Re: call for a vote -- should debian-user mailing list replies go to author or to list?

[Paul Gear]

Oliver Lupton wrote:
> ...
> I would vote for "Reply to list", it's not a big thing but it *is* more
> convenient.
> At least for me, 99% of the time I want to reply to the list, not to the
> person.

Precisely.  I'm an old Linux bod (relatively speaking - using Linux
since kernel 0.97) and i've never worked out the fascination with reply
to sender.  If i'm reading a list message, i shouldn't have to think
about it - i should just be able to hit reply, and have the most likely
scenario worked out for me.

BTW, another alternative is to use gmane.org and read the list via news.
 It's also more efficient on your Internet connection if you only want
to read a subset of the list.

-- 
Paul

--
Did you know?  Using HTML email rather than plain text is less
efficient, taking anywhere from 2 to 20 times longer to download, and a
corresponding amount more space on disk.  Learn more about using email
efficiently at .


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Re: Strange LVM on RAID Behaviour with Sarge

[Paul Gear]

Lucas Barbuto wrote:
on 29/12/04 00:58, Leni Mayo wrote:
Lucas Barbuto wrote:
> ...
> I get this error at the top of dmesg (repeated many times):
>
>> devfs_mk_dir: invalid argument.<4>devfs_mk_dev: could not append to 
parent for /disc

I saw the same error message on a sarge installation with a 2.6.8-10 
kernel, but not the 2.4.27 kernel.

Recompiling the 2.6.8 kernel without devfs makes the problem go away.
ie .config reads:
# CONFIG_DEVFS_FS is not set
I also rebuilt initrd.gz (with lvm2create_initrd.sh, see 
http://www.poochiereds.net/svn/lvm2/lvm2create_initrd) because the error 
seemed to relate to devfs initialisation at that stage of boot.

Leni,
Thanks for following up my post, I'm sure we're not the only two people
in the world to have seen this problem.
FWIW, i am seeing the same message on start-up with an LVM on RAID1 
setup.  System is a vanilla sarge install with kernel-image-2.6.8-1-686. 
 I've been ignoring the message, and it doesn't seem to have caused any 
problems yet...  ;-)

Paul


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Re: Multiple installed kernel-image packages?

[Paul Gear]

Kevin B. McCarty wrote:
...
A quick question: is there a way to get apt to install new
kernel-image packages rather than upgrade them, and keep the existing
kernel-image package installed as well?
...
If you are asking whether you can install (for instance) kernel 2.6.8,
kernel 2.6.9, and kernel 2.6.9 compiled for SMP all at once, the answer
is yes.  In fact this is the default behavior.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the detailed response.  Are you saying that once my system is 
installed (on 2.6.8, as it happens), it will never get an upgrade to 
2.6.9 (once it is released) unless i explicitly install it?  Does the 
fact that i asked for kernel-image-2.6-686 have any bearing on the 
situation?  I thought this always pointed to the latest released 2.6 
kernel image.

...
As a corollary, if you are currently using kernel 2.6.8 and want to
upgrade to 2.6.9, you will have to explicitly ask APT to install kernel
2.6.9, because "apt-get upgrade" will not do the trick.  Likewise you
will have to explicitly remove any old kernels that you are no longer
using.
I'm happy with removing the old ones myself.  The only drama with the 
way you explain it is: how do i know when 2.6.9 is released except by 
checking for it manually every day/week/whatever?

> However there are often several Debian revisions of each kernel
version; so "apt-get upgrade" WILL upgrade you from Debian release
2.6.8-6 to 2.6.8-7.  Needless to say, you CANNOT install two Debian
releases of the same kernel version at the same time.
Presumably these Debian revisions are only released to fix security 
problems or other major bugs?

...
Running "grep-available -FProvides -sPackage kernel-image"
will give you a list of kernel packages known to APT on your
architecture.  (The grep-available command is in the grep-dctrl package.)
How is that different from what
apt-cache search --names-only kernel-image
shows me?
Thanks,
Paul


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Multiple installed kernel-image packages?

[Paul Gear]

Hi folks,
A quick question: is there a way to get apt to install new kernel-image 
packages rather than upgrade them, and keep the existing kernel-image 
package installed as well?

Back on Red Hat, i could 'rpm -iv' (install) a new kernel package rather 
than 'rpm -Uv' (upgrade), and it would update grub's menu.lst and make 
the new one the default without affecting the currently-installed one. 
Is there an equivalent to this under Debian?

Thanks,
Paul


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Re: How Best to Email Documents?

[Paul Gear]

Thomas H. George wrote:
> ...
> The problem of attachments is compounded in the case of homework.  My
> grandson writes his papers using Open Office.  The printouts are fine
> but occasionally he must transmit the file to school.  The school uses
> only Mac's but can convert files from the .doc format.  This means Open
> Office must convert from .sxw to .doc for transmission to the school
> where it will be converted to their Mac format.
> 
> Is there a better way to do all this?

Install OpenOffice.org on the Macs at school.  OpenOffice.org is on
every machine at our school "whether it needs it or not".  :-)  If your
school tech is reluctant to do so, refer him or her to the educational
mailing list at marketing.openoffice.org.
-- 
Paul

--
If at first you *do* succeed, carefully check your success metrics for
accuracy.


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Re: postfix vs. exim, mailscanner vs. amavis, clamav, IMAP server thoughts?

[Paul Gear]

John Summerfield wrote:
> Paul Gear wrote:
> 
>>> At this time I'd be installing Sarge. I would not be seeking to do an
>>> upgrade any time soon.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> Except that until sarge is released, it doesn't get priority security
>> updates.
>>
>>  
>>
> Does Debian have more than one grade of security update? I assumed when
> Sarge started getting security ipdates it was placed on an equal footing
> with Woody.

Yes, but that doesn't happen until its release as stable, true?  Until
then, it's whatever filters down from sid.

-- 
Paul
<http://paulgear.webhop.net>
--
Did you know?  Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook have a poor track
record for security <http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878>.  Why not
try one of the more secure alternatives from <http://www.mozilla.org>?


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Re: gnumeric or oocalc

[Paul Gear]

Richard Lyons wrote:
> On Monday 06 September 2004 21:43, Paul Gear wrote:
> [...]
> 
>>I have another criteria which you may or may not find relevant: is it
>>cross-platform.  This is a critical issue to me, because i need to be
>>able to recommend the tool to the end users i support, and most of them
>>still use Windows or Mac.  Therefore, if there is a cross-platform
>>solution that works (i.e. OpenOffice.org), i recommend it.  I do the
>>same with browsers and email (Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird).
> 
> 
> But gnumeric can read and write excel format files, so less of a problem...

That's not the point.  Gnumeric isn't natively cross-platform.  OOo and
the Mozilla suite are.

-- 
Paul
<http://paulgear.webhop.net>
--
Did you know?  Email is not private and can be viewed by your ISP, the
recipient's ISP, and possibly other parties.  You can make sure your
emails are private by using GNU Privacy Guard <http://www.gnupg.org> and
an email plug-in like Enigmail <http://enigmail.mozdev.org>.


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Re: postfix vs. exim, mailscanner vs. amavis, clamav, IMAP server thoughts?

[Paul Gear]

John Summerfield wrote:
> ...
>> - procmail's configuration is almost as hideous as sendmail's, and i'd
>> rather not use it if i don't have to.  The only local delivery feature i
>> really need is server-side filters, and i'd like them to be maintainable
>> from a web page or mail client if possible, but this isn't essential.
> 
> Take it slowly, bit by bit. You can do lots with simple regular
> expressions.

I don't want to do lots with simple regular expressions, i want to do a
little, without procmail if possible.

> ...
>> - I've also heard good things about MailScanner as a virus/spam filter
>> (certainly it seems to be more polished than amavisd).  However,
>> MailScanner in woody doesn't seem to support postfix or ClamAV, and
>> requires exim.  This doesn't seem to be a general limitation with the
>> products, but simply with the woody versions of them.  With sarge, the
>> situation seems better, and both postfix and ClamAV are supported by
>> MailScanner.
>>
>>  
>>
> At this time I'd be installing Sarge. I would not be seeking to do an
> upgrade any time soon.

Except that until sarge is released, it doesn't get priority security
updates.

-- 
Paul

--
Did you know?  Email addresses can be forged easily.  This message is
signed with GNU Privacy Guard  and Enigmail
 so you can be sure it comes from me.


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Re: postfix vs. exim, mailscanner vs. amavis, clamav, IMAP server thoughts?

[Paul Gear]

Craig Jackson wrote:
> ...
> Check out this link for email server info:
> 
> http://www.badmagicnumber.com/linotes/cimap.php

I haven't been able to get to that web page for the last 2 days - it
just says the DNS name could not be found.

Anyone got any specific comments about my mail server thoughts?

-- 
Paul

--
Did you know?  Email is not private and can be viewed by your ISP, the
recipient's ISP, and possibly other parties.  You can make sure your
emails are private by using GNU Privacy Guard  and
an email plug-in like Enigmail .


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Re: gnumeric or oocalc

[Paul Gear]

Kamaraju Kusumanchi wrote:
> Hi all
>My intention is not to start a flamewar but to get opinions on
> which spreadsheet software is better? While having choice is better, I
> would prefer to start with one and stick to it if possible. In
> particular I am looking for
> 
> 1) things which can be done in one but cant be done in another?
> 
> 2) Which is better compatible with microsoft excel?
> 
> 3) which requires more memory, speed, other performance aspects?
> 
> 4) which is being actively developed and has good documentation?
> 
> 5) Any better spreadsheet programs out there which I have not looked at?
> 
> 6) Enable some sort of scripting along with gui?

I have another criteria which you may or may not find relevant: is it
cross-platform.  This is a critical issue to me, because i need to be
able to recommend the tool to the end users i support, and most of them
still use Windows or Mac.  Therefore, if there is a cross-platform
solution that works (i.e. OpenOffice.org), i recommend it.  I do the
same with browsers and email (Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird).

-- 
Paul

--
Did you know?  Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook have a poor track
record for security .  Why not
try one of the more secure alternatives from ?


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Re: Problem with ethernet card ?

[Paul Gear]

Nayyar Ahmed wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> I am facing  a problem with my cache server as it 
> automatically down/bzy its one interaface and then 
> aftersome time again up it.
> 
> when i have checked logs it give me following msg.
> ...
> Sep  6 17:07:54 debian kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
> Sep  6 17:07:54 debian kernel: eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1
> ...
> it is too aften seemd that when it boots it shows me one ethernet card
> and some time both...?

I saw that with my RTL8139 under the latest 2.4.x kernels.  Switching to
2.6.x solved it.  This may not be the same issue...

-- 
Paul

--
Did you know?  Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook have a poor track
record for security .  Why not
try one of the more secure alternatives from ?


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postfix vs. exim, mailscanner vs. amavis, clamav, IMAP server thoughts?

[Paul Gear]

Hi folks,

(I'm trying this with a different subject in the hope that it makes it
clearer than the previous one...)

I have a server i'm planning to bring online ASAP.  My priorities in
order are security, features, and performance.  My service requirements
are fairly standard:
- SMTP server
- IMAP & POP server
- Web mail
- Virus scanning

My current system is running Fedora Core 1, and when i switch to my
Debian box, i'd like to rethink my current mail server strategy.  My
current product mix is:
- SMTP: sendmail
- Local delivery agent: procmail
- IMAP/POP: dovecot
- Web mail: squirrelmail
- Mail virus scanner: amavisd
- Virus scanning package: McAfee Virus Scan
- SSL: stunnel 4.x

The things i'd like to do better:
- Large email folders (in the hundreds of Mb).
- Server side filtering so that IMAP and web mail get the same filters.
- Spam filtering.

Thoughts i've had so far:

- Postfix has probably the best reputation for security of any free mail
server as far as i can tell, which is quite a bit different from
sendmail's record over the years (although things have been quiet
lately).  I'm a bit of an ignoramus when it comes to exim - how does it
compare?

- Postfix seems to be easier to configure than sendmail.  After 15 years
of sendmail, i still want to puke when i try to read sendmail.cf.
Sendmail.mc is OK, but still not as easy on the eyes and the brain as
/etc/postfix/main.cf.

- When it comes to large email folders, maildir seems the way to go (at
the moment on my machine, message deletes can take in the range of 10-20
seconds).  Dovecot supports maildir, but i haven't investigated whether
procmail can do it.

- procmail's configuration is almost as hideous as sendmail's, and i'd
rather not use it if i don't have to.  The only local delivery feature i
really need is server-side filters, and i'd like them to be maintainable
from a web page or mail client if possible, but this isn't essential.

- I've heard good things about Courier as an IMAP server, particularly
with respect to maildir.

- ClamAV seems to be as good a virus scanning package as any, and is
free to boot.

- I've also heard good things about MailScanner as a virus/spam filter
(certainly it seems to be more polished than amavisd).  However,
MailScanner in woody doesn't seem to support postfix or ClamAV, and
requires exim.  This doesn't seem to be a general limitation with the
products, but simply with the woody versions of them.  With sarge, the
situation seems better, and both postfix and ClamAV are supported by
MailScanner.

- I'm fairly new to apt-get, and i'm not into its advanced features yet.
 Can i run woody with the sarge version of MailScanner, using pinning
for MailScanner until sarge's release into stable?  I've read some basic
howtos about apt pinning, and made a first attempt at getting a hybrid
stable/testing system working, but i'm not sure that i've done it right
(i had to do a few apt-get -f install and the like).  Another package
i'd like to do this with is shorewall 2.x.

- MailScanner from sarge references clamav and clamavmodule.  Which is
preferred/available under Debian?

Thanks for listening...

-- 
Paul

--
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains
a fool forever.



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Product choice recommendations for mail server, please...

[Paul Gear]

Hi folks,

I'm interested in your thoughts on my mail server.  Please forgive me
for the long message...

I have a server i'm planning to bring online ASAP.  My priorities in
order are security, features, and performance.  My service requirements
are fairly standard:
- SMTP server
- IMAP & POP server
- Web mail
- Virus scanning

My current system is running Fedora Core 1, and when i switch to my
Debian box, i'd like to rethink my current mail server strategy.  My
current product mix is:
- SMTP: sendmail
- Local delivery agent: procmail
- IMAP/POP: dovecot
- Web mail: squirrelmail
- Mail virus scanner: amavisd
- Virus scanning package: McAfee Virus Scan
- SSL: stunnel 4.x

The things i'd like to do better:
- Large email folders (in the hundreds of Mb).
- Server side filtering so that IMAP and web mail get the same filters.
- Spam filtering.

Thoughts i've had so far:

- Postfix has probably the best reputation for security of any free mail
server as far as i can tell, which is quite a bit different from
sendmail's record over the years (although things have been quiet
lately).  I'm a bit of an ignoramus when it comes to exim - how does it
compare?

- Postfix seems to be easier to configure than sendmail.  After 15 years
of sendmail, i still want to puke when i try to read sendmail.cf.
Sendmail.mc is OK, but still not as easy on the eyes and the brain as
/etc/postfix/main.cf.

- When it comes to large email folders, maildir seems the way to go (at
the moment on my machine, message deletes can take in the range of 10-20
seconds).  dovecot supports maildir, but i haven't investigated whether
procmail can do it.

- procmail's configuration is almost as hideous as sendmail's, and i'd
rather not use it if i don't have to.  The only local delivery feature i
really need is server-side filters, and i'd like them to be maintainable
from a web page or mail client if possible, but this isn't essential.

- I've heard good things about Courier as an IMAP server, particularly
with respect to maildir.

- ClamAV seems to be as good a virus scanning package as any, and is
free to boot.

- I've also heard good things about MailScanner as a virus/spam filter
(certainly it seems to be more polished than amavisd).  However,
MailScanner in woody doesn't seem to support postfix or ClamAV, and
requires exim.  This doesn't seem to be a general limitation with the
products, but simply with the woody versions of them.  With sarge, the
situation seems better, and both postfix and ClamAV are supported by
MailScanner.

- I'm fairly new to apt-get, and i'm not into its advanced features yet.
 Can i run woody with the sarge version of MailScanner, using pinning
for MailScanner until sarge's release into stable?  I've read some basic
howtos about apt pinning, and made a first attempt at getting a hybrid
stable/testing system working, but i'm not sure that i've done it right
(i had to do a few apt-get -f install and the like).  Another package
i'd like to do this with is shorewall 2.x.

- MailScanner from sarge references clamav and clamavmodule.  Which is
preferred/available under Debian?

Thanks for listening...

-- 
Paul

--
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains
a fool forever.


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Re: hotplug PS2 keyboard

[Paul Gear]

Andreas Janssen wrote:
> Hello
> 
> Li Daobing (<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) wrote:
> 
> 
>>I have a linux server, the system is Debian sarge, kernel version is
>>2.6.7. I want to know how to make the PS2 keyboard hotplug.
> 
> 
> As far as I know the PS/2 hardware normally is not hotpluggable, and the
> mainboard /can/ be damaged if you do it anyway. Are you sure it works
> on your hardware without damaging it?

Although PS/2 is not technically designed for hot plug, i've found very
few pieces of modern hardware that don't successfully hot-plug
keyboards.  I find if i boot with the keyboard (or KVM) attached, i can
pull it in and out pretty much at will.  I often do this with my servers
at home.  Of course, this has the potential to blow the board, so i'm
taking a risk every time i do it, but i haven't been bitten yet.
-- 
Paul

--
Did you know?  Most email-borne viruses use a false sender address.
Therefore you cannot track down the sender using that address.  Instead,
keep your virus scanning software up-to-date and just delete any
suspicious emails you receive.


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Re: REALTEK driver?

[Paul Gear]

John Fleming wrote:
> I have an eMachines computer that my kids use that I'm trying to get going
> with Sarge.  If I use Knoppix/Debian Unstable, it finds eth0, gets IP from
> DHCP on my LAN, and we're on the Net fine.  However, the Sarge installer
> does NOT get IP and therefore doesn't find the Internet.  Interestingly,
> both Sarge and Knoppix/Sid are using the REALTEK 8139too driver.  Thus I
> don't know why Sid finds the DHCP server and Sarge doesn't.  I've tried
> manually configuring with a static IP, but that doesn't work either.

This happened to me when i first installed sarge.  Choosing the 2.6
kernel (type 'linux26' from the installer boot prompt) fixed it.

-- 
Paul

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Re: PowerEdge 700 SATA anyone?

[Paul Gear]

Richard Weil wrote:
> I have a Dell PowerEdge 600SC which is SATA. I got it at the beginning
> of the year. I run Sarge on it no problems w/ the 2.6.7 kernel.
> ...
> Sarge is a good choice, too, since it should become stable relatively
> soon.
> 
> So, I don't know about stable, but if you want to run Sarge you should
> not have problems.

I had similar success on a PE750.  They are very cheap servers, and seem
good quality for the price.

-- 
Paul

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Re: cdrecord issues since 2.6 move

[Paul Gear]

Paul E Condon wrote:
> ...
>>And further: i've just burned a 643 Mb image to a 24x CD-RW, and it used
>>almost zero CPU.  In the past (under kernel 2.4.19 on RHL9), it took a
>>lot more CPU, and caused the foreground application to run a somewhat
>>jumpily.  Now, it's smooth sailing - i didn't even notice it happening.
>>
> 
>  I understand that DMA is turned on by default in 2.6.x 

I had it on before as well.  Maybe it's just 2.6's superior scheduling
method, but it certainly seemed a lot smoother to me...

-- 
Paul

--
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and
multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
-- Thomas Jefferson 


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Re: Getting better screen refresh rate in X?

[Paul Gear]

John Summerfield wrote:
> Paul Gear wrote:
> 
>> CW Harris wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> ...
>>> Typo... Thomas meant 'xvidtune' I'm sure.
>>> ...
>> I have to reboot into my RH drives tonight to copy the last of my data,
>> so i'll try to get some more information while i'm there and see what i
>> can come up with.

FWIW, i can confirm xvidtune still works.  :-)  I used it to output a
ModeLine on RHL9, and then added that ModeLine to the Monitor section of
/etc/X11/XF86Config.  Where do i go to contribute this so others might
benefit?

> What does Knoppix do on this hardware?

It doesn't offer 1400x1050.  It works fine in 1280x1024, but after
having more real estate, i don't like going back to lower resolutions.  ;-)

-- 
Paul
<http://paulgear.webhop.net>
--
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
-- U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953


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Re: Getting better screen refresh rate in X?

[Paul Gear]

CW Harris wrote:
> ...
> Typo... Thomas meant 'xvidtune' I'm sure.

Yes - it's been a long time since i've had to use that!  ;-)

> One other thought I had, is there any difference in the xserver 
> you are using?  Same one?  Same version?

I'm pretty sure they're the same major & minor versions (XFree86 4.3),
but i'd imagine that sarge's is more recent.  I'm using the NVIDIA
proprietary driver in both cases, but again, sarge's is probably more
recent.

I have to reboot into my RH drives tonight to copy the last of my data,
so i'll try to get some more information while i'm there and see what i
can come up with.
-- 
Paul

--
Did you know?  Most email-borne viruses use a false sender address.
Therefore you cannot track down the sender using that address.  Instead,
keep your virus scanning software up-to-date and just delete any
suspicious emails you receive.


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Getting better screen refresh rate in X?

[Paul Gear]

Hi folks,

I've recently got sarge properly working on my system, and one issue
that remains is the screen refresh rate.  Under Red Hat Linux 9, i was
able to get 1400 x 1050 @ 85 Hz out of my screen.  Under sarge, i only
get 75 Hz.

Here is the definition from my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 on both systems.

sarge:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier  "BMS:088b"
HorizSync   30-98
VertRefresh 50-160
Option  "DPMS"
EndSection


RHL9:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier   "Monitor0"
VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName"19CF"
HorizSync30.0 - 98.0
VertRefresh  50.0 - 160.0
Option  "dpms"
EndSection

As you can see, the definitions are the same in terms of specs.  I'm
guessing there is a database of mode definitions somewhere and i need to
copy the relevant definition from my RHL9 database, but i can't for the
life of me find where it is.  Any clues?  Or am i barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks,
Paul

--
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
-- U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953


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Re: dpkg / apt equivalent to 'rpm -qf'?

[Paul Gear]

John Hasler wrote:
> I wrote:
> 
>>Just off the top of my head I see no reason why these files [created by
>>maintainer scripts] could not be included in the package empty and filled
>>in by the scripts.  This would identify the files as belonging to the
>>package and also allow dpkg to remove them, eliminating the need for the
>>postrm to do so.
> 
> 
> Thomas Adam writes:
> 
>>The overhead in doing this is stupid...
> 
> 
> A few dozen bytes in each of those few packages that need it, less any
> reduction in the postinst and postrm.
> 
> 
>>...and having a lot of empty files in /etc is just pointless.
> 
> 
> Where would any empty files come from?

In rpm, they're typically not empty - they're full of interesting and
useful comments, and potentially usable defaults.  :-)

-- 
Paul

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Re: Mount Netware crazyness

[Paul Gear]

Michael wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I would like to mount a netware file system on my woody box.
> I have the ncpfs package installed.
> 
> Here's the catch:
> I actually want to pull the drive out of the netware box, and 
> slap into my woody box. Then just mount it directly somewhere on
> the system.
> Something like this:
> 
> # mount -t ncpfs /dev/sda1 /mnt
> 
> I wonder if the above command requires username and password?
> Anyone try this? You think it will work?
> Why am I doing this?
> Well I have to transfer over about 80 Gigs worth of data and don't
> want to re-fire up the novell box, and then use a network copy transfer. 
> May take too long. It would be nice if I can just pull the drive out and 
> place into my Debian box.

I don't think that's presently possible if you're using NSS.  When
Novell release Open Enterprise Server, this should be easy, if they
deliver on everything they say they can, but for now, it's going to have
to be done "the hard way".  Make sure you use -A hostname in the
ncpmount command to force use of TCP/IP.

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Re: Motherboard recommendation?

[Paul Gear]

Paul Gear wrote:
> ...
> I have a Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro, and i can personally vouch for it's solid
>  performance under Linux

s/it's/its/

I can't believe i just did that - *it's* one of my pet peeves.  :-|

-- 
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--
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fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
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Re: apt-get and distro aliases

[Paul Gear]

John Summerfield wrote:
>...
>> Sorry - i gave slightly misleading info in my post.  I actually ended up
>> with additional packages to upgrade, and i successfully upgraded them.
>> Perhaps it was just coincidental timing.
>>
>>  
>>
> If your mirror is synchronising four times a day, the chances are quite
> good.

ftp.au.debian.org (Planet Mirror - here in Brisbane).  Probably
synchronising quite often.

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Re: Motherboard recommendation?

[Paul Gear]

Stephen Tait wrote:
> ...
>> > I don't have a recommendation, but i can disrecommend the NVIDIA
>> > nForce2 chipset from a free software perspective.  The NIC has a
>> > closed source driver.  When i emailed them about it, the response was,
>> > "Our networking performance is too important to allow competitors to
>> > use our drivers." I disabled the on-board NIC and bought a $20
>> > RTL-8139.  :-)
>> ...
> 
> I have to say that although I don't approve of the closed source nature
> of the nForce drivers, the boards seem to be exceptionally good
> performers under both windows and linux.
> ...
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own or use an nForce2 motherboard, and am going
> entirely on hearsay.
> ...
> If I was going to buy a new SktA mobo, I'd probably plump for the
> nvidia. Even if they don't have OSS drivers, their hardware seems pretty
> solid with the open source ones (again, hearsay).
> ...
> That said, they're abysmal performers compared to modern Athlon chipsets
> like the nForce2.

I have a Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro, and i can personally vouch for it's solid
 performance under Linux (don't know about Windows - haven't used it on
this system at all).  I just didn't like their approach to free
software, and so next time i'd probably go for a VIA (or like you say -
upgrade to an Opteron and completely bypass the issue).

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Re: dpkg / apt equivalent to 'rpm -qf'?

[Paul Gear]

Jason Rennie wrote:
> ...
> Geez.  Try answering the question, not insulting the guy.

Don't worry - i'm used to it on this list by now...  :-)

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Re: Well documented [was Re: nvidia drivers]

[Paul Gear]

Guest, Simon wrote:
> ...
> It's all well documented what you have to do.  Once you realise that the best 
> documentation for knowing how to use packages in Debian is often to be found 
> in /usr/share/doc/, everything becomes straightforward.  
> (Thanks to those fine chaps, the Debian developers, for their excellent 
> READMEs.)
> 
> Install these Debian packages :-
> nvidia-glx  - NVIDIA binary XFree86 4.x driver
> nvidia-kernel-common- NVIDIA binary kernel module common files
> nvidia-kernel-source  - NVIDIA binary kernel module source
> 
> Then carefully follow the instructions 
> in /usr/share/doc/nvidia-kernel-source/README.Debian
> 
> cheers,
> Simon
> 
> PS: If you do this, you don't need anything from the NVidia web site. 

Thanks for that - those instructions worked like a charm for me.

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Re: apt-get and distro aliases

[Paul Gear]

Andreas Janssen wrote:
> ...
> 
>>I am now running unstable.  I just tried an update using "unstable"
>>and there was nothing new available.  Then I changed sources.list to 
>>"sid" and it retrieved 3217 kB.  However, when I ran upgrade, nothing 
>>was upgraded. Can anyone explain this behavior?  Thanks - John  
> 
> 
> Apt downloaded the package list. Because you changed the source name
> from unstable to sid, apt assumed this had to be done because the local
> list for the "new" source was missing.

Sorry - i gave slightly misleading info in my post.  I actually ended up
with additional packages to upgrade, and i successfully upgraded them.
Perhaps it was just coincidental timing.

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Re: dpkg / apt equivalent to 'rpm -qf'?

[Paul Gear]

Thomas Adam wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 24, 2004 at 09:44:33PM +1000, Paul Gear wrote:
> 
>>Hi folks,
>>
>>What is the canonical method for determining to which package an
>>installed file belongs?  dpkg -S seems to be the right *sort* of thing,
>>but doesn't always work:
>>
>>enoch:/share/download # dpkg -S /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf
>>debconf: /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf
>>enoch:/share/download # dpkg -S /etc/apt/sources.list
>>dpkg: /etc/apt/sources.list not found.
>>enoch:/share/download # dpkg -S /etc/gpm.conf
>>dpkg: /etc/gpm.conf not found.
> 
> 
> It's doing *exactly* what you asked of it. Remember that dpkg -S will only
> work for files that were *in* a package initially and not ones that were
> *created*. /etc/apt/sources.list is created by apt-setup from 'base-config',
> but does not reside in any package.

Is it fairly common, then, that packages only create their config files,
and don't include them in the package originally.  I can see times when
that would lead to confusion.  Is there another way to find out where a
file belongs?

(I am resigned to the rest of this message being flame bait, even though
it's not intended that way.)

RPM's method of including the config file in the package even if it's
empty or only comments seems to me a better solution - that way the
config file can always be traced back to its relevant package.

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Re: apt-get and distro aliases

[Paul Gear]

John Fleming wrote:
> Reading recent threads, I plan to install Sarge and change apt sources to
> name-based, i.e. to "Sarge" rather than "testing".  My understanding is that
> when Sarge becomes "stable", I will stay with Sarge and be able to get
> security updates.
> 
> I am now running unstable.  I just tried an update using "unstable" and
> there was nothing new available.  Then I changed sources.list to "sid" and
> it retrieved 3217 kB.  However, when I ran upgrade, nothing was upgraded.
> Can anyone explain this behavior?  Thanks - John

I can't explain it, but after reading the same threads, i changed my
machine from "testing" to "sarge" (planning to run it on stable when
sarge becomes so), and i got similar behaviour.  I installed them anyway
(using apt-get dist-upgrade), and things haven't broken yet, but it has
got me curious.

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dpkg / apt equivalent to 'rpm -qf'?

[Paul Gear]

Hi folks,

What is the canonical method for determining to which package an
installed file belongs?  dpkg -S seems to be the right *sort* of thing,
but doesn't always work:

enoch:/share/download # dpkg -S /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf
debconf: /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf
enoch:/share/download # dpkg -S /etc/apt/sources.list
dpkg: /etc/apt/sources.list not found.
enoch:/share/download # dpkg -S /etc/gpm.conf
dpkg: /etc/gpm.conf not found.

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Re: Software RAID using Sarge Installer

[Paul Gear]

John Fleming wrote:
> Would someone help me, preferably off-list if the question's too simple,
> know exactly what choices to make using the new Sarge installer and RAID 1
> for mirroring?  During the partitioning, there is a chance to set up RAID 1,
> but I don't fully understand exactly what partitions are required.  I just
> want a simple scheme with a root partition and a swap partition, plus
> whatever else is necessary for RAID 1.
> 
> I have 2 identical HDDs.  I know you need at least one (2?) partitions setup
> specificlaly for RAID.  I could use some newbie help with this, and comments
> like RTFM or RTFA won't help.  I'm begging for some hand-holding here!  It
> seems that you need to setup / and swap, and -then- RAID partition(s)...?  I
> can't seem to get it right.

The last time i tried, the installer didn't support installing to RAID /
or /boot, and this was a topic of some discussion on this list, since
some people think that the new installer is perfect and to think that
other people want it to support more features is just shocking! :-)

I used the HOWTO at http://alioth.debian.org/projects/rootraiddoc/ to
convert my system to RAID 1 after the install, and it worked well.  I
chose the 2nd path, which was GRUB & initrd (lilo didn't work for me for
some reason).

Short summary:
hde (200 Gb)
hde11 Gb
hde54 Gb
hde6rest of disk (195 Gb)
hdg exactly as hde
All partitions are type 0xFD (Linux RAID autodetect)
md0 = hde1 + hdg1 (/boot, ext3)
md1 = hde5 + hdg5 (swap)
md2 = hde6 + hdg6 (/, reiserfs)

My configuration looks as follows - if you can't work out the following
outputs, let me know and i'll explain further.


enoch:/root # df
Filesystem   1K-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/md2 190468740  54604380 135864360  29% /
tmpfs   258716 0258716   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda1 76920416  68312432   4700576  94% /spare
/dev/md0964408 31776883640   4% /boot


enoch:/root # swapon -s
FilenameTypeSizeUsed
Priority
/dev/md1partition   3903672 1008-1


enoch:/root # cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 hde1[0] hdg1[1]
  979840 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md1 : active raid1 hde5[0] hdg5[1]
  3903680 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md2 : active raid1 hde6[0] hdg6[1]
  190474560 blocks [2/2] [UU]

unused devices: 


enoch:/root # fdisk -l /dev/hde

Disk /dev/hde: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hde1   *   1 122  979933+  fd  Linux raid
autodetect
/dev/hde2 123   24321   194378467+   5  Extended
/dev/hde5 123 608 3903763+  fd  Linux raid
autodetect
/dev/hde6 609   24321   190474641   fd  Linux raid
autodetect


enoch:/root # fdisk -l /dev/hdg

Disk /dev/hdg: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdg1   *   1 122  979933+  fd  Linux raid
autodetect
/dev/hdg2 123   24321   194378467+   5  Extended
/dev/hdg5 123 608 3903763+  fd  Linux raid
autodetect
/dev/hdg6 609   24321   190474641   fd  Linux raid
autodetect


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Re: OT: Which tool, and how, to get partial string from file?i

[Paul Gear]

Wendell Cochran wrote:
> ...
> Then I ran across Stan Kelly-Bootle's _Understanding UNIX_ (2e 1994
> Sybex) & instantly felt right at home with his way of putting
> things.  His book pried the first brick out of the Unix sidewalk;
> then Unix seemed easy, or at least logical. 

What a great writer Stan K-B is.  I used to love his back page in Unix
Review.  It was like a mix of linguistics, theology, and computing all
wrapped into one!  :-)

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Re: Motherboard recommendation?

[Paul Gear]

Michael Rumpf wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm about to buy a new motherboard. Can anyone recommend a board that is
> known to work well with free software drivers. I just don't want to buy
> another board and find myself disabling most of the features as they
> don't work under Linux.

I don't have a recommendation, but i can disrecommend the NVIDIA nForce2
chipset from a free software perspective.  The NIC has a closed source
driver.  When i emailed them about it, the response was, "Our networking
performance is too important to allow competitors to use our drivers."
I disabled the on-board NIC and bought a $20 RTL-8139.  :-)

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Re: Mouse works with X but breaks as a left-handed... [SOLVED]

[Paul Gear]

Kent West wrote:
> ...
> gpm is the console mouse driver (for using your mouse outside of X). I
> _think_ kernel 2.6 may have moved the mouse input device to
> /dev/input/mice, which is smart enough to share the device between
> multiple mice/mice-driven apps. But before that, if you had gpm and X
> both installed, the two drivers would fight over the incoming mouse data
> ("mine mine, mine"), so you had to specifically set up gpm to be the
> reader of /dev/psaux (or whatever device your mouse was on), then to
> repeat it to a special device named /dev/gpmdata, and then configure X
> to read from that device rather than the actual device. In this way,
> both the console mouse driver and the X mouse driver could play nice
> together.

Thanks for the suggestions, Kent.  I've solved the problem, although i'm
not sure which step did it.  I did 3 things:

- Reinstalled sarge (and finally got RAID 1 on root/boot working! Yay!)

- Changed the gpm configuration to left-handed (by setting append="-B
321" in /etc/gpm.conf).

- Configured X to use /dev/input/mice instead of /dev/psaux.

I'm guessing the last of these is the most likely cause, but i don't
know.  Any comments?
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Re: Kernel updates with apt-get?

[Paul Gear]

Elimar Riesebieter wrote:
> ...
>>>you should update your kernel manually, i mean apt-get install
>>>kernel-2.4.x, because atp-get doesn't update kernel automaticaly.
>>
>>How do you know when a new kernel has been released (say for security
>>reasons)?  What is the approved method for finding this out?
> 
> Check http://www.kernel.org ?

I meant a Debian kernel package...

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Re: Debian installer RC1 on RAID (BladeCenter IBM)

[Paul Gear]

Bag wrote:
> Installing Debian on an IBM Blade, I had a big problem with the RAID.
> Where may I post it? Is this the right place?

It might be, or debian-boot might be a better place.  Is it hardware or
software RAID?  Software RAID on / and /boot is not enabled by the
installer.  See this list's archives for discussions about it and links.

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Re: Mouse works with X but breaks as a left-handed...

[Paul Gear]

Kent West wrote:
> ...
 I have exactly the same problem.  The left-handed configuration works
 with Red Hat 9, SuSE 9.1, and Morphix 0.4.1, but not Debian sarge.  Any
 ideas gratefully accepted.
 ...
 
>>>
>>> Still, the first thing that came into my mind is that if you are using
>>> gpm (the non-X mouse driver), you may be configuring the X driver for
>>> left-handedness but neglecting to do so for gpm.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> No, this happens immediately within the GNOME session.  I'm used to GDM
>> not doing the right thing.
>>  
>>
> Not meaning to be offensive, but you do realize I didn't mention gdm?
> Just want to make sure you understood I was talking about gpm.

Sorry, too late at night.  I'm a morning person.  :-)

So what you're saying is that X is now dependent upon the gPm
configuration somehow?  Now that is strange.  Why is this so?

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Re: Kernel updates with apt-get?

[Paul Gear]

Mariano Wahlmann wrote:
> ...
> you should update your kernel manually, i mean apt-get install
> kernel-2.4.x, because atp-get doesn't update kernel automaticaly.

How do you know when a new kernel has been released (say for security
reasons)?  What is the approved method for finding this out?
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Re: OT: Questions or Doubts?

[Paul Gear]

Oliver Elphick wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-08-20 at 14:46, William Ballard wrote:
> 
>>My pet peeve is "take a decision" vs. "make a decision".  Great 
>>Britains, Old Europe, New Europe, Asia and the Third World all say "take 
>>a decision" when they speak english.  We never use that in America.
> 
> 
> Comment from England: Rubbish!  "Take a decision" is rare and sounds
> odd.  The phrase is "take the decision" followed by an infinitive
> expressing what was decided; it is a more verbose synonym of "decide". 
> It is usually transitive, whereas "make a decision" is usually
> intransitive.  I make a decision; I will make a decision; I may make a
> decision.  I made a decision;  I took the decision to do something.
> 
> 
>>"Take a decision" is so passive; it implies studying what my options 
>>are, holding my nose, and choosing one.  "Make a decision" is much more 
>>American -- we'll just invent the option we want and then take that one.
> 
> 
> As in Iraq...

Here in Australia, many of us agree on both points.  :-)

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Re: Mozilla Firefox: Forbidden page

[Paul Gear]

robin wrote:
> John Summerfield wrote:
> 
>> Marvin Gerardo Aguero Salazar wrote:
>>
>>> I failed to mention in my original posting that I can access those pages
>>> if I go to a Microsoft windows machine and access them via IE.
>>>
>>> So, I don't think it is a proxy/firewall issue.
>>>
>>> I downloaded netscape, but with it I cannot even get to internet. It
>>> doesn't pop up for the user id required by the proxy to get to internet.
>>> :-(  Needless to say that I tried to configure netscape the same I
>>> configured firefox, in terms of proxy connections.
>>>...
> 
> 3.7.5 Strange access problems with some websites
> 
> Recent Linux kernels enable ECN by default, which may cause access
> problems with some websites on bad routers.

ECN must have a new feature: software categorization.  The OP said this
message comes up:

Forbidden, this page
(http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/List) is categorized
as: Shareware/Freeware.

That's gotta be SurfControl or something similar.  The reason it's
different on a Windows box is that SurfControl can do custom per-IP or
per-user rules.

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Re: Mouse works with X but breaks as a left-handed...

[Paul Gear]

Kent West wrote:
> ...
>>
>> I have exactly the same problem.  The left-handed configuration works
>> with Red Hat 9, SuSE 9.1, and Morphix 0.4.1, but not Debian sarge.  Any
>> ideas gratefully accepted.
>>  ...
> 
> Still, the first thing that came into my mind is that if you are using
> gpm (the non-X mouse driver), you may be configuring the X driver for
> left-handedness but neglecting to do so for gpm.

No, this happens immediately within the GNOME session.  I'm used to GDM
not doing the right thing.
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Re: Mouse works with X but breaks as a left-handed...

[Paul Gear]

Carlos Duque wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm a newbie with Debian, but not so much with Linux.. My problem is
> that my wheelmouse works fine with X but it goes crazy when I change
> it to left-handed (kde or gnome).  The middle button stops working
> and the other two show me the menu.
> 
> I checked the XConfig86-4 but seems fine, I even tried one generated
> by Knoppix which worked with knoppix, but it doesn't seem to work
> with Debian

I have exactly the same problem.  The left-handed configuration works
with Red Hat 9, SuSE 9.1, and Morphix 0.4.1, but not Debian sarge.  Any
ideas gratefully accepted.
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Re: Debian equivalent of /etc/profile.d

[Paul Gear]

Cameron Hutchison wrote:
> Once upon a time Paul Gear said...
> 
>>P.S.  I can't believe Debian doesn't have /etc/profile.d.  :-)  Time to
>>submit the above as a patch?
> 
> 
> Section 9.9 of the Debian policy has this to say about environment
> variables:
> ...
>  A program must not depend on environment variables to get reasonable
>  defaults.

If you want to make bash settings consistent across users,
/etc/profile.d is a very appropriate mechanism, regardless of whether
the program has a wrapper script or not.

-- 
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Re: Firewall packages (was: All these open ports)

[Paul Gear]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> ...
> Thus far, I haven't been able to find anything that provides
> canned-up functionality of the nature of the Windows "Zone Alarm",
> although I can probably overcome that by iptables scripting,
> whereas with the Windows firewalls you get whatever is there
> and have to live with it.

You could get something close to Zone Alarm (minus the application
permissions stuff) with a very short iptables script which set the
policies for INPUT and FORWARD to DROP, and OUTPUT to ACCEPT, and adding
a couple of rules for allowing related and established connections on
the INPUT chain.  I'm sure there are basic HOWTOs on this floating
around - google for something like "iptables introduction" and you
should find some good hits.

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Re: Chosing Debian firewall packages

[Paul Gear]

Anthony Campbell wrote:
> ...
> I agree firestarter is good, but I'm using shorewall which is also easy
> to set up and works out of the box for me (desktop). The author, Tom
> Eastep, has a very active mailing list and answers questions promptly.
> There is a lot of information available on Wikipedia.

Shorewall is very flexible, and is policy-driven.  Great for making
large changes easily.  You can also administer it through webmin.

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Re: raid 5 on boot? root?

[Paul Gear]

Richard Weil wrote:
> I don't know if my configuration is (a) setup badly, or (b) impossible.
> Before I spend too much more time on it, I wonder if anyone has
> relevant experience.
> 
> Is it possible to have both boot and root on RAID 5? I'm getting a
> kernel panic mid-way through boot. Assuming it's not possible, what
> about if boot is on a normal drive and root is on RAID 5?
> 
> I'm running up-to-date Sarge with kernel 2.6.7. I'm using the stock
> Debian kernel and the Grub boot loader.

It's not supported by the installer, and RAID 5 may not be supported at
all.  Check the archives of this list for some links to HOWTOs.  I'm not
sure which one works the best, since i haven't managed to get it working
yet.

-- 
Paul

--
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have of it.
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Re: Parallel Console?

[Paul Gear]

Frank Brodbeck wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> I'm having here some problems with an ebay'ed switch. The switch
> is an ovislink fsh2400 and is manageable. The problem is, that
> there is only a db25 port on the backside which should be
> connected to the host's parallel port.

Are you sure it's parallel?  The specs page at
http://www.ovislink.com.tw/2400r.htm doesn't mention anything about
parallel.  More likely it's DB-25 serial.

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Re: Parallel Console?

[Paul Gear]

Frank Brodbeck wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> I'm having here some problems with an ebay'ed switch. The switch
> is an ovislink fsh2400 and is manageable. The problem is, that
> there is only a db25 port on the backside which should be
> connected to the host's parallel port.
> 
> So far so good. The problem now is, that there is only software
> for Windows and I don't have any Windows machine nor any i386
> machine on which I could emulate Windows. Is it possible to
> connect to the machine with something like a minicom for
> parallel consoles - if something like that exists...
> 
> I searched in google, groups.google, the manual, alltheweb with
> no luck.

Scratch my last message - http://www.ovislink.com.tw/2400.htm talks
about the parallel console.  Looks like you're stuck with finding a
Windows box.  Surely it can't be that hard to find one...  :-)

-- 
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Re: Debian equivalent of /etc/profile.d

[Paul Gear]

Jeremy Brown wrote:
> ...
> What is the equivalent of "/etc/profile.d" in Debian?  Is there a
> package I can install to make this directory appear?  Or does all
> initialization I want to do need to go directly into the file
> "/etc/profile"?

Just make your own /etc/profile.d and add the following to /etc/profile:

for i in /etc/profile.d/*.sh ; do
if [ -r "$i" ]; then
. $i
fi
done
unset i

(Shamelessly cut & paste from the /etc/profile from setup-2.5.25-1 under
Red Hat Linux 9.)

P.S.  I can't believe Debian doesn't have /etc/profile.d.  :-)  Time to
submit the above as a patch?

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Re: Sarge RAID install

[Paul Gear]

Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
> ...
>>>Newbie installing latest Sarge would like to configure RAID 1.  Would
>>>someone please show me what the partition table should look like for the
>>>simple case of / and swap partitions, configured with RAID 1?  Thanks!  -
>>
>>It's not supported on / or /boot - see the thread "Rant about installer
>>features" for more discussion and some links.
> 
> 
> Oh but it is. Just do a normal install, then convert it to RAID1-
> see http://www.miquels.cistron.nl/raid/

I meant it's not supported *on install*, which is what the OP asked about.
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Re: Sarge RAID install

[Paul Gear]

Alexei Chetroi wrote:
> ...
>>  in /etc/fstab
>>  /dev/md0/   ... regular stuff ..
>>  /dev/md1/swap   ... regular swap stuff ..
>  
>   What are benefits of having swap on raid?

If one swap disk dies and you've been using it for swap, your system
will crash.  If you use RAID 1 for swap, you can lose a disk and keep
running.

> Isn't better to have two swap partitions on different disks and let
> the kernel to do load balancing? I'm thinking to install software
> raid, but cannot decide whether to put swap on raid or not. Where can
> I read more about it?

If your concern is for resilience, use RAID.  If your concern is for
performance, use raw swap, as there is a performance hit with RAID,
because you have to write every page twice.  It usually does the writes
in parallel, and you shouldn't notice a big decrease, but the
possibility is there.

-- 
Paul

--
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Re: Sarge RAID install

[Paul Gear]

WA9ALS - John wrote:
> Newbie installing latest Sarge would like to configure RAID 1.  Would
> someone please show me what the partition table should look like for the
> simple case of / and swap partitions, configured with RAID 1?  Thanks!  -

It's not supported on / or /boot - see the thread "Rant about installer
features" for more discussion and some links.
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Re: Rant about installer features (Re: Progeny)

[Paul Gear]

Greg Folkert wrote:
> ...
>>>Too bad. MD Raid is tough for a bootable setup with automated tools.
>>
>>This is part of what i don't understand.  As Alvin Oga and i were
>>discussing a while back (see archives), it is a supported configuration
>>by the kernel, and Red Hat have supported it since 7.3.  I guess that's
>>why Progeny decided to port anaconda - it worked out your tough problem.
> 
> 
> It not so much the anaconda issue, more over it is the "Debian Way" of
> doing things. I guess^WKNOW, Grub has issue with md as root. But, as
> with all thing Linux...  "We have ways of making it work! Muahahaha!"

I'm not particularly attached to grub.  Lilo seems to work in these cases.

> ...
>>I've read several HOWTOs on it, but none of them seem to solve the
>>problem completely:
>>
>>http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/07/msg01195.html
>>http://www.james.rcpt.to/programs/debian/raid1/
>>http://members.ferrara.linux.it/calicant/docs/debianraid/debian_raid1.html
>>
>>I just did a bit more searching and found
>>http://alioth.debian.org/projects/rootraiddoc/ - maybe i'll try that.
> 
> 
> I am surprised you haven't gotten it to work.

Me too.  I might give it another try with the last RAID HOWTO i found
above, but Progeny seems like a better option to me, so i'll probably
only do it if the next version doesn't come

> Yes it is a Mickey mouse way to setup the "Ultimate" Linux
> Distribution...

What's Mickey Mouse about it?  You can't have a server without RAID, and
most low-end servers don't have hardware RAID.  At least, only 2 of the
6 servers i've bought in the last year had hardware RAID, and they were
Promise RAID, which is about the same as software RAID, only harder to
implement (at least on Red Hat/Fedora).  Most of the servers i set up
have very simple OS disk requirements, so minimal partitioning is ideal
(most of my machines at work have a separate /var, but i don't bother
with that at home).

> but, at present, this Voluntary project doesn't want to "Do it 
> auto-magically" when there is a way to do it with "other means". Yes,
> it is asinine, but think about how Debian really works (well, doesn't
> work sometimes). It is quite possible, someone will get a Hair up the
> arse and make this work... but until then it'll be a kludge to get
> proper.

What do you mean "auto-magically"?  I don't expect it to just work out
what i want and do it - i'm happy to partition and set up filesystems
manually.  The trick is i want an initrd and kernel that work with RAID
on /.

> Personally, I have a server with lvm on-top of a "Promise Raid
> Mirroring" setup. Works, I see only one drive. But I have / as an LV.

I'm happy to have LVM as well.  I just haven't found it that useful in
recent installs, since most of the servers i use have 2 internal disks
and nothing else (any RAID data storage is outboard on fibre channel
disk arrays, and that is only on my most critical servers).

> See if you can tell were I patterned my VG names (on machine with more
> than one VG)from:
> 
> /dev/rootvg
> /dev/datavg
> /dev/scratchvg

Looks like AIX to me, although it's been a long time since i touched it
(v3.1).

> ...
> I'd love to start a project that will do all the work after install. Do
> it they way the Admin wants... asking questions, verifying things as you
> go, making the needed hardware addressing changes. But, I currently only
> have coupla hours a week to start something like that.
> 
> Mainly, I value Family Time.

Seriously, why would you bother?  It has already been solved by someone
else (Progeny), and it's only a matter of time before that becomes a
usable solution.  Especially when you have a family (mine is waiting for
me to come to breakfast now instead of writing email :-).
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Re: newbie package question

[Paul Gear]

Kevin Mark wrote:
> ...
>>>dpkg -l|grep libc
>>
>>This is a solution, but not perfect, 'cause sometimes the package name
>>gets truncated, e.g.:
> 
> Hi Tong,
> here is the answer to the 'truncation'.
> doing:
> COLUMNS=139 dpkg -l
> this sets the env var COLUMNS temporarity to 139 for this command.
> -Kev

Surely if you pipe the output to a non-tty, dpkg should not truncate
anything.  It should be making that conditional upon a true result from
isatty( 1 ).
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Re: Posting to Debian lists without getting mail

[Paul Gear]

Kevin Mark wrote:
> ...
> Hi Andy,
> IIRC most debian lists do not require you to 'join' the list to post. (a
> mixed blessing). And some folks use a newsreader thingy like gmame
> (sp?). to follow their reply or just read the list.

Point your news reader to news.gmane.org - fantastic for reading lists
like this.  It handles subscribing you as well.  I only read this list
through gmane because it is so much easier.
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Re: Rant about installer features (Re: Progeny)

[Paul Gear]

Joey Hess wrote:
> ...
> FWIW, repeatedly whining and harping on features that you want is really
> not a very efficient motivator for volenteers. I suppose we'll get NTFS
> resize and software raid on root support when someone feels the need to
> ad them, and has the guts to go code something.

I started asking these questions on debian-boot, where all the
developers and bug tracking system reports hang out, and i was
repeatedly ignored.  I started hacking on mkinitrd, and i think i made
some progress, but without some direction from the senior Debian
developers, it's a bit pointless.

I thought i did the right thing, with clear descriptions of the problem
and my hardware (see, e.g.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/07/msg02914.html), but it still
wasn't enough to get anyone to even respond.  Point me in the right
direction, and i'm happy to hack.

And i'm not the only one to have this issue:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/04/msg00996.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/07/msg00418.html

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Re: Mozilla Firefox: Forbidden page

[Paul Gear]

Marvin Gerardo Aguero Salazar wrote:
> OK. w3m is installed on my computer, but I cannot find a way to specify
> the proxy. The pauth command-line option only takes user:password. Where
> can I tell it the proxy's IP address?

Pre-P.S.  Top-posting is considered harmful.


Your proxy is likely the problem.  If you're getting messages about
sites being categorized as Shareware/Freeware, it's likely that whoever
runs your proxy server doesn't like people downloading free software.
Is this at a school or govt. office with a policy about all software
being approved?

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Re: Rant about installer features (Re: Progeny)

[Paul Gear]

Greg Folkert wrote:
> ...
>>>Just for laughs, how does FC go on that box?
>>
>>Nothing to laugh about - it just works.  Perfectly, straight out of the
>>box.  No mucking about, just create the partitions i want (RAID 1 on
>>everything: /, /boot, and swap) and install.  So does SuSE Personal 9.1.
> 
> 
> Too bad. MD Raid is tough for a bootable setup with automated tools.

This is part of what i don't understand.  As Alvin Oga and i were
discussing a while back (see archives), it is a supported configuration
by the kernel, and Red Hat have supported it since 7.3.  I guess that's
why Progeny decided to port anaconda - it worked out your tough problem.

> I have a workaround to get it to work proper.
> 
> If you want I can help you through that.

Thank you.  That's the first offer i've had (except for John
Summerfield's offer to consult for a fee).  If you'd like a description
of my problem, see
 and
 (although
the hang is fixed under recent snapshots).

I've read several HOWTOs on it, but none of them seem to solve the
problem completely:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/07/msg01195.html
http://www.james.rcpt.to/programs/debian/raid1/
http://members.ferrara.linux.it/calicant/docs/debianraid/debian_raid1.html

I just did a bit more searching and found
http://alioth.debian.org/projects/rootraiddoc/ - maybe i'll try that.

Maybe all of this is pointless if i just wait for the next Progeny beta
release.  According to Ian Murdock it is fairly close, and as long as it
can see my SATA drives, i suspect it will work.

> ...
> I jumped ship from RedHat long before that. RH7.3 is the Last version I
> installed from ANYONE. Customers included.

There seems to be a large anti-Red Hat/SuSE contingent here.  (I have a
gift for stating the obvious. :-)  I know people don't like their
trademark & Enterprise subscription licenses, but until they stopped
supporting Red Hat Linux, they were a genuinely free, useful, and stable
option.  Everything "just worked" for me, including RPM, which everyone
who hasn't take the time to understand seems to think is fundamentally
broken.  (It's not - saying RPM is broken because it doesn't
automatically resolve dependencies is like saying dpkg is broken for the
same reason.  It's a low-level tool for the job of package management -
the smarts are in the upper levels like yum & apt-get, just like they
are on Debian.)

> ...
> I am supporting the existing 7.3- with yum. Using www.fedoralegacy.org
> awesome. But not quite Debian... :)

And not quite updated regularly, either.

> ...
>>Sorry for the venting, but i imagine i'm not alone - there are plenty of
>>Red Hat refugees around, and i was almost sold on Debian before i even
>>installed it.  You can make some significant new converts by just taking
>>our concerns seriously.
> 
> We aren't called Snobbians fer nothing. Another common term I ave seen:
> Dweebians.

I found that out the hard way...

> ...
> Don't let us get you down.

Too late for that.  ;-(
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Re: TCO - Windows vs Linux

[Paul Gear]

John Summerfield wrote:
> "Microsoft has long asked third party analysts for accurate assessments
> of the total cost of ownership of Microsoft Windows deployments,
> especially against the Linux deployments commonly going into all
> segments of the market. However, Immunity, Inc. as a third party
> assessment provider has, until now, not done a thorough analysis, using
> Immunity proprietary data to tell the true story about the costs of Open
> Source...
> 
> http://linuxtoday.com/security/2004081302226OPSWNT
> 
> Comments?

Is Friday the 13th some sort of surrogate April 1st?  :-)

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Re: Rant about installer features (Re: Progeny)

[Paul Gear]

Tom Allison wrote:
> ...
> I'm late on this, but I have to say that the debian installer was
> actually the best installer I've ever seen.  It was very true to the
> ideas that makes Debian better than Fedora or Suse (This is just my
> opinion so don't argue about it)
> 
> I can install a non-GUI system in minutes with a minimum of interaction.

I can install a GUI system in minutes with a minimum of interaction, too.

> ...
> d-i found more hardware, correctly, than Suse 9.0 did for me and
> similarly with the Fedora release I was testing.  I would have to argue
> that, with the recognition that d-i isn't supposed to do X windows, it's
> probably better than most in it's simplicity, reliability, and
> effectiveness.

But it's not effective.  For example, you can't mount an existing RAID
set in the install, you can only create or delete RAID sets.  Also, you
can't install to RAID / or /boot, something that Red Hat has supported
since 7.x (and LVM since 8.0).

> If you insist upon having X-windows as part of the installation then you
> probably will only be happy with Windows, RedHat, and SuSE.

I don't insist on having X windows.  I just want it to work.  It just
happens that anaconda visualises the install better (particularly with
respect to partitioning) and it also has the right features (namely
working RAID and LVM support).

I didn't write this rant about GUI vs. non-GUI.  I wrote it about the
"Debian is fine, and if you don't like it, go use Windows" attitude that
seems to surface so often in posts in this group.

-- 
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Re: Mozilla Firefox: Forbidden page

[Paul Gear]

Jason D. Berg wrote:
> ...
>>
> Try this page with something besides Firefox. I'm betting that it's not
> firefox's problem. It's probably something your ISP is doing. Contact
> them to see what's up.

Sounds like a filtering proxy server.

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Re: Obsessed with a clean system

[Paul Gear]

Loki wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Kirk Strauser wrote:
> 
> 
>>>I cheated on my mirror: I installed a Squid server and pointed apt at that
>>>proxy.  That way, there's no penalty of downloading more packages than
>>>needed, but additional hosts benefit from the packages already downloaded
>>>by earlier hosts.
> 
> 
> Well yeah, if you have infinite disk space to devote to your cache. :)
> ...
> Also, things cycle out of the cache. They expire, or you run out of cache
> space and Squid wisely deletes cache objects. It's good, but a mirror is
> better.

You don't need infinite disk space to make use of a cache.  You only
need enough to store the sets of packages that you use.  I'm about to
build a new mail/proxy/web server with 80 Gb drives in RAID 1.  About 5
of that 80 Gb will be required for the actual work of the server (the
current machine has 4 Gb total), and i could easily spare 40 Gb for cache.

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Re: Obsessed with a clean system

[Paul Gear]

William Ballard wrote:
> ...
>>I used to be obsessed with clean drives before I upgraded the 120MB Connor 
>>in my Amiga.  Since then, I haven't spent much time worrying about it.
> 
> 
> But keeping it clean primarily saves time.  Nobody cares about disk 
> space.  Why download upgrades to all those packages you never need?  
> Why fight broken upgrades on things?

It's also about minimising the number of security bugs that actually
affect you.

I used to work on HP-UX servers, and i routinely deleted the audio
subsystem on them because they didn't have audio hardware.  Everyone
thought i was crazy, until one day a trivially exploitable security bug
was announced.  Then i got to thumb my nose at all the people who
thought i was being anal, and i saved our team a lot of time in security
patching.

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Rant about installer features (Re: Progeny)

[Paul Gear]

John Summerfield wrote:
> Paul Gear wrote:
> 
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> Is anyone here using Progeny?
>>> ...
>>
>> I tried it as an easy way of getting Sarge installed.  It looks pretty
>> good, but it didn't detect my SATA drives for some reason, and the GUI
>> hung when it found some config files that were modified and VC4 started
>> asking about them.  It looks like a good possibility for us Red Hat
>> refugees, though.
>>
>>  
>>
> Indeed.
> Just for laughs, how does FC go on that box?

Nothing to laugh about - it just works.  Perfectly, straight out of the
box.  No mucking about, just create the partitions i want (RAID 1 on
everything: /, /boot, and swap) and install.  So does SuSE Personal 9.1.

(Rant begins here)

I'm finding this mailing list a little hard to cope with.  Some people
on it think they know everything about Linux because they've been using
Debian for 3 years.  I've been using Linux for 10 years, but because i
didn't use Debian from the beginning, i get treated like a newbie who
doesn't understand what RAID is and obviously needs to "go back to
Windows" since i don't think Debian's features are up to scratch and i
think GUI installers are easier to use.  For crying out loud, the last
version of Windows that was the main OS on my PC was *Win95*, 9 years ago!

When are you people (not you, John) going to realise that it's not just
Windoze lusers that expect things to just work?  That's the main reason
i used Red Hat for so many years (from Red Hat Linux 4.2 through Fedora
Core 1).

The reason i'm trying to change over to Debian is because of Red Hat's
new(-ish) model of only providing experimental distributions for free
and charging more than Sun & Microsoft for their stable distributions.
The release churn is too great on Fedora.  (Of course, apt-get is a
great feature, but Fedora is coming close now, with apt and yum.)

Sorry for the venting, but i imagine i'm not alone - there are plenty of
Red Hat refugees around, and i was almost sold on Debian before i even
installed it.  You can make some significant new converts by just taking
our concerns seriously.

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Re: Progeny

[Paul Gear]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Is anyone here using Progeny?
> 
> If yes how does it compare to Sarge. I know the installer is easy.
> How's the usability out of the box? Sarge is pretty nice and fast but it
> takes a while to set it up (for me at least). Will it be free (money-wise)?
> What kernel(s) will it include?

I tried it as an easy way of getting Sarge installed.  It looks pretty
good, but it didn't detect my SATA drives for some reason, and the GUI
hung when it found some config files that were modified and VC4 started
asking about them.  It looks like a good possibility for us Red Hat
refugees, though.

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Re: raid Re: Whats with this new Debian installer?

[Paul Gear]

Alvin Oga wrote:
> hi ya john
> 
> On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, John Summerfield wrote:
> 
> 
>>Paul wants / and /boot on mdo and/or md0. I can do it, but the installer 
>>can't. Paul wants to be able to take either one drive out and boot. Always.
> 
> 
> if one can't boot off of either disk, its NOT raid ... and cannot claim
> to be raid ...  one must be able to boot even if a disk is dead and also
> keep running on 1-leg even if the other disk has long since died

The point is not what RAID is - i know that.  The point is that it
*isn't supported* by the Debian installer on / and /boot.

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Re: Whats with this new Debian installer?

[Paul Gear]

Joey Hess wrote:
> ...
> Anyway, no, hardware autodetection is not the only new feature compared
> to the boot floppies.  Off the top of my head a few other user-visible
> features:
> ...
>  - software RAID support

But not on /boot or /.  I find this just unfathomable.  What do i do if
the disk containing / dies?

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Re: Whats with this new Debian installer?

[Paul Gear]

John Summerfield wrote:
> ...
>> Its also much easier to use then the woody one, by default uses simple
>> options so it can be used by linux newbies without holding a book in
>> the other hand a
>>
> 
> I'm not so sure about that. I find the partitionaer far too confusing.

Agreed - Progeny's port of anaconda looks promising.  I've always found
the Red Hat partitioner to be good at representing the layout and easy
to use.

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Re: I hate it when that happens...

[Paul Gear]

John L Fjellstad wrote:
> Paul Gear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> 
>>And *always* use 'set -u' in shell scripts.  :-)
> 
> 
> What does that do?  I looked in bash manual, and couldn't find
> anything... (always ready to learn something new:-) )

It treats an unset variable as an error.  Very handy for making sure
your backup script doesn't overwrite your root filesystem when you write
rsync -SHavx /blah $DEST/

:-)

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Re: [Rant] The Endless Search for a Mail Client That Doesn't Suck

[Paul Gear]

Brian Nelson wrote:
> ...
>>mutt does that for me. I think gnus can also do, I mean to test it more
>>heavily some time, but the startup time is too big.
> 
> 
> Must... resist... urge... to... KILL!!!

http://palpatine.chez.tiscali.fr/Dilbert/CowDskArt040896.gif

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Re: I hate it when that happens...

[Paul Gear]

John L Fjellstad wrote:
> ...
> I wrote a script to delete my old email from ~/Mail directory, basically
> this: find $FOLDERS -type f -mtime $AGE -print0 | xargs -0r rm
> 
> Unfortunately, I forgot to add $FOLDERS variable, so it picked ~/, and
> deleted a bunch of old scripts and documents I hadn't touched in
> awhile.  And of course, I didn't have backup
> 
> Really should have tested the script with an echo before an rm...

And *always* use 'set -u' in shell scripts.  :-)

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Re: /proc/loadavg disagrees with top and ps

[Paul Gear]

Reid Priedhorsky wrote:
> ...
> Hmm. So, the general consensus is that it's not a problem; and it
> certainly doesn't seem to affect interactivity or performance at all. It's
> my home box, not a server or anything, and it normally has very low loads,
> 10-15% maybe when I'm using it and essentially zero when I'm not. There
> shouldn't be lots of processes doing I/O.
> 
> The high load dropped back to normal shortly after I posted.
> 
> I'm still interested in tools that would tell me what processes are doing
> I/O, or whatever. It's unnerving for things to being going on with my box
> that I don't understand.

Try iostat - gives you stats on hard disks.

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Re: `who` output keeps showing logins that have really logged out.

[Paul Gear]

Tom wrote:
> * [Friday 30 July 2004 15:34] Adam Funk:
> 
> 
>>For a few weeks now I've been finding logins listed in the `who`
>>output that are not really logged in.  I've found out how to clear
>>them (`cat /dev/null>/var/run/utmp`) but I'd like to cure the
>>problem.  The false entries all seem to refer to xterm sessions
>>(running bash but without the -l option), but only a few xterm
>>sessions fail to get registered as logged out.
> 
> 
> Pretty useless reply, but I've noticed the same thing. It's been like 
> that for several months here, now.

Every Unix implementation has had their utmp implementation broken for
months or years at a time at least once.  HP-UX did it twice in the
9.x-10.x series.  It's just a fact of life - use ps or something else.  :-)

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Re: [Rant] The Endless Search for a Mail Client That Doesn't Suck

[Paul Gear]

Brian Nelson wrote:
> It's 2004.  Email has been around for what, 30+ years?  Is there an
> email client out there that, after 30 years, still doesn't suck?
> ...
> thunderbird?  Never tried it, doesn't support mailing lists from what
> I've heard.  Most likely also suffers from the horrible editor syndrome.

Just out of curiosity, would you mind defining "support mailing lists"?
 I am on a fair few (although i've just switched to using this list via
gmane.org since killing threads is a really great feature that works
more efficiently in news than mail), and i don't find it a struggle to
manage them with Mozilla Mail/Thunderbird

> I guess there's no end for my misery in sight.  I hear Donald Knuth quit
> using email 14 years ago.  With that kind of foresight, he really *is* a
> genius.

BTW, i really enjoyed the rant.  A little too much swearing for my
liking, but the tone was one of good natured frustration with a little
humour thrown in.  :-)

-- 
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Re: you may be even more embarassed if you can't deliver

[Paul Gear]

Chris Metzler wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 18:28:53 +1000
> Paul Gear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>>Is this list not spamassassined?
> 
> 
> Of course it is.  The listmasters have posted here before, telling
> us that something like 95% of all email incoming to their lists is
> being rejected as spam.  You see 5-10 spam emails a day getting
> through onto this list and wonder if the list servers run some sort
> of spam blocking; you're not seeing the 5700 emails a day to this list
> that are being successfully blocked.  Personally, I think only 5-10
> getting through a day is pretty damned good.

Fair enough.  I guess most lists i visit are not such high-volume.
-- 
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Re: signature separator

[Paul Gear]

Joachim Fahnenmueller wrote:
> ...
>>--
>>Did you know?  If you use two dashes followed by a space as your
>>signature separator, good email programs will chop them off
>>automatically, reducing noise in email replies.
> 
> 
> Interesting! Can mutt do this? How do I configure it?

Don't know, sorry.  Most ones i've used (last text mailer i used was
elm) just work it out automatically.  If mutt doesn't, i'm sure there's
a script or hack you can use to implement it.

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Re: Installing Sarge

[Paul Gear]

Ricky Clarkson wrote:
> I would guess that either both CDROMs are faulty (unlikely) or that
> the machine's RAM or hard drive are faulty (more likely).  You can
> test both, but I don't know how.

I would have thought that the most likely issue would be the CD-ROM
drive itself, since they are notoriously unreliable beasts.

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Test via gmane - please ignore

[Paul Gear]

Test
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Re: how to manage services ?

[Paul Gear]

Paul Johnson wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> 
> 
>>I am new to debina. I have certain services running like lpd rpc etc. In
>>RedHat there is a command chkconfig with which i can start/ top services
>>for certain run levels or completely stop it from running.
> 
> 
> Well, first off, you only have installed an extremely minimal base
> system plus anything you've chosen to install.  This isn't Hed Rat,
> Debian doesn't install a bunch of useless stuff by default.

That is *SO* not the point.  chkconfig is a simple way to turn on and
off at boot time the important services that you explicitly want to have
on.  It also provides a convenient overview of which ones are on and off
in which levels.

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Re: /proc/loadavg disagrees with top and ps

[Paul Gear]

Nate Duehr wrote:
> ...
> emacs!!  Hey there's your problem right there!  Teach those undergrads to code 
> in vi and they'd have had lots more CPU and the box wouldn't have been 
> swapping so much!  
> 
> (LOL!  Sorry, it just *had* to be said just for tradition's sake!)

Hallelujah!  Preach on, Brother Nate of the Righteous Saints of VI!

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Re: you may be even more embarassed if you can't deliver

[Paul Gear]

Is this list not spamassassined?
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Re: /proc/loadavg disagrees with top and ps

[Paul Gear]

Greg Folkert wrote:
> ...
> Or how about a multi-threaded App server running hundreds(thousands in
> some cases) of servlets a minute... I admin'd a 32 Processor, 32GB of
> Memory machine that was capable of running a couple of thousand servlets
> a minute.
> 
> The load average on this machine usually stood at about 120-150 on a
> busy day. On rush days, sometime 270+. With no effect on inter-active
> logins or performance... though I did have to re-configure some of the
> other services to accept connections at high LA. (like the MTA)

I was speaking only for us povo sysadmins with single CPUs.  :-)

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Re: /proc/loadavg disagrees with top and ps

[Paul Gear]

Reid Priedhorsky wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> /proc/loadavg currently reports the following:
> 
>   0.96 0.98 0.78 1/116 23994
> 
> xload also reports roughly the same.
> 
> But top and ps both report a nearly idle system (98% idle). What is going
> on? How can I find out what is causing my system to be so busy?

I've seen load averages of 14 and 16 when the CPU usage was on 10%.  The
two are usually, but not necessarily, related.  There are certain types
of work where this behaviour will be seen.  Even low amounts of I/O to a
slow device, if done by enough processes could cause this.

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Re: Security camera management software

[Paul Gear]

Paul Johnson wrote:
> Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> 
>>A friend of mine recently asked me if any decent software exists for
>>Linux for managing security cameras.  He intends to setup up 6 or 7
>>cameras, and wants to be able to manage them from a MacOS X box.
> 
> 
> Seriously?  Or is this a toy project?  Having used security cameras as
> part of my job, I can safely say that every digital camera system blows
> balls.  If you want usable footage, go analog for this project.  Whoever
> has to look at the footage for some minute detail will thank you for it.

We looked into both at work, and found that non-digital systems are far
more expensive for what you get (at least in .au).  Brian might be going
for basic movement & stuff at a low price and might not want minute detail.
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Re: Installation plea: install with / and /boot on RAID 1

[Paul Gear]

John wrote:
> ...
> Numbat:~# df -h
> FilesystemSize  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/md0  1.3G  232M 1016M  19% /
> tmpfs  31M 0   31M   0% /dev/shm
> ...
> Didn't do it with the Sarge installed: I installed into a small patition
>  and worked from there.

I got that far as well.  The problem is that it doesn't start the other
RAID arrays (in my case, root is on md2, and it starts that but not md0
& md1).  In another forum i was referred to these links:

http://xtronics.com/reference/SATA-RAID-Debian.htm
http://www.james.rcpt.to/programs/debian/raid1/

However, i can't see how much difference that is going to make to the
fact that the RAID arrays are not autodetecting.

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Re: How to Move from 1 drive to another?

[Paul Gear]

John Summerfield wrote:
> ...
 I've checked the jumper settings - I will probably use Cable Select.
 
>>>
>>> You need a special cable for that. I've never seen one.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> Haven't looked very hard then... I think you'd find it close to
>> impossible
>> to put your hands on a 80-pin IDE cable that *wasn't* cable-select.
>>
>>  
>>
> 
> The crossover cables I have seen are for MFM drives and for floppy
> disks. They have a section cable this has a twist in it. None of my ATA
> cables, eithe r 40-pin or 80, has such a twist.

They don't have a twist.  They are just straight through cables.  The
difference is i think one line of the 80 onlygoes to the first connector.
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Re: Installation plea: install with / and /boot on RAID 1

[Paul Gear]

Alvin Oga wrote:
> ...
>>I know - that is why i was very disappointed to find that it wasn't
>>supported even in the latest Sarge snapshot (i honestly expected it to
>>be supported in Woody as well).
> 
> 
> yup ... people's ( developer's ) preferences and requirements are
> different or "just plain it'd be fun to do this wy instead of that way"

Any idea where i can sign up to drive this issue?  This list obviously
isn't the right place.

> ...
>>I know.  I tried to do this, but Debian's mkinitrd is not giving me the
>>joy the Red Hat one did (see below).
> 
> initrd is for the fun of things and a pat-pat on the shoulders when it
> works ( time vs other stuff to do issue )

I don't understand what you're trying to say.

> ... 
>>Again, why?  My preferred setup for a workstation is *everything* in /.
> 
> that's an age old preferences or time or ??? issue ... 
>   - it will become an issue at 3:00am when you;re sleeping and
>   get called in to fix the disks cause it crashed because a user
>   created the wrong kinda of files or filenames

It's my *workstation*.  The only one calling will be me.  Only 3 of the
18 machines i support have normal users on them, and all of those either
have a separate partition for user files or quotas.

Anyway, i'm not here to debate the merits of my partitioning scheme - as
you say, that is a personal preference issue.  I just want to get Debian
installed where every partition is mirrored - that is not a preference
issue, it is a reliability issue.

> ...
>>and has saved me from machines crashing when hard drives go
>>bad (especially the ones that don't even know they're going bad ;-).
> 
> 
> if you dint know the drives went bad... thats a bad thing???

If a drive is silently corrupting data, it's definitely bad.  I've had 3
drives do this on me in the past (2 of the 3 were Samsung drives :-).
The only way i detected it was the fact that random files were showing
up in the tripwire reports, and it was changing every night.

> ...
>>-- Snip --
>>4.  Install latest Sarge snapshot to standard ATA drive.  Set up RAID
>>devices (md0 = 1 Gb /boot, md1 = 4 Gb swap, md2 = 195 Gb /), rsync ATA
>>partition to SATA partitions, chroot to target partitions and run LILO.
> ...
>>This last method seems to be on the verge of working, but when i boot
>>from the /boot partition, it can't mount md2 on /.
> 
> usually means a partition problem ( should be "FD" ) or
> fix lilo or grub ... and do NOT use initrd you didnt create  unless
> you know it works for booting on 1/2 or 1/4 of the working raid disk

I managed to get a partially working system by changing MODULES=dep and
ROOT=/dev/md2 in /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf.  However, it only starts
the RAID device on /dev/md2, not /dev/md0 or /dev/md1, even though all
the partitions are type 0xFD and the RAID sets are working correctly.

>> I can boot from the
>>SATA /boot and use the ATA /.  It seems the md devices aren't started,
>>and i can't work out how to include them in the initrd.

I did some hacking on mkinitrd to include the right mdadm commands to
start md0 and md1, but it still doesn't work, because at the time when
the initrd/script runs, not all the device files exist.  Is this a
feature of Debian's initrd setup, or the 2.6 kernel?  (All of my Red Hat
boxes are 2.4, so i'm not familiar with the way it is done on 2.6.)

The way that mkinitrd is setting up the RAID devices seems really poor
to me anyway, since it hard-codes the array names and UUIDS.  The
autodetection that is present in the kernel would seem to be a far
better approach to me.

> to look at the initrd ..
>   mount -o loop initrd.gz /mnt/initrd ( fix for the exact syntax )
>   ls -la /mnt/initrd
>   fix what you want
>   recompress it and replace the original one

You can't do that on the latest installer, because it uses a cramfs
(mounts read-only), not a compressed ext2.

>> On RH, you
>>could just specify preload modules on the mkinitrd command line, but
>>that doesn't seem to be the case here.  I added raid1 and md to
>>/etc/mkinitrd/modules, but that doesn't help.  Any suggestions?
> 
> 
> i say mkinitrd and its variations is all broken in most versions i played
> with
>   - and better yet, its not needed if the kernel is built right
>   ( raid built into the kernel and not a module )

Do you think building a custom kernel with RAID built in will cause it
to autodetect all of my 0xFD partitions?
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Re: Installation plea: install with / and /boot on RAID 1

[Paul Gear]

Alvin Oga wrote:
> ...
>>A quick question: are there *any* Debian derivatives that support RAID 1
>>/ and /boot?
> 
> 
> normally ... raid1 supports / and /boot raid off the shelf 
> ( built in the default kernel.org kernel )

I know - that is why i was very disappointed to find that it wasn't
supported even in the latest Sarge snapshot (i honestly expected it to
be supported in Woody as well).

>   - it all assumes that /boot is in / and "/" is less than 1024
>   cylinders ( 520MB or so for "/" )

It appears that this is not a limitation in the latest installer (from
what i can tell).  Having a separate /boot seems to be supported from
the reading and testing i've done.

>   - if not, you will need a custom initrd ... that supports raid
>   and /boot and / can be anywhere on the disks crossing the 1024 
>   cylinder boundries and however big you want

I know.  I tried to do this, but Debian's mkinitrd is not giving me the
joy the Red Hat one did (see below).

>   in my own itty bitty world of machines ..
>   - creating /boot is a bad idea ..

Why?  I can't see a reason for not making it.  It then allows you to put
/ on more exotic filesystems, or even on a volume manager (i haven't
done the former, but the majority of my machines use LVM).

>   - creating / bigger than 128MB or 256MB is a bad idea ...

Again, why?  My preferred setup for a workstation is *everything* in /.
 This is the preferred arrangement for new users according to the Sarge
installer, as well.  It saves a lot of stuffing around with partitioning.

> ...
>   - bad idea because i dont want to fiddle with it once
>   it's deployed and if it breaks i want to fix in minimal
>   time and not have to wait and wait and wait and wait

What exactly do you think is a bad idea?  RAID 1 for / and /boot has
been an extremely trouble-free setup for me on all of my servers (around
20 of them), and has saved me from machines crashing when hard drives go
bad (especially the ones that don't even know they're going bad ;-).

> you can always build a custom initrd instead and all the drives
> would be happy ..

I've tried that - i must be missing something.  Below is what i posted
on debian-boot, and got no replies.  (I'm trying to install to 2 x 200
Gb WD2000JD-00GBB0 SATA drives.)

-- Snip --
4.  Install latest Sarge snapshot to standard ATA drive.  Set up RAID
devices (md0 = 1 Gb /boot, md1 = 4 Gb swap, md2 = 195 Gb /), rsync ATA
partition to SATA partitions, chroot to target partitions and run LILO.

This last method seems to be on the verge of working, but when i boot
from the /boot partition, it can't mount md2 on /.  I can boot from the
SATA /boot and use the ATA /.  It seems the md devices aren't started,
and i can't work out how to include them in the initrd.  On RH, you
could just specify preload modules on the mkinitrd command line, but
that doesn't seem to be the case here.  I added raid1 and md to
/etc/mkinitrd/modules, but that doesn't help.  Any suggestions?
-- Snip --

On RH, i use this to set up the initrd for my ITE8212F hardware RAID
controller (which i'm trying to get away from):

mkinitrd --preload sr_mod --preload iteraid /boot/initrd-2.4.20-30.9
2.4.20-30.9

The way to do the same thing on Debian's mkinitrd seems to be to add the
desired modules to /etc/mkinitrd/modules, but that doesn't seem to do
the right thing.  Do i perhaps need MODULES=dep in
/etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf?

> ( manually do what the fancy rh installer is doing that
> deb installer is not - to assemble the raid array before installing or
> booting )

Assembling the RAID array before installing is not what the new
installer choked on.  It created and mounted the partitions just fine.
It just gives a warning that the way i set it up is not supported, fails
to install both GRUB and LILO (i tried both), and fails to boot after
installation.
-- 
Paul

--
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Re: Debianised Firewall

[Paul Gear]

Sam Halliday wrote:
> ...
>>/me does `apt-get install shorewall` and to hell with figuring out the
>>proper way :-)
> 
> 
> hmm, its actually more effort to learn this shorewall thing than just make my own 
> initscript...

If you say so.  From my experience, the time spent learning shorewall
pays back in spades.

-- 
Paul

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Re: Debianised Firewall

[Paul Gear]

Sam Halliday wrote:
> Paul Gear wrote:
> 
>>Sam Halliday wrote:
>>
>>>...
>>>
>>>>Debian supports shorewall, a great iptables preprocessor - get a recent
>>>>version from backports.org, and you're laughin'!
>>>
>>>
>>>cheers... but i do not need a way to generate rules; i already know
>>>how to do that. i just want to know if there is a standardised debian
>>>way of loading up a firewall on startup... like a file i need to dump
>>>my (customised) `iptables-save` output into. else i will just write
>>>my own initscript.
>>
>>I know how to do it as well, but i don't because shorewall saves a lot
>>of time and effort, and protects you from typos.
> 
> 
> /me does `apt-get install shorewall` and to hell with figuring out the proper way :-)

  Indeed!

I learned iptables when i first converted my 900+ line ipchains script
into iptables (that alone cut the script by about 300 lines), then i
went from that to about 50 lines of shorewall config.  I've never
touched iptables since, except to troubleshoot or add a temporary rule
on a particularly slow machine.  Of course, my config is a lot bigger
now... :-)
-- 
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Re: Networking Problem

[Paul Gear]

Jonathan Barnes wrote:
> John Summerfield wrote:
> 
>> I _thought_ you might be Australian.
> 
> 
> Yes I am :)

We're everywhere!  (It's Sunday arvo - time to break my Linux box for
this week.)
-- 
Paul

--
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
-- U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953


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Re: Debianised Firewall

[Paul Gear]

Sam Halliday wrote:
> ...
>>Debian supports shorewall, a great iptables preprocessor - get a recent
>>version from backports.org, and you're laughin'!
> 
> 
> cheers... but i do not need a way to generate rules; i already know
> how to do that. i just want to know if there is a standardised debian
> way of loading up a firewall on startup... like a file i need to dump
> my (customised) `iptables-save` output into. else i will just write
> my own initscript.

I know how to do it as well, but i don't because shorewall saves a lot
of time and effort, and protects you from typos.

-- 
Paul

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Re: Debianised Firewall

[Paul Gear]

Sam Halliday wrote:

>hi there,
>
>i am quite familiar with setting up iptables rules in an initscript, or via
>iptables-{restore,save}. i could easily set up my own initscript to do
>this, but i was wondering what the correct "debian way" of setting up an
>iptables firewall is. is there a file where i should place my rules and let
>debian do the rest?
>
Debian supports shorewall, a great iptables preprocessor - get a recent
version from backports.org, and you're laughin'!

-- 
Paul

--
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multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
-- Thomas Jefferson 



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Installation plea: install with / and /boot on RAID 1

[Paul Gear]

Hi folks,

A quick question: are there *any* Debian derivatives that support RAID 1
/ and /boot?  I just tried the latest debian-installer snapshot, and was
told when i tried to put them on RAID 1 that this was not supported.
I've logged a bug report, but since it explicitly states it's not
supported, i don't like my chances of getting it fixed anytime soon.  I
can't afford to run non-RAID on any of my systems (all but the one i'm
writing this on are servers), and hardware RAID isn't an option.


Red Hat have supported software RAID 1 installations since 7.3 (or
earlier perhaps - my memory is a bit faded).  How can Debian claim to be
a suitable server OS without supporting it?

Hardware RAID is not a suitable option on many systems, and not a
preferred one anyway, since software RAID is more portable - you can
take the hard disks from one machine and put them in another and they
just work.


I've tried Morphix, set up my RAID partitions manually, and installed to
them, and that seems to work, but because my drives are SATA, they are
very slow due to a pre-2.4.26 kernel deficiency in the Silicon Image
SI3112 driver.  Am i best to try an updated Morphix with a newer kernel?
 (I've previously used the latest 0.4 release.)

Thanks in advance,
Paul

--
If at first you *do* succeed, carefully check your success metrics for
accuracy.


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Re: Ethernet not working in sarge. Have I done enough?

[Paul Gear]

Hendrik Boom wrote:
> I've been trying to net-install sarge using the new installer.
> The install worked, in the sense that I now have useless but otherwise
> working sarge system.
> 
> The trouble is that is seems to be unable to communicate with my ethernet
> card, a Realtek RTL-8139, for which it has installed the 8139too
> module.

I found this too.  Installing with the 2.6 kernel solved it (run linux26
from the boot prompt).

-- 
Paul

--
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abortion was born.  That's how oppression works.
-- Matt Evans, Harvard Law Student


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Re: Trying to install to SATA drives on RAID 1

[Paul Gear]

Paul Gear wrote:
> ...
>>>How do i do that?  I've never run a serial console on a Linux box.
>>
>>Try reading the installation documents:-)
> 
> 
> You mean the ones that only apply to Woody and kernel 2.4?  :-)

Sorry - spoke too soon.  I found them at
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/

-- 
Paul
<http://paulgear.webhop.net>
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Re: Thanks for Debian Installer

[Paul Gear]

Steve Witt wrote:
> ...
> Yeah, me too. I had to install one of the first real servers (from a
> hardware point of view) I've ever done. It has 6 IDE disks all on
> separate PCI IDE Controllers (none on the motherboard IDE channels),
> some SCSI, gigabit Ethernet and other fairly new hardware things (at
> least in my experience). I used beta4 and it ROCKS! I really wanted to
> install woody on this machine but the woody installation couldn't deal
> with the IDE configuration of this computer, so I tried the new
> installer with sarge and it worked great. I was totally speechles.
> ... This new
> installer (first time I've used it) absolutely blew me away. I'm really
> impressed, and I consider myself to be a pretty critical guy in these
> matters.

I don't suppose you managed to get it to either:

a)  Create software RAID devices without hanging, or
b)  Just mount an existing software RAID device without attempting to
recreate it?

I can't do either, and i'm sure Debian would win a die-hard convert in
me if i could just get the [EMAIL PROTECTED] thing installed.  SATA seems to be the
sticking point on my system, but i would have thought installing to an
existing md would work, since installing to an existing non-RAID
partition works.

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Re: Trying to install to SATA drives on RAID 1

[Paul Gear]

John Summerfield wrote:
> ...

 Can anyone shed any light on this issue?  I'm a Red Hat refugee trying
 to install Sarge, without much success so far.  I posted the message
 below on debian-boot without any response.  I've also searched the
 debian-user archives without result.

BTW, i'm not particularly worried about the installer side of things, as
long as i can get my mkinitrd working OK.  Any thoughts on that?
Details included again below...

> 4.  Install latest Sarge snapshot to standard ATA drive.  Set up RAID
> devices (md0 = 1 Gb /boot, md1 = 4 Gb swap, md2 = 195 Gb /), rsync ATA
> partition to SATA partitions, chroot to target partitions and run LILO.
> 
> This method seems to be on the verge of working, but when i boot
> from the /boot partition, it can't mount md2 on /.  I can boot from the
> SATA /boot and use the ATA /.  It seems the md devices aren't started,
> and i can't work out how to include them in the initrd.  On RH, you
> could just specify preload modules on the mkinitrd command line, but
> that doesn't seem to be the case here.  I added raid1 and md to
> /etc/mkinitrd/modules, but that doesn't help.

> ...
>> How do i do that?  I've never run a serial console on a Linux box.
> 
> Try reading the installation documents:-)

You mean the ones that only apply to Woody and kernel 2.4?  :-)

> And man bootparam

Mine (Red Hat 9) doesn't say anything about serial consoles.

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Re: Trying to install to SATA drives on RAID 1

[Paul Gear]

John Summerfield wrote:
> Paul Gear wrote:
> 
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> Can anyone shed any light on this issue?  I'm a Red Hat refugee trying
>> to install Sarge, without much success so far.  I posted the message
>> below on debian-boot without any response.  I've also searched the
>> debian-user archives without result.
>>  
>>
> 
> I'm surprised you don't have any response.

I tried twice - i will give it one more go.

> try filing a bug report
> against debian-installer. Give specifics about the version, and a
> transcript if you can. A nullmodem cable to another box and directing
> console activity will help with that.

How do i do that?  I've never run a serial console on a Linux box.
-- 
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