Fwd: Confusion on how to do it.

[Andrew Cater]

This went only to John whereas I meant to send it to both John and the list.

-- Forwarded message -
From: Andrew Cater 
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 4:57 PM
Subject: Re: Confusion on how to do it.
To: John Brumby 


Hi John,

Everything in one would be 40 odd DVDs worth but you can get the first DVD
to install a complete OS (with some internet access being helpful
thereafter as necessary). DVD 1-3 would give you some of the applications
that are less used, but, to be honest, if you have adequate Internet
access, you can use a Debian netinst CD. IF you have no internet access for
one particular machine / need for a completely isolated network with no
external connectivity, then there are two large .iso files you can create -
one 16GB Stick or one Blu-Ray 25GB file - both of which can be written
directly to a USB stick.  Both of these large files require a Linux system
and network access to a Debian mirror to generate but can be used
independently thereafter. Note: the 16GB stick might require a larger 32GB
USB - many USB sticks which are nominally 16GB are about 14.5GB capacity.

All the very best,

Andy C.

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 11:54 PM John Brumby 
wrote:

> Dear Team,
>
> Is there such a thing as a Full Debian Os ISO to be downloaded.
> The lists are so confusing that I see.
>
> John Brumby
>

Re: Offline systems

[Andrew Cater]

Myself - I might use the 16G stick as install medium - see conversations
elsewhere in this list on how to use jigod. That gives you the contents of
more than DVD 1 to DVD 3 in one small format. These are up to 70 real,
physical servers and not VMs? You might want to look at automated ways to
deploy and build that many servers.

What you're asking is possible - but not necessarily a good move: Debian
changes daily with fixes, security fixes and so on. Unless you are going to
build them and then walk away completely - build a mirror which is
dual-homed: you can connect it to the internet to pull in updates very
regularly, then disconnect form the internet and use this machine to update
all of the others.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy C

On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 3:47 PM mick crane  wrote:

> On 2020-09-20 16:31, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > mick crane wrote:
> >> Somebody mentioned jigdo which looked like a good thing.
> >
> > Jigdo is used for making ISO images from a frame of ISO 9660 metadata
> > and
> > other non-packaged stuff (the .template file), and the .deb packages on
> > a
> > mirror, or in a repository, or in an older ISO image.
> > The .jigdo file contains the list of packages which shall be inserted
> > into
> > the frame.
> >
> > So except that you get them wrapped in an ISO image, the packages are
> > just
> > the same as on the mirror server (or other package source) from which
> > you
> > could fetch them by appropriate means.
> >
> >
> > Have a nice day :)
> >
> > Thomas
>
> What's the best appropriate means then to fetch mirror and then only
> fetch differences to local copy ? wget does that doesn't it ?
> Not that I want to but wondered.
>
> mick
>
>
> --
> Key ID4BFEBB31
>
>

Re: Towards a custom personalized Debian installer

[Andrew Cater]

http://flosslinuxblog.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-quick-post-on-how-to-use-jigdo-to.html
- was a relatively quick attempt on my part to show how to use jigdo-lite,
a mirror and a USB stick. If you use a wired connection to do this, you
don't necessarily need non-free firmware.

Firmware - see
https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware#Firmware_during_the_installation

https://cloud.debian.org/images/release/current/amd64/jigdo-16G/ is the
current directory with the two files. If you download both, it's only about
50M and an internet connection to your nearest Debian mirror (and the
download can be restarted if interrupted.)

Hope this helps, as ever,

Andy C.

On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 1:40 PM Richard Owlett  wrote:

> On 09/18/2020 07:29 AM, Andrew Cater wrote:
> > Richard (et. al.)
> >
> > If you want an install without any Internet connectivity - you have one
> > really good choice - but you may need  someone to provide you with media
> > made on another Debian machine.
>
> My policy is to purchase at lease 1 complete DVD set of each Debian
> release (typically not the initial release). I have several machines,
> with one totally isolated from all others and dedicated to experiments.
>
> A link to instructions for creating that media? TIA
>
> >
> > The jigdo file which produces a 16GB file for writing to a USB stick is,
> > essentially, the first three DVDs plus a bit on one medium. It's directly
> > bootable on a machine that supports boot from USB. it will boot in legacy
> > (non-UEFI) and UEFI mode. It's ideal. The one thing it doesn't contain is
> > firmware - but that can be written to another USB stick.One small, cheap,
> > old stick, one newer stick and some internet connectivity _somewhere_ and
> > you can do it.
>
> Sounds like it was designed for someone more on the edge than I. I
> rarely need anything not on DVD1.
>
> >
> > That way, everything is met. I have asked Sledge if he would be prepared
> to
> > produce _another_ non-free image in 16GB size but he replied that it
> wasn't
> > particularly worth the increased bother and storage size of maintaining
> the
> > 16GB file for every point release when it could readily be regenerated.
>
> I *agree*. What is needed is a set of instructions suitable for a
> minimally competent Linux user.
>
> >
> > The alternatives are the BluRay media (or possibly the debian-edu media)
> > both of which are around the same size.
> >
> > This isn't rocket science - but yours is a distinct edge case.
>
> Before I retired, several employers found that a valuable trait.
>
> > Installs to
> > a partition and using the partition to bootstrap a second install are
> > likely to be tested by only one person - yourself - and you would
> probably
> > need to submit very detailed bug reports and a significantly compelling
> use
> > case to achieve major changes.
>
> Any bug reports would likely be against documentation rather than
> against the software itself.
>
> >
> > All the very best, as ever,
> >
> > Andy C
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM Richard Owlett 
> wrote:
> >
> >> On 09/17/2020 05:14 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
> >>> Richard Owlett composed on 2020-09-17 04:25 (UTC-0500):
> >>>
> >>>> I unsuccessfully tried to us use debootstrap several years ago.
> >>>> Right now I specifically want to use the normal Debian installer on an
> >>>> editable file system.
> >>>
> >>> Did you happen to notice what I wrote in
> >>> <https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/09/msg00441.html>?
> >>
> >> Yes.
> >> I think I have a counter example {haven't verified no operator error
> >> involved} but I've been working on another fundamental issue --
> >> understanding the installer.
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>

Re: Towards a custom personalized Debian installer

[Andrew Cater]

Richard (et. al.)

If you want an install without any Internet connectivity - you have one
really good choice - but you may need  someone to provide you with media
made on another Debian machine.

The jigdo file which produces a 16GB file for writing to a USB stick is,
essentially, the first three DVDs plus a bit on one medium. It's directly
bootable on a machine that supports boot from USB. it will boot in legacy
(non-UEFI) and UEFI mode. It's ideal. The one thing it doesn't contain is
firmware - but that can be written to another USB stick.One small, cheap,
old stick, one newer stick and some internet connectivity _somewhere_ and
you can do it.

That way, everything is met. I have asked Sledge if he would be prepared to
produce _another_ non-free image in 16GB size but he replied that it wasn't
particularly worth the increased bother and storage size of maintaining the
16GB file for every point release when it could readily be regenerated.

The alternatives are the BluRay media (or possibly the debian-edu media)
both of which are around the same size.

This isn't rocket science - but yours is a distinct edge case. Installs to
a partition and using the partition to bootstrap a second install are
likely to be tested by only one person - yourself - and you would probably
need to submit very detailed bug reports and a significantly compelling use
case to achieve major changes.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy C


On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM Richard Owlett  wrote:

> On 09/17/2020 05:14 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
> > Richard Owlett composed on 2020-09-17 04:25 (UTC-0500):
> >
> >> I unsuccessfully tried to us use debootstrap several years ago.
> >> Right now I specifically want to use the normal Debian installer on an
> >> editable file system.
> >
> > Did you happen to notice what I wrote in
> > ?
>
> Yes.
> I think I have a counter example {haven't verified no operator error
> involved} but I've been working on another fundamental issue --
> understanding the installer.
>
>

Re: Buster with MATE without systemd

[Andrew Cater]

Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Devuan -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devuan - it appears that the folks over there
have had to modify precisely udisks2 and policykit. This is not a Devuan
support list - but it looks as if stock Debian may not allow the switch
once a full system is installed. If you were to install only a minimum,
text-only system, switch to sysvinit and then use tasksel to add the MATE
desktop environment, it might then work but there's no guarantee unless you
try this.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy C.

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 12:30 PM Reco  wrote:

> Hi.
>
> On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 07:28:34PM -0700, Marc Shapiro wrote:
> > So, my question is:  Can I replace systemd with sysvint and still keep
> MATE?
>
> Exibit 1 (mate-core and systemd-sysv are installed):
>
> # apt install sysvinit-core systemd-
> ...
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
>   caja dbus-user-session gvfs gvfs-backends gvfs-daemons libpam-systemd
> ...
>   systemd systemd-sysv udisks2
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
>   initscripts insserv startpar sysv-rc sysvinit-core
>
> Exibit 2:
>
> # apt install sysvinit-core systemd- udisks2
> ...
>  udisks2 : Depends: libpam-systemd but it is not going to be installed
>
>
> Exibit 3:
>
> # apt install sysvinit-core systemd- policykit-1
> ...
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>  policykit-1 : Depends: libpam-systemd but it is not going to be installed
>
>
> So, to answer your question. It may be possible to keep assorted MATE
> programs (text editor, terminal, etc) and have sysvinit-core installed.
> But everything that makes MATE the DE (i.e. file manager, panel,
> session, etc) is tied to either udisks2 or policykit, and you cannot
> keep those (both require libpam-systemd) and have sysvinit-sysv.
>
> Even if you cheat it with equivs, and create a replacement package
> for libpam-systemd, both udisks2 or policykit - you'll just break those
> and leave yourself with non-mounting storage media and without the
> ability to suspend and poweroff.
>
> Reco
>
>

Re: Can one install packages from Parrot or Kali on Debian testing? (Was: Re: Hi :))

[Andrew Cater]

Parrot and Kali both have their own support lists. Kali, in particular, use
a modified Debian testing as the basis of their rolling release but modify
kernels and other packages. In general, people would suggest not mixing
Debian stable and Debian testing. Using packages from another
Debian-derived distribution risks creating a "FrankenDebian" that you can't
control and can't readily fix without removing significant numbers of
packages: this also applies to Ubuntu and, especially, Ubuntu PPAs mixed
with Debian.

All the very best

Andy C

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t=j==s=web==rja=8=2ahUKEwiczpvn0-DrAhWTA2MBHUrsDXwQFjAAegQIARAB=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.debian.org%2FDontBreakDebian=AOvVaw2uYNQvEqW0ju-bH_QNSw08


On Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 5:35 AM Andy Smith  wrote:

> Hi Richard,
>
> Your question is one of user support but you've sent it to the
> debian-project list, which is about the Debian project itself and
> not for asking user questions. So, I have directed replies to the
> correct place which is debian-user.
>
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 04:14:35PM -0400, richard loomis wrote:
> > I have a question using debian 10 i noticed ive upgraded till theres no
> > more using testing,
>
> Use "testing" is probably for advanced users, but the question you
> ask below about mixing in things that aren't Debian suggests you are
> maybe not that familiar with Debian. Be careful!
>
> > when i add parrot os repos and kali linux repos theres tons of
> > upgrades knowing there using testing also, Is it safe to upgrade
> > debian 10 with there repos?
>
> No. You should not mix in things that aren't Debian into Debian
> without knowing exactly what you are doing. None of those things
> (Parrot, Kali) are designed to be installed on a Debian system. You
> will very likely break your entire system doing this. It may even
> appear to work for a while, but will break later in mysterious ways.
>
> See https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian for more details.
>
> In general, upgrading to newer versions of packages for no reason
> other than that they exist is not a good practice. You should have a
> reason for wanting a newer package than what exists in Debian
> testing. I recommend that if you do have such a need for specific
> newer packages, you install them individually from upstream
> following upstream's instructions.
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
>

Re: LEAN Debian install: Exploring task selection menu

[Andrew Cater]

Standard advice from me: use the expert install (available under "Advanced
options", I think, from the standard netinst / DVD .iso image. Uncheck all
except standard install (and perhaps SSH server) - no X, no desktop
environment. That gives you a bare, text mode install with < 400 packages
in total. Build on from there. You can drop to a single user shell from the
installer to install extra packages if you really must - or you can just
reboot and use apt/apt-get to check and see what's involved at that point.
If you use wifi - you mght want to add at least any required firmware and
nmcli to get you started.[For myself, I always try to make the first
install be at the end of a cable to avoid wifi problems.]

It does need you to be command line capable. If you really have no
bandwidth, it might mean you need to buy DVDs to bootstrap the system. Be
aware, as you go, that an install from DVD media is only correct up to and
including the first boot - there will always be updates to install after
the first OS install.



On Wed, Sep 9, 2020 at 1:27 PM Richard Owlett  wrote:

> IIUC the goal of Debian designers might be summarized as maximizing
> functionality for the broadest possible audience. And when there is a
> large enough audience for "power tools" there are Debian Pure Blends.
>
> That works very well *most* of the time.
>
> But when it doesn't, it is VERY annoying ;{
>
> Problems include:
>1. Download bandwidth or data cap constraints.
>   {aggravated by treating "recommends" as "depends"}
>2. Very large undesired packages {e.g. LibreOffice}
>3. Applications cluttering menus for which one uses a better
>   alternative. {I prefer SeaMonkey over Firefox}
>
>
> My proposed alternative is to leave unchecked all options on the
> "Software Selection" menu[1] and create appropriate pseudo-packages to
> be installed with "apt-get --no-install-recommends"
>
>
> MY QUESTIONS
>
> 1. How do I find which packages are explicitly installed by checking a
> specific box {primarily Mate}?
> 2. How do I search the repository for those packages that have a
> priority “standard”? [2]
> 3. Especially when installing from an .iso on a flash drive, how do
> I run apt-get before closing the installer?
>
> TIA
>
>
>
>
> [1] Figure 4.13 of
>
> https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-handbook/sect.installation-steps.en.html
> [2] 6.3.5.2. Selecting and Installing Software
>  https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/i386/ch06s03.html.en
>
>
>

Re: 32 versus 64 bit reading list suggestions

[Andrew Cater]

32 bit Intel/AMD will likely disappear from the kernel if it becomes too
hard to support. I've just had a quick look at the Fit-PC site - all of
them look to be 64 bit capable. You want something low power - 64 bit ARM?
There does come a point when 32 bit x86 really isn't viable - that's round
about now in my humble estimation, if it wasn't actually two years ago.
Crucially, the boost library is hard to build - Firefox is built on 64 bit
to work on 32 bit - and those are the obvious ones. If you want the
distributions to spend time building on 64 bit for you to run on 32 bit
hardware which is significantly old you do need to show a demonstrable need
and perhaps find sponsors for a toolchain and permanent build at this point.

On Mon, Sep 7, 2020 at 7:52 PM deloptes  wrote:

> Charles Curley wrote:
>
> > I hope so. All I need is console capabilities, security software
> > (firewall, etc.) and server software. I don't need an office suite or web
> > browser for those machines.
>
> Same here. So it means we have 2-4years to get ready.
> I guess one needs a bit more in order to compile the code ... you need at
> least the compiler and companions. I now compile only the kernel in chroot
> as it was pointed out because debian moved away from pure 586 and also
> there is a kind of magic combination of features for the Geode board I use,
> so that the stock kernel never worked past 2.13.
>
> So the question is (as we are already on the topic) when debian drops the
> support, what would be required to build the code.
> Are compilers going to stop supporting 386 arch?
> Is it going to disappear from the kernel completely?
> Is it going to get fixes and how?
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: 32 versus 64 bit reading list suggestions

[Andrew Cater]

In reality - there's very little hardware newer than ten years old that's
economic to run - x86_6r4 has been around for long enough that 64 bit
hardware is cheap. The overhead of compiling _pure_ 32 bit is significant
to keep going. It's not for nothing that Debian's 32 bit target has
gradually moved from 386 to 586 to 686 - an early Geode is probably at the
very end of its support lifestyle. pretty much everything else other than
Debian has dropped full 32 bit support. It will be there for Bullseye but
that will almost certainly be the last.

Ubuntu has already dropped 32 bit support once, reintroduced very limited
support and it will probably go again. Maybe not before time - the laptop
I'm typing this on is eight years old or so, the sort of thing you'd pull
from a junk pile, has been rescued by adding a cheap SSD and ran 32 bit
Windows originally. It's equivalent can probaby be picked up off the back
shelf in any computer recycling shop.

On Mon, Sep 7, 2020 at 5:50 PM deloptes  wrote:

> Andrew Cater wrote:
>
> > Potentially zero difference - until the 32 bit browser just isn't there
> > any more / isn't patched. This is the sort of question that the debian-cd
> > team are also pondering: as the years go on, it is harder and harder to
> > justify 32 bit software at least for the x86 architecture. There are
> > already problems with some software that just won't build well in a 32
> bit
> > environment.
>
> this would be unfortunate because I am sure there is enough 32bit hardware
> out there still working quite well - like mine Geode based firewall - it is
> running since 2008.
> I am sure even if debian drops the support of 32bit something else will
> take
> it over.
>
>

Re: 32 versus 64 bit reading list suggestions

[Andrew Cater]

Hi Richard,

Potentially zero difference - until the 32 bit browser just isn't there any
more / isn't patched. This is the sort of question that the debian-cd team
are also pondering: as the years go on, it is harder and harder to justify
32 bit software at least for the x86 architecture. There are already
problems with some software that just won't build well in a 32 bit
environment.

On Mon, Sep 7, 2020 at 3:12 PM Richard Owlett  wrote:

> On 09/07/2020 09:28 AM, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 07, 2020 at 05:22:20PM +0300, Georgi Naplatanov wrote:
> >> You'll be able to use more RAM, CPU's registers. On the other hand some
> >> software vendors do not support x86 anymore - example: Google Chrome
> >
> > Expanding on this a little bit: the 64 bit architecture has more CPU
> > registers which could greatly improve performance for some tasks. I
> > think that there are certain other CPU instructions that are not
> > available in 32 bit mode that your programs could take advantage of.
> >
> > Not only can you use more RAM (you can address >4GiB with 64 bit memory
> > addresses without requiring workarounds like PAE), but you will almost
> > certainly *use* more RAM too, since all native pointers are now twice
> > the size. And, since most of them will be pointing at addresses lower
> > than the 4GiB boundary, half of all the newly consumed RAM will be
> > zeroes.
> >
>
> Answers I'm seem focused on too low levels. I'm interested in the
> end-user experience.
>
> E.G. what end user observable difference would there be between 32 bit
> based browser and a 64 bit based browser?
>
>
>
>

Re: Trackpoint not work properly on Thinkpad T470

[Andrew Cater]

Also - check carefully what firmware it might require. You have, for
example, installed firmware-linux-nonfree, firmware-misc-nonfree to enable
non-free firmware possibly?

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 10:12 PM riveravaldez 
wrote:

> On 9/5/20, rhkra...@gmail.com  wrote:
> > On Saturday, September 05, 2020 12:34:37 PM Aaron Elmquist wrote:
> >> Well, I don't think it's a hardware issue.  The computer is less than a
> >> year old and it's been used sporadically over the last year.  Any
> >> thoughts
> >> on how to rule hardware out as an issue?
> >
> > Oh, maybe one idea, did it come with Windows and is it still there (I
> mean, can you boot into Windows?) -- if so, do that, and try a similar app
> in Windows.
> >
> > In Linux, does the problem happen in only one application, or in other
> > applications as well?
>
> Basic thought: grab any-distro LiveUSB and boot from there and check
> if the issue persist.
>
> If any other OS makes the hardware works fine then at least that cause
> could be ruled out.
>
> Hope this help, best regards.
>
>

Re: Migrating to a new disk.

[Andrew Cater]

The easiest method might be to boot from installation media, run the
"rescue" install, chroot to the disk you want to use, then run update-grub
from there

All the very best, as ever,

Andy C.

On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 2:44 PM David  wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Aug 2020 at 20:03, Rick Thomas  wrote:
>
> > So what am I missing?  How do I tell grub on the new disk to use the
> root partition and volume-group on the new disk?
>
> Hi, I have written this message from memory
> without testing any of the commands, and
> I don't actually use any of these commands myself
> so I hope it doesn't contain any errors.
>
> You wrote that you copied /boot. This means that you
> copied the grub configuration file (/boot/grub/grub.cfg)
> unchanged, so the new grub is configured to boot
> the old system.
>
> Even though you reinstalled the bootloader on the
> new drive, you kept the old config file telling it to
> to boot the old drive.
>
> One answer might be to run 'update-grub' but I can't
> give you exact instructions because I don't like that
> aspect of grub so I prefer to write my own grub.cfg
> files without all the bloat.
>
> I expect doing that would use os-prober to generate
> a new grub.cfg file with a menu that offers to boot
> any of all the operating systems that os-prober finds.
> I think that's the usual default method.
>
> I think you could backup /boot/grub/grub.cfg and just try it
> and see what happens. If you backup to for example
> /boot/grub/grub.cfg-BACKUP then if something goes wrong
> you can just enter
> 'configfile grub.cfg-BACKUP' at the grub> prompt to use
> the old version.
>
>

Re: stretch vs iptables auto-start

[Andrew Cater]

Start here perhaps? https://wiki.debian.org/nftables

It should be relatively straightforward to move backward and forwards.
Working as a systemd service means that it will start automatically if
you're using systemd.

[When in doubt, check the Debian wiki for a topic - if that's no good, have
a quick look at the Arch Linux wiki - as folk who build from source,
they're good at documenting how things work.

All best, as ever,

Andy C.

On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 8:15 PM deloptes  wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
>
> > At the present time I have around 80 rules, all designed to deny the
> > network spiders and bots that think they have to mirror my several
> > giga-byte site, 2 or 3 times a day.  And that was eating up my bandwidth
> > allocation on a slow net connection.
> >
> > Is there a tut someplace to guide one in converting from iptables to this
> > newer nftables? I'm assumeing its a similar utility.
>
> Sure, but I have not looked into ... I only read there will be a couple of
> years transition period and somehow a compatibility layer is or can be
> used.
>
> Perhaps someone more in this can gives us a detail or a hint to a good
> tutorial
>
>

Re: Problems with Asus tuf gaming A15

[Andrew Cater]

Thanks for that. Maybe someone else can debug further. Have you tried
running any other desktop environments? Uninstall KDE and install Gnome to
check, maybe? Last and final easy thing to try: if you can get to a text
prompt: kill off the X server and lightdm and then run the startx command.

I see a couple of gamers on YouTube not recommending this series of
machines - but they're running Windows and the complaints are mainly with
airflow and aesthetics. Which Nvidia chipset is in yours? It might be that
the drivers available in Debian testing and the kernel version there may be
still more up to date but I'd be very hesitant to recommend an install of
testing just to solve this unless you're prepared for significant changes
between now and the release of Debian 11.

Sorry not to be more immediate help,

All the very best, as ever

Andy C.



On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 7:10 PM Bob McGowan  wrote:

> On 8/18/20 1:27 AM, Andrew Cater wrote:
> > To the point where you got to the end of the text mode only install -
> > was it working in text mode when you rebooted?
> Reboot was fine.
> > When you went to add the non-free firmware - was it working when you
> > rebooted?
> Again, no issues with reboot.
> > When you ran the bumblebee install process to generate the nvidia
> > modules - was it working when you rebooted?
> Yes.
> > Were there any obvious errors in building the nviidia modules?
> No errors were reported.
> > Then you add X windows and a desktop environment - while you are still
> > in text mode - and wait for the packages to install.
> No issues were detected, other than a firmware error related to my NIC,
> fixed by adding the proper NIC firmware.
> > Which desktop environment are you using?
> KDE.
> >
> > At that point, and _only_ at that point should the pieces line up.
> This is where I am currently.
> >
> > If you've got a blinking cursor - have you tried pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1,
> > Ctrl-Alt-F2 and so on to see whether X has in fact started on another
> > terminal?
> There are standard console devices on tty1-tty6.  The tty8-tty12 are
> totally inactive and cannot be switched to.
>
> When running lightdm, it "activates" tty7, so that Alt-F7 switches to
> that screen, which has the blinking cursor.  Note that no application
> appears to be running on it.
>
> When I switched to sddm, tty7 did not activate at all and acted in the
> same way as tty8 and up.
> >
> > The last problem I can think of is that the Nvidia proprietary stuff
> > explicitly requires X11 to be running rather than Wayland. If you can
> > get to a graphical login, there's an option to start Gnome with X11, for
> > example.
> The lightdm greeter is failing to run, hence no graphics and no
> graphical login.
> >
> > Hope this helps - I don't have the laptop in question. Last question -
> > how new is the laptop - when was the model introduced?
> My laptop is a little over a year old, introduce in early 2019.  I
> purposely purchased it, thinking it would be more likely to be fully
> supported.
>
> Since I was able to run lightdm manually, earlier, I checked up on
> options and reran it today with the debug option, and to save log files
> locally.  They are pretty short despite the debug mode:
>
> lightdm.log:
> [+0.00s] DEBUG: Logging to /root/lightdm/lightdm.log
> [+0.00s] DEBUG: Starting Light Display Manager 1.26.0, UID=0 PID=3315
> [+0.00s] DEBUG: Loading configuration dirs from
> /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d
> [+0.00s] DEBUG: Loading configuration from
> /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/01_debian.conf
> [+0.00s] DEBUG: Loading configuration from
> /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/40-kde-plasma-kf5.conf
> [+0.00s] DEBUG:   [SeatDefaults] is now called [Seat:*], please update
> this configuration
> [+0.00s] DEBUG: Loading configuration dirs from
> /usr/local/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d
> [+0.00s] DEBUG: Loading configuration dirs from
> /etc/xdg/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d
> [+0.00s] DEBUG: Loading configuration from /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
> [+0.00s] DEBUG: Registered seat module local
> [+0.00s] DEBUG: Registered seat module xremote
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: Registered seat module unity
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: Using D-Bus name org.freedesktop.DisplayManager
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: Monitoring logind for seats
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: New seat added from logind: seat0
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Loading properties from config section Seat:*
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Starting
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Creating greeter session
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Creating display server of type x
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: posix_spawn avoided (fd close requested)
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: Using VT 7
> [+0.01s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Starting local X d

Re: question on different hardware

[Andrew Cater]

Probably - I can't find that as an obvious Atom model: do you have any more
specifics - how much memory on board? Is this on a mini-ITX or fanless
system as an embedded processor? Debian will run on pretty much any 32 bit
/ 64 bit processor from the last 25 years to some degree.

Please be a little more clear / write a little more so that we can help you
- writing a one line question is not very helpful

All the very best

Andy C

On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:04 PM Semih Ozlem 
wrote:

> Can debian be installed or run from a machine with an intel atom processor
> specificall z7320
>

Fwd: Core Q9650 in a case with 5 hard drives

[Andrew Cater]

This also to the mailing list - someone else may find it useful as a
starting point.

-- Forwarded message -
From: Andrew Cater 
Date: Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 8:37 PM
Subject: Re: Core Q9650 in a case with 5 hard drives
To: James Allsopp 


Put some cheap slow running quiet fans in there? Do you need 5 hard drives?
Check whether you have BIOS settings that you can tweak.


On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 8:31 PM James Allsopp 
wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm using an old Core 2 processor in a case with 5 hard drives, one of
> which is an SSD.  It's a server but doesn't get hit particularly hard, so
> I'm wondering what the options are to try and conserve power with it as
> it's generating rather a lot of heat. I've looked at powertop, but there
> didn't seem to be a huge amount there.The processor only scales between 2
> and 3Ghz with an ondemand governor. I upgraded the processor from a E8460
> and doubled the ram to 8GB, with the same hard drives and this was when I
> noticed the temperature increase.
>
> Thanks
>

Re: Problems with Asus tuf gaming A15

[Andrew Cater]

No, that's OK. Grab a netinst or the DVD image: you can use mirrors - the
critical thing is that you don't install any graphics drivers over and
above the text mode drivers, you don't try to use the graphical install -
nothing graphical. Once you've got a minimal install, then you can try
adding the firmware-linux-nonfree firmware-misc-nonfree build-essential -
which will get the AMD GPU drivers for the Ryzen and also the bits you need
to build the Nvidia modules. At that point, you might need either the
bumblebee or the bumblebee-nvidia (so the proprietary drivers) as listed
above. Then you add the environment.

As you go through the expert install, at one point it asks you if you want
to use contrib and non-free drivers and whether you want to add apt-src to
allow  imports of source code to build - answer yes to all of these. If you
don't do an expert install, you don't get to see the lower priority
questions that get asked in the background, hence my insistence on expert
install mode (which is under advanced on the boot menu).

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 3:02 PM Duval Coetzer 
wrote:

> Hi man YES it is the one with the dual graphics cards. sadly it isnt intel
> but it runs a Ryzen chip and switches to Nvidia. The problem that I have is
> that when I search for the nvidia graphics to upgrade to then it doesnt
> find it. I dont know if I am messing up. How do I boot using media? Oh snap
> okay I will chack again. the thing is when I do the install I wipe
> everything again. I am having cellphone problems so I need to write the
> instructions down of what I am going to do. So let me get this right. After
> I boot from a bootable usb with Debian on it I select the installation that
> is non graphical. I dont update using mirrors which will give me the
> terminal after reboot. Where do I find the checkbox that asks for nonfree
> and contrib? Once I reboot what is the command line for bumblebee? I
> probably have to find my spicific drivers on their site right? Well I am
> still roughly new you lost me after building the modules. Thank you for the
> help!
> On 8/16/20 4:06 PM, Andrew Cater wrote:
>
> Hi David,
>
> OK. If this is one of the laptops with dual graphics cards where it will
> often use an Intel graphics chip for simple tasks and switch to Nvidia
> embedded card for more complex graphics/gaming?. Stop. Get prepared for a
> more complicated process. Boot using media. Do a text mode expert install -
> this will ask you lots of questions but, critically, will allow you to
> produce a minimal installation that is text mode only. When asked, add
> non-free and contrib repositories: uncheck the box for a graphical / X
> Windows environment. Once a minimal text mode install is complete, allow
> the computer to shut down. Reboot, use apt or aptitude to install and run
> the bumblebee program to set up the nvidia drivers and the dependencies you
> need to build modules: you can use either the free drivers which will give
> you nouveau or the proprietary driver.  Build and install any necessary
> modules. At no point until after that is completed, should you try
> installing X or a graphic environment. Shutdown and reboot. At that point,
> use the tasksel program to add the graphics environment and desktop
> environment that you want.
>
> Do this in the wrong order and it _will_ fail / appear to work briefly
> then randomly crash - I had very similar problems with one series of MSI
> laptops - trying to explain this to someone who didn't understand Linux at
> all was painful - I think it took me five or six installs and a couple of
> days to work out a passable install sequence that worked consistently
> thereafter.
>
> Andy C
>
> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 9:28 AM Duval Coetzer 
> wrote:
>
>> Hello I have problems with the Debian distro in general with the A15
>> gaming laptop. I have tried all major Debian distros like Ubuntu Mint
>> Kali and even Debian itself. The problem as such is after successful
>> install of the operating system , at boot I get an error which keeps me
>> from booting. I have tried setting the nouveau modeset= 0 and
>> nomodeset=0 which causes it to load further than my initial error but I
>> still dont reach the GUI. I am running dual graphics and I tried
>> updating the software by going into the terminal after hitting another
>> error but it still doesnt boot. Please help. The only opperating system
>> I can run at the moment is Opensuse Tumbleweed.
>>
>> Kind regards.
>>
>>

Re: Problems with Asus tuf gaming A15

[Andrew Cater]

Hi David,

OK. If this is one of the laptops with dual graphics cards where it will
often use an Intel graphics chip for simple tasks and switch to Nvidia
embedded card for more complex graphics/gaming?. Stop. Get prepared for a
more complicated process. Boot using media. Do a text mode expert install -
this will ask you lots of questions but, critically, will allow you to
produce a minimal installation that is text mode only. When asked, add
non-free and contrib repositories: uncheck the box for a graphical / X
Windows environment. Once a minimal text mode install is complete, allow
the computer to shut down. Reboot, use apt or aptitude to install and run
the bumblebee program to set up the nvidia drivers and the dependencies you
need to build modules: you can use either the free drivers which will give
you nouveau or the proprietary driver.  Build and install any necessary
modules. At no point until after that is completed, should you try
installing X or a graphic environment. Shutdown and reboot. At that point,
use the tasksel program to add the graphics environment and desktop
environment that you want.

Do this in the wrong order and it _will_ fail / appear to work briefly then
randomly crash - I had very similar problems with one series of MSI laptops
- trying to explain this to someone who didn't understand Linux at all was
painful - I think it took me five or six installs and a couple of days to
work out a passable install sequence that worked consistently thereafter.

Andy C

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 9:28 AM Duval Coetzer 
wrote:

> Hello I have problems with the Debian distro in general with the A15
> gaming laptop. I have tried all major Debian distros like Ubuntu Mint
> Kali and even Debian itself. The problem as such is after successful
> install of the operating system , at boot I get an error which keeps me
> from booting. I have tried setting the nouveau modeset= 0 and
> nomodeset=0 which causes it to load further than my initial error but I
> still dont reach the GUI. I am running dual graphics and I tried
> updating the software by going into the terminal after hitting another
> error but it still doesnt boot. Please help. The only opperating system
> I can run at the moment is Opensuse Tumbleweed.
>
> Kind regards.
>
>

Re: Lenovo S205 boot

[Andrew Cater]

I've got a similar vintage Thinkpad x130 next to me: firmware-linux-free
firmware-linux-nonfree firmware-misc-nonfree and it all works well.

UEFI should then more or less just work.

On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 9:23 AM Sven Hoexter  wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 09:57:47AM +0200, Sven Hoexter wrote:
>
> > It's a AMD CPU-GPU package, I've documented the hardware in
> > the wiki as I already pointed out earlier:
> > https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Lenovo/ideapadS205/wheezy
>
> I've updated that page with some more information. For one the
> grub2 shell input to boot amd64 from Russel and my steps on how to
> finish a i386 based installation with grub-legacy.
> That actually brings me up to a booting and working XFCE installation
> with X and all the glitter.
>
>
> > One of the things that could prevent the X start is a firmware issue.
> > I documented that in this page back then, and it's likely you could
> > not do anything without the proper non-free firmware installed.
>
> Russel, I believe what you're missing on your installation to get X
> working is just an
> apt install firmware-linux-nonfree
> That depends on some firmware package for the AMD/ATI GPU.
> The required firmware for the ralink wlan ship is installed by
> default if you based on your install on the non-free netinstall
> images.
> Otherwise also
> apt install firmware-misc-nonfree
> via a cable connection.
>
> Sven
>
>

Re: Lenovo S205 boot

[Andrew Cater]

Aha - it might be one of the strange generation of machines (way back) that
had 32 bit UEFI/BIOS and a 64 bit capable Atom processor - maybe back as
far as the Sandy Bridge series ... a long time ago anyway. Use,
specifically, the Debian i386/amd64 multiarch netboot to install this and
it works and installs the 32 bit Grub [BIOS] /Grub2 [UEFI] and 64 bit
userland.

Have done this once on an old Toshiba - this was the only way to get this
machine to boot.

On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 5:23 PM Russell L. Harris 
wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 05:38:52PM +0200, Sven Hoexter wrote:
> >On Tue, Aug 04, 2020 at 05:52:10PM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> >If going back to i386 is an option for you, the department of
> >workarounds has an option.
>
> Again, at this point, my only hope for the machine (other than to toss
> it in the dumpster) is for it to provide a reasonable environment for
> composition when away from home.
>
> For me, composition requires emacs, LaTeX or TeXLive, xdvi, and
> (hopefully) a dictionary, together with a means such as ssh or rsync
> to transfer documents to the desktop machine when I arrive back home.
> The only other necessity is the ability to use the "Dvorak Classic"
> keymap (which differs from the Dvorak ANSI map offered by the
> installer).
>
> As to the touchpad, I find a touchpad awkward at best; it is better to
> pack along a USB mouse.
>
> Years ago my first attempt to install Debian overwrote the W$7
> installation; otherwise, I might market the machine to a Window$ user.
>
> RLH
>
>

Re: BIOS time fine, Linux/Debian's isn't! ...

[Andrew Cater]

Hi Albretch,

If I'm reading your question correctly:

Why can't you set the locale for one country, the timezone for a second,
the keyboard for a third?

You can. As root or equivalent, you can reset timezone with

dpkg-reconfigure -plow tzdata

[That's the dpkg-reconfigure command, -plow to force asking low priority
questions rather than taking the default answers, and tzdata being the file
that sets the timezone.]

dpkg-reconfigure -plow console-setup

[dpkg-reconfigure -plow and then the console-setup program. That might not
be installed by default, so you might have to apt-get / apt install
console-setup which will reset the keyboard layout that you see in a
terminal - UTF-8 is usually a good choice to start with.]

dpkg-reconfigure -plow locales

will set the system wide language and spelling defaults etc. using the
locales package and allow you to switch between locales

If you want to be asked all the questions at low priority during the
install, consider using the expert install method which will ask _all_ the
questions that a standard install sets automatically - if you set your
locale to British English during the install, it will provide
England/London or GMT as options for timezone and your keyboard to British
UK layout, for example.

Live well

Andy C.

On Sat, Aug 8, 2020 at 2:12 PM Albretch Mueller  wrote:

>  On the installer it says:
>
>  Configure clock: if the desired time zone is not listed ...
>
>  Select your time zone:
>
>
> https://manjaro.site/step-by-step-install-debian-9-0-netinstall-version/install-debian-9-0-configure-clock/
>
>  but why can't you set up your computer as US English and be, say, in
> the Ukraine with the time from there?
>
>  lbrtchx
>
>

Re: how to quickly recover buster boot loader

[Andrew Cater]

Boot from Debian install media. Use rescue mode. Mount Debian partition
when prompted. Run os-prober and update-grub then exit. Machine should
reboot into Debian.


On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 1:28 PM Long Wind  wrote:

> Thank Greg!
> but chroot dance is new to me, it doesn't seem easy
> it involves many steps (commands)
> a small error will lead to failure
>
> i install centos just for fun
> i can install lubuntu at sda3 and it can boot buster
>
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, August 5, 2020, 8:15:14 PM GMT+8, Greg Wooledge <
> wool...@eeg.ccf.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 05, 2020 at 12:04:48AM +, Long Wind wrote:
>
> > i have win7 at sda1 and buster at sda2i install centos 6 at sda3, it can
> boot win7, can't see busteri mean i can't boot buster now
> > is there some rescue image that can be written to bootable usb disk?
> > or do you know how to config centos 6 boot loader?is buster's boot code
> installed at sda2 by default?
>
>
> I'm going to assume you're using Legacy/MBR booting, because I don't know
> enough about UEFI to answer this question in that universe.
>
> If you're trying to multi-boot several different Linuxes from one
> hard drive, the first thing you have to do is make a decision.  You
> must choose which Linux will be in control of the boot loader.
>
> Let's say you choose Debian.  (If you choose something else, stop
> reading now, and go ask the other OS's mailing list for help.)
>
> First step, then, will be to boot into Debian successfully.  For this,
> you'll probably need to boot into whatever Linux you *can* boot, whether
> that's the CentOS on the hard drive, or a rescue CD, or whatever.
>
> Once you're booted into *a* Linux, then you can do the chroot dance
> to mount the Debian file system(s) underneath that.
>
> According to the IRC bot factoid, that dance goes something like
> this:
>
>   Mount your root filesystem with "mount -t ext2 /dev/whatever /target"
>   and make /dev, /proc and /sys usable with "mount --rbind --make-rslave
>   /dev /target/dev ; mount -t proc none /target/proc ; mount -t sysfs none
>   /target/sys". You can then chroot into the system with "chroot /target".
>
> There may be other dances that will also work.
>
> Once you're chrooted into Debian running under some sort of Linux
> kernel, first make sure the os-prober package is installed.  Then you can
> write Debian's GRUB into the master boot recor, by running grub-install.
>
> After doing grub-install, you should have GRUB in the hard drive's
> master boot record and it should be configured to read the menu in
> Debian's version of the /boot directory.
>
> In order to make the Debian GRUB menu point to all of the operating
> systems on your hard drive, make sure os-prober is installed (yes, I
> know, I already said it; I'm saying it again).  Then run update-grub.
>
> Exit out of the chroot, unmount it, and reboot.  You should get Debian's
> GRUB menu, and you should be able to boot into Debian, at the very
> least.
>
> If the Debian GRUB menu doesn't contain all of the operating systems
> that you think it should contain, then you'll have to poke around in
> the update-grub and os-prober internals and figure out what's wrong.
>
> Once you get everything working, you'll need to remember that you have
> chosen to make Debian the controller of the boot loader.  Every time
> you make a kernel change to any of the *other* Linuxes on your hard
> drive, you'll need to boot into Debian, and run update-grub, to pick
> up the changes in the other Linuxes.
>
>
>

Re: grub update and reinstallation

[Andrew Cater]

h...@debian.org - Henrique de Moraes Holschuh posted this on LWN.net
earlier. It's about as clear as it gets so I'm cheating and copying this
direct into debian-cd so that others see it: thanks for the clarity,
Henrique

>>

For Debian, most of the issues reported with the security update were
linked to bad configuration at package update time, and an extremely
annoying shortcoming of the package: it cannot rollback when it fails to
install to the boot media, and it doesn't crash and burn the update run
either, so it will not be noticed if you are not reading the update run
output.

Run dpkg-reconfigure on your grub2 variant, so that it asks for your boot
devices. Ensure it is correct, and let it update the bootloader on disk.
Watch to ensure no errors are reported (i.e. do it from the terminal, not
some GUI). This will sync everything.

Examples:
dpkg-reconfigure grub-efi-amd64
dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc

The other issue was a chain loader breackage on EFI, already fixed in the
current packages.

<<

[The second issue affected chainloading EFI  for, say, a Debian / Windows
10 dual boot]

The fixed packages are all there now
ZFS on Debian - strictly, it's off-topic here since it's not supported in
Debian at the moment.

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 4:18 PM D. R. Evans  wrote:

> Tom Dial wrote on 8/1/20 9:31 PM:
>
> >
> > My experience, now on eight machines, indicates that it should be if the
> > installed, configured, and used versions of grub components is
> >
> > 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2.
> >
> > I could be wrong, but here it has been the case for both UEFI (and root
> > on ZFS) and legacy boot setups, on both i386 and amd64. The only
> > exception is one root-on-ZFS VM that was slightly broken beforehand and
> > declines to boot for reasons I am fairly sure are unrelated to grub
> > installation.
> >
>
> So if one has two bootable drives (call them A and B), will this update
> update
> the MBR on both A and B, not just the one that happened to have been used
> for
> the most recent boot?
>
> I ask because I have a couple of root-on-ZFS BIOS-boot machines that are
> both
> configured as two-disk mirrors and I want to be sure that, following this
> upgrade, I can still boot off either of the two disks (as I can at the
> moment)
> without having to perform any manual changes.
>
> The use case is, if it's not obvious, that if under normal circumstances
> disk
> A is used for booting, but then at some point A fails (so ZFS is running
> in a
> degraded state) I can still boot from drive B if necessary.
>
>   Doc
>
> --
> Web:  http://enginehousebooks.com/drevans
>
>

Re: Enlarging /boot

[Andrew Cater]

If you have room for two kernels and you are booting from the newest one:
potentially, you can remove the older one to gain some space. If apt update
installs another kernel of the same version so you have two 4.19 - reboot
when the apt run finishes, make sure that the new kernel boots and runs
fine, then remove the older one. The trick is to check that you are booting
from the latest version - you don't want to remove a running kernel :(

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 6:39 AM Erwan David  wrote:

> Le 02/08/2020 à 23:48, Leslie Rhorer a écrit :
> > On 8/2/2020 3:32 PM, Erwan David wrote:
> >> I used the buster installer about 1 year ago,with a fully encrypted
> >> disk, thus
> >>
> >> a /boot/efi partition, a /boot partition then an encrypted lvm.
> >>
> >> /boot is now not large enough to even have 2 kernels on it,
> >> initramfs-tools cannot create the images.
> >>
> >> I see this
> >> /dev/nvme0n1p2 237M   92M  133M  41% /boot
> >> /dev/nvme0n1p1 511M  5.3M  506M   2% /boot/efi
> >>
> >> Is it possible to reduce /boot/efi and have some more room for /boot, or
> >> should I reinstall the computer ?
> >
> > Um, the kernel is only about 5M in size.  With 133M free, there
> > should be plenty of room for multiple kernels.  The initrd image is
> > usually under 40M, so there should be room for the entire boot image to
> > be duplicated.  Note the current use is only 41%.  You shouldn't need
> > more space, per se, except that normally the initrd is temporarily
> > uncompressed while it is being created.  I think you could get around
> > this by employing chroot.
>
> My initrd is 69 M...
>
> > To answer your question, I am given to understand /boot/efi is a
> > vfat file system, so it should be possible to shrink it, move the /boot
> > partition, and then expand it.
>
> However both /boot/efi and /boot are critoical for the booting process,
> thus my concerns.
>
>
>

Re: grub update and reinstallation

[Andrew Cater]

Folk are onto this: the Buster point release is happening right now. People
are aware: the issue is also being raised in debian-cd. There are
workarounds - it will be sorted.

On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 5:20 PM Graham Seaman  wrote:

>
>
> On 01/08/2020 14:00, Sven Joachim wrote:
> > On 2020-08-01 12:23 +0100, Graham Seaman wrote:
> >
> >> On 01/08/2020 07:50, Tom Dial wrote:
> >>> I have a laptop that became unbootable because
> >>> the initial loader failed to find a symbol (grub_calloc) and balked.
> >>> Like the one mentioned here, it uses legacy boot. One explanation has
> it
> >>> that this happened because the MBR and the remainder of grub were not
> >>> both updated or were updated with slightly incompatible data.
> >>>
> >>> One fix appears to be to reinstall grub using a rescue CD or another
> >>> system. That worked for me.
> >>
> >> My home server sits in my loft managing comms with the outside world;
> >> yesterday it overheated (not a surprise) and went down.
> >
> > You should probably open the machine up and clean it. :-)
>
> The outdoor temperature was 38 centigrade; in my loft it was
> considerably more. The machine is spotless :-)
>
> >
> >> On reboot
> >> after cooling it came back up with the grub_calloc problem, so like
> >> Tom I reinstalled after which it appears to be OK.
> >>
> >> BUT because I have no idea why the original problem occurred, or why a
> >> reinstall fixed the problem, I have no idea if this is a permanent
> >> fix, or if I have a system which is liable to fail to reboot again in
> >> the future. Does anyone know? It's a very simple single drive system
> >> with legacy boot.
> >
> > In this case the error is quite unlikely to occur, I have no idea why it
> > happened for you in the first place.
> >
>
> It has happened to quite a range of users in the last week (search for
> 'grub calloc') - users running ubuntu, lubuntu, debian-mint, vanilla
> debian, that I've seen. So I assume its some upstream problem with grub.
> Some people seem to think the problem only shows on multi-boot-disk or
> raid systems, but that didn't apply in my case.
>
>
> >> I run it with security updates on auto, and check
> >> for other updates manually once a week or so. Should I change this
> >> pattern for a while while possible grub problems are sorted upstream?
> >
> > I would recommend to run "dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc".  This should bring
> > up three dialogues, the last of which asks for the disk(s) to install
> grub
> > on.  On your system this is most likely /dev/sda.
> >
>
> I already reinstalled grub-pc (using a rescue-usb) , that's how I got
> the system booting again. But I don't know if the current grub is
> trustable or not.
>
> Graham
>
>
> > Or get the device name from the debconf database:
> >
> > readlink -f $(debconf-show grub-pc 2>/dev/null | grep
> grub-pc/install_devices: | cut -d ':' -f2)
> >
> > Cheers,
> >Sven
> >
>
>

Re: VMs on external storage CPU overloading

[Andrew Cater]

That's the problem: An internal SSD is connected relatively directly to the
CPU. Almost all USB keys aren't optimised for fast data transfer other
than, perhaps, reading/buffering large  single files. Running a VM means
constant read/write, constant update - it would be all the same as pushing
a CPU to constant use of a swap file/swap partition. It's massively
stressful on I/O - if you've a USB 2.x device, it transfers (very) slowly
compared to USB 3.x.

[For an illustration: even identical USB sticks will also vary: writing
2.7GB DVD images to a set of USB 2.0 sticks a couple of weeks ago: most of
them took six minutes, one took 35 - poor i/o and constantly swapping to
check (I used dd with the oflag=sync option - essential for data
integrity.) ]

The nearest comparison would be using a nice new NVME device. Inside a
laptop, in an M.2 slot - as fast as you like. Put it into an external USB
connected caddy - via USB 3.1 - for data transfer to another NVME inside
the laptop and it will be slightly to significantly slower. Same chip, same
laptop, moderated through a slower connection. That's the difference
between your VM on internal disk and your VM on USB stick

On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 8:44 AM john doe  wrote:

> On 7/31/2020 2:52 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> >> IMO, allthose question as irrelevant - the problem is the IO. You can
> try it
> >> easily. get USB 2.0 and put a VM on it -
> >
> > I have and have had no such problems.
> > I strongly suspect that there's something else at play.
> > E.g. its VM is performing a lot of disk IO.
> >
>
> Can you expand on your thoughts?
>
> The issue only arises when the usbkey is used.
>
> --
> John Doe
>
>

Re: grub update and reinstallation

[Andrew Cater]

In addition - this is booting in legacy/BIOS mode not in UEFI - otherwise
it would have mentioned grub-efi

On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 6:38 PM Brian  wrote:

> On Fri 31 Jul 2020 at 11:21:06 -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
>
> > The recent security updates to grub inspire two questions:
> > 1) Do the changes require updating the info put in the boot sector?
>
> Yes.
>
> > 2) Does the upgrade do that installation automatically?
>
> Yes.
>
> > I couldn't find documentation that addressed either issue, though I think
> > the answer to 2) for my system is yes.
> >
> > When I did the upgrade the terminal showed
> > -
> > Setting up grub-pc (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1) ...
> > Installing for i386-pc platform.
> > Installation finished. No error reported.
> > Generating grub configuration file ...
> > 
> > The second line suggests an installation happened, though it's not clear.
>
> It is abundantly clear. What else could be meant?
>
> > In particular, it doesn't mention any particular installation location.
>
> Why should it?
>
> --
> Brian.
>
>

Re: BIOS time fine, Linux/Debian's isn't! ...

[Andrew Cater]

hwclock --hctosys will do it - run a batch file?

Or have ntpdate run automatically as the system boots?

If you mean that Debian shows a different time to Windows consistently -
check that one OS isn't resetting the other's clock. You can persuade
Windows _not_ to reset the clock on daylight saving time changes, for
example - or you can make sure that they both run in the same timezone and
change at the same time.The Debian-specific command:

ntpdate-debian

will run to the ntp pool set by Debian so that you don't have to specify an
NTP server

On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 11:19 AM Albretch Mueller  wrote:

>  I used the same laptop with another hard drive with a Windows
> installation which shows the time correctly.
>
>  How do you make Linux get the time from the BIOS at start time and
> take it from there?
>
>  lbrtchx
>
>

Re: Are the assigned capacities sufficient for my setup?

[Andrew Cater]

You _can_ use guided partitioning as a guide. Use Windows to reduce the
amount of space it takes on the disk. Use Windows tools to format the
second half of the disk, or whatever to vfat. Boot Debian: use Debian to
delete the vfat partition and create blank space: then use "use largest
blank space" and guided partition. Debian will recognise there's another OS
there and will insert the appropriate booting magic into a GPT formatted
disk with UEFI. I have (at least) one laptop here with exactly that
configuration.

If you're not sure, can I recommend Raphael Hertzog's Debian handbook -
which has just been released for Debian 10. See planet.debian.org recently.
Download and read it in slower time.

On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 11:35 AM Dan Ritter  wrote:

> gajuph4...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > Hello Dan,
> >
> > You wrote: / will have everything in it except your personal data; /var,
> /srv, and so forth all fall under it.
> >
> > Sorry for the noob question but what does /home contain?
>
> That's where each user's personal data is stored, and if you
> open a terminal, the default first location:
> /home/gajuph4pre, /home/dsr, etc.
>
>
> -dsr-
>
>

Re: Are the assigned capacities sufficient for my setup?

[Andrew Cater]

The only other thing I'd add - if you're planning to dual boot a machine -
allow both operating systems enough space. The machine on which I'm typing
this has a 256G disk. It came to me with Windows 10 and I retained a
Windows partition to do manufacturer's updates and so on. I gave the
Windows partition 30G and thought that would be fine. Not so: I had to
resize the partition after the fact and 40G has proved fine. Fortunately, I
had no data to save but it's worth thinking about.

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 10:22 PM Dan Ritter  wrote:

> Andrew Cater wrote:
> > To be honest, on 256G - when you don't know what you want - I'd be
> inclined
> > to take the guided partitioning all in one partition layout as a good
> > start. Logs rotate these days, downloads can be deleted. If you know
> you're
> > going to be running lots of things in one particular partition, that's
> > slightly different - I have 6TB as a dedicated LVM volume under /srv here
> > in one machine because there's a local Linux mirror across my desk, but
> > that's exceptional
>
> It's not a bad choice, but a separate home has made any number
> of upgrades and experiments much more bearable to me. Backups,
> too, of course.
>
> -dsr-
>

Re: Are the assigned capacities sufficient for my setup?

[Andrew Cater]

To be honest, on 256G - when you don't know what you want - I'd be inclined
to take the guided partitioning all in one partition layout as a good
start. Logs rotate these days, downloads can be deleted. If you know you're
going to be running lots of things in one particular partition, that's
slightly different - I have 6TB as a dedicated LVM volume under /srv here
in one machine because there's a local Linux mirror across my desk, but
that's exceptional

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 9:23 PM Dan Ritter  wrote:

> gajuph4...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > I have manually partitioned my hard disk drive as follows:
> >
> > /boot is assigned 200MB
> > /root is assigned 10GB
> > /swap is assigned 20GB
> > /home is assigned 35GB
> > /var is assigned 10GB
> > /usr is assigned 5GB
> > /usr-local is assigned 5GB
> > /opt is assigned 5GB
> > /srv is assigned 5GB
> >
> > In terms of capacity, which of the above partitions are over-provisioned?
> >
>
> All of them, none of them. These are the sorts of hard
> assignments I expect from the UNIX Systems Administrator
> Handbook, circa 1997 and Solaris.
>
> My recommendation:
>
> /   100 GB
> /home   100 GB
> swap 1 GB
> optionally, /var 20 GB.
>
> You don't need a separate /boot unless you're running an odd
> filesystem for root.
>
> You don't need more swap than 1 GB because any use of swap after
> the kernel settles things down (say, ten minutes after boot)
> means that you need more RAM. And you don't really need more
> RAM.
>
> You don't need a separate /usr or /usr/local or /opt or /srv
> under any conditions. That differentiation comes from a time
> when disks were tens of megabytes.
>
> You only need a separate /var if you think you're going to fill
> up log space or similar without noticing. logrotate is pretty
> standard these days.
>
> -dsr-
>
>

Re: What package should I install to have a working wired LAN connection?

[Andrew Cater]

Alan,

"If I were you, I wouldn't start from here". If you have no network
connection, you might find it easier to begin with a DVD image as this
provides more software to begin with. If you can plug in the USB-Ethernet
adapter and a cable, even better. You will almost certainly need some
element of network connectivity thereafter. [Given the opportunity, always
use a wired connection - wifi generally causes firmware issues. You can
boot a Debian live media image to check for firmware / hardware issues -
but they are a couple of GB big - you can then use the installer from that
to install Debian.



On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 8:54 PM gajuph4...@yahoo.com 
wrote:

> Thanks for your prompt reply.
>
> I am unable to answer your question, viz. "Does that happen for yours?"
> because I am unable to boot into the Gnome desktop environment after a
> minimal install of Debian 10.4
>
> Regards.
>
> Alan Reding
>
> P.S.: I posted a question on how to boot into the Gnome desktop to the
> mailing list a few minutes before this question.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, July 29, 2020, 4:06:38 AM GMT+8, Dan Ritter <
> d...@randomstring.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> gajuph4...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > My machine does not have an RJ-45 port.
> >
> > Based on my experience with Microsoft Windows OS, I need to use an
> Ethernet-to-USB adapter to have a wired LAN connection.
> >
> > As a result, during Expert Install, Debian 10.4 did not auto-detect the
> network hardware and it was unable to use DHCP to configure my network.
> >
> > Post installation, could someone advise me on which Debian package or
> driver I should install?
> >
> > Note: According to Microsoft Windows, the Ethernet-to-USB adapter is
> called ASIX AX88179 USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter.
>
> I have an Amazon USB3 ethernet adapter right here, which uses
> the same chipset:
>
> lsusb -v -s 004:006
>
> Bus 004 Device 006: ID 0b95:1790 ASIX Electronics Corp. AX88179
> Gigabit Ethernet
>
> ip link show
>
> produces a new enx-prefixed ethernet device as soon as I plug it
>
> in.
>
>
> Does that happen for yours?
>
> -dsr-
>
>

Re: What package should I install to have a working wired LAN connection?

[Andrew Cater]

>From a minimal Debian install with no desktop environment, use the tasksel
command to select the desktop for installation and work from there. How did
you install your minimal desktop environment? - if you did it just from a
netinst iso with no network, you might need to start by plugging in your
USB network adapter and trying again :(

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 8:42 PM Dan Ritter  wrote:

> gajuph4...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > I am unable to answer your question, viz. "Does that happen for yours?"
> because I am unable to boot into the Gnome desktop environment after a
> minimal install of Debian 10.4
> >
>
> If you hit ctrl-alt-F2 you should get a console login, then work from
> there.
>
> -dsr-
>
>

Re: documentation for sddm-greeter

[Andrew Cater]

Hi Tom,

Ah, if you'd said some or all of that previously, you might have had a
slightly politer response - sorry if I was grumpy. Please _DON'T_ drop back
to Stretch: with the final release, it's just transitioned to LTS. That
transition means that it will still be well supported for security issues
and issues that matter to specific funders but smaller things won't be
given as much priority.

Raise a bug / research a bit deeper / get someone to correct the wiki so
the next person doesn't have the same problem. Small issues only get
brought to somebody's attention occasionally - it may not have been
something that the package maintainer experienced if they only installed
one user or whatever. You've piqued my interest enough that I might go
install a VM and dig for myself.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy C.

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 3:18 AM tom arnall  wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I put my email on the list because I was hoping that someone knew of
> documentation which Google had missed. I also had read the items provided
> by Google at ArchLinux and the other sites.
>
> After reading your replies, I put sddm on another of my machines, which is
> running Stretch. The result was that the avatars appeared on the greeter
> screen simply by adding another user. I made no change to sddm.conf. The
> machine with the problem is running Buster. Per the documentation, no
> change is necessary to make avatars appear on the sddm greeter screen,
> i.e., EnableAvatars=true is the default. Also, there was no need to add the
> .face.icon files. Therefore, the problem is with the installation of sddm
> on Buster, i.e., with Buster. My solution is to drop back to Stretch on the
> problem machine. I have found several other problems with Buster.
>
> Thanks very much for your replies.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tom Arnall
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 1:54 AM tom arnall  wrote:
>
>> is there any?
>>
>> the issue i'm dealing with is creating avatars on the login screen.
>> i'm running debian buster with the LXQt desktop.,
>>
>

Re: question concerning wifi and connection

[Andrew Cater]

Wifi is generally going to be slower than a wired connection. Wifi is
subject to device contention as various devices sharing the channel each
struggle for bandwidth. There's also, sometimes, the issue of shared
channel interference if there are a lot of wireless access points around
which will cause some access points to back off and reduce data rates. Wifi
is often just slower: [Divide roughly by 10 for Mbit to Mbyte conversion] -
54Mb wifi (best case) == 5.4MB per second. 100Mb wired (best case) == 10MB
with no device contention. Many wifi routers now have 1Gb wired links (best
case) == 100MB.

Public wifi portals with a password - you're on your own - they all work
differently.

For the future: You may find it useful to use Wikipedia / a web search
engine to read information on some of this before you come and ask
questions on a mailing list. If you can show that you've done some reading
/ tried something out for yourself before asking a question when you don't
understand, it can help other people help you more easily.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html may be useful.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy C.

On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 10:21 AM Semih Ozlem 
wrote:

> Hi
>
> For some reason wifi is too slow or connection gets interrupted or
> downloads get stuck. When switching to wireful connection problem seems
> resolved.
>
> Also on a few cases when connecting through public wireless with a
> password, after switching off the wireless connection the connection
> refused to come back. On another occasion, the gui wireless menu did not
> work. command nmcli wireless radio on did not work either. Any ideas why
> that might happen
>

Re: issues with storage media

[Andrew Cater]

Parted / gparted are useful tools. The live .iso is very useful if you have
an unknown disk - you can boot into linux to examine disk formats. The
crucial thing to know is that most partitions can be recovered with enough
care.

USB keys - try and buy a known brand. Stick small labels on them. Know what
you use them for. They will still fail sometimes - don't rely on them for
longest term storage. Back up files you want to other media as well/

On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 5:59 PM Semih Ozlem 
wrote:

> Hi I ran into the following problems a few times.
> As operating system I use debian 10 (.2 gnome) and ubuntu 18, 19,
> (recently 20).
>
> Question 1 An external hard disk that I use (which is I think possibly
> failing) was formatted in NTFS. While I was working on a machine at the
> university where I used to work, all files disappeared, and reappeared and
> the format of the disk was changed to FAT or something like that. I have no
> idea why and how this happened. Does anyone have any clues
>
> Question 2 I use usbs to store the files I work with. Quite a few times
> when working with linux systems, the usbs refused to mount, giving wrong fs
> type blaah blaah error. This was a usb that I used and stored files to
> working under linux, and I do not remember the exact format on the disk. I
> tried various programs to recover the files, and in some cases I was able
> to recover some in other cases I was not able to. Sometimes I was able to
> format the usb to be able to use it again, a few times I was unable to.
> What methods are available to recover data, and what to do when something
> like this happens.
>
>
> Thank you in advance
>

Re: Verifying authenticity of Debian CDs

[Andrew Cater]

And it turns out that /etc/apt/trusted.gpg has the buster-stable, the
buster-automatic and the buster-security keys by default but _NOT_ the
debian-cd signing key so the stage of importing the key to match the
specific Debian CD signing key is still valid.

All best, as ever,

Andy C.

On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 4:29 PM Andrew Cater  wrote:

> I've just written up longer instructions on my own web page at FLOSSlinux
> <https://flosslinuxblog.blogspot.com/> which should explain the steps
> I've just followed for myself. Check those and see what you think. I'll
> have a go at importing from /etc/apt/trusted.gpg and see what that looks
> like. That, of course, is the keyring that apt and aptitude use for master
> verification of Debian packages as part of the verification process before
> package installation - so the master keys for the whole of the trust for
> package installation on a Debian system.
>
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 4:20 PM Stefan Monnier 
> wrote:
>
>> > when I run the command
>> > gpg --verify SHAxSUM.sign SHAxSUM
>> > I get a message saying that
>> >
>> > Can't check signature: No public key
>>
>> You should have the needed key(s) in /etc/apt/trusted.gpg, but to be
>> honest I don't know how to best pass those to GPG.
>>
>>
>> Stefan
>>
>>

Re: Verifying authenticity of Debian CDs

[Andrew Cater]

I've just written up longer instructions on my own web page at FLOSSlinux
 which should explain the steps I've
just followed for myself. Check those and see what you think. I'll have a
go at importing from /etc/apt/trusted.gpg and see what that looks like.
That, of course, is the keyring that apt and aptitude use for master
verification of Debian packages as part of the verification process before
package installation - so the master keys for the whole of the trust for
package installation on a Debian system.

On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 4:20 PM Stefan Monnier 
wrote:

> > when I run the command
> > gpg --verify SHAxSUM.sign SHAxSUM
> > I get a message saying that
> >
> > Can't check signature: No public key
>
> You should have the needed key(s) in /etc/apt/trusted.gpg, but to be
> honest I don't know how to best pass those to GPG.
>
>
> Stefan
>
>

Re: Error while trying to install openssh-server on Buster

[Andrew Cater]

It should "just work" - if you can "ssh localhost" - the server is running.

Hope this helps

Andy C

On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 2:06 AM rhkramer  wrote:

> I get this error when trying to apt-get install openssh-server on my (up
> to
> date) Buster system:
>
> Error: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.systemd1.UnitMasked: Unit -.mount is
> masked.
>
> I tried (based on the reference below):
>
> root@s32:/# systemctl unmask org.freedesktop.systemd1.UnitMasked
> Unit org.freedesktop.systemd1.UnitMasked.service does not exist,
> proceeding
> anyway.
>
> I don't really have a clue.  One googled page suggests
>
> 
> Situation
>
> Checking the status of a service shows it is masked.
>
> Running systemctl unmask  doesn't change the status.
>
>
> Resolution
> The systemd unit file is empty.  Replace it in /usr/lib/systemd/system by
> reinstalling the package in which the unit file was contained.
> 
>
>
>
>

Re: Debian and Raspberry Pi4 (was: Slic3r --gui won't run).

[Andrew Cater]

https://raspi.debian.net/tested-images/ - there's at least one image there
for the 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 from Gunnar Wolf - but note that this is still a
work in progress. It's certainly possible: other folk have got this to boot
using experimental UEFI - it's there such that you don't _have_ to use
Raspberry Pi OS any more.

On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 5:48 PM Reco  wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 08:01:17PM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > On Lu, 20 iul 20, 12:24:35, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > >
> > > FWIW, it installs and runs fine on a pi4 running buster 10.4.
> >
> > And buster doesn't work with that kernel because... ?
>
> Because, strictly speaking, *Debian* buster cannot run at Raspberry
> Pi 4 at all - see [1]. There's some big progress with sid, though - [2].
>
> The short and the long of it is that Gene is using *Raspbian*, but
> prefers to get help about it here.
>
> One could get away with Raspbian kernel and Debian chroot, I suppose, but
> that's cheating.
>
> Reco
>
> [1]
> https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/20200426195815.ga5...@xanadu.blop.info
> [2]
> https://gwolf.org/2020/07/raspberry-pi-4-now-running-your-favorite-distribution.html
>
>

Re: Problem with mirrors in a 10.4.0 install

[Andrew Cater]

Try using deb.debian.org - the CDN (content delivery network) suggestion
that will try and geolocate you. Depends which coast you're nearest - I'd
try either MIT / California [Universities with high bandwidth] :) The
default mirror for US appears to be run by Wikimedia - they've also got
bandwidth and it appears current. Following the URLs you give, they all
look correct.

If you do an expert install and _do_ choose locales and _don't_ manually
choose a mirror (the option right at the top of the mirror list - which
defaults to "mirror" with a subdirectory of "/debian/"), it will normally
default to a US mirror for you. Try again.



On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 8:01 PM Bill  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> So I'm installing 10.4.0 on a new box and I'm unable to set up a mirror
> to assist with the install. I'm using Expert Install ( although clearly
> I'm not expert enough ) and I've included "Choose Mirror" in the
> selected "Additional Components" of "Load Installer". I've tried using
> ftp.us.debian.org and debian.gtisc.gatech.edu both of which show support
> for buster (10.4) in debian/dists/Debian10.4/ .
>
> My networking in the install is correctly set up I believe. Although the
> installer doesn't have ping capability (ash), I am able to ping the new
> box correctly from another host on my lan. I've selected http as the
> mirror protocol and there is no proxy involved. I've also successfully
> checked the integrity of the CD-ROM.
>
>  From the installer I get the following error message:
> Bad Archive Mirror
> An error has been detected while trying to use the specified Debian
> archive mirror.
> Possible reasons for the error are: incorrect mirror specified; mirror
> is not available (possibly due to an unreliable network connection);
> mirror is broken (for example because an invalid Release file was
> found); mirror does not support the correct Debian version.
> Additional details may be available from /var/log/syslog or on virtual
> console 4.
> Please check the specified mirror or try a different one.
>
>  From the F4 console I get the error:
> choose-mirror [20574]: WARNING **: mirror does not support the specified
> release (buster).
>
>  From /var/log/syslog I get these messages:
> choose-mirror [20574]: DEBUG: command: wget --no-verbose
> http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/buster/Release -O - |grep -E
> '^(Suite|Codename|Architectures):'
> And then the same error message as on the F4 console above.
>
> So how can I take my diagnostics further? Is there anything else I can
> examine through a console or log or config file? Might the installer be
> using the wrong Architecture or something.  What might the source of the
> error be?
>
> All advice appreciated,
>
> Bill
> --
> Sent using Icedove on Debian GNU/Linux.
>
>

Re: Final CDs being written for Stretch - 9.13 release - prior to LTS

[Andrew Cater]

Streaming production of .iso files _is_ technically possible. Jigdo
effectively builds the iso file from chunks of ten or so files until the
disk is complete and checksummed. As mentioned, this query was about
stopping production of the .iso files specifically meant for the oldestMac
mini. That certainly sounds possible for Bullseye when it gets here since
that particular model will be about 15 years old and there's likely to be
very few of them still running.

I'm collecting what people are sending me on and off list. It does seem
that we may be able to stop routine production of as many images. Netinst,
something DVD-ish sized (so smaller than 8G) and some (larger file size ??)
may do it. The problem of using http to download large files is that it's
fairly difficult on a slow link or one which is losing packets. Jigdo does
work well to build .iso images - it might need more documentation.

Hope this helps

On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 2:25 PM Stefan Monnier 
wrote:

> >> An alternative is to have "virtual ISO images", i.e. images which are
> >> constructed on the fly (presumably by jigdo) on the web-server side.
> > Assuming that a complete set of ISOs for whatever medium occupies
> > at most 100 GB, it seems better to have the images ready rather than to
> > assemble them on demand, even if the mirror latency and bandwidth are
> > no problem.
> > This would spare the nightmare of managing the life cycle of temporary
> ISOs
> > on the server. I assume that all images would fit on a single modern HDD.
>
> I was thinking of a scheme by which the ISO is constructed and streamed
> at the same time, so the complete ISO images aren't ever stored whole
> anywhere on the server.
>
> > But the reason for letting the user perform jigdo download is that the
> network
> > load vanishes in the normal traffic of the package servers. If download
> gets
> > interrupted, one just has to start it again to get the remaining work
> > completed.
>
> Very good point.  I did not consider the interrupt issue.
>
> > The production of jigdo files is a linear effort only if the producer
> > knows where the filesystem stores file content data. This knowledge is in
> > the ISO 9660 producers genisoimage and xorriso. For other filesystems
> > the matching jigdo producer software is not available yet.
>
> I'm not sure I understand what this means, but it does sound like it
> implies that streaming production of ISOs is technically possible.
>
>
> Stefan
>
>

Re: Final CDs being written for Stretch - 9.13 release - prior to LTS

[Andrew Cater]

Thank you Thomas. Yes, that's obviously why it was done.So - a quick look
on Wikipedia suggests that this was a current machine in 2006 and was
replaced in 2007 / 2008. So - if anyone has one running anywhere, it's
somewhere between 12-15 years old. If anybody knows of any that they really
must keep running, speak now or forever hold your peace. It's probably time
for this to be dropped for Bullseye.

Separately, we also had a quick think about the numbers of iso images in
general. A suggestion: For the future, we should produce physical media for
the netinst.iso, the first DVD image in any set and one larger image to be
written to a USB stick if wanted - and corresponding source for each size.
All other .iso files to be distributed as .jigdo and .template files.In
most instances, the netinst is enough, if you have network connectivity and
bandwidth. The DVD is enough to install the basis of any of the graphical
environments readily. This does not mean that you couldn't produce every
other image - but very few people are on a desert island and need every
piece of software Debian has produced on physical media.  Producing every
disk in every size would still be possble but using jigdo as an
intermediate step. This would also mean dropping the single CD image that
installs the XFCE graphical environment but that's one tasksel selection
away anyway. This would ease the pressure on mirrors and the main
cdimage.debian.org server and make the task of testing significantly
simpler.

New users find it difficult to work out why there should be so many DVDs
and whether they need to download them all even though only one is
bootable. Anything we can do to make our collective lives easier is a
bonus, given the size of the team. Thoughts?



On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 5:55 PM Thomas Schmitt  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Andrew Cater wrote:
> > [...] here are
> > a couple of architectures that are built but not tested because the
> testers
> > have no hardware.
> > One set  is an old Mac on Intel media,
>
> Do you mean these ?
>
> https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/debian-mac-10.4.0-i386-netinst.iso
>
> https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/debian-mac-10.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso
>
> They are related to
>   https://wiki.debian.org/MacMiniIntel#Macmini_1.2C1
> and following sections.
>
> -
>
> If it is not about above "mac" ISOs, which then ? I am curious.
>
>
> Have a nice day :)
>
> Thomas
>
>

Final CDs being written for Stretch - 9.13 release - prior to LTS

[Andrew Cater]

As folk will be aware: we're building and releasing the final release of
Stretch before transition to LTS support. Testing is going well - there are
a couple of architectures that are built but not tested because the testers
have no hardware.

One set  is an old Mac on Intel media, the other is boot media for S390X.
Nobody has reported problems with these recently but it may be that nobody
is using them at all. If this is the case, these are prime candidates for
removal before Bullseye - Debian 11 - media preparation

Please shout: if we don't build media for obsolete hardware or machines
that nobody has, it makes the complex task of preparing media that much
simpler.