Re: Why choose Debian on server

[David Wright]

On Wed 09 Jan 2019 at 20:43:19 (+), Brian wrote:
> On Wed 09 Jan 2019 at 12:47:42 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 23:51:36 (+), Brian wrote:
> > > On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 14:37:30 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > > > On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 18:21:07 (+), Brian wrote:
> > > > > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 18:13:58 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > > > > 
> > > > > [...]
> > > > > 
> > > > > > BTW if this Screenshot method is meant to yield a "printable"
> > > > > > document, I haven't yet figured out how to print it sensibly.
> > > > > > $ lp -d PDF very-long-image.png   gives me the image on one page,
> > > > > > and looks, as it happens, like the sort of output that FF sometimes
> > > > > > gives when printing articles: a narrow column of minute text.
> > > > > 
> > > > > To nitpick, the claim was that the Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange page
> > > > > was printable. Whether the marks on paper satisfied a user in all
> > > > > regards wasn't touched on until now.
> > > > 
> > > > I think it's reasonable to demand a certain level of legibility.
> > > 
> > > Indeed. That is why I am looking at printouts from Firefox and lp which
> > > nobody with reasonable eyesight would have any trouble reading.
> > > 
> > > > > For me, printing the screen image obtained from my chosen page from
> > > > > the Print Preview of FireFox gave an acceptable output with a Custom
> > > > > Scale. It helped to choose Landscape mode.
> > 
> > I think I see what you're doing now: you take the snapshot in FF, then
> > open the snapshot in FF again and then use Print Preview to set the
> > scaling factor before you print it.
> 
> That's spot-on, but do not think I am wedded to this technique. If I had
> a desperate to print a one-off (like the originator of this sub-thread)
> I would use it but would be cogniscent of its limitations. Manipulating
> images within the printing system is fraught as far as I am concerned.

I have discovered, through using this Take a Screenshot command (sort
of in anger), that it pays to hit End (or scroll there) before taking
the shot. When imaging this page (which prints poorly here)
https://www.howtogeek.com/112888/3-ways-to-access-your-linux-partitions-from-windows/
the shot was, at first, taken before all the diagrams had been fully
rendered.

> Curt informatively posted:
> 
>   https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2019/01/msg00447.html
> 
> A twist with the page he refers to is that getting the whole page with a
> right click is not possible at this site.

Confirmed here.

> > > > The landscape mode changes the output from a very tall image printed
> > > > on a portrait page to the same image printed across it instead,
> > > > reducing the scale by the golden proportion.
> > > > 
> > > > > 'lp -d.' benefits from fiddling with the scaling= option and from
> > > > > orientation-requested=4.
> > > > 
> > > > This gets very involved. Having tried feeding convert with the image,
> > > > I see that it can produce a pretty faithful PDF which suffers only
> > > > from the usual problem of being overtall.
> > > 
> > > Printing from Firefox is hardly involved. Basically, choose the scaling.
> > > Forget about lp; most people never use it directly.
> > 
> > Well, I couldn't see any scaling options in lp except fit-to-page
> > which would be fighting what one is trying to do.
> 
> CUPS itself has removed or deprecated such options:
> 
>   https://github.com/apple/cups/issues/4010
> 
> It is cups-filters which carries the flag now.
> 
> > > > If I was going to indulge in this very often (which I'm not) I think
> > > > it would be worth writing a script to run convert on page-size slices
> > > > of the image, outputting them as PDFs, and collate them into a
> > > > conventional multipage document with pdftk. It would be fairly simple
> > > > to compute the y-size by ratioing the x-size according to the paper
> > > > regime, and even allow for some overlap between pages (because one
> > > > doesn't know where to slice in between lines of text).
> > > 
> > > Sounds more involved than using lp.
> > 
> > I've found that the package posterazor can split the FF image and,
> > trying it out, it seemed to be able to fit-to-width. It can also
> > yield overlapping pages so you don't get lines of print split across
> > pages as with your method.
> > 
> > But again, if I were having to do this regularly, I would prefer to
> > write a script rather than have to go through its 5-step interactive
> > dialogue on each occasion. Most of the degrees of freedom given by
> > posterazor are unnecessary because the values can all be computed
> 
> An ordinary user shouldn't have to do this. OTOH, an ordinary user
> should not feel it is acceptable to impute motives and spread false
> information. A skilled user (such as the starter of this sub-thread)
> could have copied and pasted or used 'lynx -dump ." to get what
> was wanted.
> 
> It's a pain, But needs must on occasion.

A fairly simple script: read the ima

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[francis picabia]

Both Debian and CentOS are good choices for a server OS.
We use both in my workplace.  We don't install a desktop.
It is not required and it is a waste of resources.

Debian is a good fit for developers, as there
is a great breadth of packages, and often more recent.

CentOS is easier to manage as an Apache server - the way
Debian does it with dozens of little files to enable is harder for
someone with Redhat background to master.

The bonus with CentOS/Redhat is long support lifecycle.  You can
install it and keep it running for up to 10 years, with updates.
Debian does not do that, however it provides for good upgrade
support in situ, and this is generally safe to do with relatively
little downtime.

The downside of CentOS/Redhat is the packages like open source DB
or PHP will be older than what many applications want, and you'll need
to work with 3rd party repositories such as Webtatic to get the versions
you want.  That's fine, except it introduces a new variable.  We've run
into a situation where we want to install a new server identical to
the production version and the repository no longer carries the version
of PHP it once did.  It's free, so there are no guarantees they want
to continue patching older versions for security issues, backports, etc.
On the other hand, Redhat has people who are paid to do the backports,
so even with older PHP it is being maintained, and that gets passed on to
CentOS packages.

To get into a specific, CentOS 7.5 provides php 5.4 currently, which is
fairly old,
while the current release of Debian 9.6 provides php 7.0.

We generally gravitate to CentOS when the application is relatively boring
like a CMS that is widely used.  When the application requires exotic
packages
that are not available in CentOS, like a bunch of perl modules (e.g.
netdisco)
then we tend to go with Debian.  The reasoning is we want the whole thing
updated for security without after thoughts, and stuff installed by cpan
under CentOS will be installed once and forgotten.

In my mind it is all about best fit for the job.  You try not to carry
a bias into the selection just so you can slap more stickers onto
servers.


On Wed, Jan 2, 2019 at 6:51 AM Alessandro Baggi 
wrote:

> Hi list,
> I'm new to this list and I'm choosing the right distribution for server
> needs. I hope that I'm not OT and don't want start a flame. I'm
> evaluating the possibility to switch on debian so I hope you will give
> your experiences about this topic.
>
> At the moment I'm using CentOS 7 on server and workstation but very old
> software, add third repos for get some software, use unmaintained
> software where patchs are released by dev distro team, big changes
> between a current release and next release, big corporation piloted
> distro, waiting that rh release a security patches and then recompiled
> on centos, problem on new hardware, unable to install new software from
> source due to old libs get me bored, and frustated in the last year. I
> like flexibility and I noticed that centos chains my knowledge.
>
> Today seems that RH Family is the standard and rh is more supported by
> software vendors. Considering 10 years of support, Selinux working out
> of the box, stability, enteprise class and free distro..user choose
> Centos with the perception that things work better because all is
> "followed" by a corporation. With this assumption users feel more secure
> and unfailing.
>
> This is not necessarely true. I think that is the sysadmin that make
> things safer, secure and unfailing. Sure that a stable and reliable OS
> take his part but when big blue take this game I'm not so sure about
> centos future. What if someone will choose to drop centos project? Maybe
> this is premature but from this "Why not choose a stable and community
> piloted distro where user needs are first purpose?"
>
> I used Debian in the past on several server for a big company without
> any problems but now are several years that I use centos on server and
> workstation and today I lost my debian knowledge about stability on
> server usage.
>
> Why you choose debian on server? Where for you it is better than centos
> and other server distro?
>
> Thanks in advance.
> Alessandro.
>
>

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 06 January 2019 12:56:14 Brian wrote:

> On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 12:15:09 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > > > >   screenshot filename.png --fullpage
> >
> > Humm:
> > gene@coyote:~/linuxcnc/nc_files$ sudo apt-get install screenshot
> > Reading package lists... Done
> > Building dependency tree
> > Reading state information... Done
> > E: Unable to locate package screenshot
> > gene@coyote:~/linuxcnc/nc_files$
>
> This is on one of your ancient, unsupported wheezy machines? At least
> I had the grace to say which version of FF I used. You do not know
> what you are doing. screenshot is not a Debian package.

Oh? I only have two non debian listings here in house, and thats the 
buildbot.linuxcnc.org for keeping linuxcnc up to date on all of them, 
and two are running tde for a nice stable gui. Its available on 4 32 bit 
wheezy machines and one jessie armhf machine. I've done screen snapshots 
on every one of those machines with ksnapshot. And only two of them 
aren't xfce, but tde

You may want to check the height of your ladder before you dismount next.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
>
> Thank you for your persistence. I was beginning to think your Firefox
> was not from Debian. It appears the feature you describe has disappeared
> from it in more recent versions:
>
> https://www.ghacks.net/2018/05/21/firefox-62-developer-toolbar-removal/
>

It would seem rather that the feature or process you have described is the
one that has disappeared from more recent FF versions (F2 SHIFT etc...).

The process I described (sorry for the confusion, but I used FF 64.0
downloaded directly from the FF web site) is the current one. 

Tools--->Web Developer--->Toggle Tools (check)

Or 

Tools--->Web Developer--->Web Console (select)

Once the web console is apparent, you can enable the screenshot icon in
the settings menu by checking "Take a screenshot of the entire page"
(you click the ellipsis on the upper right to access the settings menu).
Clicking on the screenshot icon takes a full-page screenshot in png
format and saves it to the default download location. There is also a
settings option to save screenshots to the clipboard.

However, as you have remarked elsewhere, the full-page screenshot
process is not infallible (and with savory irony fails on the recursive,
auto-reproductive bugzilla thread I pointed to in another post,
producing a truncated image).

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Wed 09 Jan 2019 at 12:47:42 -0600, David Wright wrote:

> On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 23:51:36 (+), Brian wrote:
> > On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 14:37:30 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > > On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 18:21:07 (+), Brian wrote:
> > > > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 18:13:58 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > [...]
> > > > 
> > > > > BTW if this Screenshot method is meant to yield a "printable"
> > > > > document, I haven't yet figured out how to print it sensibly.
> > > > > $ lp -d PDF very-long-image.png   gives me the image on one page,
> > > > > and looks, as it happens, like the sort of output that FF sometimes
> > > > > gives when printing articles: a narrow column of minute text.
> > > > 
> > > > To nitpick, the claim was that the Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange page
> > > > was printable. Whether the marks on paper satisfied a user in all
> > > > regards wasn't touched on until now.
> > > 
> > > I think it's reasonable to demand a certain level of legibility.
> > 
> > Indeed. That is why I am looking at printouts from Firefox and lp which
> > nobody with reasonable eyesight would have any trouble reading.
> > 
> > > > For me, printing the screen image obtained from my chosen page from
> > > > the Print Preview of FireFox gave an acceptable output with a Custom
> > > > Scale. It helped to choose Landscape mode.
> 
> I think I see what you're doing now: you take the snapshot in FF, then
> open the snapshot in FF again and then use Print Preview to set the
> scaling factor before you print it.

That's spot-on, but do not think I am wedded to this technique. If I had
a desperate to print a one-off (like the originator of this sub-thread)
I would use it but would be cogniscent of its limitations. Manipulating
images within the printing system is fraught as far as I am concerned.

Curt informatively posted:

  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2019/01/msg00447.html

A twist with the page he refers to is that getting the whole page with a
right click is not possible at this site.
 
> > > The landscape mode changes the output from a very tall image printed
> > > on a portrait page to the same image printed across it instead,
> > > reducing the scale by the golden proportion.
> > > 
> > > > 'lp -d.' benefits from fiddling with the scaling= option and from
> > > > orientation-requested=4.
> > > 
> > > This gets very involved. Having tried feeding convert with the image,
> > > I see that it can produce a pretty faithful PDF which suffers only
> > > from the usual problem of being overtall.
> > 
> > Printing from Firefox is hardly involved. Basically, choose the scaling.
> > Forget about lp; most people never use it directly.
> 
> Well, I couldn't see any scaling options in lp except fit-to-page
> which would be fighting what one is trying to do.

CUPS itself has removed or deprecated such options:

  https://github.com/apple/cups/issues/4010

It is cups-filters which carries the flag now.

> > > If I was going to indulge in this very often (which I'm not) I think
> > > it would be worth writing a script to run convert on page-size slices
> > > of the image, outputting them as PDFs, and collate them into a
> > > conventional multipage document with pdftk. It would be fairly simple
> > > to compute the y-size by ratioing the x-size according to the paper
> > > regime, and even allow for some overlap between pages (because one
> > > doesn't know where to slice in between lines of text).
> > 
> > Sounds more involved than using lp.
> 
> I've found that the package posterazor can split the FF image and,
> trying it out, it seemed to be able to fit-to-width. It can also
> yield overlapping pages so you don't get lines of print split across
> pages as with your method.
> 
> But again, if I were having to do this regularly, I would prefer to
> write a script rather than have to go through its 5-step interactive
> dialogue on each occasion. Most of the degrees of freedom given by
> posterazor are unnecessary because the values can all be computed

An ordinary user shouldn't have to do this. OTOH, an ordinary user
should not feel it is acceptable to impute motives and spread false
information. A skilled user (such as the starter of this sub-thread)
could have copied and pasted or used 'lynx -dump ." to get what
was wanted.

It's a pain, But needs must on occasion.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[David Wright]

On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 23:51:36 (+), Brian wrote:
> On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 14:37:30 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 18:21:07 (+), Brian wrote:
> > > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 18:13:58 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > > 
> > > [...]
> > > 
> > > > BTW if this Screenshot method is meant to yield a "printable"
> > > > document, I haven't yet figured out how to print it sensibly.
> > > > $ lp -d PDF very-long-image.png   gives me the image on one page,
> > > > and looks, as it happens, like the sort of output that FF sometimes
> > > > gives when printing articles: a narrow column of minute text.
> > > 
> > > To nitpick, the claim was that the Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange page
> > > was printable. Whether the marks on paper satisfied a user in all
> > > regards wasn't touched on until now.
> > 
> > I think it's reasonable to demand a certain level of legibility.
> 
> Indeed. That is why I am looking at printouts from Firefox and lp which
> nobody with reasonable eyesight would have any trouble reading.
> 
> > > For me, printing the screen image obtained from my chosen page from
> > > the Print Preview of FireFox gave an acceptable output with a Custom
> > > Scale. It helped to choose Landscape mode.

I think I see what you're doing now: you take the snapshot in FF, then
open the snapshot in FF again and then use Print Preview to set the
scaling factor before you print it.

> > The landscape mode changes the output from a very tall image printed
> > on a portrait page to the same image printed across it instead,
> > reducing the scale by the golden proportion.
> > 
> > > 'lp -d.' benefits from fiddling with the scaling= option and from
> > > orientation-requested=4.
> > 
> > This gets very involved. Having tried feeding convert with the image,
> > I see that it can produce a pretty faithful PDF which suffers only
> > from the usual problem of being overtall.
> 
> Printing from Firefox is hardly involved. Basically, choose the scaling.
> Forget about lp; most people never use it directly.

Well, I couldn't see any scaling options in lp except fit-to-page
which would be fighting what one is trying to do.

> > If I was going to indulge in this very often (which I'm not) I think
> > it would be worth writing a script to run convert on page-size slices
> > of the image, outputting them as PDFs, and collate them into a
> > conventional multipage document with pdftk. It would be fairly simple
> > to compute the y-size by ratioing the x-size according to the paper
> > regime, and even allow for some overlap between pages (because one
> > doesn't know where to slice in between lines of text).
> 
> Sounds more involved than using lp.

I've found that the package posterazor can split the FF image and,
trying it out, it seemed to be able to fit-to-width. It can also
yield overlapping pages so you don't get lines of print split across
pages as with your method.

But again, if I were having to do this regularly, I would prefer to
write a script rather than have to go through its 5-step interactive
dialogue on each occasion. Most of the degrees of freedom given by
posterazor are unnecessary because the values can all be computed.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-05, Gene Heskett  wrote:
>
> I think the question about is it on purpose on the part of stackexchange 

In researching this bug, I recently discovered bugzilla.mozilla.org itself
triggers the bug.

Just drumming up business, as it were, I guess.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1339370

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 14:37:30 -0600, David Wright wrote:

> On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 18:21:07 (+), Brian wrote:
> > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 18:13:58 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > 
> > [...]
> > 
> > > BTW if this Screenshot method is meant to yield a "printable"
> > > document, I haven't yet figured out how to print it sensibly.
> > > $ lp -d PDF very-long-image.png   gives me the image on one page,
> > > and looks, as it happens, like the sort of output that FF sometimes
> > > gives when printing articles: a narrow column of minute text.
> > 
> > To nitpick, the claim was that the Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange page
> > was printable. Whether the marks on paper satisfied a user in all
> > regards wasn't touched on until now.
> 
> I think it's reasonable to demand a certain level of legibility.

Indeed. That is why I am looking at printouts from Firefox and lp which
nobody with reasonable eyesight would have any trouble reading.

> > For me, printing the screen image obtained from my chosen page from
> > the Print Preview of FireFox gave an acceptable output with a Custom
> > Scale. It helped to choose Landscape mode.
> 
> The landscape mode changes the output from a very tall image printed
> on a portrait page to the same image printed across it instead,
> reducing the scale by the golden proportion.
> 
> > 'lp -d.' benefits from fiddling with the scaling= option and from
> > orientation-requested=4.
> 
> This gets very involved. Having tried feeding convert with the image,
> I see that it can produce a pretty faithful PDF which suffers only
> from the usual problem of being overtall.

Printing from Firefox is hardly involved. Basically, choose the scaling.
Forget about lp; most people never use it directly.

> If I was going to indulge in this very often (which I'm not) I think
> it would be worth writing a script to run convert on page-size slices
> of the image, outputting them as PDFs, and collate them into a
> conventional multipage document with pdftk. It would be fairly simple
> to compute the y-size by ratioing the x-size according to the paper
> regime, and even allow for some overlap between pages (because one
> doesn't know where to slice in between lines of text).

Sounds more involved than using lp.

> PS what's a backdoord malward?

Pass.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[David Wright]

On Mon 07 Jan 2019 at 18:21:07 (+), Brian wrote:
> On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 18:13:58 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > BTW if this Screenshot method is meant to yield a "printable"
> > document, I haven't yet figured out how to print it sensibly.
> > $ lp -d PDF very-long-image.png   gives me the image on one page,
> > and looks, as it happens, like the sort of output that FF sometimes
> > gives when printing articles: a narrow column of minute text.
> 
> To nitpick, the claim was that the Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange page
> was printable. Whether the marks on paper satisfied a user in all
> regards wasn't touched on until now.

I think it's reasonable to demand a certain level of legibility.

> For me, printing the screen image obtained from my chosen page from
> the Print Preview of FireFox gave an acceptable output with a Custom
> Scale. It helped to choose Landscape mode.

The landscape mode changes the output from a very tall image printed
on a portrait page to the same image printed across it instead,
reducing the scale by the golden proportion.

> 'lp -d.' benefits from fiddling with the scaling= option and from
> orientation-requested=4.

This gets very involved. Having tried feeding convert with the image,
I see that it can produce a pretty faithful PDF which suffers only
from the usual problem of being overtall.

If I was going to indulge in this very often (which I'm not) I think
it would be worth writing a script to run convert on page-size slices
of the image, outputting them as PDFs, and collate them into a
conventional multipage document with pdftk. It would be fairly simple
to compute the y-size by ratioing the x-size according to the paper
regime, and even allow for some overlap between pages (because one
doesn't know where to slice in between lines of text).

PS what's a backdoord malward?

Cheers,
David.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 18:13:58 -0600, David Wright wrote:

[...]

> BTW if this Screenshot method is meant to yield a "printable"
> document, I haven't yet figured out how to print it sensibly.
> $ lp -d PDF very-long-image.png   gives me the image on one page,
> and looks, as it happens, like the sort of output that FF sometimes
> gives when printing articles: a narrow column of minute text.

To nitpick, the claim was that the Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange page
was printable. Whether the marks on paper satisfied a user in all
regards wasn't touched on until now.

For me, printing the screen image obtained from my chosen page from
the Print Preview of FireFox gave an acceptable output with a Custom
Scale. It helped to choose Landscape mode.

'lp -d.' benefits from fiddling with the scaling= option and from
orientation-requested=4.

For a screenshot, the mouse right-click is a more straightforward way
than the other method.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Curt wrote:

> Then you, if I'm remembering correctly, joined in to profess your own
> distrust or dislike of stackexchange and your refusal to use Chromium to
> obviate a very long-standing FF bug that you appear to claim or strongly
> suggest only impacts the stackexchange web site.
> 

I bag a pardon - I just mentioned that the same FF works for many other web
sites and that it is not up to the site owner to correct this - either by
workaround or by contacting FF and making pressure.
I do not understand why I should change my behavior and as Gene mentioned
start a program that by default is compromised just to print one single
page.

>
https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/ad8p3f/my_wife_has_fallen_for_the_antivax_nonsense_and/
> 
> Try that on for size. But maybe Reddit is part of the conspiracy.*

Who know, who knows ... nowdays anything is possible ... and if you believe
or not I have found out many sites that pretend to be something they are
not most of all NGOs funded by CIA. And it is not only sites, but companies
and people as well, so in fact I can not be sure even who you are or who is
Gene, though with Gene all seems to be OK - but with you promoting Chrome -
come on ... tell me I have to run windows to print the stupid pages :) ...
and please do not take it personal.

> Anyway, I was wrong to be rude, and also wrong to say you were out of
> luck hitting the bug if you refused using another browser, as we've
> discovered together in the spirit of fraternity other ways to skin that
> cat.

Thank you and in the name of the fraternity  - love and peace :)

> 
> *Perhaps a more rational explanation (or at least one to which
> Popper's Principle of Falsifiability might be applied):
> 
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1198054
> 
> There are some combinations of style rules that Firefox handles
> perfectly fine when it doesn't need to break pages, but which do not
> break correctly at print time. I wish I could give you a list, but that
> would require hours of research.
> 
> The ones that leap to mind:
> 
> display: flex
> display: inline-block on tall elements
> display: table on elements that are not a table
> display: table-cell on elements that are not a td
> overflow/overflow-y rules
> Also, Firefox cannot paginate the fieldset tag.

Thanks, might be FF problem, but it is up to the site owner to provide a
solution or to get in touch with FF. The ignorance of the site owner speaks
for itself, or do you have any communication on the issue with
stackexchange.

Thanks and regards

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-06, deloptes  wrote:
> Curt wrote:
>
>> I have no different opinion (I don't think). I know nothing about
>> stackexchange. I am indifferent to stackexchange. However, if you want
>> to print that full thread on stackexchange, like *Gene wanted to print
>> that full thread*, and your horse is so high you won't open Chromium to
>> do it and insist on using FF, well, then, you are out of luck, son.
>> 
>
> Honestly I never thought of this :) As I said I never use it
>

I confirmed here (before growing snarky and rude, veuillez m'excuser),
after Gene lamented only being able to print the first page of a
stackexchange thread he desired saving for ulterior, offline
consultation, that he'd stumbled upon a long-standing FF printing bug
that didn't affect Chromium (I ultimately emailed him a pdf of the
thread I printed to file with that open-source browser).

Gene responded with, at the very least, an undemonstrated (and probably
undemonstrable) conspiracy theory about stackexchange, viz. that the
site owners may be triggering the bug intentionally in order to induce
people to sign up, which I found to be an unexpected hard right turn
down what I quite innocently believed was a perfectly straight and
uncluttered road. 

Then you, if I'm remembering correctly, joined in to profess your own
distrust or dislike of stackexchange and your refusal to use Chromium to
obviate a very long-standing FF bug that you appear to claim or strongly
suggest only impacts the stackexchange web site. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/ad8p3f/my_wife_has_fallen_for_the_antivax_nonsense_and/

Try that on for size. But maybe Reddit is part of the conspiracy.* 

Anyway, I was wrong to be rude, and also wrong to say you were out of
luck hitting the bug if you refused using another browser, as we've
discovered together in the spirit of fraternity other ways to skin that
cat.


*Perhaps a more rational explanation (or at least one to which
 Popper's Principle of Falsifiability might be applied):

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1198054
 
 There are some combinations of style rules that Firefox handles
 perfectly fine when it doesn't need to break pages, but which do not
 break correctly at print time. I wish I could give you a list, but that
 would require hours of research.

 The ones that leap to mind:

 display: flex
 display: inline-block on tall elements
 display: table on elements that are not a table
 display: table-cell on elements that are not a td
 overflow/overflow-y rules
 Also, Firefox cannot paginate the fieldset tag.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[David Wright]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 12:15:09 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 06 January 2019 11:28:55 David Wright wrote:
> > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 10:37:48 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > On Sunday 06 January 2019 10:17:16 Brian wrote:
> > > > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 14:42:08 +0100, deloptes wrote:
> > > > > Curt wrote:
> > > > > > I suppose you could argue that the percentage of Firefox users
> > > > > > too lazy or bewildered to try another browser is good enough
> > > > > > for stackexchange, because, goddammit, you take what you can
> > > > > > get.
> > > > >
> > > > > Please be nice - I am not lazy - I have Chromium, but I do not
> > > > > want to use it. I like FF more and I can not accept the argument
> > > > > regarding 1 page printing in FF, because other sites do not have
> > > > > the problem, hence it is doable to overcome the issue from
> > > > > within the site (perhaps css definitions - I do not know what
> > > > > exactly the issue is and I do not care). If site developers may
> > > > > embed 100s of lines of code to check browser and version and can
> > > > > adapt their sites to IE,FF and Chromium the least, they could
> > > > > also take care of this "feature", so lazy is not me, but the one
> > > > > that does not care, test or provide proper support for printing
> > > > > from within FF. This is my opinion only, you may accept or
> > > > > not... and I agree with Gene - stackexchange is phony in their
> > > > > philosophy, but it is their right to be so and my right to
> > > > > qualify it as such. OF course you have the right to have a
> > > > > different opinion and I respect this.
> > > >
> > > > Strictly speaking, the problem does not arise due a problem in the
> > > > printing system. Firefox produces a PDF before dispatching it for
> > > > printing and that PDF is not a true representation of the web
> > > > page.
> > > >
> > > > Whether the issue is tackled by Firefox or at the stackexchange
> > > > end is immaterial; this will take time. Meanwhile, there is an
> > > > elderly user who had hoped to read and absorb the material today
> > > > while eating his free lunch.
> > > >
> > > > Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum)
> > > > and take a screenshot of the whole page.
> > >
> > > Two questions then, Brian: Where in the FF menu's does one find this
> > > magic key combo documented?
> >
> > I was under the impression that taking screenshots was under the
> > control of the window manager, so the key combinations might be quite
> > different for other users.
> >
> > For example, my fvwm uses Shift-F2 for speaker-volume-down because the
> > Lenovo-W10 system chose to engrave {Speaker]- on the key.
> >
> > But if FF can take a screenshot itself, I would hope that you get
> > the whole page, not just the whole window (which is all the WM can
> > give you, of course) because configuring an application like scrot
> > can give you *much* more functionality.
> >
> So I installed scrot. But I don't see anything in its man page resembling 
> the --fullpage option. So I'll have to play I guess.

That's right: scrot works with windows (any window, including root,
the entire screen). But window, not page. That's why I wouldn't use it
for this case.

> > > >   screenshot filename.png --fullpage
> Humm:
> gene@coyote:~/linuxcnc/nc_files$ sudo apt-get install screenshot
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> E: Unable to locate package screenshot
> gene@coyote:~/linuxcnc/nc_files$
> 
> I do have ksnapshot though, and it works well for what I've needed to, 
> but I don't think it has the --fullpage option.

--fullpage has to rely on the application (browser) because it alone
knows what's off the screen. (In fact, FF's "screenshot" is a misnomer
as it's really a "pageshot".) Both types of snapshotting have their
strengths and weaknesses.

Under X, scrot works with any application, can produce a variety of
image formats, can take a screenshot with the mouse or a single
keystroke, which means you can easily take screenshots at, say, one
second intervals, and can (using a delay) capture things like open
menus. I don't know any other way of doing that particular trick.
But it can't capture the whole page.

And of course, neither gives you the text like ^A can.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[David Wright]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 16:53:03 (+), Brian wrote:
> On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 10:28:55 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 10:37:48 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > On Sunday 06 January 2019 10:17:16 Brian wrote:

> > > > Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum) and
> > > > take a screenshot of the whole page.
> > > 
> > > Two questions then, Brian: Where in the FF menu's does one find this 
> > > magic key combo documented?
> > 
> > I was under the impression that taking screenshots was under the
> > control of the window manager, so the key combinations might be quite
> > different for other users.
> 
> No. FF uses SHIFT+F2.
> 
> > For example, my fvwm uses Shift-F2 for speaker-volume-down because the
> > Lenovo-W10 system chose to engrave {Speaker]- on the key.

Yes, my Shift-F2 ≡ your SHIFT+F2.

But having released fvwm's hold on this key combination, I can see
that pressing it does now give me a prompt at the foot of the window.

However, the simple way (for me) seems to be a right-click in the page,
and "Take a Screenshot" is the last menu item. The image of the full
page appears in the default download location, and has its name
constructed as Screenshot--- .png with
subsequent shots labelled with (1) like wget does it. Not the most
elegant name (they sort badly) but sufficient. I much prefer not
having to type.

So thanks for pointing out that tool. It's complements my ^A method of
getting the text, and my scrot methods for the window image.

> > But if FF can take a screenshot itself, I would hope that you get
> > the whole page, not just the whole window (which is all the WM can
> > give you, of course) because configuring an application like scrot
> > can give you *much* more functionality.
> 
> There is no "if" about it; your hopes would also be fulfilled.

I shall have to think about ways of handling PNGs that can be tens of
thousands pixels in height.

> > > >   screenshot filename.png --fullpage
> > > 
> > > And pray tell, where does it stash this .png? FF it seems, goes out of 
> > > their way to select where it stashes a downloadable file. Its instructed 
> > > to ask me, but rarely does.
> > 
> > # find / -type f -mmin -10
> > 
> > for files created in the last 10 minutes, say.
> > 
> > > > Use TAB to complete and move along the command line. The file produced
> > > > is named filename-fullpage.png and is, of course, printable.
> > > 
> > > Good to know.
> > 
> > Yes, but some of the advice given seems to come with a lot of attitude.
> 
> Don't understand this. You would have to explain.

Blaming FF's inability to create usable PDFS on users' incompetence,
blaming reluctance to use Chrome/ium on FF users' laziness or
bewilderment, name calling and so on.

BTW if this Screenshot method is meant to yield a "printable"
document, I haven't yet figured out how to print it sensibly.
$ lp -d PDF very-long-image.png   gives me the image on one page,
and looks, as it happens, like the sort of output that FF sometimes
gives when printing articles: a narrow column of minute text.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 18:53:55 +, Curt wrote:

> On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
> > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 17:47:16 +, Curt wrote:
> >
> >> On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Very awkward, I would say. Which is why it wasn't recommended.
> >> >> >
> >> >> 
> >> >> Oops.
> >> >> 
> >> >> Still, Tools --> Web Devloper --> (but there ain't no Developer Toolbar 
> >> >> item).
> >> >
> >> > There is here (60.4.0esr). Inbetween "Storage Inspector" and "webIDE".
> >> > In any case, does SHIFT+F2 bring up a console line with a flashing
> >> > cursor at the bottom of the screen?
> >> >
> >> 
> >> In between "Storage Inspector" and "WebIDE" I have "Accessibility."
> >> 
> >> SHIFT+F2 seems to do nothing.
> >
> > What is your version of FF? (Help/About Firefox).
> >
> 
> I found it. Tools --> Web Developer --> Toggle Tools (checked)
> 
> In the console
> 
>  :screenshot foo --fullpage
> 
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Web_Console/Helpers
> 
> saves foo.png in the default download location.
> 
> On the stackexchange thread in question this process seems to "get it all."
> 
> We have arrived safely, Captain!

Thank you for your persistence. I was beginning to think your Firefox
was not from Debian. It appears the feature you describe has disappeared
from it in more recent versions:

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/05/21/firefox-62-developer-toolbar-removal/

To summarise:

The claim was made that a certain web page was not "printable". The
user was using a clapped out version of Debian and an unknown version
of Firefox. The claim is demonstrably incorrect on stretch. His "glass
half-full" philosphophy dictated that no effort be made to investigate
further and seek a solution.

Kitchens can certainly be hot, but they are tolerable when the the chef
has some ingredients, techniques and skills to offer the diners and
stimulate their appetites. Preferably by not cooking with candles.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
> On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 17:47:16 +, Curt wrote:
>
>> On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > Very awkward, I would say. Which is why it wasn't recommended.
>> >> >
>> >> 
>> >> Oops.
>> >> 
>> >> Still, Tools --> Web Devloper --> (but there ain't no Developer Toolbar 
>> >> item).
>> >
>> > There is here (60.4.0esr). Inbetween "Storage Inspector" and "webIDE".
>> > In any case, does SHIFT+F2 bring up a console line with a flashing
>> > cursor at the bottom of the screen?
>> >
>> 
>> In between "Storage Inspector" and "WebIDE" I have "Accessibility."
>> 
>> SHIFT+F2 seems to do nothing.
>
> What is your version of FF? (Help/About Firefox).
>

I found it. Tools --> Web Developer --> Toggle Tools (checked)

In the console

 :screenshot foo --fullpage

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Web_Console/Helpers

saves foo.png in the default download location.

On the stackexchange thread in question this process seems to "get it all."

We have arrived safely, Captain!

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
> On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 17:47:16 +, Curt wrote:
>
>> On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > Very awkward, I would say. Which is why it wasn't recommended.
>> >> >
>> >> 
>> >> Oops.
>> >> 
>> >> Still, Tools --> Web Devloper --> (but there ain't no Developer Toolbar 
>> >> item).
>> >
>> > There is here (60.4.0esr). Inbetween "Storage Inspector" and "webIDE".
>> > In any case, does SHIFT+F2 bring up a console line with a flashing
>> > cursor at the bottom of the screen?
>> >
>> 
>> In between "Storage Inspector" and "WebIDE" I have "Accessibility."
>> 
>> SHIFT+F2 seems to do nothing.
>
> What is your version of FF? (Help/About Firefox).
>

64.0 (64-bit)

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 17:47:16 +, Curt wrote:

> On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Very awkward, I would say. Which is why it wasn't recommended.
> >> >
> >> 
> >> Oops.
> >> 
> >> Still, Tools --> Web Devloper --> (but there ain't no Developer Toolbar 
> >> item).
> >
> > There is here (60.4.0esr). Inbetween "Storage Inspector" and "webIDE".
> > In any case, does SHIFT+F2 bring up a console line with a flashing
> > cursor at the bottom of the screen?
> >
> 
> In between "Storage Inspector" and "WebIDE" I have "Accessibility."
> 
> SHIFT+F2 seems to do nothing.

What is your version of FF? (Help/About Firefox).

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 12:15:09 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:

[...]

> > > >   screenshot filename.png --fullpage
> Humm:
> gene@coyote:~/linuxcnc/nc_files$ sudo apt-get install screenshot
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> E: Unable to locate package screenshot
> gene@coyote:~/linuxcnc/nc_files$

This is on one of your ancient, unsupported wheezy machines? At least I
had the grace to say which version of FF I used. You do not know what
you are doing. screenshot is not a Debian package.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
>> >
>> > Very awkward, I would say. Which is why it wasn't recommended.
>> >
>> 
>> Oops.
>> 
>> Still, Tools --> Web Devloper --> (but there ain't no Developer Toolbar 
>> item).
>
> There is here (60.4.0esr). Inbetween "Storage Inspector" and "webIDE".
> In any case, does SHIFT+F2 bring up a console line with a flashing
> cursor at the bottom of the screen?
>

In between "Storage Inspector" and "WebIDE" I have "Accessibility."

SHIFT+F2 seems to do nothing.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 17:33:56 +, Curt wrote:

> On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
> > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 17:05:19 +, Curt wrote:
> >
> >> On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
> >> >> 
> >> >> I was under the impression that taking screenshots was under the
> >> >> control of the window manager, so the key combinations might be quite
> >> >> different for other users.
> >> >
> >> > No. FF uses SHIFT+F2.
> >> 
> >> It doesn't seem to here (on latest stable Quantum).
> >
> >>From an earlier post:
> >
> >  > > > Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum) and
> >  > > > take a screenshot of the whole page.
> >
> >  > > Two questions then, Brian: Where in the FF menu's does one find this
> >  > > magic key combo documented?
> >
> >  > Tools --> Web Developer --> Developer Toolbar
> >
> >> Left-click the page and select "Take a Screenshot," or click the
> >> triple-dot ...  in the address bar for the roll-down menu appears to be
> >> the way to go on my browser.
> >> 
> >> Moderately awkward to capture a 7-pager.
> >
> > Very awkward, I would say. Which is why it wasn't recommended.
> >
> 
> Oops.
> 
> Still, Tools --> Web Devloper --> (but there ain't no Developer Toolbar item).

There is here (60.4.0esr). Inbetween "Storage Inspector" and "webIDE".
In any case, does SHIFT+F2 bring up a console line with a flashing
cursor at the bottom of the screen?

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Curt wrote:

> I have no different opinion (I don't think). I know nothing about
> stackexchange. I am indifferent to stackexchange. However, if you want
> to print that full thread on stackexchange, like *Gene wanted to print
> that full thread*, and your horse is so high you won't open Chromium to
> do it and insist on using FF, well, then, you are out of luck, son.
> 

Honestly I never thought of this :) As I said I never use it

> I do note the Bugzilla-Mozilla folks (if they even exist) seem to
> consider this very long-standing printing snafu in FF to be a bug (the
> apparently platform-independent creature's still alive and kicking after
> 15 years and four months!):
> 
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=258397
> 
> No mention of stackexchange, though. Two years ago Jim Scott complained
> in the bugzilla above that the Canada Revenue Agency website suffers
> from the problem (having lower moral standards than some, he gave up on
> FF and used Chrome to print his tax return).
> 

If I were having the problem I surely would "lower" my "moral standard" and
tried chrome, if I knew it would work ... but luckily where I live the
website of the ministry of finance is working properly compared to the
above mentioned sites.

> And so it goes.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
> On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 17:05:19 +, Curt wrote:
>
>> On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> I was under the impression that taking screenshots was under the
>> >> control of the window manager, so the key combinations might be quite
>> >> different for other users.
>> >
>> > No. FF uses SHIFT+F2.
>> 
>> It doesn't seem to here (on latest stable Quantum).
>
>>From an earlier post:
>
>  > > > Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum) and
>  > > > take a screenshot of the whole page.
>
>  > > Two questions then, Brian: Where in the FF menu's does one find this
>  > > magic key combo documented?
>
>  > Tools --> Web Developer --> Developer Toolbar
>
>> Left-click the page and select "Take a Screenshot," or click the
>> triple-dot ...  in the address bar for the roll-down menu appears to be
>> the way to go on my browser.
>> 
>> Moderately awkward to capture a 7-pager.
>
> Very awkward, I would say. Which is why it wasn't recommended.
>

Oops.

Still, Tools --> Web Devloper --> (but there ain't no Developer Toolbar item).

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 17:05:19 +, Curt wrote:

> On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
> >> 
> >> I was under the impression that taking screenshots was under the
> >> control of the window manager, so the key combinations might be quite
> >> different for other users.
> >
> > No. FF uses SHIFT+F2.
> 
> It doesn't seem to here (on latest stable Quantum).

>From an earlier post:

  > > > Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum) and
  > > > take a screenshot of the whole page.

  > > Two questions then, Brian: Where in the FF menu's does one find this
  > > magic key combo documented?

  > Tools --> Web Developer --> Developer Toolbar

> Left-click the page and select "Take a Screenshot," or click the
> triple-dot ...  in the address bar for the roll-down menu appears to be
> the way to go on my browser.
> 
> Moderately awkward to capture a 7-pager.

Very awkward, I would say. Which is why it wasn't recommended.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 06 January 2019 11:28:55 David Wright wrote:

> On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 10:37:48 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 06 January 2019 10:17:16 Brian wrote:
> > > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 14:42:08 +0100, deloptes wrote:
> > > > Curt wrote:
> > > > > I suppose you could argue that the percentage of Firefox users
> > > > > too lazy or bewildered to try another browser is good enough
> > > > > for stackexchange, because, goddammit, you take what you can
> > > > > get.
> > > >
> > > > Please be nice - I am not lazy - I have Chromium, but I do not
> > > > want to use it. I like FF more and I can not accept the argument
> > > > regarding 1 page printing in FF, because other sites do not have
> > > > the problem, hence it is doable to overcome the issue from
> > > > within the site (perhaps css definitions - I do not know what
> > > > exactly the issue is and I do not care). If site developers may
> > > > embed 100s of lines of code to check browser and version and can
> > > > adapt their sites to IE,FF and Chromium the least, they could
> > > > also take care of this "feature", so lazy is not me, but the one
> > > > that does not care, test or provide proper support for printing
> > > > from within FF. This is my opinion only, you may accept or
> > > > not... and I agree with Gene - stackexchange is phony in their
> > > > philosophy, but it is their right to be so and my right to
> > > > qualify it as such. OF course you have the right to have a
> > > > different opinion and I respect this.
> > >
> > > Strictly speaking, the problem does not arise due a problem in the
> > > printing system. Firefox produces a PDF before dispatching it for
> > > printing and that PDF is not a true representation of the web
> > > page.
> > >
> > > Whether the issue is tackled by Firefox or at the stackexchange
> > > end is immaterial; this will take time. Meanwhile, there is an
> > > elderly user who had hoped to read and absorb the material today
> > > while eating his free lunch.
> > >
> > > Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum)
> > > and take a screenshot of the whole page.
> >
> > Two questions then, Brian: Where in the FF menu's does one find this
> > magic key combo documented?
>
> I was under the impression that taking screenshots was under the
> control of the window manager, so the key combinations might be quite
> different for other users.
>
> For example, my fvwm uses Shift-F2 for speaker-volume-down because the
> Lenovo-W10 system chose to engrave {Speaker]- on the key.
>
> But if FF can take a screenshot itself, I would hope that you get
> the whole page, not just the whole window (which is all the WM can
> give you, of course) because configuring an application like scrot
> can give you *much* more functionality.
>
So I installed scrot. But I don't see anything in its man page resembling 
the --fullpage option. So I'll have to play I guess.

> > >   screenshot filename.png --fullpage
Humm:
gene@coyote:~/linuxcnc/nc_files$ sudo apt-get install screenshot
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package screenshot
gene@coyote:~/linuxcnc/nc_files$

I do have ksnapshot though, and it works well for what I've needed to, 
but I don't think it has the --fullpage option.

> > And pray tell, where does it stash this .png? FF it seems, goes out
> > of their way to select where it stashes a downloadable file. Its
> > instructed to ask me, but rarely does.
>
> # find / -type f -mmin -10
>
> for files created in the last 10 minutes, say.
>
> > > Use TAB to complete and move along the command line. The file
> > > produced is named filename-fullpage.png and is, of course,
> > > printable.
> >
> > Good to know.
>
> Yes, but some of the advice given seems to come with a lot of
> attitude.

Yes, there is that at times, but if one can't stand the heat, he really 
ought to stay out of the kitchen.

I try to remember to say thank you to those supplying good information.

> Cheers,
> David.

Thank you David.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
>> 
>> I was under the impression that taking screenshots was under the
>> control of the window manager, so the key combinations might be quite
>> different for other users.
>
> No. FF uses SHIFT+F2.
>

It doesn't seem to here (on latest stable Quantum).

Left-click the page and select "Take a Screenshot," or click the
triple-dot ...  in the address bar for the roll-down menu appears to be
the way to go on my browser.

Moderately awkward to capture a 7-pager.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 10:28:55 -0600, David Wright wrote:

> On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 10:37:48 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 06 January 2019 10:17:16 Brian wrote:
> > > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 14:42:08 +0100, deloptes wrote:

[...]

> > > Strictly speaking, the problem does not arise due a problem in the
> > > printing system. Firefox produces a PDF before dispatching it for
> > > printing and that PDF is not a true representation of the web page.
> > >
> > > Whether the issue is tackled by Firefox or at the stackexchange end
> > > is immaterial; this will take time. Meanwhile, there is an elderly
> > > user who had hoped to read and absorb the material today while eating
> > > his free lunch.
> > >
> > > Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum) and
> > > take a screenshot of the whole page.
> > 
> > Two questions then, Brian: Where in the FF menu's does one find this 
> > magic key combo documented?
> 
> I was under the impression that taking screenshots was under the
> control of the window manager, so the key combinations might be quite
> different for other users.

No. FF uses SHIFT+F2.

> For example, my fvwm uses Shift-F2 for speaker-volume-down because the
> Lenovo-W10 system chose to engrave {Speaker]- on the key.
> 
> But if FF can take a screenshot itself, I would hope that you get
> the whole page, not just the whole window (which is all the WM can
> give you, of course) because configuring an application like scrot
> can give you *much* more functionality.

There is no "if" about it; your hopes would also be fulfilled.

> > >   screenshot filename.png --fullpage
> > 
> > And pray tell, where does it stash this .png? FF it seems, goes out of 
> > their way to select where it stashes a downloadable file. Its instructed 
> > to ask me, but rarely does.
> 
> # find / -type f -mmin -10
> 
> for files created in the last 10 minutes, say.
> 
> > > Use TAB to complete and move along the command line. The file produced
> > > is named filename-fullpage.png and is, of course, printable.
> > 
> > Good to know.
> 
> Yes, but some of the advice given seems to come with a lot of attitude.

Don't understand this. You would have to explain.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[David Wright]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 10:37:48 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 06 January 2019 10:17:16 Brian wrote:
> > On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 14:42:08 +0100, deloptes wrote:
> > > Curt wrote:
> > > > I suppose you could argue that the percentage of Firefox users too
> > > > lazy or bewildered to try another browser is good enough for
> > > > stackexchange, because, goddammit, you take what you can get.
> > >
> > > Please be nice - I am not lazy - I have Chromium, but I do not want
> > > to use it. I like FF more and I can not accept the argument
> > > regarding 1 page printing in FF, because other sites do not have the
> > > problem, hence it is doable to overcome the issue from within the
> > > site (perhaps css definitions - I do not know what exactly the issue
> > > is and I do not care). If site developers may embed 100s of lines of
> > > code to check browser and version and can adapt their sites to IE,FF
> > > and Chromium the least, they could also take care of this "feature",
> > > so lazy is not me, but the one that does not care, test or provide
> > > proper support for printing from within FF. This is my opinion only,
> > > you may accept or not... and I agree with Gene - stackexchange is
> > > phony in their philosophy, but it is their right to be so and my
> > > right to qualify it as such. OF course you have the right to have a
> > > different opinion and I respect this.
> >
> > Strictly speaking, the problem does not arise due a problem in the
> > printing system. Firefox produces a PDF before dispatching it for
> > printing and that PDF is not a true representation of the web page.
> >
> > Whether the issue is tackled by Firefox or at the stackexchange end
> > is immaterial; this will take time. Meanwhile, there is an elderly
> > user who had hoped to read and absorb the material today while eating
> > his free lunch.
> >
> > Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum) and
> > take a screenshot of the whole page.
> 
> Two questions then, Brian: Where in the FF menu's does one find this 
> magic key combo documented?

I was under the impression that taking screenshots was under the
control of the window manager, so the key combinations might be quite
different for other users.

For example, my fvwm uses Shift-F2 for speaker-volume-down because the
Lenovo-W10 system chose to engrave {Speaker]- on the key.

But if FF can take a screenshot itself, I would hope that you get
the whole page, not just the whole window (which is all the WM can
give you, of course) because configuring an application like scrot
can give you *much* more functionality.

> >   screenshot filename.png --fullpage
> 
> And pray tell, where does it stash this .png? FF it seems, goes out of 
> their way to select where it stashes a downloadable file. Its instructed 
> to ask me, but rarely does.

# find / -type f -mmin -10

for files created in the last 10 minutes, say.

> > Use TAB to complete and move along the command line. The file produced
> > is named filename-fullpage.png and is, of course, printable.
> 
> Good to know.

Yes, but some of the advice given seems to come with a lot of attitude.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 10:37:48 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Sunday 06 January 2019 10:17:16 Brian wrote:

[...]

> > Strictly speaking, the problem does not arise due a problem in the
> > printing system. Firefox produces a PDF before dispatching it for
> > printing and that PDF is not a true representation of the web page.
> >
> > Whether the issue is tackled by Firefox or at the stackexchange end
> > is immaterial; this will take time. Meanwhile, there is an elderly
> > user who had hoped to read and absorb the material today while eating
> > his free lunch.
> >
> > Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum) and
> > take a screenshot of the whole page.
> 
> Two questions then, Brian: Where in the FF menu's does one find this 
> magic key combo documented?

Tools --> Web Developer --> Developer Toolbar
 
> >   screenshot filename.png --fullpage
> 
> And pray tell, where does it stash this .png? FF it seems, goes out of 
> their way to select where it stashes a downloadable file. Its instructed 
> to ask me, but rarely does.

It tells you when the command is completed with ENTER. (BTW, filename
is sufficient; the .png will be added to it).

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 06 January 2019 10:17:16 Brian wrote:

> On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 14:42:08 +0100, deloptes wrote:
> > Curt wrote:
> > > I suppose you could argue that the percentage of Firefox users too
> > > lazy or bewildered to try another browser is good enough for
> > > stackexchange, because, goddammit, you take what you can get.
> >
> > Please be nice - I am not lazy - I have Chromium, but I do not want
> > to use it. I like FF more and I can not accept the argument
> > regarding 1 page printing in FF, because other sites do not have the
> > problem, hence it is doable to overcome the issue from within the
> > site (perhaps css definitions - I do not know what exactly the issue
> > is and I do not care). If site developers may embed 100s of lines of
> > code to check browser and version and can adapt their sites to IE,FF
> > and Chromium the least, they could also take care of this "feature",
> > so lazy is not me, but the one that does not care, test or provide
> > proper support for printing from within FF. This is my opinion only,
> > you may accept or not... and I agree with Gene - stackexchange is
> > phony in their philosophy, but it is their right to be so and my
> > right to qualify it as such. OF course you have the right to have a
> > different opinion and I respect this.
>
> Strictly speaking, the problem does not arise due a problem in the
> printing system. Firefox produces a PDF before dispatching it for
> printing and that PDF is not a true representation of the web page.
>
> Whether the issue is tackled by Firefox or at the stackexchange end
> is immaterial; this will take time. Meanwhile, there is an elderly
> user who had hoped to read and absorb the material today while eating
> his free lunch.
>
> Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum) and
> take a screenshot of the whole page.

Two questions then, Brian: Where in the FF menu's does one find this 
magic key combo documented?

>   screenshot filename.png --fullpage

And pray tell, where does it stash this .png? FF it seems, goes out of 
their way to select where it stashes a downloadable file. Its instructed 
to ask me, but rarely does.
>
> Use TAB to complete and move along the command line. The file produced
> is named filename-fullpage.png and is, of course, printable.

Good to know.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-06, Brian  wrote:
>
> Whether the issue is tackled by Firefox or at the stackexchange end
> is immaterial; this will take time. Meanwhile, there is an elderly
> user who had hoped to read and absorb the material today while eating
> his free lunch.
>

My moral and informatical standards are quite a bit lower than some of
you, so while you were evaluating the tricky technical and ethical
aspects of this affair I sent the old codger the PDF.

Yesterday.

Bon appétit!

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 06 January 2019 08:42:08 deloptes wrote:

> Curt wrote:
> > I suppose you could argue that the percentage of Firefox users too
> > lazy or bewildered to try another browser is good enough for
> > stackexchange, because, goddammit, you take what you can get.
>
> Please be nice - I am not lazy - I have Chromium, but I do not want to
> use it. I like FF more and I can not accept the argument regarding 1
> page printing in FF, because other sites do not have the problem,
> hence it is doable to overcome the issue from within the site (perhaps
> css definitions - I do not know what exactly the issue is and I do not
> care). If site developers may embed 100s of lines of code to check
> browser and version and can adapt their sites to IE,FF and Chromium
> the least, they could also take care of this "feature", so lazy is not
> me, but the one that does not care, test or provide proper support for
> printing from within FF. This is my opinion only, you may accept or
> not... and I agree with Gene - stackexchange is phony in their
> philosophy, but it is their right to be so and my right to qualify it
> as such. OF course you have the right to have a different opinion and
> I respect this.
>
> regards

10-4 good buddy. +10 on this opinion if we are voting on it.

Stackexchange allowing this to occur when its a correctable problem, says 
to me that it may be retribution for not showing a commercial, yet I 
don't have any such filters installed. If FF refuses to play it, it is 
not my personal choice, but FF's.  But looking at my web page stats 
shows that FF is down to 2% of the visitors, googlebot and Safari are 
the top 2. googlebot, their indexing spider is at 51%. Why is googlebot 
so damned intersted in my web page? When I put that web page up it took 
me a while to put it is my sig, and I put it on an odd port so it 
wouldn't attract folks touring port 80 to see who they could hack next. 
Despite that attempt at obscurity, google had it indexed 3 hours later.

In any event stackexchange has managed to get some publicity, good or bad 
being immaterial, which is probably what they are after anyway, based on 
there being no such thing as bad publicity.  Well, there are a few 
failed bulbs in their marquee. IMO of course.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-06, deloptes  wrote:
> Curt wrote:
>
>> I suppose you could argue that the percentage of Firefox users too lazy
>> or bewildered to try another browser is good enough for stackexchange,
>> because, goddammit, you take what you can get.
>
> Please be nice - I am not lazy - I have Chromium, but I do not want to use
> it. I like FF more and I can not accept the argument regarding 1 page
> printing in FF, because other sites do not have the problem, hence it is
> doable to overcome the issue from within the site (perhaps css
> definitions - I do not know what exactly the issue is and I do not care).
> If site developers may embed 100s of lines of code to check browser and
> version and can adapt their sites to IE,FF and Chromium the least, they
> could also take care of this "feature", so lazy is not me, but the one that
> does not care, test or provide proper support for printing from within FF.
> This is my opinion only, you may accept or not... and I agree with Gene -
> stackexchange is phony in their philosophy, but it is their right to be so
> and my right to qualify it as such. OF course you have the right to have a
> different opinion and I respect this.

I have no different opinion (I don't think). I know nothing about
stackexchange. I am indifferent to stackexchange. However, if you want
to print that full thread on stackexchange, like *Gene wanted to print
that full thread*, and your horse is so high you won't open Chromium to
do it and insist on using FF, well, then, you are out of luck, son. 

I do note the Bugzilla-Mozilla folks (if they even exist) seem to
consider this very long-standing printing snafu in FF to be a bug (the
apparently platform-independent creature's still alive and kicking after
15 years and four months!):

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=258397

No mention of stackexchange, though. Two years ago Jim Scott complained
in the bugzilla above that the Canada Revenue Agency website suffers
from the problem (having lower moral standards than some, he gave up on
FF and used Chrome to print his tax return).

And so it goes.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Sun 06 Jan 2019 at 14:42:08 +0100, deloptes wrote:

> Curt wrote:
> 
> > I suppose you could argue that the percentage of Firefox users too lazy
> > or bewildered to try another browser is good enough for stackexchange,
> > because, goddammit, you take what you can get.
> 
> Please be nice - I am not lazy - I have Chromium, but I do not want to use
> it. I like FF more and I can not accept the argument regarding 1 page
> printing in FF, because other sites do not have the problem, hence it is
> doable to overcome the issue from within the site (perhaps css
> definitions - I do not know what exactly the issue is and I do not care).
> If site developers may embed 100s of lines of code to check browser and
> version and can adapt their sites to IE,FF and Chromium the least, they
> could also take care of this "feature", so lazy is not me, but the one that
> does not care, test or provide proper support for printing from within FF.
> This is my opinion only, you may accept or not... and I agree with Gene -
> stackexchange is phony in their philosophy, but it is their right to be so
> and my right to qualify it as such. OF course you have the right to have a
> different opinion and I respect this.

Strictly speaking, the problem does not arise due a problem in the
printing system. Firefox produces a PDF before dispatching it for
printing and that PDF is not a true representation of the web page.

Whether the issue is tackled by Firefox or at the stackexchange end
is immaterial; this will take time. Meanwhile, there is an elderly
user who had hoped to read and absorb the material today while eating
his free lunch.

Maybe he would like to use SHIFT+F2 with Firefox (I have Quantum) and
take a screenshot of the whole page.

  screenshot filename.png --fullpage

Use TAB to complete and move along the command line. The file produced
is named filename-fullpage.png and is, of course, printable.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 06 January 2019 07:40:44 Curt wrote:

> On 2019-01-06, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> >> > > I can confirm the 1 page Firefox printing snafu for the
> >> > > stackexchange thread on the most recent stable Quantum. I can
> >> > > also confirm that it is a *very* longstanding bug and that
> >> > > snafu is indeed the proper acronymic term.
> >> > >
> >> > > In Chromium, though, the problem is absent.
> >> >
> >> > I think the question about is it on purpose on the part of
> >> > stackexchange might be a prod to make on sign up for their spam,
> >> > aka known as signing up and logging in. I did not, having been
> >> > forced to sign up for cnczone to gain access to something I
> >> > wanted, which trippled my incoming spam, with one of the spammers
> >> > being so far out he scores 11.8 to spamd scanning the incoming
> >> > mail. A new record here.  And it started 30 seconds after I'd
> >> > filled out their plain as hell phishing form.
> >>
> >> Words of wisdom I heard recently - TANSTAAFL.
> >
> > Yep, perfect interpretation, Brian.
>
> The one-page only snafu is a well-known and long-standing Firefox
> printing bug impacting any number of web sites that affects neither
> Chromium nor its derivatives.

If its so long standing, why have I not see it before. That was a first.

> As Chrome would appear to be the most popular extant browser (when
> counting across all platforms, as well as uniquely on the desktop)
> your stackexchange conspiracy theory looks to be leaking some
> significant credibility through a rather large hole.

Chromium? It got removed when wireshark and I caught it calling home 
while I was doing some online banking.  Same with palemoon earlier. I 
had to change everything including my CC over the next week.

But you are correct, the firefox I have refuses to play videos from news 
stories entirely too often. But it plays everything you-tube sends.
IMO its a POS, the vacuum suckage for your info is insatiable.

> I suppose you could argue that the percentage of Firefox users too
> lazy or bewildered to try another browser is good enough for
> stackexchange, because, goddammit, you take what you can get.
>
> To that argument I have my own acronymic rejoinder, derived from the
> old Cockney dictum: YPYMAYTYC.
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/28/magazine/on-language-you-pays-yer-m
>oney.html
>
:)
> > Cheers, Gene Heskett


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Curt wrote:

> I suppose you could argue that the percentage of Firefox users too lazy
> or bewildered to try another browser is good enough for stackexchange,
> because, goddammit, you take what you can get.

Please be nice - I am not lazy - I have Chromium, but I do not want to use
it. I like FF more and I can not accept the argument regarding 1 page
printing in FF, because other sites do not have the problem, hence it is
doable to overcome the issue from within the site (perhaps css
definitions - I do not know what exactly the issue is and I do not care).
If site developers may embed 100s of lines of code to check browser and
version and can adapt their sites to IE,FF and Chromium the least, they
could also take care of this "feature", so lazy is not me, but the one that
does not care, test or provide proper support for printing from within FF.
This is my opinion only, you may accept or not... and I agree with Gene -
stackexchange is phony in their philosophy, but it is their right to be so
and my right to qualify it as such. OF course you have the right to have a
different opinion and I respect this.

regards

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-06, Gene Heskett  wrote:
>> > >
>> > > I can confirm the 1 page Firefox printing snafu for the
>> > > stackexchange thread on the most recent stable Quantum. I can also
>> > > confirm that it is a *very* longstanding bug and that snafu is
>> > > indeed the proper acronymic term.
>> > >
>> > > In Chromium, though, the problem is absent.
>> >
>> > I think the question about is it on purpose on the part of
>> > stackexchange might be a prod to make on sign up for their spam, aka
>> > known as signing up and logging in. I did not, having been forced to
>> > sign up for cnczone to gain access to something I wanted, which
>> > trippled my incoming spam, with one of the spammers being so far out
>> > he scores 11.8 to spamd scanning the incoming mail. A new record
>> > here.  And it started 30 seconds after I'd filled out their plain as
>> > hell phishing form.
>>
>> Words of wisdom I heard recently - TANSTAAFL.
>
> Yep, perfect interpretation, Brian.

The one-page only snafu is a well-known and long-standing Firefox
printing bug impacting any number of web sites that affects neither
Chromium nor its derivatives.

As Chrome would appear to be the most popular extant browser (when
counting across all platforms, as well as uniquely on the desktop) your
stackexchange conspiracy theory looks to be leaking some significant
credibility through a rather large hole.

I suppose you could argue that the percentage of Firefox users too lazy
or bewildered to try another browser is good enough for stackexchange,
because, goddammit, you take what you can get. 

To that argument I have my own acronymic rejoinder, derived from the old
Cockney dictum: YPYMAYTYC.

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/28/magazine/on-language-you-pays-yer-money.html

> Cheers, Gene Heskett

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 05 January 2019 14:12:44 Brian wrote:

> On Sat 05 Jan 2019 at 13:58:57 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Saturday 05 January 2019 09:36:19 Curt wrote:
> > > On 2019-01-05, mick crane  wrote:
> > > > On 2019-01-04 21:11, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > > f course it is printable. Whatever you are doing is unknown.
> > > >
> > > >> My copy of FF only prints 1 page, which is the top  3" of the
> > > >> site's front page, never getting down to any of the text past
> > > >> the headline.
> > > >>
> > > >> And it works on other sites.
> > > >>
> > > >> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> > > >
> > > > what I do is drag the mouse over text copy/paste it into a text
> > > > editor. Sometimes lose the formatting.
> > > >
> > > > mick
> > >
> > > I can confirm the 1 page Firefox printing snafu for the
> > > stackexchange thread on the most recent stable Quantum. I can also
> > > confirm that it is a *very* longstanding bug and that snafu is
> > > indeed the proper acronymic term.
> > >
> > > In Chromium, though, the problem is absent.
> >
> > I think the question about is it on purpose on the part of
> > stackexchange might be a prod to make on sign up for their spam, aka
> > known as signing up and logging in. I did not, having been forced to
> > sign up for cnczone to gain access to something I wanted, which
> > trippled my incoming spam, with one of the spammers being so far out
> > he scores 11.8 to spamd scanning the incoming mail. A new record
> > here.  And it started 30 seconds after I'd filled out their plain as
> > hell phishing form.
>
> Words of wisdom I heard recently - TANSTAAFL.

Yep, perfect interpretation, Brian.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Sat 05 Jan 2019 at 13:58:57 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Saturday 05 January 2019 09:36:19 Curt wrote:
> 
> > On 2019-01-05, mick crane  wrote:
> > > On 2019-01-04 21:11, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > f course it is printable. Whatever you are doing is unknown.
> > >
> > >> My copy of FF only prints 1 page, which is the top  3" of the
> > >> site's front page, never getting down to any of the text past the
> > >> headline.
> > >>
> > >> And it works on other sites.
> > >>
> > >> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> > >
> > > what I do is drag the mouse over text copy/paste it into a text
> > > editor. Sometimes lose the formatting.
> > >
> > > mick
> >
> > I can confirm the 1 page Firefox printing snafu for the stackexchange
> > thread on the most recent stable Quantum. I can also confirm that it
> > is a *very* longstanding bug and that snafu is indeed the proper
> > acronymic term.
> >
> > In Chromium, though, the problem is absent.
> 
> I think the question about is it on purpose on the part of stackexchange 
> might be a prod to make on sign up for their spam, aka known as signing 
> up and logging in. I did not, having been forced to sign up for cnczone 
> to gain access to something I wanted, which trippled my incoming spam, 
> with one of the spammers being so far out he scores 11.8 to spamd 
> scanning the incoming mail. A new record here.  And it started 30 
> seconds after I'd filled out their plain as hell phishing form.

Words of wisdom I heard recently - TANSTAAFL.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 05 January 2019 09:36:19 Curt wrote:

> On 2019-01-05, mick crane  wrote:
> > On 2019-01-04 21:11, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > f course it is printable. Whatever you are doing is unknown.
> >
> >> My copy of FF only prints 1 page, which is the top  3" of the
> >> site's front page, never getting down to any of the text past the
> >> headline.
> >>
> >> And it works on other sites.
> >>
> >> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> >
> > what I do is drag the mouse over text copy/paste it into a text
> > editor. Sometimes lose the formatting.
> >
> > mick
>
> I can confirm the 1 page Firefox printing snafu for the stackexchange
> thread on the most recent stable Quantum. I can also confirm that it
> is a *very* longstanding bug and that snafu is indeed the proper
> acronymic term.
>
> In Chromium, though, the problem is absent.

I think the question about is it on purpose on the part of stackexchange 
might be a prod to make on sign up for their spam, aka known as signing 
up and logging in. I did not, having been forced to sign up for cnczone 
to gain access to something I wanted, which trippled my incoming spam, 
with one of the spammers being so far out he scores 11.8 to spamd 
scanning the incoming mail. A new record here.  And it started 30 
seconds after I'd filled out their plain as hell phishing form.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-05, mick crane  wrote:
> On 2019-01-04 21:11, Gene Heskett wrote:
> f course it is printable. Whatever you are doing is unknown.
>> 
>> My copy of FF only prints 1 page, which is the top  3" of the site's
>> front page, never getting down to any of the text past the headline.
>> 
>> And it works on other sites.
>> 
>> Cheers, Gene Heskett
>
> what I do is drag the mouse over text copy/paste it into a text editor.
> Sometimes lose the formatting.
>
> mick
>

I can confirm the 1 page Firefox printing snafu for the stackexchange thread on
the most recent stable Quantum. I can also confirm that it is a *very*
longstanding bug and that snafu is indeed the proper acronymic term.

In Chromium, though, the problem is absent.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-05, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> On Saturday 05 January 2019 04:14:41 Curt wrote:
>
>> On 2019-01-04, Gene Heskett  wrote:
>> > My copy of FF only prints 1 page, which is the top  3" of the site's
>> > front page, never getting down to any of the text past the headline.
>>
>> I saved the thread to a 7 page pdf file I can send you if you like
>> (156K).
>>
> Fire away. As a PM of course.

Done (from alpine; it's actually 6 pages because some fiddling was
required to prevent text from getting cut off at the bottom of the
page(s).

Hope everything you need is there somewhere.

>> > And it works on other sites.
>> >
>> > Cheers, Gene Heskett
>
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[mick crane]

On 2019-01-04 21:11, Gene Heskett wrote:
f course it is printable. Whatever you are doing is unknown.


My copy of FF only prints 1 page, which is the top  3" of the site's
front page, never getting down to any of the text past the headline.

And it works on other sites.

Cheers, Gene Heskett


what I do is drag the mouse over text copy/paste it into a text editor.
Sometimes lose the formatting.

mick

--
Key ID4BFEBB31

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 05 January 2019 04:14:41 Curt wrote:

> On 2019-01-04, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> > My copy of FF only prints 1 page, which is the top  3" of the site's
> > front page, never getting down to any of the text past the headline.
>
> I saved the thread to a 7 page pdf file I can send you if you like
> (156K).
>
Fire away. As a PM of course.

> > And it works on other sites.
> >
> > Cheers, Gene Heskett


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-04, Gene Heskett  wrote:
>
> My copy of FF only prints 1 page, which is the top  3" of the site's 
> front page, never getting down to any of the text past the headline.

I saved the thread to a 7 page pdf file I can send you if you like
(156K).

> And it works on other sites.
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 04 January 2019 16:27:45 Doug wrote:

> On 01/04/2019 03:52 PM, David Wright wrote:
> > On Fri 04 Jan 2019 at 15:27:11 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> >> On Friday 04 January 2019 13:46:28 deloptes wrote:
> >>> Gene Heskett wrote:
>  I've built 3 rt kernels on the pi, takes it about 4 hours. But
>  for the life of me, I can't find an installer that will actually
>  do the pi, its boot is a separate mess. I'm sure it can be done
>  as I also have a pair of rock64's running armbian, and I have
>  seen apt install a new kernel on the one I'm playing with, twice
>  to its u-sd card. And installer that actually works would be nice
>  as a make install doesn't seem to exist in the linux-rt kernel
>  sources I have pulled, from the linux-rt lists announcements do
>  not seem to have that recipe in the makefiles.
> >>>
> >>> There is a good how to I used for setting up RPI. I copied
> >>> whatever it needed to an old SD card and configured to boot from
> >>> NFS server. This made testing much easier. If I could do it I bet
> >>> you can as well
> >>>
> >>> Fore example see "The Boot" here
> >>> https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/39959/raspbian-boo
> >>>t-pr ocess-and-the-partition-table
> >>
> >> One HUGE problem with that page. Its not printable! What the he!!
> >> good is it if I can't take a print out to the machine and checkmark
> >> the steps as I go. Way to go stackexchange, not!.  But I did
> >> anyway. :)
> >
> > The workaround I use is to type ^A (selects all the text), then
> > paste into an emacs window. You lose the fancy formatting, so
> > sometimes it's worth editing it a little to make things clear.
> > Images complicate matters.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > David.
>
> I used cut-and-paste--Start with Raspian Boot Process and mark
> everything. As it starts to run off the screen at the bottom, use the
> down arrow to mark the rest.
> Control-C. Then I pasted the test into Kate. No sweat, and I don't
> have to learn emacs!
> If you don't have Kate, you must have another simple word processor
> type thing.
>
> --doug
I've even used nano like that.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 04 January 2019 16:27:44 deloptes wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > And becoming a bigger problem by each kernel release.  Just the
> > bigger stack image a context switch involves takes the 64 bit stuff
> > into the very close to unusable state. Even the hit of enabling pae
> > on the 32 bit stuff is a quite noticeable hit on the rt performance.
> > And it doesn't make a lot of sense, with 2 gigs of ram in one of
> > these machines, it rarely gets into swap. Put another 2 gigs in it,
> > and before you can say uptime, its into swap by 3-5 hundred megs.
> > Pure nonsense to this old fart. Sigh, but they won't let me anywhere
> > near the rope that sounds the whistle.
>
> Why would it swap, because of the RT using memory that can not be
> freed up? Don't know how much RAM cnc requires but 2GB is a lot.

More than enough for LCNC, deloptes.  Its running on the pi with only a 
gig of ram. In a weeks uptime, it has not touched a 10Gb swap. Hasn't 
been particularly busy but LCNC has been running, with the machine power 
disabled all this time. I have that one rigged to shut off all machine 
power when motion is disabled.


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> Disk /dev/mmcblk0p1: 41 MiB, 42991616 bytes, 83968 sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disklabel type: dos
> Disk identifier: 0x
> 
> No partitions, so  much of the rest isn't applicable.

"The boot" explains well how the boot works, otherwise check this

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/

But to me it was not very useful

This is another one that shows the boot process
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/10442/what-is-the-boot-sequence

The point is that you can fully customize/optimize the RPI by fine tuning
it. However I did not find meaningful application for it :), but it looks
like you may.

regards

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> My copy of FF only prints 1 page, which is the top  3" of the site's
> front page, never getting down to any of the text past the headline.
> 
> And it works on other sites.

Same here

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> And becoming a bigger problem by each kernel release.  Just the bigger
> stack image a context switch involves takes the 64 bit stuff into the
> very close to unusable state. Even the hit of enabling pae on the 32 bit
> stuff is a quite noticeable hit on the rt performance. And it doesn't
> make a lot of sense, with 2 gigs of ram in one of these machines, it
> rarely gets into swap. Put another 2 gigs in it, and before you can say
> uptime, its into swap by 3-5 hundred megs. Pure nonsense to this old
> fart. Sigh, but they won't let me anywhere near the rope that sounds the
> whistle.

Why would it swap, because of the RT using memory that can not be freed up?
Don't know how much RAM cnc requires but 2GB is a lot.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Doug]

On 01/04/2019 03:52 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Fri 04 Jan 2019 at 15:27:11 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:

On Friday 04 January 2019 13:46:28 deloptes wrote:

Gene Heskett wrote:

I've built 3 rt kernels on the pi, takes it about 4 hours. But for
the life of me, I can't find an installer that will actually do the
pi, its boot is a separate mess. I'm sure it can be done as I also
have a pair of rock64's running armbian, and I have seen apt install
a new kernel on the one I'm playing with, twice to its u-sd card.
And installer that actually works would be nice as a make install
doesn't seem to exist in the linux-rt kernel sources I have pulled,
from the linux-rt lists announcements do not seem to have that
recipe in the makefiles.

There is a good how to I used for setting up RPI. I copied whatever it
needed to an old SD card and configured to boot from NFS server. This
made testing much easier. If I could do it I bet you can as well

Fore example see "The Boot" here
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/39959/raspbian-boot-pr
ocess-and-the-partition-table

One HUGE problem with that page. Its not printable! What the he!! good is
it if I can't take a print out to the machine and checkmark the steps as
I go. Way to go stackexchange, not!.  But I did anyway. :)

The workaround I use is to type ^A (selects all the text), then paste
into an emacs window. You lose the fancy formatting, so sometimes it's
worth editing it a little to make things clear. Images complicate matters.

Cheers,
David.



I used cut-and-paste--Start with Raspian Boot Process and mark everything.
As it starts to run off the screen at the bottom, use the down arrow to 
mark the rest.
Control-C. Then I pasted the test into Kate. No sweat, and I don't have 
to learn emacs!
If you don't have Kate, you must have another simple word processor type 
thing.


--doug

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 04 January 2019 15:57:24 Andy Smith wrote:

> Hi Gene,
>
> On Fri, Jan 04, 2019 at 03:27:11PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Friday 04 January 2019 13:46:28 deloptes wrote:
> > > Fore example see "The Boot" here
> > > https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/39959/raspbian-boo
> > >t-pr ocess-and-the-partition-table
> >
> > One HUGE problem with that page. Its not printable!
>
> One can obtain a plain text copy of the source of a Stack Exchange
> answer by clicking on the date of the answer and then clicking on
> the "source" link.
>
> https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/revisions/f5dc1641-0ca8-4824-be0
>e-98985d8f83cd/view-source
>
I'll try to remember that. I did look around for a print tool, but there 
isn't one.

Thanks Andy.

> Cheers,
> Andy


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 04 January 2019 15:38:32 Brian wrote:

> On Fri 04 Jan 2019 at 15:27:11 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Friday 04 January 2019 13:46:28 deloptes wrote:
> > > Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > > I've built 3 rt kernels on the pi, takes it about 4 hours. But
> > > > for the life of me, I can't find an installer that will actually
> > > > do the pi, its boot is a separate mess. I'm sure it can be done
> > > > as I also have a pair of rock64's running armbian, and I have
> > > > seen apt install a new kernel on the one I'm playing with, twice
> > > > to its u-sd card. And installer that actually works would be
> > > > nice as a make install doesn't seem to exist in the linux-rt
> > > > kernel sources I have pulled, from the linux-rt lists
> > > > announcements do not seem to have that recipe in the makefiles.
> > >
> > > There is a good how to I used for setting up RPI. I copied
> > > whatever it needed to an old SD card and configured to boot from
> > > NFS server. This made testing much easier. If I could do it I bet
> > > you can as well
> > >
> > > Fore example see "The Boot" here
> > > https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/39959/raspbian-boo
> > >t-pr ocess-and-the-partition-table
> >
> > One HUGE problem with that page. Its not printable! What the he!!
> > good is
>
> Of course it is printable. Whatever you are doing is unknown.

My copy of FF only prints 1 page, which is the top  3" of the site's 
front page, never getting down to any of the text past the headline.

And it works on other sites.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 04 January 2019 14:31:10 deloptes wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Can I trade the pickity nfs link in on an sshfs version? I use that
> > here as its quite bulletproof. The login without the checksum files
> > might be a hassle though. I'll certainly look that link over, thank
> > you.
>
> I don't know about sshfs - not heard that you can mount root over
> sshfs. if on NFS root it speeds up testing RPI a lot. After you get
> the magic combination working good, move the setup to the SD card if
> needed.

No, or at least I've not done it, if I have something that needs to go in 
a root user controlled area, I copy it to my /home/me partition on the 
target machine, then ssh in as me, and sudo to get the rights needed to 
put the file where it needs to go.  So thats not something readily 
amenable to scripting. That would be handier than bottled beer at times, 
but I can also understand the security problems that would expose if it 
blindly allowed the copy. Its been years since I had an NFS setup, seems 
it was always on the missing list whenever I needed it the worst. Within 
its perms limits, sshfs Just Works(TM).

> As for the kernel I build with cross-compiling toolchain and used qemu
> to the nfs share. The RPI2B was really slow.

So is the 3b, since the SSD I have attached so I have room enough to 
play, must also be accessed thru that internal and slow usb-2 port.
I build those kernels on the SSD, not on the u-sd using up all those 
write cycles. On the rock64, similar SSD plugged into the usb-3 port, 
which due to a silicon bug, has been resticted to usb-2 speeds, but its 
about an hour on the rock64 to build the same but arm64 flavored kernel 
on it. I can live with that if it actually made it usable.

Gawd I miss grub on these teeny power mizerly things.
>
> I look now at the notes and it feels I see them for the first time ...
> it was just 4y ago.

At my age, 84, its a lot quicker than that. Some vitamin b1 seems to help 
me pay attention though.

> I am very interested in the RT issues you discuss, but mostly because
> I know that linux is not RT and couldn't have time to investigate,
> however it is one problem for the industry/machinery.

And becoming a bigger problem by each kernel release.  Just the bigger 
stack image a context switch involves takes the 64 bit stuff into the 
very close to unusable state. Even the hit of enabling pae on the 32 bit 
stuff is a quite noticeable hit on the rt performance. And it doesn't 
make a lot of sense, with 2 gigs of ram in one of these machines, it 
rarely gets into swap. Put another 2 gigs in it, and before you can say 
uptime, its into swap by 3-5 hundred megs. Pure nonsense to this old 
fart. Sigh, but they won't let me anywhere near the rope that sounds the 
whistle.

> regards


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Andy Smith]

Hi Gene,

On Fri, Jan 04, 2019 at 03:27:11PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Friday 04 January 2019 13:46:28 deloptes wrote:
> > Fore example see "The Boot" here
> > https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/39959/raspbian-boot-pr
> >ocess-and-the-partition-table
> 
> One HUGE problem with that page. Its not printable!

One can obtain a plain text copy of the source of a Stack Exchange
answer by clicking on the date of the answer and then clicking on
the "source" link.

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/revisions/f5dc1641-0ca8-4824-be0e-98985d8f83cd/view-source

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[David Wright]

On Fri 04 Jan 2019 at 15:27:11 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Friday 04 January 2019 13:46:28 deloptes wrote:
> > Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > I've built 3 rt kernels on the pi, takes it about 4 hours. But for
> > > the life of me, I can't find an installer that will actually do the
> > > pi, its boot is a separate mess. I'm sure it can be done as I also
> > > have a pair of rock64's running armbian, and I have seen apt install
> > > a new kernel on the one I'm playing with, twice to its u-sd card.
> > > And installer that actually works would be nice as a make install
> > > doesn't seem to exist in the linux-rt kernel sources I have pulled,
> > > from the linux-rt lists announcements do not seem to have that
> > > recipe in the makefiles.
> >
> > There is a good how to I used for setting up RPI. I copied whatever it
> > needed to an old SD card and configured to boot from NFS server. This
> > made testing much easier. If I could do it I bet you can as well
> >
> > Fore example see "The Boot" here
> > https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/39959/raspbian-boot-pr
> >ocess-and-the-partition-table
> 
> One HUGE problem with that page. Its not printable! What the he!! good is 
> it if I can't take a print out to the machine and checkmark the steps as 
> I go. Way to go stackexchange, not!.  But I did anyway. :)

The workaround I use is to type ^A (selects all the text), then paste
into an emacs window. You lose the fancy formatting, so sometimes it's
worth editing it a little to make things clear. Images complicate matters.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Brian]

On Fri 04 Jan 2019 at 15:27:11 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Friday 04 January 2019 13:46:28 deloptes wrote:
> 
> > Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > I've built 3 rt kernels on the pi, takes it about 4 hours. But for
> > > the life of me, I can't find an installer that will actually do the
> > > pi, its boot is a separate mess. I'm sure it can be done as I also
> > > have a pair of rock64's running armbian, and I have seen apt install
> > > a new kernel on the one I'm playing with, twice to its u-sd card.
> > > And installer that actually works would be nice as a make install
> > > doesn't seem to exist in the linux-rt kernel sources I have pulled,
> > > from the linux-rt lists announcements do not seem to have that
> > > recipe in the makefiles.
> >
> > There is a good how to I used for setting up RPI. I copied whatever it
> > needed to an old SD card and configured to boot from NFS server. This
> > made testing much easier. If I could do it I bet you can as well
> >
> > Fore example see "The Boot" here
> > https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/39959/raspbian-boot-pr
> >ocess-and-the-partition-table
> 
> One HUGE problem with that page. Its not printable! What the he!! good is 

Of course it is printable. Whatever you are doing is unknown.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 04 January 2019 13:46:28 deloptes wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > I've built 3 rt kernels on the pi, takes it about 4 hours. But for
> > the life of me, I can't find an installer that will actually do the
> > pi, its boot is a separate mess. I'm sure it can be done as I also
> > have a pair of rock64's running armbian, and I have seen apt install
> > a new kernel on the one I'm playing with, twice to its u-sd card.
> > And installer that actually works would be nice as a make install
> > doesn't seem to exist in the linux-rt kernel sources I have pulled,
> > from the linux-rt lists announcements do not seem to have that
> > recipe in the makefiles.
>
> There is a good how to I used for setting up RPI. I copied whatever it
> needed to an old SD card and configured to boot from NFS server. This
> made testing much easier. If I could do it I bet you can as well
>
> Fore example see "The Boot" here
> https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/39959/raspbian-boot-pr
>ocess-and-the-partition-table

One HUGE problem with that page. Its not printable! What the he!! good is 
it if I can't take a print out to the machine and checkmark the steps as 
I go. Way to go stackexchange, not!.  But I did anyway. :)

But its also NOOBS centric and I think I'm booting via a different system 
with the images i'm using. Yeah my df looks very little like the report 
here, but it doesn't say. Then at whats line 112 in my printout, the 
poster is using a widows box for a buffer.

Then he talks about the partitions on /dev/mmcblk0p1 which fdisk shows 
almost nothing:

Disk /dev/mmcblk0p1: 41 MiB, 42991616 bytes, 83968 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x

No partitions, so  much of the rest isn't applicable.


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Alessandro Vesely wrote:

> Given the current cooperation between Devuan and Debian maintainers on
> init-diversity, I'd say that issue is fully resolved, and I'm reassured
> that a distribution like the one I like is going to be available for the
> foreseeable future.
> 
> Would you say that messy "bullshit" marked the turn point where the aim
> shifted from servers to laptops?  In that case, I can understand there
> wasn't a rule for it...

I don't know the real truth behind the decision, but this is the conclusion
I make.
The sad consequence is that resources are spent and communities are divided.
The consequence of this is that output power is lost.

The good thing is that may be more engineers and hobby developers can work
on that in the future. We'll see what it will bring to us. For now the
above mentioned diversity is the only diversity that makes sense ;-)

regards

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> Can I trade the pickity nfs link in on an sshfs version? I use that here
> as its quite bulletproof. The login without the checksum files might be
> a hassle though. I'll certainly look that link over, thank you.

I don't know about sshfs - not heard that you can mount root over sshfs.
if on NFS root it speeds up testing RPI a lot. After you get the magic
combination working good, move the setup to the SD card if needed.

As for the kernel I build with cross-compiling toolchain and used qemu to
the nfs share. The RPI2B was really slow.

I look now at the notes and it feels I see them for the first time ... it
was just 4y ago.

I am very interested in the RT issues you discuss, but mostly because I know
that linux is not RT and couldn't have time to investigate, however it is
one problem for the industry/machinery.

regards

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 04 January 2019 13:46:28 deloptes wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > I've built 3 rt kernels on the pi, takes it about 4 hours. But for
> > the life of me, I can't find an installer that will actually do the
> > pi, its boot is a separate mess. I'm sure it can be done as I also
> > have a pair of rock64's running armbian, and I have seen apt install
> > a new kernel on the one I'm playing with, twice to its u-sd card.
> > And installer that actually works would be nice as a make install
> > doesn't seem to exist in the linux-rt kernel sources I have pulled,
> > from the linux-rt lists announcements do not seem to have that
> > recipe in the makefiles.
>
> There is a good how to I used for setting up RPI. I copied whatever it
> needed to an old SD card and configured to boot from NFS server. This
> made testing much easier. If I could do it I bet you can as well
>
> Fore example see "The Boot" here

> https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/39959/raspbian-boot-pr
>ocess-and-the-partition-table

Can I trade the pickity nfs link in on an sshfs version? I use that here 
as its quite bulletproof. The login without the checksum files might be 
a hassle though. I'll certainly look that link over, thank you.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> I've built 3 rt kernels on the pi, takes it about 4 hours. But for the
> life of me, I can't find an installer that will actually do the pi, its
> boot is a separate mess. I'm sure it can be done as I also have a pair
> of rock64's running armbian, and I have seen apt install a new kernel on
> the one I'm playing with, twice to its u-sd card. And installer that
> actually works would be nice as a make install doesn't seem to exist in
> the linux-rt kernel sources I have pulled, from the linux-rt lists
> announcements do not seem to have that recipe in the makefiles.

There is a good how to I used for setting up RPI. I copied whatever it
needed to an old SD card and configured to boot from NFS server. This made
testing much easier. If I could do it I bet you can as well 

Fore example see "The Boot" here
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/39959/raspbian-boot-process-and-the-partition-table

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 04 January 2019 09:57:07 Curt wrote:

> On 2019-01-04, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> >> Dear Ivan, no one said something about systemd, because the topic
> >> was discussed and closed on the list.
> >> Not sure about Gene, but I use good old sysv init and for Gods
> >> sake, no one thinks of running systemd on a firewall (I hope)
> >
> > Just one of the reasons I have 5 boxes here running wheezy yet, one
> > running jessie. But its an armhf, an r-pi 3b TBE, and it is also
> > behind dd-wrt.  Perhaps I should watch the dd-wrt logs to see if
> > Ivan has come calling but no one answered the doorbell?
>
> You're running an obsolete release with no security support on five
> machines to obviate the eventuality of getting cracked by the Ruskies?

I'd be having nightmares if they were all hooked to the net with nothing 
but a switch or hub, but they are not. dd-wrt is the guard dog, and he's 
insatiable, eats that stuff up and never gets fat or leaves any 
excrement/residue.  Best kept security secret I know of.  A little bit 
like JoAnne Dow's pet dragon Mikey, who'se trained to answer the 
doorbell. Cucamonga(sp?), where JoAnne lives, ran out of door to door 
salesmen years ago.

Even if I was to update my stuff, I'd have to save out and reinstall a 
3.4-9-rtai-686-pae kernel (which isn't in fact pae) because its an rtai 
patched kernel which can run the base thread at a 25 microsecond 
repetition rate with latency's in the 2 microsecond timing error at the 
50% point in a histogram. Normal kernels are just a big splat spread 
over 100's of milliseconds. Even worse if an nvidia driver is installed. 
You cannot drive a stepper motor when you haven't a real heartbeat.

So later kernels have to be patched to even maintain a decent 1  
millisecond servo thread rate, using an fpga card to handle the 
microsecond critical stuff. And that raises the cost of an LCNC install, 
depending on what you want the machine to do, by as much as $300 a 
machine.

Because of poor kernel performance, there is no new full iso release of 
LinuxCNC newer than an older wheezy. The LCNC buildbot has stuff for 
stretch, but only for simulation, the realtime stuff just doesn't cut 
it. For either jessie or stretch. My jessie install on an r-pi-3b is 
bleeding edge and occasionally needs bandaids. Mostly avoided by my 
pinning the kernel and its matching library, both of which have a 
totally different numbering scheme from the normal x86 versions.
uname -a reports it as 4.4.4-rt9-v7+ #7 SMP PREEMPT RT. And a 
latency-test report says I should move more of the not so time critical 
stuff to an even slower thread, its taking the 1 millisecond servo loop 
around 1.25 milliseconds to run. I have 90% of the hand controls running 
in a slower 5 millisecond (200 hertz) loop.  There are no hand cranks on 
that 70 yo machine, motors driving ball screws have replaced all that, 
so it has $20 encoder dials from mpja.com to move it by hand. Movement 
per click adjustable starting at .0001" per click. All built by me.

Stephen R. has found the biggest timing problem with the later 64 bit 
kernels and is directing the effort to get rid of that time wasting call 
in favor of something faster, so I'm copying the linux-rt list to track 
that effort. But this is already TL;DR. And I have to go see if my 
missus is ready for some lunch.

Take care now Curt.
 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Alessandro Vesely]

On Thu 03/Jan/2019 18:53:14 +0100 Miles Fidelman wrote:
> [...]

> And then there was all the bullshit about how systemd was handled -
> including resignations of core developers over it.

Given the current cooperation between Devuan and Debian maintainers on
init-diversity, I'd say that issue is fully resolved, and I'm reassured that a
distribution like the one I like is going to be available for the foreseeable
future.

Would you say that messy "bullshit" marked the turn point where the aim shifted
from servers to laptops?  In that case, I can understand there wasn't a rule
for it...

Best
Ale
-- 









signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Curt]

On 2019-01-04, Gene Heskett  wrote:
>>
>> Dear Ivan, no one said something about systemd, because the topic was
>> discussed and closed on the list.
>> Not sure about Gene, but I use good old sysv init and for Gods sake,
>> no one thinks of running systemd on a firewall (I hope)
>>
> Just one of the reasons I have 5 boxes here running wheezy yet, one 
> running jessie. But its an armhf, an r-pi 3b TBE, and it is also behind 
> dd-wrt.  Perhaps I should watch the dd-wrt logs to see if Ivan has come 
> calling but no one answered the doorbell?

You're running an obsolete release with no security support on five
machines to obviate the eventuality of getting cracked by the Ruskies?

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 04 January 2019 03:34:31 deloptes wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Just one of the reasons I have 5 boxes here running wheezy yet, one
> > running jessie. But its an armhf, an r-pi 3b TBE, and it is also
> > behind dd-wrt.  Perhaps I should watch the dd-wrt logs to see if
> > Ivan has come calling but no one answered the doorbell?
> >
> :) I bought 2006 or 2007 two industrial PCs (fanless). On is for
> : testing and
>
> one for production. I also was not able to upgrade from wheezy for
> couple of years, because there was no kernel to work out of the box
> with the chipset and CPU. Few years ago I took my time after office
> work to dig into it. I set up NFS boot/root, so that I can easily test
> and found the problem. I could compile 4.x kernel. After it was clear
> what is the magicall combination of features/configuration it was easy
> to keep up with upgrades. The setup was transferred to the CF card of
> the PC and is happily serving as a FW and VPN.
>
> Regarding the systemd it is installed as dependency, but not running
> ... Anyway these boards are not booting with systemd, but thanks God
> there are the sysv packages that make it easy to setup, so as far as
> we have choice I am happy with debian.

I've built 3 rt kernels on the pi, takes it about 4 hours. But for the 
life of me, I can't find an installer that will actually do the pi, its 
boot is a separate mess. I'm sure it can be done as I also have a pair 
of rock64's running armbian, and I have seen apt install a new kernel on 
the one I'm playing with, twice to its u-sd card. And installer that 
actually works would be nice as a make install doesn't seem to exist in 
the linux-rt kernel sources I have pulled, from the linux-rt lists 
announcements do not seem to have that recipe in the makefiles.

I've tried several different kernels built for realtime from elsewhere, 
and they all have a common problem to a lessor or greater degree, they 
throw away mouse and keyboard events from their own consoles. Remote 
logins via ssh work well.

This problem varies in its severity with a reboot, do it enough times and 
it will eventually work well, and the uptime is good till the next power 
drop.

Other than that, its driving a mesa 7i90HD interface card, which is 
controlling an 11x54 Sheldon lathe quite nicely. writing 32 bit packets 
at 42 megabaud, and reading the responses at 25 megabaud using an 
rpspi.ko driver a prof from Sweden wrote. But its pickity about its 
arms, so it checks for an rpi-3b when its loaded, and exits if its not 
an r-pi-3b. The srcs for that driver are gpl, and part of the LinuxCNC 
src packages any one can download from linuxcnc.org. The spi and the 
radio on the pi are the 2 signals I'm aware of that bypass this usb-2 
pinhole. So on a pi, the spi, built of 4 pins of the gpio, is more than 
quick enough to do the realtime job well as the fpga card handles all 
the stuff needed for control with a reasonably steady 1 kilohertz servo 
loop. The fpga card handles the 50 megahertz stuff, needed to be able to 
drive a stepper motor well.

The rock64 is many times faster because its i/o doesn't have to fight for 
bandwidth to get thru its internal usb-2 hub, so the i/o is much more 
robust, and has 4 Gigs of memory, but the support sucks dead toads thru 
soda straws, so I've made zero progress in a years time in transplanting 
LinuxCNC to it. Their only interest is in doing multimedia servers with 
it, and that doesn't need the sort of realtime LinuxCNC needs.

If you've some links to such installers running on the pi or on the 
rock64, I'd be delighted to check them out.

> regards

To you too deloptes.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> Just one of the reasons I have 5 boxes here running wheezy yet, one
> running jessie. But its an armhf, an r-pi 3b TBE, and it is also behind
> dd-wrt.  Perhaps I should watch the dd-wrt logs to see if Ivan has come
> calling but no one answered the doorbell?

:) I bought 2006 or 2007 two industrial PCs (fanless). On is for testing and
one for production. I also was not able to upgrade from wheezy for couple
of years, because there was no kernel to work out of the box with the
chipset and CPU. Few years ago I took my time after office work to dig into
it. I set up NFS boot/root, so that I can easily test and found the
problem. I could compile 4.x kernel. After it was clear what is the
magicall combination of features/configuration it was easy to keep up with
upgrades. The setup was transferred to the CF card of the PC and is happily
serving as a FW and VPN.

Regarding the systemd it is installed as dependency, but not running ...
Anyway these boards are not booting with systemd, but thanks God there are
the sysv packages that make it easy to setup, so as far as we have choice I
am happy with debian.

regards

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 03 January 2019 16:12:00 deloptes wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 10:02 PM Ivan Ivanov  
wrote:
> > "Debian just plain works" - that's until someone discovers a yet
> > another one 0-day SystemD vuln and your server is Pwned.
> > I am telling it to you as a true Russian hacker, mwahahahaha!
> > Cheers,
> > Ivan Ivanov,
> > hacking SystemD while you sleep ;)
>
> Dear Ivan, no one said something about systemd, because the topic was
> discussed and closed on the list.
> Not sure about Gene, but I use good old sysv init and for Gods sake,
> no one thinks of running systemd on a firewall (I hope)
>
Just one of the reasons I have 5 boxes here running wheezy yet, one 
running jessie. But its an armhf, an r-pi 3b TBE, and it is also behind 
dd-wrt.  Perhaps I should watch the dd-wrt logs to see if Ivan has come 
calling but no one answered the doorbell?

> As for the useful program, as you are a hacker, you would be able to
> build a debian package and install it on your machines easily, so I
> wonder if it is word the record to ring those bells so loud.
>
> regards


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Johann Klammer]

On 01/02/2019 12:00 PM, Alessandro Baggi wrote:
> Hi list,
> I'm new to this list and I'm choosing the right distribution for server 
> needs. I hope that I'm not OT and don't want start a flame. I'm evaluating 
> the possibility to switch on debian so I hope you will give your experiences 
> about this topic.
> 
> At the moment I'm using CentOS 7 on server and workstation but very old 
> software, add third repos for get some software, use unmaintained software 
> where patchs are released by dev distro team, big changes between a current 
> release and next release, big corporation piloted distro, waiting that rh 
> release a security patches and then recompiled on centos, problem on new 
> hardware, unable to install new software from source due to old libs get me 
> bored, and frustated in the last year. I like flexibility and I noticed that 
> centos chains my knowledge.
> 
> Today seems that RH Family is the standard and rh is more supported by 
> software vendors. Considering 10 years of support, Selinux working out of the 
> box, stability, enteprise class and free distro..user choose Centos with the 
> perception that things work better because all is "followed" by a 
> corporation. With this assumption users feel more secure and unfailing.
> 
> This is not necessarely true. I think that is the sysadmin that make things 
> safer, secure and unfailing. Sure that a stable and reliable OS take his part 
> but when big blue take this game I'm not so sure about centos future. What if 
> someone will choose to drop centos project? Maybe this is premature but from 
> this "Why not choose a stable and community piloted distro where user needs 
> are first purpose?"
> 
> I used Debian in the past on several server for a big company without any 
> problems but now are several years that I use centos on server and 
> workstation and today I lost my debian knowledge about stability on server 
> usage.
> 
> Why you choose debian on server? Where for you it is better than centos and 
> other server distro?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> Alessandro.

Be careful with that. I've seen aptitude crash with SIGILL on an older box used 
as fileserver. 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 10:42 PM Ivan Ivanov  wrote:

> Well, the topic title is "Why choose Debian on server" and I thought
> of it as a perfect opportunity to compare Debian with another very
> similar OS, Devuan. + To be honest, it is not the removal of a package
> that worried me (of course almost anyone could do
> wget/configure/make/make install),
>

I do debuild it works for code written in 2001-2002


> but that Debian has started taking political decisions over technical
> (someone didn't like the name of a package (weboob) which has been a
> part of Debian for 8 years ---> reeemove!),
> and for a technical project this is a really bad sign.
>
>
Don't know the story - if you have links
Definitely political correctness/madness has gone too far in recent years.
I doubt it will end well. Historically you can compare with the middle ages
- the landlord=company, the church=political correctness and so on.
Fortunately you have a choice and I wonder why you post to Debian User.


> Best regards and have a happy holidays,
>
> Same to you and please stop top posting

regards

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 10:02 PM Ivan Ivanov  wrote:

> "Debian just plain works" - that's until someone discovers a yet
> another one 0-day SystemD vuln and your server is Pwned.
> I am telling it to you as a true Russian hacker, mwahahahaha!
> Cheers,
> Ivan Ivanov,
> hacking SystemD while you sleep ;)
>
>
Dear Ivan, no one said something about systemd, because the topic was
discussed and closed on the list.
Not sure about Gene, but I use good old sysv init and for Gods sake, no one
thinks of running systemd on a firewall (I hope)

As for the useful program, as you are a hacker, you would be able to build
a debian package and install it on your machines easily, so I wonder if it
is word the record to ring those bells so loud.

regards

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> but
> don't burden us users who already have security, with your paranoia. Its
> being very inconvenient to have your paranoia forced on us the users.
> 

+1

> Other than that beef, debian just plain works, what more could we need?

+1

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 03 January 2019 10:24:41 steef wrote:

> having allmost the same history: i agree completely roberto
>
> steef
>
> On 03-01-19 16:12, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 02, 2019 at 11:51:25AM +0100, Alessandro Baggi wrote:
> >> Why you choose debian on server? Where for you it is better than
> >> centos and other server distro?
> >
> > I actually started with Debian on my laptop.  As a college student I
> > was assigned a project that had to run on the school Linux cluster
> > (RedHat 6.2, if I recall correctly).  I installed RedHat on my
> > laptop since I wanted something closer to that environment for my
> > development work.  It was a real pain.  The "Red Hat way" seemed so
> > convoluted.
> >
> > A friend who worked tech support in the CS department at school
> > handed me a Debian install CD for Woody, which had just been
> > released.  Back in those days Debian's installer was notoriously
> > difficult to use, so I did not manage to complete the installation. 
> > I asked my friend for help with the install and once I overcame that
> > obstacle, I was all set.  The first thing I noticed was that the
> > "Debian way" seemed so much more sensible to me compared to the "Red
> > Hat way".
> >
> > After that, I decided to set up Debian on a spare PC in the house
> > and use it as a firewall/web server/mail server/etc.  I have been
> > trying to push Debian everywhere I go since.
> >
> > Now, before you go and think that I am biased, I will say that I am
> > actually biased :-)
> >
> > I certified as a RHCE some years ago and I can honestly say that
> > only highlighted to me how much more comfortable Debian feels in
> > everyday use both on the desktop and on the server.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > -Roberto
I have a friend who uses centos on everything, includeing all the 
machines in the ditches at the tv station where I was the chief engineer 
for the last 18 years of my working life. I introduced red hat 5.0 on my 
own office machine which I built from parts in 1998 or so. He borrowed 
my floppies and built a test machine a month later, and took a class at 
the uni a few months later, and today has 2 machines on his desk so he 
can keep up with both. Today, the news and weather depts all run on 
windows using programs from associated press, but everything that runs 
the tech dept on the ground floor and in the control room where 4 
channels of tv are run from, is running on centos servers he built, 
servers that can record as high as 6 streams of hi-def video, while 
simultaneously playing 4 streams. He's built 2 of those, most of the 
editing gear too. All running centos.  I went to fedora when it came out 
but got tired of being treated as an expendable lab rat, tried mandrake 
and pclos, even Mepis for a few months, them ubuntu starting with 6.04 
because linuxcnc had migrated to it, but when they migrated to debian so 
did I, nearly a decade ago. Support is generally great, and generally it 
Just works.

They've only done one thing I disagree with, and that is the requirement 
for the first operator to login at the  machines own console after a 
reboot before the x-server is started. Working on one of my machines, 
updating it and getting it ready for the next days job, its a pain in 
the ass to have to get dressed for winter weather, walk up the hill to 
the building that machine is in, and login just to get the x-server 
running so I can come back to the house and write gcode that machine 
will run tomorrow from a comfy chair, even exercising that code to see 
and correct mistakes without motor power on the machine that box is 
running. Everything here is connected to the internet by way of several 
switches on this side of dd-wrt making the net connection. In the 15 
years I've had this setup, only one person has come thru it to get into 
this machine, is that same friend and I had to give him on the phone, 
the usernames and passwords. Not another attacker has managed that and 
the logs on the router show there are still thousands an hour trying.

So my stuff has good isolation, yet every one of them has access to the 
repo's or can go browsing the net.  Such a change, in not starting the 
x=server at reboot, ready for all callers with the ssh or sshfs 
credentials is not security here, its paranoia on the part of the 
developers at debian, probaby developed from past experience with 
windblows hooked directly to a modem.

If the developers want real security, get your network thru dd-wrt, but 
don't burden us users who already have security, with your paranoia. Its 
being very inconvenient to have your paranoia forced on us the users.

Other than that beef, debian just plain works, what more could we need?

I'll probably follow the linuxcnc folks if they switch distros to base it 
on. But I am comfy with debian. And there you have it. Debian rocks, 
while centos looks way too much like winblows. My friend has at least 75 
icons for this and that on his basic screen. Ugly. But 

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Miles Fidelman]

On 1/3/19 5:55 AM, Reco wrote:


Hi.

On Wed, Jan 02, 2019 at 02:56:41PM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:

some of the recent politics, has made me far less comfortable that Debian will 
remain a stable platform - and I'm seriously considering migrating to either 
Gentoo or a BSD platform.

LOL, you've made my day, sir. It's hardly wise to consider FreeBSD as a
shelter from 'political issues' - [1], [2], and that's the only alive
BSD these days.


Except for NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, and, of course, OSX.

As to the political issues - looks like a reasonable, and detailed 
policy AND PROCEDURES to me - not like the kangaroo court in the Debian 
world.  And then there was all the bullshit about how systemd was 
handled - including resignations of core developers over it.



--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

steef wrote:

> having allmost the same history: i agree completely roberto

+1

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[steef]

having allmost the same history: i agree completely roberto

steef



On 03-01-19 16:12, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:

On Wed, Jan 02, 2019 at 11:51:25AM +0100, Alessandro Baggi wrote:


Why you choose debian on server? Where for you it is better than centos and
other server distro?


I actually started with Debian on my laptop.  As a college student I was
assigned a project that had to run on the school Linux cluster (RedHat
6.2, if I recall correctly).  I installed RedHat on my laptop since I
wanted something closer to that environment for my development work.  It
was a real pain.  The "Red Hat way" seemed so convoluted.

A friend who worked tech support in the CS department at school handed
me a Debian install CD for Woody, which had just been released.  Back in
those days Debian's installer was notoriously difficult to use, so I did
not manage to complete the installation.  I asked my friend for help
with the install and once I overcame that obstacle, I was all set.  The
first thing I noticed was that the "Debian way" seemed so much more
sensible to me compared to the "Red Hat way".

After that, I decided to set up Debian on a spare PC in the house and
use it as a firewall/web server/mail server/etc.  I have been trying to
push Debian everywhere I go since.

Now, before you go and think that I am biased, I will say that I am
actually biased :-)

I certified as a RHCE some years ago and I can honestly say that only
highlighted to me how much more comfortable Debian feels in everyday use
both on the desktop and on the server.

Regards,

-Roberto

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Roberto C . Sánchez]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2019 at 11:51:25AM +0100, Alessandro Baggi wrote:
> 
> Why you choose debian on server? Where for you it is better than centos and
> other server distro?
> 
I actually started with Debian on my laptop.  As a college student I was
assigned a project that had to run on the school Linux cluster (RedHat
6.2, if I recall correctly).  I installed RedHat on my laptop since I
wanted something closer to that environment for my development work.  It
was a real pain.  The "Red Hat way" seemed so convoluted.

A friend who worked tech support in the CS department at school handed
me a Debian install CD for Woody, which had just been released.  Back in
those days Debian's installer was notoriously difficult to use, so I did
not manage to complete the installation.  I asked my friend for help
with the install and once I overcame that obstacle, I was all set.  The
first thing I noticed was that the "Debian way" seemed so much more
sensible to me compared to the "Red Hat way".

After that, I decided to set up Debian on a spare PC in the house and
use it as a firewall/web server/mail server/etc.  I have been trying to
push Debian everywhere I go since.

Now, before you go and think that I am biased, I will say that I am
actually biased :-)

I certified as a RHCE some years ago and I can honestly say that only
highlighted to me how much more comfortable Debian feels in everyday use
both on the desktop and on the server.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Reco]

Hi.

On Wed, Jan 02, 2019 at 02:56:41PM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> some of the recent politics, has made me far less comfortable that Debian 
> will remain a stable platform - and I'm seriously considering migrating to 
> either Gentoo or a BSD platform.

LOL, you've made my day, sir. It's hardly wise to consider FreeBSD as a
shelter from 'political issues' - [1], [2], and that's the only alive
BSD these days.

Recp

[1] https://daniel-lange.com/archives/127-Saving-miscjive.html
[2] https://www.freebsd.org/internal/code-of-conduct.html

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Alessandro Baggi]

Il 02/01/19 20:56, Miles Fidelman ha scritto:
Today, as I face some upgrade issues of my own, I'm really not so sure. 
All of the debacle around systemd, and some of the recent politics, has 
made me far less comfortable that Debian will remain a stable platform - 
and I'm seriously considering migrating to either Gentoo or a BSD platform.


What recent politics?

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Alessandro Baggi]

Il 02/01/19 18:03, David Christensen ha scritto:

On 1/2/19 2:51 AM, Alessandro Baggi wrote:

Hi list,
I'm new to this list and I'm choosing the right distribution for 
server needs. I hope that I'm not OT and don't want start a flame. I'm 
evaluating the possibility to switch on debian so I hope you will give 
your experiences about this topic.


At the moment I'm using CentOS 7 on server and workstation but very 
old software, add third repos for get some software, use unmaintained 
software where patchs are released by dev distro team, big changes 
between a current release and next release, big corporation piloted 
distro, waiting that rh release a security patches and then recompiled 
on centos, problem on new hardware, unable to install new software 
from source due to old libs get me bored, and frustated in the last 
year. I like flexibility and I noticed that centos chains my knowledge.


Today seems that RH Family is the standard and rh is more supported by 
software vendors. Considering 10 years of support, Selinux working out 
of the box, stability, enteprise class and free distro..user choose 
Centos with the perception that things work better because all is 
"followed" by a corporation. With this assumption users feel more 
secure and unfailing.


This is not necessarely true. I think that is the sysadmin that make 
things safer, secure and unfailing. Sure that a stable and reliable OS 
take his part but when big blue take this game I'm not so sure about 
centos future. What if someone will choose to drop centos project? 
Maybe this is premature but from this "Why not choose a stable and 
community piloted distro where user needs are first purpose?"


I used Debian in the past on several server for a big company without 
any problems but now are several years that I use centos on server and 
workstation and today I lost my debian knowledge about stability on 
server usage.


Why you choose debian on server? Where for you it is better than 
centos and other server distro?


What is your environment?  How many servers?  What software on each 
server?  How many users/ how much load on each server?  Future needs?



David

.



Hi David,
My usage today is on small/medium office, cloud vps server and sometimes 
on baremetal.


Thank you

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Gary Dale]

On 2019-01-02 5:51 a.m., Alessandro Baggi wrote:

Hi list,
I'm new to this list and I'm choosing the right distribution for 
server needs. I hope that I'm not OT and don't want start a flame. I'm 
evaluating the possibility to switch on debian so I hope you will give 
your experiences about this topic.


At the moment I'm using CentOS 7 on server and workstation but very 
old software, add third repos for get some software, use unmaintained 
software where patchs are released by dev distro team, big changes 
between a current release and next release, big corporation piloted 
distro, waiting that rh release a security patches and then recompiled 
on centos, problem on new hardware, unable to install new software 
from source due to old libs get me bored, and frustated in the last 
year. I like flexibility and I noticed that centos chains my knowledge.


Today seems that RH Family is the standard and rh is more supported by 
software vendors. Considering 10 years of support, Selinux working out 
of the box, stability, enteprise class and free distro..user choose 
Centos with the perception that things work better because all is 
"followed" by a corporation. With this assumption users feel more 
secure and unfailing.


This is not necessarely true. I think that is the sysadmin that make 
things safer, secure and unfailing. Sure that a stable and reliable OS 
take his part but when big blue take this game I'm not so sure about 
centos future. What if someone will choose to drop centos project? 
Maybe this is premature but from this "Why not choose a stable and 
community piloted distro where user needs are first purpose?"


I used Debian in the past on several server for a big company without 
any problems but now are several years that I use centos on server and 
workstation and today I lost my debian knowledge about stability on 
server usage.


Why you choose debian on server? Where for you it is better than 
centos and other server distro?


Thanks in advance.
Alessandro.

Because Debian doesn't come from a company, it can't go out of business 
or be taken over. And because Debian has lots of spinoffs, including 
distros that are in the commercial server market (e.g. Ubuntu), you can 
bet that everything runs on it and it runs on everything.


Debian is also very stable and very secure. While Red Hat may have a 
segment of the corporate market, I'll bet that there are more Debian 
servers than Red Hat. If you think Red Hat has the market cornered, you 
aren't looking at the full market.


Then there are things like the Raspberry Pi, which are used in a lot of 
specialized server-type tasks, that mainly use Debian. They can do a lot 
of things that are useful in a corporate environment that you wouldn't 
want to put on a real server.


I also use Debian on my desktop (I have for decades) so there is a good 
knowledge crossover. I don't need to learn and use two different kinds 
of systems.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[kamaraju kusumanchi]

On Wed, Jan 2, 2019 at 5:51 AM Alessandro Baggi
 wrote:
>
> Why you choose debian on server? Where for you it is better than centos
> and other server distro?

Please see this faq
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ch-basic_defs.en.html#s-difference

1.5 What is the difference between Debian GNU/Linux and other Linux
distributions? Why should I choose Debian over some other
distribution?

-- 
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi | http://raju.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Blog

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Miles Fidelman]

On 1/2/19 5:16 PM, deloptes wrote:


Miles Fidelman wrote:


I'm not sure how well GIMP would run on across a network, particularly
if one wants to use a pen.  It's really designed to run on a machine
with a head.

so you are saying you can not ssh -X to the server and run your gimp if that
is what you want? I bet you can and I bet you can configure the server the
way you like - it is just another PC ;-) regardless hypervisors and
underlaying stuff.


No, but:

X11 is one of those things that one doesn't always install on servers.

If one wants GPU acceleration, one commonly does not install GPUs on 
servers.


Behavior over a network might be a bit problematic.  I expect network 
jitter might interfere with things like fine drawing with a wacom tablet.


Now, if one works in a graphics shop, with a serious rendering cluster 
in the same room – then maybe running GIMP on the server might make some 
sense.


Miles Fidelman





--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Joe wrote:

> I didn't say there would be problems, just that there would not
> normally be a need. The overlap between my workstation's software and
> that of my server is fairly small, largely because the server doesn't
> have a GUI, and most of my workstation software is graphical.
> 
> That's another point in favour of Debian for servers, there is no
> assumption that a GUI will be used. I believe RH uses graphical admin
> software, as of course does Windows.

well I use to start vnc and run there this and that, that would require GUI
or whatever. I usually need it to run VMWare that I can not run headless,
but Gimp would fit in if needed. Unfortunately I am not heavy Gimp user.

To keep the gui footprint low I use icewm. I don't see a problem with it.

regards

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Miles Fidelman wrote:

> I'm not sure how well GIMP would run on across a network, particularly
> if one wants to use a pen.  It's really designed to run on a machine
> with a head.

so you are saying you can not ssh -X to the server and run your gimp if that
is what you want? I bet you can and I bet you can configure the server the
way you like - it is just another PC ;-) regardless hypervisors and
underlaying stuff.

It is another question if it makes sense.

regards

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Joe]

On Wed, 02 Jan 2019 19:41:41 +0100
deloptes  wrote:

> Joe wrote:
> 
> > Indeed. I'm currently working on getting Debian onto a small Acer
> > laptop, which is not trivial. I've run it on a netbook for several
> > years. But laptops and servers are solutions to different problems,
> > and don't generally need the same hardware and software. I wouldn't
> > run Gimp on a server, nor a RADIUS server on a laptop.  
> 
> before start using the Fujitsu PC I used the same on a Dell E5440, I
> just took the hard drive and put it into the Fujitsu PC. It started
> without a problem.
> 
> The server is just a more powerful PC and the PC from today is the
> server from 10y ago.

Can be, if you are using multiple VMs, or terminal server software or
the like, or running a popular public-facing Internet server. A
general-purpose private server usually doesn't need to have the power
that a graphical workstation needs. Only Windows needs enormous
resources in a server. My current server is a cute little HP
Microserver, not especially fast and with 2GB RAM. Windows SBS2008
needed 8GB just to wake up, and that was aimed at *small* businesses.

> 
> I don't see a problem running Gimp on a server or RADIUS on a
> laptop ... well, depends on the laptop and radius configuration.
> 
> 
I didn't say there would be problems, just that there would not
normally be a need. The overlap between my workstation's software and
that of my server is fairly small, largely because the server doesn't
have a GUI, and most of my workstation software is graphical.

That's another point in favour of Debian for servers, there is no
assumption that a GUI will be used. I believe RH uses graphical admin
software, as of course does Windows.

-- 
Joe

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Miles Fidelman]

On 1/2/19 1:41 PM, deloptes wrote:


Joe wrote:


Indeed. I'm currently working on getting Debian onto a small Acer
laptop, which is not trivial. I've run it on a netbook for several
years. But laptops and servers are solutions to different problems, and
don't generally need the same hardware and software. I wouldn't run
Gimp on a server, nor a RADIUS server on a laptop.

before start using the Fujitsu PC I used the same on a Dell E5440, I just
took the hard drive and put it into the Fujitsu PC. It started without a
problem.

The server is just a more powerful PC and the PC from today is the server
from 10y ago.



Not really true.  Servers tend to be configured very differently than 
desktop machines:  Multiple network ports, support for storage area 
networks, remote management, redundancy, different disks, not to mention 
headless.  One tends to run more specialized stuff, as well - 
hypervisors, storage management, failover stuff, back-end stuff 
(databases, mail servers, list servers).  One tends to run different 
drivers, and tune things differently.




I don't see a problem running Gimp on a server or RADIUS on a laptop ...
well, depends on the laptop and radius configuration.

I'm not sure how well GIMP would run on across a network, particularly 
if one wants to use a pen.  It's really designed to run on a machine 
with a head.


Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Miles Fidelman]

On 1/2/19 2:51 AM, Alessandro Baggi wrote:

Hi list,
I'm new to this list and I'm choosing the right distribution for 
server needs. I hope that I'm not OT and don't want start a flame. 
I'm evaluating the possibility to switch on debian so I hope you will 
give your experiences about this topic.


At the moment I'm using CentOS 7 on server and workstation but very 
old software, add third repos for get some software, use unmaintained 
software where patchs are released by dev distro team, big changes 
between a current release and next release, big corporation piloted 
distro, waiting that rh release a security patches and then 
recompiled on centos, problem on new hardware, unable to install new 
software from source due to old libs get me bored, and frustated in 
the last year. I like flexibility and I noticed that centos chains my 
knowledge.


Today seems that RH Family is the standard and rh is more supported 
by software vendors. Considering 10 years of support, Selinux working 
out of the box, stability, enteprise class and free distro..user 
choose Centos with the perception that things work better because all 
is "followed" by a corporation. With this assumption users feel more 
secure and unfailing.




Traditionally, Red Hat (CentOS) and Debian  aimed primarily at servers - 
dating back to a time when server were the only place one ran Linux (if 
you were running Unix on a desktop, you probably had a Sun 
Workstation).  Graphical desktops came in with newer distros.  Suse also 
falls in this category.


These days, Red Hat has strong support, precisely because it's a 
commercial, supported product, and the primary distro used by large 
government & corporate users (outside of IBM and Oracle customers, who 
have their own distros).  If you're running Linux on a production 
server, it's probably Red Hat. CentOS is the free version.  Debian has 
been popular with those of us who don't like Red Hat's way of doing things.


Today, as I face some upgrade issues of my own, I'm really not so sure.  
All of the debacle around systemd, and some of the recent politics, has 
made me far less comfortable that Debian will remain a stable platform - 
and I'm seriously considering migrating to either Gentoo or a BSD platform.


Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Joe wrote:

> Indeed. I'm currently working on getting Debian onto a small Acer
> laptop, which is not trivial. I've run it on a netbook for several
> years. But laptops and servers are solutions to different problems, and
> don't generally need the same hardware and software. I wouldn't run
> Gimp on a server, nor a RADIUS server on a laptop.

before start using the Fujitsu PC I used the same on a Dell E5440, I just
took the hard drive and put it into the Fujitsu PC. It started without a
problem.

The server is just a more powerful PC and the PC from today is the server
from 10y ago.

I don't see a problem running Gimp on a server or RADIUS on a laptop ...
well, depends on the laptop and radius configuration.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[David Christensen]

On 1/2/19 2:51 AM, Alessandro Baggi wrote:

Hi list,
I'm new to this list and I'm choosing the right distribution for server 
needs. I hope that I'm not OT and don't want start a flame. I'm 
evaluating the possibility to switch on debian so I hope you will give 
your experiences about this topic.


At the moment I'm using CentOS 7 on server and workstation but very old 
software, add third repos for get some software, use unmaintained 
software where patchs are released by dev distro team, big changes 
between a current release and next release, big corporation piloted 
distro, waiting that rh release a security patches and then recompiled 
on centos, problem on new hardware, unable to install new software from 
source due to old libs get me bored, and frustated in the last year. I 
like flexibility and I noticed that centos chains my knowledge.


Today seems that RH Family is the standard and rh is more supported by 
software vendors. Considering 10 years of support, Selinux working out 
of the box, stability, enteprise class and free distro..user choose 
Centos with the perception that things work better because all is 
"followed" by a corporation. With this assumption users feel more secure 
and unfailing.


This is not necessarely true. I think that is the sysadmin that make 
things safer, secure and unfailing. Sure that a stable and reliable OS 
take his part but when big blue take this game I'm not so sure about 
centos future. What if someone will choose to drop centos project? Maybe 
this is premature but from this "Why not choose a stable and community 
piloted distro where user needs are first purpose?"


I used Debian in the past on several server for a big company without 
any problems but now are several years that I use centos on server and 
workstation and today I lost my debian knowledge about stability on 
server usage.


Why you choose debian on server? Where for you it is better than centos 
and other server distro?


What is your environment?  How many servers?  What software on each 
server?  How many users/ how much load on each server?  Future needs?



David

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Joe]

On Wed, 02 Jan 2019 15:20:16 +0100
deloptes  wrote:

> Joe wrote:
> 
> > Poor support for new hardware is a general problem for Linux, as
> > hardware is always designed for Windows, and drivers often have to
> > be reverse engineered for Linux. Red Hat is in a somewhat better
> > position than Debian, but no manufacturer is going to optimise
> > their hardware for RH, either. Less of a problem with servers,
> > where the hardware is likely to be robust and old-fashioned. Who
> > needs the latest version of Bluetooth or wi-fi on a server?  
> 
> some of us do not use linux only on the "server". The advantage is
> that you can run a good linux on a older desktop and get most of the
> hardware. I.e. I bought a Fujitsu ESPRIMO C700 for 180,- added some
> RAM for another 60,- to have 8GB and it is s good.

Indeed. I'm currently working on getting Debian onto a small Acer
laptop, which is not trivial. I've run it on a netbook for several
years. But laptops and servers are solutions to different problems, and
don't generally need the same hardware and software. I wouldn't run
Gimp on a server, nor a RADIUS server on a laptop.

-- 
Joe

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[deloptes]

Joe wrote:

> Poor support for new hardware is a general problem for Linux, as
> hardware is always designed for Windows, and drivers often have to be
> reverse engineered for Linux. Red Hat is in a somewhat better position
> than Debian, but no manufacturer is going to optimise their hardware
> for RH, either. Less of a problem with servers, where the hardware is
> likely to be robust and old-fashioned. Who needs the latest version of
> Bluetooth or wi-fi on a server?

some of us do not use linux only on the "server". The advantage is that you
can run a good linux on a older desktop and get most of the hardware. I.e.
I bought a Fujitsu ESPRIMO C700 for 180,- added some RAM for another 60,-
to have 8GB and it is s good.

Re: Why choose Debian on server

[Joe]

On Wed, 2 Jan 2019 11:51:25 +0100
Alessandro Baggi  wrote:


> 
> Why you choose debian on server? Where for you it is better than
> centos and other server distro?

Possibly the main selling point is that Debian has always been
continuously upgradeable from one version to the next. Building a
server from scratch can be a painful process, especially after you have
spent years tweaking and customising the previous one. The more rarely
this has to be done, the better.

The problem of old software is one you will never get away from, but on
the other hand, old software is generally reliable. A server is a
computer on which you rarely need the latest software, an old DNS or
DHCP server will generally do the same job as the very latest version.

Poor support for new hardware is a general problem for Linux, as
hardware is always designed for Windows, and drivers often have to be
reverse engineered for Linux. Red Hat is in a somewhat better position
than Debian, but no manufacturer is going to optimise their hardware
for RH, either. Less of a problem with servers, where the hardware is
likely to be robust and old-fashioned. Who needs the latest version of
Bluetooth or wi-fi on a server?

-- 
Joe