Re: tbird troubles

[Matthew Lemon]

On 15-04-2024, gene heskett wrote:
For the last 2 or 3 reboots, when launching t-bird, I get 2 copies of 
the gui stacked on top of each other. I can move them separately to 2 
separate workspaces, and both appear to work for some definition of 
working, but quitting one actually quits both.


If I click anyplace outside this composer window, it put this composer 
window behind both gui's and to re-find the composer window, I have to 
move both gui's off it to find the composer window again. Frustrating 
and inconvenient as can be.


I am supposedly running xfc4 as a desktop, but htop says I have a heck 
of a lot of kde5 running. How do I get rid of the kde stuff? 


I recently wanted to get rid of a load of KDE cruft after I installed
xfce and elected to install sddm desktop manager with it (which is xorg
and a wayland session compatible), which by default seems to come with a
lot of KDE stuff in Debian.

`aptitude purge '?and(~i ?tag(suite::kde))'`

Be sure to check the output from aptitude you before it does
anything, it will ask you to confirm package changes. YMMV but it worked
nicely for me.


Dependencies seem to be protecting it from being removed.

Anybody have a clue whats going on?

Thanks for any advice that 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



--
---
MR Lemon


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Useful Unix compatible commands

[Jonathan Matthew Gresham]

Sorry for the misleading post the other day. However, I have been reading a 
Unix system administrators textbook. 

ps -e

This lists the processes

In that display (if I'm correct) if you see a program that has extremely high 
time, then you should kill the process.

kill process

There is also

ls -R

This command lists the files in each subdirectory.

If you know any more that can work on GNU compatible software or Unix 
compatible software please indicate the commands in your reply.

Re: URLs in Mutt

[Jonathan Matthew Gresham]

Install urlview

dell OptiPlex

[Matthew Norris]

Hi everyone!
Matt here. Years ago I had Debian on a disk with an awesome package and I
told myself I was always going to start again. I have been out of
circulation for some time. I have this Dell Optiplex with 32 RAM and an SSD
with an Intel  i5-4590 CPU. Can I install and use Debian as my daily
driver? If so, show me the way. I would like to put it on a stick first
maybe. I appreciate your help.
thanks,
Matt

Re: USB enumeration issue

[Matthew McAllister]

> My final idea: have you used a wireless keyboard or mouse? 


or wireless headphones.


Nope, I don't have any other USB devices. Everything is connected through a 
hub, so I only have one cable plugged in. I didn't miss anything.

I think it's pretty likely at this point my mobo is FUBAR. I'm going to try and 
RMA it. I built my own PC so it's no surprise at least one part would be a dud.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

Matthew

Re: USB enumeration issue

[Matthew McAllister]

I get a completely different device:

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 046d:081b Logitech, Inc. Webcam C310
Device Descriptor:
  bLength18
  bDescriptorType 1
  bcdUSB   2.00
  bDeviceClass  239 Miscellaneous Device
  bDeviceSubClass 2
  bDeviceProtocol 1 Interface Association
  bMaxPacketSize064
  idVendor   0x046d Logitech, Inc.
  idProduct  0x081b Webcam C310
  bcdDevice0.12
  iManufacturer   0
  iProduct0
  iSerial 2 46417950
  bNumConfigurations  1

The MediaTek device is nowhere to be found.

Matthew

Re: USB enumeration issue

[Matthew McAllister]

Also, just try booting using linux 6.0 to see if that fixes anything. That 
still seems to available, so if you uninstalled it, it can be reinstalled.


That is great advice, but before starting the thread I had already tried 
booting 5.10, 5.19, 6.0, and 6.1 to no avail.

I was running 6.0.0-4-amd64 both before and after the device failed. I did 
upgrade to 6.0.0-6-amd64 the day after. Didn't upgrade to 6.1 until 2023-01-21.

BTW, this is what the logs contained when the device was last successfully 
started. (It is indeed the bluetooth chip; no idea why it's not a PCI device.)

2023-01-04T23:44:08.519572-08:00 cockpit kernel: [3.927596] usb 1-5: new 
high-speed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd
2023-01-04T23:44:08.519572-08:00 cockpit kernel: [4.051608] ata3: SATA link 
down (SStatus 0 SControl 330)
2023-01-04T23:44:08.519572-08:00 cockpit kernel: [4.173060] usb 1-5: New 
USB device found, idVendor=0e8d, idProduct=0608, bcdDevice= 1.00
2023-01-04T23:44:08.519573-08:00 cockpit kernel: [4.173065] usb 1-5: New 
USB device strings: Mfr=5, Product=6, SerialNumber=7
2023-01-04T23:44:08.519573-08:00 cockpit kernel: [4.173067] usb 1-5: 
Product: Wireless_Device
2023-01-04T23:44:08.519573-08:00 cockpit kernel: [4.173068] usb 1-5: 
Manufacturer: MediaTek Inc.
2023-01-04T23:44:08.519574-08:00 cockpit kernel: [4.173069] usb 1-5: 
SerialNumber: 0

Theoretically, I guess the kernel could have put the device into an 
unrecoverable state, even after power cycling, but that's more of a question 
for an expert. Not to jump to conclusions, but this is starting to sound like a 
random hardware failure to me. The mobo is still only 3 months old.

The one other thing I did try is flipping some XHCI handoff setting in my BIOS, 
but that didn't help either sadly.

Matthew

Re: USB enumeration issue

[Matthew McAllister]

Wouldn't the bluetooth device result in a PCIE error and not a USB error 
though? The WiFi device shows as PCIE and it's on the same chip.


Thanks for your replies by the way.

Matthew

On 1/23/23 8:24 PM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 11:12 PM Matthew McAllister
 wrote:

Also, looking at old kernel logs from back when it was working would be useful 
(/var/log/kernel.N.gz where N if the biggest number there is). Hopefully that 
will show what device is on usb 1-5 (though I believe port numbers may change 
over time and depend on what's plugged in).

That was the perfect piece of advice. I found the exact log where the issue 
began:

2023-01-06T20:20:28.225698-08:00 cockpit kernel: [   25.515977] usb 1-5: Failed 
to suspend device, error -110

Coincidentally, this is also exactly when the bluetooth on my motherboard 
stopped working. (The WiFi is on the same MT7921K chipset and still works 
weirdly).

Can you suggest any steps other than straight-up RMA'ing the mobo? (That might 
fix the USB-C as well, heh.)

You can sometimes turn off radios and buses in the BiOS/UEFI. But that
feels like papering over the problem. As far as I know, that's the
only way to turn off some radios and buses.

You may find something wrong with the motherboard during a visual
inspection. You can look for leaking capacitors and cracked solder
joints. But there's not much you can do besides replacing a cap or
reflowing solder.

You will probably be more satisfied if you send the board back for
repair. Or switch motherboard brands.

Jeff

Re: USB enumeration issue

[Matthew McAllister]

Also, looking at old kernel logs from back when it was working would be useful 
(/var/log/kernel.N.gz where N if the biggest number there is). Hopefully that 
will show what device is on usb 1-5 (though I believe port numbers may change 
over time and depend on what's plugged in).


That was the perfect piece of advice. I found the exact log where the issue 
began:

2023-01-06T20:20:28.225698-08:00 cockpit kernel: [   25.515977] usb 1-5: Failed 
to suspend device, error -110

Coincidentally, this is also exactly when the bluetooth on my motherboard 
stopped working. (The WiFi is on the same MT7921K chipset and still works 
weirdly).

Can you suggest any steps other than straight-up RMA'ing the mobo? (That might 
fix the USB-C as well, heh.)

Matthew

USB enumeration issue

[Matthew McAllister]

Hi all,

Since I upgraded packages a couple weeks ago, whenever I start my PC, I 
have to wait 60 seconds for the kernel to enumerate USB devices. Here's 
the log:


[    8.815277] usb 1-5: device descriptor read/64, error -110
[   24.431295] usb 1-5: device descriptor read/64, error -110
[   24.943220] usb 1-5: new high-speed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd
[   30.319491] usb 1-5: device descriptor read/64, error -110
[   45.935494] usb 1-5: device descriptor read/64, error -110
[   46.044772] usb usb1-port5: attempt power cycle
[   46.523221] usb 1-5: new high-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
[   51.323562] usb 1-5: Device not responding to setup address.
[   56.331406] usb 1-5: Device not responding to setup address.
[   56.539402] usb 1-5: device not accepting address 4, error -71
[   56.943221] usb 1-5: new high-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
[   61.743759] usb 1-5: Device not responding to setup address.
[   66.751609] usb 1-5: Device not responding to setup address.
[   66.959391] usb 1-5: device not accepting address 5, error -71
[   66.960945] usb usb1-port5: unable to enumerate USB device

This occurs when *no USB cables are plugged in*. The kernel is stalling 
the entire boot process to enumerate some internal USB hub, I assume.


My front USB-C is broken as far as I can tell, so I tried unplugging the 
header. The issue persisted.


The front USB 3.0 work correctly and I couldn't get the header unplugged 
anyways, so I didn't test if that was the issue.


Any ideas what might be going on? Kernel is 6.1.4-1.

Matthew

Re: Startup Ethernet instability

[Matthew McAllister]

> First question: do you have the firmware-realtek package installed?

That... is a great question. And the answer is no, I do not.

And I have now installed firmware-realtek, and it has solved my problem. 
That's what I get for buying a mobo without researching the network chip.


Thanks so much! Very glad I mailed the list.

Matthew

Startup Ethernet instability

[Matthew McAllister]

Greetings,

I'm running bookworm and I have an odd issue with a new desktop 
computer. Every time I boot, the Ethernet controller will repeatedly 
turn off and on again for several minutes. Here is a snippet of what 
this looks like in dmesg:


[  273.008517] r8169 :05:00.0 eno1: Link is Down
[  276.628821] r8169 :05:00.0 eno1: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow 
control rx/tx

[  277.681025] r8169 :05:00.0 eno1: Link is Down
[  281.320201] r8169 :05:00.0 eno1: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow 
control rx/tx

[  282.370330] r8169 :05:00.0 eno1: Link is Down
[  286.273750] r8169 :05:00.0 eno1: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow 
control rx/tx


And a snippet of the syslog:

2022-11-28T18:59:26.477907-08:00 cockpit kernel: [  167.861718] r8169 
:05:00.0 eno1: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow control rx/tx
2022-11-28T18:59:27.375761-08:00 cockpit systemd-timesyncd[933]: 
Contacted time server [2600:2600::199]:123 (2.debian.pool.ntp.org).
2022-11-28T18:59:27.525388-08:00 cockpit kernel: [  168.912726] r8169 
:05:00.0 eno1: Link is Down
2022-11-28T18:59:29.210368-08:00 cockpit dhclient[4484]: DHCPDISCOVER on 
eno1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 17
2022-11-28T18:59:31.139410-08:00 cockpit NetworkManager[1035]:   
[1669690771.1391] device (eno1): carrier: link connected
2022-11-28T18:59:31.141405-08:00 cockpit kernel: [  172.526366] r8169 
:05:00.0 eno1: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow control rx/tx
2022-11-28T18:59:32.189388-08:00 cockpit kernel: [  173.576860] r8169 
:05:00.0 eno1: Link is Down
2022-11-28T18:59:35.951220-08:00 cockpit NetworkManager[1035]:   
[1669690775.9509] device (eno1): carrier: link connected
2022-11-28T18:59:35.953645-08:00 cockpit kernel: [  177.337818] r8169 
:05:00.0 eno1: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow control rx/tx
2022-11-28T18:59:37.005374-08:00 cockpit kernel: [  178.392000] r8169 
:05:00.0 eno1: Link is Down


The problem mysteriously vanishes about 5 minutes after booting. So far, 
nothing seems to mitigate the issue, e.g. I've tried bringing eno1 down 
and up again.


I'm guessing this is a hardware issue, but there are no errors in dmesg. 
Maybe it's NetworkManager-related?


Relevant hardware info:

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8125 
2.5GbE Controller (rev 05)

06:00.0 Network controller: MEDIATEK Corp. MT7921K (RZ608) Wi-Fi 6E 80MHz

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
    Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
    Product Name: B550 AORUS ELITE AX V2
    Version: Default string
    Serial Number: Default string
    UUID: 035e02d8-04d3-058e-6a06-550700080009
    Wake-up Type: Power Switch
    SKU Number: Default string
    Family: B550 MB

Handle 0x, DMI type 0, 26 bytes
BIOS Information
    Vendor: American Megatrends International, LLC.
    Version: F16d
    Release Date: 07/20/2022
    Address: 0xF
    Runtime Size: 64 kB
    ROM Size: 32 MB
    Characteristics:
    PCI is supported
    BIOS is upgradeable
    BIOS shadowing is allowed
    Boot from CD is supported
    Selectable boot is supported
    BIOS ROM is socketed
    EDD is supported
    Japanese floppy for NEC 9800 1.2 MB is supported (int 13h)
    Japanese floppy for Toshiba 1.2 MB is supported (int 13h)
    5.25"/360 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
    5.25"/1.2 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
    3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
    3.5"/2.88 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
    Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
    Serial services are supported (int 14h)
    Printer services are supported (int 17h)
    CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
    USB legacy is supported
    BIOS boot specification is supported
    Targeted content distribution is supported
    UEFI is supported
    BIOS Revision: 5.17

Any ideas for looking into this will be appreciated. Thank you!

Matthew

Re: PCSX2 GPU hang

[Matthew McAllister]

Hi Piotr,

Thank you for your reply. I almost missed it, sorry to say.

> You are using non-bullseye kernel, bullseye is on 5.10.0-9-amd64. 
Where is that from?


I'm pretty sure you hit the mark! I had completely forgotten that I 
built my own kernel to try out a new driver. I'll either upgrade to 
testing or downgrade to the stable kernel.


Thanks again!

Matthew

PCSX2 GPU hang

[Matthew McAllister]

Hi folks,

I've discovered that PCSX2 causes an Intel GPU hang on bullseye. The 
whole display manager has to be restarted after the crash.


I'm not sure if this occurs in bookworm. I would report the bug 
directly, but I don't know which maintainer would be the best to take a 
look at it. My guess is the package libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 is the culprit, 
but who knows.


If anyone can suggest who would be best to send this report to, I would 
appreciate it.


dmesg:
[147858.036318] i915 :00:02.0: [drm] Resetting rcs0 for preemption 
time out
[147858.036349] i915 :00:02.0: [drm] MTGS[102288] context reset due 
to GPU hang
[147858.048564] i915 :00:02.0: [drm] GPU HANG: ecode 9:1:85df9e9d, 
in MTGS [102288]


glxinfo:
Vendor: Intel (0x8086)
Device: Mesa Intel(R) HD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2) (0x5916)
Version: 20.3.5
Accelerated: yes
Video memory: 3072MB
Unified memory: yes
Preferred profile: core (0x1)
Max core profile version: 4.6
Max compat profile version: 4.6
Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1
Max GLES[23] profile version: 3.2

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.1
  APT prefers stable-security
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.12.0 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, 
TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE 
not set

Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Strange problem after upgrading from Buster to testing.

[matthew dyer]

Hi all,

I am wondering if this should be sent to the Debian accessibility list, but any 
way, I am in the prosses of installing Debian buster, but wanted to upgrade to 
testing.  I have a very strange problem happens where the system will not boot, 
so tried to install the bulzie testing with the latest alfa image which has 
worked fine in the past, but now it will not boot from usb.  I do not have 
sited help  so not sure what has changed.  I am installing on an hp notebook 
with the nonfree firmware image.  I am wondering if there is a change 
somewhere.  Buster works fine.  Thanks all.

Matthew

Re: No updates in Debian 10 for last 5 days

[Matthew Graybosch]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2020 17:48:41 - (UTC)
"Juan R. de Silva"  wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> I'm not having any updates for my Debian Buster for last 5 days.
> Looks suspicious to me... Anybody has same experience?

The last update I got was for Firefox ESR. Also, didn't 10.6 come out
on 9/26? It seems a lot of stuff got updated then.

-- 
Matthew Graybosch   https://matthewgraybosch.com
#include  gemini://starbreaker.org
gemini://tanelorn.city
"Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."

Re: Can't activate my account

[Matthew Graybosch]

On Tue, 15 Sep 2020 18:23:07 +0200
Lars Fransén  wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I have created an account, user name LarsGIF, e-mail address
> lars.fran...@telia.com. I am not receiving any mail to activate the
> account. 

An account for what, exactly? The mailing list? If you get this then
you're probably already subscribed.

-- 
Matthew Graybosch   https://matthewgraybosch.com
#include  gemini://starbreaker.org
gemini://tanelorn.city
"Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."

Re: Journal

[Matthew Graybosch]

On Thu, 3 Sep 2020 11:50:36 +0100
Joe  wrote:

> I've finally decided I have to keep a diary. 
> 
> In Debian are RoboJournal and Lifeograph.
> 
> Neither of them actually function, at least in sid. Does anyone have
> any other ideas, apart from phpMyAdmin or Mysql Workbench?
> 

Crack open your favorite terminal and punch in the following commands.

mkdir -p ~/diary/`date +"%Y"` (once)
nano ~/diary/`date +"%Y"`/`date -I`.txt (daily)

The first command will create a "diary" directory in your home directory
and then create a subdirectory for the current year. The second command
will create a text file named for the current date in the current
year's directory and open it in a command-line text editor.

There's no need to install anything, it'll be compatible with any
software that can read plain text and when you want to search for
particular entries you can use grep.

-- 
Matthew Graybosch   https://matthewgraybosch.com
#include  gemini://starbreaker.org
gemini://tanelorn.city
"Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."

Re: bug: MT7601U Wireless Adapter not work in buster 4 amd

[Matthew Graybosch]

On Thu, 27 Aug 2020 03:04:21 + (UTC)
Long Wind  wrote:

> it crash, reboot can also fail
> at first i thought it's hard disk faultlater i realize that it's more
> likely caused by wireless bug i don't have time to file bug report

It looks like this issue has come up before in Buster.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=931561

-- 
Matthew Graybosch   https://matthewgraybosch.com
#include  gemini://starbreaker.org
gemini://tanelorn.city
"Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."

Re: Encrypt files on Linux, decrypt on Windows

[Matthew Graybosch]

On Sat, 22 Aug 2020 09:30:09 +0200
 wrote:

> I always thought it should be banned by the Geneva Convention, but
> OSHA would be fine by me, too.

I think the US stopped honoring the Geneva Conventions during the Dubya
administration. Of course, that doesn't leave much hope for OSHA
enforcement either.

Besides, if we're going to put Microsoft on trial in the Hague for
crimes against humanity, we'll need to do the rest of GAFAM too (not to
mention Disney, Nestlé, Bayer, and a great many others).

-- 
Matthew Graybosch   https://matthewgraybosch.com
#include  gemini://starbreaker.org
gemini://tanelorn.city
"Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."

Re: Encrypt files on Linux, decrypt on Windows

[Matthew Graybosch]

On Fri, 21 Aug 2020 20:10:50 -0400
rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Friday, August 21, 2020 04:11:19 PM Matthew Graybosch wrote:
> > I don't disagree, but how likely is it that local10's intended
> > recipient will...
> > 
> > 1. Have GnuPG installed on their Windows machine?
> > 2. Know how to use it to decrypt files using local10's public key?  
> 
> Shouldn't this be just the opposite -- local10 should encrypt the
> file with his recipient's public key, and then his recipient can
> unencrypt it with his (the recipient's) private key?

You're right. Please consider my last email proof that exposure to
Windows causes brain damage and that its use in the corporate workplace
should be considered an OSHA violation.

-- 
Matthew Graybosch   https://matthewgraybosch.com
#include  gemini://starbreaker.org
gemini://tanelorn.city
"Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."

Re: Encrypt files on Linux, decrypt on Windows

[Matthew Graybosch]

On Fri, 21 Aug 2020 21:59:15 +0200
 wrote:

> If you are somewhat serious about security, you better don't use this:
> 
>   "ZIP supports a simple password-based symmetric encryption
>system generally known as ZipCrypto. It is documented in
>the ZIP specification, and known to be seriously flawed." [1]
> 
> 7z is reportedly better (and it does compress better, too). But I
> concur with the others: GnuPG is the gold standard here.

I don't disagree, but how likely is it that local10's intended
recipient will...

1. Have GnuPG installed on their Windows machine?
2. Know how to use it to decrypt files using local10's public key?

-- 
Matthew Graybosch   https://matthewgraybosch.com
#include  gemini://starbreaker.org
gemini://tanelorn.city
"Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."

Re: Encrypt files on Linux, decrypt on Windows

[Matthew Graybosch]

On Fri, 21 Aug 2020 19:46:13 +0200 (CEST)
local10  wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> What would be a reasonably secure and simple way to encrypt files on
> Linux and then send them to a  non-technical Windows user so she
> would be able decrypt and read them?

The "zip" command has an "--encrypt" option. As long as your recipient
has WinZip (paid or trialware), you should be able to do the following:

1. Use "zip --encrypt" to create an archive.
2. Send the archive.
3. Send the password in a separate email.

I do this at my day job at least once a week, and haven't had a problem
yet.

The zip(1) man page will provide additional details. Good luck.

-- 
Matthew Graybosch   https://matthewgraybosch.com
#include  gemini://starbreaker.org
gemini://tanelorn.city
"Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."

Fw: Fwd: How do I troubleshoot wireless network dropping?

[Matthew Campbell]

I wouldn't recommend using ifconfig to enable or disable your second network 
card. It is somewhat deprecated. Try using ifup and ifdown.

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

 Original Message 
On Jul 5, 2020, 9:23 PM, Borden Rhodes wrote:

>> Use ps x to see how many copies of wpa_supplicant are running. If you have
>> multiple copies started from the command line the wifi won't stay connected.
>> I had the same problem.
>
> Thank you for the suggestion. I checked when it started dropping and, not only
> was there one instance of wpa_supplicant running, it was the same instance
> (judging from its PID)
>
>> Keep off the Intel card when you use the USB dongle, maybe one interfere with
>> the other
>
> Another good suggestion. I've tried disabling it from ifconfig. The interfaces
> use consistent device naming, so the names shouldn't be getting mixed up.
>
> I've isolated, what I think are, the journal lines from when my connection
> dropped today:
>
> wpa_supplicant[1555]: wlp10s0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=a0:##:##:##:##:0a
> reason=4 locally_generated=1
> wpa_supplicant[1555]: dbus: wpa_dbus_property_changed: no property
> SessionLength in object /fi/w1/wpa_supplicant1/Interfaces/0
> wpa_supplicant[1555]: wlp10s0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=CORE type=WORLD
> wpa_supplicant[1555]: wlp10s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with
> a0:##:##:##:##:0a (SSID='WiFiNetwork' freq=2462 MHz)
> wpa_supplicant[1555]: wlp10s0: Trying to associate with a0:##:##:##:##:0a
> (SSID='MyNetwork' freq=2462 MHz)
> wpa_supplicant[1555]: wlp10s0: Associated with a0:##:##:##:##:0a
> wpa_supplicant[1555]: wlp10s0: CTRL-EVENT-SUBNET-STATUS-UPDATE status=0
> wpa_supplicant[1555]: wlp10s0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=COUNTRY_IE
> type=COUNTRY alpha2=CA
> wpa_supplicant[1555]: wlp10s0: WPA: Key negotiation completed with
> a0:##:##:##:##:0a [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
> wpa_supplicant[1555]: wlp10s0: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to
> a0:##:##:##:##:0a completed [id=0 id_str=]
>
> For the purposes of these log entries, "WiFiNetwork" is the SSID of my
> network, but the log literally shows "MyNetwork" in the next line when
> it's trying to associate. I have no idea what this network is and I
> can't find it configured anywhere. So is it possible that someone's
> trying to MAC-jack my laptop?

Fw: Fw: Fw: Grub cannot see my new hard drive

[Matthew Campbell]

Nothing seems good enough. Do you want a picture? I'm not typing all of that in 
on my tablet. Let's just let it go. I'm working on understanding grub. I'm 
going to boot from a USB flash drive.

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

 Original Message 
On Jul 3, 2020, 7:37 AM, David Wright wrote:

> On Thu 02 Jul 2020 at 21:17:57 (+), Matthew Campbell wrote:
>> On Jul 2, 2020, 1:08 PM, David Wright wrote:
>> > On Thu 02 Jul 2020 at 08:12:00 (+), Matthew Campbell wrote:
>> >> On Jul 1, 2020, 7:50 PM, David Wright wrote:
>> >> > On Wed 17 Jun 2020 at 05:14:22 (+), Matthew Campbell wrote:
>> >> >> […]
>> >> >> I booted from a USB 2.0 flash drive into Grub2.
>> >> >> […]
>> >> >> /dev/sdb is the new 4 TB Toshiba External USB 3.0 hard drive.
>> >> >> […]
>> >> >> The hard drive, /dev/sdb, always responds faster than the USB flash 
>> >> >> drives so it is always /dev/sdb.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Now Debian Linux is running on my new hard drive using /dev/sdb1 as 
>> >> >> the root partition.
>> > […]
>> >> The 4 TB hard drive uses a GPT type partition table, not an MBR type 
>> >> table, which is why the computer can't see it. It can't make sense of GPT 
>> >> tables.
>> >
>> > If your computer can't make sense of GPT tables, how are you able to
>> > run Debian Linux from its first partition?
>> >
>> > I think what you might be trying to say is that you haven't managed to
>> > boot from a GPT disk connected by USB. But if you can boot with Grub
>> > from an MBR stick, that suggests that something is missing on your
>> > GPT disk.
>> >
>> > Have you tried to install Grub on your 4TB disk? What did it say?
>> > Were there any error messages.
>> >
>> > How is this disk partitioned? Did you do it, or is it just as it
>> > was bought? I'll give you an example of how I have system disks
>> > partitioned. You don't necessarily have to follow it, but it might
>> > help you to deal with yours.
>> >
>> > --✄
>> > […]
>> > --✄
>> >
>> > This drive is inside a 2000-built PC. (It can't boot from any sort of
>> > USB device.) The second partition table shows the protective MBR,
>> > which contains the Grub code for the PC to boot from.
>> >
>> > The first partition table is the GPT one. Partitions 4 and 5 are
>> > for root filesystems, one for stretch and one for buster. When
>> > bullseye is released, I'll most likely overwrite the stretch one.
>> > Partition 3 is for swap, and 6 is for /home. Both these are encrypted
>> > in different ways.
>> >
>> > That leaves the more interesting ones. Partition 2 is to enable the
>> > drive to be used to boot an EFI system, and is obviously unused by
>> > this PC. (I could "borrow" it for more swap, but the PC only has
>> > 500MB memory, so probably pointless for the tasks it does.)
>> >
>> > Partition 1 is where Grub puts the Second Stage code that it requires
>> > to read the disk partition table and filesystems, so that it can find
>> > grub.cfg, the kernel and initrd. On a "real" MBR disk, there is
>> > typically plenty of room between the partition table and the first
>> > partition for this code, but on a GPT disk, that space is where
>> > the partition table itself resides; so Grub has to find somewhere
>> > else. That's what partition 1 is for.
>> >
>> > My *guess* is that your Grub is booting ok, but has no (or little)
>> > Second Stage code to determine anything about the drives beyond
>> > their existence, so you just get the Grub prompt.
>> >
>> > Note that it's not important where Grub puts its code, only that
>> > there is some space somewhere. On this laptop, my BIOS Boot
>> > partition is sda9, because BIOS booting was late to the party
>> > on what was bought as a Windows/EFI/GPT machine.
>
>> The computer's startup/settings menu does not detect the 4 TB drive so it 
>> does not list it as a bootable device.
>
> Yes, I have no idea what criteria it uses to display devices,
> nor whether it can display more than one device, nor whether
> the connection type matters, and so on.
>
>> I cannot boot from the 4 TB drive.
>
> We gathered that, hence the thread.
>

Fw: Fw: Grub cannot see my new hard drive

[Matthew Campbell]

Man, that text really got screwed up.

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

 Original Message 
On Jun 14, 2020, 6:20 PM, Matthew Campbell wrote:

> The internal hard drive was visible to Grub, as was the other external USB 
> hard drive, a Western Digital drive. Having an external hard drive connected 
> with USB is not the problem. Grub was on /dev/sda and used to boot the 
> Western Digital drive just fine, until Grub was reconfigured to boot the 
> Toshiba hard drive instead.
>
> name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me
>
>  Original Message 
> On Jun 13, 2020, 4:00 PM, The Wanderer wrote:
>
>> On 2020-06-13 at 18:44, David Christensen wrote: [that on 2020-06-13 at 
>> 15:38, Matthew Campbell wrote:] >> /dev/sda: Toshiba MK1234GS, 111.8 GiB 
>> (Internal) >> /dev/sr0: MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ-850S , DVD R/W (Internal IDE) >> 
>> /dev/sdb: Toshiba External USB 3.0 3.7 TiB >> /dev/sdc: PNY 32 USB 2.0 FD 
>> 28.9 GiB If I'm reading things correctly, this "Toshiba External USB 3.0" - 
>> labeled here as /dev/sdb - is the drive which is at the core of the reported 
>> problem. I'm wondering whether the fact that it's an external hard drive, 
>> connected over USB3, might be relevant to the fact that GRUB and the BIOS 
>> are not detecting it. There are systems out there which have some of their 
>> USB ports hanging off of an internal USB hub chip, such that in order for 
>> the ports to be visible to the rest of the system, a driver for that hub is 
>> needed. If GRUB etc. doesn't have a compatible driver for that hub, the USB 
>> port to which this external drive is connected might not even be detected in 
>> the first place. >> All USB ports are USB 2.0. That's *probably* not a 
>> problem relative to the fact that this is a USB3 external hard drive, but it 
>> certainly can't be helping. > I like to use the manufacturer diagnostic 
>> utility to wipe and test > hard drives: > > 
>> https://storage.toshiba.com/consumer-hdd/support/product > > Entering 
>> "MK1234GS" and "MK1234GSXIDE" into the edit box makes me > think your HDD is 
>> no longer supported. But, there are many FOSS > tools that you can use 
>> instead. Unless I'm mixing up my reading of the information posted thus far, 
>> this is the internal hard drive, /dev/sda, which has Windows - not the 
>> /dev/sdb which has Linux. As such, I don't see how it's relevant to the fact 
>> that the latter is not visible to GRUB. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man 
>> adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to 
>> adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the 
>> unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

Fw: Fw: Grub cannot see my new hard drive

[Matthew Campbell]

The internal hard drive was visible to Grub, as was the other external USB hard 
drive, a Western Digital drive. Having an external hard drive connected with 
USB is not the problem. Grub was on /dev/sda and used to boot the Western 
Digital drive just fine, until Grub was reconfigured to boot the Toshiba hard 
drive instead.

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

 Original Message 
On Jun 13, 2020, 4:00 PM, The Wanderer wrote:

> On 2020-06-13 at 18:44, David Christensen wrote: [that on 2020-06-13 at 
> 15:38, Matthew Campbell wrote:] >> /dev/sda: Toshiba MK1234GS, 111.8 GiB 
> (Internal) >> /dev/sr0: MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ-850S , DVD R/W (Internal IDE) >> 
> /dev/sdb: Toshiba External USB 3.0 3.7 TiB >> /dev/sdc: PNY 32 USB 2.0 FD 
> 28.9 GiB If I'm reading things correctly, this "Toshiba External USB 3.0" - 
> labeled here as /dev/sdb - is the drive which is at the core of the reported 
> problem. I'm wondering whether the fact that it's an external hard drive, 
> connected over USB3, might be relevant to the fact that GRUB and the BIOS are 
> not detecting it. There are systems out there which have some of their USB 
> ports hanging off of an internal USB hub chip, such that in order for the 
> ports to be visible to the rest of the system, a driver for that hub is 
> needed. If GRUB etc. doesn't have a compatible driver for that hub, the USB 
> port to which this external drive is connected might not even be detected in 
> the first place. >> All USB ports are USB 2.0. That's *probably* not a 
> problem relative to the fact that this is a USB3 external hard drive, but it 
> certainly can't be helping. > I like to use the manufacturer diagnostic 
> utility to wipe and test > hard drives: > > 
> https://storage.toshiba.com/consumer-hdd/support/product > > Entering 
> "MK1234GS" and "MK1234GSXIDE" into the edit box makes me > think your HDD is 
> no longer supported. But, there are many FOSS > tools that you can use 
> instead. Unless I'm mixing up my reading of the information posted thus far, 
> this is the internal hard drive, /dev/sda, which has Windows - not the 
> /dev/sdb which has Linux. As such, I don't see how it's relevant to the fact 
> that the latter is not visible to GRUB. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man 
> adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt 
> the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. 
> -- George Bernard Shaw

Fw: Monitor Font During Boot

[Matthew Campbell]

Use the setfont command to change your console font on the fly. Look in 
/usr/share/consolefonts for available choices and try them out.

I use setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/Uni3-TerminusBold32x16.psf.gz

systemd sets it while booting too. I haven't figured that part out yet. It's a 
systemd related service.

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

 Original Message 
On Jun 13, 2020, 5:41 AM, Stephen P. Molnar wrote:

> I have a LG Flatron 24EN33TW-B LED LCD Monitor on my Debian Buster
> Linux platform.
>
> I have just changed the screen driver from nouveau to nvidia by running
> 'sudo apt install nvidia-driver.
>
> Before the change of drivers the initial font on the screen on booting
> the system was a large, ugly font, during the second portion of the boot
> process the font changed to a smaller, better looking font. After the
> change the r\font remained large and ugly until the login screen when
> the font becomes the same as the Desktop.
>
> Other than this I have had no problems with the operation of the computer.
>
> My question is what happen, and more importantly, should I be worried
> about impending doom?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> --
> Stephen P. Molnar, Ph.D.
> www.molecular-modeling.net
> 614.312.7528 (c)
> Skype: smolnar1

Fw: Grub cannot see my new hard drive

[Matthew Campbell]

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

 Original Message 
On Jun 12, 2020, 11:46 PM, David Christensen < dpchr...@holgerdanske.com> wrote:

On 2020-06-12 17:58, Matthew Campbell wrote:
> I hope I don't create a fight with this.
>
> I booted the Debian netinst disc and installed Linux on /dev/sdb1 as the root 
> partition. My computer is old.

Computer make and model? Processor? RAM module quantity, size, and
slot? HDD makes, models, interfaces, and sizes? Optical drive
supported media?

Toshiba Satellite laptop, possibly P19 or P190, something like that. I don't 
remember and can't find it.

enp10s8 10-baseT ethernet
wlp3s0 2.4 & 5 GHz wifi adapter (uses nonfree firmware package, already 
downloaded)

Intel Centrino Core 2 CPU T5200 @ 1.60 GHz

2048 MB of RAM, type & number of pins unknown, laptop profile

/dev/sda: Toshiba MK1234GS, 111.8 GiB (Internal)
/dev/sr0: MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ-850S , DVD R/W (Internal IDE)
/dev/sdb: Toshiba External USB 3.0 3.7 TiB
/dev/sdc: PNY 32 USB 2.0 FD 28.9 GiB

System BIOS version: V3.30
UUID: C08D94F8158FD811815F001636D1AA94

Memory: 640 kB + 2047 MB

> The system BIOS does not see this hard drive, nor does Grub, but the Linux 
> kernel does.

Please post the BIOS/CMOS Setup configuration variable names, available
options, and current values for anything related to drives, boot order,
etc..

Boot order:

CD/DVD
PNY USB 2.0 FD - (USB 2.0)
TOSHIBA MK1234GSXIDE S
WD 2500BMV Eternal - (USB 2.0)
FDD (Not present)
LAN (Not configured)

> I'm running the 4.19.0-9-686-pae kernel, #1 SMP Debian 4.19.118-2 and Buster 
> 10.4.0.
>
> The installation program tried to set up Grub on /dev/sda, but since Grub 
> cannot see /dev/sdb the system gets stuck in rescue mode. It sees two hard 
> drives hd0 and hd1, but says both have unknown filesystems. I had to install 
> Linux on a 32 GB USB flash drive just to get my computer to boot. Now I can 
> boot Windows again too. The flash drive is _really_ slow.

Which device (/dev/sda or /dev/sdb) is Windows and which is Debian?

Windows Vista factory installed on /dev/sda2 (Boot flag active) (Only Windows)
Debian Linux installed on /dev/sdb1 (Could not set the boot flag) (Only Linux)

Where do the names 'hd0' and 'hd1' come from?

Grub when booting /dev/sda. Grub enters rescue mode. Used ls.

What is the make and model of your USB flash drive?

Answered above.

Are you using a USB 2.0 port or a USB 3.0 port?

All USB ports are USB 2.0.

> Grub has /dev/sdb1 listed as an option, but says the disk does not exist and 
> to load the kernel first, which of course is on the new hard drive partition 
> /dev/sdb1 which I can access just fine after starting the kernel. The catch 
> is that I have to boot the flash drive /dev/sdc1 to do so thus making it the 
> root filesystem.

I have always installed GRUB to a drive device node -- e.g. /dev/sda --
and never to a partition device node -- e.g. /dev/sdb1.

How do you boot the USB flash drive?

Plugged it in and booted. Uses DOS MBR. /dev/sdc1 set to active. Uses ext4.

> 1) How can I help Grub see and use /dev/sdb1 ?

What you are attempting is called "dual-boot". I avoid that. I install
one small SSD in each computer and install one operating system. My
servers have large HDD's in RAID. One server has the bulk of my data
(download, music, pictures, video, etc.). I installed Samba and use it
as a file server for my LAN.

> 2) Can I create a CD or USB flash drive with which to boot the computer so it 
> loads the kernel and mounts /dev/sdb1 as the root file system?

That is possible, but the above is better.

> 3) How long is my flash drive likely to last? Will it wear out as I continue 
> to use it? Will reading from it damage it, or just writing to it?

I use SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0 16 GB flash drives for live drives. I
have also used them as system drives in the past. I like the small form
factor that does not stick out (and get broken off), but they run hot
and are not very fast. The interactive user experience can be choppy,
especially if multiple processes write to the flash drive at the same
time. None have died yet, but macOS Time Machine smoked (!) a 128 GB
drive after about a year.

> 4) How exactly does Grub work? What is the process, step by step?
> How do I configure Grub to do what I want?
> The installation program seems determined to do everything its own way.

I set up my machines so that the system drive is /dev/sda. I configure
the Debian Installer to install GRUB there.

If you want to learn more about GRUB:

1. Enter the command 'apropos grub' and then read the listed manual pages.

man: command not found
Therefore no man -k

2. Read the Debian Installation Guide:

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual

I'll check that out. Thanks you.

3. Use a search engine to find additional inf

Fw: Grub cannot see my new hard drive

[Matthew Campbell]

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

 Original Message 
On Jun 12, 2020, 8:32 PM, elvis < el...@dogonfire.com> wrote:

On 13/6/20 10:58 am, Matthew Campbell wrote:
> I hope I don't create a fight with this.
>
> I booted the Debian netinst disc and installed Linux on /dev/sdb1 as
> the root partition. My computer is old. The system BIOS does not see
> this hard drive, nor does Grub, but the Linux kernel does. I'm running
> the 4.19.0-9-686-pae kernel, #1 SMP Debian 4.19.118-2 and Buster 10.4.0.
>
> The installation program tried to set up Grub on /dev/sda, but since
> Grub cannot see /dev/sdb the system gets stuck in rescue mode. It sees
> two hard drives hd0 and hd1, but says both have unknown filesystems. I
> had to install Linux on a 32 GB USB flash drive just to get my
> computer to boot. Now I can boot Windows again too. The flash drive is
> _really_ slow.
>
> Grub has /dev/sdb1 listed as an option, but says the disk does not
> exist and to load the kernel first, which of course is on the new hard
> drive partition /dev/sdb1 which I can access just fine after starting
> the kernel. The catch is that I have to boot the flash drive /dev/sdc1
> to do so thus making it the root filesystem.
>
> 1) How can I help Grub see and use /dev/sdb1 ?
>
> 2) Can I create a CD or USB flash drive with which to boot the
> computer so it loads the kernel and mounts /dev/sdb1 as the root file
> system?

This is what you want.

The kernel and initrd can be on a separate partition to the root
filesystem. Append root=/dev/sdb1 to change the root from the ramdisk.

Or as on my Debian system, it ignores the kernel line and seems to find
the root filesystem anyhow. Handy when I mess up the order of the disks
and sdc1 becomes sdb1. No idea how it does it, magic I guess.

Response: It finds the correct disk/partition because each has a unique 
identifier UUID which Grub looks for. Grub can't see my /dev/sdb so telling it 
to boot /dev/sdb1 won't help because it can't see the hard drive. It will claim 
that the drive or partition does not exist.

>
> 3) How long is my flash drive likely to last? Will it wear out as I
> continue to use it? Will reading from it damage it, or just writing to it?
>
> 4) How exactly does Grub work? What is the process, step by step? How
> do I configure Grub to do what I want? The installation program seems
> determined to do everything its own way.
>
> Thank you for your assistance in these matters.
>
> name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me
>
>
>
>
--
Himself, he never took too seriously. His work most seriously.

Fw: How long will this take?

[Matthew Campbell]

I wipe a new drive for two reasons.

1) I like to make sure it's nice and clean which makes me comfortable. It 
bothers me if I don't.

2) I can make a reasonable determination about which sectors were used when 
setting up the partition table(s) and any boot loaders so I know which sectors 
were used and need to be backed up. Yes, I'm actually going to use dd to back 
up that space outside of any partition and store it elsewhere so I can restore 
it later if it is needed. I prefer to be safe rather than sorry. In today's 
cyberspace you just can't run without a backup. It's not a question of if you 
will be attacked, but when and how. I refuse to pay a ransom.

If you get a used drive and you are curious then sure, you could go snooping 
around. I remember when we used a VAX running VMS back in college. It would 
allocate some huge amount of disk space when compiling our C programs, even 
though it wasn't used or cleared. I found old deleted emails from other users 
in that slack space. Yes, they were in plain text. We later found an option to 
use when compiling our programs to prevent that so our programs didn't have to 
use as much space which was limited by a disk quota.

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

 Original Message 
On Jun 10, 2020, 6:58 AM, Anders Andersson wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 3:33 PM Nicolas George  wrote:
>>
>> Anders Andersson (12020-06-10):
>> > Except wiping a disk is trivial. Just start the job and come back
>> > later to a clean disk. It's not like you have to wipe it by hand. I do
>> > it routinely before I put a disk to use that's going to be used for a
>> > couple of years.
>>
>> There is no "except" about: define your threat model; if it requires
>> wiping, wipe. If it does not, wiping is just a waste of time, little or
>> lots, still a waste. And it is a waste of power too.
>>
>> There are many things that are trivial to do with a hard drive and could
>> benefit security in far-fetched scenarios. Did you wipe the possible
>> traces of cocaine? Did you weight it to check it matches the specs? Did
>> you take pictures of all angles? All these and many others are trivial.
>> Why one but not the others?
>
> Because the police raiding my house for dealing drugs is not a
> realistic threat. Looking at my drives for running Tor could be.

Fw: How long will this take?

[Matthew Campbell]

I have started the process over from the beginning. It seems to respond well to 
obs=4M as the write speed has gone from 3.7 MB/s to 28.2 MB/s, which is about 
the same as where it was with obs=1M. It should take a couple of days to 
complete this write process.

The WD drive that I have, which is connected to a separate USB2 port, showed a 
write speed of 27.5 Mb/s.

I am using:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb obs=4M status=progress

The read speed was faster, of course.

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

 Original Message 
On Jun 9, 2020, 2:39 AM, Nicolas George wrote:

> Christopher David Howie (12020-06-08): > I'd suggest simply adding 
> "status=progress" which gives you a summary every > second including bytes 
> written, elapsed time, and average transfer rate. How do you add 
> "status=progress" to a process that has already been running for three days? 
> Regards, -- Nicolas George

Re: How long will this take?

[Matthew Campbell]

# cat /proc/24283/fdinfo/1
pos: 877106917376
flags: 011
mnt_id: 21
#

Is that in bytes?

stdin and stderr both show a position of zero.

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

 Original Message 
On Jun 8, 2020, 1:32 PM, Nicolas George wrote:

> Matthew Campbell (12020-06-08): > I bought a new 4 terrabyte hard drive that 
> is connected with a USB > cable using USB2. It took about 32 hours to read 
> every sector on the > drive to look for bad sectors. I started blanking the 
> sectors using > /dev/zero last Friday night. It still isn't done. Is there a 
> way I can > find out how much data a particular process has written to the 
> disk? > I'm using Debian 10.4. Sending a USR1 signal to a running 'dd' 
> process makes it print I/O sta‐ tistics to standard error and then resume 
> copying. Fron dd(1). Also, you can go read /proc/$(pidof dd)/fdinfo, it 
> contains the information too. Note that it becomes much slower as it nears 
> the center of the disk. Regards, -- Nicolas George

How long will this take?

[Matthew Campbell]

I bought a new 4 terrabyte hard drive that is connected with a USB cable using 
USB2. It took about 32 hours to read every sector on the drive to look for bad 
sectors. I started blanking the sectors using /dev/zero last Friday night. It 
still isn't done. Is there a way I can find out how much data a particular 
process has written to the disk? I'm using Debian 10.4.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb ibs=4096 count=976754646

name=Matthew%20Campbell&email=trenix25%40pm.me

Re: Encrypted /boot password has to be entered twice

[Matthew Moore]

On Tue 2020-02-25 17:31, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> Grub needs the passphrase for /boot, and then Linux needs it
> separately. Unfortunately there isn't a way for Grub to pass the
> passphrase to Linux so it has to ask you again. People are looking at
> ways to make this work better...

One way to do this is to use both a passphrase and a keyfile. You use the
passphrase with grub to decrypt things, then configure the initramfs to hold the
keyfile (both located on the drive) and use it for mounting grub. The net effect
is to only have the password prompt once. Here's what to do:

* Generate the keyfile (call it /keyfile) and add it to you device.

* Add this to /etc/crypttab:

-- /etc/crypttab ---
root  UUID=  /keyfile  luks


* Install cryptsetup-initramfs and add/edit this line:

-- /etc/cryptsetup-initramfs/conf-hook -
KEYFILE_PATTERN=/keyfile


* The keyfile should be protected and is stored, so give it a more restrictive
  umask by adding/editing the line

-- /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf -
UMASK=0077


* Update /etc/default/grub.

-- /etc/default/grub 
---{{{}}}
GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="cryptdevice=/dev/"


* Rebuild the initramfs, update grub:

  $ update-initramfs -k all -u
  $ update-grub


BTW, grub's verification of the passphrase is *slow*. You can speed things up at
the cost of some security by adjusting the --iter-time parameter. I have found
that --iter-time=1000 is fast enough on newer machines.

Hope this helps,
MM

Does Debian have a yum security equivalent

[Wilkinson, Matthew]

Hello Debian Community,

I've been unable to find information about how to use apt, apt-get, or aptitude 
to get security erratum information on a Debian 10 server. Is there a yum 
security equivalent in Debian? Specifically I am looking to query the Debian 
repos for DSA advisory information. For example I know that I need to install 
an update to e2fsprogs, and I have the email from Debian with the 'DSA-4535-1' 
but is there a way I can get that information on the Debian server itself 
through the command-line?

Regards,

Matthew Wilkinson

Configure apt-get to work through corp internet proxy

[Wilkinson, Matthew]

Hello Debian users,

I'm experimenting with Debian in an enterprise environment. We have a corp. 
Internet proxy which downloads and scans files prior to passing the files onto 
the client. 

With Debian this seems to be a problem for APT. I am able to run 'apt-get 
update' and that seems to work OK, however when I try to actually run 'apt-get 
upgrade' on Debian 10 it tries for a few seconds to download a patch for: 
'linux-image-4.19.0-5-amd64', which is 47.6MB. It tries and gives up fairly 
quickly. 

   # apt-get upgrade
   Reading package lists... Done
   Building dependency tree
   Reading state information... Done
   Calculating upgrade... Done
   The following packages will be upgraded:
 linux-image-4.19.0-5-amd64
   1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
   Need to get 47.6 MB of archives.
   After this operation, 3,072 B disk space will be freed.
   Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
   Get:1 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian-security 
buster/updates/main amd64 linux-image-4.19.0-5-amd64 amd64 4.19.37-5+deb10u2 
[47.6 MB]
   Err:1 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian-security 
buster/updates/main amd64 linux-image-4.19.0-5-amd64 amd64 4.19.37-5+deb10u2
 Undetermined Error [IP: x.x.x.x]
E: Failed to fetch 
http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian-security/pool/updates/main/l/linux-signed-amd64/linux-image-4.19.0-5-amd64_4.19.37-5+deb10u2_amd64.deb
  Undetermined Error [IP: x.x.x.x]
   E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with 
--fix-missing?

I have tried to search Google to find a way to significantly increase the 
timeout that APT has or the number of retries without any success, but I fear I 
may be doing it wrong. Here is my apt.conf:

   # cat /etc/apt/apt.conf
   Acquire::http::Proxy "http://proxy.domain.tld:80";;
   Acquire::http::Timeout "999";
   Acquire::https::Timeout "999";
   APT::Acquire::Retries "5";

Anyone have any experience with forcing Debian's APT to try very hard and for a 
long time while doing downloads/upgrades? If it matters I'm running Debian 10 
AMD64 on VMware vSphere.

Thanks,

Re: Wireless home LAN - WiFi vs Bluetooth?

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/29/19 12:57 PM, David Wright wrote:
> On Mon 29 Jul 2019 at 20:43:04 (+0100), Joe wrote:
>> On Mon, 29 Jul 2019 10:26:14 -0500 John Hasler  wrote:
>>
>>> They don't have to be on the same branch circuit: just on the same
>>> "phase"[1].  There is probably a gadget available that bridges the
>>> signal between phases.
>>>
>>> [1] They aren't really phases but everyone calls them that.
>>
>> They are in my country. 3-phase, 240V RMS each phase to neutral, 415V
>> RMS between phases.
> 
> Irrelevant in a domestic setting: it's illegal to have more than one
> phase in an ordinary house. Houses will have one phase each, so you'll
> share your phase with various neighbours scattered along the street.

How do you figure? In the US most 240V outlets are 3 phase, and they are
relatively common. You need them for most ovens, washing machines, and
electric cars.



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Re: Failed to fetch http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/buster/InRelease:

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/8/19 8:23 AM, local10 wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Debian Buster updates started failing for me about a couple of days ago. I 
> understand it may be related to  Buster being moved from testing to stable 
> but that shouldn't have affected me as I specifically target buster instead 
> of testing.
> 
> Any ideas? Thanks

Use "apt update" instead of "aptitude update" or "apt-get update"

Specifically you want to:

# apt update && apt upgrade && apt full-upgrade




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Re: Steam fail to launch after upgrade to Buster

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/7/19 3:38 AM, Wang Zhiheng wrote:
> Running Steam on debian 10 64-bit
> STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
> Pins up-to-date!
> WARNING: setlocale('en_US.UTF-8') failed, using locale: 'C'.
> International characters may not work.
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] Startup - updater built Jun 17 2019 23:31:08
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] 正在验证安装...
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] Unable to read and verify install manifest
> /home/onoketa/.local/share/Steam/package/steam_client_ubuntu12.installed
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] Verification complete
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] 正在下载更新...
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] 正在检查可用更新...
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] Downloading manifest:
> client-download.steampowered.com/client/steam_client_ubuntu12
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] Download failed: http error 0
> (client-download.steampowered.com/client/steam_client_ubuntu12)
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] Downloading manifest:
> media.steampowered.com/client/steam_client_ubuntu12
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] Download failed: http error 0
> (media.steampowered.com/client/steam_client_ubuntu12)
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] failed to load manifest from buffer.
> [2019-07-07 18:37:33] Failed to load manifest
> 

I'm unable to replicate the issue on my end.

It looks to me like some kind of issue downloading the steam client
manifest, and not necessarily a Debian Buster issue. But it could also
be local corruption.

I would purge the contents of /home/onoketa/.local/share/Steam/, and try
again. Possibly reinstall Steam.



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Apt vs Apt-get (Was: Can't Upgrade to Buster}

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/7/19 4:29 AM, Mark Allums wrote:

> I never heard of the difference between apt-get and apt (no -get).  Is
> this new?

I found this article that explains the differences between apt and apt-get.

https://itsfoss.com/apt-vs-apt-get-difference/

The Debian Wiki has a section on apt as well.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianPackageManagement#Apt

Apt exists to simplify usage of apt-get, by consolidating the most used
options across the different "apt-get" and "apt-cache" commands into a
single interface.

IE instead of having to remember that you use "apt-cache search" instead
of "apt-get search" you can just use "apt search". "apt-get
dist-upgrade" becomes "apt full-upgrade". Things like that

Apt also has a few new commands such as "apt list" which can be used in
some nifty ways such as:

$ apt list --upgradable
To see which packages can be upgraded

$ apt list --installed
To see which packages are installed

$ apt list foo
To see which packages match the criteria

$ apt list | grep foo
To pipe the results of apt list into grep, to do some grep magic.

Apt-get and Apt-cache still work, and there are still specific functions
that they do that apt itself doesn't, but for day-to-day tasks apt works
very well, and in many ways works easier and better than apt-get and
apt-cache.

Cheers.

-Matt



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Re: Can't Upgrade to Buster

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/7/19 4:15 AM, Dekks Herton wrote:
> Mark Allums  writes:
> 
>> I've been running Buster in Testing happily for months.  So technically, I'm 
>> already upgraded.  However,
**snip**
>> What do I do?
> 
> For Buster its best to use apt update - then just answer y to accept the
> change in repo status to stable
> 

Indeed, apt is the preferred tool instead of apt-get.

However if you want to use apt-get still, perform this command:

# apt-get --allow-releaseinfo-change update

-Matt



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Oldest Usable x86 CPU for Stretch (Was: Choice of VMs under i386 Stretch?)

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/3/19 10:20 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> That said I do not believe that any existing i386 32-bit-only hardware
>> that is still floating around even supports the virtual machine
>> extensions necessary to run a true VM host.
> 
> I haven't use qemu on my 32bit only i686 machines recently, but I see no
> reason why it wouldn't work any more.

You know, this got me thinking. What *is* the oldest 32-bit x86 CPU that
we can use in Stretch for a VM host? And assuming we are talking
out-of-the-box experience, ie I download a standard ISO and fire it up.

And to be honest, I don't know. Debian seems to support as old as the
Pentium Pro, but I'm not sure what compiler flags that we use, ie what
CPU extensions are required. I remember a couple of years ago I had to
dig up a very old version of Puppy Linux (with a very old Kernel
version) to run an AMD K6-2 laptop because of missing CPU extensions. So
I'm wondering if the kernel that ships with Debian is the same.

Any ideas?

Note: I don't care about the practicality of this.

-Matt



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Re: Choice of VMs under i386 Stretch?

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/2/19 1:20 PM, Andy Smith wrote:
> I do feel sorry for you Matthew. You have been enticed into spending
> considerable time giving a thorough answer in an Owlett thread.
> Unfortunately Owlett threads are either an ongoing Internet
> performance art project or a result of severe mental illness (why
> not both!?), not sincere requests for help.

I have an innate desire to help people, but more importantly I give
people the benefit of the doubt. Besides I self-taught myself a few
things along the way, so I consider it a win.

I have no idea what an Owlett thread is, other than it sounds like a
Pokémon or one of the characters from the cartoon PJ Masks. Or is it
just another name for good old fashioned trolling?

> Now, which one of you is going to tell him that running virtual
> machines is a bit of a stretch on a 32-bit host?
> 
> Better luck next time! :)

I'm not going to discount that someone has a perfectly good reason for
wanting to do this, even if it is for academic purposes. Granted, I
think in this day and age it is a bit silly to try and run a VM on a
32-bit host (or for that matter, run a 32-bit host at all if your
hardware supports 64-bit, but that is another topic).

That said I do not believe that any existing i386 32-bit-only hardware
that is still floating around even supports the virtual machine
extensions necessary to run a true VM host. Containers like Docker?
Sure, those should still work, but I'm not an expert in the subject.

-Matt



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Re: Output from apt-get update.

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/2/19 5:18 PM, pe...@easthope.ca wrote:
> From: Francisco M Neto 
> Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2019 07:27:28 -0300
>> It's also worth checking if there's anything under
>> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
> peter@imager:~$ ls /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mythtv.list
> peter@imager:~$
> 
> With any luck, mythtv.list isn't involved in this conundrum.

Something tells me that it is worth a look. What are the contents of
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/mythtv.list ?

-Matt



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Re: Choice of VMs under i386 Stretch?

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/2/19 8:34 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> I'm partial to VirtualBox.   Is that on any of the Debian DVD'S?
>> No, because it isn't free software.
>> See  for details.
> 
> I believe what you wrote is slightly misleading: the base VirtualBox
> software seems to satisfy the definition of Free Software just fine.
> The above wiki page mentions two problems for Debian packaging:
> - There's a proprietary "add-on" for it, but that doesn't affect the
>   status of the base system. 

Technically Debian places Virtualbox in Contrib since version 4.2
because a non-free component is required to build the BIOS.

> - There's a lack of interest from the main developers to provide
>   long-term support for older releases which made it too much trouble
>   for Debian's security team to provide support for it, so it's not in
>   Debian any more.

This is the primary driver as to why Stretch places Virtualbox in
backports, and why Buster will not have Virtualbox packages in the
Debian repo at all.

Additionally, Oracle no longer supports i386 versions of Virtualbox, not
since version 6.0.0.

For that reason I would not recommend using Virtualbox unless you are
intending to use the Oracle-supplied packages, and I certainly would not
recommend using the i386 versions.

-Matt



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Re: Choice of VMs under i386 Stretch?

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/2/19 8:34 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> I'm partial to VirtualBox.   Is that on any of the Debian DVD'S?
>> No, because it isn't free software.
>> See  for details.
>
> I believe what you wrote is slightly misleading: the base VirtualBox
> software seems to satisfy the definition of Free Software just fine.
> The above wiki page mentions two problems for Debian packaging:
> - There's a proprietary "add-on" for it, but that doesn't affect the
>   status of the base system.

Technically Debian places Virtualbox in Contrib since version 4.2
because a non-free component is required to build the BIOS.

> - There's a lack of interest from the main developers to provide
>   long-term support for older releases which made it too much trouble
>   for Debian's security team to provide support for it, so it's not in
>   Debian any more.

This is the primary driver as to why Stretch places Virtualbox in
backports, and why Buster will not have Virtualbox packages in the
Debian repo at all.

Additionally, Oracle no longer supports i386 versions of Virtualbox, not
since version 6.0.0.

For that reason I would not recommend using Virtualbox unless you are
intending to use the Oracle-supplied packages, and I certainly would not
recommend using the i386 versions.

-Matt





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Re: Choice of VMs under i386 Stretch?

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/2/19 8:34 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> I'm partial to VirtualBox.   Is that on any of the Debian DVD'S?
>> No, because it isn't free software.
>> See  for details.
>
> I believe what you wrote is slightly misleading: the base VirtualBox
> software seems to satisfy the definition of Free Software just fine.
> The above wiki page mentions two problems for Debian packaging:
> - There's a proprietary "add-on" for it, but that doesn't affect the
>   status of the base system.

Technically Debian places Virtualbox in Contrib since version 4.2
because a non-free component is required to build the BIOS.

> - There's a lack of interest from the main developers to provide
>   long-term support for older releases which made it too much trouble
>   for Debian's security team to provide support for it, so it's not in
>   Debian any more.

This is the primary driver as to why Stretch places Virtualbox in
backports, and why Buster will not have Virtualbox packages in the
Debian repo at all.

Additionally, Oracle no longer supports i386 versions of Virtualbox, not
since version 6.0.0.

For that reason I would not recommend using Virtualbox unless you are
intending to use the Oracle-supplied packages, and I certainly would not
recommend using the i386 versions.

-Matt





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Re: Choice of VMs under i386 Stretch?

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/2/19 6:04 AM, Matthew Crews wrote:

> To determine *which* installation DVD contains one of these programs,
> you will need to look at the individual wiki page for each VM host
> program, see which package or packages you need, and check the DVD .list
> files to see which DVD contains that package [2]. You should also be
> aware that each package may have untold number of dependencies, so I
> suggest you look at each individual package [3], figure out the
> dependencies, and then figure out which dvd those dependencies are on.

Addendum:

An alternative method is to look at each individual package, figure out
which packages you need, download the .deb files for each package, put
them on removable media (CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, or a usb flash drive), put
the removable media in your host machine, and install from the removable
media.

On an internet-capable host, you can download the .deb for apps foo and
bar this way (without root access):

$ apt download foo bar

make sure you pay attention to the file name afterwards:

$ pwd
/path/to/file
$ ls *.deb
foo_3.14.deb  bar_2.18.deb

To install a .deb file, you can either use apt to point to the file:

$ sudo apt install /path/to/file/foo_3.14.deb /path/to/file/bar_2.18.deb

Or you can use dpkg:

$ sudo dpkg -i /path/to/file/foo_3.14.deb /path/to/file/bar_2.18.deb

-Matt



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Re: Choice of VMs under i386 Stretch?

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/2/19 4:30 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

> A restatement of my question might be:
> 
> I run the i386 version of Debian 9.8.
> Using only contents of that set of installation DVDs, I wish to use a VM
> host capable of running multiple VM guests. Although the guests will be
> running in command line mode, the host should have a GUI.
> What choice metapackages provide that function?

You have your answer already in previous emails.

The Wiki provides a list of software capable of turning Debian into a VM
host [1]. They include full hardware virtualization such as Qemu,
containers such as Docker, and pseudo-virtualization such as Schroot.
Its up to you to determine which one best suits your needs, as all of
these VM host programs can do what you want.

1:
https://wiki.debian.org/SystemVirtualization#Using_Debian_to_host_Virtual_Computers

To determine *which* installation DVD contains one of these programs,
you will need to look at the individual wiki page for each VM host
program, see which package or packages you need, and check the DVD .list
files to see which DVD contains that package [2]. You should also be
aware that each package may have untold number of dependencies, so I
suggest you look at each individual package [3], figure out the
dependencies, and then figure out which dvd those dependencies are on.

2: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/i386/list-dvd/
3: https://packages.debian.org/

Is this a lot of work? Yes.

Normally I would recommend VirtualBox for its ease of use, but
Virtualbox is *not* found on the installation DVDs.

Depending on your hardware, native virtualization might not even be
possible. I suggest consulting your CPU manufacturer to determine if it
is. If you are using an Intel CPU, you can visit their product page to
see if it supports VT-x [4]. I can't speak for AMD CPUs or other brand
CPUs, though it should be revealed in the output of lscpu

4: https://ark.intel.com

If native virtualization is not available, you may be required to use a
container or a pseudo-virtualization option.

-Matt



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Re: How Buster release may affect Unstable?

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/1/19 10:24 AM, Default User wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> Easy question, maybe hard to answer . . . 
> 
> Is someone has an existing conventional Unstable setup (nothing exotic
> in hardware or software), what if any special actions should be taken
> before, during, or after the impending release of the new Stable?

Be ready for Unstable to become...well, unstable again.

Right now Unstable is mostly frozen due to the imminent release of
Buster. Shortly (immediately?) after Buster is released, Unstable will
be unfrozen, and the good 'ol Debian Sid everyone knows and loves will
be back.

Remember: the purpose of Debian Unstable is to be a development platform
to develop the NEXT Stable. Breakage can, and will, occur on occasion,
and system stability is not guaranteed.



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Re: Choice of VMs under i386 Stretch?

[Matthew Crews]

On 7/1/19 10:35 AM, Curt wrote:
> On 2019-07-01, Matthew Crews  wrote:
>>
>> At a cursory glance, it does NOT appear that DVD-1 contains any VM Host
>> software, other than perhaps nspawn (which is part of Systemd).
> 
> Isn't nspawn a chroot container?
> 

Indeed, but depending on the needs, it might work.

Re: Choice of VMs under i386 Stretch?

[Matthew Crews]

On 6/30/19 12:12 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 06/30/2019 10:44 AM, Linux-Fan wrote:
>> Matthew Crews writes:
>>> Are you asking what virtual machine hosts are available on Debian?
> 
> *explicitly*

So clearly I struck a nerve, and I apologize. The way you asked your
question was somewhat unclear to me at first. It is clear now.

I do not know the entire list of software that is found on the different
DVDs, but you can find out by looking on the official DVD lists. Each
DVD has a corresponding .list.gz you can browse, all the way up to DVD 14.

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/i386/list-dvd/

At a cursory glance, it does NOT appear that DVD-1 contains any VM Host
software, other than perhaps nspawn (which is part of Systemd).

Hope this helps.

-Matt



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Re: Choice of VMs under i386 Stretch?

[Matthew Crews]

On 6/30/19 5:34 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I'm considering using a VM for some experiments.
> Although my web searches have turned up articles about particular
> aspects of particular VMs, I've found no inventory of what VMs are
> available in Debian.
> 
> My firm requirement is that all required software be in set of install
> DVDs for i386 Debian 9.8.
> 
> What are my options?
> 
> 
Are you asking what virtual machine hosts are available on Debian?
Because Debian can easily run as a virtual machine guest.

Debian has several available virtual machine hosts at its disposal.
Check out the wiki:

https://wiki.debian.org/SystemVirtualization#Using_Debian_to_host_Virtual_Computers

Cheers,

-Matt



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Re: Debian9.6 upgrades to Debian 10 byitself.

[Matthew Crews]

On 6/29/19 5:07 PM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, June 29, 2019 07:26:34 PM Matthew Crews wrote:
>> Sounds like you have a partially installed Debian Buster. This is what can
>> happen when you change your sources, but you don't do a full-upgrade.
>> Generally it probably isn't good to run this way.
>>
>> Now is a good time to upgrade to Buster at least! Buster is expected to
>> release next week, and for the most part is ready for use, unless you have
>> certain hardware that you want to keep on Stretch.
>>
>> First, I would back up your data.
>>
>> Next, I would change your sources to point to buster (not testing), and:
>>
>> $ sudo apt update
>> $ sudo apt full-upgrade
>>
>> and fully upgrade your system to Buster.
> 
> Are the release / upgrade notes (whatever they're called) available for 
> Buster?  I would guess the OP should read those for other possible actions 
> which may be required.
> 

Good call. Here are the current release notes (work-in-progress)

https://www.debian.org/releases/testing/releasenotes



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Re: Debian9.6 upgrades to Debian 10 byitself.

[Matthew Crews]

> 
> From: aprekates 
> Sent: Sun Jun 30 00:45:12 CEST 2019
> To: 
> Subject: Re: Debian9.6 upgrades to Debian 10 byitself.
> 
> 
> Thanks for the reply.
> 
> You'r right. The problem was in my sources.
> 
> Two weeks ago i tried sth and forgot to revert back
> the correct ones..
> 
> Now i wonder what damage i've done.
> 
> My system booted ok . It seems like debian 9.  No observable changes to 
> login screen or KDE.
> 
> Although kde info reports: Plasma 5.8.6 and
> uname reports Linux 4.9.0-7
> 

Sounds like you have a partially installed Debian Buster. This is what can 
happen when you change your sources, but you don't do a full-upgrade. Generally 
it probably isn't good to run this way.

Now is a good time to upgrade to Buster at least! Buster is expected to release 
next week, and for the most part is ready for use, unless you have certain 
hardware that you want to keep on Stretch.

First, I would back up your data.

Next, I would change your sources to point to buster (not testing), and:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt full-upgrade

and fully upgrade your system to Buster.

-Matt

Re: Does 32-bit x86 support (aka [multilib] ) have a future with Debian after Buster

[Matthew Crews]

Andrew McGlashan wrote:
> I would think this would be due to misunderstanding by new users more
> than anything else.

Right, I'm not referring to running Debian on 32-bit machines. I'm
referring to being able to:

# dpkg --add-architecture i386

in an amd64 machine, and

# apt install :i386

in an amd64 environment, in order to maintain i386 compatibility in an
amd64 environment.

For now it seems that Debian will be just fine for this purpose.

Cheers.



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Re: Does 32-bit x86 support (aka [multilib] ) have a future with Debian after Buster

[Matthew Crews]

On 6/19/19 3:30 PM, Lazar Tadić wrote:
> Don't worry Mathew, 32-bit arch is currently 2nd most popular arch on
> Debian. There's no way it will be dropped even after Buster.
> 

Curious, where can one look up these numbers?



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Does 32-bit x86 support (aka [multilib] ) have a future with Debian after Buster?

[Matthew Crews]

I was just reading the announcement that the Ubuntu folks are dropping
32-bit x86 support completely. Although Ubuntu is a downstream
derivative of Debian, Debian and Ubuntu have a lot of overlap in terms
of maintainers and developers, and certain developments between the two
projects tend to overlap.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/i386-architecture-will-be-dropped-starting-with-eoan-ubuntu-19-10/11263/2

As someone who uses a good chunk of 32-bit x86 software on a 64-bit
machine (with no hopes of my software ever being ported to 64-bit), this
has me worried about the future viability of running my software. For
now, the solution is simple: stick with Debian, use an older version of
Ubuntu, or use a different Linux-based distro altogether.

I won't be surprised when Debian stops shipping ISOs for 32-bit x86
support, as the demand for this architecture is rapidly declining with
each Debian release. However, there is still considerable demand for
32-bit legacy software.

Debian Buster will definitely ship with multilib support to allow using
32-bit x86 applications on 64-bit amd64 systems, without the need to
jump through virtualization hoops or running snap packages (like the
Ubuntu folks are recommending). But I'm worried that future versions of
Debian (ie: Bullseye and Bookworm) are going to be the final nail in the
coffin for 32-bit software support.

Am I worried over nothing?



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Re: Output from apt-get update.

[Matthew Crews]

On 6/11/19 7:28 PM, pe...@easthope.ca wrote:
**SNIP*

What does your "/etc/apt/sources.list" file look like on your two machines?

Its unusual to directly point to an IP address for the Debian repos, as
opposed to point to the domain name.



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Re: A call to drop gnome

[Matthew Crews]

On 4/16/19 10:36 AM, Reco wrote:
>> The major DEs are all pushing for the move to Wayland,
> 
> All two of them, I assume?

Call me lazy, but I'm not going to cite every article under the Sun
explaining why we *should* be moving to Wayland over X. Here are a few
starting points.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_protocol%29
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/

In the end it comes down to Wayland will be the future way of doing
things, and there are headaches along the way.

I will concede that as long as Nvidia drivers do not play nicely with
Wayland (and they don't AFAIK), X will still be required. But I did just
read that Plasma 5.16 landed Nvidia patches that let it work under
Wayland with Nvidia, so maybe not that much longer in the future?

(and unfortunately, people will still buy and use Nvidia cards, and want
support for them whether or not the drivers are FOSS).

>> Some major ones even USE Wayland by default where possible.
> 
> [Scratches head] SUSE? Surely that's what you meant?

Off the top of my head, Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu (as of 18.10) use
Wayland by default.

>> This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster right?
> 
> In this particular thread we discuss a wish of a Debian User, who in no
> uncertain terms expressed that GNOME should be dropped from the Debian.
> I mean, look at the Subject.

Fair enough. I personally think KDE or even XFCE should be the default
DE for Debian, but thats just my opinion and the the topic of endless
debate. We will be in circles debating what we think the default DE for
Debian should be. As long as the Debian installer gives us a choice (and
as long as a variety of Live images for each major DE are available), it
doesn't really matter in the end.

I do not think that Gnome should be removed from Debian as long as Gnome
works fine. As far as I'm concerned, it does work fine. Perfect? No, but
good enough IMO.

On this mailing list, though, I could see a progression from "why is
synaptic removed from Debian Buster?" to "Lets remove Gnome", hence why
I brought it up.

> Nope, looks alive to me.

Noted, thanks for the correction.




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Re: A call to drop gnome

[Matthew Crews]

On 4/16/19 10:36 AM, Reco wrote:
>> The major DEs are all pushing for the move to Wayland,
> 
> All two of them, I assume?

Call me lazy, but I'm not going to cite every article under the Sun
explaining why we *should* be moving to Wayland over X. Here are a few
starting points.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_protocol%29
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/

In the end it comes down to Wayland will be the future way of doing
things, and there are headaches along the way.

I will concede that as long as Nvidia drivers do not play nicely with
Wayland (and they don't AFAIK), X will still be required. But I did just
read that Plasma 5.16 landed Nvidia patches that let it work under
Wayland with Nvidia, so maybe not that much longer in the future?

(and unfortunately, people will still buy and use Nvidia cards, and want
support for them whether or not the drivers are FOSS).

>> Some major ones even USE Wayland by default where possible.
> 
> [Scratches head] SUSE? Surely that's what you meant?

Off the top of my head, Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu (as of 18.10) use
Wayland by default.

>> This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster right?
> 
> In this particular thread we discuss a wish of a Debian User, who in no
> uncertain terms expressed that GNOME should be dropped from the Debian.
> I mean, look at the Subject.

Fair enough. I personally think KDE or even XFCE should be the default
DE for Debian, but thats just my opinion and the the topic of endless
debate. We will be in circles debating what we think the default DE for
Debian should be. As long as the Debian installer gives us a choice (and
as long as a variety of Live images for each major DE are available), it
doesn't really matter in the end.

I do not think that Gnome should be removed from Debian as long as Gnome
works fine. As far as I'm concerned, it does work fine. Perfect? No, but
good enough IMO.

On this mailing list, though, I could see a progression from "why is
synaptic removed from Debian Buster?" to "Lets remove Gnome", hence why
I brought it up.

> Nope, looks alive to me.

Noted, thanks for the correction.




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Re: A few questions (buster and presentation)

[Matthew Crews]

On 4/16/19 10:32 AM, Michael Stone wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 06:27:34PM +0100, Paul Sutton wrote:
>> There are 3 main ways to install packages,  I have tried to explain this
>> in the presentation as
>>
>> Apt - 1.8.0 - command line tool (universal)
>> Gnome-packagekit - used for gnome desktop environment
>> Synaptic - 0.84.5 used for most other Desktop Environment(s)
> 
> There's also aptitude, which actually works well.
> 

FYI, Synaptic is not available in Debian Buster.

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Matthew Crews]

On 4/16/19 6:54 AM, Reco wrote:
>> I see Linus is drifting back to his older style, issuing the desktop 
>> people a whipping they are in need of over the weekend, saying 90% of 
>> why linux doesn't control the desktop is that there is not a 
>> standardized, one size fits all because it can do all things desktop. 
> 
> A link please, LKML will suffice. If Linus is back after that CoC story
> in all his former glory - I need to see this.

Old news. He posted two days ago about Linux Kernel 5.1-rc5:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/4/14/265


As far as Gnome on Wayland, X.org's days are numbered, and for good reason.

The major DEs are all pushing for the move to Wayland, but they continue
to support X because Wayland isn't fully ready. However it cannot be
made ready unless people are actually using it in the wild, and
submitting feedback.

Additionally, every major Linux distro supports Wayland, provided their
chosen DE supports Wayland. Some major ones even USE Wayland by default
where possible. It will not be long before X is deprecated, and then
fully removed.

This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster right?
Well, all someone needs to do is update Synaptic with proper Wayland
support. But judging by the upstream development, it appears that
Synaptic might be abandoned?

https://launchpad.net/synaptic

Well, it's maintained by an Ubuntu developer, and Ubuntu doesn't even
ship Synaptic anymore.

All the same, hardly a reason to drop Gnome.

My 2¢

-Matt



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Re: BTRFS snapshot space consumption (was: New laptop: need advice on choice...)

[Matthew Crews]

On 4/13/19 5:40 PM, Peter Wiersig wrote:
> Peter Wiersig  writes:
>>
>> I would be pissed if my OS removes snapshots I might or might not need
>> in the future.  That's a release critical bug in my eyes.  Yeah, I know
>> Microsoft and Apple do that automatically if your capacity runs out, but
>> that's also why I don't recommend them at all.
> 
> Ok, I checked https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Snapper and they do support
> LVM and ext4, and they have a bullet of auto-removing old snapshots.  I
> hope they did it right, perhaps I need to make a new test drive with the
> latest release.
> 
> Snapshots on ZFS can't be zero cost, so you need to account for them
> there, too.
> 
> Peter
> 

ZFS Snapshots are nearly zero cost to create the snapshot, since ZFS
(and likewise BTRFS) are copy-on-write file systems. What it does is
records the deltas after the snapshots.

This is a good thinkg as it saves on disk space.

For example:

You create a random 10 MB file, and take a snapshot. You then alter the
5 tail MBs and add five more MBs at the tail. You are left with:

Pre-Snapshot | 5MB chunk #1 | 5MB chunk #2 |  - total 10MBs
Post-Snapshot | 5MB chunk #1 | 5MB chunk #3 | 5MB chunk #4 | - total 15MBs

Actual disk usage will be 20 MBs, since the 5MB chunk #1 is only
recorded on disk once, not twice.

Here is a good talk on the subject by Michael Lucas, one of the premier
experts on ZFS. Its worth noting that a lot of the concepts apply to
BTRFS to varying degrees:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9A0dX2WqW8

-Matt

Re: Installing Debian root on ZFS mirror NetBoot

[Matthew Crews]

On 3/31/19 11:20 PM, Mimiko wrote:
> On 01.04.2019 05:51, Matthew Crews wrote:
>> Step-by-step instructions are found here:
>>
>> https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Debian-Stretch-Root-on-ZFS
> 
> Hello.
> 
> I read this guide, but this implies to have a separate MD raid on disk.
> It is not fully /boot on ZFS.
> 

Erm, this guide walks you through the process of getting / root on ZFS,
though it does make you do a little extra legwork to set up a Z-RAID.
I've followed this guide myself for an encrypted ZFS setup on Debian
with my Laptop.

You are aware that ZFS does not use traditional MDADM, but rather
integrates the RAID functionality directly into the file system, right?



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Re: Installing Debian root on ZFS mirror NetBoot

[Matthew Crews]

On 3/31/19 3:12 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> On 3/31/19 12:45 AM, Mimiko wrote:
>> Hello.
>>
>> I know that ZFS is not well supported as MD raids. All I've found on
>> internet on installing Debian on ZFS is using a live disk.
>>
>> My goal is to boot from network and install Debian root on ZFS raid
>> mirror. I can do this using MD raid. I am searching for suggestions of
>> how to enable ZFS during installing from network and partition disks
>> using ZFS.
>>
>> Any suggestion and ideas a welcome.
> 
> I migrated my SOHO file server to FreeBSD specifically for ZFS.  While
> FreeBSD rocks as a server OS, I find that graphical desktops are better
> on Debian.  On Debian, I use BTRFS.  I also use only one device for the
> system drive, and keep it small (16 GB SSD and USB flash drives) to
> facilitate taking, storing, and restoring images.
> 
> 
> David
> 

Step-by-step instructions are found here:

https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Debian-Stretch-Root-on-ZFS

Re: Using USB Flash / Pendrives or [micro]SD cards for backup

[Matthew Crews]

On 3/18/19 6:30 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> Is anyone (reading this list) using USB Flash / Pendrives or [micro]SD cards 
> for backup?
> 
> I've thought about doing that, especially as they continue to come down in 
> price, but my experience with them  at least in some cases has not been good.
> 
> The worst case seems to be dash cams where, after about a year or so they 
> just 
> stop working, but I've had at least one similar case using them for data 
> storage.
> 

My advice: Don't do it.

Pendrives and Micro SD cards are not built for long term reliability.

If your data warrants backing up, use something built for longer term
storage, like a normal HDD or a tape drive.



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Re: Systemd files on a Raspberry Pi

[Matthew Crews]

On Sun, 2019-02-10 at 13:48 +, mick crane wrote:
> On 2019-02-10 12:17, Reco wrote:
> 
> > No. See SCO vs IBM case. Linux is not Unix, and never has been.
> 
> wasn't it IBM gave Minix away and Torvalds used that as a base ?
> 

According to Linus himself, it does not use Minix code.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.minix/dlNtH7RRrGA/SwRavCzVE7gJ


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Re: Stretch to buster

[Matthew Crews]

On 2/8/19 8:06 AM, Paul Sutton wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Updated from Stretch to Buster (non-free) the other day all went fine, 
> just undertaken
> 
> apt update && apt upgrade
> 
> today and  all seem to go fine,  The process seems to be pretty painless
> for the most part.
> 
> Paul
> 
> 

That's good to hear! Keep in mind that Buster is still Testing though,
and not officially released, so you will still experience non-stable
packages and libraries.

I too am running Buster right now with minimal issues.

Cheers,

-Matt

Re: Realtek RTL8188CUS wireless usb stick on Stretch

[Matthew Crews]

On Tue, 2019-02-05 at 20:32 +, James Allsopp wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm having lots of problems getting this usb wireless dongle (Edimax)
> to pick up and connect to a wireless network. I'm not sure if there's
> a config from an older wireless  getting in the way. The hardware for
> that isn't installed anymore.
> 
> I'm running network manager in KDE
> 
> It's detected by lsusb
> Bus 002 Device 005: ID 7392:7811 Edimax Technology Co., Ltd EW-7811Un 
> 802.11n Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188CUS]
> 
> I installed the realtek firmware;
> apt-get install firmware-realtek
> 
> The drivers seem loaded correctly (from lsmod)
> rtl8192cu  69632  0
> pcspkr 16384  0
> rtl_usb20480  1 rtl8192cu
> rtl8192c_common53248  1 rtl8192cu
> rtlwifi77824  3 rtl_usb,rtl8192c_common,rtl8192cu
> mac80211  671744  3 rtl_usb,rtlwifi,rtl8192cu
> snd_usb_audio 180224  2
> snd_usbmidi_lib28672  1 snd_usb_audio
> cfg80211  589824  2 mac80211,rtlwifi
> 
> The widget can detect different AP's (I used a test one from my phone
> to confirm this), I see the one I want to connect to, but when I
> click on it, it just goes to "configuring interface" and then I get a
> disconnect notice, "wifi network could not be found". I've turned off
> the security on my phone ap to test and this made no difference. 
> 
> Can you point me in the general direction of how to start sorting
> this out?
> Thanks
> James
> 

Try adding this to /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf


[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no


Then restart NetworkManager:

# systemctl restart NetworkManager



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Re: firefox: "show blank page" doesn't work

[Matthew Crews]

On 2/3/19 11:35 PM, Long Wind wrote:
> i set firefox so that it show blank page when it starts
> but it doesn't work, it try to restore last pages, it's very slow
> 
> ff version: 60.3.0 esr
> 
> i also suspect ati display driver has problem,
> both before and after i install non-free driver

Two things:

1. Set your home page to about:blank
2. Make sure, in your preferences, where it says "When Firefox starts"
that you select "Show your home page"

This combination will force Firefox to always launch and open about:blank

Re: Need help with Play on Linux

[Matthew Crews]

On 1/27/19 8:26 PM, Jiangsu Kumquat wrote:
> So, I did all that and then I tried once again to get Spotify to install
> without errors, but It still can't find the .dll file.
> 
> I posted a picture:
> https://postimg.cc/wRLyFTyb
> and added a comment about this in the PlayOnLinux forum under Spotify:
> https://www.playonlinux.com/en/app-386.html
> 
> I think I give up. Other people have been having this issue for a while.
> Thanks oodles for your help. I did not know about adding the i386 to
> dpkg before you told me about it.

I just looked, and Spotify apparently has a native Linux client. So I
guess Wine/PoL are not needed anymore?

https://www.spotify.com/us/download/linux/

You can either use the .deb package they provide, or you can use a snap.
Either way should yield better results.

Cheers,

-Matt

Re: Can a recipients rights under GNU GPL be revoked?

[Matthew Crews]

On 1/27/19 6:23 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> I don't disagree with what is stated here (but I have a headache and didn't 
> read it carefully), but, even without reading carefully, I believe that the 
> original author of a package could do something like create further 
> modifications to the code and create a non-free version of the code.
> 
> Assuming that is correct, people using (or basing modifications) on the 
> (presumably) older free version could continue to use and develop based on 
> that, but would not have rights to that new non-free version.

This is correct, and happens all the time.

-Matt

Re: Need help with Play on Linux

[Matthew Crews]

Let's take this a step at a time.

On 1/25/19 11:55 AM, Jiangsu Kumquat wrote:
> Here's some stats about the computer I'm running Play on Linux with:
> 
> OS: stretch 64bit
> CPU: Intel® Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz × 2
> RAM:  2.0 GiB
> Graphics: Intel® 945G (built-in video on the motherboard)
> I think I have located the driver for this video card but I'm not sure
> how to install it. I tried to install it as a regular program, but the
> setup program says that my computer does not meet the requirements to
> install it.

The Linux Kernel has built-in drivers for your graphics. No additional
drivers needed.

> I just added i386 to dpkg and installed wine32. This seemed to resolve a
> lot of problems.

Good!

> I successfully got the installer for a windows app to run. However it
> did not install correctly...
> I'm trying to install Spotify client.
> 
> I installed "mono-complete" and "mono-complete:i386" but the installer
> still could not find mono.
> So I had the play on Linux installer install mono.
> 
> *It complained that I do not have "wine-gecko" installed. *I cannot seem
> to resolve this.

Thats odd, PlayOnLinux should have prompted you to install wine-gecko.

> Spotify says that it could not find WINHTTP.dll and won't run.
> 
> 
> However, I did successfully manually install and run this software with
> default wine... although it doesn't require a lot of stuff to run. (It
> will run in DOS apparently) It's an audio spectrum analyzer.
> 
> https://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Other-AUDIO-Tools/Audio-SpectrumView.shtml
> 
> Also, on the play on Linux main window, the capture plugin gives me this
> error:
> 
> 01/25/19 09:03:52 - [main] Fatal: Please install alsa-base
> 
> However, alsa-base is not available in stretch.

Have you tried installing Spotify via vanilla Wine, instead of PlayOnLinux?

> The attached log file is for Spotify. It doesn't say it in the file, but
> I am getting an error message that it cannot find WINHTTP.dll.

The only thing I can see that *might* cause a problem is that you are
installing Wine 1.7.35. Granted, this is the version that is in Stretch,
but it is a very old version. Perhaps try installing it from Stretch
Backports, then reinstall Wine, and see if that helps. Also, Spotify
appears to be problematic with Wine outright.

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=8514

To install from backports, first add backports to your repos.

# echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main" | tee
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/stretch-backports
# apt update

Then install (or in this case, re-install) Wine

# apt install \
  wine/stretch-backports \
  wine32/stretch-backports \
  wine64/stretch-backports \
  libwine/stretch-backports \
  libwine:i386/stretch-backports \
  fonts-wine/stretch-backports

This will install Wine 3.0.3 from backports, and should give improved
compatibility.

Re: Need help with Play on Linux

[Matthew Crews]

On 1/25/19 8:25 AM, Jiangsu Kumquat wrote:
> Please email me directly as I might not see your reply in the mailing list.
> 
> I installed "Play on Linux" and attempted to run a program under it. You
> can download it here:
> 
> https://www.playonlinux.com/
> 
> I am trying to completely rid myself of using Windows. The only thing
> that I really need Windows for is to play games made for Windows. So, if
> I can get this to work, I'll put Microsoft in the waste bin!
> 
> No matter what I do, it tells me that Wine has crashed. When I try to
> install a program either manually or a supported software, it tells me
> that Wine has crashed and I never see the Windows installer box.
> 
> I have tried both the 32 and 64 bit versions of wine and they both
> crash. (I installed wind with APT and also installed wine from inside
> plays on linux.)
> 
> Here is an error I get when I first execute the program:
> 
> PlayOnLinux is unable to find 32bits OpenGL libraries.
> You might encounter problem with your games
> 
> From here on out I always seem to get this error no matter what I do...
> 
> Error in POL_Wine
> Wine seems to have crashed
> 
> And this is as far I can get.
> 
> 

First, are you using Stretch, or testing/sid?

Did you add the i386 architecture to dpkg?

# dpkg --add-architecture i386
# apt update

You will then need to reinstall wine, and possibly your drivers. If you
are using Nvidia graphics, you *definitely* need to reinstall your
drivers and the proprietary drivers.

# apt install wine wine32 wine64 libwine libwine:i386 fonts-wine

I would also consider installing wine from backports, or directly from
WineHQ. Details on how to install from WineQH are on the WineHQ website.

Re: Upgrade Problem

[Matthew Crews]

On 1/3/19 7:09 PM, Patrick Bartek wrote:

> I see from a later response that your / partition is 100% full.  That
> will defintely cause problems.  Whether it's THE problem, we won't know
> until you clean out / to less than 100%, say at least 90%. Less would
> be better.
> 
> I don't know why your / is 100% full.  I'm running Stretch and my
> 20GB / is only at 31%, and /var. /tmp, /usr are not separate
> partitons. Even on my Wheezy install which I ran for 5 years, /
> never was higher than 50% full and it was only a 16GB partition.
> 
> B
> 

My guess? /home is on the same partition as /, which is a common setup
for most end users. Running lsblk is one way to tell if this is the case.

I will echo what others have said. Free up some disk space, then try again.

-Matt

Re: what to do with gtk-2/gtk-3 clash?

[Matthew Crews]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Thursday, December 13, 2018 2:28 PM, Felmon Davis  wrote:

>
>
> trying to start Firefox (from Mozilla), Pan, Google-Chrome-Stable
> generates:
>
> TK+ 2.x symbols detected. Using GTK+ 2.x and GTK+ 3 in the same
> process is not supported
>
> (I use Trinity-Desktop which extends KDE3.)
>
> I first noticed the problem after upgrading Firefox from Mozilla's
> site. it came up without vertical scrollbars. I tried to sort this out
> by changing themes and their properties. that is likely the source of
> the issue.
>
> the stuff I find online offers nothing useful if you are not
> developing code.
>
> guidance sought.
>

I didn't even realize Debian supported Trinity. Its not in the official repos.

It sounds to me like you should try a supported DE and see if it is 
reproducible. I know XFCE uses both GTK2 and GTK3 libraries and runs these web 
browsers without issue. If it is not, I would file a bug report with the folks 
at Trinity.

-Matt

Re: i386 version for chrome

[Matthew Crews]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Saturday, October 27, 2018 8:29 AM, Gene Heskett  
wrote:

> On Saturday 27 October 2018 11:03:56 Matthew Crews wrote:
>
> > Correct me if I'm wrong, but Wheezy is no longer supported, and Jessie
> > is barely supported. Except as a curiosity, why would you want to use
> > a web browser on Wheezy these days?
>
> Because its main application (LinuxCNC) is married to a 32 bit install,
> wheezy ATM.
>

Gotcha, I suspected it was something like that.

I personally wouldn't connect such a device to the internet unless I had to, or 
if I had firewalls configured correctly. But I'm going to assume you know what 
you're doing in that regard :)

I would prepare for the inevitable time when a Chromium-based web browser 
simply becomes unsupported on i386.

Also I was incorrect about Wheezy support. It still has commercial Extended LTS 
support for another seven months. https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Extended
Looks like the LinuxCNC folks will need to plan on migrating to a later version 
of Debian soon.

Re: i386 version for chrome

[Matthew Crews]

 Original Message 
On Oct 27, 2018, 06:58, Curt wrote:

On 2018-10-27, Gene Heskett  wrote:

>
>> Might be nice, but several of the dependecies can only be satisfied if on
>> stretch, and the curl command lines don't work on wheezy. At all.
>>

>At any rate a curl command line that proves
>inoperable on Wheezy arouses
>the interest of even the most jaded observer.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Wheezy is no longer supported, and Jessie is 
barely supported. Except as a curiosity, why would you want to use a web 
browser on Wheezy these days? Especially when the expectation of security 
updates and compatible software for modern web browsing is nearly, if not 
completely, zero.

Re: i386 version for chrome

[Matthew Crews]

On 10/27/18 1:19 AM, Pierre Frenkiel wrote:
> hi,
> I wanted to install chrome on my intel desktop, but the only version I found
> is amd64.
> Is it possible to get the i386 version?
> 
> best regards,
> --
> Pierre Frenkiel
> 

Use Chromium instead of Chrome. Chrome is actually based on Chromium.
i386 versions of Chromium are in the Debian repos.

# apt install chromium

Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted

[Matthew Crews]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Sunday, October 21, 2018 10:29 AM, Roberto C. Sánchez  
wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 01:25:09PM +, D&P Dimov wrote:
>
> > I did a new install of latest Debian 9.5 stable on a new Dell laptop. 
> > Debian is the only OS there now. If I encrypt /, home, and swap, it won't 
> > boot after install. If I leave them unencrypted, it boots fine. What am I 
> > missing?
> > Thanks!
>
> It will be much easier to help you if you could post the complete output
> of the boot sequence up to the failure. If that is not possible, then
> perhaps the last screenful or last few lines. Or even a photograph of
> the screen showing where the boot sequence is stuck.

To satisfy my curiosity, I fired up a VM and in the VM used the Debian 
installer to automatically partition for an encrypted install, with separate /, 
/home, and /swap. It made a 1MB blank partition, 512MiB /boot/efi partition 
flagged as bootable, 244MiB /boot partition, and allocated the rest of the disk 
to the LUKS container. In the LUKS container contained /, /home, and /swap. See 
the attached picture.

After installation was complete, here is the output of lsblk.

NAMEMAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda   8:00   20G  0 disk
├─sda18:10  512M  0 part  /boot/efi
├─sda28:20  244M  0 part  /boot
└─sda38:30 19.3G  0 part
  └─sda3_crypt  254:00 19.3G  0 crypt
├─debian--vm--vg-root   254:10  6.4G  0 lvm   /
├─debian--vm--vg-swap_1 254:202G  0 lvm   [SWAP]
└─debian--vm--vg-home   254:30 10.9G  0 lvm   /home
sr0  11:01 55.3M  0 rom


It seems the best practice is:
1MB blank partition at the beginning of the drive
512MB EFI partition (or larger) mounted at /boot/efi, flagged as bootable
256MB /boot partition (or larger as desired), NOT flagged as bootable.
Then the rest of the drive partitioned as desired (ie a LUKS container)

If all of these conditions are met, then encrypted boot with EFI *should* work 
correctly.

So I'm at a loss, D&P Dimov, as to why you had difficulty. You said it was a 
config in your BIOS that you needed to change?

Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted

[Matthew Crews]

On 10/21/18 6:41 AM, D&P Dimov wrote:
> Definitely, I did not encrypt the /boot. Only the swap, home and root are 
> encrypted.
> 
> I should have mentioned also that I have an EFI System Partition instead of 
> /boot, as it makes me create it. If I have /boot instead, it doesn't let me 
> go on and makes me create a EFI. But it boots fine, as long as the home, 
> root, and swap are not encrypted.
> 
> Thanks!

You will need to have both a /boot/efi partition, and a /boot partition,
for encrypted boot.

So your partition table would need to look like this for what you want
to accomplish:

/boot/efi
/boot
LUKS - /
LUKS - /swap
LUKS - /home

That said I'm not an expert on EFI installation via the Debian
installer. Can someone else chime in please?

Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted

[Matthew Crews]

On 10/21/18 6:25 AM, D&P Dimov wrote:
> I did a new install of latest Debian 9.5 stable on a new Dell laptop. Debian 
> is the only OS there now. If I encrypt /, home, and swap, it won't boot after 
> install. If I leave them unencrypted, it boots fine. What am I missing?
> Thanks!
> 

Did you remember to make an unencrypted /boot partition? The Debian
installer does not support encrypted /boot partition, you will need to
leave it unencrypted.

For example, see my current partition table:

matthew@matt-tower:~$ lsblk
NAME  MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:00 465.8G  0 disk
├─sda1  8:10 953.7M  0 part  /boot
├─sda2  8:20 1K  0 part
└─sda5  8:50 464.8G  0 part
  └─sda5_crypt254:00 464.8G  0 crypt
├─root--swap-root 254:10   447G  0 lvm   /
└─root--swap-swap 254:20  17.8G  0 lvm   [SWAP]
sdb 8:16   0 931.5G  0 disk
└─sdb1  8:17   0 931.5G  0 part
  └─sdb1_crypt254:30 931.5G  0 crypt
└─home-home   254:40 931.5G  0 lvm   /home

/boot is its own unencrypted partition, root and swap are in a LUKS
encryption, and /home is on its own hard disk (and also LUKS encrypted)

Re: Disable and Enable Screensaver via Bash Script

[Matthew Crews]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Tuesday, October 16, 2018 12:14 AM,  wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 11:51:48PM +0000, Matthew Crews wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> > Currently I am running Stretch with XFCE (window manager is XFWM4). I
> > presently use Xscreensaver for my screen saver. Caffeine indicator
> > doesn't work with XFCE as far as I've been able to tell, so if I want to
> > temporarily disable the screensaver I need to do so manually, and
> > re-enable it manually.
> > I'm wondering, is there a way to perform this feature with a bash
> > script? What I'm looking for is a bash script that does the following,
> > in sequence:
> >
> > 1.  Disable Xscreensaver
> > 2.  Run a given application
> > 3.  When the application closes, re-enable Xscreensaver
>
> "One" way to do it would be to issue periodically "xscreensaver-command 
> -deactivate"
> while your application is running [1].
>
> Here [2] is a practical example, for video players.
>
> Enjoy
>
> [1] https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/man3.html
> [2] https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/faq.html#dvd
> -- tomás


Makes sense to me. So I would probably need to use a FOR or WHILE loop of some 
kind to periodically check if my application is running. Would need to play 
around with it.

Something else it looks like I could do is:

#!/bin/bash
xscreensaver-command -exit   # causes the xscreensaver process to close
/usr/bin/foo # runs my desired application
xscreensaver # restarts xscreensaver process

While I think my above script will work, its a more brute-force method, and if 
something breaks then Xscreensaver might not turn back on gracefully. The FOR 
or WHILE loop would probably be more elegant.

In any case, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

Disable and Enable Screensaver via Bash Script

[Matthew Crews]

Hi all,

Currently I am running Stretch with XFCE (window manager is XFWM4). I
presently use Xscreensaver for my screen saver. Caffeine indicator
doesn't work with XFCE as far as I've been able to tell, so if I want to
temporarily disable the screensaver I need to do so manually, and
re-enable it manually.

I'm wondering, is there a way to perform this feature with a bash
script? What I'm looking for is a bash script that does the following,
in sequence:

1. Disable Xscreensaver
2. Run a given application
3. When the application closes, re-enable Xscreensaver

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

-Matt

Re: utilities

[Matthew Crews]

On 9/25/18 2:08 AM, Thakur Mahashaya wrote:
> Hi!
> Please tell me what is the list of standard utilities in Debian?wget, 
> apt, curl, transport-https, sources.list, man, dd, sha256sum,..what else?
> 

I took a peek at /usr/share/tasksel/descs/debian-tasks.desc, and this is
what I see:

Task: standard
Description: standard system utilities
 This task sets up a basic user environment, providing a reasonably
 small selection of services and tools usable on the command line.
Packages: standard
Section: user
Test-new-install: mark skip

The standard system utilities task installs the package "standard"

But apparently when I try to get details on this package:

matthew@matt-tower:~$ apt show standard
N: Unable to locate package standard
N: Unable to locate package standard
E: No packages found

So I'm a little confused too.

Running tasksel on a running system, and I don't see an option for
standard system utilities etiher.

Maybe this is a bug in the installer?

Re: odvr for Olympus WN-960PC : problem installing multimedia repository on Stretch

[Matthew Crews]

On 9/24/18 7:36 AM, Bernard wrote:
> Hi to Everyone,
> 
> I recently discovered that I could run that old voice recorder on 
> Debian. According to what I read on
> 
> https://raywoodcockslatest.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/linux-vn960pc/
> 
> it works well once this :
> 
> odvr_0.1.4.1_i386.deb
> 
> is installed (or maybe something more recent...). Problem is, this is 
> unavailable on my default repositories. I tried adding
> 
> deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org stretch main non-free
> 
> to my sources.list, but, after the update, the package odvr is still 
> unavailable.
> 
> Where can I get this package, or is there anything else that could fill 
> my purpose with this Olympus voice recorder ?
> 
> Thanks in advance for your help
> 
> Bernard
> 

Are you sure that ODVR is in the repos? I'm looking and it doesn't
appear to be.

http://www.deb-multimedia.org/dists/stable-backports/main/binary-i386/



pEpkey.asc
Description: application/pgp-keys

Re: odvr for Olympus WN-960PC : problem installing multimedia repository on Stretch

[Matthew Crews]

On 9/24/18 7:36 AM, Bernard wrote:
> Hi to Everyone,
> 
> I recently discovered that I could run that old voice recorder on 
> Debian. According to what I read on
> 
> https://raywoodcockslatest.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/linux-vn960pc/
> 
> it works well once this :
> 
> odvr_0.1.4.1_i386.deb
> 
> is installed (or maybe something more recent...). Problem is, this is 
> unavailable on my default repositories. I tried adding
> 
> deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org stretch main non-free
> 
> to my sources.list, but, after the update, the package odvr is still 
> unavailable.
> 
> Where can I get this package, or is there anything else that could fill 
> my purpose with this Olympus voice recorder ?
> 
> Thanks in advance for your help
> 
> Bernard
> 

Are you sure that ODVR is in the repos? I'm looking and it doesn't
appear to be.

http://www.deb-multimedia.org/dists/stable-backports/main/binary-i386/

Re: ext2 for /boot ???

[Matthew Crews]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Friday, September 14, 2018 10:58 AM, Pascal Hambourg 
 wrote:

> Le 14/09/2018 à 17:06, Matthew Crews a écrit :
>
> > On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 08:37:45AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> >
> > > You can solve that issue by not insisting on having a /boot partition...
> >
> > Not an option if you want / root on LUKS.
>
> Actually you can have / including /boot on LUKS with GRUB. It is just
> not natively supported by the Debian installer.

Oh really? I might need to look into that. Where can I learn more?

Re: ext2 for /boot ???

[Matthew Crews]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 08:37:45AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>You can solve that issue by not insisting on having a /boot partition...

Not an option if you want / root on LUKS.

Re: Is GIMP seriously broken in Buster?

[Matthew Crews]

Try the Flatpak version of GIMP.

Re: root on ZFS

[Matthew Crews]

On 9/12/18 7:26 PM, David Christensen wrote:
>> The upcoming ZFS 0.8 will make LUKS unnecessary as it
>> will feature native ZFS encryption.
> 
> That will be a nice feature to have.  I wonder when it will make it into 
> Debian.

Good question. The ZFS package in Sid is still at 0.7.9, and upstream
stable is 0.7.10.

https://packages.debian.org/sid/zfsutils-linux
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux
https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/releases/tag/zfs-0.7.10




pEpkey.asc
Description: application/pgp-keys

Re: root on ZFS

[Matthew Crews]

On 9/11/18 5:30 PM, David Christensen wrote:

> But, people want ZFS-on-root on their Linux distribution of choice.  So, 
> people find and post work-arounds.  Matthew Crews has kindly posted what 
> appears to be the current work-around for Debian Stretch (no, I haven't 
> tried it):
> 
>  > See the ZFSOnLinux Wiki:
> 
>  https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Debian-Stretch-Root-on-ZFS
> 
> 
> Grab a test box, a pair of SSD's, and give it a try.  Let us know how it 
> works out (or not).

I've also successfully installed Debian Stretch on a LUKS-encrypted ZFS
root partition. The upcoming ZFS 0.8 will make LUKS unnecessary as it
will feature native ZFS encryption.

> 1.  The easiest path that I have found for creating FOSS Un*x-like 
> systems with ZFS OOTB is FreeBSD.  Beware that the BSD userland and root 
> CSH are not GNU.

Aside from FreeBSD, the Antergos Linux installer also lets you install
ZFS on root. I'm not sure how they worked out the licensing for that
one, but technically its something the end user can already do.

> 2.  I seem to recall that Ubuntu added ZFS OOTB a few years ago.  STFW, 
> it looks like they currently also have a ZFS work-around:
> 
>   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZFS
> 
>  You might want to download the latest stable Ubuntu installer and 
> give it a try.

Ubuntu's installer does not allow ZFS on root. The procedure for Ubuntu
on ZFS root is largely the same as Debian, with a few Ubuntu-specific
tweaks.

Re: ext2 for /boot ??? -- WAS: Re: root on ZFS

[Matthew Crews]

My thought process is that there's no reason for any advanced features in /boot 
since it should rarely change (aside from the occasional kernel or driver 
update).

That said, theres no real harm in using a different filesystem for /boot, such 
as ext3, ext4, btrfs, etc., so long as your bootloader (ie GRUB) can read files 
from it.

Sent from [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com), Swiss-based encrypted email.

 Original Message 
On Sep 11, 2018, 11:01, Andrew McGlashan wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 11/09/18 22:48, Matthew Crews wrote:
>> My recommendation is to use a separate /boot partition and make it EXT2.
>
> Why not at least ext3? I don't baulk at ext4 btw for /boot -- I can
> never understand why ext2 is recommended when ext4 gives no trouble and
> has other advantages, even ext3 has journaling that ext2 does not.
>
> Kind Regards
> AndrewM

Re: root on ZFS

[Matthew Crews]

On 9/11/18 5:17 AM, Mimiko wrote:
> My question is more about if I should use ZFS as boot, or stick with old MD 
> raid. Would not ZFS booting break if an update to zfs will be applied?

If you intend on using ZFS RAID, do a ZFS RAIDZ pool and not MDADM. ZFS
handles all of the functions of RAID management and is generally
superior to MDADM.

> Right now sometimes ZFS mounts are not imported automatically on
> system reboot. And I must manually do zfs import. So I am worried that
> this will happen before booting the system and I will have to use some
> recovery.

This shouldn't be a problem if you set up your ZFS / root partition and
various pools and datasets correctly.

-Matt

Re: root on ZFS

[Matthew Crews]

On 9/11/18 2:04 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 11:42:43AM +0300, Mimiko wrote:
>> Hello.
>>
>> Currently I use ZFS for making a pool of disks, but the system itself is 
>> installed on 2 SSD disks using MD to mirror.
>>
>> How is now ZFS on handling booting from ZFS mirror. Can I start use ZFS as 
>> root filesystem on latest Debian? Is it stable on updates?
>>
>> Thanks for suggestions.
> 
> Your question is still a bit unclear: do you want to have just the
> _root_ partition as ZFS? That should be easy, just booting a kernel
> which understands ZFS and can mount that as /.
> 
> Do you also want to have the _boot_ partition there? I.e. that
> partition where the kernel images and the initramfs go. Then your
> boot loader (most probably GRUB?) also should be able to understand
> ZFS -- at least to a certain extent. GRUB can read ZFS since 1.99.
> The one current in Debian stable is 2.02 -- so your chances seem
> good on both fronts...

I'm not sure about the /boot partition, but its not difficult to get
your / partition on ZFS. See the ZFSOnLinux Wiki:

https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Debian-Stretch-Root-on-ZFS

My recommendation is to use a separate /boot partition and make it EXT2.

-Matt

Re: NFS mounts failing at boot (stretch)

[Matthew Pounsett]

On 7 September 2018 at 08:07, Greg Wooledge  wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 06, 2018 at 05:15:49PM -0400, Matthew Pounsett wrote:
> > I've got an NFS mount on a Debian 9 box which is failing to mount at boot
> > time, but mounts cleanly and quickly once the system is up and running.
>
> Make sure the interface is marked as "auto" rather than "allow-hotplug"
> in the /etc/network/interfaces file.
>

They were set as allow-hotplug .. I tested with a reboot, and that seems to
be it. Thanks!

NFS mounts failing at boot (stretch)

[Matthew Pounsett]

I've got an NFS mount on a Debian 9 box which is failing to mount at boot
time, but mounts cleanly and quickly once the system is up and running.

I've added the _netdev option to fstab, which according to mount(8) should
cause the mount attempt to be delayed until the network is up, but that
doesn't seem to have helped.

192.168.1.36:/pool3   /data/pool3   nfs   _netdev,rw,nolock,nfsvers=3   0
 0

I've done some googling on the subject, and all the results I've found are
either assertions that _netdev should do the trick, or reports of it not
working.  The only case I've found of someone making it work is the
unacceptable workaround of adding the mount to /etc/rc.local.

Does anyone know if the _netdev option is actually expected to work in
Debian 9, and if not, what the proper way to set an NFS mount at boot
actually is?

Thanks.

RE : E5-2696 V4-SR2J0

[Matthew Harvey]

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