from:"Gene"


On 8/26/24 14:37, David Wright wrote:

On Mon 26 Aug 2024 at 10:29:10 (-0400), gene heskett wrote:

xfce4 desktop, running linuxcnc, [ … ]
came across a dangerous situation yesterday.

Basically using the lathe as a jig to hold a long piece I was tapping
by hand, powered up but stopped. screen blanker came on and locked me
out till I logged back in leaving linuxcnc live but hidden behind a
black screen.  This is a dangerous condition if he wrong key is hit to
wake it up.


Surely it's not screen /blanking/ that's your problem¹ but screen
/locking/. BTW were you really logging back in, or just unlocking
the session?


total login to get back to my session.


That monitor AND the idling rpi4b draw about 22 watts, and is turned
off only for maintenance.  UPS, standby generator, uptimes might be
years.

Replacing a CRT power hungry monitor means the only reason to blank a
screen


tomas mentioned xset, which should deal with that. You need to decide
on whether a couple of seconds is too long to wait for recovery from
anything more than simple blanking.
If the machine starts, while trying to wake it up and log back in to get 
control back to me, its already 5 seconds too damned late. With the pi, 
wakeup time is 5 + seconds by which time a sleeve caught on a chuck jaw 
has already tried to rip an arm off.



and interpose a login is security against prying eyes in an
office environment.


That's the troublesome one for you.


Absolutely. This is not an office environment. The path thru this garage 
is hardly wide enough for me, let alone company.





S, what do I remove to absolutely, permanently disable the screen
blanker? And I mean no chance it can ever do that to me again.


AFAICT you need to investigate XFCE's Power Manager. A quick google
turned up these:
   https://forum.manjaro.org/t/how-to-disable-auto-black-screen/127827/2
   https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=13535
   https://forum.manjaro.org/t/lock-screen-vs-login-screen/166644
but there may be better ones too.

¹ touch Ctrl, the key at the extreme bottom left of the keyboard,
   to defeat it.

Cheers,
David.


Thank you David.

.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: need help killing screen blanker


On 8/26/24 14:25, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2024 at 10:29:10AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

rpib runniing bookworm. Private net. rt-preempt kernel. Security is a closed
garage door and lead projectiles for unwanted guests.



Gene,

First things first: where did the image come from?
Is it originally from Raspberry Pi OS?
If not, is it from raspi.debian.net and originally built from *Debian* sources?
32 or 64 bit? Exact version string from uname -a please

64 bit arm64 debian bookworm, modified with a later rt kernal to run 
linuxcnc, built for me by an aussie named Rod Webster,, RT kernels are 
not a problem. This one has more latency that one I built about a decade 
back but good enough to run lcnc in real time with no stuttering. 
200microsecs, mine is much faster at 12. Its a 4.19 I actually built on 
the pi, armhf flavor.


In case its not obvious, linuxcnc generally runs in its own little 
world. Your code base moves several times faster than ours. I built this 
machine a decade ago just to see if a pi3b could do it. It could but 
stumbled a bit, with a pi4b, its kool at twice the speed.  Stepper 
driven, its also a showcase for the newest motor tech, stepper/servo's. 
Several more times more accurate than normal steppers. And the motors 
run much cooler.  You see that in your power bill.



xfce4 desktop, running linuxcnc, which controls all 255 volt power to an
11x56" lathe with several horsepower at its disposal. New install, came
across a dangerous situation yesterday.



rt-preempt kernel - so home built?

By Rod.

linuxcnc - your install or the Debian-provided package?
debian's lcnc-2.9 with some later patches. I'm used to running 
3.0/master on this machine as I've played the canary in the coal mine 
for that last 2 decades. Finding problems hopefully before they bite a 
shop producing a profit. But my next bday will be my 90th so I'm scaling 
back.  We are 100% volunteer, doing this either because we are retired 
and have the time(me & several others), or are involved because of the 
$dayjob.



Basically using the lathe as a jig to hold a long piece I was tapping by
hand, powered up but stopped. screen blanker came on and locked me out till
I logged back in leaving linuxcnc live but hidden behind a black screen.
This is a dangerous condition if he wrong key is hit to wake it up.



You have a real time kernel to reduce latency but also put a desktop on there?
You have two incompatible use cases and there has to be some compromise.

Sure, if the puter has the hp, why not
.
I have 4 cnc machines, and soon 3 3d-printers. With bananapi's running 
the printers by way of klipper and friends, why not, the horsepower is 
there, use it.



That monitor AND the idling rpi4b draw about 22 watts, and is turned off
only for maintenance.  UPS, standby generator, uptimes might be years.



How - and from where did you install XFCE?
I used the package manager, usually synaptic, I assume Rod used a 
similar procedure. It worked, I didn't ask.



Replacing a CRT power hungry monitor means the only reason to blank a screen
and interpose a login is security against prying eyes in an office
environment.



XFCE settings should do it - _your_ requirement for screen blanking is not
everyone's requirement for screen blanking / security. People's needs vary
- most of the desktop environments incorporate some element of screen blanking
for security (or power saving).


S, what do I remove to absolutely, permanently disable the screen
blanker? And I mean no chance it can ever do that to me again.



"How to disable screen blanking in XFCE" into a search engine yields
https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=8303

Last comment is

"Go to application menu, then hover over settings. One of the options should 
Power Manager. In there click on display. Turn off Display Power Management.

Do Not Go Through All Settings"

Thanks.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.


Hope this helps - all best, as ever,


Thanks Andy.


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

--
"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



.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: need help killing screen blanker


On 8/26/24 14:09, fxkl4...@protonmail.com wrote:

On Mon, 26 Aug 2024, gene heskett wrote:


rpib runniing bookworm. Private net. rt-preempt kernel. Security is a
closed garage door and lead projectiles for unwanted guests.

xfce4 desktop, running linuxcnc, which controls all 255 volt power to an
11x56" lathe with several horsepower at its disposal. New install, came
across a dangerous situation yesterday.

Basically using the lathe as a jig to hold a long piece I was tapping by
hand, powered up but stopped. screen blanker came on and locked me out
till I logged back in leaving linuxcnc live but hidden behind a black
screen.  This is a dangerous condition if he wrong key is hit to wake it up.

That monitor AND the idling rpi4b draw about 22 watts, and is turned off
only for maintenance.  UPS, standby generator, uptimes might be years.

Replacing a CRT power hungry monitor means the only reason to blank a
screen and interpose a login is security against prying eyes in an
office environment.

S, what do I remove to absolutely, permanently disable the screen
blanker? And I mean no chance it can ever do that to me again.



the debian folks do a pretty good job of packaging for most folks
you can disable and uninstall till the cows come home
the next update and it's right back
sometimes you need to treat the system like a child and enforce the rules

ls -l /usr/bin/xscreensaver


no such file here... Debian, back to playing 52 pickup again.
But locate to the rescue:
/etc/xdg/autostart/xscreensaver.desktop
so sudo chmod 644 /etc/xdp/autostart/xscreensaver.desktop
sudo chattr +i /etc/xdp/autostart/xsreensaver.desktop
looks like it ought to work.


i do
chmod 644 /usr/bin/xscreensaver
chattr +i /usr/bin/xscreensaver

this usually works
then add this to a file i keep of things i modify


Thank you.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: need help killing screen blanker


On 8/26/24 13:27, Trish Fraser wrote:



S, what do I remove to absolutely, permanently disable the screen
blanker? And I mean no chance it can ever do that to me again.


Seems like, in XFCE, you need to go into settings and disable the
screensaver.

Good luck!

That I'm assuming is canceled by the next reboot. And I get killed by 
linuxcnc starting up while I can't see it. So to make it permanent, 
either uninstall the perpetrator, or put something into /etc/Xsessions 
or its option file. The question is what do I do to make it permanent?


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: need help killing screen blanker

On 8/26/24 12:46, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2024 at 10:29:10AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

rpib runniing bookworm. Private net. rt-preempt kernel. Security is a closed
garage door and lead projectiles for unwanted guests.

[...]

You have provided lots of details which don't help us help you. But,
alas, you left out the interesting tidbits :-)

S, what do I remove to absolutely, permanently disable the screen
blanker? And I mean no chance it can ever do that to me again.

There are many incarnations of screen blankers, so there are different
incantations. Possibly, the one you are after is DPMS, where the monitor
is signalled (via the VESA DPMS mechanism) to shut off.

Assuming, again, you are under X11, there is "xset s off", which would
disable the screensaver *and* the DPMS blanking. See the xset man page
for all the gory details. This [1] is a good overview for all the
other things you might want to try.

Playing like one of the 10,000 monkeys assigned to redo W.Shakespear, I
seem to have found that "xset s expose", which according to xset q turns
dpms back on, so follow that with a "xset -dpms" seems to have
accomplished it for this boot. 3 hours later I see its it still active
from the back door, precisely what I want. noblank.

Now, since Xsessions has been move to /etc, I assume it works for all
uses. but there is only one, the "cnc" operator using my pw.

So, what do I edit into /etc/Xsessions (or Xsession.options) to
duplicate this for subsequent boots?

tnx all

Most desktop environments have a set of buttons and dials to achieve
the same. That said, I don't "do" DEs, so I might be lying here.

For Wayland, you'd have to ask someone smarter than me.

Hope this gives you some leads to follow.

Cheers
[1]
https://askubuntu.com/questions/67355/how-do-i-completely-turn-off-screensaver-and-power-management

Re: need help killing screen blanker

On 8/26/24 12:46, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2024 at 10:29:10AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

rpib runniing bookworm. Private net. rt-preempt kernel. Security is a closed
garage door and lead projectiles for unwanted guests.

[...]

You have provided lots of details which don't help us help you. But,
alas, you left out the interesting tidbits :-)

S, what do I remove to absolutely, permanently disable the screen
blanker? And I mean no chance it can ever do that to me again.

There are many incarnations of screen blankers, so there are different
incantations. Possibly, the one you are after is DPMS, where the monitor
is signalled (via the VESA DPMS mechanism) to shut off.

That apparently turned it off for this boot. Where do I do it in the
boot so It is always turned off? I think its runnin x, not wayland. or
is it, I just checked, its blanked again. I issued xset s noblank, xset
q says dpms is enabled. So I disabled it again.

AArch64 debian, what do I remove to totally disable the screen blanker?
I don't even want it installed. in other words, noblank for the next 20
years Apparently it is running wayland, and I can't run sudo synapticc.

Lets start by fixing that?

Most desktop environments have a set of buttons and dials to achieve
the same. That said, I don't "do" DEs, so I might be lying here.

For Wayland, you'd have to ask someone smarter than me.

Hope this gives you some leads to follow.

Cheers
[1]
https://askubuntu.com/questions/67355/how-do-i-completely-turn-off-screensaver-and-power-management

need help killing screen blanker

2024-08-26 Thread gene heskett

rpib runniing bookworm. Private net. rt-preempt kernel. Security is a 
closed garage door and lead projectiles for unwanted guests.


xfce4 desktop, running linuxcnc, which controls all 255 volt power to an 
11x56" lathe with several horsepower at its disposal. New install, came 
across a dangerous situation yesterday.


Basically using the lathe as a jig to hold a long piece I was tapping by 
hand, powered up but stopped. screen blanker came on and locked me out 
till I logged back in leaving linuxcnc live but hidden behind a black 
screen.  This is a dangerous condition if he wrong key is hit to wake it up.


That monitor AND the idling rpi4b draw about 22 watts, and is turned off 
only for maintenance.  UPS, standby generator, uptimes might be years.


Replacing a CRT power hungry monitor means the only reason to blank a 
screen and interpose a login is security against prying eyes in an 
office environment.


S, what do I remove to absolutely, permanently disable the screen 
blanker? And I mean no chance it can ever do that to me again.


Thanks.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: tbird hot keys.

2024-08-25 Thread gene heskett

On 8/25/24 08:29, Darac Marjal wrote:

On 24/08/2024 23:50, gene heskett wrote:
I need to know how to totally disable t-birds hot keys. I mean I don't
want it to happen unless I have actually clicked on a command with the
mouse. If I didn't click on it, it doesn't happen, it can't happen.

I have a feeling that, strictly speaking, this will be impossible. For
example, when editing a message, such as I am now, Ctrl+A selects all
the text, Home moves to the start of the line etc. These are _probably_
inherent parts of the text control (rather than being something that
Thunderbird explicitly controls), but let's see.

Clicking on Help > Keyboard Shortcuts takes me to
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-thunderbird?redirectslug=keyboard-shortcuts&redirectlocale=en-US (I'm not sure why it's insistent I use the en-US locale when my system should be en-GB, but that's beside the point). The only mention of editing/disabling shortcuts is this one line:

> Some shortcuts can be customized or disabled with the use of an add-on.

So "some" shortcuts can be [...] disabled, but it doesn't tell you how.
But maybe if there is a particular hotkey that's causing a problem,
someone else might have had the same problem and written an add-on you
can look for?

Thank you.

Well, i'll be typing along, have most assuredly not done a ctl+a, but
all the text will high light, and the next keystroke deletes it all.
Sometimes I can recover with some undo's. Or the message goes away, and
half an hour later I notice there is an unsent msg in the outbox, and it
might be the disappeared msg, but not always. About 50% of the time it
might be a resurrection/read msg dated months ago. This problem has
survived 3 keyboards(this particular one is wired others were wireless,
logitech K360's which I like because the keytops are square and I use
them in the garage with my cnc machines because the keys are almost 100%
immune to a bit of swarf following the key down and wedging it down,
very dangerous when the machine is being jogged into position for the
next cut and doesn't stop when your finger is removed from a stuck key)
and 4 or 5 different rodents. Exasperating as can be. And dangerous
since some of the machines are strong enough to kill.

Is there such a hotkey lock out in tbird?

Thank you all;

tbird hot keys.

2024-08-24 Thread gene heskett

I need to know how to totally disable t-birds hot keys. I mean I don't 
want it to happen unless I have actually clicked on a command with the 
mouse. If I didn't click on it, it doesn't happen, it can't happen.


Is there such a hotkey lock out in tbird?

Thank you all;

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: UEFI multiboot

2024-08-20 Thread gene heskett


On 8/20/24 12:29, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

On Tue, Aug 20, 2024 at 11:51 AM Nicolas George  wrote:


[...]

 EFI files are signed
for Secure Boot, so vendor paths can not be easily adjusted.


Secure boot is a joke when it comes to security, its only “merit” is to
prevent lusers from installing software with disabled DRM.


Speaking of Secure Boot, this just made my radar:
<https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/07/compromising-the-secure-boot-process.html>.

Jeff

And proves the point, that all this bs is for naught if enough salary is 
paid to the right people.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: Image burn programs, Was: What is the purpose of mDNS

2024-08-06 Thread gene heskett


On 8/6/24 05:07, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

Gene Heskett wrote:

balenaetcher is purported to be smart enough to write an .iso and make it
bootable. But no surprise, I dl the latest version and run it, select the
iso file and it refuses to proceed to selecting the target device to write
it to.


Maybe it thinks too much over the entrails of the ISO.
(Does it perhaps have a plain copy mode which serves you better ?)



So I'm back to using dd.


Selfishly i advise you to put on belt and suspenders in this case:

   https://wiki.debian.org/XorrisoDdTarget



I even try XFBurn, but get told by it that burn has not been enabled yet.


Xfburn is for optical media, not for memory cards.

Whatever, if the exact message is

   "Burn mode is not currently implemented."

in the "Burn image" box, then click at the circle arrow button next to
the media type display. That's where the mouse cursor is in the second
screenshot of

   https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=339720

Afterwards Xfburn should be aware of the actual medium type and the
appropriate burn opportunities.



WTH good is a space wasting file called XFBurn [...] ?


In case of trouble i advise to use a command line burn program and to
copy+paste its exact error messages into any rant against its behavior.

Examples for xorriso, growisofs, and wodim are given at

   https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#record-unix

The wodim example would work with cdrskin, too.

They all are for optical media, not for memory cards.


But I have an optical burner too.  Just in case the bpi-m5 has grown the 
ability to run from usb. I think the iso might have the ability to 
install to emmc2, which the bpi-m5 has 16 gigs of. But in the meantime 
Igor tells me that networking is now setup by netplan, a yaml app that 
hellishly picky about its syntax, but finally worked, so I'm on my way 
with a server version of noble.



Have a nice day :)

Thomas


You too Thomas and thank you.


.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: What is the purpose of mDNS

2024-08-06 Thread gene heskett


On 8/6/24 02:04, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Mon, Aug 05, 2024 at 11:49:37PM -0500, David Wright wrote:

On Sat 03 Aug 2024 at 11:26:38 (+0200), to...@tuxteam.de wrote:


[...]


It is part of Microsoft's promise that  anyone can be sysadmin [...]



Isn't that what modern networking is striving to attain?


Whoever "modern networking" is :-)

(thanks for the RFCs, BTW)

I think this is one of those "make people smarter" vs. "make tools
smarter" things. It is interesting, utterly complex (because it
mixes technical and social issues), and the "optimum" isn't even
well-defined, and in itself a moving target.

I seem to fit nigh to the "make people smarter" side of the current
situation.


There is a hell of an echo here Tomas, but smarter has not arrived yet, 
dumber has the stage.


balenaetcher is purported to be smart enough to write an .iso and make 
it bootable. But no surprise, I dl the latest version and run it, select 
the iso file and it refuses to proceed to selecting the target device to 
write it to. So I'm back to using dd. I even try XFBurn, but get told by 
it that burn has not been enabled yet. WTH good is a space wasting file 
called XFBurn that has not grown a bun routine in close to a decade?


But each new boot attempt by an armbian img seems to first expand the 
filesystem which it then apparently uses to skip the unperformed root 
and use pw creations, so every time the card is subsequently booted that 
is all skipped, going directly to a user login which has at this point 
not yet been created.


So it needs a fresh .img write for everytime the card is inserted in a 
bpi-m5. Top that off by bookworm's k3b which now cannot see any file to 
burn it to a dvd+rw disk, so I am blocked from creating a bootable dvd. 
Color me disgusted.



Cheers


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: can this iso be put on a micro-sd


On 8/4/24 01:13, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Sat, Aug 03, 2024 at 08:04:08PM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 8/3/24 19:39, gene heskett wrote:

[ISO]    debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso


Wrote it to /dev/sdl, won't mount on sdl or sdl1. gparted says sdl2 is the
dos partition??

Now writing it to /dev/sdl1. card adapter traffic led blinks for either
write.

but...:
gene@coyote:~/Downloads/armbian$ sudo dd if=./debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso
bs=4096 of=/dev/sdl1
dd: error writing '/dev/sdl1': No space left on device

its a 128GB card.


That would be the whole card. Now how big is the sdl1 partition?

Could you please do a "sudo sfdisk -l /dev/sdl" (NOTE: NO PARTITION NUMBER 
SUFFIX)
for us?

128GB SD Card has already been overwritten with a ubuntu/noble server 
.img. And its waiting for me to create a 30+ char root pw.



thanks & cheers


Take care & stay well yourself Tomas.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: can this iso be put on a micro-sd


On 8/4/24 09:40, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

Gene Heskett wrote:

/dev/sdl2   7783552 7798783   15232  7.4M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
Now, that looks like something that might boot an intel system,


Or on one of the other systems with EFI firmware.
EFI boot program names are defined for 32-bit and for 64-bit ARM CPUs.
But - as you meanwhile pointed out - there are ARM systems without EFI.



Now power it down, pull the card and put it back in the reader, and write
the armbian server .img file to it.
/dev/sdl18192 4161535 4153344   2G 83 Linux


Are there any files matching "start*.elf" to see in that filesystem ?

   find ...where.it.is.mounted... -name 'start*.elf'

If so, then you may hope that the Debian Raspberry .img.xz and armbian
are following a similar boot path.



So the $64,000 question is: where do I get a genuine debian-arm64 .img that
will boot a pi clone using the arm bootp protocol.


The Debian wiki

   https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi

does not talk of "bootp" but points to the promising download page

   https://raspi.debian.net/tested-images/

and to descriptions of particular versions like

   https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi4

which talks of
   "Current status (2024-07)"
So it is actively maintained.
... and it has lots of detail and links to interesting tangents.


George at Clug wrote:

If the aim is to make a bootable USB then I like to use:
# cp debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso /dev/sdl



Dammit, people, I am NOT making a bootable /usb device/,


Seen from Linux userland, a USB stick and a SD card behave the same,
namely like conventional hard disks. After all you see yours as /dev/sdl,
a disk device operated by SCSI commands.
Insofar the advise is correct for your case.
Except it does not work, no disk activity, & no boot.  And I've tried 
debian-arm all the way back to jessie over the years. But cleaned that 
directory out yesterday.


Any differences between usual USB sticks and your storage device have for
now to be considered red herrings.


Once booted, absolutely true. Keywords "once booted"...


The obvious problem is that your system has no EFI but the Debian arm64
ISO aims at EFI as boot firmware.


Which I can't get away from on wintel stuff, but have rather studiously 
avoided it on the arms. I don't need any help from micro$haft to screw 
things up, I can do a fine job of that all by myself.


I need to get amanda running, so I'll do it on ubuntu's noble server 
.img.  If debian can't or won't support me on this, I'm also subbed to 
ubuntu's list.



Have a nice day :)


Making some progress on this would make it a very nice day.


Thomas

Thank you Thomas. Take care & stay well yourself.


.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: can this iso be put on a micro-sd


On 8/4/24 06:58, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

Gene Heskett wrote

[ISO]   debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso


and later:

Well, I'm tired of trying to make debian-arm work so you guys aren't
hassling me for bringing armbian questions here,


I make a new attempt of an answer to your initial question


... > can this iso be put on a micro-sd


   Yes. But it is possibly not intended for Raspberry Pi with 64 bit CPU.


--
Reasoning:

It seems that Debian on Raspberry Pi has its own means of installation

   https://raspi.debian.net/tested-images/

This is probaly more specialized than the arm64 ISO.
It has at least 4 different "Bookworm" images depending on the raspi
version.

I downloaded and inspected
   https://raspi.debian.net/tested/20231109_raspi_4_bookworm.img.xz

fdisk yields:

   Disklabel type: dos
   ...
   Device Boot   Start End Sectors  Size Id Type
   20231109_raspi_4_bookworm.img1 8192 1048575 1040384  508M  c W95 
FAT32 (
   20231109_raspi_4_bookworm.img2  1048576 511 40714242G 83 Linux


Mounting partition 1 shows among a few other files, a bunch of executable
programs:

   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2973536 Nov  9  2023 /mnt/fat/start.elf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2249280 Nov  9  2023 /mnt/fat/start4.elf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  803964 Nov  9  2023 /mnt/fat/start4cd.elf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3744808 Nov  9  2023 /mnt/fat/start4db.elf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2996680 Nov  9  2023 /mnt/fat/start4x.elf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  803964 Nov  9  2023 /mnt/fat/start_cd.elf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4816712 Nov  9  2023 /mnt/fat/start_db.elf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3720360 Nov  9  2023 /mnt/fat/start_x.elf

Maybe you got similar ones in your armbian system.
Obviously this image does not aim much at EFI firmware. At least no
/EFI/BOOT directory is to see.

There are no files in the Debian arm64 ISO with a name matching "*.elf".
The wiki
   https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi
does not point to arm64 ISOs but rather to
   https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPiImages
which points to
   https://raspi.debian.net/

Partition 2 is according to "file" an ext4 "(needs journal recovery)".
Its content looks more like GNU/Linux:
   ...
   -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 30964073 Nov  9  2023 
/mnt/ext4/boot/initrd.img-6.1.0-13-arm64
   -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 32622528 Sep 29  2023 
/mnt/ext4/boot/vmlinuz-6.1.0-13-arm64
   ...


Interesting, bookmarked. thanks.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: Booting BananaPi from sd [WAS Re: can this iso be put on a micro-sd]


On 8/4/24 06:55, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Sun, Aug 04, 2024 at 02:01:24AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 8/4/24 01:17, David Wright wrote:

On Sat 03 Aug 2024 at 20:04:08 (-0400), gene heskett wrote:

On 8/3/24 19:39, gene heskett wrote:

[ISO]    debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso



This will work on an arm64 board potentially that is in a desktop/server.
It will also work on a Raspbberry Pi 4 that's booting from a port of
Tianocore. (EDK - the UEFI basis) [For the Pi 4, Pete Batard has done
a port].


Links?

Yes, no response, written to /dev/sdl or to .dev/sdl1. The armbian .img's
for noble and bookworm written to /dev/sdl, booted to a cli in 30 or 40
seconds.



RIGHT - see previous note about Armbian and how they take the vendor
core support and make it boot. You've got a .img file - kernel, initrd
and (probably) u-boot in one file. You put it in and it boots.
The 30-40s is probably u-boot kicking in, initialising hardware
including any dtb and then booting up.
It does seem to be a 2 stage thing. But it does by at a fraction of C 
speed, to fast to capture.


If you _know_ how to build u-boot for yourself, you can possibly
get it to boot anything arbitrary but at that point it gets complicated:
see, for example 
https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2023/10/debian-on-bpi-m2-zero.html

I've built an rt-preempt 4.19-something, but at the time I wasn't fam 
enough with u-boot or bootp in some circles so my middle 1940's 11x54 
Sheldon lathe I run with linuxcnc was analized and I made a 27 megabyte 
tarball that when unpacked to the sd card, installed enough of two 
directory's that it booted to the realtime version for the next 7 years. 
Folks said I couldn't run it with a pi, so I did it anyway.  Its worked 
so well that if I could still get the interface cards, I'd convert my 
other cnc'd machines to it. intel stuff works well too but is a huge 
power pig. 10x or more than the pi & monitor which totals about 25 watts.



or did you mystify yourself by trying to mount the partitions and
then abandon the process in favour of:


Now writing it to /dev/sdl1.


that didn't work either. The 2 armbian .img files worked fine, the
debian.iso failed 100%.  This thing should work for amanda, it has
recognized all 4 of the 4t SP SSD's. And in past linux installs from stretch
to buster, rpi-os just worked I had built earlier versions of amanda with
little problems as long as I skipped the docs. Thats always a problem for
intel stuff, dependency hell, for both amanda and linuxcnc.  I believe
that's my problem as the linuxcnc buildbot is doing them ok recently.


which is an odd thing to do.


Well, I'm tired of trying to make debian-arm work so you guys aren't
hassling me for bringing armbian questions here, while armbian Just Works
for everything once the network is configured. Getting the network
configured on armbian is a pita though.  Never have made it work on
debian-arm since wheezy.



One topic at a time, please, Gene :)


Cheers,
David.


Thanks David, take care & stay well.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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



.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: can this iso be put on a micro-sd


On 8/4/24 06:29, Darac Marjal wrote:


On 04/08/2024 05:23, gene heskett wrote:


Nice, but no pi clone has ever booted from a usb stick, ever, not even 
real pi's can do that.


You are one of today's lucky 10,000:

https://thepihut.com/blogs/raspberry-pi-tutorials/how-to-boot-your-raspberry-pi-from-a-usb-mass-storage-device


unforch, no mention of the rpi4b. or the new one.

The query command returns a different result on an rpi4b.

17:08b0

Perhaps someone can decode that?

Thanks Darac.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: can this iso be put on a micro-sd


On 8/4/24 06:29, Darac Marjal wrote:


On 04/08/2024 05:23, gene heskett wrote:


Nice, but no pi clone has ever booted from a usb stick, ever, not even 
real pi's can do that.


You are one of today's lucky 10,000:

https://thepihut.com/blogs/raspberry-pi-tutorials/how-to-boot-your-raspberry-pi-from-a-usb-mass-storage-device

Thanks, I've done that, but have not succeeded in 20 or so try's, in 
blowing the fuse that switches it forever. Marked for more recent 
investigation.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: can this iso be put on a micro-sd

On 8/4/24 03:37, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

Gene Heskett wrote:

Wrote it to /dev/sdl, won't mount on sdl or sdl1. gparted says sdl2 is the
dos partition??

The partition table of debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso is in MBR, which
many tools call "DOS".

$ /sbin/fdisk -l debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso
...
Disklabel type: dos
...
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso10 7783551 7783552 3.7G 83 Linux
debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso2 7783552 7798783 15232 7.4M ef EFI
(FAT-12/16/32)

Partition 1 is the ISO 9660 filesystem.
Partition 2 is the EFI System Partition, a FAT filesystem.
Both and also the base device should be mountable after copying.

Try in a running Linux system

dir=/mnt/iso
sudo mount debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso "$dir"
ls -l "$dir"

This should show
total 653
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Jun 29 12:24 EFI
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 9084 Jun 29 13:39 README.html
...
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Jun 29 12:24 pics
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Jun 29 12:24 pool

The start of partition 1 and the start of the base device are the same.
So it makes no difference if you mount either of them.

Now for the EFI partition (7783552 * 512 = 3985178624):

sudo umount "$dir"
sudo mount -o offset=3985178624 debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso "$dir"
find "$dir"

should show:

/mnt/iso
/mnt/iso/efi
/mnt/iso/efi/boot
/mnt/iso/efi/boot/bootaa64.efi
/mnt/iso/efi/boot/grubaa64.efi
/mnt/iso/efi/debian
/mnt/iso/efi/debian/grub.cfg

That is not bootp, its grub. Different critter entirely. I don't know
which debian version can boot that but an earlier release, say 5 or 7
years back, it actually booted, but what it booted was incomplete so I
used the raspi-os at the time, building my own realtime 4-19 kernel. At
that time on an rpi3b, which worked but the 3b was dragging its tongue
on the floor but the 4b made it happy when it came out. And still is.

Both mounts together will not work properly, because the kernel people
decided that one device needs only to be mounted once. Any further mount
just repeats the first one. Use losetup(8) to create separate /dev/loopN
if you really need these two mounts at the same time.

If Linux does not show these files by mounting /dev/sdl1 and /dev/sdl2
after copying the ISO to the SD card /dev/sdl, then copying went wrong or
the kernel did not notice the change of partition tables.
With a pluggable device it is best to unplug and replug.
A fixely installed drive may show the new table after:

sudo hdparm -z /dev/sdl

(I wish we had a similar ioctl for size assessment of /dev/srX after
burning.)
Aggred, that would be handier than the turnbuttton on the outhouse door
at a family reunion in 1940.

gene@coyote:~/Downloads/armbian$ sudo dd if=./debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso
bs=4096 of=/dev/sdl1
dd: error writing '/dev/sdl1': No space left on device
its a 128GB card.

That's the wrong output device. You need to write ISOs with partitions
to the base device, not to an existing partition.
(I assume that sdl1 is smaller than the ISO.)

If the base device was partitioned by GPT, then you should also zeroize
the last block of the device. Else a partition editor could come to the
idea of restoring the GPT from the backup at the end of the device.
This would destroy the partition table of the ISO image.

Zeroizing the backup GPT header block would be done by xorriso-dd-target,
if you use that script for copying.
If the SD card is removable, then i propose

https://wiki.debian.org/XorrisoDdTarget#Identify_the_device_by_plugging_and_copy_if_it_looks_safe_enough

If plugging out-and-in is not an option or if xorriso-dd-target shys
away from overwriting the existing neither-ISO-nor-FAT filesystems, then

https://wiki.debian.org/XorrisoDdTarget#How_to_overwrite_a_drive_against_the_will_of_xorriso-dd-target
It will then show you the commands which it would run if it was more
daring.
(You could of course play with the other proposals in

https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/xorriso-dd-target/xorriso-dd-target.1.en.html
)

George at Clug wrote:

If the aim is to make a bootable USB then I like to use:
# cp debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso /dev/sdl

That should be ok.

But I guess a micro-sd behaves differently to a USB ?

Not in the booted Linux. Maybe the firmware of the computer has its own
ideas. One could ask GRUB via its command shell how it perceives the
device persentation by the firmware. I roughly guess guess from "sdl":
ls (hd12)
In general:
ls
See
https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/ls.html
(Experts might have better proposals for this.)

Gene Heskett wrote:

-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene 3993284608 Aug 3 19:39 debian-12.6.0-arm64-
DVD-1.iso <-trying to write this file to a new DVD+RW disk.

Re: can this iso be put on a micro-sd


On 8/4/24 03:37, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

Gene Heskett wrote:

Wrote it to /dev/sdl, won't mount on sdl or sdl1. gparted says sdl2 is the
dos partition??


The partition table of debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso is in MBR, which
many tools call "DOS".

   $ /sbin/fdisk -l debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso
   ...
   Disklabel type: dos
   ...
   Device Boot   Start End Sectors  Size Id Type
   debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso10 7783551 7783552  3.7G 83 Linux
   debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso2  7783552 7798783   15232  7.4M ef EFI 
(FAT-12/16/32)

Partition 1 is the ISO 9660 filesystem.
Partition 2 is the EFI System Partition, a FAT filesystem.
Both and also the base device should be mountable after copying.

Try in a running Linux system

   dir=/mnt/iso
   sudo mount debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso "$dir"
   ls -l "$dir"

This should show
   total 653
   dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root   2048 Jun 29 12:24 EFI
   -r--r--r-- 1 root root   9084 Jun 29 13:39 README.html
   ...
   dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root   4096 Jun 29 12:24 pics
   dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root   2048 Jun 29 12:24 pool

The start of partition 1 and the start of the base device are the same.
So it makes no difference if you mount either of them.

Now for the EFI partition (7783552 * 512 = 3985178624):

   sudo umount "$dir"
   sudo mount -o offset=3985178624 debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso "$dir"
   find "$dir"

should show:

   /mnt/iso
   /mnt/iso/efi
   /mnt/iso/efi/boot
   /mnt/iso/efi/boot/bootaa64.efi
   /mnt/iso/efi/boot/grubaa64.efi
   /mnt/iso/efi/debian
   /mnt/iso/efi/debian/grub.cfg

Both mounts together will not work properly, because the kernel people
decided that one device needs only to be mounted once. Any further mount
just repeats the first one. Use losetup(8) to create separate /dev/loopN
if you really need these two mounts at the same time.

If Linux does not show these files by mounting /dev/sdl1 and /dev/sdl2
after copying the ISO to the SD card /dev/sdl, then copying went wrong or
the kernel did not notice the change of partition tables.
With a pluggable device it is best to unplug and replug.
A fixely installed drive may show the new table after:

   sudo hdparm -z /dev/sdl

(I wish we had a similar ioctl for size assessment of /dev/srX after
burning.)



gene@coyote:~/Downloads/armbian$ sudo dd if=./debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso
bs=4096 of=/dev/sdl1
dd: error writing '/dev/sdl1': No space left on device
its a 128GB card.


That's the wrong output device. You need to write ISOs with partitions
to the base device, not to an existing partition.
(I assume that sdl1 is smaller than the ISO.)


The iso is a 4Gb dvd .iso
the total size of /dev/sdl is 128 GB, not that ess dee ell, not ess dee 
one so there's many times the size of the .isp on /dev/sdl.


The 128GB card is back in the card adapter. And I am, about to rewrite 
the iso tp /dev/sdl, getting this response:
gene@coyote:~/Downloads/armbian$ sudo dd 
if=./debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso bs=4096 of=/dev/sdl

974923+0 records in
974923+0 records out
3993284608 bytes (4.0 GB, 3.7 GiB) copied, 77.9216 s, 51.2 MB/s
the card is not at this point mounted, so removed from the reader and 
inserted into the bpim5. and powered up in should boot, right? but first 
a look with fdisk -l /dev/sdl:

gene@coyote:~/Downloads/armbian$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdl
Disk /dev/sdl: 119.08 GiB, 127865454592 bytes, 249737216 sectors
Disk model:  Storage Device
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x

Device Boot   Start End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdl1 0 7783551 7783552  3.7G 83 Linux
/dev/sdl2   7783552 7798783   15232  7.4M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)

Now, that looks like something that might boot an intel system, but most 
of the arm64 pi like systems use the bootp protocol, a different critter 
entirely.  Anyway, remove card from reader, take to bpi-m5, plug it and 
power it up, No activity except for my network attempting to ID an unk 
port that showed up because the cat6 is plugged in so the eth0 port is 
being banged on by arp.. I need an .img file, could be bigger than a DVD 
that conforms to the the bootp protocol & this isn't it.


Now power it down, pull the card and put it back in the reader, and 
write the armbian server .img file to it.  Takes around 4 minutes,returning:
gene@coyote:~/Downloads/armbian$ sudo dd 
if=./Armbian_24.5.1_Bananapim5_noble_current_6.6.31.img bs=4096 of=/dev/sdl

[sudo] password for gene:
520192+0 records in
520192+0 records out
2130706432 bytes (2.1 GB, 2.0 GiB) copied, 141.57 s, 15.1 MB/s
And fdisk -l /dev/sdkl shows:
Disk /dev/sdl: 119.08 GiB, 127865454592 bytes, 249737216 sectors
Disk model:  Storage Device
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 51

Re: can this iso be put on a micro-sd


On 8/4/24 01:17, David Wright wrote:

On Sat 03 Aug 2024 at 20:04:08 (-0400), gene heskett wrote:

On 8/3/24 19:39, gene heskett wrote:

[ISO]    debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso


Wrote it to /dev/sdl, won't mount on sdl or sdl1. gparted says sdl2 is
the dos partition??


With amd64-netinst ISOs, all three of /dev/sdX{,1,2} should be
mountable. sdX and sdX1 will appear identical as they both start at
sector 0. sdX2 is FAT because it's the EFI partition.

Obviously arm64-DVD ISOs might differ somewhat, but my question is
whether, having written the ISO to sdl, did you try and boot from it,


Yes, no response, written to /dev/sdl or to .dev/sdl1. The armbian 
.img's for noble and bookworm written to /dev/sdl, booted to a cli in 30 
or 40 seconds.



or did you mystify yourself by trying to mount the partitions and
then abandon the process in favour of:


Now writing it to /dev/sdl1.


that didn't work either. The 2 armbian .img files worked fine, the 
debian.iso failed 100%.  This thing should work for amanda, it has 
recognized all 4 of the 4t SP SSD's. And in past linux installs from 
stretch to buster, rpi-os just worked I had built earlier versions of 
amanda with little problems as long as I skipped the docs. Thats always 
a problem for intel stuff, dependency hell, for both amanda and 
linuxcnc.  I believe that's my problem as the linuxcnc buildbot is doing 
them ok recently.



which is an odd thing to do.


Well, I'm tired of trying to make debian-arm work so you guys aren't 
hassling me for bringing armbian questions here, while armbian Just 
Works for everything once the network is configured. Getting the network 
configured on armbian is a pita though.  Never have made it work on 
debian-arm since wheezy.



Cheers,
David.


Thanks David, take care & stay well.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: can this iso be put on a micro-sd


On 8/3/24 21:11, George at Clug wrote:



On Sunday, 04-08-2024 at 10:04 gene heskett wrote:

On 8/3/24 19:39, gene heskett wrote:

[ISO]    debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso


Wrote it to /dev/sdl, won't mount on sdl or sdl1. gparted says sdl2 is
the dos partition??

Now writing it to /dev/sdl1. card adapter traffic led blinks for either
write.

but...:
gene@coyote:~/Downloads/armbian$ sudo dd
if=./debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso bs=4096 of=/dev/sdl1
dd: error writing '/dev/sdl1': No space left on device


I do not know what the aim of the above dd statement is, as I have yet to learn 
how to make use of dd.

DD is the original bypass the filesystem way to write an sd card. The 
man page is pretty simple but read carefully before pressing return 
because it bypasses all the system security and a typo can destroy your 
system in a millisecond. It is at least 26 years old maybe older. Was 
included in RH5.0, my first linux install after my full bore amiga 2000 
upchucked in late 1997.



If the aim is to make a bootable USB then I like to use:
# cp debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso /dev/sdl



But I guess a micro-sd behaves differently to a USB ?

George.



its a 128GB card.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.


If so I'll see how this boots from a micro-sd.


It didn't, yet the armbian versions boots to a cli in about 30 seconds.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: can this iso be put on a micro-sd


On 8/3/24 22:38, e...@gmx.us wrote:

On 8/3/24 20:04, gene heskett wrote:

On 8/3/24 19:39, gene heskett wrote:

[ISO]    debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso

Wrote it to /dev/sdl, won't mount on sdl or sdl1. gparted says sdl2 is 
the

dos partition??


If it's meant to be written to a thumb drive to result in a bootable drive,
you need to do something like

dd if=debian.iso of=/dev/sdl


Nice, but no pi clone has ever booted from a usb stick, ever, not even 
real pi's can do that.


(modify filenames and add flags as appropriate)

That may result in there being mountable filesystems, but it doesn't 
have to

be that way. This will also wipe out any data on the _entire_ drive, so be
sure that's what you want.

Eban, I am puzzled. I have a ~/gene/Downloads/armbian directory with 
this content:

gene@coyote:~/Downloads/armbian$ ls -l
total 15489740
-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene  50058 Aug 20  2023 1
-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene 4412407808 Aug 18  2023 
2023-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene 7256145920 Aug  3 07:22 
Armbian_24.5.1_Bananapim5_bookworm_current_6.6.31_xfce_desktop.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene 2130706432 Aug  3 07:23 
Armbian_24.5.1_Bananapim5_noble_current_6.6.31.img


-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene 3993284608 Aug  3 19:39 debian-12.6.0-arm64- 
DVD-1.iso <-trying to write this file to a new DVD+RW disk.


XFburn claims it can't burn yet, so I had apt install k3b and its deps.
I run k3b as me, you can see I own the iso so k3b should be able to 
write it, but k3b cannot see a single file in the above and below ls -l 
output. The menu's in k3b have been played with since the last time I 
used it. So xfburn is out and so is k3b.  So what do I use to put the 
above file on an optical disk, which would be a first if it then works 
to boot an arm, which normally boots from a micro-sd card containing an 
.img file. But that does not work. I can make it boot the latest 
armbian, in noble server flaver or bootworm+xfce, but apparently no way 
to boot the debian arm64 bookworm_12.6.0.iso. am I missing something the 
FAQ doesn't tell me about?  Or a link to the latest .img. but I spent a 
couple hours looking for it w/o a hit. So I need some sort of a magic spell.


-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene   5458 Apr 11 23:21 
generic-bigtreetech-octopus-pro-v1.1.cfg

-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene   26626136 Dec 27  2023 linuxcnc-doc-en_2.9.1_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene   1125 Dec 12  2023 linuxcnc-install.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene   27075096 Dec 27  2023 
linuxcnc-uspace_2.9.1_arm64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene 256404 Dec 27  2023 
linuxcnc-uspace-dev_2.9.1_arm64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 gene gene   35155564 Dec 27  2023 
linux-image-5.4.258-rtai-amd64_5.4.258-rtai-amd64-2_amd64.deb

--
Q: Why do black holes never learn?
A: Because they're too dense.  -- ZurkisPhreek on Fark


cute. ;o)> Thanks for any advice that actually works...

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: can this iso be put on a micro-sd


On 8/3/24 19:39, gene heskett wrote:

[ISO]    debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso

Wrote it to /dev/sdl, won't mount on sdl or sdl1. gparted says sdl2 is 
the dos partition??


Now writing it to /dev/sdl1. card adapter traffic led blinks for either 
write.


but...:
gene@coyote:~/Downloads/armbian$ sudo dd 
if=./debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso bs=4096 of=/dev/sdl1

dd: error writing '/dev/sdl1': No space left on device

its a 128GB card.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.


If so I'll see how this boots from a micro-sd.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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

can this iso be put on a micro-sd


[ISO]   debian-12.6.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso

If so I'll see how this boots from a micro-sd.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: dot internal and mDNS


On 8/3/24 18:09, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Sat, Aug 03, 2024 at 04:10:33PM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 8/3/24 09:00, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,



[Very interesting Stuff snipped about ICANN and domain suffixes]


If you use .local for other things it can interfere with mDNS but
picking almost anything else has very few repercussions (unless you
are very silly about it), so I don't understand why this topic
always generates so much debate on this list.

Thanks,
Andy




Part of the reason it generates more heat than light, Andy, is because
off-topicness creaps in. It's an occupational hazard on this list.


I can hint at some of the problems Andy. Because I'm about to try to bring
another bpi-m5 up to run amanda in a 8 to 16 t-byte all solid state NAS.



Gene,

With the best will in the world: you'll be bringing up another small
ARM board ro do something and assuming that any and all discussion
of any other topic is relevant to that.

Most of the boards you have are running Armbian (information gathered
from another reply from you on debian-arm mailing list recently at
https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2024/07/msg00018.html .)

The folks at Armbian do one job really well. They take the board
support packages and random kernels that vendors put out when you buy
a board from an OEM somewhere in SE Asia. Those BSPs and kernel versions
may not correspond to anything aybody else has - Armbian take them,
get the boards running and then drop a Debian or an Ubuntu userland on top.
Whatever the vendor has put out to boot up the new board and deal with all
its hardware quirks - Armbian will make that run. They don't necessarily
undertake to revise it, support it long term. That's not their job as
they see it, theirs is to get a board up and running and (relatively)
stable before they move on to the next one. That they do *really* well

One more time: Armbian may be using a Debian based userland but it's
NOT Debian.The underpinning bootstrap routines may be different. They
may have chosen different options as they've built effectively yet
another Debian derivative per new ARM board.


The coders in charge have gone way beyond just hiding a sensible way of
setting hostname and domainname without using some other tool that isn't
even intuitively named. You can put the arm64 boot media into another
machine, mount it and edit both /etc/hostname and /etc/domainname with nano,
write a copy of your /etc/hosts file to that media. then umount it, put it
back in the target machine, boot it, and both files are wiped & gone.
Why



You'll need to take that up with the Armbian folks and see how they've
configured Debian userland and the settings in their master image. You'll
have to look at the steps that you've taken to customise your instances on
your machines on your internal network at coyote.den


The machine has no damned idea of what its domain and hostname is.
Prefilling /etc/hosts with the correct data is a waste of time until that is
configured by the correct tool, Why



What logs are you seeing / what error messages? What's the behaviour
if your network doesn't give out DHCP but the Armbian software is expecting
it? We have no information even for an informed guess.


And if it has to be that difficult to bring up a new machine on your local
192.168.xxx.zzz unroutable network, why the heck do we not have a fill in
the blanks script to do that. This is 2024, not 1985 and AT&T's Unix-3.3.
There's no excuse for that level of difficulty to exist in 2024.



What are the defaults?


IDK, I've written the nobel server install to a 128GB micro-sd, along 
with setting the hosts file from this machine as the master copy. Since 
192.168.nn.2 wasn't used, I added amanda.coyote.den there, played to see 
it it recognized the pair of SP 4t's drives, seems to but if the hub 
with the 4T attached is in the same vertical pair of usb ports the 
keyboard button is disabled. Left to right pairing works fine.

Rebooting it resets the hostname to bannapim5 and blanks the domainname.
I'll next install the debian-arm bookworm server and see how it behaves


I'll admit that network-mangler has now learned how to do much of that once
you have the names set, but why did it take a decade to reach that state? It
should have been fixed by the end of wheezy.



In default of better information, the rest of us won't know if it's a
Debian problem or a Gene problem.

With every good wish, as ever,

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


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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



.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 s

Re: dot internal and mDNS


On 8/3/24 09:00, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Sat, Aug 03, 2024 at 06:40:32PM +1000, George at Clug wrote:

I believe ICCAN are moving to possibly replacing .local, .home, .lan,
.corp, .mail, .localdomain, (and possibly others) with .internal ?


home.arpa was defined by IANA in 2018. If they go ahead with
.internal then I can only imagine it will be in addition to, not
instead of, home.arpa.


How could this affect mDNS and the use of .local?


It won't. mDNS will continue using .local.

If you use .local for other things it can interfere with mDNS but
picking almost anything else has very few repercussions (unless you
are very silly about it), so I don't understand why this topic
always generates so much debate on this list.

Thanks,
Andy


I can hint at some of the problems Andy. Because I'm about to try to 
bring another bpi-m5 up to run amanda in a 8 to 16 t-byte all solid 
state NAS.


The coders in charge have gone way beyond just hiding a sensible way of 
setting hostname and domainname without using some other tool that isn't 
even intuitively named. You can put the arm64 boot media into another 
machine, mount it and edit both /etc/hostname and /etc/domainname with 
nano, write a copy of your /etc/hosts file to that media. then umount 
it, put it back in the target machine, boot it, and both files are wiped 
& gone. Why


The machine has no damned idea of what its domain and hostname is. 
Prefilling /etc/hosts with the correct data is a waste of time until 
that is configured by the correct tool, Why


And if it has to be that difficult to bring up a new machine on your 
local 192.168.xxx.zzz unroutable network, why the heck do we not have a 
fill in the blanks script to do that. This is 2024, not 1985 and AT&T's 
Unix-3.3. There's no excuse for that level of difficulty to exist in 2024.


I'll admit that network-mangler has now learned how to do much of that 
once you have the names set, but why did it take a decade to reach that 
state? It should have been fixed by the end of wheezy.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: nsswitch what should come first

2024-08-02 Thread gene heskett


On 8/2/24 12:09, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Fri, Aug 02, 2024 at 10:39:46AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Fri, Aug 02, 2024 at 10:29:40 -0400, gene heskett wrote:

ISP's dns. I suppose eventually they'll issue
.den and I be forced to pick some other 3 letter name for my local domain.


https://www.hostzealot.com/domains/den


Weird - that TLD has not yet been delegated by IANA so I don't get
how they are selling it. Perhaps I have missed something.

 https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db

Still, your point does remain that it could be delegated at some
point. There is a new set of proposals being entertained right now
for new TLDs so there will be some pointless new ones soon.

Gene';s reply to you misses your point so if/when it does happen
that .den is delegated I'm sure he will miss the point again anyway.

Thanks,
Andy

Thanks for the no-confidence vote Andy. I have been entertaining what I 
do next if that does happen. I'm pleasantly surprised it hasn't happened 
already in 26 years.  Its a bit like sesame st. on PBS, with Bert and 
Earnie waiting for the other shoe to drop. ;o)>


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: nsswitch what should come first

2024-08-02 Thread gene heskett


On 8/2/24 10:40, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Fri, Aug 02, 2024 at 10:29:40 -0400, gene heskett wrote:

ISP's dns. I suppose eventually they'll issue
.den and I be forced to pick some other 3 letter name for my local domain.


https://www.hostzealot.com/domains/den

.
I already have a paid for, legally registered domainname, Greg. Not 
currently enabled because the last time it was, it took 150 lines of 
Iptables updated almost daily to keep mj12's & bing's godamned bots from 
using 200+ gigs a month spidering my site. Using ALL my limited ADSL 
upload bandwidth. Screw em and the camel that rode it on them.


The above link is some dips--- MBA trying to make a buck using the if I 
don't get caught its legal mentality. You can do this without enriching 
these jerks. mj12's bots don't pay any attention to the bot denier 
response but tracking bing is easier since they only move to a different 
address block to get around iptables lockouts about monthly, mj12 
sometimes moves stuff daily.  Most of the other bots look at the rules 
and follow them.


Take care & stay well Greg.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: nsswitch what should come first

2024-08-02 Thread gene heskett

On 8/1/24 22:07, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 9:45 PM George at Clug wrote:

On Friday, 02-08-2024 at 00:48 David Wright wrote:

On Thu 01 Aug 2024 at 10:32:27 (-0400), Greg Wooledge wrote:

[...]
I have no comment on mdns4_minimal because I don't really know what that
is.

AIUI mdns4_minimal is for devices that configure themselves using
multicast DNS on .local. If you put dns first, then the names of any
.local devices will be leaked out of your LAN and on to the Internet's
DNS servers. [NOTFOUND=return] is what prevent that happening IF you
leave the order alone.

(BTW don't use .local for your LAN domain name.)

Why is that? (recently I was starting to believe I should stop using the domain
names I had chosen, and start using (what I thought was) the standard of .local)

Is it your personal preference, or a technical necessity?

What is best practice for a local LAN prefix? (I have never found conclusive
instruction).

Frankly, neither have T that actually makes sense. Particularly as
future proof. The smartest dog I ever met was not a dog, but a tamed
coyote. This was in the '70's of the last century. So when I setup my
home network and built my first linux box in 1998, this machine became
coyote.den as the domainename. Its arbitrary and has not yet clashed
with anything the powers that be have defined. My network lookups are to
look first at /etc//hosts, and failing to find it, my ISP's dns. I
suppose eventually they'll issue .den and I be forced to pick some other
3 letter name for my local domain. Until then, I am as that now very old
saying goes, FAT, DUMB and HAPPY... And my machines, all of them, can
tour this planet transparently.

It is my belief that .local is a MS idea originating from the configuration of
their servers. Is this correct?

.local is a multicast DNS (mDNS) thing. See
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6762.html> and
<https://www.iana.org/assignments/special-use-domain-names/special-use-domain-names.xhtml>.

Neither of these 2 documents appear to infringe on what I am doing at
this time. OTOH, I am not famous for thinking inside the box. This
advise, if followed and something gets broken, you get to keep all the
pieces. It has worked for me for 26 years.

I personally remove mDNS and Bonjour from my machines. mDNS is not the
source of truth on my networks. Rather, DNS is the source of truth in
my networks, ao I use home.arpa from RFC 8375,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8375.html>.

Jeff

Re: nginx or apache for php?


On 8/1/24 15:01, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Thu, Aug 01, 2024 at 01:10:37PM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 8/1/24 09:34, Andy Smith wrote:

Hello,

On Thu, Aug 01, 2024 at 08:54:22AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

Au contraire Andy.


What a surprise. Here we go again.


The best, most expandable 3d printer driver, klipper,
uses nginx to build its control interface


I am answering based on OP's stated situation. You are answering
based on your personal circumstances and still making a big leap of
reasoning.


apache2 was probably tested and found wanting.


Fact that it's working for OP's use case trumps your vague
"probably". If OP had come here with a problem we'd solve it, and
that could involve switching to something else. But they didn't.


Neither of us has any knowledge of how many coding hours went into making
apach2 work for the OP, the OP didn't indicate.



There's a to and fro here - none of us knows _exactly_ how much
time and effort the original poster is able to devote to this.
Both would do the job. I used nginx for my Debian mirror because
it allegedly serves small files very well.


It also illustrates that this stuff isn't restricted to "genuine rpi" stuff
to run on, there are dozens of other clones that can do this quite nicely.
Some of them quite a bit faster than the rpi's with their usb2 speed limits.
That is one of the reasons I chose the bpi-m5, all 4 usb ports are usb3.

That spreading of "it works for me" info seems like a proper function of a
"community" list, Andy.



"It works for me" : Gene, how many of your ARM boards are running
Debian as distinct from Ubuntu / Armbian?


Round about, all of them are running armbian, which, depending on the 
individual install, is either running debian bookworm for arm64, in the 
server version, or jammie in the full desktop installs. In either event, 
the actual dl I installed came from the armbian site.  Either way, it 
just works on the arm64's.



You do keep repeating that everyone should follow you in running
ARM boards and pushing stuff forwards yourself but this list always
has problems establishing exactly where your problems lie and exactly
what you've done.


Why should I try anymore? Everytime I try to describe what I've done, I 
get called a liar.  That gets old rather quickly.


What I will do, when trxie is released, is install it, but you will get 
to read absolutely everything I had to do to make it work.



All the very best to all on the list,

Ditto Andy.


Andy
(amaca...@debian.org)


Andy



Cheers, & best wishes, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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



.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: nginx or apache for php?


On 8/1/24 10:31, Sarunas Burdulis wrote:

On 8/1/24 07:35, Walt E wrote:

Hello

I have been using apache2 + php for years under debian. But I heard
people says nginx + php has better performance.


That is not true:

1. https://people.apache.org/~jim/presos/ACNA11/Apache_httpd_cloud.pdf
2. 
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/choosing-a-proxy-server-apachecon-2014/33506168


While (2) purports to be all encompassing, I'll point out that the data 
is a decade stale. And needs redone using contemporary tooling.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: nginx or apache for php?


On 8/1/24 09:34, Andy Smith wrote:

Hello,

On Thu, Aug 01, 2024 at 08:54:22AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

Au contraire Andy.


What a surprise. Here we go again.


The best, most expandable 3d printer driver, klipper,
uses nginx to build its control interface


It doesn't matter what niche activities you (or I) engage in on niche
hardware that happen to use nginx for reasons you don't know of but
assume are "probably" vital. OP has a working apache2 that they are
familiar with. If they told me they had a working nginx they are
familiar with I'd have told them to stick with that.

I am answering based on OP's stated situation. You are answering
based on your personal circumstances and still making a big leap of
reasoning.


apache2 was probably tested and found wanting.


Fact that it's working for OP's use case trumps your vague
"probably". If OP had come here with a problem we'd solve it, and
that could involve switching to something else. But they didn't.


Neither of us has any knowledge of how many coding hours went into 
making apach2 work for the OP, the OP didn't indicate.



It doesn't seem that OP is doing anything like that and if they were
it would be down to them to state they have an issue with
constrained resources. They did not, so your advice is bizarre at
best.


It also illustrates that this stuff isn't restricted to "genuine rpi" 
stuff to run on, there are dozens of other clones that can do this quite 
nicely. Some of them quite a bit faster than the rpi's with their usb2 
speed limits. That is one of the reasons I chose the bpi-m5, all 4 usb 
ports are usb3.


That spreading of "it works for me" info seems like a proper function of 
a "community" list, Andy.



Andy



Cheers, & best wishes, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: nginx or apache for php?


On 8/1/24 07:50, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Thu, Aug 01, 2024 at 07:35:38PM +0800, Walt E wrote:

I have been using apache2 + php for years under debian.
But I heard people says nginx + php has better performance.
Do you have experience on both of setup and share a bit with me?


I do and I don't think it will make any noticeable performance
difference for you, so I would suggest sticking with apache2 unless
you have a stronger need to use nginx or for purely educational
purposes.

Thanks,
Andy

Au contraire Andy. The best, most expandable 3d printer driver, klipper, 
uses nginx to build its control interface, apache2 was probably tested 
and found wanting. Most of this stuff is run on stm32 for the hardware 
interface, administered by klipper running on one of the better pi 
clones. rpi3b's generally are minimum but I'm using several 64 bit 
bpi-m5's for that.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: Looking for a qr code reader/displayer

2024-07-30 Thread gene heskett


On 7/30/24 07:12, gene heskett wrote:

On 7/29/24 21:57, Dan Ritter wrote:

gene heskett wrote:
Un-fortunately, in synaptic, only the first hit seems to have a 
displayable

screenshot. All the rest only have an empty box.

So assuming i'm missing the display things, what am I missing?

And assuming I could display them since the first hit seems to have a
screenshot, which seems to be random tree foliage why are the others 
a blank

box?

Using xfce as a desktop.  What do I need to make an $18 supermarket 
scanner

read these things for firefox?



The supermarket scanner might not be able to read QR codes; most
supermarkets use UPC and similar 1 dimensional bar codes.

The one I selecttd for 18$ claimed it red qr too, we shall see.


You can encode any text you want into a QR code and save it as
a PNG with the qrencode package.

If you want other barcode formats, the zint package handles
almost all of them, including QR.

You can display the QR code in a terminal with the qrterminal
package -- no X11 or Wayland required.

If you want an X11 program to create and display QR codes,
the qreator package does all of that.

-dsr-

This one gives a menu in icons, look like it will work, but reading them 
before clicking would be the main interest.  Thank you a lot.

.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: Looking for a qr code reader/displayer

2024-07-30 Thread gene heskett


On 7/29/24 21:57, Dan Ritter wrote:

gene heskett wrote:

Un-fortunately, in synaptic, only the first hit seems to have a displayable
screenshot. All the rest only have an empty box.

So assuming i'm missing the display things, what am I missing?

And assuming I could display them since the first hit seems to have a
screenshot, which seems to be random tree foliage why are the others a blank
box?

Using xfce as a desktop.  What do I need to make an $18 supermarket scanner
read these things for firefox?



The supermarket scanner might not be able to read QR codes; most
supermarkets use UPC and similar 1 dimensional bar codes.

You can encode any text you want into a QR code and save it as
a PNG with the qrencode package.

If you want other barcode formats, the zint package handles
almost all of them, including QR.

You can display the QR code in a terminal with the qrterminal
package -- no X11 or Wayland required.

If you want an X11 program to create and display QR codes,
the qreator package does all of that.

-dsr-

This one gives a menu in icons, look like it will work, but reading them 
before clicking would be the main interest.  Thank you a lot.

.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: Looking for a qr code reader/displayer


On 7/29/24 20:25, allan grossman wrote:


zbarcam-gtk or zbarcam-qt should get you where you need to be but I've 
never used them.


cheers -


Thanks Allan, qt version no dl perms, gtk installled but can't find in 
menu's. Might not show up till camera is plugged in & don''t have it 
yet.. Installed quite a list of new stuff, including kernel. should 
reboot. Later, after reboot.





*From:* gene heskett 
*Sent:* Monday, July 29, 2024 4:15 PM
*To:* debian-user@lists.debian.org 
*Subject:* Looking for a qr code reader/displayer
Un-fortunately, in synaptic, only the first hit seems to have a
displayable screenshot. All the rest only have an empty box.

So assuming i'm missing the display things, what am I missing?

And assuming I could display them since the first hit seems to have a
screenshot, which seems to be random tree foliage why are the others a
blank box?

I don't have a hellfone, don't intend to get one to get a camera sharp
enough to use...

Using xfce as a desktop.  What do I need to make an $18 supermarket
scanner read these things for firefox?

Thanks all.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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



Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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

Looking for a qr code reader/displayer

Un-fortunately, in synaptic, only the first hit seems to have a 
displayable screenshot. All the rest only have an empty box.


So assuming i'm missing the display things, what am I missing?

And assuming I could display them since the first hit seems to have a 
screenshot, which seems to be random tree foliage why are the others a 
blank box?


I don't have a hellfone, don't intend to get one to get a camera sharp 
enough to use...


Using xfce as a desktop.  What do I need to make an $18 supermarket 
scanner read these things for firefox?


Thanks all.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: Where is the user community? (Was Re: Strange behaviorofifupdownpackage)


On 7/29/24 04:47, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Mon, Jul 29, 2024 at 04:32:43AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

[...] I can't even post a 10k .png here.


I don't believe you. There sure is a limit, 10k seems too small.
It may have been bigger, its long forgotten but it was small and it was 
silently stripped.


It'd be unpolite anyway -- forcing 6k people to download your
attachments (there are still folks on limited bandwidth, y'know).

I'm on shentel's lowest cost account, phone and net. No tv. rooftop 
antenna.  100 gig a month which I only approached for 2 months, found 
the neighbor across the street was using my wifi to watch porn on his 
fone. Turned off the wifi so I'm using only a gig or 5 a month.



There is paste.debian.net for that: dump your cat vid there, include
a link in the mail, done.


That doesn't appear to be public knowledge, thank you


Complaining is always OK, but it is even more OK to do some research
before :-)

Cheers


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: Where is the user community? (Was Re: Strange behaviorofifupdown package)


On 7/29/24 03:53, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Sun, Jul 28, 2024 at 11:00:08PM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 7/28/24 22:02, Andy Smith wrote:

Discourse is not Discord. They are completely different pieces of
software made by different people with different purposes. You are
the first person to have mentioned Discord in this thread.


I am on the Discord list for klipper and other 3d printing friends. Its
generally good. We even get answers from the sw's authors. Solid,
knowledgeable answers. It can be a breath of fresh air.


I believe that you, now, are referring to Discourse installs, but
calling them Discord, which is only increasing people's confusion.

The icon on the opening firefox screen is self labeled Discord Andy, a 
one click login to the main menu. I can click on it, post a msg, and get 
a useful reply in less than 5 minutes elapsed time quite often. Not only 
that, but the usual method they use for trouble shooting involves 
posting the complete log from a current session of klipper, a log which 
can run to 15 megabytes, no problem because of the size. I can't even 
post a 10k .png here. Or a screen snap showing the problem in far more 
detail than I can describe and get called a liar for trying to describe 
it it text.  The last calendar I have is for 2024, why is debian still 
running on dialup rules from 1995?



Unless you actually *are* talking about the realtime chat service
(like IRC), which would be unusual for a software support community
but not unheard of (rsync recently switched to using Discord for
realtime chat, for example).

Thanks,
Andy



Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: Where is the user community? (Was Re: Strange behavior ofifupdown package)

2024-07-28 Thread gene heskett


On 7/28/24 22:02, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Sun, Jul 28, 2024 at 09:09:39PM -0400, Patrick Wiseman wrote:

I like this forum/format


Not wanting to try to convince people on a mailing list to not be on
a mailing list, so keeping this brief, but…


IMO Discord pretty much sucks.


Discourse is not Discord. They are completely different pieces of
software made by different people with different purposes. You are
the first person to have mentioned Discord in this thread.

Thanks,
Andy

I am on the Discord list for klipper and other 3d printing friends. Its 
generally good. We even get answers from the sw's authors. Solid, 
knowledgeable answers. It can be a breath of fresh air.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: why reliable linux hasn't gained more market share?


On 7/20/24 16:45, debian-u...@howorth.org.uk wrote:

Andy Smith  wrote:

Hi,

On Sat, Jul 20, 2024 at 11:54:06AM +0800, hlyg wrote:

crowdstrike makes news headlines, many Windows become blue screens

it is evident that many people around still use Windows

i wonder if linux is more reliable than Windows


For this specific issue, if Linux were used at the same scale and
for the same purposes as these affected Windows machines, then a
similar issue would affect Linux sooner or later.

The reason why this is the case is that the current motivation for
the use of Crowdstrike's software on those Windows machines would
be exactly the same if they were Linux machines, and so these
companies would do the same thing with the same end result.

In fact, Crowdstrike already made a similar mistake earlier this
year with one of their Linux solutions which resulted in end user
machines having a kernel panic. Debian stable end user machines. So
there is no practical difference between Crowdstrike+Windows and
Crowdstrike+Linux.

 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41005936

So then you might assume that the problem here is Crowdstrike's
incompetence and a better vendor would solve all problems. You would
be wrong, because the world is full to the brim with inept software
vendors and there is no real consequence for software failures.


It seems clear to me that what's needed is a change in the law. At the
moment here in the UK we have national news services explaining that
airline passengers won't be able to get compensation because the
'event' was outside the airline's control. That's clearly nonsense
since some airlines weren't affected so perhaps sense will eventually
prevail and the companies that have had problems will be held liable
for damages to their customers. But it would be better if they could
then sue Crowdstrike for installing the faulty update. (Perhaps they
can? I don't know, IANAL.) That might provide some incentive to improve
the systems and processes so problems like this don't occur again.

.
That bit of legaleze should have been addressed about the time NT3.51 
came out.  Maybe by now M$ would have been stung in the bank balance 
enough to have learned they will get caught out eventually. NT deleted 
the main OS library, and of coarse would not boot. I put the drive in 
another machine and poked around a bit, finally finding a file that was 
apparently part of the drives housekeeping but only called if a call to 
rand returned a certain date in the future which turned out to be about 
a day in the past. But it contained nothing in the way of a check to see 
if the file belonged to the os.  I called support, but had no 
registration for that copy because it was a bulk purchase by the 
network, and all the tv stations got was the machine pre-installed, the 
network had not given us the paper work. So I explained to M$ support 
and got called a pie rat by support. Screw M$ and the camel that rode in 
on them. I packed the drive in a padded box & handed it to the fedex 
driver. The network net guru reinstalled and overnighted it back. But 
while it was down, the lack of data to program our 7 meter C band dish 
cost us about 5k$ a day because we were not airing the commercials we 
were contracted to transmit.


So now you know why my hatred of M$ is very long term and incurable.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: why reliable linux hasn't gained more market share?


On 7/20/24 09:59, Hans wrote:

Hello,

well, the thing is: Do we really want to go to more market share?

Let's imagine, Debian becomes market relevant, what will happen? Sure, more
developers get paid, what is very nice. But not all developers will.

Many good developers will not be paid and when the market will rule things,
then many good developers will be pushed away or demoralied. Because it will
become common, that people will no more cherish theire work.

The development of a few people will be cherished, those, who create programs,
the market wants.

I am using linux since more than 30 years and it is impressive, what people
can do, when they can do, what they want and what they like.

And look at the quality, look, what has been created since the beginning. This
was only possible, because no market forced people, to do things the market
wants, not what the developers want.

I think, we all can be happy, that we are not dependent from any market, the
developers, because theire freedom and theire contentement is not been
deminished, and the users, who get very good and high qulitative software to
work with.

And if you really think, the more you spend, the better the software, you can
of course buy software only from the market.

Or, you can donate linux developers and/or distributors of your money.

Personally(!) I think, the second way is better, because I can speak directly
to developers, could (if I would be capable of) fix things myself together
with the developers and maybe can even ask him, to implenent some functions
especially for me.

All things, a market driven software will never offer.

So, I think, we can be happy, that linux (and debian) is not market relevant.
It will lose its freedom, its high quality and the joy of many people.

Sorry, if I did not always find the right expression, I am not native English.


And even you Hans, leave out the major, all encompassing, reason for the 
lack of market share, which is that most business that have a 
computerized system to run things also value what their MBA says.  And 
since there is no one to sue to cover their personal butt in case the 
system goes south like cloudflare has in the last 3 days, M$ & 
cloudflare are a brick and morter legal target they can sic the legal 
team onto.


Their is essentially no one in the linux arena to sue if things go 
south, so it doesn't take more than an eighth grade education to see why 
they won't ever recommend linux no matter how superior it may be at the 
end of a P&L report.  They have to have someone to sue.  Bill Shakespear 
said it best when he wrote "first, we kill all the lawyers." But MBA's 
had not yet crawled out of the slime schools yet, so he can't be blamed 
for not including MBA's when he wrote that famous phrase.


Best regards

Hans
  



.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: why reliable linux hasn't gained more market share?


On 7/20/24 09:58, Larry Martell wrote:

I’ve never owned a machine running windows in my life.
I've owned one. I needed a lappy I could use with a gps for roadmap, had 
the then new XP on it, cleared the disk a week later and put mandrake on 
it because XP had no drivers that could run the broadcom radio in it, 
should have been a free module update from hp. I don't think that 20 
years later there has ever been a driver for that particular radio that 
Just Works. The lappy has long since suicided. Typical hp chinese 
sourced stuff even before they sold it all to lenovo.


Now there are around 10 linux installs here, half running armbian, they 
get better uptimes than x86-64's.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: why reliable linux hasn't gained more market share?


On 7/20/24 04:28, Nicolas George wrote:

hlyg (12024-07-20):

Thank David! market share is important though it isn't "reliable
recommendation for quality": more users attract more programmers, who
develop more apps,


The programmers who are attracted by market share are not necessarily
the ones who are interested in developing quality and/or innovative
software, though.

If they were, you'd have support for software-defined radio signal
processing in FFmpeg, for example.

Which the current rules for such does not allow, by FCC edicts, only 
sealed FCC approved blobs are allowed to play in the rf field.

So don't blame the coders, blame the regukatory agencies.


Regards,



Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: Bug Report

2024-07-16 Thread gene heskett


On 7/16/24 02:06, Richard Bostrom wrote:

Bug in my opinion.

/etc/resolv.conf does not block out pornography


That is not its job.


Yours sincerely
Richardh Bostrom






Sent with Proton Mail <https://proton.me/> secure email.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: General questions

2024-07-08 Thread gene heskett


On 7/8/24 19:02, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Mon, Jul 08, 2024 at 06:08:49PM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 7/8/24 17:20, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Tue, Jul 09, 2024 at 12:15:00AM +0500, 타토카 wrote:

I mean subscriptions like this "debian-user"


The only cost associated with this mailing list is your sanity.


+1, Andy. Some of us get downright upset with the Karens that think they run
this all volunteer show. I've unfortunately come to the conclusion they are
best ignored. Generally, they don't seem to be members of a civil society,
or to be able to learn how to treat their fellow man. Your monitoring, and
howto corrections are much appreciated, thank you.


Thanks,
Andy





All contributions by any Andy gratefully received on this list. There
are also all sorts of people contributing to - and reading - this list.
Sometimes, even the worst of the passers by and trolls improve.

Please don't stoop to characterising others too readily as you might
dissuade somebody from contributing who could be really valuable.


All quite true Andy. But you may have noted that I only speak up from 
personal experience from having done it myself, not always in the 
approved way.



All the very best, as ever,

Andy
(amaca...@debian.org)


Take care & stay well, Andy.



Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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



.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: General questions

2024-07-08 Thread gene heskett


On 7/8/24 17:20, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Tue, Jul 09, 2024 at 12:15:00AM +0500, 타토카 wrote:

I mean subscriptions like this "debian-user"


The only cost associated with this mailing list is your sanity.

+1, Andy. Some of us get downright upset with the Karens that think they 
run this all volunteer show. I've unfortunately come to the conclusion 
they are best ignored. Generally, they don't seem to be members of a 
civil society, or to be able to learn how to treat their fellow man. 
Your monitoring, and howto corrections are much appreciated, thank you.



Thanks,
Andy



Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: usb => serial port converter

2024-07-07 Thread gene heskett


On 7/7/24 18:02, Lee wrote:

What's everybody using for a usb => serial port converter?

I got a new network switch and .. OhNoes!! how to I talk to the darn thing???

I went looking thru cabinets and came up with a keyspan usb -> serial
dongle; a quick search found the site with driver downloads, but they
all were for Windows or MacOS.  I tried plugging the dongle into my
debian laptop but it didn't recognize it :(

So... what are people using to talk to serial devices now that PCs
don't come with serial ports anymore?

And what program are you using to talk to something over the serial
link?  pterm or something else?

I still have a Windows machine, so install the drivers, configure
putty to talk to COM4 & I'm good to go.  But I'm trying to get *away*
from Windows.  How do I talk to my switch over the serial port?
See if you can find a usb-232 from FDTI. And keep looking if you see a 
Prolific, its not very good.


Thanks,
Lee

.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: how2 format a flash drive

2024-07-01 Thread gene heskett


On 7/1/24 23:41, Stefan Monnier wrote:

In the more general case, telemetry is not in itself
considered 'evil'.


I consider it evil if it's opt-out rather than opt-in.


 Stefan

I think that highly depends on what that telemetry is sending. Crash 
reports, yes, contents of a list of phone numbers it found, not no, but 
hell no! Ditto for passwords and such.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: System time/timezone, was Re: Maximum size .bash_aliases file

2024-06-23 Thread gene heskett


On 6/23/24 09:23, e...@gmx.us wrote:

On 6/23/24 02:30, gene heskett wrote:

A attribute the FCC forced on broadcasters as they like to see 
transmitter
logs kept in 24 hour time. I got so used to it that when I retired in 
2002,
I'd been on 24 hour time for 40 years and didn't convert back to two 
12 hour

periods a day.


I started using 24 hour time in junior high school with digital watches.  I
just thought it made more sense, especially for setting alarms.  Several
decades later I've not seen any reason to change, though it annoys my wife.

Digital watches were much later, not arriving till the later 70's, and 
may have bothered my wives. but not enough to start a discussion over. 
One could say tongue in cheek, that I've had the ultimate revenge, 
outliving 3 of them now. Position open, must be able hold my coffee 
while watching something I'm doing.

--
"Hear Me, for I am The Lord. I have seen your browser history, and am
wroth before it. Thus I shall strike down from the heavens a mighty blast,
and lo, [thou] shalt no longer have access to the naughty pictures."
sudo sudo The Book of Support, Chap 404 -- Osiris32 on TFTS

.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: System time/timezone, was Re: Maximum size .bash_aliases file

2024-06-22 Thread gene heskett


On 6/23/24 01:35, Keith Bainbridge wrote:


On 23/6/24 14:25, David Wright wrote:

On Sun 23 Jun 2024 at 12:52:55 (+1000), Keith Bainbridge wrote:

Have you ever pondered why the 'international date line' is so 
convoluted?


Only on the odd occasion when an area decides to cross it, for
whatever reason. Like Samoa recently. And before that, the
creation of Pacific/Kiritimati (+14:00), which became a press
story at the start of the new millennium.



+14:00??   I've only ever heard of maxima of +/- 12:00.   But see below

A attribute the FCC forced on broadcasters as they like to see 
transmitter logs kept in 24 hour time. I got so used to it that when I 
retired in 2002, I'd been on 24 hour time for 40 years and didn't 
convert back to two 12 hour periods a day.  The AM/PM convention. So 
when I say its 22:30, its 10:30 PM to the neighbors next door.



As for odd time zones, we have a narrow one, somewhere between the
West Australian border (with Sth Aust) and the first notable town on
the road West - Norseman. It's 45 mins different from Sth Aust and the
a further 45 mins to main stream West Aust.  There might be 10,000
people live within it.


$ TZ=Pacific/Kiritamati date; TZ=Australia/Eucla date
Sun Jun 23 04:24:54 Pacific 2024
Sun Jun 23 13:09:54 +0845 2024
$



So Eucla: Sun Jun 23 13:09:54 would be UTC: Sun Jun 23 04:24:54
How do we get that time in the middle of the Pacific? Surely it would be 
Sat Jun22 18:24:54



And then I see a LOT of discussion on my suggestion about how MUA format 
the send time when people reply. I'll get back to that later.



Cheers,
David.





Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: Maximum size .bash_aliases file

2024-06-17 Thread gene heskett


On 6/17/24 04:26, Keith Bainbridge wrote:


On 16/6/24 23:50, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Sun, Jun 16, 2024 at 06:13:36PM +1000, Keith Bainbridge wrote:


It was late afternoon on 16Jun2024 that I wrote this. Possibly 18:13:36 
when I pressed send. I'd reckon it would likely have been 08:13:36 UTC 
  What's wrong with my system clock. I've not really looked at the time 
on my originals before.  I'll try to remember to enter my local time as 
I press send


You are not running an ntp client? I do, and in turn I am a stratum 2 
server for most of my other machines here. So my system is withing a 
millisecond of the atomic clocks in Colorado Springs. It's no big deal. 
use ntpsec if up 24/7, or chrony if you shut down. ntpsec works if 
already in time but can't slam to the correct time if not synchronized, 
chrony can sync after long downtimes.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: "Repeaters", etc.

2024-06-12 Thread gene heskett


On 6/12/24 10:07, mick.crane wrote:

On 2024-05-29 16:08, gene heskett wrote:


Except at the service. Properly wired, the neutral and static grounds
are bonded ONLY in the service box. I am constantly amazed at the
people who call themselves electricians, who think the static ground
and the neutral are interchangeable just because they are bonded at
the service.

AIUI the distribution neutral is hammered into the ground at the 
substation/generator.
Some electricians say you don't need the earth, another explained it is 
necessary to locally drive a conductor into the ground and attach the 
earth to that in case something happens to the distribution neutral the 
electric has somewhere to go to trip a relay in the house.

mick
.
And here in the USA, the NEC demands two ground rods separated by enough 
distance it actually is two good grounds. I have had zero problems since 
making it so in 2008 as I was building a garage on the end of the house 
and upgrading the service from a 60 amp pushmatic to a 200 amp SQD. The 
house is still a 60 but is a subcircuit now.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: about 10th new install of bullseye

2024-06-09 Thread gene heskett


On 6/9/24 08:52, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Sun, Jun 09, 2024 at 02:14:14AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

orca is gone, as is gnome. Apt and synaptic refuse to re-install gnome w/o
dragging in orca too. Good night, whats left of it, Tom.


The "gnome" metapackage depends on "orca".  It's a direct dependency.

hobbit:~$ apt-cache show gnome | grep Depends:
Depends: gnome-core (= 1:43+1), desktop-base, libproxy1-plugin-networkmanager, network-manager-gnome (>= 1.8), cheese (>= 3.38), 
file-roller (>= 3.38), gnome-calendar (>= 3.38), gnome-clocks (>= 3.38), gnome-color-manager (>= 3.36), gnome-maps (>= 3.38), 
gnome-music (>= 3.36), shotwell | gnome-photos (>= 3.36), gnome-weather (>= 3.36), orca (>= 3.38), rygel-playbin (>= 0.36), 
rygel-tracker (>= 0.36), simple-scan (>= 3.36), avahi-daemon, evolution (>= 3.36), gnome-sound-recorder, gnome-tweaks (>= 3.30), 
libgsf-bin, libreoffice-gnome, libreoffice-writer, libreoffice-calc, libreoffice-impress, rhythmbox (>= 3.0), seahorse (>= 3.36), 
xdg-user-dirs-gtk, cups-pk-helper (>= 0.2), evolution-plugins (>= 3.36), gstreamer1.0-libav (>= 1.10), gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly (>= 
1.10), rhythmbox-plugins, rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder, totem-plugins

So I ran the above apt-cache show, writing it to /tmp/gnome-deps, then 
removed orca from that list and saved it over itself.


I am freshly rebooted, nothing is running but this tbird and ntpsec as 
this machine is a stratum 3 server to most of the other machines here. 
I have a few bash's running but no local network has been started so the 
system is relatively clean.


So I have a comma separated list of deps w/o orca, in /tmp/gnome-deps. 
whats next?




hobbit:~$ apt-cache show gnome | grep Depends: | grep -oP 'orca.*?,'
orca (>= 3.38),

I've spelled out for you step by step how to build your own replacement
for "gnome" which lacks this dependency.  You've ignored that.

Not totally, but studying the equiv docs (the README) is leaving me 
puzzled.  Your list above, leaving out orca looks like a good starting 
point but is a lot of typing. I just had a lockup & had a 30 second lag 
like launching shotwell gives before the reset button even cleared the 
screen to start the reboot.



Others have suggested steps for disabling/reconfiguring orca without
removing it.  You haven't tried that path either.

That I finally figured out 9 months or so back up the log, so I didn't 
pursue it further.



You just keep repeating the same steps over and over and expecting a
different result.

.

Thanks Greg.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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

weekly crash

2024-06-09 Thread gene heskett

This lockup was different. System totally froze, clock stopped too while 
scrolling a long message from the coco mailing list using tbird. Gave it 
a 5 second tap on the reset button but the reset was delayed by the 30 
second lag before it cleared the screen and dropped into the bios to 
reboot. Running normally for this system after the reboot.


Data point? DIIK.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: about 10th new install of bullseye

2024-06-08 Thread gene heskett


On 6/8/24 19:11, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/7/24 23:41, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/7/24 20:38, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/6/24 23:14, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/6/24 19:00, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/5/24 19:53, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/5/24 17:25, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/5/24 08:58, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/5/24 02:05, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/4/24 04:26, gene heskett wrote:

On 2/19/22 06:31, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

Hi Gene,

If this was someone calling you from a TV station saying they 
had a TV
transmitter that was varying in power output - you'd have a 
mental checklist.
You'd get down there, perhaps schedule some sort of power 
down / reduced
power operation and then you'd check - power supplies, feeder 
cables, hot
spots on cables - whatever. Divide and conquer- working back 
to a baseline

of known working conditions and eliminating causes.

My suggestion to you of a reinstall is partly designed to get 
you out of this
"X happens, I did Y, now I've got Z" - to get to a known 
initial state.


Take out all the serial converters to UPS, lathe and so on. 
Wireless keyboard
doesn't present as serial in the same way that brltty does - 
if it did, I'd

have brltty with every install on this laptop.

Copy off your home directory as you did before - maybe using 
tar.gz and preserving permissions. Start with the .iso that 
includes firmware - the unofficial one.


Build back slowly - do an expert text mode install if you 
can. Then add your
Trinity desktop - I don't think any of us can help you there, 
since we don't

run trinity.

Check and you should find that brltty isn't installed at all. 
Then re-add thingsgradually until you have the working system 
you want. Document it - write down

the steps you take / copy configuration files you change.

That will also reveal logging / login slowdowns or whatever 
caused by

individual devices as you add them back. Keep a list as you go.

That's the counsel of perfection: alternatively:

apt rdepends brltty gives me:

me@mymachine:~$ apt rdepends brltty
brltty
Reverse Depends:
   Suggests: speechd-el (>= 3.7.2)
   Depends: brltty-espeak (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Suggests: orca
   Depends: brltty-x11 (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-speechd (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-flite (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)

You could try apt-get remove (or equivalent) on each of those 
packages and
see if that clears it. I _know_ this is frustrating as all 
get out for you
but a clear approach, written down so that you can remember 
where you got

to will be very helpful.


Any attempt to remove cura or brltty, removes gnome leaving me I 
assume with a text only system by the time gnome takes all its 
dependency's with it.  Thanks Tom.


Have you actually tried uninstalling brltty only, as a separate 
action from all others?


I have a number of gnome installations, unfortunately for this 
discussion all bookworm. None of them has brltty.


I have a few installations of bullseye and an older stretch 
installation, but none with gnome installed. On all of them, 
though, "apt-rdepends -r gnome" fails to list brltty as a gnome 
dependency. And on the bookworm systems, simulated installation 
of gnome ("apt install -s gnome") shows brltty as a suggested 
package only and would not install it along with gnome; on the 
stretch system, gnome installation makes no reference at all to 
brltty.


While I have both with only the radio buttons for keyboard and 
rodent plugged into usb at install time. I have only one wired 
keyboard and no wired mice as I've had a lightning strike on the 
pole that serves this house reach up and tap me by way of my 
fingers on the keyboard. Wasn't that much of a tap, I've been 
tapped a lot harder that that, hard enough to trigger a 6 month 
round of shingles and the burns were months healing. And in this 
case did not damage the keyboard or computer, but I did get the 
message. I've had many strikes on that pole since I built a garage 
on the end of the house, which caused me to install a 200 amp 
service and bring my grounding specs up to NEC. Zero problems 
since then (2008)


Is it possible you have apt settings that automatically pull in 
suggested packages, and that is interfering with attempts to 
remove brltty? I am not expert enough wrt apt and its relatives 
to know whether that even makes sense, and it seems a bit far 
fetched if maybe barely possible.


Maybe if you post the output from "apt-rdepends -r brltty" and 
"apt purge --simulate brltty" it will be informative.


Neither of those utils are installed. Should they be?


apt should be installed. As far as I know it has been included by 
default in the Debian base system as the preferred command line 
package management program since buster or earlier. I have never 
had to install it. You probably should if it is missing.


apt-rdepends is at least partly red

Re: about 10th new install of bullseye

2024-06-08 Thread gene heskett


On 6/8/24 18:02, David Christensen wrote:

On 6/8/24 12:13, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/8/24 03:22, David Christensen wrote:
If you installed VirtualBox on your Debian primary workstation, you 
could create one Debian VM for each of your engineering/ 
manufacturing apps.  This would give each app a clean Debian VM for 
installation, prevent apps from fighting each other, and prevent apps 
from modifying your base Debian installation.


It is quite rare that a snap, appimage, or venv needs anything from 
the system. Memory or storage is generally done at whatever venv is 
started as the user. That venv equ is generally what they all claim to 
do. I see your reticence to make use of them as a restriction.



My suggestion is a variation of the "divide and conquer" troubleshooting 
strategy.



I am not familiar with snap, appimage, or venv.  Regardless of the 
software distribution mechanism, I expect that each app is developed and 
tested against a list of supported OS's and releases using VM's.  If you 
provide each app with its own VM containing a supported OS and release, 
the app should install and work correctly.  And, your base Debian 
installation should remain stable.


That it is not, locking up about every 10 days switching workspaces, 
locking with what would be horizontal synch bar in an NTSC system, 
frozen at some random location on the screen. Mouse pointer is alive and 
moves with the mouse, but buttons are inactive, Cycle the power or press 
the front panel reset for 4+ seconds to reboot. I've also asked about 
that several times, without a reply. Memtest86, V9.4 says my 32Gigs is 
clean. Video is built into the mainboard, Intel of some sort I believe. 
Compared to the other problem I have, fixing this is not a very high 
priority. But I need sleep, so good night.  Take care & stay well, David.>

David

.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: about 10th new install of bullseye

2024-06-08 Thread gene heskett


On 6/8/24 03:22, David Christensen wrote:

On 6/7/24 22:41, gene heskett wrote:
I OTOH, have found AppImages a good way to get uptodate, and keep 
uptodate, packages like OpenSCAD, FreeCAD and the miriad 3d slicers, 
most of which do a new AppImage in the first week of the month. So the 
OpenSCAD I'm running is nearly 4 years newer than the repo version, 
and probably 20x faster.



I have found that installing software on Debian by any means other than 
official Debian packages is a recipe for disaster.



I sometimes write Perl code that runs as root.  I use VirtualBox and do 
my development and testing on virtual machines.  Oracle provides Debian 
packages and integrates with sources.list(5) and apt-get(8).  See 
"Debian-based Linux distributions":


https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads


If you installed VirtualBox on your Debian primary workstation, you 
could create one Debian VM for each of your engineering/ manufacturing 
apps.  This would give each app a clean Debian VM for installation, 
prevent apps from fighting each other, and prevent apps from modifying 
your base Debian installation.



David

It is quite rare that a snap, appimage, or venv needs anything from the 
system. Memory or storage is generally done at whatever venv is started 
as the user. That venv equ is generally what they all claim to do. I see 
your reticence to make use of them as a restriction.

.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: about 10th new install of bullseye


On 6/7/24 20:38, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/6/24 23:14, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/6/24 19:00, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/5/24 19:53, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/5/24 17:25, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/5/24 08:58, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/5/24 02:05, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/4/24 04:26, gene heskett wrote:

On 2/19/22 06:31, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

Hi Gene,

If this was someone calling you from a TV station saying they 
had a TV
transmitter that was varying in power output - you'd have a 
mental checklist.
You'd get down there, perhaps schedule some sort of power down 
/ reduced
power operation and then you'd check - power supplies, feeder 
cables, hot
spots on cables - whatever. Divide and conquer- working back to 
a baseline

of known working conditions and eliminating causes.

My suggestion to you of a reinstall is partly designed to get 
you out of this
"X happens, I did Y, now I've got Z" - to get to a known 
initial state.


Take out all the serial converters to UPS, lathe and so on. 
Wireless keyboard
doesn't present as serial in the same way that brltty does - if 
it did, I'd

have brltty with every install on this laptop.

Copy off your home directory as you did before - maybe using 
tar.gz and preserving permissions. Start with the .iso that 
includes firmware - the unofficial one.


Build back slowly - do an expert text mode install if you can. 
Then add your
Trinity desktop - I don't think any of us can help you there, 
since we don't

run trinity.

Check and you should find that brltty isn't installed at all. 
Then re-add thingsgradually until you have the working system 
you want. Document it - write down

the steps you take / copy configuration files you change.

That will also reveal logging / login slowdowns or whatever 
caused by

individual devices as you add them back. Keep a list as you go.

That's the counsel of perfection: alternatively:

apt rdepends brltty gives me:

me@mymachine:~$ apt rdepends brltty
brltty
Reverse Depends:
   Suggests: speechd-el (>= 3.7.2)
   Depends: brltty-espeak (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Suggests: orca
   Depends: brltty-x11 (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-speechd (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-flite (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)

You could try apt-get remove (or equivalent) on each of those 
packages and
see if that clears it. I _know_ this is frustrating as all get 
out for you
but a clear approach, written down so that you can remember 
where you got

to will be very helpful.


Any attempt to remove cura or brltty, removes gnome leaving me I 
assume with a text only system by the time gnome takes all its 
dependency's with it.  Thanks Tom.


Have you actually tried uninstalling brltty only, as a separate 
action from all others?


I have a number of gnome installations, unfortunately for this 
discussion all bookworm. None of them has brltty.


I have a few installations of bullseye and an older stretch 
installation, but none with gnome installed. On all of them, 
though, "apt-rdepends -r gnome" fails to list brltty as a gnome 
dependency. And on the bookworm systems, simulated installation of 
gnome ("apt install -s gnome") shows brltty as a suggested package 
only and would not install it along with gnome; on the stretch 
system, gnome installation makes no reference at all to brltty.


While I have both with only the radio buttons for keyboard and 
rodent plugged into usb at install time. I have only one wired 
keyboard and no wired mice as I've had a lightning strike on the 
pole that serves this house reach up and tap me by way of my fingers 
on the keyboard. Wasn't that much of a tap, I've been tapped a lot 
harder that that, hard enough to trigger a 6 month round of shingles 
and the burns were months healing. And in this case did not damage 
the keyboard or computer, but I did get the message. I've had many 
strikes on that pole since I built a garage on the end of the house, 
which caused me to install a 200 amp service and bring my grounding 
specs up to NEC. Zero problems since then (2008)


Is it possible you have apt settings that automatically pull in 
suggested packages, and that is interfering with attempts to remove 
brltty? I am not expert enough wrt apt and its relatives to know 
whether that even makes sense, and it seems a bit far fetched if 
maybe barely possible.


Maybe if you post the output from "apt-rdepends -r brltty" and "apt 
purge --simulate brltty" it will be informative.


Neither of those utils are installed. Should they be?


apt should be installed. As far as I know it has been included by 
default in the Debian base system as the preferred command line 
package management program since buster or earlier. I have never had 
to install it. You probably should if it is missing.


apt-rdepends is at least partly redundant with apt.
The command "apt-rdepends -r ", and "apt rd

Re: about 10th new install of bullseye


On 6/7/24 18:12, David Christensen wrote:

On 6/6/24 22:14, gene heskett wrote:
In experimenting I've found a name clash, there are appprently two 
orca's. one is a speech synth, one is a slicer for 3d printers I don't 
use. Typing orca in a shell locks the shell wo any output, for several 
minutes but comes back to a prompt with a ctl-c, so I've NDC which was 
being executed. Whatevver, the installation is quite voluminous:

gene@coyote:~/AppImages$ locate orca |wc -l
1560

So I took orca out, which took gnome out. But now gnomes dependencies 
will put orca back in. So now I can't run autoremove. So one more time 
this broken damned bookworm install has bit me in a rear.


No Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.



Here are my installation notes from when I migrated my daily driver from 
Debian 9 to Debian 11.  It has orca, and orca has never bothered me:


January 9, 2022

1.  Wipe Intel SSD 520 Series 60 GB drive in Intel DQ67SW.  Insert
     debian-11.2.0-amd64-netinst USB flash drive into USB 3.0 port
     adjacent Gigabit port. Boot:

 Debian GNU/Linux installer menu (BIOS mode)
     install
 Language    C
 Continent or region    North America
 Country, territory or area    United States
 Keymap to use    American English
 Hostname    laalaa
 Domain name    tracy.holgerdanske.com
 Root password    
 Re-enter password    
 Full name for new user    debian
 Username for your account    debian
 Choose a password    
 Re-enter password    
 Select your time zone    Pacific
 Partitioning method    Manual
   Select a partition...    SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 60.0 GB ATA INTEL 
SSDSC2CW06

     Create partition table    Yes
   Select a partition...    pri/log 60.0 GB FREE SPACE
     Create a new partition
   New partition size    1 GB
   Type    Primary
   Location    Beginning
   Partition settings
     Use as    Ext4 journaling file system
     Mount point    /boot
     Mount options    defaults
     Label    laalaa_boot
     Reserved blocks    5%
     Typical usage    standard
     Bootable flag    on
     Done setting up the partition
   Select a partition...    pri/log 59.0 GB FREE SPACE
     Create a new partition
   New partition size    1 GB
   Type    Primary
   Location    Beginning
   Partition settings
     Use as    physical volume for encryption
     Encryption method    Device-mapper (dm-crypt)
     Encryption    aes
     Key size    256
     IV algorithm    xts-plain64
     Encryption key    Random key
     Erase data    no
     Bootable flag    off
     Done setting up the partition
   Select a partition...    pri/log 58.0 GB FREE SPACE
     Create a new partition
   New partition size    13 GB
   Type    Primary
   Location    Beginning
   Partition settings
     Use as    physical volume for encryption
     Encryption method    Device-mapper (dm-crypt)
     Encryption    aes
     Key size    256
     IV algorithm    xts-plain64
     Encryption key    Passphrase
     Erase data    no
     Bootable flag    off
     Done setting up the partition
   Configure encrypted volumes
     Write the changes to disk    Yes
     Encryption configuration    Create encrypted volumes
     Devices to encrypt
   [*] /dev/sda2 (1000MB; crypto)
   [*] /dev/sda3 (13000MB; crypt)
     Continue
     Encryption configuration    Finish
     Encryption passphrase    
     Re-enter passphrase    
   Select a partition...    #1 13.0 GB f ext4
     Partition settings
   Use as    Ext4 journaling file system
   Mount point    /
   Mount options    defaults
   Label    laalaa_root
   Reserved blocks    5%
   Typical usage    standard
   Done setting up the partition
   Finish partitioning and write changes to disk
     Write the changes to disks    Yes
 Debian archive mirror country    United States
 Debian archive mirror    deb.debian.org
 HTTP proxy information    
 Package usage survey    No
 Choose software    Debian desktop environment
     Xfce
     SSH server
     standard system utiilties
 Device for boot loader installation
     /dev/sdb (ata-INTEL_SSDSC2CW060A3_)
 Installation complete    Continue

     Push and hold power button at POST; re

Re: about 10th new install of bullseye


On 6/7/24 14:15, mick.crane wrote:

On 2024-06-07 12:32, gene heskett wrote:


Where did you get that beta trixie installer? bookworm does not allow
that removal of orca without also removing gnome. brltty yes, but not
orca.


I don't think I've got any gnome stuff.
here probably.
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/amd64/iso-dvd/
mick

.

Got it, thanks mick.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: about 10th new install of bullseye


On 6/7/24 07:16, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Fri, Jun 07, 2024 at 01:14:16AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

In experimenting I've found a name clash, there are appprently two orca's.
one is a speech synth, one is a slicer for 3d printers I don't use.


Oh!  That sounds super relevant.


I forgot to mention the speech synth is "orca", the slicer is "Orca"


If you're not using the second one, where did it come from?  If it's
interfering with your desktop environment, but you're not using it,
maybe you can get rid of it.


An AppImage, rm it.


That would be one solution path to explore.  The other... you're already
exploring, so see below.


Typing
orca in a shell locks the shell wo any output, for several minutes but comes
back to a prompt with a ctl-c, so I've NDC which was being executed.


"type orca" will tell you what the shell has chosen.

"type -a orca" will tell you all the places the shell sees it, in order.


So I took orca out, which took gnome out. But now gnomes dependencies will
put orca back in. So now I can't run autoremove.


Install "equivs".  Read its documentation.  Read it a second time,
because it's probably too subtle to get all at once.

Pick one of the example templates (mail-transport-agent is the smallest,
so I'd use that one), make a copy of it, and modify the copy.  Get rid of
the Provides and Conflicts, and replace them with a Depends: line that's
identical to the one from "gnome", except get rid of orca.  Change the
Package name and the Description to be something meaningful to you.

I'd suggest the name gene-gnome because it's a fun pun.

Build your new .deb which depends on all the parts of GNOME except for
orca.  Install it with dpkg -i.

Since the gnome Depends: line has versioned dependencies, your custom
replacement probably won't survive a dist-upgrade, so be prepared to
undo and redo this hack when you upgrade to a new version of Debian.

.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: about 10th new install of bullseye


On 6/7/24 07:16, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Fri, Jun 07, 2024 at 01:14:16AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

In experimenting I've found a name clash, there are appprently two orca's.
one is a speech synth, one is a slicer for 3d printers I don't use.


Oh!  That sounds super relevant.

If you're not using the second one, where did it come from?  If it's
interfering with your desktop environment, but you're not using it,
maybe you can get rid of it.

That would be one solution path to explore.  The other... you're already
exploring, so see below.


Typing
orca in a shell locks the shell wo any output, for several minutes but comes
back to a prompt with a ctl-c, so I've NDC which was being executed.


"type orca" will tell you what the shell has chosen.

"type -a orca" will tell you all the places the shell sees it, in order.


So I took orca out, which took gnome out. But now gnomes dependencies will
put orca back in. So now I can't run autoremove.


Install "equivs".  Read its documentation.  Read it a second time,
because it's probably too subtle to get all at once.


Where are the docs, it doesn't come with a manpage? Buried someplace in 
/usr/share/docs? Found it, instructs are in the README-Debian file but 
quite sparse.  Looks like it could work however. Needs more 
coffee...Lots more.


Thanks.


Pick one of the example templates (mail-transport-agent is the smallest,
so I'd use that one), make a copy of it, and modify the copy.  Get rid of
the Provides and Conflicts, and replace them with a Depends: line that's
identical to the one from "gnome", except get rid of orca.  Change the
Package name and the Description to be something meaningful to you.

I'd suggest the name gene-gnome because it's a fun pun.


Interesting. and something I've not tried on x86-64 machines. I do build 
stuff on the arm64, but this looks different from making a buildbot or 
rt kernel.


Build your new .deb which depends on all the parts of GNOME except for
orca.  Install it with dpkg -i.

Since the gnome Depends: line has versioned dependencies, your custom
replacement probably won't survive a dist-upgrade, so be prepared to
undo and redo this hack when you upgrade to a new version of Debian.


Noted but short term memory will probably fail.

Thank you Greg.

.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: about 10th new install of bullseye


On 6/7/24 04:33, mick.crane wrote:

On 2024-06-07 06:14, gene heskett wrote:


So I took orca out, which took gnome out. But now gnomes dependencies
will put orca back in. So now I can't run autoremove. So one more time
this broken damned bookworm install has bit me in a rear.

I delayed logging in after starting the PC some time ago when a voice 
boomed out the keys I was typing.

"What the.."
Reading this thread I purged orca and brltty on trixie and everything 
still seems to be working.

mick

.
Where did you get that beta trixie installer? bookworm does not allow 
that removal of orca without also removing gnome. brltty yes, but not orca.


Thanks mick.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: about 10th new install of bullseye

2024-06-06 Thread gene heskett


On 6/6/24 19:00, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/5/24 19:53, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/5/24 17:25, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/5/24 08:58, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/5/24 02:05, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/4/24 04:26, gene heskett wrote:

On 2/19/22 06:31, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

Hi Gene,

If this was someone calling you from a TV station saying they had 
a TV
transmitter that was varying in power output - you'd have a 
mental checklist.
You'd get down there, perhaps schedule some sort of power down / 
reduced
power operation and then you'd check - power supplies, feeder 
cables, hot
spots on cables - whatever. Divide and conquer- working back to a 
baseline

of known working conditions and eliminating causes.

My suggestion to you of a reinstall is partly designed to get you 
out of this
"X happens, I did Y, now I've got Z" - to get to a known initial 
state.


Take out all the serial converters to UPS, lathe and so on. 
Wireless keyboard
doesn't present as serial in the same way that brltty does - if 
it did, I'd

have brltty with every install on this laptop.

Copy off your home directory as you did before - maybe using 
tar.gz and preserving permissions. Start with the .iso that 
includes firmware - the unofficial one.


Build back slowly - do an expert text mode install if you can. 
Then add your
Trinity desktop - I don't think any of us can help you there, 
since we don't

run trinity.

Check and you should find that brltty isn't installed at all. 
Then re-add thingsgradually until you have the working system you 
want. Document it - write down

the steps you take / copy configuration files you change.

That will also reveal logging / login slowdowns or whatever 
caused by

individual devices as you add them back. Keep a list as you go.

That's the counsel of perfection: alternatively:

apt rdepends brltty gives me:

me@mymachine:~$ apt rdepends brltty
brltty
Reverse Depends:
   Suggests: speechd-el (>= 3.7.2)
   Depends: brltty-espeak (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Suggests: orca
   Depends: brltty-x11 (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-speechd (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-flite (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)

You could try apt-get remove (or equivalent) on each of those 
packages and
see if that clears it. I _know_ this is frustrating as all get 
out for you
but a clear approach, written down so that you can remember where 
you got

to will be very helpful.


Any attempt to remove cura or brltty, removes gnome leaving me I 
assume with a text only system by the time gnome takes all its 
dependency's with it.  Thanks Tom.


Have you actually tried uninstalling brltty only, as a separate 
action from all others?


I have a number of gnome installations, unfortunately for this 
discussion all bookworm. None of them has brltty.


I have a few installations of bullseye and an older stretch 
installation, but none with gnome installed. On all of them, though, 
"apt-rdepends -r gnome" fails to list brltty as a gnome dependency. 
And on the bookworm systems, simulated installation of gnome ("apt 
install -s gnome") shows brltty as a suggested package only and would 
not install it along with gnome; on the stretch system, gnome 
installation makes no reference at all to brltty.


While I have both with only the radio buttons for keyboard and rodent 
plugged into usb at install time. I have only one wired keyboard and 
no wired mice as I've had a lightning strike on the pole that serves 
this house reach up and tap me by way of my fingers on the keyboard. 
Wasn't that much of a tap, I've been tapped a lot harder that that, 
hard enough to trigger a 6 month round of shingles and the burns were 
months healing. And in this case did not damage the keyboard or 
computer, but I did get the message. I've had many strikes on that 
pole since I built a garage on the end of the house, which caused me 
to install a 200 amp service and bring my grounding specs up to NEC. 
Zero problems since then (2008)


Is it possible you have apt settings that automatically pull in 
suggested packages, and that is interfering with attempts to remove 
brltty? I am not expert enough wrt apt and its relatives to know 
whether that even makes sense, and it seems a bit far fetched if 
maybe barely possible.


Maybe if you post the output from "apt-rdepends -r brltty" and "apt 
purge --simulate brltty" it will be informative.


Neither of those utils are installed. Should they be?


apt should be installed. As far as I know it has been included by 
default in the Debian base system as the preferred command line package 
management program since buster or earlier. I have never had to install 
it. You probably should if it is missing.


apt-rdepends is at least partly redundant with apt.
The command "apt-rdepends -r ", and "apt rdepends 
" both show reverse dependencies of ; the 
latter also shows su

Re: about 10th new install of bullseye

2024-06-06 Thread gene heskett


On 6/6/24 17:57, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/5/24 19:53, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/5/24 17:25, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/5/24 08:58, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/5/24 02:05, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/4/24 04:26, gene heskett wrote:

On 2/19/22 06:31, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

Hi Gene,

If this was someone calling you from a TV station saying they had 
a TV
transmitter that was varying in power output - you'd have a 
mental checklist.
You'd get down there, perhaps schedule some sort of power down / 
reduced
power operation and then you'd check - power supplies, feeder 
cables, hot
spots on cables - whatever. Divide and conquer- working back to a 
baseline

of known working conditions and eliminating causes.

My suggestion to you of a reinstall is partly designed to get you 
out of this
"X happens, I did Y, now I've got Z" - to get to a known initial 
state.


Take out all the serial converters to UPS, lathe and so on. 
Wireless keyboard
doesn't present as serial in the same way that brltty does - if 
it did, I'd

have brltty with every install on this laptop.

Copy off your home directory as you did before - maybe using 
tar.gz and preserving permissions. Start with the .iso that 
includes firmware - the unofficial one.


Build back slowly - do an expert text mode install if you can. 
Then add your
Trinity desktop - I don't think any of us can help you there, 
since we don't

run trinity.

Check and you should find that brltty isn't installed at all. 
Then re-add thingsgradually until you have the working system you 
want. Document it - write down

the steps you take / copy configuration files you change.

That will also reveal logging / login slowdowns or whatever 
caused by

individual devices as you add them back. Keep a list as you go.

That's the counsel of perfection: alternatively:

apt rdepends brltty gives me:

me@mymachine:~$ apt rdepends brltty
brltty
Reverse Depends:
   Suggests: speechd-el (>= 3.7.2)
   Depends: brltty-espeak (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Suggests: orca
   Depends: brltty-x11 (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-speechd (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-flite (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)

You could try apt-get remove (or equivalent) on each of those 
packages and
see if that clears it. I _know_ this is frustrating as all get 
out for you
but a clear approach, written down so that you can remember where 
you got

to will be very helpful.


Any attempt to remove cura or brltty, removes gnome leaving me I 
assume with a text only system by the time gnome takes all its 
dependency's with it.  Thanks Tom.


Have you actually tried uninstalling brltty only, as a separate 
action from all others?


I have a number of gnome installations, unfortunately for this 
discussion all bookworm. None of them has brltty.


I have a few installations of bullseye and an older stretch 
installation, but none with gnome installed. On all of them, though, 
"apt-rdepends -r gnome" fails to list brltty as a gnome dependency. 
And on the bookworm systems, simulated installation of gnome ("apt 
install -s gnome") shows brltty as a suggested package only and would 
not install it along with gnome; on the stretch system, gnome 
installation makes no reference at all to brltty.


While I have both with only the radio buttons for keyboard and rodent 
plugged into usb at install time. I have only one wired keyboard and 
no wired mice as I've had a lightning strike on the pole that serves 
this house reach up and tap me by way of my fingers on the keyboard. 
Wasn't that much of a tap, I've been tapped a lot harder that that, 
hard enough to trigger a 6 month round of shingles and the burns were 
months healing. And in this case did not damage the keyboard or 
computer, but I did get the message. I've had many strikes on that 
pole since I built a garage on the end of the house, which caused me 
to install a 200 amp service and bring my grounding specs up to NEC. 
Zero problems since then (2008)


Is it possible you have apt settings that automatically pull in 
suggested packages, and that is interfering with attempts to remove 
brltty? I am not expert enough wrt apt and its relatives to know 
whether that even makes sense, and it seems a bit far fetched if 
maybe barely possible.


Maybe if you post the output from "apt-rdepends -r brltty" and "apt 
purge --simulate brltty" it will be informative.


Neither of those utils are installed. Should they be?


apt should be installed. As far as I know it has been included by 
default in the Debian base system as the preferred command line package 
management program since buster or earlier. I have never had to install 
it. You probably should if it is missing.


apt-rdepends is at least partly redundant with apt.
The command "apt-rdepends -r ", and "apt rdepends 
" both show reverse dependencies of ; the 
latter also sho

Re: about 10th new install of bookworm!


On 6/5/24 21:05, Felix Miata wrote:

gene heskett composed on 2024-06-05 11:21 (UTC-0400):


I always get re-install instructions.  Frustrating.


Should you choose to accept any fresh installation suggestion by doing another,
consider removing the sound card from its slot, or disabling the motherboard's
sound device in BIOS setup, whichever is applicable, before beginning
installation, as a possible thwart to the Gnome must have everything paradigm, 
if
blocking Gnome entirely is unacceptable.


That might be useful advice, but the sound card is not readily 
removable, its built into this asus motherboard. An Asus PRIME Z370-A II.


As a side note to installation: as soon as a fresh installation seems suitably
complete, but before adding any additional software, create a compressed /
filesystem partition backup image to facilitate any need for a consequent 
do-over.

gene heskett composed on 2024-06-05 17:08 (UTC-0400):


So this is the umptieth time I've asked how to fix it, and got recipes
for re-installing the basic system as an answer. Mike gave me instructs
to run a couple commands, once normally, once while it was hung but the
2nd comnnand I fed to wc -l and got almost 300k lines. Difficult to do
in real time because the command itself is subject to the lockout lag.


Answering a help request like this one is a toughie. It's commonly necessary to
reproduce both hardware configuration and software configuration in order to try
to address the problem. That can be quite complicated, and time consumptive. 
Here
it seems we may have a shortage from both helper and helpee, not necessarily a
fault of either, but a puzzle with missing pieces, in addition to some pieces 
that
don't belong to the puzzle (history tomes; not being concise). Could it also be
that we have too many cooks in the kitchen here too?


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: about 10th new install of bullseye


On 6/5/24 17:25, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/5/24 08:58, gene heskett wrote:

On 6/5/24 02:05, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/4/24 04:26, gene heskett wrote:

On 2/19/22 06:31, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

Hi Gene,

If this was someone calling you from a TV station saying they had a TV
transmitter that was varying in power output - you'd have a mental 
checklist.
You'd get down there, perhaps schedule some sort of power down / 
reduced
power operation and then you'd check - power supplies, feeder 
cables, hot
spots on cables - whatever. Divide and conquer- working back to a 
baseline

of known working conditions and eliminating causes.

My suggestion to you of a reinstall is partly designed to get you 
out of this
"X happens, I did Y, now I've got Z" - to get to a known initial 
state.


Take out all the serial converters to UPS, lathe and so on. 
Wireless keyboard
doesn't present as serial in the same way that brltty does - if it 
did, I'd

have brltty with every install on this laptop.

Copy off your home directory as you did before - maybe using tar.gz 
and preserving permissions. Start with the .iso that includes 
firmware - the unofficial one.


Build back slowly - do an expert text mode install if you can. Then 
add your
Trinity desktop - I don't think any of us can help you there, since 
we don't

run trinity.

Check and you should find that brltty isn't installed at all. Then 
re-add thingsgradually until you have the working system you want. 
Document it - write down

the steps you take / copy configuration files you change.

That will also reveal logging / login slowdowns or whatever caused by
individual devices as you add them back. Keep a list as you go.

That's the counsel of perfection: alternatively:

apt rdepends brltty gives me:

me@mymachine:~$ apt rdepends brltty
brltty
Reverse Depends:
   Suggests: speechd-el (>= 3.7.2)
   Depends: brltty-espeak (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Suggests: orca
   Depends: brltty-x11 (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-speechd (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-flite (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)

You could try apt-get remove (or equivalent) on each of those 
packages and
see if that clears it. I _know_ this is frustrating as all get out 
for you
but a clear approach, written down so that you can remember where 
you got

to will be very helpful.


Any attempt to remove cura or brltty, removes gnome leaving me I 
assume with a text only system by the time gnome takes all its 
dependency's with it.  Thanks Tom.


Have you actually tried uninstalling brltty only, as a separate action 
from all others?


I have a number of gnome installations, unfortunately for this 
discussion all bookworm. None of them has brltty.


I have a few installations of bullseye and an older stretch 
installation, but none with gnome installed. On all of them, though, 
"apt-rdepends -r gnome" fails to list brltty as a gnome dependency. And 
on the bookworm systems, simulated installation of gnome ("apt install 
-s gnome") shows brltty as a suggested package only and would not 
install it along with gnome; on the stretch system, gnome installation 
makes no reference at all to brltty.


While I have both with only the radio buttons for keyboard and rodent 
plugged into usb at install time. I have only one wired keyboard and no 
wired mice as I've had a lightning strike on the pole that serves this 
house reach up and tap me by way of my fingers on the keyboard. Wasn't 
that much of a tap, I've been tapped a lot harder that that, hard enough 
to trigger a 6 month round of shingles and the burns were months 
healing. And in this case did not damage the keyboard or computer, but I 
did get the message. I've had many strikes on that pole since I built a 
garage on the end of the house, which caused me to install a 200 amp 
service and bring my grounding specs up to NEC. Zero problems since then 
(2008)


Is it possible you have apt settings that automatically pull in 
suggested packages, and that is interfering with attempts to remove 
brltty? I am not expert enough wrt apt and its relatives to know whether 
that even makes sense, and it seems a bit far fetched if maybe barely 
possible.


Maybe if you post the output from "apt-rdepends -r brltty" and "apt 
purge --simulate brltty" it will be informative.


Neither of those utils are installed. Should they be?



Regards,
Tom Dial



If all else fails, you can then share it with the list and say "I 
got to

step X with no problems, then Y happened - help me out here" and we'll
have some better idea. We all jib at you for being vague/not indluding
details but otherwise it is all just guesswork for the usual folk that
hang out here.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater

How much longer till trixie is officially out??  What you are 
proposing sounds like several days work, and i have other irons in 
the

Re: about 10th new install of bullseye


On 6/5/24 13:12, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Tue, Jun 04, 2024 at 06:26:31AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

On 2/19/22 06:31, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

Hi Gene,

You could try apt-get remove (or equivalent) on each of those packages and
see if that clears it. I _know_ this is frustrating as all get out for you
but a clear approach, written down so that you can remember where you got
to will be very helpful.

If all else fails, you can then share it with the list and say "I got to
step X with no problems, then Y happened - help me out here" and we'll
have some better idea. We all jib at you for being vague/not indluding
details but otherwise it is all just guesswork for the usual folk that
hang out here.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater


How much longer till trixie is officially out??  What you are proposing
sounds like several days work, and i have other irons in the fire. This
release has been such a disaster for me because the install insists on
installing and configuring orca and brltty w/o asking. I've done 40 some
installs now, trying to stop it from wasting about a second while its
yelling every keystroke at me because it thinks I'm blind. I finally have
orca disabled and the computer is useful. The delays are a pain in the a$$
but i can do work now. It is not useful when orca is using 90% of a 6 core
I5 yelling at me loud enough to announce and pronounce every keystroke or
mouse motion/click loud enough to wake the neighbors.  The first 23 installs
never asked me if I wanted that crap. And if you nuked the orca executable
it would not reboot but hung forever waiting for orca to start. I have it
usable, the installer AFAIAC is broken and I don't want to have to go
through all that again. Until the installer ASKS me if I want it because it
thinks I am blind, I have only one nerve left and and the suggestion that I
do yet another install, is standing on it. Trying to remove it now, it
insists on removing gnome and every dependency. I just checked again with
synaptic, removing either orca or brltty still wants to destroy the system,
Yet all I get when I fuss about the broken installer is "won't fix, not
broken'.



How long until trixie is out?  Could be 12-15 months.

Are you still running Bullseye there? if so, you should probably upgrade
to Bookworm sometime soon.

Given that I wrote this to you two years ago: you didn't actually take
the suggestion and reinstall. That's OK - but nobody has ever been able
to get to the root cause of brokenness here. Is it a Gene problem or a
problem that hits other people more widely? We don't have details.


They have been given quite a few times, Andy.  Simplified, I had just a 
week before, installed 2 more 2T seagate's, one for amanda, one for 
boot. I already had /home on a raid10 of 1T samsungs. About 10 days 
later both of the 2T segates dropped off the bus, never to be heard from 
again. Research disclosed that they were helium filled drives of 
shingled architecture, so seagate was using me, at $150 a pop, for a lab 
rat. At that point it was bullseye. The only other machine that had an 
optical drive was an old dell in the garage running my original milling 
machine, so I went to it, and downloaded the bookworm full installer and 
put it on a dvd. The installer found a couple usb-serial adaptors, 
ASSUMED they were driving an audio tty, automatically installing and 
configuring both brltty and orca to start very early in the boot. BUT if 
they are there but disabled it waits forever for orca to start, which 
caused the first 23 re-installs. A year+ later I don't recall what i did 
but they are installed but out of the loop, so with reservations, the 
machine is usable. The reservations are that its not very stable, x is 
crashing about halfway thru a workspace change at about 2 week 
intervals, and anything that opens a path to storage, is frozen for 30 
seconds or more if it will wait, or if it won't wait, disables that 
function but like digiKam, goes thru the motions of downloading from my 
camera without actually doing it. Fortunately, shotwell works but hangs 
at startup for 30 secs or more, and does gimp, GpenSCAD and anything 
else that opens a path to storage. All w/o logging a single error msg,

In gimps case, each cd to a new path invokes the freeze all over again.

I've been a linux only house since 1998 when I put redhat 5.0 on a 400 
mhz K6, this "bookworm" is the worst experience I've had in the last 26 
years.


So this is the umptieth time I've asked how to fix it, and got recipes 
for re-installing the basic system as an answer. Mike gave me instructs 
to run a couple commands, once normally, once while it was hung but the 
2nd comnnand I fed to wc -l and got almost 300k lines. Difficult to do 
in real time because the command itself is subject to the lockout lag.


I see someone else has suggested strip a machine down to nothing an

Re: about 10th new install of bullseye


On 6/5/24 11:18, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Wed, Jun 05, 2024 at 10:58:22AM -0400, gene heskett wrote:

Any attempt to remove cura or brltty, removes gnome leaving me I assume with
a text only system by the time gnome takes all its dependency's with it.


"assume"

This is your fundamental problem here.  Do you know what the "gnome"
package actually contains?

hobbit:~$ apt-cache show gnome
Package: gnome
Source: meta-gnome3
Version: 1:43+1
Installed-Size: 14
[...]

Installed size is 14.  I'm pretty sure that's kilobytes.

"gnome" is a meta-package.  Its purpose is to depend on a whole bunch
of other packages.  That's all.  It doesn't actually do anything by
itself.

Removing "gnome" will not remove any functionality, because "gnome" does
not *have* any functionality.

As long as you don't do an "apt-get autoremove" afterward, nothing else
will be deleted, other than what apt-get told you it was going to delete.

.
autoremove is the first command of my update script. Designed to get rid 
of old kernels.


But that still doesn't answer the question, How much longer till trixie 
is official? I even put a ? mark on it.


Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"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: about 10th new install of bullseye BUT its not Bullseye, its bookworm!


On 6/5/24 02:30, Tom Dial wrote:



On 6/4/24 04:26, gene heskett wrote:

On 2/19/22 06:31, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

Hi Gene,

If this was someone calling you from a TV station saying they had a TV
transmitter that was varying in power output - you'd have a mental 
checklist.

You'd get down there, perhaps schedule some sort of power down / reduced
power operation and then you'd check - power supplies, feeder cables, 
hot
spots on cables - whatever. Divide and conquer- working back to a 
baseline

of known working conditions and eliminating causes.

My suggestion to you of a reinstall is partly designed to get you out 
of this

"X happens, I did Y, now I've got Z" - to get to a known initial state.

Take out all the serial converters to UPS, lathe and so on. Wireless 
keyboard
doesn't present as serial in the same way that brltty does - if it 
did, I'd

have brltty with every install on this laptop.

Copy off your home directory as you did before - maybe using tar.gz 
and preserving permissions. Start with the .iso that includes 
firmware - the unofficial one.


Build back slowly - do an expert text mode install if you can. Then 
add your
Trinity desktop - I don't think any of us can help you there, since 
we don't

run trinity.

Check and you should find that brltty isn't installed at all. Then 
re-add thingsgradually until you have the working system you want. 
Document it - write down

the steps you take / copy configuration files you change.

That will also reveal logging / login slowdowns or whatever caused by
individual devices as you add them back. Keep a list as you go.

That's the counsel of perfection: alternatively:

apt rdepends brltty gives me:

me@mymachine:~$ apt rdepends brltty
brltty
Reverse Depends:
   Suggests: speechd-el (>= 3.7.2)
   Depends: brltty-espeak (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Suggests: orca
   Depends: brltty-x11 (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-speechd (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Depends: brltty-flite (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)

You could try apt-get remove (or equivalent) on each of those 
packages and
see if that clears it. I _know_ this is frustrating as all get out 
for you
but a clear approach, written down so that you can remember where you 
got

to will be very helpful.

If all else fails, you can then share it with the list and say "I got to
step X with no problems, then Y happened - help me out here" and we'll
have some better idea. We all jib at you for being vague/not indluding
details but otherwise it is all just guesswork for the usual folk that
hang out here.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater

How much longer till trixie is officially out??  What you are 
proposing sounds like several days work, and i have other irons in the 
fire. This release has been such a disaster for me because the install 
insists on installing and configuring orca and brltty w/o asking. I've 
done 40 some installs now, trying to stop it from wasting about a 
second while its yelling every keystroke at me because it thinks I'm 
blind. I finally have orca disabled and the computer is useful. The 
delays are a pain in the a$$ but i can do work now. It is not useful 
when orca is using 90% of a 6 core I5 yelling at me loud enough to 
announce and pronounce every keystroke or mouse motion/click loud 
enough to wake the neighbors.  The first 23 installs never asked me if 
I wanted that crap. And if you nuked the orca executable it would not 
reboot but hung forever waiting for orca to start. I have it usable, 
the installer AFAIAC is broken and I don't want to have to go through 
all that again. Until the installer ASKS me if I want it because it 
thinks I am blind, I have only one nerve left and and the suggestion 
that I do yet another install, is standing on it. Trying to remove it 
now, it insists on removing gnome and every dependency. I just checked 
again with synaptic, removing either orca or brltty still wants to 
destroy the system, Yet all I get when I fuss about the broken 
installer is "won't fix, not broken'.



Hi Gene,

I, too, am not in need of the services that  brltty or orca provide, and 
have noticed them hanging about from time to time, although I have not 
encountered any difficulties like you describe.


On a bullseye system, apt-rdepends -r brltty informs me:

# apt-rdepends -r brltty
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
brltty
   Reverse Depends: brltty-espeak (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Reverse Depends: brltty-flite (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Reverse Depends: brltty-speechd (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
   Reverse Depends: brltty-x11 (= 6.3+dfsg-1+deb11u1)
brltty-espeak
brltty-flite
brltty-speechd
brltty-x11

If I understand apt-rdepends correctly, you should be able to 
remove/purge brltty ("apt purge brltty") without removing any installed 
packages other than the four listed above.

Re: about 10th new install of bullseye