Re: Back to systemd [was: Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)]

[ghe]

> On Dec 30, 2019, at 05:47 PM, Sven Hartge  wrote:
> 
> Please show the output of
> 
>systemctl cat YOUR_SERVICE_UNIT
> 
> This will show all additions and overrides to the unit.

root@test:~# systemctl cat ipfilter
# /usr/lib/systemd/system/ipfilter.service
[Unit]
Description=packetFilter

[Service]
ExecStart=/etc/ipfilterfiles/ipfilter.sh on
ExecStop=/etc/ipfilterfiles/ipfilter.sh off

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

> Your shell script isn't really daemon, so it is normal to not stay
> running after it setup the iptables rules.

I guess I misunderstood the term 'daemon.' I thought it was just a piece of 
software that, when run, stays run until it's through -- when it's started at 
boot and has no exit, hangs around in the background doing stuff. Unless 
somebody tells it to stop.

This code has, under the old init system, been thinking it's a daemon for a 
couple decades now. But you're right. On other systemd computers, I have to 
start my local firewall by hand, like I have to with BIND on the DNS server. 

> I think your unit is missing the following:
> 
> ,
> | [Service]
> | Type=oneshot
> | RemainAfterExit=yes
> `

That makes sense. I'll insert those lines and see what happens. 

I knew it'd be trivial when it came to light what I was missing. Thanks a lot.

(grumble, grumble, systemd, grumble, grumble)

>> And how did that file get in /usr? When I wrote it, it was in
>> /lib/systemd/system.
> 
> usr-merge is the keyword here.

What's that? I never heard of that before, and I certainly didn't ask for it. 
One of the reasons I run Debian was that the config stuff is all in /etc. And, 
it goes without saying, stays there.

As I said before, (grumble, grumble, systemd, grumble, grumble). It seems to be 
pretty nicely done system code, but with an absolutely abominable user 
interface. So far, I know of systemd dirs in /lib, /etc, and /usr. That's no 
way to run a *nix railroad.

While I have you on the hook, Sven, how/where did you get your systemd 
knowledge? I've looked around, and I haven't seen any mention of what you just 
told me. 

-- 
Glenn English

Re: On systemd, raspbian and off-topics [was: systemdq]

[황병희]

> I actually do enjoy off-topic tangents, and [...]

Me too, happy new year tomás ^^^

Sincerely, Byung-Hee from South Korea

-- 
^고맙습니다 _地平天成_ 감사합니다_^))//

Re: realtime kernel on ARM hardware

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 23:05:07)
> On Monday 30 December 2019 16:49:14 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> 
> > Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 21:00:55)
> >
> > > If debian was serious about supporting the "arm's" that would have 
> > > been fixed several years ago by moving that list and its contents 
> > > to "debian-arm-devel", and instituting a new "debian-arm-users" 
> > > list.
> >
> > Ahhh.  We have struggled for ages in Debian with the lack of 
> > manpower. Turns out we simply need mailinglists named accurately - 
> > that'll make them magically populated with knowledgable and helpful 
> > Debian experts.
> 
> I detect a smidgeon of tongue in cheek, ;-) but I think it would also 
> help by drawing in those that do have experience in that hdwe.

True.  Sorry I forgot to accompany it with a smiley.  Here it is: :-)

> Cheers, Gene Heskett

Cheers!

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private


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Re: Back to systemd [was: Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)]

[Sven Hartge]

ghe  wrote:
> On 12/30/19 3:54 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

>> Please show us the full output of
>> 
>> systemctl status YOUR_SERVICE_UNIT

> root@test:~# systemctl status ipfilter
> ● ipfilter.service - packetFilter
>Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ipfilter.service; enabled;
> vendor preset: enabled)
>Active: inactive (dead) since Mon 2019-12-30 16:23:33 MST; 1min 41s ago
>   Process: 393 ExecStart=/etc/ipfilterfiles/ipfilter.sh on (code=exited,
> status=0/SUCCESS)
>   Process: 1520 ExecStop=/etc/ipfilterfiles/ipfilter.sh off
> (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
>  Main PID: 393 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)


Please show the output of

systemctl cat YOUR_SERVICE_UNIT

This will show all additions and overrides to the unit.

> Dec 30 16:23:00 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]   Saved HTTP_BLK to
> /etc/ipfilterfiles/savedHTTP_BLK.sh
> Dec 30 16:23:00 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]   Saved POP_BLK to
> /etc/ipfilterfiles/savedPOP_BLK.sh
> Dec 30 16:23:00 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]   Saved NTP_BLK to
> /etc/ipfilterfiles/savedNTP_BLK.sh
> Dec 30 16:23:01 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]   Saved SMTP_BLK to
> /etc/ipfilterfiles/savedSMTP_BLK.sh
> Dec 30 16:23:01 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]  Accepting all slsware
> Dec 30 16:23:33 test root[1751]: packetFilter: off (ACCEPT all) at Mon
> 30 Dec 2019 04:23:33 PM MST
> Dec 30 16:23:33 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]  Accepting all input
> Dec 30 16:23:33 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]  Accepting and
> masquerading all routing
> Dec 30 16:23:33 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]  Accepting all output
> Dec 30 16:23:33 test systemd[1]: ipfilter.service: Succeeded.

>> immediately after boot and also explain what makes you think the service 
>> is not actually running.

Your shell script isn't really daemon, so it is normal to not stay
running after it setup the iptables rules.

See for example the ferm.service doing the same on my system:

,
| ● ferm.service - ferm firewall configuration
|  Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/ferm.service; enabled; vendor 
preset: enabled)
| Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/ferm.service.d
|  └─override.conf
|  Active: active (exited) since Fri 2019-10-04 14:37:39 CEST; 2 months 26 
days ago
|Main PID: 1663 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
|   Tasks: 0 (limit: 19173)
|  Memory: 0B
|  CGroup: /system.slice/ferm.service
`

It also terminates after doing its thing.

I think your unit is missing the following:

,
| [Service]
| Type=oneshot
| RemainAfterExit=yes
`

> And how did that file get in /usr? When I wrote it, it was in
> /lib/systemd/system.

usr-merge is the keyword here.

Grüße,
Sven.

-- 
Sigmentation fault. Core dumped.

Re: Back to systemd [was: Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)]

[ghe]

On 12/30/19 3:54 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> Please show us the full output of
> 
> systemctl status YOUR_SERVICE_UNIT

root@test:~# systemctl status ipfilter
● ipfilter.service - packetFilter
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ipfilter.service; enabled;
vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) since Mon 2019-12-30 16:23:33 MST; 1min 41s ago
  Process: 393 ExecStart=/etc/ipfilterfiles/ipfilter.sh on (code=exited,
status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 1520 ExecStop=/etc/ipfilterfiles/ipfilter.sh off
(code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 393 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Dec 30 16:23:00 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]   Saved HTTP_BLK to
/etc/ipfilterfiles/savedHTTP_BLK.sh
Dec 30 16:23:00 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]   Saved POP_BLK to
/etc/ipfilterfiles/savedPOP_BLK.sh
Dec 30 16:23:00 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]   Saved NTP_BLK to
/etc/ipfilterfiles/savedNTP_BLK.sh
Dec 30 16:23:01 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]   Saved SMTP_BLK to
/etc/ipfilterfiles/savedSMTP_BLK.sh
Dec 30 16:23:01 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]  Accepting all slsware
Dec 30 16:23:33 test root[1751]: packetFilter: off (ACCEPT all) at Mon
30 Dec 2019 04:23:33 PM MST
Dec 30 16:23:33 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]  Accepting all input
Dec 30 16:23:33 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]  Accepting and
masquerading all routing
Dec 30 16:23:33 test ipfilter.sh[1520]: [ OK ]  Accepting all output
Dec 30 16:23:33 test systemd[1]: ipfilter.service: Succeeded.


> immediately after boot and also explain what makes you think the service 
> is not actually running.

root@test:~# pfil status

 Running on host: test.slsware.net


--- FILTER table---

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 3 packets, 108 bytes)
num   pkts bytes target prot opt in out source
 destination
1   58  5941 ACCEPT tcp  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0
 0.0.0.0/0tcp dpt:22
25   380 ACCEPT all  --  *  *   216.17.134.0/24
 0.0.0.0/0
Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
num   pkts bytes target prot opt in out source
 destination
Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 8 packets, 488 bytes)
num   pkts bytes target prot opt in out source
 destination
1   52  7719 ACCEPT tcp  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0
 0.0.0.0/0tcp spt:22
25   380 ACCEPT all  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0
 216.17.134.0/24

--- NAT table---

Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
num   pkts bytes target prot opt in out source
 destination
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
num   pkts bytes target prot opt in out source
 destination
Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
num   pkts bytes target prot opt in out source
 destination
Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
num   pkts bytes target prot opt in out source
 destination


iptaples.sh is big shell script I use on all my computers. pfil (packet
filter) is an alias to save a little typing.

Those steps it goes through in the systemctl status command are some of
the steps it goes through when I stop it by hand (pfil stop). This looks
like it's been started, then immediately stopped. The 'pfil status'
display's the state of the iptables firewall.

If it were running, there'd be many lines from 'pfil status' (attached
if you're interested).


The service file:

root@test:/lib/systemd/system# cat /usr/lib/systemd/system/ipfilter.service
[Unit]
Description=packetFilter

[Service]
ExecStart=/etc/ipfilterfiles/ipfilter.sh on
ExecStop=/etc/ipfilterfiles/ipfilter.sh off

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target


And how did that file get in /usr? When I wrote it, it was in
/lib/systemd/system.

And this all on the RPi4.

-- 
Glenn English
Turning it on:

root@test:/lib/systemd/system# pfil on

 Running on host: test.slsware.net

 Initializing the netfilter chains
[ OK ]  Accepting all slsware
[ OK ]  Netfilter chains initialized
 Loading the netfilter chains for outside IP 216.17.134.204
[ OK ]  TCP SMTP (25) on the local nets
[ OK ]  TCP SMTP (25) from almost anywhere
[ OK ]  TCP POP3 (110, 995) from anywhere
[ OK ]  TCP IMAP (143, 993) from anywhere
[ OK ]  UDP DCC (6277) from anywhere
[ OK ]  TCP HTTP (80) from anywhere
[ OK ]  TCP SSH (22) on the local nets
[ OK ]  TCP FTP (21) from anywhere
[ OK ]  TCP HTTPS (443) from anywhere
[ OK ]  TCP RSYNC (873) on the local nets
[ OK ]  TCP AUTH (113) on the local nets
[ OK ]  TCP SMTP on port 537 from anywhere
[ OK ]  UDP RIP-2 (520) on 224.0.0.9 -- the IANA assignment
[ OK ]  UDP NTP (123) from anywhere
[ OK ]  UDP TRACEROUTE (33434) from anywhere
[ OK ]  UDP and TCP DNS (53) from anywhere
[ OK ]  Netfilter chains loaded
 Enabling the netfilter chains
[ OK ]  Netfilter chains enabled
 Starting other iptables daemons (if any)
 Loading the saved BLK_CHAIN

Re: Back to systemd [was: Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)]

[chris]

Omg another systemd thread jeez

On Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 6:12 PM Andrei POPESCU 
wrote:

> On Lu, 30 dec 19, 15:12:54, ghe wrote:
> > On 12/30/19 1:08 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> >
> > > Did you forget to "enable" it?
> >
> > Nope. It works by hand, and after boot, systemctl status claims it's
> > running. But is isn't.
>
> Please show us the full output of
>
> systemctl status YOUR_SERVICE_UNIT
>
> immediately after boot and also explain what makes you think the service
> is not actually running.
>
> Kind regards,
> Andrei
> --
> http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
>

Back to systemd [was: Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)]

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 30 dec 19, 15:12:54, ghe wrote:
> On 12/30/19 1:08 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> 
> > Did you forget to "enable" it?
> 
> Nope. It works by hand, and after boot, systemctl status claims it's
> running. But is isn't.

Please show us the full output of

systemctl status YOUR_SERVICE_UNIT

immediately after boot and also explain what makes you think the service 
is not actually running.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: On systemd, raspbian and off-topics [was: systemdq]

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 30 dec 19, 10:01:55, Gene Heskett wrote:
> But it sure would be nice if the manpages were a little more obvious. 
> :) Options seem to be well explained but commonly used examples that 
> one can play with to learn how it works are thin. A good tut that 
> passed as a manpage would likely reduce the objection chatter a lot by 
> showing that it can be a better way to do things.

For a quick start you only need 'systemctl' with the 'status', 'start', 
'stop', 'restart', 'reload', 'enable' and 'disable' commands, possibly 
also 'mask' (didn't need it so far, 'disable' was always sufficient when 
applied correctly[1]).

The man page for 'systemctl' has a detailed example for the 'status' 
command, the only one where the output is not so easy to understand at 
first look.

For more advanced stuff the wiki pages on systemd seem to be a good 
start[2].

[1] a service can also be enabled via a .socket unit and systemd does 
warn if you only disable the .service unit for a service that also has a 
.socket unit.

[2] https://wiki.debian.org/systemd


Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: various raspbian x posts

[ghe]

On 12/30/19 3:56 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> And this is the output to exactly what command?

Now that's a good question. I really don't remember. There've been so
many in the last few days, and that came up very early.

-- 
Glenn English

Re: various raspbian x posts

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 30 dec 19, 15:50:32, ghe wrote:
> On 12/30/19 2:22 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> 
> > I was asking for examples of non-meaningful systemd error messages. Oh 
> > well...
> 
> I've got one, Andrei:
> 
> "Systemd service ssh cannot be created unless command is given"
> 
> That's systemd saying it needs a command. Search the web for "systemd
> command" and see what you get :-)

And this is the output to exactly what command?

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: various raspbian x posts

[ghe]

On 12/30/19 2:22 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> I was asking for examples of non-meaningful systemd error messages. Oh 
> well...

I've got one, Andrei:

"Systemd service ssh cannot be created unless command is given"

That's systemd saying it needs a command. Search the web for "systemd
command" and see what you get :-)

-- 
Glenn English

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[ghe]

On 12/30/19 1:08 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:

> Did you forget to "enable" it?

Nope. It works by hand, and after boot, systemctl status claims it's
running. But is isn't.

> See also .

Already saw it :-)

I'm missing something that is going to be patently obvious when I do it.
I've done the things from many web sites, but it doesn't quite work yet.

And O'Reilly doesn't have a book on systemd yet...

-- 
Glenn English

Re: On systemd, raspbian and off-topics [was: systemdq]

[tomas]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2019 at 11:34:43PM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Lu, 30 dec 19, 10:23:27, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 06:57:12PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > 
> > > Chasing us off from asking raspbian related questions here, is a lost 
> > > cause because [...]
> > 
> > Please, don't misrepresent me. I *never* "chased anyone off" from
> > asking raspbian [...]

> At the very least posters should state it's not Debian and not send us 
> on possibly wild goose chases.

On this, we do agree fully. It's minimum courtesy, I'd say.

Cheers
-- t


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Re: realtime kernel on ARM hardware

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 16:49:14 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

> Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 21:00:55)
>
> > If debian was serious about supporting the "arm's" that would have
> > been fixed several years ago by moving that list and its contents to
> > "debian-arm-devel", and instituting a new "debian-arm-users" list.
>
> Ahhh.  We have struggled for ages in Debian with the lack of manpower.
> Turns out we simply need mailinglists named accurately - that'll make
> them magically populated with knowledgable and helpful Debian experts.

I detect a smidgeon of tongue in cheek, ;-) but I think it would also 
help by drawing in those that do have experience in that hdwe.

> Thanks for your wisdom, Gene.  And a great 2020 to you as well.
>
>  - Jonas


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 30 dec 19, 10:13:50, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, December 30, 2019 08:48:20 AM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 06:57:12PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > Chasing us off from asking raspbian related questions here, is a lost
> > > cause because they don't have a mailing list, but a forum generally
> > > populated by uppity folks, [...]
> > 
> > That does not mean you can post Raspbian problems HERE.
> > 
> > This list is for Debian problems only.
> 
> It would not be that hard to create a new mailing list for raspbian users, 
> maybe over on groups.io (can even be done for free).

The raspbian-devel[1] list is still listed as "active", though the last post is 
from Jan.19.

[1] https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/raspbian-devel

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 15:16:34 Jude DaShiell wrote:

> On Mon, 30 Dec 2019, ghe wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2019 14:49:36
> > From: ghe 
> > To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> > Subject: Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)
> > Resent-Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2019 20:06:09 + (UTC)
> > Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> >
> > Goodness. My asking for a little help with systemd seems to have
> > started the closest thing to a flame war I remember seeing on a
> > Debian mailing list.
> >
> > I apologize for that, but I learned a lot. SSH works now, but I
> > can't get my own *.service file to work at boot (does manually,
> > though), but I now have several things to look for.
> >
> > With this problem, I probably should have asked the systemd-user
> > list, but it doesn't exist. The systemd-devel list does and they say
> > user questions are welcome, but subscribing to it is a real PITA,
> > and the process didn't work for me (the web page kept saying I
> > didn't respond to the Capcha -- there was none).
> >
> >
> > To the subject at hand:
> >
> > On 12/30/19 10:40 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > I find forums much less convenient than mail
> > > lists.
> >
> > As do I. That's why I asked the debian-user list. On this list, you
> > ask a question; you usually get a knowledgeable human on the other
> > end with an answer in just a few minutes.
> >
> > So let me add a vote for the suggestion that a raspian-user list
> > would be a good idea. Even though it would likely quickly fill up
> > with people trying to build science fair projects.
> >
> > A systemd-user list would be a good idea too.

Ya got to be kidding, that list has 1 post I couldn't read w/o joining, 
dated in 2017.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 30 dec 19, 13:14:55, Charles Curley wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Dec 2019 12:49:36 -0700
> ghe  wrote:
> 
> > A systemd-user list would be a good idea too.
> 
> I'll second that.

-1 from me. There's nothing so special about systemd that would require 
a dedicated list.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: On systemd, raspbian and off-topics [was: systemdq]

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 30 dec 19, 10:23:27, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 06:57:12PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> 
> > Chasing us off from asking raspbian related questions here, is a lost 
> > cause because [...]
> 
> Please, don't misrepresent me. I *never* "chased anyone off" from
> asking raspbian. On the contrary: I think fringe-Deian questions
> to be on topic here, to get a feel on how different Debian derivatives
> relate to each other. But I know there are people who disagree.

At the very least posters should state it's not Debian and not send us 
on possibly wild goose chases.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: realtime kernel on ARM hardware

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 21:00:55)
> If debian was serious about supporting the "arm's" that would have 
> been fixed several years ago by moving that list and its contents to 
> "debian-arm-devel", and instituting a new "debian-arm-users" list.

Ahhh.  We have struggled for ages in Debian with the lack of manpower. 
Turns out we simply need mailinglists named accurately - that'll make 
them magically populated with knowledgable and helpful Debian experts.

Thanks for your wisdom, Gene.  And a great 2020 to you as well.

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private


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Re: realtime kernel on ARM hardware

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 30 dec 19, 15:00:55, Gene Heskett wrote:
> 
> Yes, debian has a "debian-arm" mailing list but its miss-named as its 
> actually for debian-arm-devels only as has been made very plain to me on 
> several occasions when I have posted pleas for user help to it.
 
I've had success with ARM specific questions on debian-arm, that is for 
things that are *really* ARM specific, like the support for certain 
hardware in u-boot, Linux and Xorg, etc..

Anything that is the same on all architectures (systemd, ssh, etc.) is 
much better suited on debian-user because:

1. It's not ARM specific (no need to bother the developers)
2. Many more subscribers, which means faster answers (and hopefully at 
   least some of them good)

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: various raspbian x posts

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 30 dec 19, 09:39:20, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 30 December 2019 03:48:54 Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> 
> > On Du, 29 dec 19, 18:57:12, Gene Heskett wrote:
> [...]
> >
> > Could you please provide some examples?
 
[sniped stuff on Raspbian and Linux rt kernels]

I was asking for examples of non-meaningful systemd error messages. Oh 
well...

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Charles Curley]

On Mon, 30 Dec 2019 12:49:36 -0700
ghe  wrote:

> A systemd-user list would be a good idea too.

I'll second that.

-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 14:49:36 ghe wrote:

> Goodness. My asking for a little help with systemd seems to have
> started the closest thing to a flame war I remember seeing on a Debian
> mailing list.
>
> I apologize for that, but I learned a lot. SSH works now, but I can't
> get my own *.service file to work at boot (does manually, though), but
> I now have several things to look for.
>
> With this problem, I probably should have asked the systemd-user list,
> but it doesn't exist. The systemd-devel list does and they say user
> questions are welcome, but subscribing to it is a real PITA, and the
> process didn't work for me (the web page kept saying I didn't respond
> to the Capcha -- there was none).
>
>
> To the subject at hand:
>
> On 12/30/19 10:40 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I find forums much less convenient than mail
> > lists.
>
> As do I. That's why I asked the debian-user list. On this list, you
> ask a question; you usually get a knowledgeable human on the other end
> with an answer in just a few minutes.
>
> So let me add a vote for the suggestion that a raspian-user list would
> be a good idea. Even though it would likely quickly fill up with
> people trying to build science fair projects.
>
> A systemd-user list would be a good idea too.

+10 Glenn, we need a pair of new lists, but I'd name the new debian list 
debian-arm-user, and if it really worked, raspbian might become the 
media mecca it wants to be, leaving those of us who want to do real but 
non-media work using debian on arm hardware, to wag that dog. I don't 
think having raspbian in the list name would do anything but dilute it 
as you alluded to already. There is lots of other arm based hardware 
being peddled besides the r-pi's, and which are sorely lacking in 
non-media support. A real list, supporting debian linux on some of these 
other platforms, could rake in 1000's of new debian arm users rather 
quickly.
 
Cheers Glenn and a better 2020 to all, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Jude DaShiell]

On Mon, 30 Dec 2019, ghe wrote:

> Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2019 14:49:36
> From: ghe 
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)
> Resent-Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2019 20:06:09 + (UTC)
> Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org
>
> Goodness. My asking for a little help with systemd seems to have started
> the closest thing to a flame war I remember seeing on a Debian mailing list.
>
> I apologize for that, but I learned a lot. SSH works now, but I can't
> get my own *.service file to work at boot (does manually, though), but I
> now have several things to look for.
>
> With this problem, I probably should have asked the systemd-user list,
> but it doesn't exist. The systemd-devel list does and they say user
> questions are welcome, but subscribing to it is a real PITA, and the
> process didn't work for me (the web page kept saying I didn't respond to
> the Capcha -- there was none).
>
>
> To the subject at hand:
>
> On 12/30/19 10:40 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > I find forums much less convenient than mail
> > lists.
>
> As do I. That's why I asked the debian-user list. On this list, you ask
> a question; you usually get a knowledgeable human on the other end with
> an answer in just a few minutes.
>
> So let me add a vote for the suggestion that a raspian-user list would
> be a good idea. Even though it would likely quickly fill up with people
> trying to build science fair projects.
>
> A systemd-user list would be a good idea too.
>
>

-- 

https://groups.io/g/ThePIGuys
may be able to help.

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Kenneth Parker]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2019 at 11:12 AM Eduardo M KALINOWSKI <
edua...@kalinowski.com.br> wrote:

> On seg, 30 dez 2019, rhkramer wrote:
> > It would not be that hard to create a new mailing list for raspbian
> users,
> > maybe over on groups.io (can even be done for free).
>
> There are already support channels for raspbian:
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/ . True, it's a forum, not a
> mailing list, but it's probably better to use that than to split
> support in two places.
>

+1

I find it amusing that some of the Controversies we experience here occur
there also.  For example, one person innocently posted, about how he had
successfully installed Devuan 64 on a Pi 3 [1], and was happy, only to get
harassed by those, on the Forum that thought Raspbian was the only OS to
ever use. (LOL!)  Add to that a heated SystemD "discussion", and I don't
blame the Moderator for shutting down the Thread!

[1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=170125

Kenneth Parker

P.S.  I am of the "There's room for multiple Init Systems" crowd, even to
maintaining, both Devuan and Debian (Stretch and Buster) Systems.

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2019 at 12:49:36PM -0700, ghe wrote:
> SSH works now, but I can't
> get my own *.service file to work at boot (does manually, though), but I
> now have several things to look for.

Did you forget to "enable" it?

See also .

Re: RCA Cable to USB Video input device

[Charles Curley]

On Mon, 30 Dec 2019 18:31:57 +0100
Christian Seiler  wrote:

> the main problem we ran
> into were that different chips are sold in the same format - so
> just from looking at it from the outside it is unclear what
> chip is actually used there. There appears to be Linux support
> for some of the common chips used in this kind of device, but
> there's no guarantee.

You may be able to tell that with lsusb.

Before you plug it in, run lsusb. Then plug it in, and run lsusb. The
difference in the two runs will make it easy to spot the new device.

Then run lsusb with the -s option to specify the device, and -v to get
more information. That may tell you far more about the device than you
wanted to know.

You may find the file /var/lib/usbutils/usb.ids (in the package
usb.ids) useful.

-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[ghe]

Goodness. My asking for a little help with systemd seems to have started
the closest thing to a flame war I remember seeing on a Debian mailing list.

I apologize for that, but I learned a lot. SSH works now, but I can't
get my own *.service file to work at boot (does manually, though), but I
now have several things to look for.

With this problem, I probably should have asked the systemd-user list,
but it doesn't exist. The systemd-devel list does and they say user
questions are welcome, but subscribing to it is a real PITA, and the
process didn't work for me (the web page kept saying I didn't respond to
the Capcha -- there was none).


To the subject at hand:

On 12/30/19 10:40 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

> I find forums much less convenient than mail 
> lists.

As do I. That's why I asked the debian-user list. On this list, you ask
a question; you usually get a knowledgeable human on the other end with
an answer in just a few minutes.

So let me add a vote for the suggestion that a raspian-user list would
be a good idea. Even though it would likely quickly fill up with people
trying to build science fair projects.

A systemd-user list would be a good idea too.

-- 
Glenn English

Re: realtime kernel on ARM hardware

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 13:26:27 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

> Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 18:37:34)
>
> > On Monday 30 December 2019 11:05:15 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 16:48:20)
> > >
> > > > On Monday 30 December 2019 10:01:59 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > > > Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 15:39:20)
> > > > >
> > > > > > This one has to do with building a pre-empt-rt kernel for
> > > > > > armhf, which allows linuxcnc to run in uspace. But
> > > > > > subjectwise it wanders badly but I'd like to show one full
> > > > > > chain of recent events:
> > > > >
> > > > > [ Raspbian details snipped ]
> > > > >
> > > > > How do Debian with linux-image-rt-* perform on that hardware?
> > > > >
> > > > > https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=linux-image-rt
> > > >
> > > > I can't directly answer that, Jonas, as I shifted my attention
> > > > to raspbian when I tried a netinstall of the buster original
> > > > image and found it was arm64.
> > >
> > > I fully understand how running 32bit has its use even for hardware
> > > supporting 64bit.  But if I understand you correctly that you
> > > tried only the arm64 image before giving up and moving to a
> > > different distribution, then I don't understand why - Buster
> > > support both armhf and arm64: https://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/
> >
> > I must have come to a page similar, but to not recall previously
> > seeing all the choices showing on that page linked above. I saw one
> > choice only for the netinstall at the time I downloaded the iso.
> > ISTR it was about a week after buster was announced.
> >
> > Would it have made a difference when asking about a realtime kernel
> > for it?
>
> I don't understand your question - yes, I guess that if you had seen
> (not some other misleading page but) the official Debian page listing
> both armhf and arm64 options then you would have tried the armhf
> option before looking outside of Debian, which I guess would have
> affected how you would then have phrased questions here related to
> your (then different) journey.
>
> ...but I suspect I misunderstood and your question above is another.
>
>
>  - Jonas

To Clarify Jonas: for a debian armhf install of buster.

Yes, debian has a "debian-arm" mailing list but its miss-named as its 
actually for debian-arm-devels only as has been made very plain to me on 
several occasions when I have posted pleas for user help to it.

If debian was serious about supporting the "arm's" that would have been 
fixed several years ago by moving that list and its contents 
to "debian-arm-devel", and instituting a new "debian-arm-users" list.

But my "oar" here steering this "ship of state" is no bigger than a 
toothpick. ;-)

Cheers Jonas, and have a better 2020, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 12:40:14 rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Monday, December 30, 2019 10:40:42 AM Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:
> > There are already support channels for raspbian:
> > https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/ . True, it's a forum, not a
> > mailing list, but it's probably better to use that than to split
> > support in two places.
>
> Disclaimer: I don't have a raspberry pi, so am sort of an innocent
> bystander (from the peanut gallery), but I find forums much less
> convenient than mail lists.
>
> I guess to (probabbly mis-) use some terminology from a different
> context, email is "push" and a forum is "pull".

Whatever, the diff is that everyone on the list gets to at least look at 
_all_ the headlines, tapping the + key (I use kmail from TDE) if this 
one has no interest or you can't contribute meaningfull info, and that 
seems to get a lot more "participation". Forums, where you have to 
search for trigger terms, just don't seem to do it, at least for me. I 
have yet to discover a forum that could use the search term new, to show 
you everything since your last visit. Fetchmail OTOH, pulls everything 
new every 2 minutes here.  Lots more realtime conversational.

Thanks all.

 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: On systemd, raspbian and off-topics [was: systemdq]

[Celejar]

On Mon, 30 Dec 2019 10:23:27 +0100
 wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 06:57:12PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 29 December 2019 17:19:06 to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > Unforch Tomas, we are not likely to see any progress toward acceptance of 
> > systemd [...]
> 
> I'm not asking for "acceptance of systemd" or something (FWIW I
> still run a systemd-free Debian Buster here, for a reason!). I'm
> asking for a polite, civilised way of treating each other. And
> hopin this "LP" (sic!) bashing stops. Just treat each other civilly.
> 
> Is that that hard?

+10

I really appreciate this attitude. I rather like systemd myself,
although I have much less expertise in this sort of low-level system
maintenance than you and many others have.

...

> What I really do care for is (a) to express disagreement in a civil
> manner (you don't like systemd? just don't use it, even better: help
> others with your experience. But don't mention LP [1] at every turn
> in the discussion as if he were the Devil incarnate. This is so wrong
> on so many accounts that I don't know where to start). And (b)
> always think that there are ~3000 readers of this list, so do fix
> your subjects when swerving off-topic. And, oh, (c) accept that there
> are other views, and that (gasp!) they might be right.

+10

Celejar

Re: No security support for binutils and libqt5webkit5, what to do?

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Mark Allums (2019-12-30 18:29:07)
> 
> On 12/29/2019 8:44 PM, Andreas wrote:
> > I was supposing that Mark's answer implied that (against general 
> > policies of debian and for reasons unknown to me) in this case 
> > security changes of upstream would be passed on to debian, even if 
> > binutils is "not covered by security support". If this is 
> > (probably?) not the case, the fact that binutils is supported by 
> > upstream of course is of no help.
> 
> My answer was the naive one, that assumes that the upstream even 
> cares.  Of course Debian adds its own patches and "spin", and upstream 
> doesn't care about that.  Everyone may recall the random number 
> debacle...

Some upstream care about Debian handling integration into Debian of 
their project.  Others think they know better how to integrate their 
project into Debian than Debian does.  And others do not care about 
their project being well integrated with Debian at all.

When Debian declares a project unsupported, it means the user is on 
their own - i.e. cannot rely on Debian to aid in continued maintenance 
for the integration of that project into Debian.

I think your answer does a disservice to someone asking if there is 
reason for concern: They want to know if they should do something, and 
your respons can easily me misunderstood as no action is needed which is 
plain wrong.

YES there is reason for concern EXACTLY because for those projects the 
USER needs to make sure to investigate if that project is one where 
upstream offers some alternative maintenance path, or it is a project 
where upstream expects you to run a less stable (a.k.a. more 
modern/fresh/shiny) system, or however they expect their project to work 
reliable, and then the USER needs to act accordingly.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private


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Description: signature

Re: realtime kernel on ARM hardware

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 18:37:34)
> On Monday 30 December 2019 11:05:15 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> 
> > Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 16:48:20)
> >
> > > On Monday 30 December 2019 10:01:59 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > > Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 15:39:20)
> > > >
> > > > > This one has to do with building a pre-empt-rt kernel for 
> > > > > armhf, which allows linuxcnc to run in uspace. But subjectwise 
> > > > > it wanders badly but I'd like to show one full chain of recent 
> > > > > events:
> > > >
> > > > [ Raspbian details snipped ]
> > > >
> > > > How do Debian with linux-image-rt-* perform on that hardware?
> > > >
> > > > https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=linux-image-rt
> > >
> > > I can't directly answer that, Jonas, as I shifted my attention to 
> > > raspbian when I tried a netinstall of the buster original image 
> > > and found it was arm64.
> >
> > I fully understand how running 32bit has its use even for hardware 
> > supporting 64bit.  But if I understand you correctly that you tried 
> > only the arm64 image before giving up and moving to a different 
> > distribution, then I don't understand why - Buster support both 
> > armhf and arm64: https://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

> I must have come to a page similar, but to not recall previously 
> seeing all the choices showing on that page linked above. I saw one 
> choice only for the netinstall at the time I downloaded the iso. ISTR 
> it was about a week after buster was announced.
> 
> Would it have made a difference when asking about a realtime kernel 
> for it?

I don't understand your question - yes, I guess that if you had seen 
(not some other misleading page but) the official Debian page listing 
both armhf and arm64 options then you would have tried the armhf option 
before looking outside of Debian, which I guess would have affected how 
you would then have phrased questions here related to your (then 
different) journey.

...but I suspect I misunderstood and your question above is another.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private


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Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[rhkramer]

On Monday, December 30, 2019 10:40:42 AM Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:
> There are already support channels for raspbian:
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/ . True, it's a forum, not a
> mailing list, but it's probably better to use that than to split
> support in two places.

Disclaimer: I don't have a raspberry pi, so am sort of an innocent bystander 
(from the peanut gallery), but I find forums much less convenient than mail 
lists.

I guess to (probabbly mis-) use some terminology from a different context, 
email is "push" and a forum is "pull".

Re: RCA Cable to USB Video input device

[Christian Seiler]

Hi there,

Am 2019-12-14 07:45, schrieb Marc Shapiro:

I want to copy some videos from VCR and DVD to my computer for editing
(simple stuff, like removing commercials).  I found this device on
Amazon:


https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Converter-Capture-Support-Android/dp/B06X42H9VZ/ref=sr_1_3?m=A3ENZ260X3A00C&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER&qid=1576302348&s=merchant-items&sr=1-3&th=1


It says in the title that it works on Linux, and at least one of the
reviews says it works on Debian.


My father has one that looks just like it. I don't really know
whether it works on Linux (because my father uses Windows), but
when he upgraded his Laptop to Windows 10, he asked me to help
him find drivers for this thing, and the main problem we ran
into were that different chips are sold in the same format - so
just from looking at it from the outside it is unclear what
chip is actually used there. There appears to be Linux support
for some of the common chips used in this kind of device, but
there's no guarantee.

From the listing you posted the device you have appears to have
a UTV007 chipset, and you can find some documentation on how to
make that work on Linux here:

https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Easycap#Making_it_work_4

As for recording software: after searching for quite a while,
the best software I was able to recommend to my father was OBS
studio to make recording very easy to use (though it requires
some setup) - it technically isn't what OBS was designed to do,
but you can use it for that purpose nonetheless.

As for editing, you might want to take a look at kdenlive or
avidemux. I don't have much experience myself with this though,
so YMMV here.

Hope that helps!

Regards,
Christian

Re: considering a new system and a sshd hybrid drive

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 11:38:27 Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:

> On 30.12.2019 20:18, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Monday 30 December 2019 05:16:51 Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
> >> On 29.12.2019 16:56, Gene Heskett wrote:
> >>> On Sunday 29 December 2019 04:42:20 Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
>  On 29.12.2019 12:37, shirish शिरीष wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > Last year I had read some articles when I was looking to build a
> > system there seemed to problems with hybrid drives. Does anybody
> > know how things stand/look today and if anybody had any good/bad
> > experience with them ?  IIRC, the issues were more to do with
> > the firmware rather than the hardware, is it the same or have
> > things improved ? which package I should be looking at if I'm
> > looking for solutions ?
> >
> >
> > I am ok with using either a stable or an alpha/debian-installer
> > snapshot if people have had good experience.
> >
> > Just so people have an idea about what hybrid drives are all
> > about, here are couple of links
> >
> > https://www.seagate.com/in/en/do-more/how-to-choose-between-hdd-
> >st or age-for-your-laptop-master-dm/
> >
> > https://www.howtogeek.com/195262/hybrid-hard-drives-explained-wh
> >y- yo u-might-want-one-instead-of-an-ssd/
> 
>  I strongly suggest against hybrid drives. It's just added
>  complexity and therefore more ways and parts to fail with time.
>  If you considering to buy hybrid HDD, chances are high you simply
>  want faster performance for your system. I don't see why to
>  choose slightly better solution (hybrid) over fastest one (SSDs).
>  For a system disk and\or laptop upgrade, I'd stick with plain
>  MLC-based (2 bit) NAND 250GB+ SSD (or NVMe if your system allows
>  it), because they have the best reliability+performance+price
>  ratings. Try to avoid TLC-based SSDs because they have much lower
>  reliability and performance in comparison to MLC-based SSDs, but
>  also much cheaper. And completely avoid QLC-based SSDs, which are
>  cheap, but slow and unreliable, similar to USB flash drives.
>  Backup your data (obvious), monitor health of your SSDs using
>  S.M.A.R.T. and you'll be just fine.
>  Also, watch out for manufacturers who use dark marketing
>  practices, offering MLC-based (3-bit) NAND in advertisement,
>  which is non-sense, but in reality they should be called
>  TLC-based (3-bit) NAND, and also avoid manufacturers who is
>  hiding real TBW or DWPD ratings of their SSD products and offer
>  only useless MTBF rating. By using TBW or DWPD ratings you can
>  calculate how long SSD will last in your estimated work-load.
> >>>
> >>> So how does one tell what sort of a drive I've bought half a dozen
> >>> of for under a 50 dollar bill for a 240 gig with a sata interface
> >>> actually is? ADATA's on sale usually.
> >>>
> >>> I've so far used them for a couple years, either on a std sata
> >>> cable, as the only drive in a cnc machine or on a usb-3 to sata
> >>> adapter. I've had zero drive failures and one adapter cable
> >>> failure, with the 2 latest installed as swap and work drives for
> >>> compiling both kernels and makeing deb's of linuxcnc on an rpi4.
> >>> Cuts a kernel build time by several hours, but I have noted they
> >>> do get a lot slower if the file being copied is several gigabytes.
> >>> Giving an 2Gb rpi4 a 10 Gb swap to play in is plumb amazing. Using
> >>> 197 megs to build the rs-274 interpreter of linuxcnc there was no
> >>> slowdown while doing it.
> >>>
> >>> There may be better choices out there, and I'd like to be able to
> >>> tell the difference, but these so far have been more that good
> >>> enough for "the girls I go with".
> >>>
> >>> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> >>
> >> You have to read through specifications that are available on
> >> official web site of the manufacturer.
> >> In addition to what I described in my previous email for OP, ADATA
> >> is also takes an opportunity to trick their customers, for an
> >> example they sell "Ultimate SU650" model which, according to their
> >> web site filter [1] could be either TLC or MLC type, and you still
> >> can't tell exact NAND type by reading specifications table [2] or
> >> the sticker on the device itself.
> >> Obviously, there is no way to see if manufacturers are lying about
> >> their specifications before you actually buy the specific model of
> >> SSD. And after you bought it, you can check the internals of it
> >> with SSD-Z utility. [3]
> >> I don't know if similar utility exists for Linux, though.
> >>
> >> [1] https://www.adata.com/en/Solid-State-Drives/25/
> >> [2] https://www.adata.com/en/specification/503
> >> [3] http://aezay.dk/aezay/ssdz/
> >
> > Thank you Alexander, interesting links, particularly the last one.
> > I've not even tried to snoop thru these as so far they Just Work.
> >
> > Is smartc

Re: realtime kernel on ARM hardware

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 11:05:15 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

> Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 16:48:20)
>
> > On Monday 30 December 2019 10:01:59 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 15:39:20)
> > >
> > > > This one has to do with building a pre-empt-rt kernel for armhf,
> > > > which allows linuxcnc to run in uspace. But subjectwise it
> > > > wanders badly but I'd like to show one full chain of recent
> > > > events:
> > >
> > > [ Raspbian details snipped ]
> > >
> > > How do Debian with linux-image-rt-* perform on that hardware?
> > >
> > > https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=linux-image-rt
> >
> > I can't directly answer that, Jonas, as I shifted my attention to
> > raspbian when I tried a netinstall of the buster original image and
> > found it was arm64.
>
> I fully understand how running 32bit has its use even for hardware
> supporting 64bit.  But if I understand you correctly that you tried
> only the arm64 image before giving up and moving to a different
> distribution, then I don't understand why - Buster support both armhf
> and arm64: https://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/
>
> [ Armbian details snipped ]
>
>
>  - Jonas

I must have come to a page similar, but to not recall previously seeing 
all the choices showing on that page linked above. I saw one choice only 
for the netinstall at the time I downloaded the iso. ISTR it was about a 
week after buster was announced.

Would it have made a difference when asking about a realtime kernel for 
it?

If the armhf netinstall boots via grub I'd consider that enough of a 
plus, as I might do a rebuild as all those srcs are on a separate drive 
I could disconnect while the netinstall was running. 64 gig u-sd cards I 
have already.

Thank you.


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: No security support for binutils and libqt5webkit5, what to do?

[Mark Allums]

On 12/29/2019 8:44 PM, Andreas wrote:

I was supposing that Mark's answer implied that (against general
policies of debian and for reasons unknown to me) in this case security
changes of upstream would be passed on to debian, even if binutils is
"not covered by security support". If this is (probably?) not the case,
the fact that binutils is supported by upstream of course is of no help.


My answer was the naive one, that assumes that the upstream even cares.  
Of course Debian adds its own patches and "spin", and upstream doesn't 
care about that.  Everyone may recall the random number debacle...


Mark

Re: New list for Raspbian?

[John Hasler]

Eduardo writes:
> There are already support channels for raspbian:
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/ . True, it's a forum, not a
> mailing list, but it's probably better to use that than to split
> support in two places.

I found the forums helpful early on (I had a beta board and did some
debugging) but I've not looked there for years.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: considering a new system and a sshd hybrid drive

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

On 30.12.2019 20:18, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 30 December 2019 05:16:51 Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
>
>> On 29.12.2019 16:56, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>> On Sunday 29 December 2019 04:42:20 Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
 On 29.12.2019 12:37, shirish शिरीष wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Last year I had read some articles when I was looking to build a
> system there seemed to problems with hybrid drives. Does anybody
> know how things stand/look today and if anybody had any good/bad
> experience with them ?  IIRC, the issues were more to do with the
> firmware rather than the hardware, is it the same or have things
> improved ? which package I should be looking at if I'm looking for
> solutions ?
>
>
> I am ok with using either a stable or an alpha/debian-installer
> snapshot if people have had good experience.
>
> Just so people have an idea about what hybrid drives are all
> about, here are couple of links
>
> https://www.seagate.com/in/en/do-more/how-to-choose-between-hdd-st
> or age-for-your-laptop-master-dm/
>
> https://www.howtogeek.com/195262/hybrid-hard-drives-explained-why-
> yo u-might-want-one-instead-of-an-ssd/
 I strongly suggest against hybrid drives. It's just added
 complexity and therefore more ways and parts to fail with time.
 If you considering to buy hybrid HDD, chances are high you simply
 want faster performance for your system. I don't see why to choose
 slightly better solution (hybrid) over fastest one (SSDs).
 For a system disk and\or laptop upgrade, I'd stick with plain
 MLC-based (2 bit) NAND 250GB+ SSD (or NVMe if your system allows
 it), because they have the best reliability+performance+price
 ratings. Try to avoid TLC-based SSDs because they have much lower
 reliability and performance in comparison to MLC-based SSDs, but
 also much cheaper. And completely avoid QLC-based SSDs, which are
 cheap, but slow and unreliable, similar to USB flash drives.
 Backup your data (obvious), monitor health of your SSDs using
 S.M.A.R.T. and you'll be just fine.
 Also, watch out for manufacturers who use dark marketing practices,
 offering MLC-based (3-bit) NAND in advertisement, which is
 non-sense, but in reality they should be called TLC-based (3-bit)
 NAND, and also avoid manufacturers who is hiding real TBW or DWPD
 ratings of their SSD products and offer only useless MTBF rating.
 By using TBW or DWPD ratings you can calculate how long SSD will
 last in your estimated work-load.
>>> So how does one tell what sort of a drive I've bought half a dozen
>>> of for under a 50 dollar bill for a 240 gig with a sata interface
>>> actually is? ADATA's on sale usually.
>>>
>>> I've so far used them for a couple years, either on a std sata
>>> cable, as the only drive in a cnc machine or on a usb-3 to sata
>>> adapter. I've had zero drive failures and one adapter cable failure,
>>> with the 2 latest installed as swap and work drives for compiling
>>> both kernels and makeing deb's of linuxcnc on an rpi4. Cuts a kernel
>>> build time by several hours, but I have noted they do get a lot
>>> slower if the file being copied is several gigabytes. Giving an 2Gb
>>> rpi4 a 10 Gb swap to play in is plumb amazing. Using 197 megs to
>>> build the rs-274 interpreter of linuxcnc there was no slowdown while
>>> doing it.
>>>
>>> There may be better choices out there, and I'd like to be able to
>>> tell the difference, but these so far have been more that good
>>> enough for "the girls I go with".
>>>
>>> Cheers, Gene Heskett
>> You have to read through specifications that are available on official
>> web site of the manufacturer.
>> In addition to what I described in my previous email for OP, ADATA is
>> also takes an opportunity to trick their customers, for an example
>> they sell "Ultimate SU650" model which, according to their web site
>> filter [1] could be either TLC or MLC type, and you still can't tell
>> exact NAND type by reading specifications table [2] or the sticker on
>> the device itself.
>> Obviously, there is no way to see if manufacturers are lying about
>> their specifications before you actually buy the specific model of
>> SSD. And after you bought it, you can check the internals of it with
>> SSD-Z utility. [3]
>> I don't know if similar utility exists for Linux, though.
>>
>> [1] https://www.adata.com/en/Solid-State-Drives/25/
>> [2] https://www.adata.com/en/specification/503
>> [3] http://aezay.dk/aezay/ssdz/
> Thank you Alexander, interesting links, particularly the last one. I've 
> not even tried to snoop thru these as so far they Just Work.
>
> Is smartctl growing any knowledge of these yet? I've not been aware of 
> any updates to it in a year or so.
I don't think so. This information is quite the low-level stuff, far
beyond simple S.M.A.R.T. manipulations, so I'd expect such functionality
more from projects lik

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Eduardo M KALINOWSKI]

On seg, 30 dez 2019, rhkramer wrote:

It would not be that hard to create a new mailing list for raspbian users,
maybe over on groups.io (can even be done for free).


There are already support channels for raspbian:  
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/ . True, it's a forum, not a  
mailing list, but it's probably better to use that than to split  
support in two places.

--
Eduardo M KALINOWSKI
edua...@kalinowski.com.br

Re: New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 10:13:50 rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Monday, December 30, 2019 08:48:20 AM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 06:57:12PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > Chasing us off from asking raspbian related questions here, is a
> > > lost cause because they don't have a mailing list, but a forum
> > > generally populated by uppity folks, [...]
> >
> > That does not mean you can post Raspbian problems HERE.
> >
> > This list is for Debian problems only.
>
> It would not be that hard to create a new mailing list for raspbian
> users, maybe over on groups.io (can even be done for free).
>
> I'm not sure how many people from this list would subscribe.
>
> But, this list might tolerate occasional posts of the nature:
>
> <~quote>
> A new post / thread has been posted over on (e.g.,) raspbian-user
> asking the question:  :
>
>* there have been answers, but none seems to solve the problem
>* no one on the list seems to be able to answer
>* 
>
> Help would be appreciated, either on that list or possibly here if it
> seems relevant to debian users.
> 
>
> If help is needed to create such a list, I can probably find time.
>
> groups.io has three tiers of service, including a free one.  Any of
> them will work as a mailing list, iirc, the free one has a limit
> (maybe 1 GB) on things like files, photos, ... (and maybe
> attachments).
>
> It is possible that Debian would allow it to be hosted on
> lists.debian.org.

That would be the obvious place, but I'd think the debian folks might 
have controlling objections.  And raspbian would likely ignore it.

Never hurts to ask though.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: realtime kernel on ARM hardware

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 16:48:20)
> On Monday 30 December 2019 10:01:59 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> 
> > Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 15:39:20)
> >
> > > This one has to do with building a pre-empt-rt kernel for armhf, 
> > > which allows linuxcnc to run in uspace. But subjectwise it wanders 
> > > badly but I'd like to show one full chain of recent events:
> >
> > [ Raspbian details snipped ]
> >
> > How do Debian with linux-image-rt-* perform on that hardware?
> >
> > https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=linux-image-rt
> >
> I can't directly answer that, Jonas, as I shifted my attention to 
> raspbian when I tried a netinstall of the buster original image and 
> found it was arm64.

I fully understand how running 32bit has its use even for hardware 
supporting 64bit.  But if I understand you correctly that you tried only 
the arm64 image before giving up and moving to a different distribution, 
then I don't understand why - Buster support both armhf and arm64: 
https://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

[ Armbian details snipped ]


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private


signature.asc
Description: signature

Re: realtime kernel on ARM hardware

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 10:01:59 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

> Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 15:39:20)
>
> > This one has to do with building a pre-empt-rt kernel for armhf,
> > which allows linuxcnc to run in uspace. But subjectwise it wanders
> > badly but I'd like to show one full chain of recent events:
>
> [ Raspbian details snipped ]
>
> How do Debian with linux-image-rt-* perform on that hardware?
>
> https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=linux-image-rt
>
I can't directly answer that, Jonas, as I shifted my attention to raspbian when 
I tried a netinstall of the buster original image and found it was arm64.

Since the build target was to run a metal lathe with linuxcnc and
linuxcnc is very old code, and runs better on 32 bit installs because the 
smaller stack frame also reduces latency. So even armhf is actually overkill, 
and arm64 may be to slow at a context switch, so I didn't waste a lot of time 
with it.

For Armbian which run arm64 on a rock64, I did find that armhf was a crasher. 
The backup program amanda build in the repo's is apparently armhf, and amanda 
as a server will crash an arm64 install about one second after the server asks 
the client for an estimate. True for Armbian stretch and debian buster.  
Running amanda is one of my other requirements here.  Beyond that bit of 
trivia, I'm fairly clueless.
Both versions are otherwise very stable, with extended up times.

>  - Jonas


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

New list for Raspbian? (was: Re: systemdq)

[rhkramer]

On Monday, December 30, 2019 08:48:20 AM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 06:57:12PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Chasing us off from asking raspbian related questions here, is a lost
> > cause because they don't have a mailing list, but a forum generally
> > populated by uppity folks, [...]
> 
> That does not mean you can post Raspbian problems HERE.
> 
> This list is for Debian problems only.

It would not be that hard to create a new mailing list for raspbian users, 
maybe over on groups.io (can even be done for free).

I'm not sure how many people from this list would subscribe.

But, this list might tolerate occasional posts of the nature:

<~quote>
A new post / thread has been posted over on (e.g.,) raspbian-user asking the 
question:  :

   * there have been answers, but none seems to solve the problem
   * no one on the list seems to be able to answer
   * 

Help would be appreciated, either on that list or possibly here if it seems 
relevant to debian users.


If help is needed to create such a list, I can probably find time.

groups.io has three tiers of service, including a free one.  Any of them will 
work as a mailing list, iirc, the free one has a limit (maybe 1 GB) on things 
like files, photos, ... (and maybe attachments).

It is possible that Debian would allow it to be hosted on lists.debian.org.

Re: considering a new system and a sshd hybrid drive

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 05:16:51 Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:

> On 29.12.2019 16:56, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 29 December 2019 04:42:20 Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
> >> On 29.12.2019 12:37, shirish शिरीष wrote:
> >>> Dear all,
> >>>
> >>> Last year I had read some articles when I was looking to build a
> >>> system there seemed to problems with hybrid drives. Does anybody
> >>> know how things stand/look today and if anybody had any good/bad
> >>> experience with them ?  IIRC, the issues were more to do with the
> >>> firmware rather than the hardware, is it the same or have things
> >>> improved ? which package I should be looking at if I'm looking for
> >>> solutions ?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> I am ok with using either a stable or an alpha/debian-installer
> >>> snapshot if people have had good experience.
> >>>
> >>> Just so people have an idea about what hybrid drives are all
> >>> about, here are couple of links
> >>>
> >>> https://www.seagate.com/in/en/do-more/how-to-choose-between-hdd-st
> >>>or age-for-your-laptop-master-dm/
> >>>
> >>> https://www.howtogeek.com/195262/hybrid-hard-drives-explained-why-
> >>>yo u-might-want-one-instead-of-an-ssd/
> >>
> >> I strongly suggest against hybrid drives. It's just added
> >> complexity and therefore more ways and parts to fail with time.
> >> If you considering to buy hybrid HDD, chances are high you simply
> >> want faster performance for your system. I don't see why to choose
> >> slightly better solution (hybrid) over fastest one (SSDs).
> >> For a system disk and\or laptop upgrade, I'd stick with plain
> >> MLC-based (2 bit) NAND 250GB+ SSD (or NVMe if your system allows
> >> it), because they have the best reliability+performance+price
> >> ratings. Try to avoid TLC-based SSDs because they have much lower
> >> reliability and performance in comparison to MLC-based SSDs, but
> >> also much cheaper. And completely avoid QLC-based SSDs, which are
> >> cheap, but slow and unreliable, similar to USB flash drives.
> >> Backup your data (obvious), monitor health of your SSDs using
> >> S.M.A.R.T. and you'll be just fine.
> >> Also, watch out for manufacturers who use dark marketing practices,
> >> offering MLC-based (3-bit) NAND in advertisement, which is
> >> non-sense, but in reality they should be called TLC-based (3-bit)
> >> NAND, and also avoid manufacturers who is hiding real TBW or DWPD
> >> ratings of their SSD products and offer only useless MTBF rating.
> >> By using TBW or DWPD ratings you can calculate how long SSD will
> >> last in your estimated work-load.
> >
> > So how does one tell what sort of a drive I've bought half a dozen
> > of for under a 50 dollar bill for a 240 gig with a sata interface
> > actually is? ADATA's on sale usually.
> >
> > I've so far used them for a couple years, either on a std sata
> > cable, as the only drive in a cnc machine or on a usb-3 to sata
> > adapter. I've had zero drive failures and one adapter cable failure,
> > with the 2 latest installed as swap and work drives for compiling
> > both kernels and makeing deb's of linuxcnc on an rpi4. Cuts a kernel
> > build time by several hours, but I have noted they do get a lot
> > slower if the file being copied is several gigabytes. Giving an 2Gb
> > rpi4 a 10 Gb swap to play in is plumb amazing. Using 197 megs to
> > build the rs-274 interpreter of linuxcnc there was no slowdown while
> > doing it.
> >
> > There may be better choices out there, and I'd like to be able to
> > tell the difference, but these so far have been more that good
> > enough for "the girls I go with".
> >
> > Cheers, Gene Heskett
>
> You have to read through specifications that are available on official
> web site of the manufacturer.
> In addition to what I described in my previous email for OP, ADATA is
> also takes an opportunity to trick their customers, for an example
> they sell "Ultimate SU650" model which, according to their web site
> filter [1] could be either TLC or MLC type, and you still can't tell
> exact NAND type by reading specifications table [2] or the sticker on
> the device itself.
> Obviously, there is no way to see if manufacturers are lying about
> their specifications before you actually buy the specific model of
> SSD. And after you bought it, you can check the internals of it with
> SSD-Z utility. [3]
> I don't know if similar utility exists for Linux, though.
>
> [1] https://www.adata.com/en/Solid-State-Drives/25/
> [2] https://www.adata.com/en/specification/503
> [3] http://aezay.dk/aezay/ssdz/

Thank you Alexander, interesting links, particularly the last one. I've 
not even tried to snoop thru these as so far they Just Work.

Is smartctl growing any knowledge of these yet? I've not been aware of 
any updates to it in a year or so.

What os does this SSDZ work on?

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for th

Re: On systemd, raspbian and off-topics [was: systemdq]

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 04:23:27 to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 06:57:12PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 29 December 2019 17:19:06 to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > Unforch Tomas, we are not likely to see any progress toward
> > acceptance of systemd [...]
>
> I'm not asking for "acceptance of systemd" or something (FWIW I
> still run a systemd-free Debian Buster here, for a reason!). I'm
> asking for a polite, civilised way of treating each other. And
> hopin this "LP" (sic!) bashing stops. Just treat each other civilly.
>
> Is that that hard?
>
> > Chasing us off from asking raspbian related questions here, is a
> > lost cause because [...]
>
> Please, don't misrepresent me. I *never* "chased anyone off" from
> asking raspbian. On the contrary: I think fringe-Deian questions
> to be on topic here, to get a feel on how different Debian derivatives
> relate to each other. But I know there are people who disagree.
>
> [about off-topic tangents]
>
> > I don't like it, helpfull folks like you don't like it. But thats
> > how it actually works.
>
> I actually do enjoy off-topic tangents, and think they belong into
> such general mailing lists as this. If it deviates too far from my
> interests, I just bow out politelly.
>
> What I really do care for is (a) to express disagreement in a civil
> manner (you don't like systemd? just don't use it, even better: help
> others with your experience. But don't mention LP [1] at every turn
> in the discussion as if he were the Devil incarnate. This is so wrong
> on so many accounts that I don't know where to start). And (b)
> always think that there are ~3000 readers of this list, so do fix
> your subjects when swerving off-topic. And, oh, (c) accept that there
> are other views, and that (gasp!) they might be right.
>
> Cheers
>
> [1] he's writing free software for you & me to use as we wish,
>after all, no?
>
> -- tomás

You and I agree that offtopic is still educational which is as it should 
be as long as its still linux. Seeing new stuff mentioned here can and 
has led to some very helpfull learning. And while I disagree with the 
manner that systemd has been bleeding into linux, my attack of the 
author was out of place. My apologies. But it sure would be nice if the 
manpages were a little more obvious. :) Options seem to be well 
explained but commonly used examples that one can play with to learn how 
it works are thin. A good tut that passed as a manpage would likely 
reduce the objection chatter a lot by showing that it can be a better 
way to do things.

Take care Tomas

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: realtime kernel on ARM hardware

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Gene Heskett (2019-12-30 15:39:20)
> This one has to do with building a pre-empt-rt kernel for armhf, which 
> allows linuxcnc to run in uspace. But subjectwise it wanders badly but 
> I'd like to show one full chain of recent events:

[ Raspbian details snipped ]

How do Debian with linux-image-rt-* perform on that hardware?

https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=linux-image-rt


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private


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Description: signature

various raspbian x posts

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 30 December 2019 03:48:54 Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> On Du, 29 dec 19, 18:57:12, Gene Heskett wrote:
[...]
>
> Could you please provide some examples?

This one has to do with building a pre-empt-rt kernel for armhf, which 
allows linuxcnc to run in uspace. But subjectwise it wanders badly but 
I'd like to show one full chain of recent events: 

Raspbian claims to have such a src tree if you want to build it yourself.
But it was not updated for 10.1 when the default was updated, so we were 
stuck with video running at about 1.5 fps.  I know, I built it.  So I 
asked for clarification and got a "thats how it is answer" from 
raspbian.  I knew better than come here, so I was on my own.  So since 
I'm lurking on the linux-rt list, I went back in time to a 4.19 kernel 
src tree and built it, quite successfully I think, getting around 57 fps 
out of glxgears pulled out to full screen. But linux-rt is not a usr 
list and usr's asking build questions there are generally ignored.

You can dl that kernel from my web site, along with the debs to install 
linuxcnc on your rpi4, and 2 or 3 others have done so. My web site shows 
my rather eclectic interests, and hadn't generated a huge amount of 
traffic from the bots as they were simply indexing it and moving on, 
using perhaps 10Gb a month.

But with my putting that up, every bot on the planet suddenly started 
mirroring it all, quite a few gigabytes, and fighting for bandwidth as 
they were doing it in a loop, when they got done, they restart it again. 
With my connection speed, that can be defined as a DDOS attack.

Never before have I felt the need to block them but when the bots started 
ignoring my robots.txt files and using 99% of my uploads bandwidth for 
weeks on a 24/7 basis I came here for help as the manpage for iptables 
may as well have been written in swahili. Eventually I got the help, 
made bash scripts out of 3 cli examples that were posted, and did get 
most of them that ignored the robots.txt stopped.

Many of the replies I got weren't terribly usefull, suggesting I install 
a whole kit of automatic stuff that needed its own programming setup to 
become effective, and most of the suggested stuff, like fail2ban 
depending on a failure to trigger their actions, but that meant you had 
to have failures, but the bots were very successfull so there weren't 
any failures. But that little detail wasn't understood by the responders 
here.  So I had to keep hammering on it.  That doesn't exactly endear to 
the list either.

I try to ask pertinent questions here, as I have 4 machines here running 
stretch right now, with the rpi4 running raspbian buster, but as an 
example, thats not a good one for the quality of the help I got for 
asking how to put iptables to work. I now have an iptables status report 
with about 35 xx.xx.xx.xx/24 drops and its working. But it took many 
posts to accomplish what I thought was a very specific task.

And I'm back to fetchmail using the majority of my used bandwidth, so I'm 
a happy camper again.

Thank you Andrei POPESCU (and others) for reading my tale of woe.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: systemdq

[Greg Wooledge]

On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 06:57:12PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> Chasing us off from asking raspbian related questions here, is a lost 
> cause because they don't have a mailing list, but a forum generally 
> populated by uppity folks, [...]

That does not mean you can post Raspbian problems HERE.

This list is for Debian problems only.

Re: systemdq

[Greg Wooledge]

On Sat, Dec 28, 2019 at 02:57:40PM -0700, Charles Curley wrote:
> Debian (not rasbian) seems to put sshd into place at installation time.
> 
> charles@hawk:~$ locate sshd.service
> /etc/systemd/system/sshd.service
> /var/lib/systemd/deb-systemd-helper-enabled/sshd.service
> charles@hawk:~$
> 
> The second one has to be there. The first is optional and overrides the
> second.

I know this has been mentioned once in this gargantual sprawling
thread of lies and incompetence, but I think it needs repeating.

Debian (and probably Raspbian also, but I have no way to know for sure)
ships a unit file named

  ssh.service

Note that there is no 'd' here.

Within this unit file, there is the following line:

  Alias=sshd.service

This means that SOME OF THE TIME, you can get away with calling it
"sshd.service" -- for example when you try to start or stop it.

However, the Alias name does not always work.  Sometimes you must
use the actual name of the unit -- for example, if you try to create
a drop-in directory under /etc/systemd/service/ to tweak it.

Please trust me: you DO NOT under any circumstances want to create a
drop-in directory using the Alias name.  Bad shit happens.  I found
this out the hard way.

Some of you have already observed that there's an
/etc/systemd/system/sshd.service in Debian.  Let's take a closer look
at that:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 Apr 10  2017 /etc/systemd/system/sshd.service -> 
/lib/systemd/system/ssh.service

It's not a file.  It's a symlink, and that symlink points to the REAL
unit file with the name "ssh.service" (no "d").  This is what the Alias
line does.  It creates this alternatively-named reference ("sshd.service")
that you can use to start and stop the service, but NOT to configure
it.

There's been a lot of bad advice given in this thread.  It's extremely
hard to undo that.  All I can do is try to point out the truth and the
falsehoods, and hope that people will update their mental caches.

And the moral of all of this is:

  DO NOT POST RASPBIAN ISSUES IN DEBIAN-USER.

Re: considering a new system and a sshd hybrid drive

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

On 29.12.2019 16:56, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 29 December 2019 04:42:20 Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
>
>> On 29.12.2019 12:37, shirish शिरीष wrote:
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> Last year I had read some articles when I was looking to build a
>>> system there seemed to problems with hybrid drives. Does anybody
>>> know how things stand/look today and if anybody had any good/bad
>>> experience with them ?  IIRC, the issues were more to do with the
>>> firmware rather than the hardware, is it the same or have things
>>> improved ? which package I should be looking at if I'm looking for
>>> solutions ?
>>>
>>>
>>> I am ok with using either a stable or an alpha/debian-installer
>>> snapshot if people have had good experience.
>>>
>>> Just so people have an idea about what hybrid drives are all about,
>>> here are couple of links
>>>
>>> https://www.seagate.com/in/en/do-more/how-to-choose-between-hdd-stor
>>> age-for-your-laptop-master-dm/
>>>
>>> https://www.howtogeek.com/195262/hybrid-hard-drives-explained-why-yo
>>> u-might-want-one-instead-of-an-ssd/
>> I strongly suggest against hybrid drives. It's just added complexity
>> and therefore more ways and parts to fail with time.
>> If you considering to buy hybrid HDD, chances are high you simply want
>> faster performance for your system. I don't see why to choose slightly
>> better solution (hybrid) over fastest one (SSDs).
>> For a system disk and\or laptop upgrade, I'd stick with plain
>> MLC-based (2 bit) NAND 250GB+ SSD (or NVMe if your system allows it),
>> because they have the best reliability+performance+price ratings. Try
>> to avoid TLC-based SSDs because they have much lower reliability and
>> performance in comparison to MLC-based SSDs, but also much cheaper.
>> And completely avoid QLC-based SSDs, which are cheap, but slow and
>> unreliable, similar to USB flash drives.
>> Backup your data (obvious), monitor health of your SSDs using
>> S.M.A.R.T. and you'll be just fine.
>> Also, watch out for manufacturers who use dark marketing practices,
>> offering MLC-based (3-bit) NAND in advertisement, which is non-sense,
>> but in reality they should be called TLC-based (3-bit) NAND, and also
>> avoid manufacturers who is hiding real TBW or DWPD ratings of their
>> SSD products and offer only useless MTBF rating.
>> By using TBW or DWPD ratings you can calculate how long SSD will last
>> in your estimated work-load.
> So how does one tell what sort of a drive I've bought half a dozen of for 
> under a 50 dollar bill for a 240 gig with a sata interface actually is? 
> ADATA's on sale usually.
>
> I've so far used them for a couple years, either on a std sata cable, as 
> the only drive in a cnc machine or on a usb-3 to sata adapter. I've had 
> zero drive failures and one adapter cable failure, with the 2 latest 
> installed as swap and work drives for compiling both kernels and makeing 
> deb's of linuxcnc on an rpi4. Cuts a kernel build time by several hours, 
> but I have noted they do get a lot slower if the file being copied is 
> several gigabytes. Giving an 2Gb rpi4 a 10 Gb swap to play in is plumb 
> amazing. Using 197 megs to build the rs-274 interpreter of linuxcnc 
> there was no slowdown while doing it.
>
> There may be better choices out there, and I'd like to be able to tell 
> the difference, but these so far have been more that good enough 
> for "the girls I go with".
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
You have to read through specifications that are available on official
web site of the manufacturer.
In addition to what I described in my previous email for OP, ADATA is
also takes an opportunity to trick their customers, for an example they
sell "Ultimate SU650" model which, according to their web site filter
[1] could be either TLC or MLC type, and you still can't tell exact NAND
type by reading specifications table [2] or the sticker on the device
itself.
Obviously, there is no way to see if manufacturers are lying about their
specifications before you actually buy the specific model of SSD. And
after you bought it, you can check the internals of it with SSD-Z
utility. [3]
I don't know if similar utility exists for Linux, though.

[1] https://www.adata.com/en/Solid-State-Drives/25/
[2] https://www.adata.com/en/specification/503
[3] http://aezay.dk/aezay/ssdz/

-- 
With kindest regards, Alexander.

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄ 

Re: systemdq

[Reco]

Hi.

On Mon, Dec 30, 2019 at 10:33:28AM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> dpkg would not even warn if one would install packages from one on the 
> other (they are both "armhf"), but the result is hard to predict.

For Raspberry Pi the result was predictable. If a package was providing
a binary executable or a library - it failed with SIGILL.
If a package was providing some kind of arch-independent script - it
worked.

Starting with Raspberry Pi 2 nearly any Debian-provided binaries have
started to work. The exceptions to this rule are packages that depend on
kernel features which are included in Debian, but are missing in
Raspbian, and OpenGL-dependent ones.

Latter are more-or-less operational with Raspberry Pi 3.


> [1] Not sure if/how this applies with current Raspbian releases. Do they 
> still recompile Debian packages? If yes, why?

Yes, they do. Some packages have Raspbian-specific patches (dhcpcd, to
name a few), most are rebuilt "just in case".

Reco

On systemd, raspbian and off-topics [was: systemdq]

[tomas]

On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 06:57:12PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 29 December 2019 17:19:06 to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

[...]

> Unforch Tomas, we are not likely to see any progress toward acceptance of 
> systemd [...]

I'm not asking for "acceptance of systemd" or something (FWIW I
still run a systemd-free Debian Buster here, for a reason!). I'm
asking for a polite, civilised way of treating each other. And
hopin this "LP" (sic!) bashing stops. Just treat each other civilly.

Is that that hard?

> Chasing us off from asking raspbian related questions here, is a lost 
> cause because [...]

Please, don't misrepresent me. I *never* "chased anyone off" from
asking raspbian. On the contrary: I think fringe-Deian questions
to be on topic here, to get a feel on how different Debian derivatives
relate to each other. But I know there are people who disagree.

[about off-topic tangents]

> I don't like it, helpfull folks like you don't like it. But thats how it 
> actually works.

I actually do enjoy off-topic tangents, and think they belong into
such general mailing lists as this. If it deviates too far from my
interests, I just bow out politelly.

What I really do care for is (a) to express disagreement in a civil
manner (you don't like systemd? just don't use it, even better: help
others with your experience. But don't mention LP [1] at every turn
in the discussion as if he were the Devil incarnate. This is so wrong
on so many accounts that I don't know where to start). And (b)
always think that there are ~3000 readers of this list, so do fix
your subjects when swerving off-topic. And, oh, (c) accept that there
are other views, and that (gasp!) they might be right.

Cheers

[1] he's writing free software for you & me to use as we wish,
   after all, no?

-- tomás


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Re: considering a new system and a sshd hybrid drive

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

On 29.12.2019 15:49, shirish शिरीष wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I read Alexander's reply with interest at [1] .
>
> @Alexander, thank you for taking time to answer my question/s . Maybe
> you can CC me the next time :)
>
> What was also interesting in your answer was the use of dark marketing
> practises used by some manufacturers to disguise TLC (3-bit NAND)
> memory chips as MLC ones but haven't shared either literature or any
> tools to tell them apart.
>
Worst offender of this trickery is Samsung. You have to carefully read
through full specifications for each device that available on official
web sites, which are often hidden behind very long page scrolls and many
clicks.
Basically, if it says "4-bit" it means drive was build with QLC NAND
type. And if it says "3-bit" it means TLC NAND type. And if it says
"2-bit" it means MLC NAND type.
And if some information is not available on official web site of some
manufacturer, personally I'd search for another SSD elsewhere.
There are also utilities that can view exact specifications of SSD, but
I don't know if similar programs exist for Linux. [1]
These kinds of utilities rely on internal database of known devices
(nand chips, controllers, SSDs), so they can't simply identify any and
all SSDs as is.
If you have identified exact NAND chip and its manufacturer you can look
up specifications for chips alone to see their, for an example, write
endurance, which varies and could be different for each NAND type. [2]

> You shared something called TBW or DWPD ratings for SSD but again
> didn't share anything about that. Any links or literature which will
> help me find a bit more about them and perhaps what you have used it
> for ?  My workload varies, sometimes it is compiling, sometimes it is
> running some tests, sometimes doing gaming and sometimes just browsing
> and using multimedia (movies etc.) . So my idea and stress would be
> general system improvements and response times. Also my budget is not
> that great, at the most I could afford is either a 500 GB to 1 TB
There is a good article to read about this. [3]
>
> I have also been reading about multi-actuator heads [2] in traditional
> HDD's but guessing they will be probably be priced and used by
> enterprise more rather than the enthusiast class at least in the
> beginning. I also have read blackbaze hdd failures to get some ideas
> about what's good or not even though their use-case scenario is far
> bigger than mine.[3]
>
> For e.g. for me the question would be how to deal with backups and
> crashes if a time comes, as checking 4 TB hdd's is also insane, at
> least in my puny setup.
>
> Looking forward to know more.
>
> 1. https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2019/12/msg00726.html
> 2. 
> https://blog.seagate.com/craftsman-ship/multi-actuator-technology-a-new-performance-breakthrough/
> 3. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/
>
Personally, I use self-hosted NAS with RAID1 build from 2x 4TB NAS grade
HDDs. Because I like to keep my data private and I like the idea of
giving up storage space of one HDD drive as insurance for data safety.
>From my personal experience over many years, I can see how HDDs could
fail in many different ways, long before SMART will mark them as "Failed".
But it is very unlikely (and unfortunate) to buy a brand new HDD that
will fail during it's warranty period, and if it worked fine before
chances are high it will continue to work for many years after warranty
period expires.
Fun fact: I still have my ~20 years old 3.5" Fujitsu 20GB IDE HDD that
is still alive and kicking. :)

[1] http://aezay.dk/aezay/ssdz/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Write_endurance
[3]
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Storage-at-Microsoft/Understanding-SSD-endurance-drive-writes-per-day-DWPD-terabytes/ba-p/426024

-- 
With kindest regards, Alexander.

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄ 

Re: systemdq

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Du, 29 dec 19, 18:57:12, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 29 December 2019 17:19:06 to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 05:11:18PM -0500, chris wrote:
> > > There's nothing wrong with not being a fan of systemd.
> >
> > Absolutely not. Myself, I'm not a fan either.
> >
> > > It's good to let people know there's a active community that isn't
> > > overly impressed [...]
> >
> > But what I definitely don't like either is this dramatization.
> >
> > My wish would be that we, the non-fans and the fans of systemd
> > work together in peace. That's all.
>
> Unforch Tomas, we are not likely to see any progress toward acceptance 
> of systemd until some means of eliciting a meaningfull error message 
> from it comes into existence. 

Could you please provide some examples?

> LP must lay awake nights thinking up ways to makes its output totally 
> unrelated to whats wrong.

I tend to avoid attributing any kind of intention to other people, 
especially ones I've never met.

> Chasing us off from asking raspbian related questions here, is a lost 
> cause because they don't have a mailing list, but a forum generally 
> populated by uppity folks, who when you think you are about to get an 
> answer to your problem, decide to declare the conversation has drifted 
> off topic and refuse to further participate in the discussion, leaving 
> you hanging for a real answer.  So while we do take our questions there, 
> we are forced, language barrier, whatever, to come back here, starting 
> yet another new thread in hopes we will get a usable answer.
> 
> I don't like it, helpfull folks like you don't like it. But thats how it 
> actually works.

From what I see here on d-u you tend to write some posts with maybe 10% 
relevant content and 90% totally unrelated to the issue being discussed 
(while the issue itself might already be off-topic).

One of a forum moderator's job is exactly to take action on such 
occurrences.


Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: systemdq

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Du, 29 dec 19, 15:01:21, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Quoting Andrei POPESCU (2019-12-29 14:21:30)
> > 
> > Raspbian (note the 'B') was created because Debian's armhf port requires 
> > an ARMv7 processor, whereas the original Raspberry Pi (Raspberry Pi 1 
> > model B) is ARMv6.
> 
> Raspbian ports are *different* from Debian but possibly use same names. 
> Super confusing at a low level, causing those unaware of the low level 
> differences to clutter further discussions with confusing potentially 
> wrong or misleading suggestions and assumptions.

To expand a little bit on that, the original Raspbian had to 
recompile[1] Debian's armhf port so the packages work on ARMv6 
(Raspberry Pi 1, model B).

dpkg would not even warn if one would install packages from one on the 
other (they are both "armhf"), but the result is hard to predict.

[1] Not sure if/how this applies with current Raspbian releases. Do they 
still recompile Debian packages? If yes, why? What other changes are 
done to it? etc.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: systemdq

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Du, 29 dec 19, 11:23:33, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 29 December 2019 08:21:30 Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> >
> > Debian also has an armhf port[1].
> 
> Not at all obvious from the available downloads selections.

I can only guess you are expecting to find ready-made images.

Considering the variety of ARM-based boards available providing images 
for each and every one that is supported by Debian would be unrealistic.

With Debian being The Universal Operating System it provides "only" the 
necessary pieces and tools to install it.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: systemdq [Solved]

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Du, 29 dec 19, 14:57:19, ghe wrote:
> 
> Amazing. I'm a self-taught *nix geek, but I've never seen a release
> without SSH. Not since I figured out what SSH is, anyway. Makes me
> question the sanity of the otherwise quite rational 'Pi folks.

Depending on what you mean by "release" Debian doesn't include SSH by 
default. One has to explicitly request it during the installation 
process.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: systemdq [Solved]

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Du, 29 dec 19, 20:21:48, Reco wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 09:40:29AM -0700, ghe wrote:
> > Somebody just forgot to enable SSH while preparing the Raspian Buster
> > release, it looks like.
> 
> Nope. It was deliberate - [1] (note the "ssh" part).
> 
> 
> > And I didn't know enough about systemd to
> > realize that was what the error message was trying to tell me.
> 
> Reading error messages is not a viable substitute to reading the
> documentation. At least the distribution one.
> 
> Small "problems" such as this "ssh-sshd" discrepancy is the reason
> Raspbian is frowned upon here. It's close to Debian yes, except for such
> small yet fundamental parts, which makes it different to Debian.

Except that I was looking at the unit file in Debian ;)

The only difference appears to be that sshd is disabled by default in 
Raspbian.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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