) & VAX's (VMS) and even the bad old days when
>Novell Netware came on 5.15" 'floppy disks' - you just did
>NOT start doing ANYTHING to the OS until you had the full
>distro in your hand, in front of the machine

Ah...  Lots of memories there.  But in those days one machine was all
that was available.  Screw it up and you were really in a world of
hurt.  But these days you probably have more than one computer
available to you.  So these days if you have a serious problem you can
use the other one to help with the recovery.

>  o  From days when we did not have any internet connectivity at
>home

These days I work out of my home and have better connectivity than the
folks at big box corporations.  :-)

>  o Proprietary Ethernet controllers that do not allow network
>connectivity when SOE's from one machine are partimage
>restored to new hardware

NICs not working due to missing kernel firmware blobs?  You could take
an inventory of all possible network cards on your site and add into
your standard image all of the needed combinations of firmware blobs.
That won't help when you encounter a new card for the first time.  But
it will work among the set that have become known.

  apt-cache search firmware | grep ^firmware

> Lastly, while having spent many fruitful and prosperous years in the
> industry, times and circumstances change, and I am now just a 'user
> of infotech' rather than a directly interested party.  For this
> reason, I have not kept up with this LSB and 'dependency based boot
> system' stuff.

The LSB headers for /etc/init.d scripts have been around for a while
but not required in Debian previously.  In the Squeeze 6.0 release
they are now required for the dependency based booting.  Starting with
Squeeze Debian users are going to be hitting this more and more.
However the fallback for the upgrade is that the system continues to
use the hard coded start order numbers.  Some people who like the
previous hard coded ordering system feel that is the way it should
continue.  So for them it is a win even if for others it is a loss.

The problems with the hard coded numbers is that when there are
circular dependencies it allows maintainers to point fingers at other
people.  They want other packages to change instead of their package.
Three maintainers with three packages all pointing fingers at the
person to their side and no one owning up to taking responsibility to
actually fixing the problem.  That isn't helpful.  I like the
dependency based boot ordering because you define dependency
relationships and circular dependencies are flagged as problems.  You
can't dodge the issue anymore.  The boot sequence is getting cleaned
up.  However there is still more work to be done and there are still
problems to be fixed in the current set of packages in Debian.

The usual problem is bootstrapping the networking system.  The problem
usually involves a combination of networking and syslog and DNS.
Everything wants networking.  Everything wants logging.  Everything
wants DNS.  But there is a bootstrapping problem among the core system
services.  DNS can't start until the networking is online.  People
often want to log remotely over the network.  People often want to use
hostnames instead of IP addresses.  You can how easily someone can
create a dependency loop there.

With the hard coded number boot ordering trying to sort those out in
the distribution packages was impossible.  But the local admin could
adjust the ordering and usually make it work.  But it wasn't pretty.
Now with the stated dependencies 

RAR/ apt-get Question

[RiverWind]

Hey There,

Whilst trying to get and install the rar file compression utility,
I encountered a bit of an interesting  obstacle. It seems that this
file is either obsolete and hence no longer supported by Linux, or
something else of that nature has made this application unavailable
via mainstream measures. I have several radio plays, books and
documentaries that have been compressed using rar, so I therefore
don't quite know what to do in order to process these particular
files so they can be played by my media utilities. Here is the
error message that the "apt" command returned.

Quote On:
apt-get install rar
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package rar is not available, but is referred to by another
package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been
obsoleted, or is only available from another source

E: Package 'rar' has no installation candidate
Quote Off:

Since this is my first time encountering this particular problem,
I will be more than open to and thankful for any and all
suggestions concerning the matter.

cheerio,
Riv

Feel free to visit my website and my blog and learn more about me
and what I stand for.
My Website @ http://riverwind.shellworld.net
My Blog http://windraven13.livejournal.com/


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Non functioning D-Link Ethernet adapter card

[John Foster]

I installed a D-Link DGE-530T 10/100/1000 Gigabit Desktop PCI
Adapterethernet card. Based on the RTL8169xx chip. The thing is not
recognized by
any flavor of linux. Mint, Ubuntu, or Debian (squeeze). Worked in Windows
7pro after installing the drivers from the setup disc. I want it to work on
this system (Quadruple booting of the above). There do not seem to be any
instructions, from D-Link anyways, that work, though the drivers are
provided as raw tarballs. I can't get them to work or even build. As these
chips have been around at least since 2003 I was very surprised to find no
mods precompiled in any distro. Any suggestions? Not stranded as I have a
working old 3com horse in there also. Just the new one is supposed to be
twice as fast.
Thanks

Re: Console access using F1 etc

[John Foster]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 6:42 PM, Bob Proulx  wrote:

> John Foster wrote:
> > Well I use it as an application server for a lot of video content so
> > I need the X-windows for editing and viewing.  I also do both on
> > this system and it is an intranet server as well.
>
> When you said production server it implied something like a rack mount
> data center server.  But you mean a machine with a graphics display
> and keyboard such as a deskside and it is acting as a server too.
> Gotcha.
>
> > Any idea what I need to edit to get my system back to what I like. I
> > will probably figure it out sooner or later, but sooner will be
> > better.
>
> Probably.  But please do tell us on the mailing list what it is that
> you are trying to accomplish.  You asked about how to drop from X
> Windows to the text console and I replied with Control-Alt-F1.  As far
> as I can tell that should have completely and totally answered your
> question.  But I guess not.  I and others on the mailing list will be
> happy to help but we are not mind readers.  Tell us something.
>
> Bob
>
Sorry I thought I made it plain. I can NOT use CTRL/ALT/F1 to get to the
basic console. I have noticed that in the last 2 systems I have built &
installed linux on that this was the standard installation with xwindows.
This function is disabled. I had to edit some file in /etc/ X11 or Xorg to
get this to work. Its been a couple of years & I forgot what I had to edit &
where it was. Sorry for the confusion. Not a rookie, just don't do this
often.
Thanks

Re: Console access using F1 etc

[Whit Hansell]

On 09/14/2011 06:59 PM, John Foster wrote:
I recently had to do a new installation of squeeze on a production 
server. Its been a LONG time since I did that and I see a few things 
are different since my last time. I can not access the consoles by 
hitting ctrl,alt, delete. I recall a couple of years ago that I had to 
edit something somewhere to enable this feature.  I like to use the 
console for doing many things as root from a command line. I thought 
it was a file in /etc/X11 but do not recall. Anyone know what & where 
I should edit.


John,
I had the same problem using Lenny when I changed monitors.  Found to 
fix it was to add vga=785 to the end of the kernel lines in 
/boot/grub//menu/./lst. The 785 has to do w. the font size. I forget 
exactly how it all works but that was what did it for me.


Hope that helps.  It did for me.  I kept getting a message "out of 
range.  It did not like my new monitor for some reason.


Here is an example of some of the lines in my _old_ menu.lst file...

[...]
/

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-1-amd64

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-amd64 root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet _vga=785_

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-amd64

[...]

Whit

Re: 'apt-get dist-upgrade' from Lenny to Squeeze crashes

[Alex]

Hi Bob,

Thank you very much for the prompt and very comprehensive reply.

There are some questions and comments arising, please:-

   * Since I am working from a partimage backup of the Debian system
 partition (S.O.E. that can be transferred from one machine to
 another in case of emergency), it is not a problem to restore that
 and start again, if you think that would be the best course and
 then check the extra packages, circular dependencies and lint
 etc..  I presume that all that would be done BEFORE adding the
 DVD's to /etc/apt/sources.list.
   * The full distro. set, is as a result of "old habits die hard"  ;-) :-
 o  From my old days in the industry working on DEC PDP's
   (RSX/RT11/RSTS) & VAX's (VMS) and even the bad old days when
   Novell Netware came on 5.15" 'floppy disks' - you just did
   NOT start doing ANYTHING to the OS until you had the full
   distro in your hand, in front of the machine
 o  From days when we did not have any internet connectivity at
   home
 o Proprietary Ethernet controllers that do not allow network
   connectivity when SOE's from one machine are partimage
   restored to new hardware

Lastly, while having spent many fruitful and prosperous years in the 
industry, times and circumstances change, and I am now just a 'user of 
infotech' rather than a directly interested party.  For this reason, I 
have not kept up with this LSB and 'dependency based boot system' stuff. 

I have only recently started to get my head around all the /dev/etc.etc. 
naming conventions. I am not sure if this is part of this 'dependency 
based boot system', but when I get told that I have to have something 
that looks like a hexadecimal version of 
'nameinternationaladdresspostcodeandinternationalphonenumber' as my NEW 
device naming convention, I must admit that the old "acronym phobia" 
that forced me from the industry in the end, starts to rear its ugly 
head again and the questions start to arise "why do we want to make life 
MORE complicated and LESS?".  At that point  just say NO!  Please just 
give me the /dev/etc.etc. naming convention that I have just managed to 
get my head around.


Any chance of a link to a "concise primer" / "idiots guide" to LSB and  
'dependency based boot system'?


Thank you once again for the prompt and very comprehensive reply.

Thanking you in anticipation.

Regards

Alex

Re: Console access using F1 etc

[Bob Proulx]

John Foster wrote:
> Well I use it as an application server for a lot of video content so
> I need the X-windows for editing and viewing.  I also do both on
> this system and it is an intranet server as well.

When you said production server it implied something like a rack mount
data center server.  But you mean a machine with a graphics display
and keyboard such as a deskside and it is acting as a server too.
Gotcha.

> Any idea what I need to edit to get my system back to what I like. I
> will probably figure it out sooner or later, but sooner will be
> better.

Probably.  But please do tell us on the mailing list what it is that
you are trying to accomplish.  You asked about how to drop from X
Windows to the text console and I replied with Control-Alt-F1.  As far
as I can tell that should have completely and totally answered your
question.  But I guess not.  I and others on the mailing list will be
happy to help but we are not mind readers.  Tell us something.

Bob


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Re: Console access using F1 etc

[John Foster]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Bob Proulx  wrote:

> John Foster wrote:
> > I recently had to do a new installation of squeeze on a production
> server.
>
> Excellent!
>
> > Its been a LONG time since I did that and I see a few things are
> different
> > since my last time. I can not access the consoles by hitting ctrl,alt,
> > delete.
>
> You mean Control-Alt-F1 instead.  Or Control-Alt-F2 and similar for
> other function keys.
>
> After dropping to the console then you don't need to use control
> anymore.  Originally on the console it was only Alt-F1, Alt-F2, and
> Alt-Left and Alt-Right to shift between virtual consoles.  Recently
> because so many people have finger memory from X that the Control
> modifier was also added as additional key shortcuts.
>
> You installed X Windows on your server?  Is that wise?  If it is a
> server does it need to run X11 at all?  I wouldn't think so and don't
> run it on any of my servers.
>
> Bob
>
---
Well I use it as an application server for a lot of video content so I need
the X-windows for editing and viewing. I also do both on this system and it
is an intranet server as well. Any idea what I need to edit to get my system
back to what I like. I will probably figure it out sooner or later, but
sooner will be better.
Thanks.

Re: Free drivers for AMD Radeon (Vaio S)

[Dan]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 6:43 AM, Camaleón  wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:56:48 -0400, Dan wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Camaleón  wrote:
>>> On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:27:17 -0400, Dan wrote:
>>>
 I would like to buy a Vaio S. It has the user-switchable graphics card
 AMD Radeon 6470M.
>>>
>>> Then take a look into this Ubuntu forum thread (post #11) where a user
>>> talks about the status of that card in his distribution:
>>>
>>> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=467b83bbff9b48f6a32dc2c2d06bf452&t=1699832&page=2
>
> (...)
>
>> Thanks for your answer. That post is from April and things may have
>> changed but it seems that it is not a great idea to buy a laptop with a
>> switchable graphics card, they are not well supported right now. I was
>> debating between the Vaio S and the Macbook pro. The Macbook uses an
>> integrated intel card which should work better with Linux.
>
> Uff... I would avoid a Mac at all. Better a compatible system than
> irons from a "closed-minded" company :-)
>
> But I would reconsider a dual VGA based laptop, mainly because of two
> points:
>
> 1/ They're still fairly new in the linux scope.
>
> 2/ I see no point of having a dual VGA card at all. A good power
> management routine provided by the card's driver that reduces the watts
> consumption of the card when it is required should be enough, I don't
> see why the need of using two different graphic chipsets and what is
> worst, they can be only controlled by "undetermined" (i.e., not open)
> tools, so I prefer to stick to something that I know how it behaves.
>
>> Has anybody a good experience with switchable graphic cards?
>
> I can't tell for this, sorry ;-(
>
> Greetings,
>
> --
> Camaleón

Hi,

I went to the shop and tested a live ubuntu CD and it worked! The
wireless, sound and graphic card worked. The switch was in Stamina
(Intel graphic card) The fancy 3D effects of Unity worked pretty well,
that is enough for me as I use bare gnome. I did lspci and I can see
both cards the Intel and the AMD.

Why would you stay away from Mac... and why did you mention
compatibility? Everything should work with Debian because it is a PC.
They are just using the new EFI system, but what I understood is that
EFI will be the standard in the near future.

Greetings,
Dan


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Re: Console access using F1 etc

[Bob Proulx]

John Foster wrote:
> I recently had to do a new installation of squeeze on a production server.

Excellent!

> Its been a LONG time since I did that and I see a few things are different
> since my last time. I can not access the consoles by hitting ctrl,alt,
> delete.

You mean Control-Alt-F1 instead.  Or Control-Alt-F2 and similar for
other function keys.

After dropping to the console then you don't need to use control
anymore.  Originally on the console it was only Alt-F1, Alt-F2, and
Alt-Left and Alt-Right to shift between virtual consoles.  Recently
because so many people have finger memory from X that the Control
modifier was also added as additional key shortcuts.

You installed X Windows on your server?  Is that wise?  If it is a
server does it need to run X11 at all?  I wouldn't think so and don't
run it on any of my servers.

Bob


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Console access using F1 etc

[John Foster]

I recently had to do a new installation of squeeze on a production server.
Its been a LONG time since I did that and I see a few things are different
since my last time. I can not access the consoles by hitting ctrl,alt,
delete. I recall a couple of years ago that I had to edit something
somewhere to enable this feature.  I like to use the console for doing many
things as root from a command line. I thought it was a file in /etc/X11 but
do not recall. Anyone know what & where I should edit.

USB ACM vs USB memory device conflict

[Thomas H. George]

I purchased a Verizon Samsung SHU-u370 cell phone and installed a
microSD card.  When connected to a usb port the phone registers as an
ACM device, specifically as ttyACM0.  The settins on the phone allow a
choice between Media Sync Mode and Modem modem and clearly the Debian
kernel has chosen the latter though the phone is set for the former.
The manual for the phone says it should appear as a new cd drive
(presumably when connected to a Windows system, not having a Windows
system I have not tried this).

Any ideas as to how I can persuade my Debian system to cancel the ACM
setting which I am unlikely to need and recognize the phone as a mass
storage device?

Tom


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Re: 3D.rendering became slow since moved to wheezy.

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:04:35 +0700, Sthu wrote in message 
<4e70ecd6.925ee30a.6e29.6...@mx.google.com>:

> Good time of the day.
> 
> I have slow 3D rendering on ATI card after full upgrading to wheezy.
> 
> Is there any strategy how I can investigate the bottle neck so that I
> might file a bug report against it?
> 
> Thanks for Your time.
> 
> 

..chk that you have linux-firmware-free and -non-free installed, and 
KMS working, both upstream and Debian likes to weed out closed source
blobs and put them in -non-free packages, and at least the radeon 
driver still depends on some of them for speed.


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Re: Bug in Debian installer

[Bob Proulx]

sppmg wrote:
> 於 2011年09月14日 02:45, Bob Proulx 提到:
> > spp mg wrote:
> >> I install Debian(6.0.2.1 amd64) to a old HDD.This HDD has a lvm
> >> partition,it's creat by Fedora installer.
> >> I can't delete this lvm partition in intaller,it's display about "lvm
> >> is busy..." ,even if I delete all Logical Volume and restart
> >> installer.

I am unable to recreate your issue.  That does not mean you have not
found a problem.  It means that I cannot reproduce your problem.  It
works okay for me.

If I have an existing LVM configuration I am presented with a dialog
screen saying that there is an existing LVM configuration which is
about to be removed.  "Remove existing logical volume data?"
Selecting "" removes it.

> Now,I want delete lvm(vda5),but it display "partition in use" .So I
> enter "Configure the Logical Volume Manager" this entry,and delete all
> volume group.But it still display "partition in use",even if I restart
> installer.

I am sorry but I am unable to recreate this problem.  I do not see
that behavior.

This is the debian-user mailing list.  You probably should take this
problem directly to the debian-installer people.  They have the domain
knowledge for the problem.

Bob


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Re: Swap does not mount [swapon failed: Device or resource busy]

[Walter Hurry]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:54:29 -0400, Param wrote:

Please post the outputs of:

cat /etc/fstab

sudo fdisk -l



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Swap does not mount [swapon failed: Device or resource busy]

[Param]

Hi,

The swap partition did not mount post-installation (Debian "Squeeze"
(Xfce)).
Created a 2nd swap partition, & planned to delete the earlier swap
partition. The 2nd swap partition doesn't mount either.

(Been using Debian (my 1st intro to Linux) for < 3 weeks. If
a) I'm missing any blindingly obvious solution(s)
b) this post should have been posted under a different topic/forum

then please let me know.)

Further info:
Followed the instructions at http://web.mit.edu/rhel-doc/5/RHEL-5-ma ...
dding.html
Name of logical volume: HU

/etc/fstab: (commented out the earlier swap partition)
-
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
#  
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/mapper/HU-root / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=50ed87f2-905e-4780-b867-a8e0831e3db8 /boot ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/mapper/HU-home /home ext3 defaults,user_xattr 0 2

/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/usb0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

#/dev/mapper/HU-swap none swap sw 0 0
#2nd_swap
/dev/mapper/HU-swap2 swap swap defaults 0 0
--

(tried /dev/HU/swap2 instead of /dev/mapper/HU-swap2. Did not work.)

Output of fdisk -l
Code: Select all Disk
/dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xed1f86f7

   Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   1  64  512000   83  Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2   *  64  77  1024007  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3  773481273437507  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda43481   14594892610575  Extended
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda534813572  732160   83  Linux
/dev/sda63573   1459488527872   8e  Linux LVM


Output of swapon -a
Code: Select all swapon:
/dev/mapper/HU-swap2: swapon failed: Device or resource busy


Output of swapon -va
Code: Select all swapon
on /dev/mapper/HU-swap2
swapon: /dev/mapper/HU-swap2: found swap signature: version 1, page-size 4,
same byte order
swapon: /dev/mapper/HU-swap2: pagesize=4096,
swapsize=2147483648,
devsize=2147483648
swapon: /dev/mapper/HU-swap2: swapon failed: Device or resource busy


Output of swapon -s
Code: Select all  swapon
on /dev/mapper/HU-swap2
FilenameType  Size   Used   Priority
/dev/dm-3   partition   2097144   0   42
Output of mount /dev/HU/swap2
mount: mount point none does not exist



How can I mount swap upon booting? Would really appreciate help/suggestions.
Thanks for your time and patience,
--

Re: 'apt-get dist-upgrade' from Lenny to Squeeze crashes

[Bob Proulx]

Alex wrote:
> 'apt-get dist-upgrade' from Lenny (up to date as of 04 Spet. 2011)

Too late now but before upgrading I think it is advisable to look at
the output of apt-show-versions and clean up packages that are no
longer available.  Even though you were fully up to date with Lenny
there were probably other packages installed that have become obsolete
and should be removed.  I think the problem is with these extra
packages.

  $ apt-show-versions | grep -v -e uptodate

Now that you have a mixed Lenny Squeeze system looking at this output
may be more difficult.  You will have to improvise.

> to Squeeze crashes with the following error:-
> 
>E: Internal Error, Could not perform immediate configuration (2) on 
> libtext-iconv-perl

I think you have extra packages that have been installed previously
but are no longer in the archive and among the set there are circular
dependencies.  These circular dependencies confuse APT and cause it to
fail.

> Procedure used during upgrade to date:-

>1) Downloaded and burned all .iso images from
>http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.2.1/i386/iso-dvd/ to DVD.
>2) Using Synaptic, all DVDs the added to the repository using 'Add
>CDROM', and all other repositories disabled (commemnted out).

Why?  That seems very painful to me and uses a lot of bandwidth.  Why
not download just the needed packages with apt-get instead of
downloading *all* available packages?  It is not only easier on you
but it is also easier on the archive mirrors.  Any single machine and
associated site will only use a small fraction of all available
packages.

 ...good tracking history deleted...

>11) E: Internal Error, Could not perform immediate configuration (2) on 
> libtext-iconv-perl
>12) Search web for this error message and find that I have to reinstall 
> libc6 and libc6-i686

I think not when the problem is reported with libtext-iconv-perl.  You
probably found hits on reports of error with libc6.

>13) Reboot into "single-user" mode using root password.
>14) apt-get install --reinstall libc6 libc6-i686

Didn't hurt but I think didn't do anything helpful either.

>15) apt-get dist-upgrade
>16) E: Internal Error, Could not perform immediate configuration (2) on 
> libtext-iconv-perl

Usually that error means a circular dependency loop.  You need to find
the problem and break the loop.  Start by removing lint that has
accumulated.  If you are lucky then cleaning that up will be enough.

I don't know why you are insisting to use DVDs for this upgrade.  It
makes no sense to me and I think just setting yourself up for a more
painful upgrade.

  $ apt-show-versions | grep -v -e uptodate -e linux-image -e keyring

Review that and remove the lint that has collected.

  # dpkg --remove somepackage

Also using deborphan and orphaner can be useful for cleaning.

  # apt-get install deborphan
  # orphaner

You can force an installation of a particular package.  These packages
are downloaded to /var/cache/apt/archives.  This means that you can
fairly easily use that cache location and use dpkg to install.

  # dpkg -i --force-depends /var/cache/apt/archives/somepackage.deb

For example because your package with the problem is
libtext-iconv-perl you could for it to be the only package installed
with dpkg directly:

  # dpkg -i --force-depends 
/var/cache/apt/archives/libtext-iconv-perl_1.7-2_i386.deb
  # apt-get -f install

Then use 'apt-get -f install' to "fix" the newly introduced dependency
problems.

Other cleaning I recommend before an upgrade is to purge packages that
have been removed but have configuration files remaining behind.
Upgrades are a great time to clean up long gone packages that have
conffiles remaining behind that you will never use again.  Back up
anything that you wish to store long term if there is something you
have configured and think you might want to refer to again.  Remember
that a --purge deletes conffiles from /etc that are otherwise not
removed.

  $ dpkg -l | grep ^rc
  # dpkg --purge somepackage

The more styling way to do 'dpkg -l | grep ^rc' is to use grep-status
and have it print out only package names.  This is useful for more
command line and script automation.  More obscure perhaps but very
powerful and more precise output.

  $ grep-status -sPackage -n -FStatus "deinstall ok config-files"

Lastly here is a complication that makes this Debian upgrade more
difficult than most.  Debian migrates to a dependency based boot
system with Squeeze.  But it can only do this if all /etc/init.d/*
files have LSB headers.  If you don't want this migration then any
error in this will cause that part of the upgrade to stop.  You will
have a good Squeeze system but without dependency based booting.  That
is fine.  Many people consider that a feature.  But if you want to be
like a freshly installed system then you will want it.  This means
cleaning /etc/init.d/ of any executable script (e.g. mode a+x) that
does not have LSB headers.  T

Re: After upgrade to squeeze OS will not accept passphrase to unlock disk

[Bob Proulx]

Walter Hurry wrote:
> I don't know what finnix is, but if it allows you to mount and access the 
> Debian filesystem, then here is one way:
> 
> Boot into finnix.
> Become finnix's root.
> Mount the Debian partition containing /etc.
> Edit Debian's /etc/inittab.
> Look for the line under # What to do in single-user mode.
> Change it from ~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin to ~~:S:wait:/bin/bash
> Now boot Debian into single user mode and you will not be asked for a 
> password. You can now run passwd.

Even easier is to boot the system with init=/bin/bash as a kernel
commandline boot parameter.  Then instead of init loading it will load
bash as the init process.  This is in some ways similar to single user
mode.  It won't ask for a password and you can then mount disks and
repair the system.

Bob


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Re: linux-kbuild-3.1.0 ?

[Sven Hoexter]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 04:14:31PM +, Camaleón wrote:

> Well, then who/what is the target of "linux-headers-3.1.0-rc4-amd64" 
> package? I mean, if it is not installable -on purpose- because of the 
> broken dependency, what is it aimed for? Just curious :-?

You can try out the kernel image, so to speak the kernel itself, and check
if it works on your hardware. It's just the surounding toolchain to
build e.g. dkms modules etc. which is missing. But that doesn't
prevent you from checking if $latest-fix-in-upstream-rc fixes one of
your reported or not reported problems.

Sven
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And I don't know much, but I do know this:
With a golden heart comes a rebel fist.
 [ Streetlight Manifesto - Here's To Life ]


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Re: After upgrade to squeeze OS will not accept passphrase to unlock disk

[Walter Hurry]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:25:50 -0400, Ken Heard wrote:

> Since writing the last paragraph of my post earlier today:
> 
>> Not only that, but also I after closing the computer and rebooting I
>> was unable to install *any* operating system, whether finnix from the
>> CD or Squeeze from the hard drive. I am now consequently forced to do
>> completely new Squeeze installation.
> 
> I discovered that I could indeed boot finnix from the CD and Squeeze
> from the hard drive.  Nevertheless, because of the idiosyncrasies of
> finnix it will not help me recover the Squeeze root password.
> 
> Last month there was a thread about replacing a forgotten root password,
> but frankly is seems to me to be easier to start the installation all
> over again.

I don't know what finnix is, but if it allows you to mount and access the 
Debian filesystem, then here is one way:

Boot into finnix.
Become finnix's root.
Mount the Debian partition containing /etc.
Edit Debian's /etc/inittab.
Look for the line under # What to do in single-user mode.
Change it from ~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin to ~~:S:wait:/bin/bash
Now boot Debian into single user mode and you will not be asked for a 
password. You can now run passwd.


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Re: autodiscover of a samba share

[tadziu]

> When using "smb://" you don't "mount" the shares, you "access" the
> shares. And you can bookmark your network shares for an easy access, they
> will appear listed in the left side panel.
>
> yes i know, i've also experimented with adding shares to fstab through
cifs,
and static ip number. and it was kinda successful but not exactly what
i want.

but that is not the point. probably misuderstanding
comes from by bad english.

i'll put it this way:

by default, process of browsing samba shares requires:

1. opening networks
2. choosing workgroup if more than one
3. choosing computer if more than one
4. opening desired folder

ofc you can make shortcuts to make thing easy.

problem with such method:

1. refreshing shares after reboot of 'server' machine
2. repetition of mentioned process every time new computer connects to
network

and now my caprice:

1. every time i connect to a network (at friend's house or in my house with
occasional other's people computers) i can see listed all shared folders
in the left panel of nautilus without former creating shortcuts.
2. the list refreshes every time new machine connects or disconnects
3. ability to work with dynamic ip's not just static as with cifs (i can be
wrong just
individual experience)

just as it works in macos leopard, and does not on any linux distro i've
used.

it's just important for me because as a hobbyst musician i work with large
files
which i transfer between different people and machines on diverse networks,
and copying those files with portable hdd is just onerous.

i hope i made things clear

all the best

/t

ps, sorry for the mixup with notion of mounting, but any time i open
public shared folder cairo dock notifies me that a particular folder was
mounted.
on the other hand those folders can be unmounted in nautilus left panel with

a single click just as it's done with memory sticks. i don't get it...

Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Justin The Cynical]

On 9/13/11 3:15 PM, Bryan Irvine wrote:

> Which brings me to another fun question.  What's your worst
> administration mistake and how did you recover?

Years ago on my main workstation back in my slackware days, I was
upgrading samba from the source tarballs.

I had everything compiled and installed in /usr/local and was trying to
remove the old binaries in /usr/bin.  The command was something like this:

root:/usr# rm /usr/bin/smb *

The command ran quickly, and obviously I realised something was wrong
when various things, like ls, stopped working.

Fortunately I had an open instance of midnight commander, so I was able
to ftp the now-missing binaries from the original install media in a
secondary windows machine and use the built-in chmod/chown functions in
mc to unarchive and fix the files so they could be run.

>From this, I learned the importance of watching the spaces in a command
and being aware of what the value of cwd is.


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Re: After upgrade to squeeze OS will not accept passphrase to unlock disk

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Since writing the last paragraph of my post earlier today:

> Not only that, but also I after closing the computer and rebooting I was
> unable to install *any* operating system, whether finnix from the CD or
> Squeeze from the hard drive. I am now consequently forced to do
> completely new Squeeze installation.

I discovered that I could indeed boot finnix from the CD and Squeeze
from the hard drive.  Nevertheless, because of the idiosyncrasies of
finnix it will not help me recover the Squeeze root password.

Last month there was a thread about replacing a forgotten root password,
but frankly is seems to me to be easier to start the installation all
over again.

Regards, Ken Heard

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Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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Logitech K360 keyboard NumLock behavior gets turned on by Shift keys!

[Gilbert Sullivan]

When using a text editor like Geany I like to turn NumLock off and use 
the Alt, Ctrl, and Shift keys with the numeric keypad keys to select and 
move text and to move around through text.


This is the first time I've encountered a keyboard that activates the 
NumLock when either Shift key is depressed. So, when I press Shift-End, 
instead of selecting text to the end of the line, the numeral "1" is 
entered!


If I use this keyboard with a Windows system, the NumLock / numeric 
keypad all function as expected, allowing me to make proper use of the 
keypad in an editor.


I've used a number of other external keyboards with this system (Lenovo 
T520i with AMD64 image, Debian testing), and all of them exhibit the 
behavior I expect from NumLock -- namely that it stays off when I turn 
it off, and it stays on when I turn it on.


I've called Logitech support, and they say that this behavior is 
"unexpected".


I tried a number of the alternative Logitech keyboard layouts listed in 
Xfce's settings, but none of them fixes the issue. (I figured that most 
of the "special" keyboard layouts are for get special function keys to 
work, anyhow, but I thought I'd give it a shot.) Is this keyboard going 
to need a special driver if it is to behave properly?


I really like the keyboard. It's comfortable, tiny, and quiet. The 
manufacturer claims around a 3 year battery life. It's got a lot of nice 
features, but I'm going to have to work hard to train my fingers out of 
a couple of decades of practiced behavior when I'm trying to select text.



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Re: netbook, close, suspend: ACPI?

[Alexander Batischev]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 07:34:01AM +0300, Mihamina Rakotomandimby wrote:
> I just noticed that if I "close" (or fold) it, after a while it goes
> to suspend state (or hibernate I dont know exactly). I have to
> "open" it and press the power button in order to make it.

If you need to press power button in order to wake the computer, it's
hibernate. To wake up from sleep it's enough to press any key at
keyboard.

> How to avoid going to a sleepy state when closed? I want to close it
> for esthetic reasons.
> 
> I guess it's about disabling some ACPI, but what is the Debian way
> to do that?

If you don't have any DE installed, it should be enough to go to
/etc/acpi/events, find the file that describes reaction to closed lid
and then making appropriate script non-executable. Say, if in event file
you saw the line:

  action=/etc/acpi/lid.sh

then you need to do the following:

  $ sudo chmod -x /etc/acpi/lid.sh

Note, though, that it may became executable again once you update the
package (I not sure about that, though).

If you have some DE installed, check your settings - it should be there.

-- 
Regards,
Alexander Batischev

1024D/69093C81
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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Walter Hurry]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:22:14 -0700, Mike McClain wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 08:51:50AM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>> Bryan Irvine wrote:
>> >Which brings me to another fun question. What's your worst
>> >administration mistake and how did you recover? -Bryan
>> 
> 
> 
> I've never administered anyone elses system but my own but for several
> years was running different versions of Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris x86
> on the same machine (different partitions) to get a feel for things were
> handled by the different OSs. I was dismayed to find when I installed
> Redhat that it used my Solaris partition as swap durring the install.
> Ouch,

It is perhaps unfortunate that type 82 is used for both Solaris and Linux 
Swap. However, *you* get to decide during installation which partition is 
used for swap.



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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Brad Alexander]

I had a case where it had snowed, and instead of driving 50 miles in snow
and ice with dodgy DC drivers, I'd work from home. Had my laptop, was doing
work. Well, they scheduled a meeting for that afternoon (at about lunch
time), so I got ready and headed in to the office. I typed halt in a window
on my machine, and went to get my stuff together. Came back a few minutes
later and found the laptop was still up. Had inadvertantly (I blame
focus-follows-mouse) shut down a remote box, our production webserver...

As for non-Linux, I found out that the GNU version of killall doesn't take
arguments, it does just that...Everything but the halt. Was on an AIX box,
and needed to kill several licensing servers, so I typed "killall
" After about 5 minutes, lost contact with the box, because it
had killed all processes. Since then, I always prefer pkill...

--b

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Bryan Irvine  wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 7:02 AM, Aaron Toponce 
> wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 03:15:13PM -0700, Bryan Irvine wrote:
> >> Which brings me to another fun question.  What's your worst
> >> administration mistake and how did you recover?
> >
> > My worst administration mistake was rebooting a rack in our production
> data
> > center. I thought I had typed a specific IP address to get to a specific
> > rack, but fat-fingered one of the numbers in the IP, and it send me to
> our
> > production rack.
> >
> > My job was to setup the hard drives with software RAID, and put LVM on
> > them. THere were plenty of opportunities the system was giving me that
> > should have warned me that I was on the wrong rack, but I continued
> anyway.
> >
> > Getting frustrated that I was seeing more devices than expected, I issued
> a
> > reboot on most of the servers in that rack. Because those servers were
> part
> > of a clustered filesystem, and running many virtual machines, a lot of
> our
> > infrastructure went down, and we were down for about 3 hours.
> >
> > Needless to say, it was a valuable lesson, one I'll never forget. In
> fact,
> > it prompted me to use LocalCommand in my ~/.ssh/config, and echo colored
> > prompts, depending on whether or not I'm on a production (blinking bold
> red),
> > staging (bold yellow) ordevelopment (bold green) server.
>
> Now THAT is genius!  I'm going to have to do that. :-)
>
>
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>
>

Re: Encoder for linux

[Walter Hurry]

On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:06:56 -0400, cosme wrote:

> Hi
> 
> I'm looking for something similar to Windows Media Encoder Series 9 ES
> in Linux.
> 
> I'm use Debian squeeze

Can't help you, since I neither know nor care what "Windows Media Encoder 
Series 9 ES" is or does.

Now if you were to actually enumerate requirements...



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3D.rendering became slow since moved to wheezy.

[Sthu Deus]

Good time of the day.

I have slow 3D rendering on ATI card after full upgrading to wheezy.

Is there any strategy how I can investigate the bottle neck so that I
might file a bug report against it?

Thanks for Your time.


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Encoder for linux

[cosme]

Hi

I'm looking for something similar to Windows Media Encoder Series 9 ES in
Linux.

I'm use Debian squeeze

Regards
Cosme





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CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator

[cosme]

Hi

i'm trying to get my sound card pci:

06:01.0 Multimedia audio controller: Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24/30
[CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator] (rev 01)

but is not possible the kernel dos not support

i use Debian squeeze.

How i could install and condigure this sound card???

Regards
Cosme




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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Mike McClain]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 08:51:50AM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Bryan Irvine wrote:
> >Which brings me to another fun question. What's your worst 
> >administration mistake and how did you recover? -Bryan 
> 
 

I've never administered anyone elses system but my own but
for several years was running different versions of Linux, 
FreeBSD and Solaris x86 on the same machine (different 
partitions) to get a feel for things were handled by the 
different OSs. I was dismayed to find when I installed Redhat
that it used my Solaris partition as swap durring the install.
Ouch,
Mike
-- 
Satisfied user of Linux since 1997.
O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org


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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Bryan Irvine]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 7:02 AM, Aaron Toponce  wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 03:15:13PM -0700, Bryan Irvine wrote:
>> Which brings me to another fun question.  What's your worst
>> administration mistake and how did you recover?
>
> My worst administration mistake was rebooting a rack in our production data
> center. I thought I had typed a specific IP address to get to a specific
> rack, but fat-fingered one of the numbers in the IP, and it send me to our
> production rack.
>
> My job was to setup the hard drives with software RAID, and put LVM on
> them. THere were plenty of opportunities the system was giving me that
> should have warned me that I was on the wrong rack, but I continued anyway.
>
> Getting frustrated that I was seeing more devices than expected, I issued a
> reboot on most of the servers in that rack. Because those servers were part
> of a clustered filesystem, and running many virtual machines, a lot of our
> infrastructure went down, and we were down for about 3 hours.
>
> Needless to say, it was a valuable lesson, one I'll never forget. In fact,
> it prompted me to use LocalCommand in my ~/.ssh/config, and echo colored
> prompts, depending on whether or not I'm on a production (blinking bold red),
> staging (bold yellow) ordevelopment (bold green) server.

Now THAT is genius!  I'm going to have to do that. :-)


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Re: linux-kbuild-3.1.0 ?

[Camaleón]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:49:19 +0200, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Camaleón  wrote:
>> On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:39:15 +0200, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
>>
>>>   I would like to give linux 3.10~rc4 a try. For this I tried
>>>   installing:
>>>
>>> $ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.1.0-rc4-amd64 -t experimental
>>> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>>>  linux-headers-3.1.0-rc4-amd64 : Depends: linux-kbuild-3.1.0 but it
>>>  is
>>> not installable
>>> E: Broken packages
>>>
>>> I could not find where is linux-kbuild-3.1.0, ref:
>>>
>>> http://packages.debian.org/experimental/kernel/linux-headers-3.1.0-rc4-amd64
>>
>> ***
>> dep: linux-kbuild-3.1.0
>>    Package not available
>> ***
>>
>> Given that's from the experimental branch... have you already reported
>> this?
> 
> Apparently this is not expected:
> 
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=641428#10

That was fast :-)

Well, then who/what is the target of "linux-headers-3.1.0-rc4-amd64" 
package? I mean, if it is not installable -on purpose- because of the 
broken dependency, what is it aimed for? Just curious :-?

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Debian 6 iSCSI root boot problem

[Andrés Durán]

Hello to all, and sorry for may bad english, i'm Spanish.

I'm trying to install Debian 6 on one server without internal disks, I 
have a Workstation running Debian 6 too that run as an iSCSI Target. This work 
station is configured as iSCSI target with the package iscsitarget, it is 
running without problems. The logical drive is exported perfectly.

On the other hand (the initiator), the server is an HP DL380 G6, it  
have an network controller with boot from iSCSI support, we like use it to 
start Debian 6 without PXE, BOOTP, usb or something else.
I'm using this post "http://www.david-web.co.uk/blog/?p=188"; to install 
Debian in the Target drive using iSCSI protocol (Debian is installed correctly 
in the remote drive using this method), but when I finish the installation and 
the server restart it is unable to boot. The grub is installed on the remote 
drive, and the Network firmware is well configured and it is connected to the 
remote drive at the moment of boot, but when the Grub of the remote drive try 
to start it show an error that says: "Grub Read Error" and the boot process is 
stopped at this time. At this time no grub rescue mode is available and no 
interactive methods is possible to debug the boot process.

Here is the details of the server and his network controller (Chipset Broadcom 
BCM5709C): 
"http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13234_div/13234_div.HTML";

Because I'm using the iSCSI firmware provided by the network card, I'm 
not doing nothing in the last process of the post 
"http://www.david-web.co.uk/blog/?p=188"; where the post says: "DON’T allow the 
system to reboot – the installed system can’t boot yet. I decided that I wanted 
to boot using BOOTP and TFTP". 

Please, ¿could someone help me?

Thanks and Best Regards,
Andrés Durán

Re: After upgrade to squeeze OS will not accept passphrase to unlock disk

[Ken Heard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Darac Marjal wrote:

> Just to clarify things, you did change the password for the root on your
> installation, didn't you? That is, you didn't just change the password
> for root on the live CD, which was then lost as you rebooted?

After examination of the directory structure created by Finnix, I
discovered that you are right.  Finnix creates two new directories,
FINNIX and UNIONFS.  Each one of these has a complete linux standard
directory structure.  Running command "ls -l /" lists the major
directories, bin, boot, etc, home, lib, opt, root, run, sbin, srv, usr
and var as links to the same sub-directories in directory UNIONFS.

So I indeed set the root password for finnix, not Squeeze, with the
result that I am still denied access to root in Squeeze.  How that
password got changed from the one I set last May when I started the
long, difficult process of upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze I know not.
(Why are Debian upgrades always so difficult and time consuming?)  That
password had been working for a time, but without any conscious
intervention on my part it suddenly stopped working.

While I had finnix loaded I tried to access the Squeeze /etc directory
by removing the relevant link, so I could update the /etc/passwd or
/etc/shadow files rather than /UNIONFS/etc/passwd or
/UNIONFS/etc/shadow. but without success.  In fact that attempt caused
finnix to hang the computer.

Not only that, but also I after closing the computer and rebooting I was
unable to install *any* operating system, whether finnix from the CD or
Squeeze from the hard drive. I am now consequently forced to do
completely new Squeeze installation.

Regards, Ken Heard




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Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Rob Owens]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 11:32:38PM +, Walter Hurry wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:15:13 -0700, Bryan Irvine wrote:
> 
> > Which brings me to another fun question.  What's your worst
> > administration mistake and how did you recover?
> 
> The worst admin mistake is failure to secure proper backups. Full stop.
> 
Early one morning I was experimenting on one of my company's Linux
servers.  In the home directory of a test user, I issued:

rm -rf *

I did it on purpose.  But it took a long time to remove what should have
only been a handful of files.  I hit Ctrl-C and then 'ls'.  I realized
that I had a shared company network drive mounted as
/home/testuser/company, and it was deleting everything on that drive!

11 GB of data was deleted from that drive.  Thanks to BackupPC, I had
everything restored in 15 minutes.  Nothing was lost, and only one
person even noticed what happened.

-Rob


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Re: linux-kbuild-3.1.0 ?

[Mathieu Malaterre]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Camaleón  wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:39:15 +0200, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
>
>>   I would like to give linux 3.10~rc4 a try. For this I tried
>>   installing:
>>
>> $ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.1.0-rc4-amd64 -t experimental The
>> following packages have unmet dependencies:
>>  linux-headers-3.1.0-rc4-amd64 : Depends: linux-kbuild-3.1.0 but it is
>> not installable
>> E: Broken packages
>>
>> I could not find where is linux-kbuild-3.1.0, ref:
>>
>> http://packages.debian.org/experimental/kernel/linux-headers-3.1.0-rc4-amd64
>
> ***
> dep: linux-kbuild-3.1.0
>    Package not available
> ***
>
> Given that's from the experimental branch... have you already reported
> this?

Apparently this is not expected:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=641428#10


-- 
Mathieu


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Re: Controling Process Memory Consumption

[Camaleón]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:31:25 -0400, Roman Gelfand wrote:

> Is there a way, on os level or when executing, to limit the amount of
> memory a specific executable can use? or control the amount of memory a
> program sees for this machine.

You may find useful this thread:

http://help.lockergnome.com/linux/ulimit-process-limits--ftopict525956.html

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Debian 6 iSCSI root boot problem

[Andrés Durán]

Hello to all, and sorry for may bad english, i'm Spanish.

I'm trying to install Debian 6 on one server without internal disks, I 
have a Workstation running Debian 6 too that run as an iSCSI Target. This work 
station is configured as iSCSI target with the package iscsitarget, it is 
running without problems. The logical drive is exported perfectly.

On the other hand (the initiator), the server is an HP DL380 G6, it  
have an network controller with boot from iSCSI support, we like use it to 
start Debian 6 without PXE, BOOTP, usb or something else.
I'm using this post "http://www.david-web.co.uk/blog/?p=188"; to install 
Debian in the Target drive using iSCSI protocol (Debian is installed correctly 
in the remote drive using this method), but when I finish the installation and 
the server restart it is unable to boot. The grub is installed on the remote 
drive, and the Network firmware is well configured and it is connected to the 
remote drive at the moment of boot, but when the Grub of the remote drive try 
to start it show an error that says: "Grub Read Error" and the boot process is 
stopped at this time. At this time no grub rescue mode is available and no 
interactive methods is possible to debug the boot process.

Here is the details of the server and his network controller (Chipset Broadcom 
BCM5709C): 
"http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13234_div/13234_div.HTML";

Because I'm using the iSCSI firmware provided by the network card, I'm 
not doing nothing in the last process of the post 
"http://www.david-web.co.uk/blog/?p=188"; where the post says: "DON’T allow the 
system to reboot – the installed system can’t boot yet. I decided that I wanted 
to boot using BOOTP and TFTP". 

Please, ¿could someone help me?

Thanks and Best Regards,
Andrés Durán

Controling Process Memory Consumption

[Roman Gelfand]

Is there a way, on os level or when executing, to limit the amount of memory
a specific executable can use? or control the amount of memory a program
sees for this machine.



Thanks in advance

Re: Wiping hard drives

[shawn wilson]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 09:55, Aaron Toponce  wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 09:02:42AM -0400, shawn wilson wrote:
>> On Sep 14, 2011 8:51 AM, "Robert Parker"  wrote:
>> > What's wrong with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX for SSDs?
>>
>> Well, I remember hearing that data is recoverable to some degree unless the
>> media is destroyed. Is there no trace of a bit being stored after it is 0'd
>> out on an ssd?
>
> With regards to spinning platters, it's FUD. Today's drive densities are so
> great, that there is no room for the actuator to "jitter" the data off the
> track, as was problematic with drives in the early '90s and earlier. If the
> actuator doesn't put the data _exactly_ where it was last time, you could
> suffer data loss. So, writing a single pass of zeros will overwrite every
> bit, and there will be no "left-over" data that can be determined as to
> what was overwritten.
>

i sorta believe this. otoh, most of the places here in dc don't seem
to believe this. most places have a data assurance policy that
involves removing the face plate from the hdd (for rma purposes) and
shredding or compressing the disc (some places degauss, but i haven't
seen anyone do this for 2+ years now).

so, your argument is that this policy is because of fud?

> With SSDs, it's a different story. We've had HDD secure erasing solved for
> ages, but SSDs appear to be problematic. The same methods you would use for
> securely erasing an HDD should not be the same you use on an SSD (or any
> solid state media, such as USB thumb disks for that matter).
>
> Ars Technica ran two "Ask Ars" articles that pretty much explain the
> problem we are facing with SSDs:
>
>
> http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/01/askars-solid-state-drives-and-garbage-collection.ars
> http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/03/ask-ars-how-can-i-safely-erase-the-data-from-my-ssd-drive.ars
>

ok, yeah, i remember hearing about this. good read though. however,
this leaves the question: how do you delete data on a ssd?

>> The other thing is ease of use. I'm not going to tell my grandmother 'type
>> dd of..' no, not happening. But, 'go get the drill and you should notice
>> a circle outlay; you want to drill through the disc a third off center of
>> that circle' - that, she can manage just fine.
>
> If your grandmother is running a GNU/Linux desktop, then she should have no
> problem pulling up a terminal and typing "dd if=/dev/...". Then again, just
> physically bending the platters is enough to prevent every data recovery
> organization out there to get to your data, unencrypted or not.
>

i think that was sorta my point - it doesn't matter who you are or
what you run. if i tell you to drill a hole and give a rough
description of where to drill, i think a kid or mentally deficient
person can handle this task. it's a no brainer :)

'run linux, drop down to cli, run this'... no! even for me - if i want
to get rid of a disc and make sure the data isn't read, i pop out the
drill and follow my own advice. reason - it's quicker and better than
waiting for dd to write to every block on the disc. and generally, if
i'm getting rid of a disc, i've got a half dozen stacked in a closet
that i am cleaning out and i'm not going to shove disc in computer,
run dd, wait, remove disc, shove disc in computer, run dd, wait...
no! i'm going to: grab 2x4, grab drill, take disc, drill, take disc,
drill, take disc, drill, etc.

however, my point (more validated by ars) is that there doesn't seem
to be a good solution for ssd that doesn't involve some mechanism of
total destruction that isn't viable for most people. it seems that the
only good advise is to encrypt data. this isn't a very good option if
i'm running a db or san/nas on these discs (i suppose tpm might help
but there's still overhead with this afaik).


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Re: Wiping hard drives

[yudi v]

> I used an external USB/eSATA case hooked up via eSATA and then bootet
> GRML. The BIOS did not protect the external drive and I was able to
> transfer the ATA Secure Command via eSATA. I bet it might not work via USB
> tough.
>
> Booted from ubuntu live USB, checked if the internal disk was frozen, yes.
Suspended the system and back on again, not frozen. This hack was mentioned
in http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase



> Tough my SSD also reports SECURITY ERASE UNIT, does your HDD have that
> too?
>
> merkaba:~> hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep -i erase
>supported: enhanced erase
>2min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 2min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE
> UNIT.
>
>
yes. what exactly does Security erase unit mean?

 supported
not enabled
not locked
not frozen
not expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase
132min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 132min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE
UNIT.


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Yudi

Re: Wiping hard drives

[Martin Steigerwald]

Am Mittwoch, 14. September 2011 schrieb yudi v:
> > For SSDs or harddisk which do encryption internally - with or without
> > encryption password in BIOS - an ATA Secure Erase should be enough:
> > 
> > http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase
> > 
> > Search "site:kernel.org secure erase" on Google and use webcache as
> > long as kernel.org is down.
> > 
> > I wiped a Windows 7 installation very quickly from the Intel SSD 320
> > in my new ThinkPad T520. Had to plug in the SSD externally tough, as
> > the BIOS froze security settings and disabled secure erase for the
> > internel drive.
> > 
> > An ATA Secure Erase does not need much write accesses, which is great
> > for SSDs: The drive just forgets the key and then is not able to
> > encrypt the old data anymore.
> 
> Excellent info. Can't believe this is in use since 2001 and this is the
> first time I am hearing about it. Thank you very much for sharing.
> 
> USA's NIST considers it to be on par with degaussing.
> 
> My HDD even supports enhanced erase, my laptop BIOS locks the drive I
> need to figure out how to unlock it.
> 
> Security:
> supported
> notenabled
> notlocked
> frozen
> notexpired: security count
> supported: enhanced erase

I used an external USB/eSATA case hooked up via eSATA and then bootet 
GRML. The BIOS did not protect the external drive and I was able to 
transfer the ATA Secure Command via eSATA. I bet it might not work via USB 
tough.

Tough my SSD also reports SECURITY ERASE UNIT, does your HDD have that 
too?

merkaba:~> hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep -i erase
supported: enhanced erase
2min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 2min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE 
UNIT.

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


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Test

[Andrés Durán]

Test


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Re: debian-installer: Guided partitioning breaks PERC2 Raid controllers

[trouble daemon]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 9:46 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
 wrote:
> Because you used old fdisk (or new fdisk in dos mode), and it is paying
> attention to CHS information.

Thanks for the explanation, much appreciated.

> The world has changed, and left CHS crap behind, as well as the hacks
> from hell these older RAID cards did to try to recover performance from
> the absurd misalignent issues they had trying to match RAID stripe size
> to CHS boundaries.
>
> Nowadays, we have to align to either 4KiB (spinning rust), erase-block
> size (crappy SSDs) or RAID stripe size (any RAID).  1MiB works right for
> everything but very large RAID stripe sizes.

God, sounds like the crap I gotta go through when I play with
mdadm+LVM+somefs and get stripes and stride and md block size all in
perfect harmony. We originally doing this and didn't even have the
RAID card installed, but opted to try it out since it had battery
backup on it. Of course, until I stumbled on all of these changes that
broken the archaic thing :)

> Please file a normal bug, explaining that PERC2 and some other arrays
> require DOS-compatible MBRs and asking for an expert mode option to get
> that.  The package name to report the bug against is "debian-installer".
> You can use reportbug to file that bug.

Great, thanks for the package name to file against and the option
request. It's a shame that old Dell already has to use noapic (thanks
to EISA kernel issue), and pnpbios=off to shut up some warnings about
the kernel trying to manipulate stuff the BIOS seems to have locked
down when disabled. I swear, in 5 years, there are going to be some
many options I need on that stupid machine that you guys are going to
just replace it all with "troubled_install=on" option for me ;)

Anyways, thanks for taking the time to help out and point me in the
right direction. Cheers! \o


troubled


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Re: Wiping hard drives

[yudi v]

> For SSDs or harddisk which do encryption internally - with or without
> encryption password in BIOS - an ATA Secure Erase should be enough:
>
> http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase
>
> Search "site:kernel.org secure erase" on Google and use webcache as long
> as kernel.org is down.
>
> I wiped a Windows 7 installation very quickly from the Intel SSD 320 in my
> new ThinkPad T520. Had to plug in the SSD externally tough, as the BIOS
> froze security settings and disabled secure erase for the internel drive.
>
> An ATA Secure Erase does not need much write accesses, which is great for
> SSDs: The drive just forgets the key and then is not able to encrypt the
> old data anymore.
>


Excellent info. Can't believe this is in use since 2001 and this is the
first time I am hearing about it. Thank you very much for sharing.

USA's NIST considers it to be on par with degaussing.

My HDD even supports enhanced erase, my laptop BIOS locks the drive I need
to figure out how to unlock it.

Security:
supported
notenabled
notlocked
frozen
notexpired: security count
supported: enhanced erase

-- 
Kind regards,
Yudi

Re: Power Consumption - Testing

[Frank Lanitz]

Am 14.09.2011 16:02, schrieb Camaleón:
> On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:43:54 -0300, Chir0n wrote:
> 
>> Someone more has been this issue?
> 
> That would depend to who you ask :-)
>  
>> Yesterday I got scared about the power consumption of my debian
>> notebook. 2 hours.
>>
>> Normally it takes 2 hours to finish the power. 
> 
> It takes the same time now and then? Then no problem at all >:-)
> 
>> There is some workround to resolve this uncomfortable problem?
> 
> I read something on a regression¹ in kernel about power management that 
> left batteries dried very quickly, but not sure if that was oficially 
> confirmed nor if it is "still" present on the 3.0 branch :-?

There have been two reasons found, whereas one has been fixed. Second
one I'm not sure about, but IIRC the core reason wasn't located.

Cheers,
Frank



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Re: Power Consumption - Testing

[Camaleón]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:43:54 -0300, Chir0n wrote:

> Someone more has been this issue?

That would depend to who you ask :-)
 
> Yesterday I got scared about the power consumption of my debian
> notebook. 2 hours.
> 
> Normally it takes 2 hours to finish the power. 

It takes the same time now and then? Then no problem at all >:-)

> There is some workround to resolve this uncomfortable problem?

I read something on a regression¹ in kernel about power management that 
left batteries dried very quickly, but not sure if that was oficially 
confirmed nor if it is "still" present on the 3.0 branch :-?

¹http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_31_power_regress&num=1

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Re: Power Consumption - Testing

[Darac Marjal]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 10:43:54AM -0300, Chir0n wrote:
>Hello,
> 
>Someone more has been this issue?
> 
>Yesterday I got scared about the power consumption of my debian notebook.
>2 hours.
> 
>Normally it takes 2 hours to finish the power. There is some workround to
>resolve this uncomfortable problem?

There are plenty of tools in linux to discover what's using your battery
and to reduce that consumption. powertop is a well-regarded tool for
showing what's using power at the moment (for example, what's causing
the CPU to wake from idle, what's keeping the disk running etc).

In terms of reducing power consumption, laptop-mode-tools is probably
your first port of call. It includes a range of measures to bring down
power consumption (such as adjusting sync times so the hard drive gets a
change to spin down and stay spun down longer).


-- 
Darac Marjal


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: autodiscover of a samba share

[Camaleón]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:39:42 +0200, tadziu wrote:

> close, but not really.
> 
> gnome nautilus discovers networks but not shares by which i mean
> particular public folders shared through a certain network - accessible
> with a single click from something that in gnome nautilus is called
> shortcuts.

That's the behaviour I get. 

I first get a list of the available computers and when double-clicking 
over each of them I reach the shared folders... and this has been so 
since I recall :-?

> if you don't know what i mean here is a little article:
> http://www.askbjoernhansen.com/2007/10/27/
setup_samba_for_bonjour_networking_with_os_x_105_l.html

I don't get the point of the article. You can also get the samba shares 
listed and ready to click on Nautilus, on the Desktop...

> so far i've managed to configure avahi so it finds samba shares through
> avahi-discovery. but i still do research how to gain functionality of
> automounting them in nautilus shortcuts the way its done after you
> double click particular samba share what i believe is mounting a samba
> share.

When using "smb://" you don't "mount" the shares, you "access" the 
shares. And you can bookmark your network shares for an easy access, they 
will appear listed in the left side panel.

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Re: debian-installer: Guided partitioning breaks PERC2 Raid controllers

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011, trouble daemon wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 8:44 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
>  wrote:
> > On Mon, 12 Sep 2011, trouble daemon wrote:
> >> So it would seem that the installers guided partitions are creating
> >> broken partition tables that seem to mess with certain RAID
> >
> > No, it is creating perfectly fine LBA partition tables that are aligned to
> > 1MiB boundaries.
> 
> Then why was fdisk -l showing me that the boot volume the installer
> created as being not aligned properly, and that went away after I
> manually created it on tty2 with fdisk and popped back to tty1 and
> continued to the partition step and used the existing partition
> layout?

Because you used old fdisk (or new fdisk in dos mode), and it is paying
attention to CHS information.

> > Contact Dell and demand a PERC2 firmware update: it is their crap firmware
> > which is doing something it shouldn't.
> 
> Well true, I agree that the firmware is old and has problems in that
> it could more gracefully handle such a situation, but if the table was
> being aligned the same way it does when I manually fdisk it, I don't
> think this would be a problem. In fact, I don't think this was ever a
> problem in the last 10 years I have had it running debian until
> recently.

The world has changed, and left CHS crap behind, as well as the hacks
from hell these older RAID cards did to try to recover performance from
the absurd misalignent issues they had trying to match RAID stripe size
to CHS boundaries.

Nowadays, we have to align to either 4KiB (spinning rust), erase-block
size (crappy SSDs) or RAID stripe size (any RAID).  1MiB works right for
everything but very large RAID stripe sizes.

> > It might be useful to have a "legacy dos-compatible MBR" option on the
> > expert mode, indeed.
> 
> Ah, interesting option. Ya, something like that would definetly be
> nice. So if I understand this right then, it's because when I fdisk,
> it uses a dos compatible MBR? Then what in the world is partman (right
> name for sub app?) using? Seemed like it was standard MBR last I
> looked at fdisk -l, and only differed in that only sda1 was out of
> alignement.
> 
> Anyways, I appreciate the reply and some of the insight. Look forward
> to hearing back from you. Thanks!

Please file a normal bug, explaining that PERC2 and some other arrays
require DOS-compatible MBRs and asking for an expert mode option to get
that.  The package name to report the bug against is "debian-installer".
You can use reportbug to file that bug.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh


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Power Consumption - Testing

[Chir0n]

Hello,

Someone more has been this issue?

Yesterday I got scared about the power consumption of my debian notebook. 2
hours.

Normally it takes 2 hours to finish the power. There is some workround to
resolve this uncomfortable problem?

Re: autodiscover of a samba share

[tadziu]

close, but not really.

gnome nautilus discovers networks but not shares
by which i mean particular public folders shared
through a certain network - accessible with a single
click from something that in gnome nautilus is
called shortcuts.

if you don't know what i mean here is a little article:
http://www.askbjoernhansen.com/2007/10/27/setup_samba_for_bonjour_networking_with_os_x_105_l.html

so far i've managed to configure avahi so it finds samba shares
through avahi-discovery. but i still do research how to gain
functionality of automounting them in nautilus shortcuts the way its
done after you double click particular samba share what i believe
is mounting a samba share.

cheers
/t

:-)
>
> That's what actually GNOME nautilus (and I think Konqueror/Dolphin also)
> does when you connect to a windows network, it auto-discovers available
> resources and you can then click on them without mounting the share in
> the usual way but by means of "smb://" protocol.
>
> Greetimgs,
>
>

Re: debian-installer: Guided partitioning breaks PERC2 Raid controllers

[trouble daemon]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 8:44 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
 wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Sep 2011, trouble daemon wrote:
>> So it would seem that the installers guided partitions are creating
>> broken partition tables that seem to mess with certain RAID
>
> No, it is creating perfectly fine LBA partition tables that are aligned to
> 1MiB boundaries.

Then why was fdisk -l showing me that the boot volume the installer
created as being not aligned properly, and that went away after I
manually created it on tty2 with fdisk and popped back to tty1 and
continued to the partition step and used the existing partition
layout?

>> controllers (google to get an idea of just how many). I should also
>> note that I have a near identical machine with a similar RAID card
>> (shows as AMI instead of LSI iirc), but this other card which is using
>> an identical raid setup, doesn't seem to have a problem with the
>> partitioning, yet the PERC2 one does. Very hit an miss I guess.
>
> Contact Dell and demand a PERC2 firmware update: it is their crap firmware
> which is doing something it shouldn't.

Well true, I agree that the firmware is old and has problems in that
it could more gracefully handle such a situation, but if the table was
being aligned the same way it does when I manually fdisk it, I don't
think this would be a problem. In fact, I don't think this was ever a
problem in the last 10 years I have had it running debian until
recently.

> It is possible that one of the advanced configuration options of the PERC2
> can instruct it to stop bothering with the MBR, you'll have to test.

Ya, don't recall any option like that unfortunately. Thanks for the
advice though.

> Alternatively, you can partition manually directly from the CLI or a live-cd
> to get something the PERC2 can tolerate.

Ya, this is what I did end up doing actually (although I partitioned
in CLI on installer not live-cd, but same thing no doubt), which is
why I can't understand what it is about the installer that changed.

>> Anyways, I hope this gets the attention of some of the installer gurus
>> out there and possibly point me in the right direction so that this
>> can be resolved properly. Keep up the great work! \m/
>
> It might be useful to have a "legacy dos-compatible MBR" option on the
> expert mode, indeed.

Ah, interesting option. Ya, something like that would definetly be
nice. So if I understand this right then, it's because when I fdisk,
it uses a dos compatible MBR? Then what in the world is partman (right
name for sub app?) using? Seemed like it was standard MBR last I
looked at fdisk -l, and only differed in that only sda1 was out of
alignement.

Anyways, I appreciate the reply and some of the insight. Look forward
to hearing back from you. Thanks!


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libmcrypt-dev: char* function signatures

[Ralph Schneider]

(I have trouble finding the original author of mcrypt, so I'm hoping that 
Debian will be sufficiently upstream for this query.)

Most of the libmcrypt functions that require a char-string take the string as a 
pointer to non-const char. I am wondering whether that is deliberate, or 
whether that is just by oversight. If it is feasible to change the signatures 
to `const char *`, it would make wrapping the library in a C++ class
much easier, since it would allow using standard C++ idioms (like 
std::string::c_str()) rather than cumbersome copies to writeable memory or 
using C-style arrays.

I appreciate all your hard work, and thank you very much!


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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Camaleón]

On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:15:13 -0700, Bryan Irvine wrote:

(...)

> Which brings me to another fun question.  What's your worst
> administration mistake and how did you recover?

Hum, I don't recall of any... yet.

But that's because I started administering linux boxes only a lustrum+3 
years ago, so I guess I'm still waiting for "The Day of The Big Mistake" 
to come :-P

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Re: Wiping hard drives

[shawn wilson]

On Sep 14, 2011 8:51 AM, "Robert Parker"  wrote:
>
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 7:39 PM, shawn wilson  wrote:
> >
> > On Sep 14, 2011 8:33 AM, "Eduardo M KALINOWSKI" <
edua...@kalinowski.com.br>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> On Qua, 14 Set 2011, shawn wilson wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I don't get that warm and fuzzy feeling by drilling an ssd.
> >>>
> >>> So, what is the best way for an individual to destroy an ssd?
> >>
> >>
> >> I'd say that if you drill the memory chips in the SSD it is destroyed
> >> beyond recovery.
> >>
> >
> > I would think that is obvious. However the task has gone from taking
less
> > than a minute to taking >10.
> >
> > Have you ever tried to drill through a chip? And you're recommending
doing
> > it dozens of different times? Really?
>
> What's wrong with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX for SSDs?
>

Well, I remember hearing that data is recoverable to some degree unless the
media is destroyed. Is there no trace of a bit being stored after it is 0'd
out on an ssd?

The other thing is ease of use. I'm not going to tell my grandmother 'type
dd of..' no, not happening. But, 'go get the drill and you should notice
a circle outlay; you want to drill through the disc a third off center of
that circle' - that, she can manage just fine.

Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Dave Sherohman]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 03:15:13PM -0700, Bryan Irvine wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Bob Proulx  wrote:
> > jacques wrote:
> >> by error most of the binaries in /usr are erased (killing rm :-(
> >
> > Everyone has made that mistake at some point.  I know I have!
> 
> Not me!

Me neither!

However, on my first attempt to back up a Debian system, I somewhat
misunderstood the tar man page and entered:

tar cvzf /dev/hda1 *

-- 
Dave Sherohman


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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Miles Fidelman]

Bryan Irvine wrote:
Which brings me to another fun question. What's your worst 
administration mistake and how did you recover? -Bryan 


Discovered the hard way the symptoms of a failing drive in a RAID array, 
leading to completely rebuilding an O/S install and restoring from backup.


Had a server that was running slower... and slower... and slower   
Still running, but taking forever to respond to even the simplest 
prompts.  Couldn't figure out what was wrong - some things made it look 
like hardware, some like software.


Long story, short: turns out one of the drives in a 4-drive RAID array 
was experiencing a high, and increasing,  raw-read-error rate.  Since 
the drive's internal software was doing re-reads, and eventually 
succeeding, the result was that the drive simply slowed down; and pulled 
down the response time of the entire array.  That's when I discovered 
(after the fact) that linux md drivers don't consider long delays a 
reason for failing a drive out of an array.


Worse.. when you're running a high-availability configuration (xen, 
pacemaker, drbd, etc.) - one slow drive in an array on one server, drags 
down the DRBD mirror, as well.  The good news: when I powered down the 
failing system, the backup started to work just fine.  The bad news: I 
trashed some stuff before figuring this out.  Sigh...


If I had known, I could have pulled one drive, plugged in a new one, let 
the array rebuild, and kept on going.  Unfortunately, what I did was... 
lots of diagnostics, lots of trial and error, ultimately trashing my 
system and some user data (not a lot.. good backups).. and ultimately 
had to reinstall the o/s and restore from backup.


Four lessons learned:
- RAID and high-availability configurations are vulnerable to a single 
drive failure
- keep a close eye on the raw-read-error rates of drives (anything over 
0 raises questions)
- be sure to purchase server-grade drives (they assume that failures 
will be handled by a RAID array, so spend less time trying to recover 
from a read error)
- when one disk starts going, replace them all (assuming that they went 
online at the same time)... it's amazing how similar the lifetime is for 
all the disks in an array


Miles Fidelman

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



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Re: Wiping hard drives

[Robert Parker]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 7:39 PM, shawn wilson  wrote:
>
> On Sep 14, 2011 8:33 AM, "Eduardo M KALINOWSKI" 
> wrote:
>>
>> On Qua, 14 Set 2011, shawn wilson wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't get that warm and fuzzy feeling by drilling an ssd.
>>>
>>> So, what is the best way for an individual to destroy an ssd?
>>
>>
>> I'd say that if you drill the memory chips in the SSD it is destroyed
>> beyond recovery.
>>
>
> I would think that is obvious. However the task has gone from taking less
> than a minute to taking >10.
>
> Have you ever tried to drill through a chip? And you're recommending doing
> it dozens of different times? Really?

What's wrong with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX for SSDs?

-- 
Why is it that people who tell me what I need to eat to be healthy are
invariably obese?


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Re: debian-installer: Guided partitioning breaks PERC2 Raid controllers

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Mon, 12 Sep 2011, trouble daemon wrote:
> So it would seem that the installers guided partitions are creating
> broken partition tables that seem to mess with certain RAID

No, it is creating perfectly fine LBA partition tables that are aligned to
1MiB boundaries.

> controllers (google to get an idea of just how many). I should also
> note that I have a near identical machine with a similar RAID card
> (shows as AMI instead of LSI iirc), but this other card which is using
> an identical raid setup, doesn't seem to have a problem with the
> partitioning, yet the PERC2 one does. Very hit an miss I guess.

Contact Dell and demand a PERC2 firmware update: it is their crap firmware
which is doing something it shouldn't.

It is possible that one of the advanced configuration options of the PERC2
can instruct it to stop bothering with the MBR, you'll have to test.

Alternatively, you can partition manually directly from the CLI or a live-cd
to get something the PERC2 can tolerate.

> Anyways, I hope this gets the attention of some of the installer gurus
> out there and possibly point me in the right direction so that this
> can be resolved properly. Keep up the great work! \m/

It might be useful to have a "legacy dos-compatible MBR" option on the
expert mode, indeed.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh


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Re: Wiping hard drives

[shawn wilson]

On Sep 14, 2011 8:33 AM, "Eduardo M KALINOWSKI" 
wrote:
>
> On Qua, 14 Set 2011, shawn wilson wrote:
>>
>> I don't get that warm and fuzzy feeling by drilling an ssd.
>>
>> So, what is the best way for an individual to destroy an ssd?
>
>
> I'd say that if you drill the memory chips in the SSD it is destroyed
beyond recovery.
>

I would think that is obvious. However the task has gone from taking less
than a minute to taking >10.

Have you ever tried to drill through a chip? And you're recommending doing
it dozens of different times? Really?

Re: Wiping hard drives

[Eduardo M KALINOWSKI]

On Qua, 14 Set 2011, shawn wilson wrote:

I don't get that warm and fuzzy feeling by drilling an ssd.

So, what is the best way for an individual to destroy an ssd?


I'd say that if you drill the memory chips in the SSD it is destroyed  
beyond recovery.




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edua...@kalinowski.com.br



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'apt-get dist-upgrade' from Lenny to Squeeze crashes

[Alex]

Hi,

'apt-get dist-upgrade' from Lenny (up to date as of 04 Spet. 2011) to 
Squeeze crashes with the following error:-


   E: Internal Error, Could not perform immediate configuration (2) on
   libtext-iconv-perl


Procedure used during upgrade to date:-

   1) Downloaded and burned all .iso images from
   http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.2.1/i386/iso-dvd/ to DVD.
   2) Using Synaptic, all DVDs the added to the repository using 'Add
   CDROM', and all other repositories disabled (commemnted out).
   3) Reboot into "single-user" mode using root password.
   4) "apt-cdrom add" on all DVD's
   5) apt-get update
   6) apt-get upgrade
   7) apt-get install linux-image-2.6.32-5-openvz-686
   8) apt-get install udev
   9) Reboot into "single-user" mode using root password.
   10) apt-get dist-upgrade
   11) E: Internal Error, Could not perform immediate configuration (2)
   on libtext-iconv-perl
   12) Search web for this error message and find that I have to
   reinstall libc6 and libc6-i686
   13) Reboot into "single-user" mode using root password.
   14) apt-get install --reinstall libc6 libc6-i686
   15) apt-get dist-upgrade
   16) E: Internal Error, Could not perform immediate configuration (2)
   on libtext-iconv-perl
   17) apt-get install --reinstall libc6 libc6-i686
   18) apt-get dist-upgrade
   19) E: Internal Error, Could not perform immediate configuration (2)
   on libtext-iconv-perl
   20) Give up and look for Ghostbusters?!?!?!   ;-)


Please help, as I would really like to upgrade to a full version of squeeze.

Thanking you in anticipation

Alex

Re: Wiping hard drives

[shawn wilson]

On Sep 13, 2011 10:05 AM, "yudi v"  wrote:
>

> I just want to hear some opinions as to what precautions you take before
parting with hard drives. I would be very interested to hear from SSD
owners.
>

So, this is sort of an interesting question I haven't had to deal with yet
(and I haven't really seen answered). With old, spinning hard 'disc' drives,
I felt secure with my data by drilling a hole through the platters. However,
with ssd I don't really have the same option to make the data pretty much
inaccessible.

Obviously I could still get a press or shreader. However, for personal use
the drill gave me that assurance the data was unrecoberible by 99.999% of
people. I don't get that warm and fuzzy feeling by drilling an ssd.

So, what is the best way for an individual to destroy an ssd?

Re: Rolling my own

[Camaleón]

On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:04:41 -0600, Dave Higgins wrote:

> I'm trying to figure out how to make my own Debian based distribution.
> Either I'm asking the wrong question on Google or there is no
> information.

(...)

No need to go that far away :-)

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianCustomCD

Besides, I remember there was an online build tool to create customized 
Debian-based install CDs (similar to what SuSE Studio does) but I can't 
recall the URL nor the name >:-?

Greetings,

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Re: Just a Quick Question

[green]

RiverWind wrote at 2011-09-13 18:53 -0500:
> Subject: Just a Quick Question

Please use meaningful subjects for your list messages. It makes it easier for 
people who can help you to notice your messages.


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Re: netbook, close, suspend: ACPI?

[Camaleón]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 07:34:01 +0300, Mihamina Rakotomandimby wrote:

> I have a small netbook that I broke the screen.
> 
> I use it as a headless gateway now (the VGA port is still OK when
> needed, I just have to plug a screen).
> 
> I just noticed that if I "close" (or fold) it, after a while it goes to
> suspend state (or hibernate I dont know exactly). I have to "open" it
> and press the power button in order to make it. If I dont close it, it's
> alright, nothing to say.
> 
> How to avoid going to a sleepy state when closed? I want to close it for
> esthetic reasons.
> 
> I guess it's about disabling some ACPI, but what is the Debian way to do
> that?

This is usually set under power-management settings (you have to remove 
the option to put the computer into sleep state when closing the lid, 
basically set it to "do nothing") but steps may vary if you are running a 
DE like GNOME/KDE or no DE at all. 

Greetings,

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Re: How to disable USB automounts

[Brian]

On Wed 14 Sep 2011 at 10:46:44 +1000, Scott Ferguson wrote:

> With the greatest respects to the previous posters and there
> suggestions... this has nothing to do with membership of plugdev, custom
> udev rules to try and over-ride existing hal fdi, udev, and policykit
> rules won't work.

I'd agree that the OP's KDE specific issue should be tackled from within
KDE, but if the desire is to disable automounting for all users then
surely udev is the route to take? Furthermore, udev should not be used to
make up for any failure to solve the problem from within the DE.

> Policykit knows two types of mountable drives - system and removable...
> Policykit's definition of "removable" is:-
> "Typically, system internal devices include non-removable internal hard
> disks and other drives that are not easily added/removed by a local
> console user. The heuristic typically used is that only devices on
> removable media and devices connected via Firewire, USB, eSATA and SDIO
> are considered external."

Times change:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/devkit-devel/2011-June/001094.html

   > This is why the DeviceIsSystemInternal property, this one

   >  
http://hal.freedesktop.org/docs/udisks/Device.html#Device:DeviceIsSystemInternal

   > talks about "heuristics". Note that this property will be removed in
   > udisks in the next ABI break (2.0).

July of the same mailing list also has a disussion on the same topic.


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Re: autodiscover of a samba share

[Camaleón]

On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:04:21 +0200, tadziu wrote:

> recently friend of mine visited me with his macbook in my home. i never
> used macos before to often, but i was amazed that its default file
> manager discovered automatically my public samba shares without
> mounting. they are just visible and accessible with single click, just
> after connecting to my wireless network.
> 
> honestly i'm jealous, BUT i'm pretty shure that it can be done in debian
> aswell.
> 
> was looking for some solutions on internet, but i haven't found anything
> satisfying.
> 
> any suggestions?

:-)

That's what actually GNOME nautilus (and I think Konqueror/Dolphin also) 
does when you connect to a windows network, it auto-discovers available 
resources and you can then click on them without mounting the share in 
the usual way but by means of "smb://" protocol.

Greetimgs,

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Re: Bug in Debian installer

[sppmg]

於 2011年09月14日 02:45, Bob Proulx 提到:
> spp mg wrote:
>> I install Debian(6.0.2.1 amd64) to a old HDD.This HDD has a lvm
>> partition,it's creat by Fedora installer.
>> I can't delete this lvm partition in intaller,it's display about "lvm
>> is busy..." ,even if I delete all Logical Volume and restart
>> installer.
>>
>> Finally, I delete lvm partition by other PC.
>>
>> It's a bug ,right?
> It sounds like it automatically started the lvm subsystem due to the
> presence of the lvm partitions.
>
> Does it give you the option to Configure LVM?  I believe it should.
> If so then you can go into that menu and delete the lvm configuration
> there.
>
> Bob
Hi,It has "Configure the Logical Volume Manager",but it only has "delete
volume group"

I playback this problem in my virtual machine.
First,choose "Guided partitioning" in "partition disk" step .
Now,my disk partition look like this:
--
LVM LG debian, LV root - 20.3 GB Linux device-mapper (linear)
#1 20.3 GB f ext3 /
LVM LG debian, LV swap_1 - 914.4 MB Linux device-mapper (linear)
#1 914.4 MB f swap swap
Virtual disk 1 (vda) - 21.5GB Virtio Block Device
#1 primary 254 MB B f ext2 /boot
#5 logical 21.2 GB k lvm
--
Now,I want delete lvm(vda5),but it display "partition in use" .So I
enter "Configure the Logical Volume Manager" this entry,and delete all
volume group.But it still display "partition in use",even if I restart
installer.

I know a only way can use this PC to solve problem.
Enter the shell and use fdisk to delete lvm partition(vda5),and return
"partition disk" step.
But,this way is dirty,I think.


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Re: Wiping hard drives

[Martin Steigerwald]

Am Dienstag, 13. September 2011 schrieb yudi v:
>  I will be wiping partitions on my hard drive before sending it back to
> the manufacturer for replacement.
> 
> I usually prefer dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX#  for the unencrypted
> partitions and just over write the first few sectors on the LUKS
> partition to destroy the header file.
> 
> I just want to hear some opinions as to what precautions you take
> before parting with hard drives. I would be very interested to hear
> from SSD owners.

For SSDs or harddisk which do encryption internally - with or without 
encryption password in BIOS - an ATA Secure Erase should be enough:

http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

Search "site:kernel.org secure erase" on Google and use webcache as long 
as kernel.org is down.

I wiped a Windows 7 installation very quickly from the Intel SSD 320 in my 
new ThinkPad T520. Had to plug in the SSD externally tough, as the BIOS 
froze security settings and disabled secure erase for the internel drive.

An ATA Secure Erase does not need much write accesses, which is great for 
SSDs: The drive just forgets the key and then is not able to encrypt the 
old data anymore.

-- 
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
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Re: Wiping hard drives

[Aidan Gauland]

On 14/09/11 02:10, yudi v wrote:
>  I will be wiping partitions on my hard drive before sending it back to
> the manufacturer for replacement.
> 
> I usually prefer dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX#  for the unencrypted
> partitions and just over write the first few sectors on the LUKS
> partition to destroy the header file.
> 
> I just want to hear some opinions as to what precautions you take before
> parting with hard drives. I would be very interested to hear from SSD
> owners.

I think you want scrub.  It provides somewhat more felxibility than dd
if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdXn.  There's a Debian pacakge for it.

Kind regards,
Aidan Gauland


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Re: After upgrade to squeeze OS will not accept passphrase to unlock disk

[Darac Marjal]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 07:50:41PM -0400, Ken Heard wrote:
> Further to the problem described in the first post to this thread, I
> have progress of a sort to report.
> 
[cut]
> 
> At this point I entered the root password but it was not accepted.  I
> then -- as Gary Golden suggested -- rebooted using finnix, which allowed
> me to log on as root without a password.  Using the command passwd I was
> able to re-enter the root password.
> 
> I rebooted once again using squeeze, got as far as the maintenance shell
>  and was asked for the root password.  I entered the password, which
> I now knew was the right one, three times; but it was not accepted.

Just to clarify things, you did change the password for the root on your
installation, didn't you? That is, you didn't just change the password
for root on the live CD, which was then lost as you rebooted?


-- 
Darac Marjal


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Re: Wiping hard drives

[Jörg-Volker Peetz]

With an SSD or modern HDD look for "secure erase", e.g., with hdparm or gparted.
-- 
Best regards,
Jörg-Volker.


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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[The_Ace]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Bryan Irvine  wrote:

> Which brings me to another fun question.  What's your worst
> administration mistake and how did you recover?
>
> -Bryan

drop database Live_database;

Restored the previous day's backup and blamed it on a bad power supply :P

-- 
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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Martin Steigerwald]

Am Mittwoch, 14. September 2011 schrieb Mihamina Rakotomandimby:
> On 09/14/2011 01:15 AM, Bryan Irvine wrote:
> > Which brings me to another fun question.  What's your worst
> > administration mistake and how did you recover?
> 
> On ext4 resizing
> 
> - I did not put a swap partition on my laptop, just / and /home
> - I decided to shrink /home to put a swap at the end
> - fdisk
> -- del & new smaller partition for /home, with same beginning
> -- new partition at the end for swap (label 82)
> - reboot
> - fsck failed, resize2fs failed, all failed
> - I forgot to backup during the week end
> - I lost important documents...
> 
> There is a need of absolute "ext4 resizing tutorial"... :-P

Most important rule is the ordering:

1) On enlarging first enlarge the volume / partition, then grow the 
filesystem

2) On shrinking do it the *other* way around when you are interested in 
your data. So first shrink your filesystem and then shrink the volume / 
partition, but not below the new size of the filesystem.

But I guess you know that by now ;)

-- 
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Re: Worst Admin Mistake? was --> Re: /usr broken, will the machine reboot ?

[Martin Steigerwald]

Am Mittwoch, 14. September 2011 schrieb Andrew Reid:
> > On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Bob Proulx  wrote:
> > > jacques wrote:
> > >> by error most of the binaries in /usr are erased (killing rm :-(
> > > 
> > > Everyone has made that mistake at some point.  I know I have!
> > 
> > Not me!  Though I did chmod -R /usr once.  I noticed it immediately
> > and cancelled.  Most of the commands were broken, though luckily tar
> > and scp still worked, so I copied over a backup and untarred it. 
> > This anecdote is brought up whenever anyone suggests skipping /usr
> > /bin in backups is a good idea because the data doesn't change and
> > would be recovered by OS reinstall anyway (yes I've heard that
> > argument).
> > 
> > Which brings me to another fun question.  What's your worst
> > administration mistake and how did you recover?
> 
>   I once tried to change the ownership of all the files in a user
> directory by doing something like "chown -R  .*" from within
> the directory -- I've forgotten what exactly I typed, but my motive was
> to get all the "." files included in the scope of the command.
> 
>   Unfortunately, ".*" includes "..", so the chown command hopped
> up to /home, and started switching the whole file system over
> to be owned by the new user.
> 
>   I caught it after it was taking a suspiciously long time, and
> after a minute or two, I figured out what had happened.

In my Linux/UNIX basics training I have a slide about exactly that.

And another one about escaping. Consider rm * and rm "*". Or mkdir "A 
directory with space" versus mkdir A directory with spaces.

And a recommendation to put echo in front of the command if unsure what 
the shell does make out of the command line.

Cause I think I do not need to let my course participants run into data 
loss experiences.

And yes, I did rm -rf .* once ;).

-- 
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Re: Free drivers for AMD Radeon (Vaio S)

[Jörg-Volker Peetz]

Hi, Martin,

Martin Steigerwald wrote, on 09/14/11 09:35:
> Hi Jörg!
> 
> Am Dienstag, 13. September 2011 schrieb Jörg-Volker Peetz:
>> The status of the free radeon driver is available here:
>> http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature
>>
>> A very recent kernel and additional firmware (firmware-linux-nonfree)
>> is needed for the discrete graphic adapter. A HP Pavilion DV7 with an
>> integrated and a discrete graphic adapter (5470M) from AMD works with
>> the technique called vgaswitcheroo.
> 
> But not without restarting X, or did that change?

Right, this hasn't changed yet.

> 
> Actually I do not get the point of that dual gfx card setups.
> 
> Either I want to do demanding graphics stuff with the machine and then its 
> discrete graphics, or I just use Intel Sandybridge onboard graphics. I 
> decided for the later and frankly, it has been speedy enough for me for 
> anything that I tried including Freedroid RPG and Supertuxkart at Full HD 
> resolution (1920x1080). Sure for more demanding games it can get to slow. 
> But I am not interested in those at the moment.
> 

As I understand it, the point is energy saving, especially with a mobile device.
With vgaswitcheroo one of the graphic adapters can be switched off. On battery
(e.g., while traveling) the integrated GPU consuming less energy can be used.
With access to a power supply the discrete more powerful GPU could be used if
necessary.
Also, with the discrete GPU deactivated, the noise of the cooling fan can be
reduced.
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Jörg-Volker.


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Re: Free drivers for AMD Radeon (Vaio S)

[Martin Steigerwald]

Hi Jörg!

Am Dienstag, 13. September 2011 schrieb Jörg-Volker Peetz:
> The status of the free radeon driver is available here:
> http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature
> 
> A very recent kernel and additional firmware (firmware-linux-nonfree)
> is needed for the discrete graphic adapter. A HP Pavilion DV7 with an
> integrated and a discrete graphic adapter (5470M) from AMD works with
> the technique called vgaswitcheroo.

But not without restarting X, or did that change?

Actually I do not get the point of that dual gfx card setups.

Either I want to do demanding graphics stuff with the machine and then its 
discrete graphics, or I just use Intel Sandybridge onboard graphics. I 
decided for the later and frankly, it has been speedy enough for me for 
anything that I tried including Freedroid RPG and Supertuxkart at Full HD 
resolution (1920x1080). Sure for more demanding games it can get to slow. 
But I am not interested in those at the moment.

-- 
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Re: Sandy bridge and kernel 3.1

[Martin Steigerwald]

Am Dienstag, 13. September 2011 schrieb Rémi Marchal:
> Hello!

Hi Rémi,

> I have bought the laptop N53SN-SZ126V from ASUS with the technology
> Sandy Bridge. When I install the last stable version of Debian, I get
> a black screen typical of the incompatibility of the kernel and Sandy
> bridge.
> 
> I have read that the kernel 3.1 works very good with Sandybridge. Is it
> possible to use the stable version with the kernel 3.1.If not, what
> solutions could you propose to me ?
> 
> Thanks a lot for your help,

I use a ThinkPad T520 with Intel i5 Core Sandybridge onboard graphics only 
with Debian Kernel package 3.0.0-3 and mesa 7.11. Works like a charm, 
except for some glitches:

1) kwin crashes when starting the first time unless I do

martin@merkaba:~> cat .kde/env/fix-kwin-intel-gl.sh
#!/bin/sh
export KWIN_DIRECT_GL=1

reported this already. This only happens since mesa 7.11. Which I still 
prefer since it fixed corruptions with playing a playstation game via pcsx 
reloaded.

2) if compositing in kwin is enabled and I leave a game from full screen 
mode the X server might crash. I am not sure actually whether I reported 
this. I think I have...

I did try 3.1.0-rc4 debian package for a short while. It basically worked, 
but there is no linux-kbuild for it yet for building virtualbox and 
thinkpad smapi modules, so I reverted to 3.0.

In summary my short recommendation is: Use Wheezy (or Sid if you want to 
live on the edge, but not necessary anymore) instead of Squeeze on 
Sandybridge machines ;).

Ciao,
-- 
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