Re: OT: End the Phone-Based Childhood Now

[Steve Sobol]

On 2024-03-15 22:58, Marco Moock wrote:

Am 15.03.2024 um 18:16:50 Uhr schrieb Jeffrey Walton:


Fascinating reading here:
.



What the hell?

I already get a ton of legitimate mail from the debian-user mailing 
list. Don't need the off-topic crap.


Admins, could you please get rid of the people who are contributing to 
the noise?

Re: Letting Windows go: scanning

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-09-20 10:17, Timothy M Butterworth wrote:


When I used to use HP MFD's I used to have to connect to it with USB
to get scanning. I do not know if network scanning is now supported or
not.


Scanning directly to a computer, using drivers installed on that 
computer, is a nightmare - even with Windows PCs and Brother 
multi-function devices, which (in my opinion) work far better than 
products from any other manufacturer.


Consistently having to reinstall drivers because the MFD's suddenly were 
unable to connect to one or more computers got really old, really 
quickly.


I've started scanning to Windows (SMB) shares. Setting up shared folders 
on a Linux box is easy - Samba is your friend.


If the MFD is network-capable (either wired or wireless), that's the way 
to go.

Re: Gradle version in bookworm

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-08-26 03:18, Mark Fletcher wrote:


continue using it -- but since I can get it onto my machine with zero
effort via Intellij


I am a Jetbrains subscriber who uses many of their IDEs, including 
IntelliJ, and if that's the way you want to go, I'm certainly not going 
to tell you not to.


But if you don't need IntelliJ, it seems silly to install it just to get 
Gradle.


You can download the latest OSS version of Gradle from gradle.org.

Am I missing something?

Re: Bookworm VPS image and cron

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-08-25 08:38, Andy Smith wrote:

Hello,

On Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 03:02:55PM -0700, Steve Sobol wrote:
So, there you go... it was a problem with DO's Bookworm image. I'm 
assuming
the omission wasn't intentional and if that is, in fact, the case, it 
will

get fixed quickly.


It sounds to me like not a bug, since a minimal debootstrap
(debootstrap --variant=minbase bookworm target-dir) of Debian 12
does not include the "cron" package either. It's just a change.
Nothing in the base system needs cron any more.


Might not be a bug. Regardless, that was their response. If they 
determine the package should not have been omitted, they'll fix their 
image.


It is what it is.

Thanks
--Steve

Re: Bookworm VPS image and cron

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-08-05 23:06, Geert Stappers wrote:



> Or you could ask your VPS provider why they aren't providing
> "important" packages in their default image.

This is the first time it's happened. Of the Linux images I've used 
there,
Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, and Debian bullseye all 
shipped
with cron properly installed. Come to think of it... I just checked a 
local
bookworm VM I'm running at home, and it has cron installed, too. I'll 
open a

ticket.


Response from the provider:

[ Hi Steve,

Thanks for reaching out to DigitalOcean.

I understand you ran into an issue where you found cron was not 
preinstalled on our Debian 12 images. I can confirm that in testing I 
was able to replicate this issue where it's not installed on Debian 12, 
but is on Debian 11 and our Ubuntu images. It sounds to me like a bug, 
so I've submitted a review to our engineering team that handles the 
images for the Droplets. If they determine this to be incorrect they 
will update the image accordingly.


We appreciate the bug report! For the time being, if you need to launch 
a new Droplet with Debian 12 you will want to manually install cron.


If you have any other questions or concerns please feel free reach back 
out at your convenience.


Thank you for being a customer and have a great day! ]

So, there you go... it was a problem with DO's Bookworm image. I'm 
assuming the omission wasn't intentional and if that is, in fact, the 
case, it will get fixed quickly.


Thanks
--Steve

Re: Bookworm - cron?

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-08-05 13:16, Andy Smith wrote:

Hello,

On Sat, Aug 05, 2023 at 12:53:08PM -0700, Steve Sobol wrote:
Part of my standard procedure for setting up new VMs involves editing 
root's

crontab.

But cron isn't installed.


Seems unlikely. There are system cron jobs that are not yet
converted to systemd timers. A bookworm install I did just yesterday
has cron jobs in /etc/cron.d/ that require the "cron" package.

What are you typing to edit root's crontab? What output do you get
that you don't expect?


crontab -e

Bash tells me that the "crontab" command wasn't found.

dpkg -l |grep cron returned nothing.

Re: Bookworm - cron?

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-08-05 13:23, Michael Kjörling wrote:

On 5 Aug 2023 22:13 +0200, from johndoe65...@mail.com (john doe):

But cron isn't installed.


I just install a new Bookworm VM and 'cron' is present! :)


Ditto. That must be some customization your VPS provider has made, if
the installation didn't somehow fail.


I'll talk to them. The VPS was acting quite strangely, anyhow, and 
rather than fight with Bookworm, I nuked the VPS and created another one 
from their bullseye image.



Or you could ask your VPS provider why they aren't providing
"important" packages in their default image.


This is the first time it's happened. Of the Linux images I've used 
there, Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, and Debian bullseye all 
shipped with cron properly installed. Come to think of it... I just 
checked a local bookworm VM I'm running at home, and it has cron 
installed, too. I'll open a ticket.


Thanks :)

Re: Gradle version in bookworm

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-08-05 12:12, Anders Andersson wrote:



Impossible, fake news. It's Java. When I still coded C and assembly in
the nineties everyone told me that Java would solve the issue of
portability forever. Write once, run anywhere! Just run it, no
worries!


Ahhh... I don't know what com.gradle.enterprise is, but I'm guessing 
it's not in the Gradle distributions I download from gradle.org.


So, before you share any more snark about Java... I'm running Gradle 8 
on at least one Debian VPS. And all I had to do was download it, untar 
and put it somewhere, and ensure that I had a recent JVM on that server.


Note that I downloaded the OSS version of Gradle from gradle.org, not 
Gradle Enterprise from gradle.com.

Re: Gradle version in bookworm

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-08-05 09:50, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:


However, it seems like there are rather serious blocking issues that
have halted progress.


When I need Gradle (whether on Mac, Linux or Windows), I just download 
the latest version, put it somewhere and use it. I do the same thing 
with Java VMs.


Gradle 4 is beyond ancient. The Bullseye VPS I'm looking at right now is 
running Gradle 8.0.2.

Bookworm - cron?

[Steve Sobol]

Crazy question:

My VPS provider just started offering bookworm images. So when I set up 
a new server yesterday, I installed bookworm.


Part of my standard procedure for setting up new VMs involves editing 
root's crontab.


But cron isn't installed.

What am I expected to use instead? (I assume that I *could* install 
cron, but there must be a reason it's not installed by default anymore, 
right?)


Thanks :)

Re: [OT] connect to Amazon AWS service

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-07-28 08:46, Haines Brown wrote:

Sorry for a quetion not directly related to Debian, but where else
to turn?

I've used an on line validation servce to which I submit code. It
terminated with the note that it has now become a web service on the
Amazon EC2 Web Service. I registered for this cloud sercice, but have
no idea how to access an instance created by someone else.


I'm not sure what you're asking. You don't have access to anyone else's 
AWS resources unless someone gives you access to theirs.

Re: When to sudo apt clean?

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-06-27 10:54, David Wright wrote:

On Fri 23 Jun 2023 at 15:51:31 (-0700), Steve Sobol wrote:

On 2023-06-23 15:26, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Steve Sobol wrote:
>
> > > In general people don't want to dist-upgrade automatically.
> >
> > Seconded.
>
> I'm not following, when these functions are invoked, be it
> scheduled by some other software or by the user from the shell,
> they are intended to do their work automatically
> (non-interactively) if that is what you mean?

Dist-upgrade makes major changes to your system, updating dozens of
packages, and pointing the OS at different APT repos.


Yes, but only if you've changed the codename in your sources.list
(or after a new release if you use the suite names).


Maybe I'm thinking of do-release-upgrade, then.

I am still not comfortable automating OS updates.

Re: php7.4 on bookworm

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-06-26 00:52, Markus Schönhaber wrote:


I don't know if that somehow qualifies as "best practice" but Ondřej
Surý packages different PHP versions for Debian and Ubuntu one can
install side-by-side:

https://sury.org/


I can vouch for the quality of the Sury packages. I've used them for 
years.



That said: Upgrading the website to use a upstream-supported version
of PHP would probably be really "best practice".


But yes, upgrading is your best bet.

Re: When to sudo apt clean?

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-06-23 21:59, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Fri, Jun 23, 2023 at 05:29:22PM -0700, Steve Sobol wrote:

[...]

I'd much rather err on the side of extreme caution. If something goes 
bump,

I'm screwed.


To be fair, autoremove can improve safety: when it removes old kernel 
versions

filling up your boot partition.


Yes. My comment was about dist-upgrade, not autoremove.

Re: When to sudo apt clean?

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-06-23 16:54, Emanuel Berg wrote:


Ah, don't worry, it is safe, I've done it a lot.


I don't doubt that it is quite safe, most of the time.

But I run my servers on Ubuntu and Debian. (Mostly Ubuntu right now; 
slowly migrating to Debian.)


I get paid for hosting, as well as work I do that requires the use of my 
VPS's.


I'd much rather err on the side of extreme caution. If something goes 
bump, I'm screwed.




But actually even if something goes wrong, it is still a good
idea since then it is the upgrade process that must be
debugged at the other end, the command is fine.


Spoken like someone who doesn't run live servers in production... :)

Re: When to sudo apt clean?

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-06-23 15:26, Emanuel Berg wrote:

Steve Sobol wrote:


In general people don't want to dist-upgrade automatically.


Seconded.


I'm not following, when these functions are invoked, be it
scheduled by some other software or by the user from the shell,
they are intended to do their work automatically
(non-interactively) if that is what you mean?


Dist-upgrade makes major changes to your system, updating dozens of 
packages, and pointing the OS at different APT repos.


(Debian, and downstream distros like Ubuntu, have separate repos for 
each release.)


Automating such changes would be a very bad idea.

Personally, I avoid doing in-place upgrades from one Debian/Ubuntu 
release to another. Given the low cost and quick turnaround time 
involved in spinning up a new VPS, I will almost always spin up a new VM 
instead, and move services and data from the old one to the new one. But 
if I have to do an in-place upgrade, I'm going to sit and watch it 
happen... just in case something goes wrong.

Re: When to sudo apt clean?

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-06-23 14:14, Dan Ritter wrote:


It seems unlikely to me that you want to do an autoremove before
you have done an upgrade.


I'd not say unwise. Useless, pointless, perhaps; but it doesn't hurt 
anything.


autoremove removes packages that were installed as dependencies of other 
packages that were "orphaned" (meaning any package(s) that installed 
those dependent packages are no longer installed). Running it two or 
more times in a row, or running it when you haven't uninstalled packages 
since the last time you ran autoremove, is pointless, but will have 
absolutely no effect.



In general people don't want to dist-upgrade automatically.


Seconded.

Re: Is perl still the No.1 language for sysadmin?

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-04-02 14:57, debian-u...@howorth.org.uk wrote:


I'll admit that when I first saw perl, I thought it was horrific and I
swore to continue using awk and C and ... anything but perl. But then
one day $job required me to learn perl so I did and have been a convert
ever since.


Perl definitely has the edge when you're working with text.

CPAN, however Ooo, CPAN. I can't even think about CPAN without 
my blood pressure rising.


(Don't ask. Just know that CPAN's stupidity has caused me untold amounts 
of grief.)

Re: Is perl still the No.1 language for sysadmin?

[Steve Sobol]

On 2023-04-02 02:24, Emanuel Berg wrote:


If you are looking for a career, Python is much bigger but
there is a lot of shell scripts and for that matter a little
bit of Perl don't harm, absolutely mot.


I'm seeing scripts written in Python far more often than Perl these 
days, but it is probably useful to at least be familiar with both.


There are some very popular software packages, like Sympa and RT, that 
are written in Perl. Both are currently maintained and have dropped new 
releases recently.