Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread David Christensen 

On 1/17/24 17:23, Default User wrote:

On Wed, 2024-01-17 at 09:19 -0800, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/17/24 08:19, Default User wrote:

Opinions, please.

...
Hi guys, thanks for the replies.



YW.  :-)



BTW, the two backup drives are external 4 Gb USB HDDs.  The secondary
backup drive is always kept away from the computer, in a locked steel
box, except when it is attached to the computer to have the primary
backup drive copied to it.



That means the live data and all the backups are exposed to the same 
computer if and when it is compromised.  It would be safer to do the 
copy on another computer.  If you only have one computer, then boot live 
media to do the copy.




The primary backup drive is almost always attached to the computer, so
that I can access files archived there, that are not on the computer.



Accidental file modification and deletion are probably the most common 
failure modes.



One of the features of ZFS is snapshots.  Snapshots can be accessed via 
the hidden ".zfs/snapshot/" directory in the root of each file system. 
Users can browse the snapshots and copy out whatever files and 
directories they need, subject to the file system permissions at the 
time the snapshot was taken.  So, recovery from the above failure is 
"self serve" -- no sysadmin required, no backup/ restore software required.




Probably not good practice, but that's why I have the secondary backup
drive.

I guess in the back of my mind I was thinking of a scenario where a
file on the primary backup drive might be corrupted or deleted before
being copied to the secondary backup drive.  Then if it is not present
on the primary backup drive, rsync dutifully deletes it from the
secondary backup drive. If the file is no longer on the computer's
internal SSD, I am then SOL.



ZFS snapshots are read-only.  Individual files and directories within a 
snapshot cannot be created, updated, or deleted.



Another feature of ZFS is that both data and metadata are checksummed. 
So, if you can read a file, the metadata and data are good.  "bitrot" is 
extremely unlikely.




I have also thought of trying to use partclone to copy the data from
the primary backup drive to the secondary backup drive. Why not try,



Transferring 4 TB at 150 MB/s would require:

4 TB / 150 MB/s = 26,667 s

Or, about 7.4 hours.



since rsync takes an hour and a half, every day!



How much data is rsync(1) transferring?


Another feature of ZFS snapshots is that they can be replicated from one 
pool to another.  The first replication is full.  Subsequent 
replications are incremental.  Here are some recent transfers from my 
backup server to a removable HDD:


frequency  bytes   real timebandwidth
=  ==  ===  =
weekly 11,125,755,324   25m08.848s  7.37 MB/s
monthly75,218,102,216  140m53.710s  8.90 MB/s



As for ZFS . . .   I wish!  But I think the resource requirements would
be too high for my setup, so it probably would be impractical - or
impossible. 



ZFS will use as much or as little resources as you provide.


(ZFS is known to consume most of available memory OOTB; this can be 
tuned.  The simple answer is to put it on a dedicated file server/ NAS.)



Please tell us about your setup -- hardware, stored data, and I/O workload.



And  then there's the complexity.



I find ZFS has more conceptual integrity than cobbling together 
fdisk(8), mdadm(8), cryptsetup(8), lvm(8), mkfs(8), etc..




And the learning curve.



The Lucas books got me up the learning curve:

https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#fmzfs

https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#fmaz


While both have "FreeBSD" in the title, most of the content applies 
equally to OpenZFS on Debian.




Finally I really should have a third backup drive in the mix.  Yes, I
am familiar with the 1-2-3 backup theory.  But the third backup drive
could not be off-site, for various reasons.  And I do have other things
to do rather than spend all day, every day, managing backups.



Disaster preparedness is an open-ended problem.  Only you can decide how 
much solution to give it.



David

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas Schmitt 
Hi,

gene heskett wrote:
> > where did the extra 19.4G's come from? Can filesystem
> > ext4's overhead account for that?

In an earlier mail:

> > > command line: rsync -a --bwlimit=10m --fsync --progress /home/ 
> > > /mnt/homevol

David Christensen wrote:
> Please RTFM rsync(1) to choose your options.  These look
> useful:
>--archive, -a   (-rlptgoD)
>--delete
>--hard-links, -H
>--one-file-system, -x
>--sparse, -S

I bet on --hard-links and --sparse as means to avoid the extra disk space
consumption. (--archive is important for other reasons, but it was
already in use as -a with your successful rsync run. --delete will be
of importance if the rsync run gets repeated on the already filled target
directory tree.)

man rsync:

 -H, --hard-links
This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the source and
link together the corresponding files on the destination.  With‐
out  this option, hard-linked files in the source are treated as
though they were separate files.
[...]
 -S, --sparse
Try  to  handle  sparse  files  efficiently so they take up less
space on the destination. [...]

One can observe a similar inflation effect when copying the files of a
Debian installation ISO to hard disk. In the original disk directory
on the machine which created the ISO there were hardlinked kernels and
firmware packages. In the ISO these link siblings share the same file
content storage.
But when mounted, the siblings get treated as separate files with
different inode numbers. So the 8,135,584 bytes of the hardlink siblings
  /install.amd/gtk/vmlinuz
  /install.amd/vmlinuz
  /install.amd/xen/vmlinuz
get triplicated when these three files get copied out of the ISO.

I am somewhat astonished that --hard-links is not default in rsync,
as it is quite important for backup fidelity.
(On the other hand it is some effort to find all siblings on the disk.)

Sparse files are files with large areas of 0-bytes. Many filesystems
don't store the zeros but rather an instruction to hand out the given
number of 0-bytes when requested by a reader.


If i were you, i'd let rsync make a complete new copy with --hard-links
--sparse, and --delete, but without --bwlimit= in order to get a higher
copy fidelity and also to check whether the transfer speed really was not
to blame for the appearance of the OOM killer.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread Charles Curley 
On Tue, 16 Jan 2024 21:10:28 -0500
gene heskett  wrote:

> gene@coyote:~/src/klipper-docs$  lsblk -d -o 
> NAME,MAJ:MIN,MODEL,SERIAL,WWN /dev/sd[hijkl]
> NAME MAJ:MIN MODEL SERIAL WWN
> sdh8:112 Gigastone SSD GSTD02TB230102
> sdi8:128 Gigastone SSD GST02TBG221146
> sdj8:144 Gigastone SSD GST02TBG221146
> sdk8:160 Gigastone SSD GSTG02TB230206
> sdl8:176 Gigastone SSD GSTG02TB230206

Something is seriously wrong here. I worked at Maxtor for a while. They
went out of their way to be sure there were no duplicate serial
numbers.

Gene, I suggest you check these SNs with the SN on the packages (if
there is one) and on the label on the drive.

Also, take each drive, one at a time, attach it to another computer
with a fresh installation of Debian, one you haven't mucked with in any
way, and only one other drive already in it, and read the SNs there.

I also went looking for Gigastone's web site. Every page I tried at
gigastone.com led to what I presume was an Error 404 page. I say
presume because most of the text was in non-English, probably Chinese,
characters.

-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

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

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/18/24 00:50, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/17/24 20:20, gene heskett wrote:

On 1/17/24 19:58, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/17/24 15:58, gene heskett wrote:
Now the question is how did it make this: homevol s/b very close to 
/home  in size but:

root@coyote:~# df && free
Filesystem  1K-blocks  Used  Available Use% Mounted on
udev 16327704 0   16327704   0% /dev
tmpfs 3272684  1912    3270772   1% /run
/dev/sda1   863983352  22348472  797673232   3% /
tmpfs    16363420  1244   16362176   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs    5120 8   5112   1% /run/lock
/dev/sda3    47749868   784   45291076   1% /tmp
/dev/md0p1 1796382580 335102676 1369954928  20% /home
tmpfs 3272684  4956    3267728   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdh1  1967892164 354519236 1513336680  19% /mnt/homevol
    total    used    free  shared  
buff/cache available
Mem:    32726840 3417576  515520  934540    30072184 
29309264

Swap:  111902712    2048   111900664
root@coyote:~#

It somehow changed 335G into 354G. Thinking the AppImages dir is 
full of soft links of short names pointing at the long filename and 
had turned the links into duplicates, that was the first thing I 
checked, but it was all good soft-links, so where did the extra 
19.4G's come from? Can filesystem ext4's overhead account for that?



I suggest running rsync(1) with --dry-run, --log-file=FILE, 
--itemize_changes, and whatever other options are needed to find the 
differences.  Please RTFM rsync(1) to choose your options.  These 
look useful:


 --archive, -a    (-rlptgoD)
 --delete

Why --delete?



If you have files on the destination from a previous run of rsync(1) and 
they no longer exist on the source, --delete will get rid of extraneous 
files on the destination.




 --hard-links, -H
 --one-file-system, -x
 --sparse, -S

or --sparse?



First, you need to understand what "sparse file" means:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_file


If you have sparse files on the source -- say, 10 GB virtual machine 
images -- then you want rsync(1) to create sparse files on the destination.



Well, my abundance of curiosity, may have killed the cat, but if I 
understand how rsync's -a works, re-running the same command will only 
update for the incoming email and any posts I've made while it was 
running the first time.  So the same command quoted last is now 
running again. when it has exited, which it has now done in about 15 
minutes I'll edit fstab to remove the 60 gigs of swap on md1, remove 
the existing mount of md0p1 as /home taking the raid10 completely out 
of the system. And add the mounting of LABEL=homevolsdh1 as the /home 
partition and reboot. In the event I have to re-install, the raid will 
still contain my data and can be recovered.
I already have a dvd with the most recent netinstall burnt. All I have 
to do is convince it to not install orca and brltty. Probably by 
unplugging _all_ usb stuff except the keyboard and mouse buttons.


What would solve many of my problems is a bit of help from someone who 
it running trinity to tell me how to install it on a system w/o any 
installed gui which obviously disables synaptic. That leaves apt, 
apt-get, and aptitude, unless there is a better way. aptitude is 
uncontrollable, has fixed me once, has torn the system down to another 
install 3 times so the odds are not in my favor.


So those fstab edits have been done, next is a reboot



You should be able to migrate your /home file system from RAID10 to an 
SSD without needing to reinstall Debian.


The migration took two passes because udev can't make up its alleged 
mind so I was finally forced to use the rescue mode to edit fstab to 
mount it by UUID and that worked, I've got /home on the copy right now. 
and I took the 60 G's of swap out too since I've never used more the 20G 
with any gfx program, so I figure 47G's on /dev/sda is enough.  So now 
none of the raid is mounted, but the 30+ second lag when opening a write 
path is still there, so I was erroneously blaming the raid. So I've 
narrowed the problem but w/o a good clue what to do next. One thing that 
bothers me is there is no way the installers parted shows partition 
names for non-raid disks. To me that is a serious bug. It appears from 
the help that it can LABEL a partition but can't read that LABEL. parted 
when asked to print all does that just fine, but the | doesn't put it to 
less, so it scrolls off screen the top 60% of a parted's print all 
output at some fraction of C speed. Not exactly helpful. I have other 
things to do while I cogitate on what to do next.  Many thanks to all 
that helped.



If you use rsync(1), I suggest using some kind of integrity checking 
tool to verify that the source and destination file systems are 
identical.  I prefer BSD mtree(8):


I assume I'd have to remount the raid like to /raid?
Whew!

Re: No Release file for Security Update

2024-01-17 Thread Charles Curley 
On Wed, 17 Jan 2024 11:31:52 -0500
Thomas George  wrote:

> # deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.2.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 DVD 
> Binary-1 with firmware 20231007-10:29]/ bookworm main
> non-free-firmware
> 
> deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free
> non-free-firmware
> 
> deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free 
> non-free-firmware
> 
> # deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports main non-free 
> non-free-firmware
> 
> deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-security  main non-free 
> non-free-firmware
> sources.list (END)

The first thing I'll suggest is that you replace
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ with http://deb.debian.org/debian

More to the point, the security URL I have is
http://security.debian.org/debian-security

> 
> 
> root@Phoenix:/etc/apt# apt-get update
> Hit:1 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
> Hit:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease
> Ign:3 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-security InRelease
> Hit:4 https://linux.brostrend.com stable InRelease
> Err:5 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-security Release
>    404  Not Found [IP: 151.101.

I'm guessing that that brostrend line came from something in
/etc/apt/sources.d. Sometimes renaming those is a useful debugging
trick.

For more information, see man 5 sources.list.

-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

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

Re: standardize uid:gid?

2024-01-17 Thread Tim Woodall 

On Thu, 18 Jan 2024, David Chmelik wrote:


Couldn't Debian standardize uid:gid numbers for daemons?  The oldest--and
only strictly UNIX-like--GNU/Linux (Slackware) does this so if you install
multiple instances and want them the same, you can backup /etc/passwd & /
etc/group from one and use them on another (as long as there aren't
different users which is sometimes the case).  This standardization was
probably from UNIX/*BSD.
   What happens every time I can't use *BSD or Slackware on a server and
resort to Devuan (or Debian-based for some users' PCs) is that all the
uid:gid seem random so there's no way to administer them all with the same
files in cases that it'd work.  Having random uid:gid is a last-rate
style.



I haven't tried it but I would assume that if the user exists then the
package uses that.

So cresting a template /etc/passwd before installing packages would fix
this.

I agree this is annoying, and hardish to fix once servers are deployed.

top bar the way I want it

2024-01-17 Thread Beyond Insulted 
On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 08:40:30PM -0500, Maureen L Thomas wrote:
>    I now have a system that works but I cannot find any utility
> to fix the top bar the way I want it.  Any hints?

Try to understand the audience that is being asked.

Imaging that they were willing to help and stopped doing so
because the "the way I want it" is a way too poor description.

 
> Moe


Groeten
Geert Stappers
-- 
Silence is hard to parse

Re: no sound

2024-01-17 Thread David Christensen 

On 1/17/24 17:40, Maureen L Thomas wrote:
Well I did a back-up, that didn't work, but I didn't know it at the 
time, 



The back up failed?  :-(


Do you need help with data recovery?


and did a reinstallation from scratch.  



Did you install using debian-12.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso?


Did you install a graphical desktop?  If so, which one?


I now have my sound back 



Good.  :-)


after I added back ports to my repositories. 



Do you mean backports?

https://backports.debian.org/


What backport package(s) did you require?


I now have a system that 
works but I cannot find any utility to fix the top bar the way I want 
it.  Any hints?



If you are using Xfce, right click on a blank area of any panel and 
choose Panel -> Panel Preferences.  This will give you a multi-tab app 
that you can use to customize all the panels.



David

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread David Christensen 

On 1/17/24 20:20, gene heskett wrote:

On 1/17/24 19:58, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/17/24 15:58, gene heskett wrote:
Now the question is how did it make this: homevol s/b very close to 
/home  in size but:

root@coyote:~# df && free
Filesystem  1K-blocks  Used  Available Use% Mounted on
udev 16327704 0   16327704   0% /dev
tmpfs 3272684  1912    3270772   1% /run
/dev/sda1   863983352  22348472  797673232   3% /
tmpfs    16363420  1244   16362176   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs    5120 8   5112   1% /run/lock
/dev/sda3    47749868   784   45291076   1% /tmp
/dev/md0p1 1796382580 335102676 1369954928  20% /home
tmpfs 3272684  4956    3267728   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdh1  1967892164 354519236 1513336680  19% /mnt/homevol
    total    used    free  shared  buff/cache 
available
Mem:    32726840 3417576  515520  934540    30072184 
29309264

Swap:  111902712    2048   111900664
root@coyote:~#

It somehow changed 335G into 354G. Thinking the AppImages dir is full 
of soft links of short names pointing at the long filename and had 
turned the links into duplicates, that was the first thing I checked, 
but it was all good soft-links, so where did the extra 19.4G's come 
from? Can filesystem ext4's overhead account for that?



I suggest running rsync(1) with --dry-run, --log-file=FILE, 
--itemize_changes, and whatever other options are needed to find the 
differences.  Please RTFM rsync(1) to choose your options.  These look 
useful:


 --archive, -a    (-rlptgoD)
 --delete

Why --delete?



If you have files on the destination from a previous run of rsync(1) and 
they no longer exist on the source, --delete will get rid of extraneous 
files on the destination.




 --hard-links, -H
 --one-file-system, -x
 --sparse, -S

or --sparse?



First, you need to understand what "sparse file" means:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_file


If you have sparse files on the source -- say, 10 GB virtual machine 
images -- then you want rsync(1) to create sparse files on the destination.



Well, my abundance of curiosity, may have killed the cat, but if I 
understand how rsync's -a works, re-running the same command will only 
update for the incoming email and any posts I've made while it was 
running the first time.  So the same command quoted last is now running 
again. when it has exited, which it has now done in about 15 minutes 
I'll edit fstab to remove the 60 gigs of swap on md1, remove the 
existing mount of md0p1 as /home taking the raid10 completely out of the 
system. And add the mounting of LABEL=homevolsdh1 as the /home partition 
and reboot. In the event I have to re-install, the raid will still 
contain my data and can be recovered.
I already have a dvd with the most recent netinstall burnt. All I have 
to do is convince it to not install orca and brltty. Probably by 
unplugging _all_ usb stuff except the keyboard and mouse buttons.


What would solve many of my problems is a bit of help from someone who 
it running trinity to tell me how to install it on a system w/o any 
installed gui which obviously disables synaptic. That leaves apt, 
apt-get, and aptitude, unless there is a better way. aptitude is 
uncontrollable, has fixed me once, has torn the system down to another 
install 3 times so the odds are not in my favor.


So those fstab edits have been done, next is a reboot



You should be able to migrate your /home file system from RAID10 to an 
SSD without needing to reinstall Debian.



Copying a file system that is mounted read-write is problematic.  It is 
best to remount it read-only, and then copy.  This is hard to do when 
you are logged in and using the file system you want to copy.  Options 
include rebooting into single-user root console or using live media.



To make an exact copy of the source, consider using a tool designed for 
this task -- such as cpio(1), tar(1), or a backup/restore system such as 
amanda(8).



If you use rsync(1), I suggest using some kind of integrity checking 
tool to verify that the source and destination file systems are 
identical.  I prefer BSD mtree(8):


https://manpages.debian.org/bullseye/mtree-netbsd/mtree.8.en.html


(Be careful not to confuse the above with mtree(5) via libarchive.)


David

Re: File has unexpected size (x != y). Mirror sync in progress? [IP: ...] ...

2024-01-17 Thread Albretch Mueller 
On 1/14/24, Max Nikulin  wrote:
> On 14/01/2024 04:43, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
>>
>> And use of HTTP in other fetches is dangerous, and HTTPS should be
>> used. See
>> .
>
> https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2019-3462
> states that this particular vulnerability has been fixed. Do you have
> any evidence that APT is still affected by another one related namely to
> HTTP?
>
> Serious vulnerabilities have been found in OpenSSL and other libraries.
> Do you think, it is a reason to stop using TLS?
>
> In the case of APT, unless you disabled it, content is verified using
> GPG keys and signatures, see apt-secure(8) and
> https://wiki.debian.org/SecureApt
>
> HTTP clear text communication allows to use caching proxies, so to
> decrease load of repository servers and communication channels.
>
> HTTPS may be a mitigation till a specific fix is installed.

$ date; sudo apt -o Acquire::http::AllowRedirect=false  update
Thu Jan 18 12:38:19 AM UTC 2024
Get:1 file:/run/live/medium bookworm InRelease
Ign:1 file:/run/live/medium bookworm InRelease
Get:2 file:/run/live/medium bookworm Release [4,535 B]
Get:2 file:/run/live/medium bookworm Release [4,535 B]
Get:3 file:/run/live/medium bookworm Release.gpg
Ign:3 file:/run/live/medium bookworm Release.gpg
Get:4 file:/run/live/medium bookworm/main amd64 Packages [48.2 kB]
Get:5 file:/run/live/medium bookworm/non-free-firmware amd64 Packages [30.4 kB]
Err:6 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
  302  Found [IP: 151.101.162.132 80]
Reading package lists... Done
E: Failed to fetch
http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/bookworm/InRelease  302  Found [IP:
151.101.162.132 80]
E: The repository 'http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease' is
no longer signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is
therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user
configuration details.
$

> Generally just pay attention that GPG keys for repositories are obtained
> through trusted channels.

 How do you functionally (that is, give me the step-by-step command
line statements, ... in order to) do that?

 lbrtchx

standardize uid:gid?

2024-01-17 Thread David Chmelik 
Couldn't Debian standardize uid:gid numbers for daemons?  The oldest--and 
only strictly UNIX-like--GNU/Linux (Slackware) does this so if you install 
multiple instances and want them the same, you can backup /etc/passwd & /
etc/group from one and use them on another (as long as there aren't 
different users which is sometimes the case).  This standardization was 
probably from UNIX/*BSD.
What happens every time I can't use *BSD or Slackware on a server and 
resort to Devuan (or Debian-based for some users' PCs) is that all the 
uid:gid seem random so there's no way to administer them all with the same 
files in cases that it'd work.  Having random uid:gid is a last-rate 
style.

Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing

2024-01-17 Thread David Wright 
On Tue 16 Jan 2024 at 11:47:53 (+0100), hw wrote:
> On Mon, 2024-01-15 at 20:32 +0100, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 08:08:36PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > 
> > > I don't understand why you involve a terminal emulator in the process.
> > > Do you need to see the data that goes through the COM port displayed
> > > in a terminal (like minicom)?
> > 
> > People interact with the (remote) application by means of the terminal
> > emulator. Things get sent to/from the printer based on escape sequences
> > initiated by the application.
> 
> Desktop sharing works fine with gnome these days.  Why not interact
> with the application through that kinda locally?
> 
> > In the original (proprietary) application, the dispatching functionality
> 
> Dispatching functionality?
> 
> > is integrated in the terminal emulator, so it is understandable that
> > pheoebus phoebus wants to keep that structure in the replacement.
> 
> I don't understand.
> 
> > I proposed splitting off the "mux" functionality from the terminal
> > emulator functionality, but I fully understand that phoebus phoebus
> > favours the more "conservative" approach.
> > 
> > By the way -- back then (TM), when terminals were real things, it was
> > not unheard of that they came with an attached printer and some bar
> > code scannery -- all handily multiplexed over the RS-232 (or something
> > more monstruous), orchestrated via intricate escapery.
> > 
> > So the thing is just a natural evolution dating back to The Dinosaurs.
> 
> Well, I'd have to be quit a bit older to have experienced "real"
> terminals like that.  I do remember printers accepting some escape
> sequences to control their functionality, though.
> 
> If this application is running on such a terminal, maybe it's time to
> find a more modern und thus more feasible replacement ...  An ancient
> terminal may cease to work eventually and be very difficult to repair
> once it does ...

It isn't running on a terminal: tomas wrote "back then (TM), when
terminals were real things".

It's running on a Windows PC. Walk into many a shop and you can see
the sort of setup, a PC and screen with a barcode scanner, keyboard,
credit card reader, receipt printer, etc, all hanging off it. The
server might be in an office, or perhaps at HQ or in the cloud.
All perfectly normal. The import of the thread is Windows → Linux.

Cheers,
David.

Re: How to prevent rtkit from giving firefox higher priority?

2024-01-17 Thread David Wright 
On Wed 17 Jan 2024 at 15:02:05 (+0100), hw wrote:
> On Wed, 2024-01-17 at 07:26 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 11:19:50AM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:41 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 02:17:05PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:03 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > > > > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 01:43:23PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > > > > > There's only a bunch of links in that directory, apparently all
> > > > > > > pointing to files that don't exist.  Don't you have that?
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > unicorn:~$ ls -l /run/user/1000/systemd/units
> > > > > > total 0
> > > > > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 greg greg 32 Jan  4 10:33 
> > > > > > invocation:at-spi-dbus-bus.service -> 
> > > > > > bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92
> > 
> > > > You can access it just fine.  You just don't *understand* it.  (Neither
> > > > do I.)
> > > 
> > > If I could access it, I could display the file.  If there is no file,
> > > then these directory entries shouldn't exist.
> > 
> > I don't know how to make it any clearer.  THE SYMBOLIC LINK TARGET IS
> > THE CONTENT.  They are storing this "Invocation ID" inside the symbolic
> > link itself.
> >
> > This is what they chose to do.  I don't know WHY.  But you can clearly
> > see what they're doing.
> 
> I can only see links to files that don't exist.

Perhaps a more understandable example would help. If you edit some
file with emacs, and make some change in the buffer, take a look at
the directory the file is in, and you'll see something like:

  $ ls -al foo
  total 28
  drwxr-x---  2  4096 Jan 17 22:56 .
  lrwxrwxrwx  127 Jan 17 22:56 .#connectivity -> 
auser@ahost.26418:1705500887
  drwxrwxrwt 17 20480 Jan 17 22:55 ..
  -rw---  1   793 Apr 26  2017 connectivity
  $ 

If someone else tries to edit the same file and make an alteration,
emacs will prompt them with a query, and they can back off, or
carry on editing, or "steal" the file (swapping roles, so the original
editor becomes the intruder).

That process is enabled by the lock file, a dangling symlink, which
enables emacs to inform the second person who and where the first
person is, and their process's PID. In this case, the data in the
symlink is easily recognised: u...@host.pid:seconds, where seconds
is likely the host's boot time.

> Unknown things never seen before are always alarming.

Nonsense. Small children would be in a constant state of alarm.

Cheers,
David.

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 19:58, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/17/24 15:58, gene heskett wrote:
Now the question is how did it make this: homevol s/b very close to 
/home  in size but:

root@coyote:~# df && free
Filesystem  1K-blocks  Used  Available Use% Mounted on
udev 16327704 0   16327704   0% /dev
tmpfs 3272684  1912    3270772   1% /run
/dev/sda1   863983352  22348472  797673232   3% /
tmpfs    16363420  1244   16362176   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs    5120 8   5112   1% /run/lock
/dev/sda3    47749868   784   45291076   1% /tmp
/dev/md0p1 1796382580 335102676 1369954928  20% /home
tmpfs 3272684  4956    3267728   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdh1  1967892164 354519236 1513336680  19% /mnt/homevol
    total    used    free  shared  buff/cache 
available
Mem:    32726840 3417576  515520  934540    30072184 
29309264

Swap:  111902712    2048   111900664
root@coyote:~#

It somehow changed 335G into 354G. Thinking the AppImages dir is full 
of soft links of short names pointing at the long filename and had 
turned the links into duplicates, that was the first thing I checked, 
but it was all good soft-links, so where did the extra 19.4G's come 
from? Can filesystem ext4's overhead account for that?



I suggest running rsync(1) with --dry-run, --log-file=FILE, 
--itemize_changes, and whatever other options are needed to find the 
differences.  Please RTFM rsync(1) to choose your options.  These look 
useful:


 --archive, -a    (-rlptgoD)
 --delete

Why --delete?

 --hard-links, -H
 --one-file-system, -x
 --sparse, -S

or --sparse?

Well, my abundance of curiosity, may have killed the cat, but if I 
understand how rsync's -a works, re-running the same command will only 
update for the incoming email and any posts I've made while it was 
running the first time.  So the same command quoted last is now running 
again. when it has exited, which it has now done in about 15 minutes 
I'll edit fstab to remove the 60 gigs of swap on md1, remove the 
existing mount of md0p1 as /home taking the raid10 completely out of the 
system. And add the mounting of LABEL=homevolsdh1 as the /home partition 
and reboot. In the event I have to re-install, the raid will still 
contain my data and can be recovered.
I already have a dvd with the most recent netinstall burnt. All I have 
to do is convince it to not install orca and brltty. Probably by 
unplugging _all_ usb stuff except the keyboard and mouse buttons.


What would solve many of my problems is a bit of help from someone who 
it running trinity to tell me how to install it on a system w/o any 
installed gui which obviously disables synaptic. That leaves apt, 
apt-get, and aptitude, unless there is a better way. aptitude is 
uncontrollable, has fixed me once, has torn the system down to another 
install 3 times so the odds are not in my favor.


So those fstab edits have been done, next is a reboot



David

.


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, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis

Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread Stefan Monnier 
> However, I have read that using rsync --delete instead of rsync --
> delete-after is faster and uses less memory, and so is more efficient. 

I'd be surprised if it makes a significant difference.


Stefan

Re: No Release file for Security Update

2024-01-17 Thread Todd Zullinger 
Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 08:40:58PM -0500, Thomas George wrote:
>> deb http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main
>> non-free non-free-firmware
> 
> Stop guessing, and *read* what you were told to use.
> 
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2024/01/msg00778.html
> 
> Your source is incorrect. The security repo is at
> "http://security.debian.org/debian-security";;.
> 
> There are other lines that also work, but you can't just guess randomly
> until you stumble across one.  Read a trusted source, and copy what
> they tell you to use.  Don't put "ftp." in front of things that don't
> need it.

https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList is also a good resource
with numerous examples.

-- 
Todd

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread David Wright 
On Wed 17 Jan 2024 at 15:34:09 (-0500), gene heskett wrote:
> On 1/17/24 12:27, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
> > David Christensen wrote:
> > > I suspect the conflicting serial numbers are causing problems in the 
> > > kernel,
> > > as indicated by the /dev/disk/by-id/* problems.
> > 
> > That's not in the kernel but in udev/systemd's process of creating the
> > symbolic links in /dev/disk/by-id/.
> > It gets /dev/sd[h-l] and /dev/sd[h-l]1 as kernel generated device files.
> > But sd[ij] and also sd[hl] show pair-wise the same serial numbers.
> > In case of sd[ij] the outcome is mixed: links to sdi and sdj1 survive.
> > In case of sd[hl] we see a less strange outcome: sdh and sdh1, while
> > sdl and sdl1 are missing.
> > 
> missing because the original command line did not look at sdl.
> I added the l and it showed up. No magic.

What do you mean, it was "missing"? The original command, which I wrote
for you, contained a wildcard, so it doesn't miss anything that's there:

  root@coyote:~# for j in /dev/disk/by-id/* ; do printf '%s\t%s\n' "$(realpath 
"$j")" "$j" ; done 

and there was no sdl in the output from that command. In fact,
there was no "l" in your post between the "l" in "realpath",
above, and the "l" in "like", below:

  root@coyote:~#
  but like I wrote, 2 pairs with identical "serial numbers", so the

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2024/01/msg00658.html
shows this, that no sdl was seen under by-id/.

> > The open question (at least to me) is whether it's the disks or the
> > controllers or the drivers which cause the duplication.
> Neither, a typu in the original command.

Cheers,
David.

Re: To partition or not to partition MD arrays (Was Re: smartctl cannotaccess my storage, need syntax help)

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 19:54, Steve McIntyre wrote:

Andy Smith wrote:


The newer set of people recommending partitions are mostly doing so
because there's been a few incidents of "helpful" PC motherboards
detecting on boot what they think is a corrupt GPT, and replacing it
with a blank one, damaging the RAID. This is a real thing that has
happened to more than one person; it even got linked on Hacker News
I believe.

Then there will just be people going by taste.

Personally I still put them directly on drives. If I ever get taken
out by one of those crappy motherboards, I reserve the right to get
a different religion. 😀


I'm clearly a member of a third group of people,,, :-)

Putting partitions on the RAID drives helps *me* identify them.


you aren't alone Steve.
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, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis

Re: No Release file for Security Update

2024-01-17 Thread Greg Wooledge 
On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 08:40:58PM -0500, Thomas George wrote:
> deb http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main
> non-free non-free-firmware

Stop guessing, and *read* what you were told to use.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2024/01/msg00778.html

Your source is incorrect. The security repo is at
"http://security.debian.org/debian-security";;.

There are other lines that also work, but you can't just guess randomly
until you stumble across one.  Read a trusted source, and copy what
they tell you to use.  Don't put "ftp." in front of things that don't
need it.

Re: No Release file for Security Update

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas George 



On 1/17/24 19:05, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 11:31:52AM -0500, Thomas George wrote:

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.2.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 DVD
Binary-1 with firmware 20231007-10:29]/ bookworm main non-free-firmware

This one, before you commented it out, only contained non-free-firmware
and *not* non-free.  They are two different sections.


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free non-free-firmware

Here, someone has added non-free.  If that's not what you want, you
can remove that.  You should *keep* non-free-firmware, though.

Also, if you don't want to use plain http, you can change this to https.


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-security  main non-free
non-free-firmware

This one is incorrect, but someone else already addressed that one.
Be sure you actually follow their instructions correctly.  The
hostnames security.debian.org and ftp.security.debian.org are not
the same.


I have tried many permutations of the last line in this sources.list

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.2.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 DVD 
Binary-1 with firmware 20231007-10:29]/ bookworm main non-free-firmware


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free non-free-firmware

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free 
non-free-firmware


# deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports main non-free 
non-free-firmware


deb http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security 
main non-free non-free-firmware


None have worked perfectly, apt-get update gives this

root@Phoenix:/etc/apt# apt-get update
Hit:1 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
Hit:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease
Hit:3 https://linux.brostrend.com stable InRelease
Ign:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
Ign:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
Ign:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
Err:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
  Could not connect to ftp.security-debian.org:80 (57.128.81.193), 
connection timed out

Reading package lists... Done
W: Failed to fetch 
http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security/dists/bookworm-security/InRelease 
Could not connect to ftp.security-debian.org:80 (57.128.81.193), 
connection timed out
W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old 
ones used instead.

root@Phoenix:/etc/apt# vi sources.list

no sound

2024-01-17 Thread Maureen L Thomas 
Well I did a back-up, that didn't work, but I didn't know it at the 
time, and did a reinstallation from scratch.  I now have my sound back 
after I added back ports to my repositories.  I now have a system that 
works but I cannot find any utility to fix the top bar the way I want 
it.  Any hints?


Moe

Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread Michel Verdier 
On 2024-01-17, Default User wrote:

> By "glitch", I mean anything that could interfere with the rsync copy
> process.  Possible causes: 

Whatever the cause you just have to get return code and restart rsync
until it complete succesfully. Then you are sure to have an exact copy.
To cope with errors in primary backup you must have multiple copies as
suggest Michael. Personnally I use rsnapshot (a tool using rsync itself)
for that.

Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread Default User 
On Wed, 2024-01-17 at 09:19 -0800, David Christensen wrote:
> On 1/17/24 08:19, Default User wrote:
> > Hello!
> > 
> > Opinions, please.
> > 
> > I use rsync to copy my primary backup drive to a secondary backup
> > drive
> > , so that the secondary backup drive is theoretically always an
> > exact
> > copy of the primary backup drive.
> > 
> > Here is the rsync command I use:
> > 
> > time sudo rsync -aAXHxvv --delete-after --numeric-ids --
> > info=progress2,stats2,name2 --
> > exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/m
> > edia
> > /*","/lost+found"} /media/default/MSD0001/ /media/default/MSD0002/
> > 
> > Question:
> > I use rsync --delete-after because it might seem to be "safer", so
> > in
> > case of a "glitch" of any kind, no file ever disappears from both
> > the
> > source drive and the destination drive.
> > 
> > However, I have read that using rsync --delete instead of rsync --
> > delete-after is faster and uses less memory, and so is more
> > efficient.
> > 
> > Note: The current copy process time varies, but takes a long time -
> > last night 131 minutes.
> > :(
> > 
> > Disk space used is not currently an issue.
> > 
> > But, is rsync --delete AS SAFE as rsync --delete-after?
> 
> 
> In the past, I used the --backup and --backup-dir options to retain 
> files on the destination.
> 
> 
> Then I moved my primary backup to ZFS, implemented snapshots, and 
> implemented replication to the secondard backup devices.
> 
> 
> David
> 



Hi guys, thanks for the replies.

BTW, the two backup drives are external 4 Gb USB HDDs.  The secondary
backup drive is always kept away from the computer, in a locked steel
box, except when it is attached to the computer to have the primary
backup drive copied to it. 

The primary backup drive is almost always attached to the computer, so
that I can access files archived there, that are not on the computer.
Probably not good practice, but that's why I have the secondary backup
drive.

I guess in the back of my mind I was thinking of a scenario where a
file on the primary backup drive might be corrupted or deleted before
being copied to the secondary backup drive.  Then if it is not present
on the primary backup drive, rsync dutifully deletes it from the
secondary backup drive. If the file is no longer on the computer's
internal SSD, I am then SOL.

BTW(2), I do use rsnapshot with cron jobs to back up the internal SSD
to the primary backup drive daily (and weekly, monthly, yearly).  But I
am not sure if I could also use it to do copies of the primary backup
drive to the secondary backup drive (maybe using an additional
configuration file)? 

I have also thought of trying to use partclone to copy the data from
the primary backup drive to the secondary backup drive. Why not try,
since rsync takes an hour and a half, every day! 

As for ZFS . . .   I wish!  But I think the resource requirements would
be too high for my setup, so it probably would be impractical - or
impossible.  And  then there's the complexity.  And the learning curve.

Finally I really should have a third backup drive in the mix.  Yes, I
am familiar with the 1-2-3 backup theory.  But the third backup drive
could not be off-site, for various reasons.  And I do have other things
to do rather than spend all day, every day, managing backups. 

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread David Christensen 

On 1/17/24 15:58, gene heskett wrote:
Now the question is how did it make 
this: homevol s/b very close to /home  in size but:

root@coyote:~# df && free
Filesystem  1K-blocks  Used  Available Use% Mounted on
udev 16327704 0   16327704   0% /dev
tmpfs 3272684  1912    3270772   1% /run
/dev/sda1   863983352  22348472  797673232   3% /
tmpfs    16363420  1244   16362176   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs    5120 8   5112   1% /run/lock
/dev/sda3    47749868   784   45291076   1% /tmp
/dev/md0p1 1796382580 335102676 1369954928  20% /home
tmpfs 3272684  4956    3267728   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdh1  1967892164 354519236 1513336680  19% /mnt/homevol
    total    used    free  shared  buff/cache 
available
Mem:    32726840 3417576  515520  934540    30072184 
29309264

Swap:  111902712    2048   111900664
root@coyote:~#

It somehow changed 335G into 354G. Thinking the AppImages dir is full of 
soft links of short names pointing at the long filename and had turned 
the links into duplicates, that was the first thing I checked, but it 
was all good soft-links, so where did the extra 19.4G's come from? Can 
filesystem ext4's overhead account for that?



I suggest running rsync(1) with --dry-run, --log-file=FILE, 
--itemize_changes, and whatever other options are needed to find the 
differences.  Please RTFM rsync(1) to choose your options.  These look 
useful:


--archive, -a   (-rlptgoD)
--delete
--hard-links, -H
--one-file-system, -x
--sparse, -S


David

Re: To partition or not to partition MD arrays (Was Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help)

2024-01-17 Thread Steve McIntyre 
Andy Smith wrote:
>
>The newer set of people recommending partitions are mostly doing so
>because there's been a few incidents of "helpful" PC motherboards
>detecting on boot what they think is a corrupt GPT, and replacing it
>with a blank one, damaging the RAID. This is a real thing that has
>happened to more than one person; it even got linked on Hacker News
>I believe.
>
>Then there will just be people going by taste.
>
>Personally I still put them directly on drives. If I ever get taken
>out by one of those crappy motherboards, I reserve the right to get
>a different religion. 😀

I'm clearly a member of a third group of people,,, :-)

Putting partitions on the RAID drives helps *me* identify them.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com
Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky,
Tongue-tied & twisted, Just an earth-bound misfit, I...

Re: No Release file for Security Update

2024-01-17 Thread Greg Wooledge 
On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 11:31:52AM -0500, Thomas George wrote:
> # deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.2.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 DVD
> Binary-1 with firmware 20231007-10:29]/ bookworm main non-free-firmware

This one, before you commented it out, only contained non-free-firmware
and *not* non-free.  They are two different sections.

> deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free non-free-firmware

Here, someone has added non-free.  If that's not what you want, you
can remove that.  You should *keep* non-free-firmware, though.

Also, if you don't want to use plain http, you can change this to https.

> deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-security  main non-free
> non-free-firmware

This one is incorrect, but someone else already addressed that one.
Be sure you actually follow their instructions correctly.  The
hostnames security.debian.org and ftp.security.debian.org are not
the same.

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 16:45, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/17/24 12:30, gene heskett wrote:

By LABELing the partitions uniquely, that problem so far as I can
see, is solved.



Okay.


So, are you confident that your motherboard ports, HBA ports, and SSD's
are all working correctly now?



The OOM death of the system was the xfce4 terminal apparently being
set for unlimited scrollback and that was eating the memory. Switching 
to Konsole with has the ability to control the scrollback

to 200 lines, and its taken all 32G's as .cache and 1536 1k blocks of
swap, and its working w/o any OOM actions I've detected.



Okay.


Xfce -> Terminal Emulator -> right click on screen -> Preferences ->
General -> Scrolling:

 Scrollback    200
 Unlimited scrollback    uncheck


Using tee(1) would allow you to both monitor progress and save standard 
output and/or standard error (via shell redirection).



A related issue is that lots of standard output can slow a program. 
Minimizing a terminal can help.  Redirecting standard output to a file 
or to /dev/null can help, especially when done on the remote host while 
using ssh(1).



The best solution is to tell rsync(1) not to generate messages on 
standard output -- do not use --verbose, do not use --info, do not use 
--progress, etc.; use --quiet, etc..


All good hints after it is done.  Now the question is how did it make 
this: homevol s/b very close to /home  in size but:

root@coyote:~# df && free
Filesystem  1K-blocks  Used  Available Use% Mounted on
udev 16327704 0   16327704   0% /dev
tmpfs 3272684  19123270772   1% /run
/dev/sda1   863983352  22348472  797673232   3% /
tmpfs16363420  1244   16362176   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs5120 8   5112   1% /run/lock
/dev/sda347749868   784   45291076   1% /tmp
/dev/md0p1 1796382580 335102676 1369954928  20% /home
tmpfs 3272684  49563267728   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdh1  1967892164 354519236 1513336680  19% /mnt/homevol
   totalusedfree  shared  buff/cache 
available
Mem:32726840 3417576  515520  93454030072184 
29309264

Swap:  1119027122048   111900664
root@coyote:~#

It somehow changed 335G into 354G. Thinking the AppImages dir is full of 
soft links of short names pointing at the long filename and had turned 
the links into duplicates, that was the first thing I checked, but it 
was all good soft-links, so where did the extra 19.4G's come from? Can 
filesystem ext4's overhead account for that?


David


Thanks David.

.


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, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis

Re: debian-cd baking process

2024-01-17 Thread Steve McIntyre 
Hi Kevin!

Kevin Price wrote:
>
>I'm not quite sure where to address this to, but I'm certain this is a
>bug: If you download debian installer media, for instance
>debian-12.4.0-amd64-DLBD-2.iso, they prominenty include the files
>"README.txt" and "README.html". Those presumably somehow auto-generated
>README files say, in the case of former example:
>
>"this disc is number 2 of a set of 1 discs"
>
>Which is obviously false.
>
>Could anyone please help me find where to file this bug to? Any ideas
>much appreciated. Maybe there's a bug already that I didn't find.

Argh, that's my code in the debian-cd package. "reportbug debian-cd"
should do the right thing...

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com
Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky,
Tongue-tied & twisted, Just an earth-bound misfit, I...

Re: No Release file for Security Update

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas George 



On 1/17/24 16:13, Tom Furie wrote:

Thomas George  writes:


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-security  main non-free
non-free-firmware
Err:5 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-security Release
    404  Not Found [IP: 151.101.

I entered you suggested line as

http://security.debian.org/debian-security

and apt-get update responded:

E: Malformed line 9 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (type)
E: The list of sources could not be read.

Please keep replies on-list in future, for the benefit of anyone else
who might encounter a similar problem.

You still need the rest of the line, I only indicated the correct
URL. The full line should look like: (it might get wrapped but should
all be a single line)

http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main non-free 
non-free-firmware

Cheers,
Tom


Still not right bur InRelease:

root@Phoenix:/etc/apt# apt-get update
Ign:1 http://ftp.security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-secutity 
InRelease

Hit:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
Hit:3 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease
Hit:4 https://linux.brostrend.com stable InRelease
Ign:1 http://ftp.security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-secutity 
InRelease
Ign:1 http://ftp.security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-secutity 
InRelease
Err:1 http://ftp.security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-secutity 
InRelease

  Could not resolve 'ftp.security.debian.org'
Reading package lists... Done
W: Failed to fetch 
http://ftp.security.debian.org/debian-security/dists/bookworm-secutity/InRelease 
Could not resolve 'ftp.security.debian.org'
W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old 
ones used instead.


I tried leavin security.debian.org out of the line but that didn't work 
either

Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread Keith Bainbridgge 




On 18/1/24 04:19, David Christensen wrote:
> I use rsync to copy my primary backup drive to a secondary backup drive


Good morning

I wonder why both processes don't copy from the original data; so that 
you don't copy a potential glitch in the first backup?


on a separate matter
Glitch?  Power goes off inconveniently?
--
All the best

Keith Bainbridge

keithr...@gmail.com
keith.bainbridge.3...@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468

UTC + 10:00

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread David Christensen 

On 1/17/24 12:30, gene heskett wrote:

By LABELing the partitions uniquely, that problem so far as I can
see, is solved.



Okay.


So, are you confident that your motherboard ports, HBA ports, and SSD's
are all working correctly now?



The OOM death of the system was the xfce4 terminal apparently being
set for unlimited scrollback and that was eating the memory. 
Switching to Konsole with has the ability to control the scrollback

to 200 lines, and its taken all 32G's as .cache and 1536 1k blocks of
swap, and its working w/o any OOM actions I've detected.



Okay.


Xfce -> Terminal Emulator -> right click on screen -> Preferences ->
General -> Scrolling:

Scrollback  200
Unlimited scrollbackuncheck


Using tee(1) would allow you to both monitor progress and save standard 
output and/or standard error (via shell redirection).



A related issue is that lots of standard output can slow a program. 
Minimizing a terminal can help.  Redirecting standard output to a file 
or to /dev/null can help, especially when done on the remote host while 
using ssh(1).



The best solution is to tell rsync(1) not to generate messages on 
standard output -- do not use --verbose, do not use --info, do not use 
--progress, etc.; use --quiet, etc..



David

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 16:16, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

i wrote:

What did finally help ? Just the shorter terminal scroll back memory ?


gene heskett wrote:

That, and possibly the --bwlimit=10m, giving the SSD time to keep their
stuff in one sock.


Then i place my bet on the terminal alone.
Linux is able to handle disk-to-disk copies that are larger than the
available memory. This is a standard use case.



How large was it set when your runs caused the OOM killer to act ?



different terminal, xfce4's is apparently unlimited but can't find it in the
config prefs.


I normally start new xterms by

   xterm -ls -geometry 80x24 -bg wheat -fg black -sl 1 +sb &

The -sl option gives the number of lines to be memorized for scrollback.
Black-on-wheat is a calmative color combination which does not overwork
the eyes.


Thank you, I did not know that.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

.


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, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas Schmitt 
Hi,

i wrote:
> > What did finally help ? Just the shorter terminal scroll back memory ?

gene heskett wrote:
> That, and possibly the --bwlimit=10m, giving the SSD time to keep their
> stuff in one sock.

Then i place my bet on the terminal alone.
Linux is able to handle disk-to-disk copies that are larger than the
available memory. This is a standard use case.


> > How large was it set when your runs caused the OOM killer to act ?

> different terminal, xfce4's is apparently unlimited but can't find it in the
> config prefs.

I normally start new xterms by

  xterm -ls -geometry 80x24 -bg wheat -fg black -sl 1 +sb &

The -sl option gives the number of lines to be memorized for scrollback.
Black-on-wheat is a calmative color combination which does not overwork
the eyes.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread David Christensen 

On 1/17/24 09:31, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:

I suspect the conflicting serial numbers are causing problems in the kernel,
as indicated by the /dev/disk/by-id/* problems.


That's not in the kernel but in udev/systemd's process of creating the
symbolic links in /dev/disk/by-id/.
It gets /dev/sd[h-l] and /dev/sd[h-l]1 as kernel generated device files.
But sd[ij] and also sd[hl] show pair-wise the same serial numbers.
In case of sd[ij] the outcome is mixed: links to sdi and sdj1 survive.
In case of sd[hl] we see a less strange outcome: sdh and sdh1, while
sdl and sdl1 are missing.

The open question (at least to me) is whether it's the disks or the
controllers or the drivers which cause the duplication.



Thank you for the explanation.


I would still remove them.


David

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 15:13, gene heskett wrote:

On 1/17/24 11:30, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

after i began enumerating suspects, gene heskett wrote:

terminals scroll back memory, I purposely set this
particular terminals scrollback to 200 lines with that in mind.


How large was it set when your runs caused the OOM killer to act ?
different terminal, xfce4's is apparently unlimited but can't find it in 
the config prefs.



I have a good number of xterms with 10,000 lines each. No tabs, no KDE,
but 8 fvwm "desktops" (virtual screens) full of terminal windows.


12 workspaces with 1 to 8 tabs open. 32G of main memory.




[Request to test the disks one-by-one on some other computer, whether
  they bear the same serial number at all controllers in all machines.]


Not as easily tried, the other 4 are in twin mounts in another 
portion of

the drive cages in this 30" tall tiger direct cage and not too readily
accessible w/o tipping the mobo out on its hinged mount.


One should raise protest at Gigastone if the disks really have the same
serial numbers. But before doing so, one would have to make sure that
it is not some weird effect of them all being plugged into that machine
at the same time.
Should not be a problem if labeled uniquely.  And that's easily affected 
by gparted.




One of you made the remark that seems to be the secret password.


What did finally help ? Just the shorter terminal scroll back memory ?


That, and possibly the --bwlimit=10m, giving the SSD time to keep their 
stuff in one sock.



It would explain why a verbose rsync could summon the OOM killer always
around the same stage of progress. But what waste of memory would have
to happen with each of the rsync messages ?


Everything you see flying by when the -v is in the opts, and some of the 
pathnames are 250-300 bytes long.



(You mentioned LABEL as a possibility. But not as actually used.)


Yes I have, repeatedly.



Its still, slowly at 10 megs a second, working.


I see in your previous mail rsync option --bwlimit=10m . But in the
same mail there is an older quote from you that --bwlimit=3m only
prolonged the time until the OOM killer appeared.
So i wonder whether it would work at a more contemporary speed.


I can't change it for testing?  Boggles my mind.


A probably informative test.
But as yet not tested.




Self-incrimination: The rest of this mail is off topic.


they gave all 7nth graders the Iowa
test in 1947, similar to the S/B IQ test but not copyrighted, there 
fore a

lot cheaper, and I came out of that with an equivalent of 147.


I was tested in the 1960s but they did not tell the results to kids or
parents. We only got recommendations at which of our three types of 
school

we should continue at the age of 10 or 11 years.


That I believe was the intention but one of the teachers was a 
blabbermouth.



(So it was not to avoid discrimination of the dumb but rather to avoid
that pupils feel more intelligent than their teachers.)


That avoidance was untenable, in the 1st semester of my freshman year I 
got thrown out of the senior physics class for correcting an erroneous 
statement by the teacher that was patently at odds with Newton's 3rd law 
of motion. For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction.


Pretty basic stuff. But correcting the teacher in front of the other 
students was absolutely not to be tolerated. But I felt correcting him 
AND setting it straight was more important to the rest of the nominally 
20 students present than any embarrassment it may have caused him.


Same with the papered EE's who can't understand that E=MV2 does not have 
a speed floor, below which its doesn't work when the electron beam in a 
klystron amplifier is only moving at a potential of 20,000 volts. The 
problem not understood is that the amplification is obtained not from a 
current variation, but a velocity variation induced by a 1 watt signal 
speeding up or slowing down the passing beam as it traverses the first 
cavity of 4, the next two to control the bandwidth, the last one picks 
30 kilowatts back off the beam by the capacitative coupling effects as 
the beam goes on thru into a copper funnel cooled by 70 gallons of very 
pure water to absorb the end of that beam which takes around 125 
kilowatts to generate.


I forgot to mention that 70 gallons figure is a per minute value 
supplied by a 15 hp ingersol-rand pump. A semi sealed system that has a 
4' wide x8' long x1.5' thick radiator supplied with external cooling air 
by a another 20 horse motor. Rigged by vent louvers to control the air 
flow to maintain the water above freezing. That 20 horse had the power 
to blow that whole louver out into the field behind the building when 
the modutrol motor that controlled that hot air exit louver failed to 
open it at signon time one morning. Panic call from the remote control 
site as it was only about 20F outside and the water was getti

Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread Andy Smith 
Hi,

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 02:52:49PM -0500, Default User wrote:
> By "glitch", I mean anything that could interfere with the rsync copy
> process.  Possible causes: 
> - electrical outages, voltage spikes, voltage drops, "brownouts"
> - mechanical failure
> - earthquake
> - lightning
> - cat walking on keyboard
> - out of memory errors
> - out of disk space errors
> - PEBKAC errors
> - etc.

But, both --delete and --delete-after only delete things from the
destination that ALREADY are missing on the source, so in which of
the above situations would something that still exists somewhere be
accidentally deleted with either option?

In my view the only ones that apply would be human error / cat
standard behaviour but even then you'd have to notice it had
happened and abort the transfer before rsync has chance to do the
delete. Do you typically sit and watch these transfers? It doesn't
sound like any kind of backup to me if it doesn't have history,
i.e. the state of your data *before* the cat walked on 'r' 'm' ' '
'-' 'f' 'r' ' ' '.' ''.

Thanks,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 12:27, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:

I suspect the conflicting serial numbers are causing problems in the kernel,
as indicated by the /dev/disk/by-id/* problems.


That's not in the kernel but in udev/systemd's process of creating the
symbolic links in /dev/disk/by-id/.
It gets /dev/sd[h-l] and /dev/sd[h-l]1 as kernel generated device files.
But sd[ij] and also sd[hl] show pair-wise the same serial numbers.
In case of sd[ij] the outcome is mixed: links to sdi and sdj1 survive.
In case of sd[hl] we see a less strange outcome: sdh and sdh1, while
sdl and sdl1 are missing.


missing because the original command line did not look at sdl.
I added the l and it showed up. No magic.


The open question (at least to me) is whether it's the disks or the
controllers or the drivers which cause the duplication.

Neither, a typu in the original command.



Have a nice day :)

Thomas

.


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, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 12:16, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

Curt wrote:

I discovered a couple of discussions of the phenomenon, the upshot of which
were:
1) That's what you get when you purchase cheap SSDs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/s0rrpo/two_sata_ssds_with_identical_serial_numbers/
2) SSDs belonging to the same software RAID show identical serial numbers
in software, but these numbers don't match the serial numbers printed on the
SSDs themselves.
https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/s0rrpo/two_sata_ssds_with_identical_serial_numbers/


Those URLs are identical. (OMG ! Is it contageous ?)

Number 2 would match my suspicion that some layer in the disk driving
gets confused and mixes up the serial numbers.



But you said *similar*.


By "colliding serial numbers" i mean indeed "identical serial numbers".

How cheap the disks may ever be, that would be no excuse for not making
them individually distinguishable.



As Gene's threads have too many movable parts
for me to follow, on that point I couldn't say.


This one begins to gain presence in the web. So one can use search engines
and AI to untangle its sub-threads. I meanwhile participate in two of them:
serial number collision, rsync caused OOM killer (solved now, but how ?).



By LABELing the partitions uniquely, that problem so far as I can see, 
is solved.


The OOM death of the system was the xfce4 terminal apparently being set 
for unlimited scrollback and that was eating the memory. Switching to 
Konsole with has the ability to control the scrollback to 200 lines, and 
its taken all 32G's as .cache and 1536 1k blocks of swap, and its 
working w/o any OOM actions I've detected.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas



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, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 11:38, Curt wrote:

On 2024-01-17, Thomas Schmitt  wrote:


This is just weird.
I still have difficulties to believe that any disk manufacturer would
hand out disks with colliding serial numbers. I googled for this
phenomenon, but except two mails of Gene nothing similar popped up.


I discovered a couple of discussions of the phenomenon, the upshot of which
were:

1) That's what you get when you purchase cheap SSDs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/s0rrpo/two_sata_ssds_with_identical_serial_numbers/

2) SSDs belonging to the same software RAID show identical serial numbers
in software, but these numbers don't match the serial numbers printed on the 
SSDs themselves.


But the drives in question are not yet and never have been in a raid 
just plugged in awaiting my putting them to work.


https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/s0rrpo/two_sata_ssds_with_identical_serial_numbers/

But you said *similar*. As Gene's threads have too many movable parts
for me to follow, on that point I couldn't say.

.


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, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 11:30, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

after i began enumerating suspects, gene heskett wrote:

terminals scroll back memory, I purposely set this
particular terminals scrollback to 200 lines with that in mind.


How large was it set when your runs caused the OOM killer to act ?
different terminal, xfce4's is apparently unlimited but can't find it in 
the config prefs.



I have a good number of xterms with 10,000 lines each. No tabs, no KDE,
but 8 fvwm "desktops" (virtual screens) full of terminal windows.


12 workspaces with 1 to 8 tabs open. 32G of main memory.




[Request to test the disks one-by-one on some other computer, whether
  they bear the same serial number at all controllers in all machines.]



Not as easily tried, the other 4 are in twin mounts in another portion of
the drive cages in this 30" tall tiger direct cage and not too readily
accessible w/o tipping the mobo out on its hinged mount.


One should raise protest at Gigastone if the disks really have the same
serial numbers. But before doing so, one would have to make sure that
it is not some weird effect of them all being plugged into that machine
at the same time.
Should not be a problem if labeled uniquely.  And that's easily affected 
by gparted.




One of you made the remark that seems to be the secret password.


What did finally help ? Just the shorter terminal scroll back memory ?


That, and possibly the --bwlimit=10m, giving the SSD time to keep their 
stuff in one sock.



It would explain why a verbose rsync could summon the OOM killer always
around the same stage of progress. But what waste of memory would have
to happen with each of the rsync messages ?

(You mentioned LABEL as a possibility. But not as actually used.)



Its still, slowly at 10 megs a second, working.


I see in your previous mail rsync option --bwlimit=10m . But in the
same mail there is an older quote from you that --bwlimit=3m only
prolonged the time until the OOM killer appeared.
So i wonder whether it would work at a more contemporary speed.


A probably informative test.
But as yet not tested.




Self-incrimination: The rest of this mail is off topic.


they gave all 7nth graders the Iowa
test in 1947, similar to the S/B IQ test but not copyrighted, there fore a
lot cheaper, and I came out of that with an equivalent of 147.


I was tested in the 1960s but they did not tell the results to kids or
parents. We only got recommendations at which of our three types of school
we should continue at the age of 10 or 11 years.


That I believe was the intention but one of the teachers was a blabbermouth.


(So it was not to avoid discrimination of the dumb but rather to avoid
that pupils feel more intelligent than their teachers.)


That avoidance was untenable, in the 1st semester of my freshman year I 
got thrown out of the senior physics class for correcting an erroneous 
statement by the teacher that was patently at odds with Newton's 3rd law 
of motion. For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction.


Pretty basic stuff. But correcting the teacher in front of the other 
students was absolutely not to be tolerated. But I felt correcting him 
AND setting it straight was more important to the rest of the nominally 
20 students present than any embarrassment it may have caused him.


Same with the papered EE's who can't understand that E=MV2 does not have 
a speed floor, below which its doesn't work when the electron beam in a 
klystron amplifier is only moving at a potential of 20,000 volts. The 
problem not understood is that the amplification is obtained not from a 
current variation, but a velocity variation induced by a 1 watt signal 
speeding up or slowing down the passing beam as it traverses the first 
cavity of 4, the next two to control the bandwidth, the last one picks 
30 kilowatts back off the beam by the capacitative coupling effects as 
the beam goes on thru into a copper funnel cooled by 70 gallons of very 
pure water to absorb the end of that beam which takes around 125 
kilowatts to generate.


But that beams electrons have mass, another name for weight, and one 
watt to slow them slows them more than 1 watt to speed them up speeds 
them up, so at high power levels, the tube is effective longer in terms 
of the transit time. This puts a time of flight error into the signal we 
didn't know how to pre-distort for in the 1970's. A very dependable way 
to generate transmitter power levels that was also not very efficient, 
95% of the uhf stations that went dark in those years were bankrupted by 
the power bills even at 3 cents a kw.


So there was a huge financial push to find a better method as that time 
distortion would have killed hidef tv before it ever got out of the 
laboritory,


And E=MV2 is as valid at 25 mph as it is at C speed, nominally 186,272 
miles per second.


Yup, I understand Albert Eintein's theory.  Did this help you to 
unders

Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread Michael Kjörling 
On 17 Jan 2024 14:52 -0500, from hunguponcont...@gmail.com (Default User):
> I am writing as someone who has lost data more than once over time, for
> various reasons.  The loss has ranged from slightly annoying, to soul-
> rending catastrophe. It is NEVER appreciated. 

I think this gets closer to the root of what you're trying to achieve:
it sounds to me as though no matter what happens, you want to have a
restorable backup which you can trust to (reasonably well) match the
state of the source at the time when that backup was taken. That is a
commendable goal.

Twiddling with options to rsync won't offer you that in light of
several of the scenarios you listed, though; not least a lightning
strike. A lightning strike will blow out the drive just as much no
matter what options you're using to invoke rsync.

What you need is really rather multiple copies.

I suggest to get a second drive to use for backup purposes along with
the one you currently have. Only ever connect one of them at the same
time to data or power anywhere. Ideally, always keep at least one of
them in a separate location, powered off and disconnected.

That way, if you mess up one, or if one of them fails (for any
reason), or whatever else might happen, you have the other. It might
not be quite as up to date, but it will be in a known-good state.

For less drastic failures, really, look at rsnapshot. It's a wrapper
around rsync which makes maintaining multiple revisions of a backup
much easier. (It essentially passes to rsync with --link-dest, and
manages the respective root directories.)

-- 
Michael Kjörling 🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread Default User 
On Wed, 2024-01-17 at 10:29 -0800, Kushal Kumaran wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 17 2024 at 11:19:39 AM, Default User
>  wrote:
> > Hello!
> > 
> > Opinions, please.
> > 
> > I use rsync to copy my primary backup drive to a secondary backup
> > drive
> > , so that the secondary backup drive is theoretically always an
> > exact
> > copy of the primary backup drive.  
> > 
> > Here is the rsync command I use:
> > 
> > time sudo rsync -aAXHxvv --delete-after --numeric-ids --
> > info=progress2,stats2,name2 --
> > exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/m
> > edia
> > /*","/lost+found"} /media/default/MSD0001/ /media/default/MSD0002/
> > 
> > Question: 
> > I use rsync --delete-after because it might seem to be "safer", so
> > in
> > case of a "glitch" of any kind, no file ever disappears from both
> > the 
> > source drive and the destination drive.  
> > 
> 
> What do you mean by "glitch"?  Irrespective of whether you use --
> delete
> or --delete-after, deleted files on the source are deleted on the
> destination once your rsync is complete (which is what I'd assume you
> want when you want an exact copy).  I'd presume if you're ok with
> that,
> you are also fine with the deletion happening earlier in the rsync
> process?
> 
> If you're concerned about accidental deletions, you should just not
> use
> any of the `--delete*` options (and give up on the exact copy
> requirement).  You can look at alternatives to bare rsync that keep
> track of multiple backed-up images (rsnapshot is a very simple
> wrapper
> over rsync that can do this, for example).
> 
> > However, I have read that using rsync --delete instead of rsync --
> > delete-after is faster and uses less memory, and so is more
> > efficient. 
> > 
> > Note: The current copy process time varies, but takes a long time -
> > last night 131 minutes.
> > :(
> 
> You can try using --delete for a couple of runs and see if it
> actually
> affects performance in your situation.
> 
> > 
> > Disk space used is not currently an issue.
> > 
> > But, is rsync --delete AS SAFE as rsync --delete-after?
> 
> You'll need to define what safety means for you.
> 



Hi, Kushal! 
Thanks for replying. 

By "glitch", I mean anything that could interfere with the rsync copy
process.  Possible causes: 
- electrical outages, voltage spikes, voltage drops, "brownouts"
- mechanical failure
- earthquake
- lightning
- cat walking on keyboard
- out of memory errors
- out of disk space errors
- PEBKAC errors
- etc.

By safe, may I try to explain using a story? 

I once read that centuries ago, a king wanted his crown to be safe.  So
four guards watched his crown at all times.  The guards were not
allowed to take their eves off of the crown, even for a second, until
the the their replacements, the next group of guards, all said "I see
the crown". 

I am sorry if I can not come up with a better, technical explanation. 
I use this story because it has always been meaningful to me, and seems
to point to the essence of what I am getting at. 

I am writing as someone who has lost data more than once over time, for
various reasons.  The loss has ranged from slightly annoying, to soul-
rending catastrophe. It is NEVER appreciated. 

I do intend to try doing rsync --delete instead of rsync --delete
after, to see if it "seems to work".  

But I just wanted to ask first ask, as it would seem better to hear
someone say "How stupid are you? I can't believe you were going to do
that!", than to have them say "How stupid are you? I can't believe you
did that!"

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas Schmitt 
Hi,

i see that i messed up "h" and "k" in my explanation of the fight over
the link targets in /dev/disk/by-id. So another attempt:

sdh has a unique serial number GSTD02TB230102. Thus we see in
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2024/01/msg00667.html
these two links:

  /dev/sdh/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GSTD02TB230102
  /dev/sdh1   /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GSTD02TB230102-part1

sdi and sdj share the serial number GST02TBG221146. So the concurrent
attempts to create the links let only these two survive:

  /dev/sdi/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GST02TBG221146
  /dev/sdj1   /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GST02TBG221146-part1

sdk and sdl share GSTG02TB230206. The survivors are:

  /dev/sdk/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GSTG02TB230206
  /dev/sdk1   /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GSTG02TB230206-part1

The next system startup might yield other survivors.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: man page for cut

2024-01-17 Thread Tom Furie 
Richmond  writes:

> In the man page for cut it says:
>
>  -b, --bytes=LIST
>   select only these bytes
>
> But there is no equals sign in the actual syntax:
>
> echo hello|cut -b 2-5
> ello
>
> echo hello|cut -b=2-5
> cut: invalid byte/character position ‘=2-5’
> Try 'cut --help' for more information.
>
> Why is this?

The equals sign is used with the long-form option, not the short-form.

Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread Kushal Kumaran 
On Wed, Jan 17 2024 at 11:19:39 AM, Default User  
wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Opinions, please.
>
> I use rsync to copy my primary backup drive to a secondary backup drive
> , so that the secondary backup drive is theoretically always an exact
> copy of the primary backup drive.  
>
> Here is the rsync command I use:
>
> time sudo rsync -aAXHxvv --delete-after --numeric-ids --
> info=progress2,stats2,name2 --
> exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media
> /*","/lost+found"} /media/default/MSD0001/ /media/default/MSD0002/
>
> Question: 
> I use rsync --delete-after because it might seem to be "safer", so in
> case of a "glitch" of any kind, no file ever disappears from both the 
> source drive and the destination drive.  
>

What do you mean by "glitch"?  Irrespective of whether you use --delete
or --delete-after, deleted files on the source are deleted on the
destination once your rsync is complete (which is what I'd assume you
want when you want an exact copy).  I'd presume if you're ok with that,
you are also fine with the deletion happening earlier in the rsync
process?

If you're concerned about accidental deletions, you should just not use
any of the `--delete*` options (and give up on the exact copy
requirement).  You can look at alternatives to bare rsync that keep
track of multiple backed-up images (rsnapshot is a very simple wrapper
over rsync that can do this, for example).

> However, I have read that using rsync --delete instead of rsync --
> delete-after is faster and uses less memory, and so is more efficient. 
>
> Note: The current copy process time varies, but takes a long time -
> last night 131 minutes.
> :(

You can try using --delete for a couple of runs and see if it actually
affects performance in your situation.

>
> Disk space used is not currently an issue.
>
> But, is rsync --delete AS SAFE as rsync --delete-after?

You'll need to define what safety means for you.

-- 
regards,
kushal

Re: No Release file for Security Update

2024-01-17 Thread Tom Furie 
Thomas George  writes:

> deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-security  main non-free
> non-free-firmware
> Err:5 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-security Release
>   404  Not Found [IP: 151.101.

Your source is incorrect. The security repo is at
"http://security.debian.org/debian-security";.

Re: man page for cut

2024-01-17 Thread Dan Ritter 
Richmond wrote: 
> echo hello|cut -b=2-5
> cut: invalid byte/character position ‘=2-5’
> Try 'cut --help' for more information.
> 
> Why is this?
> 
> (An example paints a thousand words).

$ echo hello|cut -b 2-5
ello

$ echo hello|cut --bytes=2-5
ello

-dsr-

Re: man page for cut

2024-01-17 Thread Tixy 
On Wed, 2024-01-17 at 17:26 +, Richmond wrote:
> In the man page for cut it says:
> 
>  -b, --bytes=LIST
>   select only these bytes
> 
> But there is no equals sign in the actual syntax:
> 
> echo hello|cut -b 2-5
> ello
> 
> echo hello|cut -b=2-5
> cut: invalid byte/character position ‘=2-5’
> Try 'cut --help' for more information.
> 
> Why is this?
> 

The equals sign only applies to the 'long form' of the option...

$echo hello|cut --bytes=2-5
ello

This is standard behaviour for a lot of utilities.

A hyphen and single letter is the 'short form' and there is an optional
space between the letter and it's arguments.

A double hyphen and and option name has an '=' separating it from and
arguments.

For the short form, you can often (usually?) merge multiple option
letters and any argument at the end applies to the last option letter.

$echo hello|cut -zb2-5
ello$

(the 'z' option says use NUL byte for line terminator so in this case
it didn't output the newline and my '$' command prompt got printed
straight after the 'ello'.

-- 
Tixy

Re: debian-cd baking process

2024-01-17 Thread Michael Kjörling 
On 17 Jan 2024 18:00 +0100, from k...@osnanet.de (Kevin Price):
> Could anyone please help me find where to file this bug to? Any ideas
> much appreciated. Maybe there's a bug already that I didn't find.

The canonical starting point is https://bugs.debian.org

Notably for this situation, near the bottom of that page is a link to
a list of pseudo-packages, which in turn includes "cdimage.debian.org
— CD Image issues" which looks right for this.

So you would file a bug with a

Package: cdimage.debian.org

The corresponding list of currently outstanding bugs is viewable
through https://bugs.debian.org/cdimage.debian.org

Also, while obviously it's far, far better to take care to file a bug
against the correct package, I would go out on a limb here and say
that it's not a disaster if, _despite your best efforts_, it ends up
being filed against the wrong package or pseudo-package. Bugs _can_ be
reassigned to different packages if they are filed against the wrong
package by mistake.

The above is NOT meant to imply endorsement of sloppy bug filing; _do_
your best to find the correct package to report the bug against, but
_don't_ lose sleep over a slim chance that you might end up reporting
it against the wrong package. Someone will almost certainly fix it if
you get it wrong; it might just take longer to get the bug fixed,
especially for a low-priority bug like I would at first glance
consider the one you're talking about in this thread.

-- 
Michael Kjörling 🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

man page for cut

2024-01-17 Thread Richmond 
In the man page for cut it says:

 -b, --bytes=LIST
  select only these bytes

But there is no equals sign in the actual syntax:

echo hello|cut -b 2-5
ello

echo hello|cut -b=2-5
cut: invalid byte/character position ‘=2-5’
Try 'cut --help' for more information.

Why is this?

(An example paints a thousand words).

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas Schmitt 
Hi,

David Christensen wrote:
> I suspect the conflicting serial numbers are causing problems in the kernel,
> as indicated by the /dev/disk/by-id/* problems.

That's not in the kernel but in udev/systemd's process of creating the
symbolic links in /dev/disk/by-id/.
It gets /dev/sd[h-l] and /dev/sd[h-l]1 as kernel generated device files.
But sd[ij] and also sd[hl] show pair-wise the same serial numbers.
In case of sd[ij] the outcome is mixed: links to sdi and sdj1 survive.
In case of sd[hl] we see a less strange outcome: sdh and sdh1, while
sdl and sdl1 are missing.

The open question (at least to me) is whether it's the disks or the
controllers or the drivers which cause the duplication.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread David Christensen 

On 1/17/24 08:19, Default User wrote:

Hello!

Opinions, please.

I use rsync to copy my primary backup drive to a secondary backup drive
, so that the secondary backup drive is theoretically always an exact
copy of the primary backup drive.

Here is the rsync command I use:

time sudo rsync -aAXHxvv --delete-after --numeric-ids --
info=progress2,stats2,name2 --
exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media
/*","/lost+found"} /media/default/MSD0001/ /media/default/MSD0002/

Question:
I use rsync --delete-after because it might seem to be "safer", so in
case of a "glitch" of any kind, no file ever disappears from both the
source drive and the destination drive.

However, I have read that using rsync --delete instead of rsync --
delete-after is faster and uses less memory, and so is more efficient.

Note: The current copy process time varies, but takes a long time -
last night 131 minutes.
:(

Disk space used is not currently an issue.

But, is rsync --delete AS SAFE as rsync --delete-after?



In the past, I used the --backup and --backup-dir options to retain 
files on the destination.



Then I moved my primary backup to ZFS, implemented snapshots, and 
implemented replication to the secondard backup devices.



David

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas Schmitt 
Hi,

Curt wrote:
> I discovered a couple of discussions of the phenomenon, the upshot of which
> were:
> 1) That's what you get when you purchase cheap SSDs.
> https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/s0rrpo/two_sata_ssds_with_identical_serial_numbers/
> 2) SSDs belonging to the same software RAID show identical serial numbers
> in software, but these numbers don't match the serial numbers printed on the
> SSDs themselves.
> https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/s0rrpo/two_sata_ssds_with_identical_serial_numbers/

Those URLs are identical. (OMG ! Is it contageous ?)

Number 2 would match my suspicion that some layer in the disk driving
gets confused and mixes up the serial numbers.


> But you said *similar*.

By "colliding serial numbers" i mean indeed "identical serial numbers".

How cheap the disks may ever be, that would be no excuse for not making
them individually distinguishable.


> As Gene's threads have too many movable parts
> for me to follow, on that point I couldn't say.

This one begins to gain presence in the web. So one can use search engines
and AI to untangle its sub-threads. I meanwhile participate in two of them:
serial number collision, rsync caused OOM killer (solved now, but how ?).


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread David Christensen 

On 1/17/24 06:18, gene heskett wrote:

On 1/17/24 00:52, David Christensen wrote:
I suggest removing one GST02TBG221146 and one GSTG02TB230206.  Put 
them on the shelf, in other computer(s), or sell them.  Then perhaps 
copying the /home RAID10 2 TB to one Gigastone 2 TB SSD would work.


Or LABEL them.



I suspect the conflicting serial numbers are causing problems in the 
kernel, as indicated by the /dev/disk/by-id/* problems.  I would remove 
one each of the duplicate serial number disks to eliminate that possibility.



David

Cheers, Gene Heskett.

debian-cd baking process

2024-01-17 Thread Kevin Price 
Hi all!

I'm not quite sure where to address this to, but I'm certain this is a
bug: If you download debian installer media, for instance
debian-12.4.0-amd64-DLBD-2.iso, they prominenty include the files
"README.txt" and "README.html". Those presumably somehow auto-generated
README files say, in the case of former example:

"this disc is number 2 of a set of 1 discs"

Which is obviously false.

Could anyone please help me find where to file this bug to? Any ideas
much appreciated. Maybe there's a bug already that I didn't find.
-- 
Kevin Price

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread David Christensen 

On 1/16/24 23:46, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Gene Heskett wrote:
One of these mails from a thread in december reveals that the three
unique serial numbers GSTD02TB230102, GST02TBG221146, GSTG02TB230206
each come with a different version of "1C0", "7A0", "5A0", respectively.
   https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-user@lists.debian.org/msg799307.html
That's unexpected, too, as the disk properties look identical elsewise.



Thank you for locating the lshw(1) output.  It appears to have been run 
when one Gigastone SSD was on the motherboard SATA controller and four 
Gigastone SSD's were on the 6-port HBA:


2024-01-17 08:58:54 dpchrist@laalaa ~
$ egrep 'sata|disk|product|version|serial' gene-heskett-coyote-lshw.out 
| grep -B 1 -A 2 Gigastone

  *-disk:1
   product: Gigastone SSD
   version: 7A0
   serial: GST02TBG221146
--
  *-disk:0
   product: Gigastone SSD
   version: 7A0
   serial: GST02TBG221146
--
  *-disk:1
   product: Gigastone SSD
   version: 5A0
   serial: GSTG02TB230206
--
  *-disk:2
   product: Gigastone SSD
   version: 5A0
   serial: GSTG02TB230206
--
  *-disk:3
   product: Gigastone SSD
   version: 1C0
   serial: GSTD02TB230102


David

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread Curt 
On 2024-01-17, Thomas Schmitt  wrote:
>
> This is just weird.
> I still have difficulties to believe that any disk manufacturer would
> hand out disks with colliding serial numbers. I googled for this
> phenomenon, but except two mails of Gene nothing similar popped up.

I discovered a couple of discussions of the phenomenon, the upshot of which
were:

1) That's what you get when you purchase cheap SSDs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/s0rrpo/two_sata_ssds_with_identical_serial_numbers/

2) SSDs belonging to the same software RAID show identical serial numbers
in software, but these numbers don't match the serial numbers printed on the 
SSDs themselves.

https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/s0rrpo/two_sata_ssds_with_identical_serial_numbers/

But you said *similar*. As Gene's threads have too many movable parts
for me to follow, on that point I couldn't say.

Re: No Release file for Security Update

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas George 
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.2.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 DVD 
Binary-1 with firmware 20231007-10:29]/ bookworm main non-free-firmware


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free non-free-firmware

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free 
non-free-firmware


# deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports main non-free 
non-free-firmware


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-security  main non-free 
non-free-firmware

sources.list (END)


root@Phoenix:/etc/apt# apt-get update
Hit:1 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
Hit:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease
Ign:3 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-security InRelease
Hit:4 https://linux.brostrend.com stable InRelease
Err:5 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-security Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 151.101.



On 1/16/24 11:30, Thomas George wrote:
My system is Bookworm installed from the first DVD which was 
downloaded with the checksums and successfully checked.


I commented out the dvd and added to sources.list lines for bookworm, 
bookworm-updates and bookworm-security.


Ran apt-get update

The result was  bookworm InRelease, bookworm-updates InRelease, 
bookworm-secutity Relesse 404 Not Found [IP: 146.75.30.132 80]


Reading package lists Done

bookwoom-security Release does not have a Release file.

How do I fix this?

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas Schmitt 
Hi,

after i began enumerating suspects, gene heskett wrote:
> terminals scroll back memory, I purposely set this
> particular terminals scrollback to 200 lines with that in mind.

How large was it set when your runs caused the OOM killer to act ?

I have a good number of xterms with 10,000 lines each. No tabs, no KDE,
but 8 fvwm "desktops" (virtual screens) full of terminal windows.


> > [Request to test the disks one-by-one on some other computer, whether
> >  they bear the same serial number at all controllers in all machines.]

> Not as easily tried, the other 4 are in twin mounts in another portion of
> the drive cages in this 30" tall tiger direct cage and not too readily
> accessible w/o tipping the mobo out on its hinged mount.

One should raise protest at Gigastone if the disks really have the same
serial numbers. But before doing so, one would have to make sure that
it is not some weird effect of them all being plugged into that machine
at the same time.


> One of you made the remark that seems to be the secret password.

What did finally help ? Just the shorter terminal scroll back memory ?

It would explain why a verbose rsync could summon the OOM killer always
around the same stage of progress. But what waste of memory would have
to happen with each of the rsync messages ?

(You mentioned LABEL as a possibility. But not as actually used.)


> Its still, slowly at 10 megs a second, working.

I see in your previous mail rsync option --bwlimit=10m . But in the
same mail there is an older quote from you that --bwlimit=3m only
prolonged the time until the OOM killer appeared.
So i wonder whether it would work at a more contemporary speed.



Self-incrimination: The rest of this mail is off topic.

> they gave all 7nth graders the Iowa
> test in 1947, similar to the S/B IQ test but not copyrighted, there fore a
> lot cheaper, and I came out of that with an equivalent of 147.

I was tested in the 1960s but they did not tell the results to kids or
parents. We only got recommendations at which of our three types of school
we should continue at the age of 10 or 11 years.
(So it was not to avoid discrimination of the dumb but rather to avoid
that pupils feel more intelligent than their teachers.)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

rsync --delete vs rsync --delete-after

2024-01-17 Thread Default User 
Hello!

Opinions, please.

I use rsync to copy my primary backup drive to a secondary backup drive
, so that the secondary backup drive is theoretically always an exact
copy of the primary backup drive.  

Here is the rsync command I use:

time sudo rsync -aAXHxvv --delete-after --numeric-ids --
info=progress2,stats2,name2 --
exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media
/*","/lost+found"} /media/default/MSD0001/ /media/default/MSD0002/

Question: 
I use rsync --delete-after because it might seem to be "safer", so in
case of a "glitch" of any kind, no file ever disappears from both the 
source drive and the destination drive.  

However, I have read that using rsync --delete instead of rsync --
delete-after is faster and uses less memory, and so is more efficient. 

Note: The current copy process time varies, but takes a long time -
last night 131 minutes.
:(

Disk space used is not currently an issue.

But, is rsync --delete AS SAFE as rsync --delete-after?

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 02:42, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

Gene Heskett wrote:

lsblk, which I've published several times, shows 5 drives.


Duh. Obviously this thread overstretches my mental capacity.



And I've since tried cp in addition to rsync, does the same thing, killing
the sysytem with the OOM but much quicker. cp using all system memory (32Gb)
in 1 minute, another 500K into swap adds another 15 secs, and the OOM kills
the system. So both cp and rsync act broken.


I get the suspicion that your disk set overstretches the mental capacity
of the hardware or the operating system.
Both "cp" and "rsync" are heavily tested by the GNU/Linux community and
quite independently developed. A common memory leak would have to sit
deeper in the software stack, i.e. in kernel or firmware.


kernel. firmware, or terminals scroll back memory, I purposely set this 
particular terminals scrollback to 200 lines with that in mind.





rsync, with a --bwlimit=3m set, takes much longer to kill the system but the
amount of data moved is very similar, 13.5G from clean disk to system freeze
for rsync, 13.4G for cp.


This observation might be significant. But i fail to make up a theory.


One of the things I'm fairly good at, they gave all 7nth graders the 
Iowa test in 1947, similar to the S/B IQ test but not copyrighted, there 
fore a lot cheaper, and I came out of that with an equivalent of 147. I 
quit school 2 years later when I could and went to work fixing tv's. Had 
my draft number moved up in '52 in the middle of korea to get that out 
of the way, drafted was 2 years, volunteered was 4 years, but failed the 
AFQT by getting a 98 out of 100, which earned me a 4F classification 
because I wouldn't take orders from the Sargent, I find out the next 
best score that day among 130+ boys was 36/100 which freed me to let a 
girl become my wife in '57, & started making kids, got a 1st phone in 
1962 without cracking a book, did the same thing in 1972 to become a 
registered CET which I'll readily admit is getting rusty in my dotage at 
89 yo. The technology is slowly passing me by since I retired in the 
middle of 2002. Because I went diabetic in the '80's, my beer limit is 
1, but I'd do it with any of you folks if we ever meet in person.  Let 
the war stories flow. ;o)>  <-smiley with a goatee.


That copy is now up to 4x the data copied in any other try.
root@coyote:~# df && free
Filesystem  1K-blocks  Used  Available Use% Mounted on
udev 16327704 0   16327704   0% /dev
tmpfs 3272684  19043270780   1% /run
/dev/sda1   863983352  22346308  797675396   3% /
tmpfs16363420  1244   16362176   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs5120 8   5112   1% /run/lock
/dev/sda347749868   612   45291248   1% /tmp
/dev/md0p1 1796382580 335101664 1369955940  20% /home
tmpfs 3272684  37523268932   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdh1  1967892164  64369552 1803486364   4% /mnt/homevol
   totalusedfree  shared  buff/cache 
available
Mem:32726840 3453372  199708  91904430336824 
29273468

Swap:  1119027121536   111901176
And swap use has not increased, its stabilized.





gene@coyote:~/src/klipper-docs$  lsblk -d -o NAME,MAJ:MIN,MODEL,SERIAL,WWN 
/dev/sd[hijkl]
NAME MAJ:MIN MODEL SERIAL WWN
sdh8:112 Gigastone SSD GSTD02TB230102
sdi8:128 Gigastone SSD GST02TBG221146
sdj8:144 Gigastone SSD GST02TBG221146
sdk8:160 Gigastone SSD GSTG02TB230206
sdl8:176 Gigastone SSD GSTG02TB230206


This is just weird.
I still have difficulties to believe that any disk manufacturer would
hand out disks with colliding serial numbers. I googled for this
phenomenon, but except two mails of Gene nothing similar popped up.

One of these mails from a thread in december reveals that the three
unique serial numbers GSTD02TB230102, GST02TBG221146, GSTG02TB230206
each come with a different version of "1C0", "7A0", "5A0", respectively.


Which is why, when I let my imagination out to play w/o a chaperone, my 
thoughts run toward some invented date code for a batch number.



   https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-user@lists.debian.org/msg799307.html
That's unexpected, too, as the disk properties look identical elsewise.

I guess that it is not possible to identify which disk came with which
of the two separate purchases ?


Once removed from the boxes, no.


How many days were these purchases apart ?


6 weeks or so, as I formulated what to do next. But that isn't carved 
even in sandstone.


David Christensen wrote:

I suggest removing one GST02TBG221146 and one GSTG02TB230206.  Put them on
the shelf, in other computer(s), or sell them.  Then perhaps copying the
/home RAID10 2 TB to one Gigastone 2 TB SSD would work.


I join this proposal.
... and dimly remember to have seen the proposal to attach the disks
one by one without the other four, in order to see whether the seria

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

2024-01-17 Thread gene heskett 

On 1/17/24 00:52, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/16/24 17:08, gene heskett wrote:
 > lsblk, which I've published several times, shows 5 drives. by-id listing
 > only shows 3. The drive I've been trying to use bounces from /dev/sdd to
 > sde to sdh dependin on which controller it is curently plugged into.
 >
 > And I've since tried cp in addition to rsync, does the same thing,
 > killing the sysytem with the OOM but much quicker. cp using all system
 > memory (32Gb) in 1 minute, another 500K into swap adds another 15 secs,
 > and the OOM kills the system. So both cp and rsync act broken.
 >
 > rsync, with a --bwlimit=3m set, takes much longer to kill the system but
 > the amount of data moved is very similar, 13.5G from clean disk to
 > system freeze for rsync, 13.4G for cp.


On 1/16/24 18:10, gene heskett wrote:

On 1/16/24 11:08, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

  ls -l /dev/sd[ij]*

oot@coyote:~#  ls -l /dev/sd[ij]*
brw-rw 1 root disk 8, 128 Jan 16 05:01 /dev/sdi
brw-rw 1 root disk 8, 129 Jan 16 05:01 /dev/sdi1
brw-rw 1 root disk 8, 144 Jan 16 05:01 /dev/sdj
brw-rw 1 root disk 8, 145 Jan 16 05:01 /dev/sdj1
root@coyote:~#

lsblk -d -o NAME,MAJ:MIN,MODEL,SERIAL,WWN /dev/sd[hijkl]
gene@coyote:~/src/klipper-docs$  lsblk -d -o 
NAME,MAJ:MIN,MODEL,SERIAL,WWN /dev/sd[hijkl]

NAME MAJ:MIN MODEL SERIAL WWN
sdh    8:112 Gigastone SSD GSTD02TB230102
sdi    8:128 Gigastone SSD GST02TBG221146
sdj    8:144 Gigastone SSD GST02TBG221146
sdk    8:160 Gigastone SSD GSTG02TB230206
sdl    8:176 Gigastone SSD GSTG02TB230206



I suggest removing one GST02TBG221146 and one GSTG02TB230206.  Put them 
on the shelf, in other computer(s), or sell them.  Then perhaps copying 
the /home RAID10 2 TB to one Gigastone 2 TB SSD would work.



David

.

Or LABEL them.
And I seem to be making some progress this morning. opening a konsole 
and setting scrollback to 200 lines, limiting its use of memory, the tan 
memory bar in htop if full scale and it a couple megs into swap out of 
107G. and the system still feels normal.

in another multitabbed xfce4 shell, a "df && free" is showing this:
root@coyote:~# df && free
Filesystem  1K-blocks  Used  Available Use% Mounted on
udev 16327704 0   16327704   0% /dev
tmpfs 3272684  19043270780   1% /run
/dev/sda1   863983352  22346276  797675428   3% /
tmpfs16363420  1244   16362176   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs5120 8   5112   1% /run/lock
/dev/sda347749868   580   45291280   1% /tmp
/dev/md0p1 1796382580 335100148 1369957456  20% /home
tmpfs 3272684  37523268932   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdh1  1967892164  23830812 1844025104   2% /mnt/homevol
   totalusedfree  shared  buff/cache 
available
Mem:32726840 3343048  218316  92219630443960 
29383792

Swap:  1119027121536   111901176
root@coyote:~#

rsync has been stopped and restarted, 4 times, but stopping it has not 
recovered the cache, so swap is increasing slowly.

That faint knocking sound? Me, knocking on wood... ;o)>

command line: rsync -a --bwlimit=10m --fsync --progress /home/ /mnt/homevol

So we'll eventually either git-r-done or crask the system but this is 
farther than it ever got before in several days.


Thanks everybody.

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, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis

Re: How to prevent rtkit from giving firefox higher priority?

2024-01-17 Thread The Wanderer 
On 2024-01-17 at 09:02, hw wrote:

> On Wed, 2024-01-17 at 07:26 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 11:19:50AM +0100, hw wrote:

>> > systemctl --user show -p InvocationID at-spi-dbus-bus.service 
>> > InvocationID=4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af
>> > Invalid unit name "InvocationID=4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af" escaped 
>> > as "InvocationID\x3d4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af" (maybe you should 
>> > use systemd-escape?).
>> > InvocationID=b6e84c2dd18b4d9f84436580113abaca
>> > 
>> > InvocationID=
>> 
>> What were you trying to do?  You took my command and mangled it.  You
>> appended the *output* of my command as an *argument* to your command,
>> substituting my 128-bit InvocationID with one of your own.  Why?
> 
> I copied your command and replaced the UUID with one that shows up in
> /run/user/1000/systemd/units/ as a link target since it seems unlikely
> that the same UUIDs you have are being used here..  At least that was
> my intention.
> 
> Maybe your command was supposed to be 'systemctl --user show -p
> InvocationID at-spi-dbus-bus.service'?

Not just "supposed to be" - I'm essentially certain that it *was* that.

What I think happened is that you saw the command, and its output on the
next line, and mistakenly thought that this was a single longer command
that had been line-wrapped.

> That shows only
> 
> 
> InvocationID=b6e84c2dd18b4d9f84436580113abaca
> 
> 
> which doesn't tell me anything.

If I'm not mistaken, it shows the same value as is the target of the
symlink, which tells you that the target of the symlink is the
InvocationID value. (I'd guess that the command is getting it from that
same symlink.)

>> > Neither the user, nor root gets anything from this.  What is it
>> > supposed to show?
>> 
>> You got the InvocationID of the at-spi-dbus-bus.service unit.  You
>> also got an error message because of the mangled argument you passed,
>> and an extra blank InvocationID= line as output from that same mangled
>> argument, because it wasn't a running unit's name.
>> 
>> When I ran *my* command, I was simply demonstrating that the "systemctl"
>> command, when asked for the InvocationID of a unit, gives the same
>> 128-bit number that you can see with ls -l.
>> 
>> That's all.  Nothing more complicated than that.
> 
> How would that be useful?

As a way of looking up the InvocationID of the "service" in question.

>> THE 128-BIT HEX NUMBER IS THE CONTENT.  IT IS THE DATA.  IT IS WHAT YOU
>> SEEM TO BE LOOKING FOR.  THAT'S ALL THERE IS.  THERE IS NO ADDITIONAL
>> PAYLOAD TO BE FOUND.
>> 
>> THE SYMBOLIC LINKS ARE *SUPPOSED* TO BE DANGLING.  THEY ARE NOT MEANT
>> TO BE catTED.
> 
> If that is so, what is the purpose of useless directory entries?

My guess is: so that they can get the data directly in a variable by a
call to stat() or similar, rather than having to read and parse (and
validate against possible malicious replacement) the contents of a file.

I wouldn't consider that to be sufficient benefit to justify abusing the
semantics of symbolic links, but it's long since clear that the
freedesktop.org people don't use the same criteria in assessing these
things as I would, so it's no surprise that they might have done it anyway.

-- 
   The Wanderer

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



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: How to prevent rtkit from giving firefox higher priority?

2024-01-17 Thread tomas 
On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 02:41:37PM +0100, hw wrote:

[...]

> Ok but all the files in /run/user/1000/systemd/units/ are
> lrwxrwxrwx. (except . and ..).

Symlinks are always like this. The "real" permissions are the
target's, which, as you have found out, doesn't exist.

(Permissions don't actually make sense for a symlink, since
the "content" is off-limits for user space anyway, which can
only access it through "ln" and friends).

Cheers
-- 
t


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Description: PGP signature

Re: How to prevent rtkit from giving firefox higher priority?

2024-01-17 Thread hw 
On Wed, 2024-01-17 at 07:26 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 11:19:50AM +0100, hw wrote:
> > On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:41 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 02:17:05PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:03 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 01:43:23PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > > > > There's only a bunch of links in that directory, apparently all
> > > > > > pointing to files that don't exist.  Don't you have that?
> > > > > 
> > > > > unicorn:~$ ls -l /run/user/1000/systemd/units
> > > > > total 0
> > > > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 greg greg 32 Jan  4 10:33 
> > > > > invocation:at-spi-dbus-bus.service -> bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92
> 
> > > You can access it just fine.  You just don't *understand* it.  (Neither
> > > do I.)
> > 
> > If I could access it, I could display the file.  If there is no file,
> > then these directory entries shouldn't exist.
> 
> I don't know how to make it any clearer.  THE SYMBOLIC LINK TARGET IS
> THE CONTENT.  They are storing this "Invocation ID" inside the symbolic
> link itself.
>
> This is what they chose to do.  I don't know WHY.  But you can clearly
> see what they're doing.

I can only see links to files that don't exist.

> > > I did a bit of Google searching, and I think this is something called
> > > an "InvocationID".
> > > 
> > > > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 greg greg 32 Jan  4 10:33 
> > > > > invocation:at-spi-dbus-bus.service -> bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92
> > > 
> > > unicorn:~$ systemctl --user show -p InvocationID at-spi-dbus-bus.service
> > > InvocationID=bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92
> > 
> > That is not useful:
> > 
> > 
> > systemctl --user show -p InvocationID at-spi-dbus-bus.service 
> > InvocationID=4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af
> > Invalid unit name "InvocationID=4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af" escaped 
> > as "InvocationID\x3d4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af" (maybe you should use 
> > systemd-escape?).
> > InvocationID=b6e84c2dd18b4d9f84436580113abaca
> > 
> > InvocationID=
> 
> What were you trying to do?  You took my command and mangled it.  You
> appended the *output* of my command as an *argument* to your command,
> substituting my 128-bit InvocationID with one of your own.  Why?

I copied your command and replaced the UUID with one that shows up in
/run/user/1000/systemd/units/ as a link target since it seems unlikely
that the same UUIDs you have are being used here..  At least that was
my intention.

Maybe your command was supposed to be 'systemctl --user show -p
InvocationID at-spi-dbus-bus.service'?  That shows only


InvocationID=b6e84c2dd18b4d9f84436580113abaca


which doesn't tell me anything.

> > Neither the user, nor root gets anything from this.  What is it
> > supposed to show?
> 
> You got the InvocationID of the at-spi-dbus-bus.service unit.  You
> also got an error message because of the mangled argument you passed,
> and an extra blank InvocationID= line as output from that same mangled
> argument, because it wasn't a running unit's name.
> 
> When I ran *my* command, I was simply demonstrating that the "systemctl"
> command, when asked for the InvocationID of a unit, gives the same
> 128-bit number that you can see with ls -l.
> 
> That's all.  Nothing more complicated than that.

How would that be useful?

> THE 128-BIT HEX NUMBER IS THE CONTENT.  IT IS THE DATA.  IT IS WHAT YOU
> SEEM TO BE LOOKING FOR.  THAT'S ALL THERE IS.  THERE IS NO ADDITIONAL
> PAYLOAD TO BE FOUND.
> 
> THE SYMBOLIC LINKS ARE *SUPPOSED* TO BE DANGLING.  THEY ARE NOT MEANT
> TO BE catTED.

If that is so, what is the purpose of useless directory entries?

> > > Maybe it's just a fancy PID?  I dunno, it's all very shrouded in mystery.
> > 
> > See, you're starting to understand how this is alarming :)
> 
> If you want to know what the InvocationID IS USED FOR, ask on the
> systemd mailing lists, because clearly we don't know.

That may be a good idea.

> If you want to know WHY they chose to store the InvocationID inside
> the target of a symbolic link, instead of as regular file content,
> ask on the systemd mailing lists, because clearly we don't know.
> 
> If you want to know why things that you've never seen before are
> alarming to you, ask your therapist, because... well, you get the picture,
> I hope.
> 

Unknown things never seen before are always alarming.  There may not
be any therapist able to help you if they aren't alarming to you.

Re: How to prevent rtkit from giving firefox higher priority?

2024-01-17 Thread hw 
On Wed, 2024-01-17 at 12:25 +, Tixy wrote:
> On Wed, 2024-01-17 at 11:19 +0100, hw wrote:
> > On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:41 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 02:17:05PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:03 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 01:43:23PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > > > > There's only a bunch of links in that directory, apparently all
> > > > > > pointing to files that don't exist.  Don't you have that?
> > > > > 
> > > > > unicorn:~$ ls -l /run/user/1000/systemd/units
> > > > > total 0
> > > > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 greg greg 32 Jan  4 10:33 
> > > > > invocation:at-spi-dbus-bus.service -> bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92
> > > > > [...]
> > > > > I guess that's normal, then.  It seems they're using the symlink 
> > > > > target
> > > > > as the actual *data*, not a link to another file that contains the 
> > > > > data.
> > > > > Why?  I have no idea.  I seem to recall one of the BSDs doing 
> > > > > something
> > > > > like this, but I never fully understood the rationale.  Something 
> > > > > about
> > > > > atomic operations, maybe?
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > I consider it as alarming rather than normal when I can't access data
> > > > on my own computer.
> > > 
> > > You can access it just fine.  You just don't *understand* it.  (Neither
> > > do I.)
> > 
> > If I could access it, I could display the file.  If there is no file,
> > then these directory entries shouldn't exist.
> 
> Filesystem directories entries hold more than file and directory
> objects. As well as symbolic links, there's named FIFOs, named sockets,
> and devices.
> 
> E.g.
> 
> $ mkfifo a-fifo
> $ nc -lkU a-socket&
> $ ln -T target -s a-link
> 
> $ ls -l a-*
> prw-r--r-- 1 tixy tixy 0 Jan 17 12:07 a-fifo
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 tixy tixy 6 Jan 17 12:08 a-link -> target
> srwxr-xr-x 1 tixy tixy 0 Jan 17 12:07 a-socket
> 

Ok but all the files in /run/user/1000/systemd/units/ are
lrwxrwxrwx. (except . and ..).

Re: How to prevent rtkit from giving firefox higher priority?

2024-01-17 Thread hw 
On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 10:19 -0600, John Hasler wrote:
> I  wrote:
> > You may be able to prevent Firefox from getting increased priority by
> > using polkit.
> 
> hw writes:
> > How would I do that?  All the freedektop stuff always has been a big
> > mystery, and polkit is part of it, or isn't it?
> 
> I don't know, but it at least has a man page and I think that this is
> the sort of stuff it is supposed to be for.  Worth investigating.

Cool, it has a man page :)  I checked the files/directories mentioned
in the page, and nothing seems to indicate that there is anything that
would allow firefox to increase its priority.

It might not need a special allowance because I have allowed the user
to set a nice level of up to -10 in /etc/security/limits.conf.  I
think that doesn't mean that firefox could get real time priority
though --- unless rtkit-daemon is somehow able to set any process that
asks for it to whatever priority the process asks for.

If rtkit-daemon can do that I wonder why the default configuration
is made to open such an enormous security backdoor.

Re: Debian 11 & Debian 12

2024-01-17 Thread Michael Kjörling 
On 17 Jan 2024 03:21 +, from a...@strugglers.net (Andy Smith):
>> Please find a way to restore the integrity of open-source software 
>> distribution.
> 
> Firmware updates are required for almost every general purpose
> computing device in existence and at this time those are non-free.
> 
> You have no choice about using them whether you use Debian or not,
> because your computer hardware will come pre-installed with several
> bits of non-free firmware, such as the CPU microcode and the entire
> Minix-based OS that runs inside every Intel and AMD CPU. By refusing
> to download newer firmwares you will not actually make your computer
> usage any more ideologically pure, you will only make it less
> reliable and secure.

Another example of non-free firmware on a typical system might be that
running on and managing the internal workings of the storage device.

Or the UEFI/BIOS.

Or the display.

Or the network card.

Also, there seems to me to be some confusion on OP's part. What's
changed in Debian 12 compared to earlier releases is that a new,
separate component was added, named non-free-firmware; and non-free
firmware was moved into it from elsewhere. Previously firmware was
often packaged in non-free, so required either including the non-free
component as a whole or managing firmware blobs packages manually.

IMO, if anything, this change _helps_ things by creating a cleaner
separation between non-free packages which are to some extent
necessary for the secure use and proper functioning of the computer,
and those which are not required except for their particular uses.

Nothing forces you to include even non-free-firmware in your apt
sources list, but as has already been pointed out, you probably _want_
to do that in order to bring in firmware updates. You aren't running
any _less_ non-free software by not including it.

If you absolutely want to run an operating system with no non-free
components at all, the FSF has a list of distributions that they
recommend. https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html Be prepared
to need to make significant concessions in other areas if you use one
of those, and keep in mind that unless you have _really_ gone out of
your way in picking components, there will still be a _lot_ of
non-free code running on your computer.

-- 
Michael Kjörling 🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

Re: How to prevent rtkit from giving firefox higher priority?

2024-01-17 Thread Greg Wooledge 
On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 11:19:50AM +0100, hw wrote:
> On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:41 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 02:17:05PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:03 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 01:43:23PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > > > There's only a bunch of links in that directory, apparently all
> > > > > pointing to files that don't exist.  Don't you have that?
> > > > 
> > > > unicorn:~$ ls -l /run/user/1000/systemd/units
> > > > total 0
> > > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 greg greg 32 Jan  4 10:33 
> > > > invocation:at-spi-dbus-bus.service -> bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92

> > You can access it just fine.  You just don't *understand* it.  (Neither
> > do I.)
> 
> If I could access it, I could display the file.  If there is no file,
> then these directory entries shouldn't exist.

I don't know how to make it any clearer.  THE SYMBOLIC LINK TARGET IS
THE CONTENT.  They are storing this "Invocation ID" inside the symbolic
link itself.

This is what they chose to do.  I don't know WHY.  But you can clearly
see what they're doing.

> > I did a bit of Google searching, and I think this is something called
> > an "InvocationID".
> > 
> > > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 greg greg 32 Jan  4 10:33 
> > > > invocation:at-spi-dbus-bus.service -> bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92
> > 
> > unicorn:~$ systemctl --user show -p InvocationID at-spi-dbus-bus.service
> > InvocationID=bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92
> 
> That is not useful:
> 
> 
> systemctl --user show -p InvocationID at-spi-dbus-bus.service 
> InvocationID=4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af
> Invalid unit name "InvocationID=4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af" escaped as 
> "InvocationID\x3d4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af" (maybe you should use 
> systemd-escape?).
> InvocationID=b6e84c2dd18b4d9f84436580113abaca
> 
> InvocationID=

What were you trying to do?  You took my command and mangled it.  You
appended the *output* of my command as an *argument* to your command,
substituting my 128-bit InvocationID with one of your own.  Why?

> Neither the user, nor root gets anything from this.  What is it
> supposed to show?

You got the InvocationID of the at-spi-dbus-bus.service unit.  You
also got an error message because of the mangled argument you passed,
and an extra blank InvocationID= line as output from that same mangled
argument, because it wasn't a running unit's name.

When I ran *my* command, I was simply demonstrating that the "systemctl"
command, when asked for the InvocationID of a unit, gives the same
128-bit number that you can see with ls -l.

That's all.  Nothing more complicated than that.

THE 128-BIT HEX NUMBER IS THE CONTENT.  IT IS THE DATA.  IT IS WHAT YOU
SEEM TO BE LOOKING FOR.  THAT'S ALL THERE IS.  THERE IS NO ADDITIONAL
PAYLOAD TO BE FOUND.

THE SYMBOLIC LINKS ARE *SUPPOSED* TO BE DANGLING.  THEY ARE NOT MEANT
TO BE catTED.

> > Maybe it's just a fancy PID?  I dunno, it's all very shrouded in mystery.
> 
> See, you're starting to understand how this is alarming :)

If you want to know what the InvocationID IS USED FOR, ask on the
systemd mailing lists, because clearly we don't know.

If you want to know WHY they chose to store the InvocationID inside
the target of a symbolic link, instead of as regular file content,
ask on the systemd mailing lists, because clearly we don't know.

If you want to know why things that you've never seen before are
alarming to you, ask your therapist, because... well, you get the picture,
I hope.

Re: How to prevent rtkit from giving firefox higher priority?

2024-01-17 Thread Tixy 
On Wed, 2024-01-17 at 11:19 +0100, hw wrote:
> On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:41 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 02:17:05PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:03 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 01:43:23PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > > > There's only a bunch of links in that directory, apparently all
> > > > > pointing to files that don't exist.  Don't you have that?
> > > > 
> > > > unicorn:~$ ls -l /run/user/1000/systemd/units
> > > > total 0
> > > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 greg greg 32 Jan  4 10:33 
> > > > invocation:at-spi-dbus-bus.service -> bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92
> > > > [...]
> > > > I guess that's normal, then.  It seems they're using the symlink target
> > > > as the actual *data*, not a link to another file that contains the data.
> > > > Why?  I have no idea.  I seem to recall one of the BSDs doing something
> > > > like this, but I never fully understood the rationale.  Something about
> > > > atomic operations, maybe?
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > I consider it as alarming rather than normal when I can't access data
> > > on my own computer.
> > 
> > You can access it just fine.  You just don't *understand* it.  (Neither
> > do I.)
> 
> If I could access it, I could display the file.  If there is no file,
> then these directory entries shouldn't exist.

Filesystem directories entries hold more than file and directory
objects. As well as symbolic links, there's named FIFOs, named sockets,
and devices.

E.g.

$ mkfifo a-fifo
$ nc -lkU a-socket&
$ ln -T target -s a-link

$ ls -l a-*
prw-r--r-- 1 tixy tixy 0 Jan 17 12:07 a-fifo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 tixy tixy 6 Jan 17 12:08 a-link -> target
srwxr-xr-x 1 tixy tixy 0 Jan 17 12:07 a-socket

-- 
Tixy

Re: How to prevent rtkit from giving firefox higher priority?

2024-01-17 Thread hw 
On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:41 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 02:17:05PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 08:03 -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 01:43:23PM +0100, hw wrote:
> > > > There's only a bunch of links in that directory, apparently all
> > > > pointing to files that don't exist.  Don't you have that?
> > > 
> > > unicorn:~$ ls -l /run/user/1000/systemd/units
> > > total 0
> > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 greg greg 32 Jan  4 10:33 invocation:at-spi-dbus-bus.service 
> > > -> bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92
> > > [...]
> > > I guess that's normal, then.  It seems they're using the symlink target
> > > as the actual *data*, not a link to another file that contains the data.
> > > Why?  I have no idea.  I seem to recall one of the BSDs doing something
> > > like this, but I never fully understood the rationale.  Something about
> > > atomic operations, maybe?
> > > 
> > 
> > I consider it as alarming rather than normal when I can't access data
> > on my own computer.
> 
> You can access it just fine.  You just don't *understand* it.  (Neither
> do I.)

If I could access it, I could display the file.  If there is no file,
then these directory entries shouldn't exist.

> > And I do want to know what this unit file for firefox contains and
> > does and how it is being brought about.
> 
> If it's a symlink whose name begins with "invocation:" and whose target
> is a 32-hex-digit (128-bit) value, like the one shown above, then
> you are seeing everything there is to see.  I don't know what the 128-bit
> number is used for, but that number *is* the data.  Of that, I'm certain.
> 
> I did a bit of Google searching, and I think this is something called
> an "InvocationID".
> 
> > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 greg greg 32 Jan  4 10:33 invocation:at-spi-dbus-bus.service 
> > > -> bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92
> 
> unicorn:~$ systemctl --user show -p InvocationID at-spi-dbus-bus.service
> InvocationID=bfec6466520a4586b8c9205c235ccc92

That is not useful:


systemctl --user show -p InvocationID at-spi-dbus-bus.service 
InvocationID=4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af
Invalid unit name "InvocationID=4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af" escaped as 
"InvocationID\x3d4bd113a0ec4c4f1eab6c51da8a43c1af" (maybe you should use 
systemd-escape?).
InvocationID=b6e84c2dd18b4d9f84436580113abaca

InvocationID=


Neither the user, nor root gets anything from this.  What is it
supposed to show?

> 
> describes this as "a unique 128-bit ID identifying each runtime cycle
> of the unit".
> 
> There is also a man page systemd-id128(1) ("man systemd-id128") but
> it doesn't describe things in a way I can currently understand. It
> seems to reference another page sd-id128(3) which I do not have, but
> which I can find online at
> 

It indicates that these numbers are just UUIDs with the dashes
omitted.  Apparently they aren't called UUIDs to make things more
complicated and/or to hide something.

UUIDs are good as unique identifiers and not good for being data
themselves.

> ... which, OK, that's pretty boring.  What I cannot find anywhere is
> a basic explanation of *what this ID is used for*.
> 
> Maybe it's just a fancy PID?  I dunno, it's all very shrouded in mystery.

See, you're starting to understand how this is alarming :)

I'll try to find out more but I don't have time for now ...

Re: Correction to last message for Debian 11 and Debian 12

2024-01-17 Thread Andrew M.A. Cater 
On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 10:31:40PM +, Jeff Jennings wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> After a couple of decades of using various Linux distributions, I've been on 
> Debian 10 for some years. I like it a lot!
> 
> Recently, I decided to download Debian 12.4 and was alarmed to notice that 
> Debian 12 downloads are no longer through https connections.
> 

Hi Jeff,

The most obvious place to me to start with a Debian download - if I
were brand new to this - would be www.debian.org front page.

It's been reorganised - there's a prominent Download link which points
to the amd64 netinst image. That's served via https from cdimage.debian.org.
All the downloads linked off Other downloads are also https links.

> In addition, I installed 12.4 and discovered that the post installation 
> repository links are non-free only. Also, two of the largest corporate 
> entities are evident within desktop notifications, prior to any updates to 
> the operating system.

Did you read the release notes? As others have pointed out, Debian is now
supplying non-free firmware by default so that your device has up to date
firmware. That was the subject of a General Resolution. The repository
that it adds contains _only_ firmware: it doesn't add other software 
that would have been in non-free. That repository still exists independently.

The medium you install from is almost exactly equivalent to the old 
"unofficial" installer in that respect which also contained firmware.
> 

If you install with a machine that has a network connection, the
base install process brings you up to date: your operating system is
updated prior to reboot at the end of the install.

If you install Gnome, then yes, there are steps in the first run
of Gnome that allow you to set up corporate accounts. Note: the
default is to skip these. That's not Debian specific - that's upstream
Gnome and works the same way on other Linux distributions.

> Then, I tried 11.8 and was able to download on https link. However, after 
> installing the operating system, the repository links are non-free only. 
> Also, the desktop notifications have an obvious presence of one of the 
> largest corporations.
The 11.8 images are *exactly* as they were: they don't include firmware.
The "unofficial" image is still there for those who can't install without
firmware e.g. some wifi or the need for sound for visually impaired users
to install.
> 
> It appears that after Debian 10, the corporate takeover of open source 
> software is in play.
> 

No - Debian still remains non-commercial and we're all volunteers.

> It's not that I'm unwilling to download from contrib or obviously non-free 
> sources, but it's clear that Debian is no longer the "complete free" 
> operating system. It was a lot better experience to be able to run Debian 
> without non-free sources, and then to decide whether or not to download 
> non-free drivers or packages.

Editing your sources list is still open to you during the install. 
For 12.4, firmware *is* offered by default - which allows install over WiFi
/ with sound for problematic cases - but the release notes also note 
how to disable that check such that your machine is not installed with
appropriate firmware.
> 
> Consequently, I've decided to keep using 10.13 until I can find a different 
> Linux distribution that is still completely free.
> 

You have until 30th June 2024 to reconcile your choices before you lose 
long term support for 10.13. As you're aware: there's no update process
that will allow you to skip releases so if you update from there, you'll
need to go through 11 to 12.

The next point release of Debian 11 and Debian 12.5 is likely to be in
early February.

> Please find a way to restore the integrity of open-source software 
> distributions.
> 

That's a *much* wider topic for another day, perhaps: this list can only
really discuss Debian :)

> Thank you for your time.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Jeff Jennings

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater
(amaca...@debian.org)