Re: Content of /etc/ethers

2024-01-04 Thread Rick Thomas
Thank you for mentioning "dnsmasq".  I do the same thing on my home network and 
it works very well.
Rick

On Wed, Jan 3, 2024, at 9:29 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> Which tools read /etc/ethers, what do they expect in there, what do
>> they do with the contents?
>
> AFAIK it's mostly unused nowadays.  I have such a file on my DHCP
> server, where `dnsmasq` reads it (lets me give static IP addresses to
> some of my machines, even though they're configured via DHCP,
> i.e. they're "dynamically static").
>
>
> Stefan



Re: Is it safe to install Bookworm on a new machine now?

2023-12-12 Thread Rick Thomas



On Tue, Dec 12, 2023, at 6:22 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 05:47:48PM -0800, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> Is there a netinst iso that I can use to safely install Bookworm (stable) on 
>> a new PC?
>
> Well, with a netinst, the issue isn't what's on the netinst medium.  It's
> what's on the Debian mirrors, which the installer will use for most of
> your packages.
>
> Even if you were to use a Debian 12.2 installer image, you'd still end
> up bringing in packages for Debian 12.4 during the installation.
>
> If your machine has no wifi interface, you *might* be safe to install
> now.  But if in doubt, I'd wait.

Well, the machine in question has a wi-fi but I don't plan on using it.  Though 
unless I'm misunderstanding, just having a wi-fi (used or not) is enough to 
trigger the bug.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So, is there an ETA for the fix?

Thanks!
Rick





Is it safe to install Bookworm on a new machine now?

2023-12-12 Thread Rick Thomas
Is there a netinst iso that I can use to safely install Bookworm (stable) on a 
new PC?
If so, where can I download it from?
If not, how much longer is it likely to be before one exists?

Thanks!
Rick



Re: How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm

2023-11-06 Thread Rick Thomas



On Sun, Nov 5, 2023, at 7:04 PM, జిందం వాఐి wrote:
>> PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice,
>> would there be a better VM supervisor
>> I could use? If so, can you point me
>> to a set of instructions for it?
>
> * these are MY personal opnions from
> experience [ almost decade ago ]
> [ may not be correct or relevant ]
>   * my laptop with amd processor [ low
> end model ]
>   * installation of qemu was impossible
> because virtualization [ svm ] is not
> enabled in BIOS, only high end models
> have it enabled [ blame on bios vendors
> for poor implementation, eventhough
> it is enabled by amd ] [ kernel 6.7
> commit [ 1 ] fixed incorrect data ]
>
> * so do you have amd or intel?
> * how much ram [ is relevant due to
> recent security incidents affecting
> intel [ little bit more ], amd
>
> * virtualbox [ 2 ], but it is available
> in unstable? [ 3 ] why?
>   * it was working flawlessly
>   * even if you have intel, installation
> of debian [ minimal installation ]
> + twm is more than enough ;)
>
> [ 1 ] 
> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20231027170151.GOZTvs%2FwR%2F47ib4+qe@fat_crate.local/T/#u
> [ 2 ] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation
> [ 3 ] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/virtualbox
>
> -- 
> regards,
> జిందం వాఐి [ jindam, vani ]
> [matrix]_ @jindam.vani:oikei.net

Thanks for the very useful information!

If I understand you correctly:
1) The box I'm thinking of using has a CPU that is an Intel core i5-7500.  It 
has 4 cores running at 3.4GHz, and It has 24GB RAM.  The OS is Debian 6.1.55-1 
(2023-09-29) -- stable/bookworm.
2) The Virtualbox documentation (but not virtualbox itself?) is available in 
Debian Sid (but only Sid?)
3) Does the documentation (either from Virtualbox.org, or from Debian Sid) 
cover installation and use of Virtualbox under Debian?
4) How do I find out if it has virtualization/svm enabled in the firmware?  If 
it does, would I be better off with KVM/QEMU, or Virtualbox?

Thanks very much!
Rick



Documentation for KVM/QEMU? [Re: How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm]

2023-11-05 Thread Rick Thomas
Can anyone recommend good documentation on KVM/QEMU that would allow me to get 
up to speed on it quickly?

Thanks!
Rick


On Sun, Nov 5, 2023, at 4:33 AM, Michael Kjörling wrote:
> On 5 Nov 2023 10:56 +0100, from andr...@xss.co.at (Andreas Haumer):
>>> PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice, would there be a better VM
>>> supervisor I could use?  If so, can you point me to a set of
>>> instructions for it?
>> 
>> To answer just these questions only: take a look at kvm/qemu and
>> the virt-manager GUI.
>
> Yes, definitely look at KVM/QEMU. "Better" is subjective but certainly
> one huge advantage of KVM over almost anything else is that it's
> already there in the kernel, and you pretty much just need to install
> the tools to manage it. VirtualBox, VMWare and others require adding
> third-party software, which can easily break with a kernel upgrade.
>
> -- 
> Michael Kjörling  https://michael.kjorling.se
> “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”



How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm

2023-11-05 Thread Rick Thomas
The title says it all, I hope.  I've tried installing vmware player on my 
Bookworm according to the instructions from 
https://techviewleo.com/install-vmware-on-debian/

But I can't seem to get vmware player to start up.  What am I doing wrong?  Is 
there a better location to look for instruction?

Thanks,
Rick

PS: My motivation is that I have a young friend (he is mid 20s; I myself am mid 
70s) who wants to learn Linux, and in particular, how to set up and use virtual 
machines.  I have a Dell machine that I'm not using that would be ideal for his 
learning experiences and I would like to make it available to him.  I'm a 
Debian user for over 20 years, so I'd like to base his study on Debian because 
that's what I know best and would be best able to mentor.

PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice, would there be a better VM supervisor I 
could use?  If so, can you point me to a set of instructions for it?



Re: Raspberry Pi Debian after upgrade Bullseye => Bookworm -- problem Setting up ca-certificates-java

2023-06-22 Thread Rick Thomas
That seems to have worked (I think)...

On Thu, Jun 22, 2023, at 7:34 AM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
 snip 
> It might be worth looking at precisely what is not installed / removed
> dpkg -C will give you what needs configuring if anything, I think.
>
> I had a similar experience with upgrading Debian WSL - in the end, I 
> found that temporarily removing default-jre-?? helped.
>
> That allowed me to upgrade the system and then to reinstall the JRE.
>
> I think the versions of the Java runtime environment have changed very
> significantly, hence the problem.

What I did was run "dpkg -C" to get a list of problematical packages, which I 
then purged.
aptitude -PVv  purge default-jre openjdk-17-jre:arm64 
openjdk-17-jre-headless
I saved the list of all packages being removed (including several not in the 
original list but removed for dependency reasons).

The purge ran without incident.  I was then able to do "apt-get upgrade" which 
ran to completion without complaint.

I then re-installed all the packages that had previously been removed.  This 
ran without incident, as did "apt-get upgrade" following.

I believe the only thing I've lost at this point is knowledge of which of the 
re-installed packages were originally "auto-installed" due to depends or 
recommends .

I hope this report helps the next person with this kind of problem.  I know I 
learned a lot!

Thanks very much to Andy, Jeff and Sven for all their help!
Rick





Re: Raspberry Pi Debian after upgrade Bullseye => Bookworm -- problem Setting up ca-certificates-java

2023-06-22 Thread Rick Thomas
Thanks, Jeff!

On Thu, Jun 22, 2023, at 12:04 AM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 2:49 AM Rick Thomas  wrote:
 snip 
>> In this case, the package is already installed.
>> Unfortunately when I try to reinstall it, I get:
>>
>> rbthomas@pi:~$ sudo -i  apt-get install --reinstall ca-certificates-java
>> Reading package lists... Done
>> Building dependency tree... Done
>> Reading state information... Done
>> 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
>> 4 not fully installed or removed.
>> After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
>> E: Internal Error, No file name for ca-certificates-java:arm64
>> rbthomas@pi:~$
>>
>> Any idea that that even means?
>
> I would probably try this next:
> sudo apt-get -f install && sudo dpkg -a --configure
> If that doesn't help, then I am out of ideas.

Sadly, that didn't work.
Do you (or anyone else on the list) have any idea what this message means?
"E: Internal Error, No file name for ca-certificates-java:arm64"

In particular, what directory might contain the file 
ca-certificates-java:arm64. And what does "no filename for..." mean in this 
context?

Thanks!
Rick



Re: Raspberry Pi Debian after upgrade Bullseye => Bookworm -- problem Setting up ca-certificates-java

2023-06-22 Thread Rick Thomas



On Wed, Jun 21, 2023, at 9:21 PM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 12:15 AM Rick Thomas  wrote:
>>
>> I have a Raspberry Pi that is running Debian (*not* Raspbian) that I just 
>> upgraded from Bullseye => Bookworm.
>>
>> Following the upgrade whenever I try to install the latest upgrades, I get 
>> errors (see attached transcript).
>>
>> Can anybody see what I've done wrong?  Or what I can do to fix it?
>>
>> I'm not a java user myself, though I suspect there are java programs are 
>> used by programs that I use at the command-line level.   Would it be 
>> possible to simply "purge" the affected packages?
>>
>> Thanks for any help you can give me to get this machine back in operation!
>
> The first command I would run is:
>
>apt-get install ca-certificates-java
>
> If the package is already installed (I can't tell; it looks like
> install may have failed), then:
>
>apt-get install --reinstall ca-certificates-java
>
> If apt-get fails, then I would move on to dpkg.
>
> Jeff

Thanks, Jeff!
In this case, the package is already installed.
Unfortunately when I try to reinstall it, I get:

rbthomas@pi:~$ sudo -i  apt-get install --reinstall ca-certificates-java
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
4 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
E: Internal Error, No file name for ca-certificates-java:arm64
rbthomas@pi:~$ 

Any idea that that even means?

Thanks!
Rick



Raspberry Pi Debian after upgrade Bullseye => Bookworm -- problem Setting up ca-certificates-java

2023-06-21 Thread Rick Thomas
I have a Raspberry Pi that is running Debian (*not* Raspbian) that I just 
upgraded from Bullseye => Bookworm.

Following the upgrade whenever I try to install the latest upgrades, I get 
errors (see attached transcript).

Can anybody see what I've done wrong?  Or what I can do to fix it?

I'm not a java user myself, though I suspect there are java programs are used 
by programs that I use at the command-line level.   Would it be possible to 
simply "purge" the affected packages?

Thanks for any help you can give me to get this machine back in operation!

Rick

transcript
Description: Binary data


Re: VirtualBox key is store in deprecated legacy keyring

2023-06-20 Thread Rick Thomas



On Mon, Jun 19, 2023, at 8:27 PM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 11:15 PM Rick Thomas  wrote:
>>
>> Now when I do "apt update" I get this message:
>> .W: 
>> https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/dists/bullseye/InRelease: 
>> Key is stored in legacy trusted.gpg
>>keyring (/etc/apt/trusted.gpg), see the DEPRECATION section 
>> in apt-key(8) for details.
>> Has anybody else seen this?  If so, what did you do?  And did it help?

> I _think_ the key should be stored in its own file under
> /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d. Maybe something like
> /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/virtual-box.gpg.

This squares with what I get from RTFM, and I'm glad to hear the confirmation, 
but...
Where can I get the text to put into /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/virtual-box.gpg ?  
Currently the key seems to be part of /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.  Is there some way 
to use apt-key to extract that part of it?  If not, I forget where I got the 
original from (somewhere on the Oracle website, I guess?)  Can someone point me 
in the right direction?

> Also see https://wiki.debian.org/SecureApt:

Thanks!
Rick



Ethernet device names change Bullseye => Bookworm. How to assign unchanging name to device?

2023-06-20 Thread Rick Thomas
I've been upgrading my machines Bullseye => Bookworm recently.  In a few of 
these upgrades, the name of the ethernet device changed.  (E.g. enP2p32s15f0 => 
enP2p0s15f0)  This required changes to /etc/network/interfaces in order to 
start up the interface.

This is only a minor inconvenience (though it may require me to take a drive 
out 30 miles to the location where a few of these machines reside -- no 
problem, it's a beautiful drive!)

However, I seem to remember that once upon a time there was a way to get (I 
think it involved udev) the system to assign an arbitrary name (e.g. (enet0") 
to a given interface based on something that doesn't change when the 
firmware/driver gets upgraded. For example, the MAC address for an Ethernet 
interface would be a good basis.

The trouble is that it was a while ago and I can't remember how to do that?

Any hints will be appreciated.  Pointers to documentation on the subject would 
be especially helpful!

Thanks in advance!
Rick



VirtualBox key is store in deprecated legacy keyring

2023-06-19 Thread Rick Thomas
I recently upgraded one of my Debian Bullseye machines to Bookworm.  The 
machine's main purpose is to run Virtualbox to allow me to experiment on 
disposable VMs rather than real hardware.

Now when I do "apt update" I get this message:
.W: 
https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/dists/bullseye/InRelease: Key 
is stored in legacy trusted.gpg
   keyring (/etc/apt/trusted.gpg), see the DEPRECATION section in 
apt-key(8) for details.

I've thoroughly RTFM in search of a clue as to how to fix this, but I can't 
figure out what I'm supposed to do.

Has anybody else seen this?  If so, what did you do?  And did it help?

Thanks in advance!
Rick

PS: As an aside,  it appears that the VirtualBox developers at Oracle waited 
until Bookworm was officially released before they started working on getting a 
bookworm version of their software, so I'm still using the Bullseye version -- 
which seems to work fine.  Presumably, fixing this problem would be one of the 
things they might want to do before releasing a new version...  (One can hope, 
anyway...)  Would it be worth filing a bug-report to Oracle?  If so, does 
anyone know how to do that?



Re: disk usage for /usr/lib on bullseye

2023-05-01 Thread Rick Thomas
On Mon, May 1, 2023, at 11:14 AM, Bret Busby wrote:
> On 2/5/23 02:06, David Christensen wrote:
>> On 5/1/23 06:51, Bonno Bloksma wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> On my "new" Bullseye machines the root volume starts to fill up. The 
>>> cause seems to be the /usr/lib folder.
>>> On my older Buster (10.13) machine the total /usr directory is 701M, 
>>> the /usr/lib folder is 260M
>>> In my /usr/lib folder on Buster is NO /usr/lib/modules folder
>>>
>>> On my Bullseye machines the /usr/lib folder is 2+GB on the machines 
>>> that have been operating for a while and 1+G on a machine that has 
>>> been operating for a shorter while.
>>>
>>> The cause seems to be the folder /usr/lib/modules#
>>> linams:/usr/lib/modules# du * -sh
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-10-amd64
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-11-amd64
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-12-amd64
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-13-amd64
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-15-amd64
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-16-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-18-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-19-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-20-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-21-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-22-amd64
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-7-amd64
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-8-amd64
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-9-amd64
>>>
>>> And
>>> linutr:/usr/lib/modules# du * -sh
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-16-amd64
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-17-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-18-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-19-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-20-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-21-amd64
>>>
>>> And
>>> lola:/usr/lib/modules# du * -sh
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-13-amd64
>>> 4.7M    5.10.0-19-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-20-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-21-amd64
>>> 309M    5.10.0-22-amd64
>>>
>>> Guessing on what I see these are libraries for older kernel versions. 
>>> I usually clean up older kernel versions by using
>>> # apt autoremove"
>>> All 3 servers have 1 older kernel version installed according to apt 
>>> autoremove.
>>>
>
> Have you tried running also
> apt autoclean
> and
> apt purge
> ?
>
> -- 
> ..
> Bret Busby
> Armadale
> West Australia
> (UTC+0800)
> ..

Another thing I usually do after doing an "apt upgrade" that installs a new 
kernel is:
aptitude -P purge '~o'
aptitude -P purge '~c'

The "-P" tells aptitude to ask permission before actually deleting anything.

Rick



what do I need to add to my sources.list for the new non-free-firmware repository?

2023-01-31 Thread Rick Thomas
I've got a couple of Debian systems that (for various reasons) are running 
"testing" or "sid".  I recently did
 apt update && apt upgrade && aptitude search '~o'
on these machines and found that a number of firmware packages are considered 
"obsolete", presumably because they are no longer in any of the repositories 
listed in sources.list.

So what do I need to add to my sources.list file to get them back now?

Here's what I see:

root@kmac:~# aptitude search '~o'
i A  firmware-amd-graphics - Binary firmware for 
AMD/ATI graphics chips
i firmware-linux - Binary firmware 
for various drivers in the Linux kernel (metapackage) 
i A  firmware-linux-nonfree  - Binary firmware for 
various drivers in the Linux kernel (metapackage) 
i A  firmware-misc-nonfree  - Binary firmware for 
various drivers in the Linux kernel   
root@kmac:~# 

Any thoughts?
Rick



Re: PowerBook G4 OS

2023-01-12 Thread Rick Thomas



On Wed, Jan 11, 2023, at 1:02 PM, Bob Crochelt wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2023 at 09:59:48AM +0100, didier gaumet wrote:
>> Le mardi 10 janvier 2023 à 16:32 -0800, Bob Crochelt a écrit :
>> > > 
>> > Thanks to all who replied.  I appreciate the help and advice.  Think
>> > I
>> > will just sit tight with the system, as it works fine for what I
>> > need:
>> > email, a little (slow surfing) and some note writing.
>> > 
>> > I imagine you have saved me many hours of frustration.
>> > 
>> > Regards
>> > Bob Crochelt
>> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> That would leave you with unmaintained software, though, with obvious
>> risks accessing the internet (web, mail, etc...)
>> 
>> Debian port for a Powerbook G4 is unofficial and I don't know the
>> actual state of this port.
>> 
>> NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD all seem to have an active and official
>> port for the PowerPC G4.
>> 
>>
> Thanks for this information.  I was aware that Jessie is not maintained;
> that was the reason for my inquiry.  I will look into your suggestions
> Regards
> Bob Crochelt

What I have isn't a powerbook, it's a PowerMac G4 Silver, which may or may-not 
make a difference.
In any case, it runs fine on "sid".  Here's what /proc/cpuinfo says about it:

processor   : 0
cpu : 7410, altivec supported
temperature : 35-37 C (uncalibrated)
clock   : 533.32MHz
revision: 1.3 (pvr 800c 1103)
bogomips: 66.58

timebase: 33290001
platform: PowerMac
model   : PowerMac3,4
machine : PowerMac3,4
motherboard : PowerMac3,4 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh
detected as : 69 (PowerMac G4 Silver)
pmac flags  : 0010
L2 cache: 1024K unified
pmac-generation : NewWorld
Memory  : 1536 MB

And "uname -a" says:

Linux dillserver 6.0.0-6-powerpc #1 Debian 6.0.12-1 (2022-12-09) ppc 
GNU/Linux

Rick



Re: Will my reconstructed fstab work?

2022-11-03 Thread Rick Thomas
Sorry to hear of your mishap, Ken ...
In regards to possibly making your system un-bootable, I have two suggestions:
1) First make a backup of everything ASAP! (and make plans for frequent regular 
backups into the future)
2) Always remember that you can boot from the Bullseye install DVD (or USB 
stick, or whatever) and go into "rescue mode".  From there you can chroot (it's 
one of the menu options) into the root partition and fix whatever problems you 
encounter with the fstab.

If you run into problems with either of those, you can always come back to the 
list with questions.

Good luck! and I hope that helps!
Rick

On Wed, Nov 2, 2022, at 9:52 PM, Ken Heard wrote:
> A few days ago using vim I added to my desktop fstab file a line for a 
> new portable storage device.  in the process I somehow managed to screw 
> up fstab.  Unfortunately I saved the screwed up version of fstab before 
> I noticed the damage done to it.
>
> As I had no fstab backup  -- to correct later -- I had to reconstruct 
> fstab using the information produced by blkid for the missing UUIDs.   I 
> think the reconstruction is correct, but I have since been afraid to 
> close the computer if because of a faulty fstab I would be unable to 
> reopen it
>
> I would consequently appreciate help in verifying  the essential fstab 
> lines, numbered 11-20 in the reconstructed fstab quoted below and 
> thereby assuage my reopening fears.  (Lines 26-40 relating to portable 
> storage devices I checked myself; they all work.)
>
> Basic Information:  two internal hard drives, /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, 
> each divided into two small partitions of equal size.  Sda1 is used for 
> /boot/efi, lines 13 and 15. Partition sdb1, line 17, is currently 
> unused; in time I will copy to it what is in sda1.  Partitions sda2 and 
> sdb2 form a RAID1, with the five LVM partitions listed in lines 11, 18, 
> 19 and 20.  Operating system is Debian Bullseye.
>
> If anybody in interested, following the reconstructed fstab  quoted 
> below is quoted further below how the fsab looked right after the screw 
> up.
>
> 01 # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
> 02 #
> 03 # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
> 04 # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name 
> devices
> 05 # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
> 06 #
> 07 # Systemd generates mount units based on this file, see systemd.mount(5).
> 08 # Please run 'systemctl daemon-reload' after making changes here.
> 09 #
> 10 #
> 11 /dev/mapper/Morcom-ROOT /   ext4errors=remount-ro 0 1
> 12 # /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
> 13 UUID=3020-1029  /boot/efi   vfatumask=0077  0   1
> 14 # /dos was on /dev/sda1 during installation
> 15 UUID=3020-1029  /dosvfatutf80   0
> 16 # /dos2 was on /dev/sdb1 during installation
> 17 UUID=2AF2-0A16  /dos2   vfatutf80   0
> 18 /dev/mapper/Morcom-HOME_crypt /home   ext4defaults 0   2
> 19 /dev/mapper/Morcom-VAR /varext4defaults0   2
> 20 /dev/mapper/Morcom-SWAP_crypt noneswapswap  0   0
> 21 /dev/sr0/media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0   0
> 22 tmpfs  /tmptmpfs   nodev,nosuid,size=20%   0   0
> 23 UUID=c577-7f18-4443-a77b-c5827f977449 /media/fdr ext2 
> user,noauto,noatime 0  0
> 24 UUID=33cebfb3-b568-493f-853b-e1b7ca5cc3a2 /media/fde ext2 
> user,noauto,noatime  0 0
> 25 # -e8b57fb2ac09/media/ssda ext4user,npauto,noatime 0   > 0
> 26 UUID=la449167-8497-4471-ae0c-e8b57fb2ac09 /media/phda ext4 
> user,noauto,noatime 0 0
> 27 UUID=0fee2d01-2441-4699-a4ae-bb45c417b8ee /media/ssda ext4 
> user,noauto,noatime 0 0
> 28 UUID=e26255ab-e6c5-4bcd-941c-7378b7cf4083 /media/ssdb ext4 
> user,noauto,noatime 0 0
> 29 UUID=3DB1-1700 /media/fdg  vfatuser,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 30 UUID=5966-5502 /media/fdp  vfatuser,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 31 UUID=1170-1657 /media/hca  vfatuser,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 32 UUID=0E0A-0F26 /media/hcb  vfatuser,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 33 UUID=1E82-122E /media/hcc  vfatuser,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 34 UUID=1D1F-1032  /media/xca exfat   user,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 35 UUID=1909-1458 /media.xcb  exfat   user,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 36 UUID=6238-3434 /media/xcc  exfat   user,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 37 UUID=206F-163F /media/xcd  exfat   user,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 38 UUID=3630-6530 /media/xce  exfat   user,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 39 UUID=3065-6630 /media/xcf  exfat   user,noauto,noatime 
> 0   0
> 40 LABEL=ostree   /media/phdc ext4

Re: failure trying to install bullseye on Cubox-i

2022-07-17 Thread Rick Thomas
On Sun, Jul 17, 2022, at 6:37 PM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> I'm experimenting with installing Bullseye on a Cubox-i4Pro I keep 
> around for testing purposes.
>
> I followed the instructions at:
> 
> 
> http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-armhf/current/images/netboot/SD-card-images/README.concatenateable_images
>
> Then I dd'ed the resulting complete image onto an 8GB microSD card, 
> which I then inserted into the microSD slot in the Cubox-I.  When I 
> applied power, I got the attached log on the serial console.
>
> Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?  Is this a bug in the installer? 
>  If so, what's the best way for me to volunteer to help as a tester in 
> debugging it.
>
> Rick
> Attachments:
> * screenlog

In case it helps, the two components I used in this experiment are:


http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-armhf/20210731+deb11u4/images/netboot/SD-card-images/firmware.MX6_Cubox-i.img.gz

and


http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-armhf/20210731+deb11u4/images/netboot/SD-card-images/partition.img.gz

On the web page, these files are dated 2022-07-05 15:57 .

Any clues are appreciated!
Rick



failure trying to install bullseye on Cubox-i

2022-07-17 Thread Rick Thomas
I'm experimenting with installing Bullseye on a Cubox-i4Pro I keep around for 
testing purposes.

I followed the instructions at:

http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-armhf/current/images/netboot/SD-card-images/README.concatenateable_images

Then I dd'ed the resulting complete image onto an 8GB microSD card, which I 
then inserted into the microSD slot in the Cubox-I.  When I applied power, I 
got the attached log on the serial console.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?  Is this a bug in the installer?  If so, 
what's the best way for me to volunteer to help as a tester in debugging it.

Rick

screenlog
Description: Binary data


Re: OT, Recommendation for low cost laptop

2022-07-17 Thread Rick Thomas
On Sun, Jul 17, 2022, at 1:59 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On Sun Jul 17 09:16:57 2022 Dekks Herton  wrote:
>
>  > john doe  writes:
>  >
>  >> I'm comtemplating buying a Pinebook pro but I'm not sure if this is
>  >> better then buying a Windows laptop and putting linux on it.
>  >>
>  >> I'm looking for something cheap (max would be around 300 bucks),
>  >> do you have any suggestions/ideas?
>  >
>  > 2nd hand Thinkpad off ebay, craigslist etc, likely easy to upgrade and
>  > certainly straightforward to install linux.
>
> Another place to look is your local laptop store.  My current laptop,
> as well as its predecessor, are refurbished ThinkPads I bought there
> for about $300.  They run Linux just fine.

Or ask your neighbors.  Due to Covid, a lot of people are replacing their 
Windows or Mac machines so they can run Zoom and other "community building 
while isolated" apps.  Most of them don't bother with looking for a good 
trade-in deal, and have the old computer lying around doing nothing.  If you 
let it be known that you will take it of their hands, upgrade it to run modern 
software (like Linux) and make it available to charities in the area, often 
they will donate it to you for free.  

Anyway, that's how I do it...
Rick



Re: Alternatives to ISC dhcp-client ?

2022-05-08 Thread Rick Thomas
On Sat, May 7, 2022, at 7:47 PM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> According to the ISC webpage:
>
>> ISC has ended development on the ISC DHCP client as of early 2022.
>> This client implementation is no longer maintained and should not be
>> used in production any longer.
>
> Can anybody recommend a good replacement?
> Does anybody know what the Debian PTBs are planning for this?
>
> Thanks!
> Rick

Does anybody know what the Debian developers plan to do about this change of 
policy by ISC?  I have a feeling it's going to be a problem that will have to 
be faced reasonably soon.

Rick



Re: Alternatives to ISC dhcp-client ?

2022-05-08 Thread Rick Thomas



On Sat, May 7, 2022, at 9:37 PM, Jeremy Ardley wrote:
> On 8/5/22 11:27 am, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> Thanks for the heads up!
>> Can you describe in detail what one needs to do in order to switch over?
>> I.e. what to remove, what to install?  What to configure?
>
> This is a recent blogpost of mine showing a more complex installation 
> including IPv6 delegation. If you just do the bits that refer to IPv4 it 
> should still work.
>
> https://jeremyardley.blogspot.com/2022/04/configuring-systemd-networkd-with.html
> Jeremy

Thanks!
Rick
PS:  I'll also do the IPv6 part, because I'm interested in that too.



Re: Alternatives to ISC dhcp-client ?

2022-05-07 Thread Rick Thomas
On Sat, May 7, 2022, at 8:19 PM, Jeremy Ardley wrote:
> On 8/5/22 11:14 am, Jeremy Ardley wrote:
>>
>>
>> You can just use systemd-networkd as an IPv4 dhcp client.
>>
>>
>
> Of note: Using systemd-networkd you should not use NetworkManager or 
> networking services. I think both use the ISC dhcp client
>
> Of further note, I moved to systemd-networkd precisely because the ISC 
> dhcp client was badly behaved, and no-one at ISC seemed interested in 
> fixing it.

Thanks for the heads up!
Can you describe in detail what one needs to do in order to switch over?  I.e. 
what to remove, what to install?  What to configure?

Thanks!
Rick



Re: Alternatives to ISC dhcp-client ?

2022-05-07 Thread Rick Thomas
On Sat, May 7, 2022, at 8:14 PM, Jeremy Ardley wrote:
> On 8/5/22 10:47 am, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> ISC has ended development on the ISC DHCP client as of early 2022.
>>> This client implementation is no longer maintained and should not be
>>> used in production any longer.
>> Can anybody recommend a good replacement?
>>
>
> I presently use systemd-networkd which provides its own DHCP v4 and v6 
> clients, and servers if you want.
>
> In my network my dual homed router acts as a dhcp client to the ISP and 
> gets an IPv4 address and is delegated an IPv6 /56 range.
>
> You can just use systemd-networkd as an IPv4 dhcp client.
> Jeremy

Is systemd-networkd automatically installed by Debian?

I ask because my "testing" and "stable" systems all show isc-dhcp-client as 
installed and running.

Thanks!
Rick



Alternatives to ISC dhcp-client ?

2022-05-07 Thread Rick Thomas
According to the ISC webpage:

> ISC has ended development on the ISC DHCP client as of early 2022.
> This client implementation is no longer maintained and should not be
> used in production any longer.

Can anybody recommend a good replacement?
Does anybody know what the Debian PTBs are planning for this?

Thanks!
Rick



Re: Networking book recommendation

2022-05-07 Thread Rick Thomas
You might want to take a look at "Computer Networks" by A.S. Tanenbaum and D.J. 
Wetherall.  It's available for free online at 

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v=sites=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxza21pbmh8Z3g6NjQxMTI2MmYxMTAwZmNjZQ

Or you can buy a copy from your local bookseller.

Enjoy!
Rick

Re: Debian 11 on old Macbook

2021-11-25 Thread Rick Thomas
Hold down the  key when you turn the machine on.  Hold it until the  
finishes.  You should see a menu of possible boot disks.  Pick one that has a 
penguin on it.

Hope that helps!
Rick

On Wed, Nov 24, 2021, at 11:11 AM, David Wright wrote:
> On Wed 24 Nov 2021 at 14:59:09 (+0100), fran...@libero.it wrote:
>> I installed Debian 11 (386) on a 2009 Macbook Pro 13 "(5.5).
>> 
>> The installation did not give me any problems except it did not detect wifi 
>> card and touchpad, but I was connected with ethernet and used an external 
>> mouse, so the whole process ended.
>> 
>> During the installation phase of Grub I only chose the hd that appeared in 
>> the window and did all the installer.
>> 
>> I enclose photos of the subdivision that the installer did. I only chose to 
>> install Debian on a partition that I had left empty choosing partitions / 
>> and home Unfortunately Debian does not appear on reboot and neither does 
>> Grub, but Mac OS (Snow Leopard) starts immediately How can I solve this 
>> problem?
>> 
>> If I reinstall using AMD64 instead, what can be the right suggestions to 
>> install Grub in the right place to reboot with it?
>
> You don't mention anything about how you boot. From my great
> experience of Macs (watching people use them in the last
> century), I'm guessing you might have to hold down some key
> while you boot. That's not just for dual-booting (certainly
> not, 30 years ago), but for doing various Mac-ish things,
> so it should be documented somewhere.
>
> Also there were threads here, in late August, about booting Macs.
>
> Cheers,
> David.



Re: "Proper" filesystem for Debian installed on a flash drive

2021-09-30 Thread Rick Thomas
On Thu, Sep 30, 2021, at 6:02 PM, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> * On 2021 30 Sep 15:15 -0500, Marco Möller wrote:
>> SUMMARY:
>> I never observed problems with ext4 on my since 4 years heavily used USB
>> pen-drive.
>> 
>> Good Luck!
>> Marco
>
> Thanks Marco!
>
> That is a very useful review of your experience.  Your taking the time
> to write it up is greatly appreciated.
>
> - Nate

Marco,  would you be kind enough to share the manufacturer and other specs of 
your USB pen drive?

Thanks!
Rick



Re: Always run apt update before clicking on synaptic ?

2021-08-15 Thread Rick Thomas
Synaptic has a button to (essentially) run "apt update"  It's in the upper left 
corner of the window and labeled "Reload" and if you hover over it, it says 
"reload the package information to become informed about new, removed or 
upgraded software packages".

HTH!
Rick



Re: Help: explanation of secure flash?

2021-07-06 Thread Rick Thomas



On Tue, Jul 6, 2021, at 5:43 PM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 6, 2021, at 3:37 PM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I've seen warnings (against hacks) that say (among other things) to enable 
> > "secure flash".  I've been googling to learn more about that, but I haven't 
> > found any good explanation.
...
> Use your favorite search engine to look for "self encrypted ssd" 
> (without the quotes).

In particular:

https://www.crucial.com/articles/about-ssd/self-encrypting-ssd-for-data-security



Re: Help: explanation of secure flash?

2021-07-06 Thread Rick Thomas
On Tue, Jul 6, 2021, at 3:37 PM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> I've seen warnings (against hacks) that say (among other things) to enable 
> "secure flash".  I've been googling to learn more about that, but I haven't 
> found any good explanation.
> 
> I'm beginning to get hints that it is not so much a thing (to be enabled), 
> but 
> more the (a) process to update the computer's BIOS.  (e.g., "'Unable to start 
> a Secure flash session' error message.")
> 
> Can somebody provide either a little more explanation and / or a link to a 
> (reasonably simple) reference?

There are available on the market SATA  and USB interface flash or SSD drives 
that have built-in encryption.  they require the user to enter an encryption 
key when they start up.  The software to handle requesting and passing the key 
can be in the BIOS or in a user-supplied boot-loader or user-mode app that 
resides on a non-encrypted disk.

The advantage of this mode vs software encryption is that the encryption engine 
resides in the firmware of the disk so it doesn't eat up CPU or GPU cycles that 
should be better applied to running user apps.

Use your favorite search engine to look for "self encrypted ssd" (without the 
quotes).

Does that help?
Rick



X server running on a different machine [Re: Wanted: a special purpose Debian installer]

2021-06-28 Thread Rick Thomas
On Sun, Jun 27, 2021, at 8:33 AM, Peter Ehlert wrote:
> > X clients like MATE don't directly depend on an X server, because in
> > theory, the X server could be on a different machine.

I'd love to be able to do that!  E.g. a headless machine with plenty of RAM and 
CPU power to run Mate, but located in a locked building on the other side of 
campus.

What do I need to install to do that?  And what are the configuration options?

AtDhVaAnNkCsE (thanks in ADVANCE)
Rick



Re: When to reboot after dist-upgrade?

2021-05-03 Thread Rick Thomas
I use the following little script.  If it produces output, then a reboot is 
desirable.

#!/bin/bash -p

set -x

PATH=/usr/bin:/bin

lsof +c0 -w | grep ' DEL  *REG  *[^0 ]' | egrep -v \ 
'(/var/lib/gdm3|/usr/share/mime|/home/[^/]*)/(.cache|.config|.local)'


What it does is look for library (and other) files that are in use but have 
been removed from the filesystem.  The "egrep -v" filters out some files that 
various utilities create, open, then delete without closing so that if the 
utility ends catastrophically without cleaning up, they don't hang around.  
It's not perfect, but it does help.

Rick

On Sun, May 2, 2021, at 9:16 PM, Kenneth Parker wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sun, May 2, 2021, 9:42 PM riveravaldez  wrote:
>> Hi, sorry if this is not the place to ask (and in that case please
>> point me in the proper direction).
>> 
>> I'm trying to distinguish when a system reboot is an absolute need
>> and when it is absolutely safe to keep the system running/working
>> after a `sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade`, once
>> I have already performed a complete restart of all needed services
>> through `sudo needrestart' options in Debian testing.
> 
> In general, if the Kernel is updated, plan to Restart.  Usually, dist-upgrade 
> is required, when Version Numbers change, requiring addition of new packages. 
>  The Linux Kernel is a common (but not the only) reason for this. 
> 
> Also beware, because Debian occasionally will update the Kernel without 
> updating the Version Number.  So it is possible that a Restart is required, 
> without a dist-upgrade. 
> 
> Good luck! 
> 
> Kenneth Parker 
> 
>> 
>> So, in a situation like this:
>> 
>> $ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
>> Reading package list ... Done
>> Creating dependency tree ... Done
>> Reading status information ... Done
>> Calculating the update ... Done
>> The following packages have been withheld:
>>imagemagick inkscape libc-bin libc6 libc6-dbg libcrypt1
>> libpoppler-glib8 local openssh-client openssh-server
>> openssh-sftp-server ssh
>> 0 updated, 0 new will be installed, 0 to remove, and 12 not updated.
>> 
>> $ sudo needrestart
>> Scanning processes...
>> Scanning processor microcode...
>> Scanning linux images...
>> 
>> Running kernel seems to be up-to-date.
>> 
>> Failed to check for processor microcode upgrades.
>> 
>> No services need to be restarted.
>> 
>> No containers need to be restarted.
>> 
>> No user sessions are running outdated binaries.
>> 
>> $ sudo checkrestart
>> lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfsd-fuse file system /run/user/1000/gvfs
>>   Output information may be incomplete.
>> Found 6 processes using old versions of upgraded files
>> (1 distinct program)
>> (0 distinct packages)
>> No packages seem to need to be restarted.
>> (please read checkrestart(8))
>> 
>> , would be perfectly safe and right to keep the system running or on
>> the contrary should I perform a (warm/cold?) reboot to be safe?
>> 
>> Thanks a lot in advance for any hint or info.
>> 
>> Kind regards.
>> 
>> PS: `apt-get dist-upgrade` output is translated to English..., system is
>> in Spanish and I keep not-remembering how to force console output
>> to English, sorry...
>> 


Re: OT: Router behaviour

2021-02-20 Thread Rick Thomas
On Thu, Feb 4, 2021, at 4:26 PM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> Mark Fletcher wrote: 
> > First apologies for the off-topic post, but I know this community is 
> > full of experts on this topic and my ask in the end is a simple one:
> 
> (and you can use Debian to achieve your ends)
> 
> > Can anyone point me at a reasonably accessible guide to the details of 
> > how IP networks work, in particular the communications that occur 
> > between router devices that are designed to support home networks? I'm 
> > computer science trained but from many years ago and if I ever learned 
> > these specific details I have forgotten them, but I feel equipped to 
> > understand them. I'm after a certain amount of detail and would prefer 
> > to avoid adverts or advice of the "just buy our product, plug it in and 
> > your problems will all be solved" type.
> 
> The most useful single doc is https://lartc.org/lartc.html
> which, although omitting more recent developments, is an
> excellent foundation in networking and routing aimed at the
> small office or family sysadmin.

If you want a complete, comprehensive textbook on networking, take a look at
David J. Wetherall, Andrew Tanenbaum: "Computer Networks, Fifth Edition"
This is e-book, but it's also available in paperback and hardback.


https://bellasias.com/product/e-book-computer-networks-fifth-edition-pdf-epub-david-j-wetherall-andrew-s-tanenbaum/?msclkid=6dce151da1951218f101752d64ca293f

Enjoy!
Rick



Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... No ethernet detected

2021-02-06 Thread Rick Thomas
On Fri, Jan 29, 2021, at 7:18 PM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2021, at 1:03 AM, Holger Wansing wrote:
> > On https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
> > you should look under the daily snapshots.
> > For armhf that would be
> > https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
> 
> I downloaded the two-part image from [1] dated 2021-01-30 and tried to 
> install it on my Cubox-i4.
> 
> It booted fine but when it got to the "Detect network hardware" phase, 
> it failed and said:
> 
> No Ethernet card was detected. If you know the name of the driver 
> needed by your Ethernet card, you can select it from the list. 
> Driver needed by your Ethernet card:  
> and gave a long list of available ethernet drivers.
> 
> I couldn't find anything that looked like an Atheros 8035 driver, which 
> seems to be the one in use when I boot with a working system.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> Thanks!
> Rick
> 
> [1] https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
>  dated 2021-01-30

I tried it again, this time with the components dated 2021-02-06 (today).
I was hoping that the problem was transient and might have been fixed in the 
intervening week, but I still got the same result: "No Ethernet card was 
detected."

Do I need to file a bug report?  If so, to which package?  If I do, is there 
any chance it will be fixed before Bullseye is released into the wild?
Is there a known workaround that I can apply?

Thanks for any help!
Rick



Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... No ethernet detected

2021-01-29 Thread Rick Thomas
Hi!

On Fri, Jan 29, 2021, at 1:03 AM, Holger Wansing wrote:
> On https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
> you should look under the daily snapshots.
> For armhf that would be
> https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/

I downloaded the two-part image from [1] dated 2021-01-30 and tried to install 
it on my Cubox-i4.

It booted fine but when it got to the "Detect network hardware" phase, it 
failed and said:

No Ethernet card was detected. If you know the name of the driver 
needed by your Ethernet card, you can select it from the list. 
Driver needed by your Ethernet card:  
and gave a long list of available ethernet drivers.

I couldn't find anything that looked like an Atheros 8035 driver, which seems 
to be the one in use when I boot with a working system.

Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Rick

[1] https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
 dated 2021-01-30



Re: Installing Debian Buster on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive.

2021-01-28 Thread Rick Thomas



On Thu, Jan 28, 2021, at 12:08 AM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2021, at 11:15 PM, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> > On 2021-01-27, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > > I'm trying to install Debian Buster [1] on my Cubox-i4P with an eSATA
> > > drive. Everything seems to be fine, but when it comes time to reboot,
> > > it boots into the installer again, rather than the installed system.
> > >
> > > Here's what I did, and what I observed:
> > >
> > > *) I downloaded the two parts of the SDcard install image from [1] and 
> > > followed the instructions in the README to create a 4GB (I didn't have 
> > > anything smaller) SDcard installer.
> > > *) I connected the eSATA disk and plugged the SDcard into the Cubox and 
> > > powered it up.
> > > *) It booted off the SD-card into the installer as expected.
> > ...
> > > *) But when the reboot happened, I found myself back in the installer.
> > > *) I tried removing the SDcard and rebooting, but it failed to boot -- 
> > > after power-on nothing happened.
> > 
> > > What I hoped would happen with the eSATA drive was that the installer
> > > would write the boot firmware (u-boot, etc) to the SDcard, and
> > > configure it to get /boot, root, /home, swap off the eSATA.
> > 
> > U-boot can only be loaded from microSD on that platform, as far as I'm
> > aware.
> > 
> > You can use the bootloader from the installer image, just delete the
> > boot.scr and/or extlinux.conf from the partition on the installer image,
> > or make another partition on the microSD card, and mark it bootable, but
> > don't put anything on it. Then u-boot should fall back to loading the
> > kernel+initrd+device-tree off of the eSATA.
> > 
> > If you interrupt the boot process and get to a u-boot prompt, you should
> > be able to see the order of devices u-boot tries to boot from with:
> > 
> >   printenv boot_targets
> > 
> > 
> > Now that bullseye is in the early phases of freeze, please consider
> > testing bullseye, too, if you can! :)
> 
> Thanks!  This sounds like it ought to work.  I'll give it a try.
> 
> For bullseye, where should I download the latest installer image from?  
> I'd love to give it a try as well!
> Rick

That worked!

Specifically, what I did was:
*) on a different machine, I mounted the installer SDcard first partition
*) renamed boot.scr to oboot.scr
*) sync and umount the SDcard.
*) inserted it in the Cubox
*) powered up and watched it boot from the eSATA disk.

Whoopie!

Observations:
*) => printenv boot_targets
   boot_targets=mmc0 sata0 usb0 pxe dhcp

*) It located the /boot partition on the eSATA drive without any help from me.  
I assume that means it goes down the list of boot_targets one by one looking 
for an active bootable partition containing a file called "boot.scr" which it 
then executes to perform the remainder of the boot process (mostly to load the 
kernel and initrd , then pass control to them).

*) I wonder if it would be possible to change the "boot_targets" environment 
variable to put "sata0" first?  Would that work, if it could be done?  If that 
were done, would it mess up booting from the SDcard when there was no eSATA 
drive?

So now, the next question is: how do we convince the debian installer to 
recognize that it's installing to the eSATA drive and either set "boot_targets" 
appropriately, or mark the boot partition on the SDcard as not bootable.

I've added "debian-boot" to the CC list of this email.  Should I file a bug 
report?  If so, what package should I file it against?

Next thing to test -- can I install bullseye the same way?

Thanks very much to everyone for all your help!
Rick



Re: Installing Debian Buster on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive.

2021-01-28 Thread Rick Thomas
On Wed, Jan 27, 2021, at 11:15 PM, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> On 2021-01-27, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > I'm trying to install Debian Buster [1] on my Cubox-i4P with an eSATA
> > drive. Everything seems to be fine, but when it comes time to reboot,
> > it boots into the installer again, rather than the installed system.
> >
> > Here's what I did, and what I observed:
> >
> > *) I downloaded the two parts of the SDcard install image from [1] and 
> > followed the instructions in the README to create a 4GB (I didn't have 
> > anything smaller) SDcard installer.
> > *) I connected the eSATA disk and plugged the SDcard into the Cubox and 
> > powered it up.
> > *) It booted off the SD-card into the installer as expected.
> ...
> > *) But when the reboot happened, I found myself back in the installer.
> > *) I tried removing the SDcard and rebooting, but it failed to boot -- 
> > after power-on nothing happened.
> 
> > What I hoped would happen with the eSATA drive was that the installer
> > would write the boot firmware (u-boot, etc) to the SDcard, and
> > configure it to get /boot, root, /home, swap off the eSATA.
> 
> U-boot can only be loaded from microSD on that platform, as far as I'm
> aware.
> 
> You can use the bootloader from the installer image, just delete the
> boot.scr and/or extlinux.conf from the partition on the installer image,
> or make another partition on the microSD card, and mark it bootable, but
> don't put anything on it. Then u-boot should fall back to loading the
> kernel+initrd+device-tree off of the eSATA.
> 
> If you interrupt the boot process and get to a u-boot prompt, you should
> be able to see the order of devices u-boot tries to boot from with:
> 
>   printenv boot_targets
> 
> 
> Now that bullseye is in the early phases of freeze, please consider
> testing bullseye, too, if you can! :)

Thanks!  This sounds like it ought to work.  I'll give it a try.

For bullseye, where should I download the latest installer image from?  I'd 
love to give it a try as well!
Rick



Installing Debian Buster on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive.

2021-01-27 Thread Rick Thomas
I'm trying to install Debian Buster [1] on my Cubox-i4P with an eSATA drive. 
Everything seems to be fine, but when it comes time to reboot, it boots into 
the installer again, rather than the installed system.

Here's what I did, and what I observed:

*) I downloaded the two parts of the SDcard install image from [1] and followed 
the instructions in the README to create a 4GB (I didn't have anything smaller) 
SDcard installer.
*) I connected the eSATA disk and plugged the SDcard into the Cubox and powered 
it up.
*) It booted off the SD-card into the installer as expected.
*) Everything went as expected, until it got to the partition-disks phase.
*) I chose to use the eSATA disk as the installation target.  I told it to use 
the whole disk and use the LVM method of partitioning.
*) It created the /boot ext2 partition in /dev/sda1 and put root, /home and 
swap in the LVM on /dev/sda5.  This is (I think) exactly what I wanted.
*) There was no mention of the SDcard /dev/mmcblk1 (except when initially 
choosing the target disk -- I did explicitly NOT choose it at this time)
*) I allowed it to wipe and re-partition the eSATA disk, which it did without 
incident.
*) Everything proceeded as expected.  I chose a minimal (ssh and base packages) 
in tasksel.
*) When it came to "make it bootable" I said go ahead.  There was no mention of 
/dev/mmcblk1 at this stage.
*) It proceeded from there without any apparent errors.
*) When it came time to reboot, I said go ahead.
*) But when the reboot happened, I found myself back in the installer.
*) I tried removing the SDcard and rebooting, but it failed to boot -- after 
power-on nothing happened.

What I hoped would happen with the eSATA drive was that the installer would 
write the boot firmware (u-boot, etc) to the SDcard, and configure it to get 
/boot, root, /home, swap off the eSATA.

What I suspect has happened is that the boot firmware (u-boot, etc) was written 
to the eSATA drive and so it can't be found by the power-up routine without 
some reconfiguration to tell it to look at the eSATA, but that isn't happening.

Anybody know what I can do to either:
1) Tell the power-up routines to look at the eSATA?
   or
2) Write the boot firmware to the SD card and configure it to get the rest of 
the system from the eSATA?

Debug logs were saved, and can be provided upon request.

Thanks in advance for any help!
Rick

PS:   In a previous attempt, I used a 64GB SDcard without the eSATA disk -- 
putting everything onto the SDcard.  That worked fine (It put the boot stuff on 
the SDcard) but it's horribly slow due to the very low speed of data transfer 
to and from the SDcard.

[1] 
http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-armhf/current/images/netboot/SD-card-images/



Re: po...@lists.debian.org

2021-01-10 Thread Rick Thomas
This is not the place for a political discussion.  Please confine your comments 
to debian technical questions.



Re: Release status of i386 for Bullseye and long term support for 3 years?

2020-12-21 Thread Rick Thomas

On Mon, Dec 21, 2020, at 3:48 AM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 06:42:41AM -0700, Charles Curley wrote:
> > On Tue, 15 Dec 2020 13:42:37 +0200
> > Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> > 
> > > That is, if you and other list subscribers care about continued i386 
> > > support you should probably look into contributing.
> > 
> > And how does one do that?
> > 
> > -- 
> > Does anybody read signatures any more?
> > 
> > https://charlescurley.com
> > https://charlescurley.com/blog/
> 
> If you have "real" 686 32 bit hardware that you can press into service that 
> isn't being used: pick up a Debian i386 disk and try reinstalling Debian.
> 
> If you have "real" 686 32 bit hardware - get a copy of a Debian live CD and
> boot it - you may face probelms if there isn't a lot of memory.

Well, as it happens I just did that!  But I didn't have any problems...

Details:
I recently was given an old IBM ThinkPad T60 1953 with an Intel Core Duo 
(Yonah) 32-bit processor. Vintage c 2006.  Output of "cat /proc/cpuinfo" is 
attached.

First I tried booting the Debian 10.7.0 (Buster) amd64 Live DVD.  It said I 
didn't have the right kind of processor, and I should try the i386 version.  So 
I did.  It booted fine and ran a couple of simple commands without incident.  
Then I rebooted and ran the installer from the same DVD.  Again, no problem 
installing a system without GUI.  I then ran tasksel and used it to install the 
Cinnamon desktop, which is working great.

I'll file an installation report soon.  After that, I guess I'll try installing 
Bullseye and file a report on it.

Does anybody know if there's an i386 Live DVD for Bullseye?

Thanks for all your work!
Rickprocessor   : 0
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model   : 14
model name  : Genuine Intel(R) CPU   T2400  @ 1.83GHz
stepping: 8
microcode   : 0x39
cpu MHz : 997.463
cache size  : 2048 KB
physical id : 0
siblings: 2
core id : 0
cpu cores   : 2
apicid  : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fdiv_bug: no
f00f_bug: no
coma_bug: no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp  : yes
flags   : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov 
clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon 
bts cpuid aperfmperf pni monitor vmx est tm2 xtpr pdcm dtherm
bugs: cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 l1tf mds swapgs 
itlb_multihit
bogomips: 3657.32
clflush size: 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 1
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model   : 14
model name  : Genuine Intel(R) CPU   T2400  @ 1.83GHz
stepping: 8
microcode   : 0x39
cpu MHz : 997.453
cache size  : 2048 KB
physical id : 0
siblings: 2
core id : 1
cpu cores   : 2
apicid  : 1
initial apicid  : 1
fdiv_bug: no
f00f_bug: no
coma_bug: no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp  : yes
flags   : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov 
clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon 
bts cpuid aperfmperf pni monitor vmx est tm2 xtpr pdcm dtherm
bugs: cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 l1tf mds swapgs 
itlb_multihit
bogomips: 3657.32
clflush size: 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:



Re: Buster with MATE without systemd

2020-09-17 Thread Rick Thomas
I too have been using Debian for over a decade, and I've come to rely on it, so 
I hear your concern at having to "switch" to something new.  But I don't think 
Devuan is really all that "new".  

 For almost two years I've had Devuan ascii with mate desktop in a VM that I 
use daily for a variety of jobs.  I did it originally as a lark, but over the 
months, I've come to rely on it.   I'm not a developer, so I'm not tuned to the 
gory details, but from a user point of view, Devuan might as well be Debian -- 
but without the need for systemd.

The only reason I haven't upgraded to beowulf is sheer laziness.  But all this 
talk has gotten me inspired.  I'm definitely planning to upgrade to beowulf 
soon now.

I recommend it!
Rick



Migrating to a new disk.

2020-08-30 Thread Rick Thomas
OK, I've got a Debian computer where the system disk is showing signs of 
flakiness.  I want to replace it with a new disk and retire the old one.

Before I do it for real, I'm doing a dry-run on a vmware virtual machine.  I 
don't *think* the fact that it's virtual should affect my results.  But I put 
it out there, just incase.

Here's what I've done so far:

*) Set up a VM with one virtual SATA disc drive, and installed Buster on it.  
The system has a MBR partitioning with /boot in /dev/sda1 and the rest of the 
disk as an LVM volume-group ("tryout-vg") partition in /dev/sda5 with root, 
swap, and home as LVs.

*) Added a virtual SATA disk drive and partitioned it the same as above -- 
/dev/sdb1 is boot and /dev/sdb5 is the LVM partition.  However, in order to 
have both disks available for mounting (see below) at the same time, the new 
drive's LVM volume-group had to have a different name ("new-vg").

*) Used rsync to copy the contents of the boot, root, and home partitions from 
the original disk to the new one.

*) Modified the /etc/fstab on the new disk to reflect the names and uuid's of 
the partitions on the new disk.

*) Booted the Buster install DVD in rescue mode and ran "reinstall boot loader" 
for the new disk.

*) Rebooted and told the BIOS to boot from the new disk.  It went to the grub 
screen and proceeded to boot.

*) To my surprise, after it booted, I logged in and saw that the root, swap, 
home and boot partitions that were mounted were all from the original disk!

So what am I missing?  How do I tell grub on the new disk to use the root 
partition and volume-group on the new disk?

Thanks for any help!
Rick



Re: Disks renamed after update to 'testing'...?

2020-08-18 Thread Rick Thomas
On Mon, Aug 17, 2020, at 4:42 PM, hobie of RMN wrote:
> Hi, All -
> 
> My brother has been issuing "mount /dev/sdb1" prior to backing up some
> files to a second hard disk.  He lately upgraded to 'testing', and it
> appears (from result of running df) that what the system now calls
> /dev/sdb1 is what he has thought of as /dev/sda1, the system '/'
> partition.
> 
> Thanks to the UUID= mechanism, his system still boots properly, but 'mount
> /dev/sdb1' is inappropriate now, could even be the path to madness. :)
> 
> Two questions, then: (1) What caused this shift of device naming? And (2)
> How do we fix it?  Is this something that can be changed in the BIOS? 
> But, if so, what caused it to change in the first place?
> 
> Thanks for your time and attenton.

The /dev/sdx names for devices have been unpredictable for quite a while.  
Which one is sda and which sdb will depend on things like timing -- which one 
gets recognized by the kernel first.

The best solution is to either use UUID or LABEL when you fsck and/or mount the 
device.  So:

1) Use "df" to find out the device name that the kernel decided to use for your 
backup disk this time.  Let's assume it's /dev/sda1.

2) label that device with the "tune2fs" command (assuming your device contains 
an ext[234] filesystem.  If not, check the man pages for the filesystem you are 
using.)  e.g. "tune2fs -L BACKUP /dev/sda1".

3) then when you want to mount or fsck  the device (you do fsck it before 
mounting it, right?) use "LABEL=BACKUP" instead of "/dev/sdb1".
fsck LABEL=BACKUP
mount LABEL=BACKUP
4) If you're into typing long strings of random characters, you can instead 
skip the label step and do
fsck UUID=..
mount UUID=..
But that's only for masochists, IMHO.

In any case, read the man pages before you try anything, so you'll know what 
your doing.

Enjoy!
Rick



Re: Fw: Fw: How long will this take?

2020-06-13 Thread Rick Thomas
On Thu, Jun 11, 2020, at 11:05 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> Matthew Campbell wrote: 
> > The process is complete. The 4 TB drive has been successfully blanked in 
> > less than 40 hours using dd. It got done between 11 pm last night and 12 am 
> > this morning. dd showed an overall average write speed of 28.4 MB/s. It was 
> > never my intention to start a war. My sincere apologies if I have said or 
> > done anything to offend anyone. I prefer to test out new hardware after I 
> > buy it and I prefer to blank new hard drives before partitioning and 
> > writing out new file systems. Thank you to each of you for your assistance.
> > 
> 
> I think you stated your issue well, responded to queries, and
> reported back with the results. Thanks for being part of the
> community.

+1
You didn't start the war, Mathew.  It was there long before you stumbled into 
the battlefield.  Sadly, any list with more than one participant will have 
issues about which people will disagree vociferously.  There's probably 
somebody's law that states that observation...  Something like, "Whenever the 
words 'stupid' or 'idiot' occur in a thread, there's nothing to be gained in 
following it beyond that point."

Enjoy!
Rick



Re: Fw: How long will this take?

2020-06-09 Thread Rick Thomas
This means that reads and writes should be on 4KiB boundaries, and writes 
should be multiples of 4KiB, for optimal performance. As long as those criteria 
are met, there's no harm and some real benefits of reading and writing larger 
blocks than the minimum.

One example benefit, among several possible, is that the OS overhead of one 
single 1MiB write will be much less than 256 individual 4KiB writes. (number of 
system calls performed; overhead inside the OS of merging successive writes to 
optimize the size of actual disk transfers, etc...)

Hope that helps!
Rick

On Mon, Jun 8, 2020, at 9:47 PM, Matthew Campbell wrote:
> fdisk said the minimum and optimal access size for my hard drive was 4096 
> bytes.
> 
> name=Matthew%20Campbell=trenix25%40pm.me
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  Original Message 
> On Jun 8, 2020, 7:42 PM, Dan Ritter < d...@randomstring.org> wrote:
>> 

>> Jude DaShiell wrote:
>>  > Does any optimal formula exist based on hard drive size which minimizes
>>  > time needed for checking and blanking hard drives in connection with the
>>  > block size value?


>> If the disk firmware offers it, a SMART long read/verify test
>>  should be close to optimal. Consult smartctl and the disk manufacturer
>>  for details.


>> For conventional spinning hard disks, the optimal write size would be
>>  a complete cylinder at a time. That varies across the radius of the disk,
>>  and may not be made available to the OS.


>> In lieue of knowing that, writes which are reasonable integer
>>  multiples of the sector size are very good. 1 MB is probably
>>  good for most drives.


>> For SMR spinning disks,the optimal write size is one complete
>>  write zone. I've heard that this is standardizing at 256MB, but
>>  I would want to confirm with the manufacturer. There are a lot
>>  of interactions with PMR caches.


>> For SSD, writing wears out the storage mechanism. A write-all
>>  test won't test reliability; flaws will be detected and remapped
>>  without letting the host know.

>> -dsr-



Re: Smallest Usable EFI Partition?

2020-05-12 Thread Rick Thomas
On Tue, May 12, 2020, at 3:37 PM, Andrea Borgia wrote:
> Il 13/05/20 00:21, Patrick Bartek ha scritto:
> > I can't find anything definitive on this question.  Some say, 100MB is
> > fine; others 215 or 550 is a safe choice.  It all seems to be just
> > opinions.
> I had the same doubts about a year ago and went with the recommendation 
> of a larger partition, about 500MB... of which only 6% is used.
> My office laptop with Windows10 has something in the region of 100MB but 
> it is not dualboot.
> Debian uses about 6MB, MS about 26MB, plus a couple of megs for boot.
> If space is really tight you might want to stick with 100MB in total.

One thing to keep in mind is that, when the contents are being updated, the EFI 
partition and the /boot partition if you have one, will need space for two (or 
even more) copies of stuff.  So don't be too stingy!

Stay well, stay safe!
Rick



Re: Hmmm... /boot is too small. what's the best way to increase it's size?

2020-05-10 Thread Rick Thomas



On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 12:30 PM, David Christensen wrote:

> As for using GRML, I have never heard of it.  The Debian Installer can 
> get the job done.  

GRML [1]  says: "Grml is a bootable live system (Live-CD) based on Debian. Grml 
includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for system 
administrators. Users don't have to install anything on fixed storage. Grml is 
especially well suited for administrative tasks like installation, deployment 
and system rescue. Read more..."

There's also Debian Live, which also has all the features I'll need to do a 
full backup, repartition, and restore.  The installer in rescue mode is more 
limited than either of these alternatives.

Rick

[1] http://grml.org



Re: Hmmm... /boot is too small. what's the best way to increase it's size?

2020-05-10 Thread Rick Thomas
On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 3:22 AM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Du, 10 mai 20, 02:02:45, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > So... Here's another question:
> > 
> > Why is the default size of /boot, as created by the installer, so 
> > small?  Disk (even SSD) is cheap enough these days that the default 
> > size could be as much as a GB without great pain.
> > 
> > Has this been thought about by the PTBs?  Was there a discussion of 
> > possibly raising the default?  Maybe I missed it...
> 
> A quick search in the BTS reveals #893886 and #951709 (both fixed in 
> git).

Thanks for the pointers, Andrei!   Do you think those changes will get into 
Bullseye before it's released?
Rick



Re: Hmmm... /boot is too small. what's the best way to increase it's size?

2020-05-10 Thread Rick Thomas



On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 1:17 AM, David Christensen wrote:
> On 2020-05-09 22:05, Will Mengarini wrote:
> > * Rick Thomas  [20-05/09=Sa 20:05 -0700]:
> >> What's the best way to increase the size of /boot?
> > By creating a reliable backup and reformatting the disk to
> > the new format.  I've never found it to be cost-effective
> > to try anything else. 
> +1

Yeah, that's probably what I'll do.  Fortunately, it's an amd64 machine, so 
I'll be able to use GRML to do the work.
Enjoy!
Rick



Re: Hmmm... /boot is too small. what's the best way to increase it's size?

2020-05-10 Thread Rick Thomas
So... Here's another question:

Why is the default size of /boot, as created by the installer, so small?  Disk 
(even SSD) is cheap enough these days that the default size could be as much as 
a GB without great pain.

Has this been thought about by the PTBs?  Was there a discussion of possibly 
raising the default?  Maybe I missed it...

Stay safe and stay healthy!
Rick



Re: Hmmm... /boot is too small. what's the best way to increase it's size?

2020-05-10 Thread Rick Thomas
> Consider the time you've spent posing this question, waiting for the
> answers, and reading them.  Dump and reload might've finished already.

True, but I wouldn't have learned half so much and wouldn't have had a third so 
much had so much fun learning it!

Stay safe!



Re: Hmmm... /boot is too small. what's the best way to increase it's size?

2020-05-10 Thread Rick Thomas



On Sat, May 9, 2020, at 9:10 PM, Charles Curley wrote:
> On Sat, 09 May 2020 20:05:48 -0700
> "Rick Thomas"  wrote:
> 
> > Filesystem  Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> > /dev/mapper/debian--vg-root ext4   30G  9.9G   19G  36% /
> > /dev/sda2   ext2  248M   78M  158M  34% /boot
> 
> Odd. That should be good for more than three kernels. I have:
> 
> root@jhegaala:~# df /boot/
> Filesystem  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda5   226M   92M  119M  44% /boot
> root@jhegaala:~#
> 
> with three kernels.
> 
> My /boot is ext4, but I doubt that makes enough difference to matter.
> My installation is not EFI. Would that make the difference?

The figures above are *after* I deleted the two previous kernel versions.  So 
yes, there's plenty of space there when this is taken.  It looks like each 
kernel/initrd combo takes 75-80 MB so three of them could take as much as 240 
MB, just a bit beyond the space available.

Stay well and stay safe!
Rick



Hmmm... /boot is too small. what's the best way to increase it's size?

2020-05-09 Thread Rick Thomas
I recently did a "apt update ; apt upgrade" and it died for lack of space in 
/boot when trying to install the latest kernel.

I purged a couple of old kernel packages (still present in the 'stable' repo, 
so they weren't obsolete) to make enough space and tried again.  Worked this 
time, but I would have liked to have the old kernels around as fallbacks just 
in case of a regression...

Here's the disk layout:

rbthomas@milli:~$ lsblk
NAME  MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:00 111.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1  8:10   512M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2  8:20   244M  0 part /boot
└─sda3  8:30 111.1G  0 part 
  ├─debian--vg-root   253:0028G  0 lvm  /
  ├─debian--vg-swap_1 253:10   7.9G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
  └─debian--vg-home   253:20  75.2G  0 lvm  /home
sdb 8:16   1   239G  0 disk 
└─sdb1  8:17   1   239G  0 part /media/rbthomas/Spare
mmcblk0   179:00 238.3G  0 disk 
└─mmcblk0p1   179:10 238.3G  0 part /media/rbthomas/Downloads
rbthomas@milli:~$ 

rbthomas@milli:~$ df -HTP | grep -v tmpfs
Filesystem  Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/debian--vg-root ext4   30G  9.9G   19G  36% /
/dev/sda2   ext2  248M   78M  158M  34% /boot
/dev/sda1   vfat  536M  144k  536M   1% /boot/efi
/dev/mapper/debian--vg-home ext4   79G  4.4G   71G   6% /home
/dev/sdb1   ext4  252G   63M  239G   1% 
/media/rbthomas/Spare
/dev/mmcblk0p1  ext4  251G   63M  238G   1% 
/media/rbthomas/Downloads
rbthomas@milli:~$ 


What's the best way to increase the size of /boot ?

I can easily create a gig or so of space by a shrink/resize of /home, but how 
do I add that space to /dev/sda2 ?

I can't just move up the end of /dev/sda2 = start of /dev/sda3 without backing 
up and restoring, can I?


Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Rick



Re: Anti-malware for my personal Debian workstation?

2020-04-24 Thread Rick Thomas



On Thu, Apr 23, 2020, at 5:40 PM, David Wright wrote:
> On Thu 23 Apr 2020 at 23:58:41 (+0200), l0f...@tuta.io wrote:
> 
> > > "When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything
> > > at all." - Futurama
> > >
> > Could you explain that please?
> 
> If you're like me when you go for your flu shot, you offer your arm
> and look the other way. A good nurse will surprise you when they
> unexpectedly say, "All done".

I used to manage a group of system administrators for an academic department at 
a major East-coast University.  We used to say that "The best sysadmin is the 
one whose phone number you don't know."  The intention being that a good 
sysadmin will anticipate the problems and fix them before you, the user, even 
realize the problem is a possibility.  You never have to look up their phone 
number because you don't see any problems.  Being that good is hard work!  You 
have to keep up-to-the-minute-and-beyond on every aspect of anything that might 
affect your users.  Attend technical conferences; participate actively in you 
local professional society chapters; be alert and at your best when you get a 
trouble call at three in the morning, and so on...

Does that help?

Rick



Re: Can I install Debian on Raspberry Pi?

2020-04-14 Thread Rick Thomas
Pure Debian, as noted, does not have the kernel tweaks to take full advantage 
of the R...pi4B hardware.  However, I have found that Raspbian is "close 
enough" to pure Debian that I can easily exercise all by Debian skills on it 
with almost no surprises.   It's a nice little box!

Hope that helps!
Rick 



Re: NAS software for Raspberry Pi that supports full range of client OS (Win-10, MacOS-X, Linux) ?

2020-03-24 Thread Rick Thomas



On Tue, Mar 24, 2020, at 6:45 AM, deloptes wrote:
> Rick Thomas wrote:
> > The covid-19 situation is giving me lots of free time recently, so I've
> > ordered a Raspberry Pi 4 with delivery expected sometime this week.
> Can you explain to me what type of storage you intend to setup on the pi4 -
> USB3 disks?
> Does someone has experience with USB3 disks - may be in raid1 on the Rpi4?
> I tried years ago with usb2 disks in raid1 and the results were miserable.

I plan to use a 1TB 2.5-inch USB3 disk drive, powered via the USB cable from 
the Pi, as a first try.  If that's successful and the family needs more space 
for shared files, I plan to move to a USB3 multi-disk box with its own power 
supply.  I'll probably configure the box as a JBOD so I can use software RAID.

USB2 disks are, of course, slow by modern standards, but they do work -- as 
long as you don't overload the bandwidth.  Is that what you mean by 
"miserable".USB3, on the other hand, is plenty fast enough for a NAS 
driving a 1Gbit LAN -- depending on the speed of the underlying disk drives, of 
course.

I've done this kind of configuration before.  If you have specific questions, 
I'll be happy to try to answer them...
Enjoy!
Rick



Re: NAS software for Raspberry Pi that supports full range of client OS (Win-10, MacOS-X, Linux) ?

2020-03-24 Thread Rick Thomas



On Mon, Mar 23, 2020, at 10:59 PM, Vincent Lammens wrote:
> Hi Rick
> 
> You could try openmediavault. It has an iso for the raspberrypi, and 
> comes with a smb, ftp and ssh system preinstalled, so serving all kinds 
> of client os's should be no problem. It also has a webgui, and has a few 
> plugins to add webdav for example.

Thanks, Vincent.  That looks very interesting.  Are there plugins to handle NFS 
(for Linux clients) and AFP (for Mac clients)?  Or (since both of them do speak 
SMB, whatever it's limitations) is SMB/ftp/ssh considered sufficient for all?

Enjoy!
Rick



Re: NAS software for Raspberry Pi that supports full range of client OS (Win-10, MacOS-X, Linux) ?

2020-03-24 Thread Rick Thomas



On Mon, Mar 23, 2020, at 9:28 PM, Charles Curley wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Mar 2020 20:43:43 -0700
> "Rick Thomas"  wrote:
> 
> > Can anybody suggest a good NAS package? Debian based is preferable,
> > but almost any Linux will do.
> 
> I find a combination of plain vanilla Samba and nextcloud do me quite
> well.

Thanks for the pointer, Charles.  It looks very interesting.  Nextcloud sounds 
like it does exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for.

Can you explain a little bit about how "plain vanilla Samba" fits into the 
nextcloud picture?



NAS software for Raspberry Pi that supports full range of client OS (Win-10, MacOS-X, Linux) ?

2020-03-23 Thread Rick Thomas
The covid-19 situation is giving me lots of free time recently, so I've ordered 
a Raspberry Pi 4 with delivery expected sometime this week.

I'd like to use it for a NAS for the home network, so my family can share files 
without resorting to sneaker-net.

We have a full range of clients -- Mac, Win, Linux (mostly debian, but also 
CentOS and Ubuntu) and I'd like to be able to serve all of them if possible.

Can anybody suggest a good NAS package? Debian based is preferable, but almost 
any Linux will do.

I've been looking at Rockstor but I don't see anything there that will run on a 
Raspberry Pi.

Anybody using something they have had good experience with?

Thanks in advance,
Rick



Re: Looking for Debian unofficial install for mac with firmware...

2020-02-10 Thread Rick Thomas
I notice that the webpage at

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/10.3.0+nonfree/amd64/iso-cd/
mentions a mac image as if it *should* be there, but it's not in the list of 
files.  Is that an oversight, or was there a conscious decision to drop "mac" 
support with 10.3 ?

On Mon, Feb 10, 2020, at 3:17 AM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> For a friend...
> 
> Does there exist a Buster Debian amd64 installer for mac with non-free 
> firmware?
> 
> He has a been given a 2006 vintage quad core  MacPro1,1
> 
> https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-quad-3.0-specs.html
> That he'd like to get Linux running on.
> 
> A live image for the same would be nice too!
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Rick
>



Looking for Debian unofficial install for mac with firmware...

2020-02-10 Thread Rick Thomas
For a friend...

Does there exist a Buster Debian amd64 installer for mac with non-free firmware?

He has a been given a 2006 vintage quad core  MacPro1,1
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-quad-3.0-specs.html
That he'd like to get Linux running on.

A live image for the same would be nice too!

Thanks in advance,
Rick



Re: could not resolve deb.debian.org after installing via debian live image

2020-02-02 Thread Rick Thomas
I'm not sure myself, but maybe somebody on the list knows?

Anybody know what's the procedure for adding a local disk as a repo?

Thanks in advance!

On Sun, Feb 2, 2020, at 4:15 AM, Tamar Nirenberg wrote:
> Hi Rick,
> 
> Thank you for your answer.
> 
> The sources file contains only these lines, no reference to the live 
> installer image:
> 
> $ cat sources.list

> # See https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList for more information.

> deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main

> deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main

> 

> deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main

> deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main

> 

> deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ buster/updates main

> deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ buster/updates main

> 
> 
> Do you know how I can add the USB mount (i did not use a DVD, but a USB 
> stick) as a source for the apt install?
> 
> Thanks,
> Tamar
> 
> 
> ‫בתאריך יום א׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2020 ב-13:45 מאת ‪Rick Thomas‬‏ 
> <‪rick.tho...@pobox.com‬‏>:‬
>> __
>> Hi Tamar,
>> 
>> I think your problem is that the box is not connected to the internet. The 
>> sources.list file left by the install process assumes you will be connected.
>> 
>> So take a look at /etc/apt/sources.list and comment out the lines that refer 
>> to internet sites such as deb.debian.org, Then un-comment the line(s) that 
>> refer(s) to the live installer image. Then make sure the DVD is in the drive 
>> and mounted. You should now be able to install packages from the DVD.
>> 
>> Good luck!
>> Rick
>> 
>> On Sun, Feb 2, 2020, at 3:13 AM, Tamar Nirenberg wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I installed Debian 10 on a new server using live 
>>> image:debian-live-10.2.0-amd64-gnome.iso The box is not connected to the 
>>> internet.

>>> Installation ended successfully, but now when I try to install open-ssh I 
>>> get an error saying "could not resolve deb.debian.org" 

>>> 

>> 


Re: could not resolve deb.debian.org after installing via debian live image

2020-02-02 Thread Rick Thomas
Hi Tamar,

I think your problem is that the box is not connected to the internet. The 
sources.list file left by the install process assumes you will be connected.

So take a look at /etc/apt/sources.list and comment out the lines that refer to 
internet sites such as deb.debian.org, Then un-comment the line(s) that 
refer(s) to the live installer image. Then make sure the DVD is in the drive 
and mounted. You should now be able to install packages from the DVD.

Good luck!
Rick

On Sun, Feb 2, 2020, at 3:13 AM, Tamar Nirenberg wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I installed Debian 10 on a new server using live 
> image:debian-live-10.2.0-amd64-gnome.iso The box is not connected to the 
> internet.

> Installation ended successfully, but now when I try to install open-ssh I get 
> an error saying "could not resolve deb.debian.org" 

> 



Re: Fwd: Re: AMD 10.2 netinstall

2020-01-21 Thread Rick Thomas
Hmmm...

It looks like you're correct.  I just downloaded the "netinst" and "DVD-1" 
unofficial firmware images and compared the two
"/pool/non-free/" directories on the two ISOs.  They are identical.

Bottom line: You can use either the netinst or the DVD-1 versions without fear 
of Catch-22.

Thanks for the correction!
Rick

On Mon, Jan 20, 2020, at 8:32 PM, David Wright wrote:
> On Mon 20 Jan 2020 at 17:09:33 (-0800), Rick Thomas wrote:
> > Whether you can use the "netinstall" CD depends on whether your device's 
> > network connection requires one of those non-free drivers.  If it needs a 
> > driver that isn't on the CD (which is more likely, the smaller the install 
> > medium) to retrieve the drivers it needs...
> 
> I'm confused. I thought you were discussing firmware. I was under the
> impression that the non-free firmware on the netinstall CD was the
> same as that on the DVDs, ie the files under
> http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/firmware/



Re: Fwd: Re: AMD 10.2 netinstall

2020-01-20 Thread Rick Thomas
Whether you can use the "netinstall" CD depends on whether your device's 
network connection requires one of those non-free drivers.  If it needs a 
driver that isn't on the CD (which is more likely, the smaller the install 
medium) to retrieve the drivers it needs...

Well, you get the picture.  (If not, read "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller...  In 
fact, read it anyway if you haven't already!)
Enjoy!
Rick

On Mon, Jan 20, 2020, at 1:58 PM, Thomas Hilbert wrote:
> Hey Rick
> 
> Thanks for that response.  What you describe below was my understanding 
> going into it, but then it didn't load the driver without my 
> intervention.   Perhaps it is because I used the ~350mb netinstaller NOT 
> the full CD or DVD iso's...though I haven't seen that explicitly 
> documented anywhere.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> Tom
> 
> On 1/19/20 9:18 PM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > The "unofficial" firmware installer iso has a bunch of non-free/proprietary 
> > drivers/firmware for various adapters and devices that do not have 
> > open-source drivers, but that your machine may need to run correctly.
> >
> > For example, a laptop may have a wi-fi built-in from a manufacturer who is 
> > unwilling to release the source code for the wi-fi device's firmware.  The 
> > "unofficial" installer CD has the necessary firmware in the form of a 
> > "binary blob" that can be installed to make the laptop's wi-fi work with 
> > Linux.
> >
> > Hope That Helps!
> > Rick
> >
> > - Original message -
> > From: Thomas Hilbert 
> > To: Rick Thomas 
> > Subject: Re: AMD 10.2 netinstall
> > Date: Sunday, January 19, 2020 5:50 PM
> >
> > Good to know about the expert option.  So what does the Non-Free,
> > firmware installer get you over the standard all open source installer?
> >
> > On 1/19/20 2:35 AM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> >>> Since you have to install the firmware-linux-nonfree that means that
> >>> it s not installed! From what I remember
> >>> you need to select those packages at the end of the base image
> >>> installation.
> >> And you must do an "expert" install, in order to see that option.  If you 
> >> do a "Standard" install, you won't get a chance.
> >>
> >> There's probably something you can put in the boot args that will force it 
> >> to install the firmware-linux-nonfree package, but I don't know what that 
> >> is.
> >>
> >> Rick
> >>
>



Fwd: Re: AMD 10.2 netinstall

2020-01-19 Thread Rick Thomas
The "unofficial" firmware installer iso has a bunch of non-free/proprietary 
drivers/firmware for various adapters and devices that do not have open-source 
drivers, but that your machine may need to run correctly.

For example, a laptop may have a wi-fi built-in from a manufacturer who is 
unwilling to release the source code for the wi-fi device's firmware.  The 
"unofficial" installer CD has the necessary firmware in the form of a "binary 
blob" that can be installed to make the laptop's wi-fi work with Linux.

Hope That Helps!
Rick

- Original message -----
From: Thomas Hilbert 
To: Rick Thomas 
Subject: Re: AMD 10.2 netinstall
Date: Sunday, January 19, 2020 5:50 PM

Good to know about the expert option.  So what does the Non-Free, 
firmware installer get you over the standard all open source installer?

On 1/19/20 2:35 AM, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> Since you have to install the firmware-linux-nonfree that means that
>> it s not installed! From what I remember
>> you need to select those packages at the end of the base image
>> installation.
> And you must do an "expert" install, in order to see that option.  If you do 
> a "Standard" install, you won't get a chance.
>
> There's probably something you can put in the boot args that will force it to 
> install the firmware-linux-nonfree package, but I don't know what that is.
>
> Rick
>



Re: AMD 10.2 netinstall

2020-01-18 Thread Rick Thomas
> Since you have to install the firmware-linux-nonfree that means that
> it s not installed! From what I remember
> you need to select those packages at the end of the base image 
> installation.

And you must do an "expert" install, in order to see that option.  If you do a 
"Standard" install, you won't get a chance.

There's probably something you can put in the boot args that will force it to 
install the firmware-linux-nonfree package, but I don't know what that is.

Rick



Re: apple mini

2020-01-09 Thread Rick Thomas



On Wed, Jan 8, 2020, at 6:57 PM, ghe wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Jan 8, 2020, at 07:46 PM, Michael Stone  wrote:
> > 
> >> If you need to protect against an attacker willing to examine your HDD 
> >> with magnetic force microscopy, there is no substitute for physical 
> >> destruction of the media.
> > 
> > Yes--if single-pass all-zeros erase isn't sufficient, the next step up is 
> > physical destruction, not multi-pass pattern mumbo-jumbo.
> 
> Back in the analog days, I worked at a college radio station that sent 
> out radio programs on tape. There was a big box that we passed a reel 
> of tape over to erase it. That box might do disks too :-)
> 
> Unless there was some magnetic magic written on the disk for the firmware.
> 
> -- 
> Glenn English

Yup!  Disk drives need (at least) some pre-formatting information on the media 
so the drive firmware can tell if it's on the right track.  In the old days, 
you could re-write that information by "formatting" the disk.  But these days 
that's all done at the factory and they don't want the consumer to even know 
about the existence of such things.

Bottom line:  If you tried the "big electromagnet" trick with a modern disk 
drive, you would render it useless.  I doubt that's what the OP wanted.

Rick



Re: Easiest Way to forward an email Message from Linux to a Mac

2019-11-03 Thread Rick Thomas

On Sat, Nov 2, 2019, at 10:25 PM, elvis wrote:
> 

> On 3/11/19 1:50 pm, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> See reply bottom posted...
>> 
>> On Sat, Nov 2, 2019, at 10:17 AM, Bob Weber wrote:
>>> On 11/2/19 8:10 AM, Martin McCormick wrote:
>>>> Here is the setup.  We are on a private vlan as in 192.168.x.x.
All local host names are resolved via hosts files.  Messages to
go to the big wide world must go through Suddenlink's SMTP
smarthost and I definitely don't want to break that.

On rare occasions, I want to forward an email to the Mac
which normally doesn't send or receive emails.  What would be the
simplest way to "forward" an email from the Linux box to the
Mac's mailer?

The Mac only needs to be able to receive, not send any
email.

Thank you

Martin WB5AGZ


>>>> 
>>> Why not create a user on the Linux box to receive such emails and have the 
>>> MAC client connect to that user on the Linux box. You might have to install 
>>> a pop server (popa3d ... easiest to install and configure) or imac server 
>>> (dovecot-imapd ... harder to configure and probably more than you need) on 
>>> the Linux box if one isn't installed already. 

>>> Your MAC would have to have an email client capable of connecting to a pop 
>>> or imac mailbox at the ip of the Linux box or host name in the hosts file 
>>> corresponding to the Linux box.

>> 
>> Hi Martin,
>> 
>> The setup Bob describes is exactly what I use for my family. Debian linux 
>> box running dovecot receives email from our ISP via "fetchmail" and sorts it 
>> out to separate accounts for each family member, who then reads their mail 
>> on a Mac or PC using the native OS gui mail-reader on their machine.
>> 
>> Feel free to ask me if you have any questions.
> Hi Rick,

> Why doesn't each user use the native reader to get the mail from the ISP? 
> What is the reason for the extra step? 

> I've never been able to quite figure out where I would need fetchmail in my 
> mail setup but every howto seems to mention it, so I am curious to see if I 
> am missing something.


The local mail server is inside the firewall, so it's a bit more private than 
the ISP. Also, the local machine keeps archives that the ISP would charge money 
for. It sorts into folders and does other automated activities that are not 
available from the ISP. The main benefit is that this setup gives us finer 
grained control than we can get from the ISP.

Fetchmail allows me (via cron) to schedule precisely when mail is retrieved 
from the ISP. Also, the connection starts from inside the firewall, so I don't 
have to poke a hole in the firewall for SMTP to reach in and deliver mail.

It's a trade-off of simplicity vs control.

HopeThatHelps
Rick

Re: Backup Times on a Linux desktop

2019-11-02 Thread Rick Thomas



On Sat, Nov 2, 2019, at 1:30 PM, Konstantin Nebel wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > Anyway from my experience borg is the best and I can recommend it wormly.
> 
> I appreciate you answering in the fullest how you do backups and I used borg
> in the past which I can recommend as well. But I really want to focus on how
> to trigger the backup in an automated way and not in which tool is recommended
> to use.
> 
> > My use case is quite opposite. I shut down the backup server as I do only
> > weekly and monthly backups.
> 
> I assume u trigger them manually then? I would like to do them automatically
> and hopefully forget about them that they exist and do the occasional check if
> they work or not :)

For this I use "rsnapshot," which schedules it's backup runs via Linux "cron".  
It's pretty much "fire and forget" once you've done the configuration details.

Hope that helps!
Rick



Re: Easiest Way to forward an email Message from Linux to a Mac

2019-11-02 Thread Rick Thomas
See reply bottom posted...

On Sat, Nov 2, 2019, at 10:17 AM, Bob Weber wrote:
> On 11/2/19 8:10 AM, Martin McCormick wrote:
>> Here is the setup.  We are on a private vlan as in 192.168.x.x.
All local host names are resolved via hosts files.  Messages to
go to the big wide world must go through Suddenlink's SMTP
smarthost and I definitely don't want to break that.

On rare occasions, I want to forward an email to the Mac
which normally doesn't send or receive emails.  What would be the
simplest way to "forward" an email from the Linux box to the
Mac's mailer?

The Mac only needs to be able to receive, not send any
email.

Thank you

Martin WB5AGZ

>> 
> Why not create a user on the Linux box to receive such emails and have the 
> MAC client connect to that user on the Linux box. You might have to install a 
> pop server (popa3d ... easiest to install and configure) or imac server 
> (dovecot-imapd ... harder to configure and probably more than you need) on 
> the Linux box if one isn't installed already. 

> Your MAC would have to have an email client capable of connecting to a pop or 
> imac mailbox at the ip of the Linux box or host name in the hosts file 
> corresponding to the Linux box.


Hi Martin,

The setup Bob describes is exactly what I use for my family. Debian linux box 
running dovecot receives email from our ISP via "fetchmail" and sorts it out to 
separate accounts for each family member, who then reads their mail on a Mac or 
PC using the native OS gui mail-reader on their machine.

Feel free to ask me if you have any questions.

Enjoy!
Rick

task-print-server in testing seems to have changed it's name to task-print-service -- why?

2019-09-09 Thread Rick Thomas
task-print-server in testing seems to have changed it’s name to 
task-print-service -- why?

Thanks
Rick


Re: Looking for suggestions of a "modern" desktop that runs Debian

2019-09-06 Thread Rick Thomas
Have you looked at a NUC from Intel?

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark.html#@PanelLabel70407

I’ve got a couple of them and I’m very happy.
Rick

> On Sep 5, 2019, at 2:49 PM, Rogério Brito  wrote:
> 
> Dear people,
> 
> As all my computers are quite old so far (including the ones that I
> use to develop my packages and contribute to Debian), I would like to
> get a "modern" desktop that is able to keep up with compiling stuff
> and doing basic web surfing/web and typing texts in Emacs.
> 
> Unfortunately, I have assembled computers way, way, way back then and
> I don't know which processors should go with which motherboards and so
> on.
> 
> I would gladly appreciate some help choosing a computer (or computer
> parts) that has a configuration along the following lines:
> 
> * Is able to run Debian without any problems (I am willing to use
> something that requires firmware from non-free, but not proprietary
> drivers)
> * Is a budget system (I'm short on money, unfortunately)
> * Is silent, with as little fans as possible
> * Has the ability to have 16GB or 32GB of memory (this is one of the
> parts where I am willing to focus spending the money)
> * Has a processor like a modern AMD Ryzen 5 or whatever is similar in
> Intel-land (the 2nd part where I am willing to focus spending the
> money)
> * I don't care too much about video cards; As long as it can drive a
> Full HD monitor, I am satisfied. Integrated card with the CPU is
> perfectly ok with me (and, actually, preferred if that would make the
> final cost of the computer lower).
> 
> Any recommendations are more than welcome,
> 
> Rogério Brito.
> 
> -- 
> Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 4096R/BCFC
> http://cynic.cc/blog/ : github.com/rbrito : profiles.google.com/rbrito
> DebianQA: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=rbrito%40ime.usp.br
> 



Re: Buster Installation - Partition phase - Inode option to choose - SSD or Mechanical HD

2019-08-24 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Aug 24, 2019, at 4:18 PM, l...@contacte.xyz wrote:
> 
> What would be the «best» to choose for an SSD in an usual desktop environment 
> ?
> What would be the «best» to choose for an mechanical HD in an usual desktop 
> environment ?

I don’t think there’s any difference between SSD and spinning disk (for the 
particular question of how many inodes are needed).

If your planned usage is “typical” then, for either type of hardware, “typical 
usage” is the right choice.  If you have a particular use in mind that is known 
to involve lots of small files, then “news” might be more appropriate.

As a real-world example, here’s a system I set up a couple of years ago (so 
it’s had enough time to reach an equilibrium state) with “typical usage” (the 
default).


rbthomas@monk:~$ df -ih | grep -v tmpfs
FilesystemInodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
udev3.0M   580  3.0M1% /dev
/dev/mapper/monk--vg-root   1.8M  258K  1.5M   15% /
/dev/sda161K   337   61K1% /boot
/dev/mapper/monk--vg-home   5.3M   43K  5.2M1% /home
/dev/mapper/monk-download50M   374   50M1% /download
/dev/mapper/monk-export  25M18   25M1% /export


Enjoy!
Rick


Re: Virtual Box

2019-08-02 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Aug 2, 2019, at 10:03 AM, Peter Hillier-Brook  wrote:
> 
> Given that VBox is no longer in the Buster repositories I tried to
> install the Stretch .deb package from the VBox web site. dpkg failed
> because of dependency problems, including libvpx4 that is not in the
> Buster repositories.
> 
> Anyone have any thoughts?
> 
> Peter HB

A little googling found this website
https://tecadmin.net/install-virtualbox-on-debian-10-buster/
which tells how to install the Oracle 6.0 VirtualBox using the usual “apt” 
tools.

It talks about using the “add-apt-repository” command, which is not usually 
installed as part of Buster.  I worked around that by simply editing the 
/etc/apt/sources.list file manually.

I’m using virtualbox as described in that webpage as I type.  Works great!

Hope that helps!
Rick



Re: Hibernation takes too long

2019-07-23 Thread Rick Thomas
And here’s an example where the output media is an SD card:

rbthomas@nuc8:/media/rbthomas/99602c92-f887-4578-b6bc-39c91d49c43c/rbthomas$ dd 
if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 0.48058 s, 2.2 GB/s

rbthomas@nuc8:/media/rbthomas/99602c92-f887-4578-b6bc-39c91d49c43c/rbthomas$ dd 
if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=1M count=1024 oflag=sync
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 34.044 s, 31.5 MB/s



> On Jul 23, 2019, at 1:19 AM, Rick Thomas  wrote:
> 
> Here’s an example from one of my machines with a SATA-III SSD and lots of RAM:
> 
> rbthomas@nuc8:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=1M count=1024
> 1024+0 records in
> 1024+0 records out
> 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 1.77789 s, 604 MB/s
> 
> rbthomas@nuc8:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=1M count=1024 oflag=sync
> 1024+0 records in
> 1024+0 records out
> 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 4.88158 s, 220 MB/s



Re: Hibernation takes too long

2019-07-23 Thread Rick Thomas
You need to add the clause “oflag=sync” on your dd commands.  Without it the 
MB/s numbers are really just measuring how fast you can fill up the RAM cache 
(for write) or scoop up data from the RAM cache (in the case of read).

Here’s an example from one of my machines with a SATA-III SSD and lots of RAM:

rbthomas@nuc8:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 1.77789 s, 604 MB/s

rbthomas@nuc8:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=1M count=1024 oflag=sync
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 4.88158 s, 220 MB/s

Hope it helps!
Rick

> On Jul 21, 2019, at 2:44 PM, Shahryar Afifi  wrote:
> 
> Correct!
> I attached a screen shot of read write speed.
> The 2 min hibernation time is when there is little or no contents
> present. If I have many things opened, it would take more.



Re: Hibernation takes too long

2019-07-20 Thread Rick Thomas
If 12GB is reasonable (I have no idea, I don’t use “hibernate” myself) here are 
figures to input to the calculation:

SSD sustained write transfer rate is between 30 MB/sec and 120 MB/sec.
Closer to 30 MB/sec (or even slower) if it’s a USB-3 thumb drive (even less 
than that if USB-2); closer to 120 MB/sec if it’s a SATA drive.

So: 12GB/30MB/sec = 6.7 minutes
12GB/120MB/sec = 1.7 minutes

So 2 minutes is not unreasonable.
Rick


> On Jul 20, 2019, at 8:14 AM, Shahryar Afifi  wrote:
> 
> If bulk storage is the same as mass storage, I have 128 SSD
> 
> On Sat, 2019-07-20 at 09:27 -0400, Carl Fink wrote:
>> On 7/20/19 12:43 AM, Shahryar Afifi wrote:
>>> Up to 2 Min
>>> 
>>> amd64
>>> buster
>>> X61
>>> 6GB dynamic
>>> 6GB swap
>>> swapness 50
>>> 
>>> I don't know which log file to loo into...
>>> 
>>> Thank you.
>>> 
>> What are you using for bulk storage? Your system
>> has to copy ~12 gigabytes into it. Do the math--is
>> that the main reason for your wait?
>> 
> 



Re: Minimial Live Image

2019-07-12 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Jul 11, 2019, at 11:06 AM, J.Arun Mani  wrote:
> 
> Hi
> 
> Im planning to install Debian in my (already Linux Mint powered) laptop. But 
> the ISO size is huge (~2.7 GB), something beyond my per-day bandwidth limit 
> of 1.5 GB (actually 2 GB, but .5 GB is spent in other personal things). And I 
> also found that Debian ships with a large pack of softwares and does not have 
> (official) support for propertiary drivers.
> 
> So what I want is a live bootable minimial ISO with a DE (a basic one is 
> enough if DEs can be changed easily later) and a basic set of packages with 
> support for propertiary drivers (is there anyother way to get it if Debian 
> doesn't provide it officially ?).
> 
> My dear friends, help me, where can I find such ISOs? (No Netinst or Network 
> boot, because of my Internet speed and other issues)
> 
> Nice day :)
> J Arun Mani

Hi!

I found this [1] 1.3GB image.  (“standard” = no DE, just text console.  But you 
can add any DE you want later with “sudo tasksel”.)  That’s just barely under 
your stated daily bandwidth allowance of 1.5GB.  Everything else (the images 
that include a DE GUI) is hovering around 2.5GB.

You can also get it from bittorrent at [2].  Bittorrent is recommended if you 
have a choice, because it minimizes the load on the debian.org servers.

Hope it helps!

Rick

[1] 
https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/10.0.0-live+nonfree/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-10.0.0-amd64-standard+nonfree.iso

[2] 
https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/10.0.0-live+nonfree/amd64/bt-hybrid/debian-live-10.0.0-amd64-standard+nonfree.iso.torrent


Re: [Better Solution] how to switch a Debian buster system from systemd to sys-v init

2019-06-27 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Jun 27, 2019, at 12:42 AM, Rick Thomas  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jun 25, 2019, at 11:20 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
>> 
>> Seems this would work as well, with less collateral damage:
>> 
>> apt install -y sysvinit-core elogind
>> apt --purge autoremove
>> 
> 
> This works great and, as noted, is far more elegant.
> 
> Thanks, Jonas!
> Rick

A warning about all of these solutions:  They will remove the package, 
network-manager.
Sometimes this may rewrite the “/etc/network/interfaces” file.  You can loose 
network connectivity after a reboot as a result.
Be prepared to login to the console and fix that up manually if it happens.

Another work-around is to, before doing any apt stuff at all, put a suitable 
fragment into the “/etc/network/interfaces.d/“ directory that configures at 
least one of your network interfaces the way you want it.  As an example, on my 
test system I have:

> $ cat /etc/network/interfaces.d/enp0s3
> auto enp0s3
> iface enp0s3 inet dhcp

Hope it helps!
Rick


Re: [Better Solution] how to switch a Debian buster system from systemd to sys-v init

2019-06-27 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Jun 25, 2019, at 11:20 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
> 
> Seems this would work as well, with less collateral damage:
> 
>  apt install -y sysvinit-core elogind
>  apt --purge autoremove
> 

This works great and, as noted, is far more elegant.

Thanks, Jonas!
Rick



Re: [Solved - sorta - part 2] Re: how to switch a Debian buster system from systemd to sys-v init

2019-06-26 Thread Rick Thomas
Hi Jonas,

> On Jun 25, 2019, at 11:20 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
> 
> Would be helpful to know if those experiencing long pause in 
> dbus-depending environments had _no_ dbus installed (and actively 
> running) or had it running with elogind.

How can I tell which situation I have?

Thanks!
Rick



[Solved - sorta - part 2] Re: how to switch a Debian buster system from systemd to sys-v init

2019-06-24 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Jun 23, 2019, at 2:24 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Jun 22, 2019 at 05:45:39PM -0700, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> 
>> Purely out of curiosity, I'd like to see what's involved in
>> switching a Debian buster system from systemd to sysv init.
> 
> The short version [1]:
> 
>  apt-get install -y sysvinit-core

So our goal is to start with a working Debian buster system with the Mate 
desktop using the systemd init, and convert it to a working buster system with 
no desktop gui, and using the sys-V init.

As Tomas points out, basically all you should have to do is “apt-get install 
sysvinit-core”, and the rest should be fully automatic.  This may have worked 
with Debian stretch, but it’s a bit more complicated with buster.  In 
particular, there seems to be some parts of the old dbus stuff left around that 
cause the long pauses I’ve mentioned previously.  This may be a bug and should 
be reported, but I have no idea what package to report it against, or what a 
suitable proposed fix would be.

In any case, the solution I came up with is

apt-get --purge install -y sysvinit-core dbus- glib-networking- libgtk-3-0-
apt-get --purge autoremove

Note the trailing minus-signs on dbus- glib-networking- libgtk-3-0-  These 
packages need to be deleted in the same pass as sysvinit-core is added.

Hope this helps somebody in the future…

Enjoy!
Rick




[Solved - sorta - part 1] Re: how to switch a Debian buster system from systemd to sys-v init

2019-06-24 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Jun 23, 2019, at 2:24 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Jun 22, 2019 at 05:45:39PM -0700, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> 
>> Purely out of curiosity, I'd like to see what's involved in
>> switching a Debian buster system from systemd to sysv init.
> 
> The short version [1]:
> 
>  apt-get install -y sysvinit-core

That may work when starting from Debian stretch (or a non-gui buster system), 
but buster with mate is a little bit more complicated.  See my next email “part 
2”…

> 
>> Please, I don't want to restart or get involved in any of
>> the existing systemd/sysv flame wars [...]
> 
> Phew! ;-)

So far we’ve managed.  Let’s try to keep it that way!

> 
>> First of all, is this even possible?
> 
> See above. It's even easy. But see the somewhat longer version
> below.
> 
>> Second, has anyone done it?  If so, how did you do it?
>> Here's what I've discovered so far:
> 
> [I see you already found out about [1], but Mate goes down the drain]

Sad, but I can live with it if necessary.

> 
> That's right. "Modern" desktop environments (Gnome and derivatives,
> most probably also KDE) depend these days on systemd. I don't know
> how hard those dependencies are -- you'd want to look at Devuan [2] [3]
> to see how far they went, if at all, into fixing this.

Devuan does seem to have something working — kudos to them!
But I like to have a better idea of how much they have to give up to get the 
job done.

> 
> Since I'm not using a DE, but just a traditional window manager,
> I’m a happy Debian user without systemd.

Maybe that would work for me too…
Which window manager are you using?
What’s your preferred method of installing it?

> 
> Cheers
> 
> [1] https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Installing_without_systemd
> [2] https://devuan.org/
> [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devuan
> -- tomás



how to switch a Debian buster system from systemd to sys-v init

2019-06-22 Thread Rick Thomas


Purely out of curiosity, I'd like to see what's involved in switching a Debian 
buster system from systemd to sysv init. Please, I don't want to restart or get 
involved in any of the existing systemd/sysv flame wars.  I'm *just curious* to 
see if it would work?

First of all, is this even possible?

Second, has anyone done it?  If so, how did you do it?  Here's what I've 
discovered so far:

Step zero:  I fired up a virtual machine and installed stock-out-of-the-box 
Debian buster with mate on it.  I didn't want to have my experiments break any 
of my production machines! Everything that follows is happening on the VM.

Step one:  I searched for packages with "sysv" in their names that weren't 
already installed.  Then I looked for one that said it conflicted with systemd. 
 I settled on sysvinit-core.  The rival was sysv-rc (though I'm sure there were 
others I could have tried).  The reason I rejected sysv-rc is that it does not 
seem to conflict with systemd.  Am I wrong in assuming that this (conflicting 
with systemd) is a requirement for something that will replace systemd?

Step two:  But when I try "apt install sysvinit-core" it wants to delete lots 
of stuff that seem to have nothing to do with systemd at all.  For example it 
wants to remove a bunch of libreoffice packages, and some mate packages,  and a 
bunch of xserver-xorg packages.  More precisely it says they are no longer 
needed and should be deleted by using "apt autoremove".  Somehow that doesn't 
seem right to me.  I’m pretty sure I need those packages.

Step three:  I tried “apt install sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils” and let it go 
ahead and delete all the stuff it wanted to.  Then I rebooted the system and it 
came up running the sysv init, but there was a long pause during the boot 
process while it was trying to start dbus. This eventually timed out and 
continued and gave me a “login:” prompt, but now I get frequent pauses while it 
seems to be looking for a non-existent bus daemon. 

Anybody got any thoughts?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

Rick

PS: It would be really cool (TM) if the Debian installer offered sysv as an 
option!

PPS: I googled a bit and found a Devuan website[1] that had instructions for 
getting a small number of .deb packages from the Devuan ascii repo and using 
them to replace the corresponding packages from Debian, but it said to start 
with Debian stretch, not buster.  It also pointed out that gnome (and 
presumably most/all of the other of the other desktop managers) in Debian 
nowadays explicitly depend on systemd, so it’s best done on a pure headless 
server configuration.  This explains why sysvinit-core wanted to delete all the 
stuff like server-xorg and libreoffice.

I’d prefer a solution that was pure Debian (i.e. without being dependent on 
stuff from Devuan[2]) even if it meant being restricted to a headless server 
config.

[1] 
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-replace-systemd-with-sysv-init-on-debian-linux

[2] Don’t take me wrong,  I am very supportive of Devuan.  I even have a couple 
of systems that run it in production, but it does tend to drag a bit behind 
Debian on bug-fixes and latest-feature updates.  This is understandable: it’s a 
much smaller project than Debian.




Re: Fully automatic installation of Debian made simple

2019-05-15 Thread Rick Thomas
Great!  Sounds wonderful.

If I want to set up a VirtualBox VM to run this, what packages/tasks do I want 
to install other than bare-bones Debian?  Then what do I do, once I have Debian 
plus packages installed?  I’ve never used Docker before, so please assume I’m a 
complete newbie at that part of it,,,


Thanks!
Rick
  

> On May 15, 2019, at 1:37 AM, André Rodier  wrote:
> 
> Hello Debian users,
> 
> For those who are interested in fully automatic installation of Debian,
> I have published something that you'll find useful.
> 
> It allows you to create a fully automatic Debian installation disk very
> easily, using a simple YAML file to describe the system and docker to
> build the ISO image.
> 
> For now, there are three flavours you can use:
> 
> - lvm: Simple logical volume on one disk, no encryption.
> - raid: Create an ISO image with software RAID and LVM (RAID1, two
> disks).
> - luks: Create and ISO image with fully encrypted disk (one disk only).
> 
> It has been tested on Debian Stretch only for now.
> 
> Also:
> 
> - AppArmor activated on boot.
> - Root password set.
> - Your SSH public key is installed for root.
> 
> https://github.com/progmaticltd/debian-iso-builder
> 
> A big thanks to simple-cdd and reprepro, this could not have been
> possible without these tools.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> -- 
> André Rodier
> 



Re: List attachments (was: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender)

2019-05-05 Thread Rick Thomas


> On May 5, 2019, at 4:26 PM, David  wrote:
> 
> For pastebin purposes within Debian, please use: https://paste.debian.net/

Thanks, David.  This sound like exactly what I need.
Rick



Re: List attachments

2019-05-05 Thread Rick Thomas
Thanks, Carl!  The free WordPress account sounds very interesting.  I’ll check 
it out.
Rick

> On May 5, 2019, at 4:28 AM, Carl Fink  wrote:
> 
> On 5/5/19 6:13 AM, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> I used to have my own webserver, but the machine I was running it on died.
>> 
>> What is “pastebin”?  Is it available to everyone?
>> 
>> Enjoy!
>> Rick
> 
> Places you can put stuff for others to see, besides Pastebin:
> 
> 1)Many ISP accounts give some free web space, e.g. Panix
> 
> 2)A free Google account allows document sharing. So does a free Microsoft
> account. Like them or hate them, most of us have one for convenience's sake.
> 
> 3)You can create a free WordPress account easily. Even if you only blog
> every decade or two, you get the ability to upload files and give them URLs.
> 
> 4)Plenty of others
> 
> -- 
> Carl Fink   nitpick...@nitpicking.com
> 
> Read my blog at blog.nitpicking.com.  Reviews!  Observations!
> 



Re: Installing Debian on iMac

2019-05-05 Thread Rick Thomas
Hi John, and welcome to the Debian community!

I assume you have a broadband Internet connection where you will be doing this 
installation?  If so:

You’ll want the Mac specific “netinst” installer image[1] that gets most of its 
software packages from the Debian mirrors on the Web.
   [1]  https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/>

Take a look at this wiki page[2] for instructions on making a dual-boot 
MacOS/Debian setup.  The wiki page is aimed at the mac mini but it should 
mostly carry over for your iMac.  Also, you’ll want to read the wiki page[3] 
for burning an installer CD under MacOS.
   [2] https://wiki.debian.org/MacMiniIntel
   [3] https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#record-mac

And, of course, you’ll want to RTFM[4]
   [4] https://www.debian.org/doc/

If you’re not already signed up, you will want to join the debian-user mailing 
list[5].  That’s where you’ll find lots of friendly, helpful and knowledgeable 
folks.
   [5] https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/

Enjoy!
Rick


> On May 5, 2019, at 1:52 PM, John Hammack  wrote:
> 
> iMac:  iMac (24-inch, early 2009), Processor 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mem 
> 8GB 1067 MHz DDR3,  OS X El Capitan ver 10.11.6. 
> Objective: Install Debian and software development tools (compilers, 
> interpreters, and support applications for software development.)  
> Progress:  I have searched  the internet and have not found instructions I 
> could follow through to completion.  
> Experience:  Before retirement (1995) I was doing software development on a 
> Hewlett Packard Unix System ((HPUX).  I was then comfortable with the Unix 
> system, BASH and all.  
> Excuse:  I am now living in The Villages FL and with all these old folks 
> there is no one here with which I can discuss OS’s etc.
> 
> Comments recommendations appreciated.  
> 
>   Thanks John 
> I am 85 and have accumulated rust where brain cells used to be.  



Re: List attachments (was: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender)

2019-05-05 Thread Rick Thomas
Thanks for the reply!

> On May 5, 2019, at 2:55 AM, Brad Rogers  wrote:
> 
> There are other places things can be put (own web site, pastebin, etc.)

I used to have my own webserver, but the machine I was running it on died.

What is “pastebin”?  Is it available to everyone?

Enjoy!
Rick


Re: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender

2019-05-05 Thread Rick Thomas


> On May 5, 2019, at 2:34 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On May 5, 2019, at 11:33 AM, Rick Thomas  wrote:
>> 
>> The file was “.zip” compressed on a Mac — not “.gz’ on a Linux.  Do you 
>> think that makes a difference?
> 
> You should simply not send compressed attachments, especially for text.
> 
> Adrian

What do you recommend instead?  The original file was 365KB.  The compressed 
file was 48KB.
Rick



Re: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender

2019-05-05 Thread Rick Thomas



> On May 5, 2019, at 12:45 AM, Pierre Frenkiel  
> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 5 May 2019, Rick Thomas wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On May 4, 2019, at 9:28 PM, Mail Delivery System 
>>>  wrote:
>>> 
>>> : host bendel.debian.org[82.195.75.100] 
>>> said:
>>>   550 5.7.1 No attachments allowed (in reply to end of DATA command)
>>> Reporting-MTA: dns; pb-sasl20.pobox.com
>> 
>> Hmmm I was trying to attach the syslog file from a failing install.
>> 
>> Whats the approved method for doing that now, since its not allowing 
>> attachments?
>> 
>> Rick
>> 
> As a check, I try to attach mine
> 
> best regards,
> -- 
> Pierre Frenkiel

That seems to have worked for debian-user.  Mine was a .zip file, and I sent it 
to debian-powerpc.
Do you think an uncompressed .txt file would have done better?

Rick


Re: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender

2019-05-05 Thread Rick Thomas



> On May 5, 2019, at 1:04 AM, Frank Scheiner  wrote:
> 
> Hi Rick,
> 
> On 5/5/19 09:06, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On May 4, 2019, at 9:28 PM, Mail Delivery System 
>>>  wrote:
>>> 
>>> : host bendel.debian.org[82.195.75.100] 
>>> said:
>>>550 5.7.1 No attachments allowed (in reply to end of DATA command)
>>> Reporting-MTA: dns; pb-sasl20.pobox.com
>> 
>> Hmmm… I was trying to attach the syslog file from a failing install.
>> 
>> What’s the approved method for doing that now, since it’s not allowing 
>> attachments?
> 
> Did you compress the attachments?
> 
> Strange indeed, maybe that was changed. But no longer allowing
> attachments is not that useful. Maybe just an intermediate issue because
> of spamming other lists?
> 
> Cheers,
> Frank

The file was “.zip” compressed on a Mac — not “.gz’ on a Linux.  Do you think 
that makes a difference?
Rick


Re: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender

2019-05-05 Thread Rick Thomas



> On May 4, 2019, at 9:28 PM, Mail Delivery System 
>  wrote:
> 
> : host bendel.debian.org[82.195.75.100] said:
>550 5.7.1 No attachments allowed (in reply to end of DATA command)
> Reporting-MTA: dns; pb-sasl20.pobox.com

Hmmm… I was trying to attach the syslog file from a failing install.

What’s the approved method for doing that now, since it’s not allowing 
attachments?

Rick


Re: Cannot re-install synaptic on Buster.

2019-04-15 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Apr 14, 2019, at 11:03 PM, Reco  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 01:24:32AM -0400, Kieran Smyth wrote:
>> For reasons unknown to me, synaptic uninstalled itself about three weeks
>> ago. I am using Buster on the desktop, with MATE as my desktop environment.
> 
> Synaptic was removed from testing two weeks ago, see #818366.
> 
>> I like using a GUI frontend to apt, and if anyone can help me get it back
>> on my system i'd really appreciate it.
> 
> You're not supposed to use synaptic in Wayland session anymore. Consider
> using gnome-packagekit instead.

Or try muon.  (apt install muon)

I don’t know if it is fully wayland compatible, or if it’s just not well enough 
known to show up on the remover’s radar screens.

In any case, I find it’s a good substitute for synaptic.

Rick


Re: Installer can't find network interface on Intel NUC BOXNUC8i3BEH1

2019-02-13 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Feb 13, 2019, at 6:51 PM, Rick Thomas  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Feb 13, 2019, at 5:47 PM, Ben Hutchings  wrote:
>> 
>> On Wed, 2019-02-13 at 16:17 -0500, Laurent Dumont wrote:
>>> I'm not sure if it's the exact same case but I had the same issue with a
>>> more recent motherboard. Debian failed to detect the network card with the
>>> E1000 drivers.
>>> 
>>> I tried an iso with the non free repo without success.
>>> 
>>> A base Ubuntu iso install was able to detect and configure the network
>>> driver.
>>> 
>>> I'll see if I can find the adapter version. It was an Intel based adapter.
>> [...]
>> 
>> Unfortunately the various chips supported by e1000e are all subtly
>> different and each new chip seems to need extra code in the driver. 
>> Debian 9 still has Linux 4.9 and we haven't backported those driver
>> changes.
>> 
>> There is supposed to be an optional installer build that uses a newer
>> kernel version, but that hasn't officially happened yet.
>> 
>> At this point you might be better off using the alpha release of the
>> installer for Debian 10 "buster".
>> 
>> Ben.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Ben Hutchings
>> When in doubt, use brute force. - Ken Thompson
> 
> Thanks, Ben!
> 
> I’ll give that a try!
> Rick

That works!  I used the amd64 “alpha5” image. I had to install the non-free 
firmware to get the wifi to work, but I probably would have done that anyway!

Thanks for your help!
Rick



Re: Installer can't find network interface on Intel NUC BOXNUC8i3BEH1

2019-02-13 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Feb 13, 2019, at 5:47 PM, Ben Hutchings  wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 2019-02-13 at 16:17 -0500, Laurent Dumont wrote:
>> I'm not sure if it's the exact same case but I had the same issue with a
>> more recent motherboard. Debian failed to detect the network card with the
>> E1000 drivers.
>> 
>> I tried an iso with the non free repo without success.
>> 
>> A base Ubuntu iso install was able to detect and configure the network
>> driver.
>> 
>> I'll see if I can find the adapter version. It was an Intel based adapter.
> [...]
> 
> Unfortunately the various chips supported by e1000e are all subtly
> different and each new chip seems to need extra code in the driver. 
> Debian 9 still has Linux 4.9 and we haven't backported those driver
> changes.
> 
> There is supposed to be an optional installer build that uses a newer
> kernel version, but that hasn't officially happened yet.
> 
> At this point you might be better off using the alpha release of the
> installer for Debian 10 "buster".
> 
> Ben.
> 
> -- 
> Ben Hutchings
> When in doubt, use brute force. - Ken Thompson

Thanks, Ben!

I’ll give that a try!
Rick



Installer can't find network interface on Intel NUC BOXNUC8i3BEH1

2019-02-13 Thread Rick Thomas
I recently bought an intel NUC BOXNUC8i3BEH1.  You can see a description of the 
product at Newegg:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102213

I’m trying to install Debian Stretch on it
debian-9.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso
and (later)
firmware-9.6.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso

I made a bootable USB stick the usual way with dd to copy the iso to the stick. 
 It boots fine and loads some preliminary stuff.  When it gets to trying to 
identify the network interface, it fails at that task and drops into a screen 
with a long list of network drivers for me to choose from.

I didn’t know what driver to load (the Newegg description says it uses an Intel 
networking chip, but I didn’t know which driver was needed by that chip)  So I 
aborted the installation.  On a hunch, I then tried to install Ubuntu 
(ubuntu-mate-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso) and that works fine.  The network comes 
up automatically.

So, on Ubuntu, I typed “lspci -v” and searched the output for the network 
interface.  It says that the driver installed for that interface is “e1000e”.  
A quick check on a working Stretch system shows that the e1000e driver *is* 
available in Debian.  So, I think to myself, “Problem solved — all I have to do 
is specify the e1000e driver and all will be well!”

Not so fast…  I boot the Debian “firmware-9.6…” stick and it gets to the list 
of drivers.  I pick e1000e (with is there, along with a bunch of other Intel 
drivers) and go back to see if it now can see the interface.   Nope!   It still 
isn’t seeing the network.


What am I missing?  What is Ubuntu doing to make this work that Debian doesn’t?


Anybody got any suggestions???

Thanks in advance,
Rick



Re: how to backup to an encrypted usb drive? [OT: rsync metadata]

2018-11-19 Thread Rick Thomas



> On Nov 18, 2018, at 7:31 PM, Reco  wrote:
> 
>   Hi.
> 
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 11:56:27AM -0800, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> 
>>>> On 11/14/18, Reco  wrote:
>>>>> If you're content with losing all this metadata in your backup - there
>>>>> are rsync, cpio or tar. Or all those ‘backup solutions' based on those.
>> 
>>>> On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 12:52:57PM -0500, Lee wrote:
>>>> Do I need all that metadata?  This is for me at home so it's pretty
>>>> much a single user machine.
>> 
>>> On Nov 14, 2018, at 10:26 AM, Reco  wrote:
>>> That's for you to decide. I'd say you definitely need it for the backups
>>> of / and /var and can *probably* skip it for /home, but YMMV.
>> 
>> Don’t the options for rsync -aAHX preserve all the metadata?  Is there 
>> something besides
> 
> Yep, there is at least one thing rsync looses along the way:
> 
> # chattr +i /bin/ping
> # rsync -aHAX /bin/ping /tmp
> # lsattr /bin/ping
> ie--- /bin/ping
> # lsattr /tmp/ping
> -e--- /tmp/ping
> 
> Reco

Fascinating…
1) Are there any other extended attributes that are not copied by rsync? Or is 
there something special about “immutable”.
2) Is this a bug or a feature?  Should there be a bg report filed on this 
phenomenon?  If not, should it be documented in the rsync(1) man page?  Does 
that need a bug report?

Enjoy!
Rick



  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   >