Re: [DNG] Networking on installation: was Devuan GNU+Linux Beta2 release

[Robert Storey]

Alessandro Selli said:

> I'd like to point out that including proprietary drivers does
> not address any of the issues Robert Storey described:
>
> 1) no WiFi support in the install program;
> 2) no DHCP autoconfiguration using a wired Ethernet connection;
> 3) Wicd missing after installation.
>
> None of the above has anything to do with hardware support
> or missing proprietary drivers/firmware.

Yes, exactly. My problem had nothing to do with a lack of drivers. Neither
the Ethernet nor wifi would connect during the installation, which actually
is no big deal since I could complete the installation without
connectivity. But after first boot, no wifi (since wicd was not installed.).

With Refracta (which is based entirely on Devuan) the whole operation went
smoothly. I did not need to be connected during the install, and upon first
reboot I was able to get online right away with wicd.

My hardware is four years old and has worked with every Linux distro I've
ever tried, except Devuan beta2. And that worries me.  I don't think it's
wise to make a release until this issue is resolved - it would be
disastrous for Devuan's reputation. And fixing the issue should not be hard
- again, it's all fixed in Refracta.

I have to run - very busy day today. More later.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Devuan GNU+Linux Beta2 release

[Robert Storey]

I wrote:

> Refracta saved the day! Thank goodness it exists, or else I would
> not be able to install Devuan on any of my machines. Please note
> that with Refracta, I did not need to set up networking at all
> during the installation, but Wicd was there on the first boot and
> getting wifi working was a piece of cake.

After I made this post, someone sent me a message to ask if I was using
fsmithred's new "Unofficial Devuan Beta Live" iso or Refracta8 to install.
I just thought I should clarify that I used the Refracta8 stable release.
Specifically, this one:

refracta8_xfce_amd64-20161013_1314.iso

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Refracta on Distrowatch

[Robert Storey]

Hi all,

I think this idea of having a Clearlooks option is fine. It would be a nice
feature to boast about for the next release (version 8.1?).

> Only problem I see with that is that refracta is pared down to fit on a
cd so there might not be room to do it that way.

I'm of the opinion that trying to squeeze everything onto a CD is kind of a
dated concept. I can't remember the last time I saw an actual CD drive (as
opposed to a DVD drive). OK, I guess you can still find CD music players,
but on computers, CD-only drives are a blast from the past. And Refracta's
big selling point is actually its capabilities to run off a USB stick.
Maybe somebody somewhere feels a need to max out at 700MB, but I'd
personally be fine with one GB.

While I'm meditating on this particular subject (the iso file size), I also
think it's worth considering if there's a better way of dealing with the
firmware drivers for wifi. The complexity of setting that up probably
scares off a lot of people from installing Refracta. The first time I
installed it, I didn't know how to set up wifi and had to ask fsmithred for
help (which he graciously gave). That's why I went into details in the
review explaining how to do it. But anyway, if there is an easy solution to
that problem which increases the size of the iso file beyond what will fit
on a CD, again I have no problem with that. Just thought I should voice
that opinion here - others may not agree.

As for when Refracta might get reviewed again on DistroWatch, I don't think
there's a hard and fast rule about it, but in general when there's a new
release with some noteworthy features, it should be fine to write an
article about it. I'm not the one who makes the final decision on what gets
published, but my experience is that DistroWatch management is very
reasonable - if there's news to report, they'll report it.

So here's to hoping for a great new release in 2017.

cheers,
Robert
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[DNG] Devuan 1.0 final release?

[Robert Storey]

Greetings All,

By now I'm sure all with an interest in Devuan have seen the review of
Refracta that I wrote for DistroWatch. A few of you knew in advance that I
was working on this article, and sent me technical tips and advice before
it was published. Thank you for this assistance - indeed, it was essential,
my story would have been a hopeless muddle without it. Needless to say,
fsmithred was foremost among my contacts, but a few others also contributed
their expertise, and I am grateful for the help.

As the title of this thread indicates, a final release of Devuan 1.0 is on
my mind. The reason why Devuan hasn't been reviewed yet is because it's
still only available as a beta version. When the much anticipated final
release makes its debut, it will undoubtedly be reviewed on DistroWatch,
and there is a better-than-even chance that I'll be the one to write the
story.

As I hinted in my Refracta article, the main gotcha that Devuan suffers
from right now is its installer. Once installed, the operating system is
actually rock-solid. Indeed, I think it's fair to say that Devuan in its
current state could honestly call itself a "stable release"...if the
installer gets fixed.

Not that I could do better, mind you. I fully appreciate how much work it
is to write a program that performs flawlessly on everyone's computer, no
matter what stupid things the end-user does. But this is a problem that
just has to get fixed or else the world will end, so let's take a look at
the details...

Specifically, the problem with the installer is that it forces you to do a
network install even if you've downloaded and burned the bulky 4GB DVD ISO.
My experience is that the installation takes over an hour, but YMMV due to
network speed. A lot of people don't have that much patience, but more
problematic is that in the middle of the process, it's usual to receive an
error message that the installation failed (I believe this is caused by
network timeout, but I'm not sure).

Ironically, if you ignore the threatening error message and just reissue
the appropriate command, the installer will pick up where it left off and
successfully compete the routine. So this "fatal error" is not really
fatal, as long as you don't let yourself be intimidated.

Unfortunately, upon seeing the "installation failed" error message, many
potential converts to Devuan are convinced that the Department of Homeland
Security has learned of their disloyalty to systemd, thus they WILL BE
PUNISHED unless they immediately repent and burn their Devuan CD.

Of course, I'm exaggerating. It's ridiculous to believe that the Department
of Homeland Security knows what you're doing. Just as long as you wear your
tinfoil hat at all times, their spy satellites won't be able to read your
thoughts. So there's no reason to be paranoid.

Sorry I'm starting to ramble. It could be those chemtrails are starting to
affect me, or maybe the nano-robots in the vaccinations. Anyway, I hope you
all get my point. No, not the point that I should be committed, but rather
that the installer needs some attention. I'm sorry to say that I don't have
the technical skills to fix it myself, but I'm hoping that doing so won't
be too onerous, and that it can be done in the near future. I swear that
once the Devuan 1.0 final release is in my hot little hands, I will
immediately pounce upon it and write the review.

OK, I'll go now.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] USB bootable ISO for i386

[Robert Storey]

Hi. Thanks to everyone for suggestions on how to diagnose the problem. It
might well be something to do with PAE or UEFI, or maybe his processor is
an i486. I'll see him tomorrow and try to figure it out, but I don't want
to devote too much time and effort to this...just one more good reason for
him to use Refracta, which seems to boot everything!

On my computer, I've gotten Refracta to do everything I need, with the
exception of typing in Chinese (I live in Taiwan, remember). Actually, I
can type Chinese just fine in Refracta by using Emacs, but I'm thinking
that for non-Emacs users, it would be good if I could get one of the
Chinese input daemons working (ie scim, ibus or gcin) but that's an issue
for another day.

Again, thanks for all the help. I'm going to bed (almost midnight in my
time zone).

cheers,
Robert
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[DNG] USB bootable ISO for i386

[Robert Storey]

Hi everyone.

I've introduced Devuan to a friend who is not (yet) an accomplished Linux
geek, but he's been learning very fast. He's not real well-off financially,
so his two computers are old i386 laptops donated by friends. Neither of
these machines has a workable CD or DVD drive (ie one is a netbook and thus
no built-in DVD drive, the other has a DVD burner but is broken). Of
course, both machines have USB2 ports and can boot off of these.

In order to install, he downloaded file(s):

devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_i386_CD.iso

  and

devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_i386_NETINST.iso

Installed to a usb stick as follows:

dd if=devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_i386_CD.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M
sync

But neither machine will boot either of these installed ISO files, even
after fiddling with BIOS parameters. However, at my suggestion he also
downloaded Refracta, which as all/most of you know is based on Devuan.
Refracta booted fine on both machines, and installed easily to the hard
drive.

Now I'm trying to wrap my head around why the Refracta ISO boots with ease
but Devuan doesn't. A little bit of online searching and I came upon this
info about isohydrid files...

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/isohybrid

...and this possible solution to the problem...

http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Isohybrid

But before suggesting this experiment to my friend, I thought I'd walk it
by the collective wisdom of this group. First, I have to ask: Are the
Devuan ISO files we download not already isohybrid enabled? Any other
possible reasons why the Refracta ISO files are USB bootable but the Devuan
files are not? Am I on the right track here, or have I missed the boat
entirely? Feel free to be merciless in your answers, I'm always happy to
learn.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] vdev - the next generation

[Robert Storey]

Just want to say Ralph that your work on this is really appreciated. I
consider vdev to be one of the most important projects going. I wish I was
more competent at development work, because I'd like to help with it. When
you get to scanner support, I'm going to definitely get more involved with
testing and reporting. I make heavy use of my scanner, so I can give it a
good workout.

cheers,
Robert
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[DNG] Subject: Re: Distrowatch Devuan poll do-over

[Robert Storey]

Subject: Re: [DNG] Distrowatch Devuan poll do-over
> Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:25:36 -0400
> From: Steve Litt 
>
> I just voted again, "ready to use" again. I'm able to vote multiple
> times because I'm originally from Chicago.

Actually, I really do believe that Devuan would be "ready to use" if that
little bug with the installer is fixed (the one that forces a netinstall,
even if you're not connected to the Internet). Once Devuan is installed,
it's rock-solid stable...at least that's been my experience.

I was talking (via email) to someone from this list the other day, and I
mentioned that I've installed/tested every final release of Fedora since
version 1.0 up until they went systemd-mandatory, and found it to be alpha
quality. Yet these were labeled as Fedora "stable" releases. Devuan
1.0-beta is vastly more stable, but the general public is not going to see
it that way as long as it has the "beta" label attached. So if we can just
get the installer thing sorted out, I really think we can honestly put out
version 1.0 and call it "stable" with a clear conscience.

I write occasional reviews for DistroWatch, and I'm planning a review just
as soon as 1.0 becomes official. So hoping that happens soon.

As for the vdev stuff, I think that's very important, but it can probably
wait for release 1.1 so we have time to test it properly. Just my opinion.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] vdev

[Robert Storey]

> From: Ralph Ronnquist 
>
> If it's any help, I've uploaded a bash script as
> www.realthing.com.au/files/vdev/install-gnuinos.vdev.sh which steps
> through all the steps for installing the gnuinos vdev bundle for a
> pristine Devuan 1.0.0 installation. It documents what I did some few
> days ago, and as the debs get updated some steps might not be needed.
>
> The script is totally uncommented, but fairly straight-forward.

Hi Ralph,

Thanks for your post. It was very helpful.

Actually, a small typo in your message. No problem for me now that I found
it, but for the benefit else who wants to give it a go, the message said
that the script file was named:

http://www.realthing.com.au/files/vdev/install-gnuinos.vdev.sh

That gave me a "file not found" message. It's actually here:

http://www.realthing.com.au/files/vdev/install-gnuinos-vdev.sh

Just the difference of a dot vs. a hyphen

Good script. A million thanks for posting it. I'm going to run it now.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] vdev

[Robert Storey]

Hi All,

OK, I use Devuan as my main get-work-done distro, so I don't want to risk
accidentally nuking it. Therefore, I just installed another copy of Devuan
into a different partition. This is my experimental Devuan - I'm all ready
to play with vdev now. Before I pull the trigger, I need to clarify the
procedure...

> I think it's better to use the deb files that Aitor is creating for us.
> Just download the deb files here:
>
> http://packages.gnuinos.org/pool/main/

When you say "Just download the deb files" do you mean add them to
/etc/apt/sources.list? I'm a bit confused. Just to clarify, is this the
right procedure to install vdev...

  1) Add a line to my /etc/apt/sources.list file saying...

  deb http://packages.gnuinos.org/pool/main/

  2) apt-get update

  3) apt-get install vdev

Or have I got it completely wrong?

=

> From: Hendrik Boom 
>
> Accidentally nuking it is my main concern.  Using another partition is
> likely the answer to this; I used it when I did major Debian upgrades
> from one stable to the next.  (I have had those upgrades fail).
>
> But grub is such a rat's nest that I worry about getting an
> experimental vdev too early in the boot process to be able to avoid it
> with grub's boot menu.
>
> Is this a real concern?
> -- hendrik
-
> From: fsmithred 
>
> Don't let the test installation be the one to rule grub or even be the
> default choice in the boot menu. If the test system takes over the
> bootloader after installing it, reboot into the first installation and run
> grub-install.
>
> Keep a copy of the non-vdev initrd in the test installation, so you can
> boot with it if necessary.

I'm running grub-legacy, installed in a different partition, so I'm good. I
will take your advice about keeping a copy of the non-vdev initrd in the
test installation...thanks for mentioning that, Hendrik.

=
> From: Adam Borowski 
>
> For anything that can break your system, and for running unstable, btrfs
is
> awesome.  You can make snapshots at any point (most people have at least a
> daily cronjob), and then restore or mount live when you want.  And when
you
> make it unbootable, you append subvol=backups/@2016-08-12 (or whatever
> you named it) in grub, and there you go.

Wow, wish I'd read that before I installed my test Devuan. I used ext4. Any
way to change that to btrfs without reinstalling?

=
aitor_czr  wrote:

> Of course, but for this particular purpose there is no need to make
> multiple partitions. Just use 1 partition for everything.
>
> You make a safe copy of a machine that boots. If you nuke the install,
> just reinstall the image or the snapshot. Always keep an
> extra /working/ image aside in case you really fsck things up :)
>
> Tip: use Proxmox, that's very simple:
>
> http://www.proxmox.com/en/

I haven't bothered with virtualization, but maybe I should. Might be
simpler than multi-boot (though I'm comfortable with that). I'll add
virtualization to my things-to-do list.

=
> "Ismael L. Donis Garcia"  wrote:
>
>
>> To my mind would be a better option to opt for eudev that vdev as it
>> has greater support behind.
>>
>> I see half vdev orphan and do not think that support eudev go to
>> decant by systemd.
>
> And when Red Hat buys maintainership of eudev?
>
> SteveT

...

> And when RedHat you make a very attractive offer to Jude Nelson?
> That's just supociones. There will be "who" follow their development.
> No trust for such an important project and so connotation in only one
person
> behind.

I've heard that eudev is quite a kludge, in the technical sense, while vdev
is supposed to be simpler. Anyone here should feel to correct me if I'm
wrong about that.

I'm not worried about Jude selling out, and were that to happen, vdev can
always be forked anyway. But I'm wondering...is Jude too busy to finish
this project? Has he dropped it totally? If so, is anyone here able to
finish up what remains to be done in vdev so that we can get it out the
door and make it viable for the official release of Devuan?

I'm not a developer myself, and I couldn't finish vdev. I can/will install
it, beta test and offer feedback. I think vdev is a good idea - it's worth
doing, provided we can actually get it done.

=

> > > On August 13, 2016 at 4:45 AM aitor_czr 
> > > wrote:
> >
> > As you know, today is August 12, not August 13.
> >
> > PLEASE FIX YOUR COMPUTER CLOCK

Funny, after installing my test copy of Devuan, I started running into
clock issues too. Turned out that I had my original Devuan set up to see
the clock as UTC rather than local time, while my test Devuan had local
time for both.

For most users, life is simpler when the hardware clock is set to local
time. Anyway, if you've got more than one distro installed, at least be
consistent. So if you 

Re: [DNG] vdev

[Robert Storey]

> I have to do some work now, I look forward to the packages. Maybe you
> can add a small README.txt for those who are willing to test vdev.

Yes please. A small README.TXT explaining what we have to do to set up and
install vdev will work wonders at attracting testers. Having to sift
through the archives of the Devuan mailing list for instructions will blow
away 90% of potential testers.

I'm enthused about helping get vdev finished and out the door - it would be
a major coup against the evil forces of Poetterism. Today, I'm setting up a
second install of Devuan on another partition just for testing vdev, since
Devuan is currently my main distro for getting things done and I don't want
to accidentally nuke it.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] vdev

[Robert Storey]

> From: richard lucassen 
> Subject: Re: [DNG] vdev
>
> So, please join the Group Of Three who are testing vdev. Without vdev
> or any other standalone udev version Devuan is stillborn. This whole
> vdev beast is much more complicated than a single daemon. We need
> testing, input, otherwise we'll go down the drain. It is as simple as
> that.

Hi Richard,

OK, I'm willing to join the Group-of-Three and file bug reports. But may I
just ask this...

Someplace, somewhere on the Internet (maybe on devuan.org, github,
wherever) can we just have a simple how-to for installing and setting up
vdev? I suppose this info is already out there someplace, but I don't know
where, and it needs to be easy to find.

The how-to doesn't need to be any more than a few sentences. Something like:

Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://whatever.devuan.org/blah-blah/ jessie main

apt-get update

apt-get install vdev

Edit file blah-blah.conf in your /etc directory to read as follows...
...and so on

Thanks in advance,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Oh, how I hate systemd

[Robert Storey]

> From: "Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult" 
>
> Oh, BTW, I wonder when they merge gconf into systemd and so make that
> bad registry idea (which was one of the major reason of many people
> switching to unix/linux) mandatory ...
>
>> Making /etc, the equivalent of the Windows Registry in Linux, read
>> only, renders system administrators  powerless whatever their
>> knowledge and experience.
>
>Maybe that the actual purpose behind the whole project ...

I don't if I should laugh or cry. Yes indeed, the Windows Registry mess
that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me - it got me started
looking at Linux. There were other things I didn't like about Windows
(security holes, blue screen of death, etc), but the Registry seemed like a
bad joke. And yet I've been reading over the years in various blogs and
articles (by "experts") that one of the problems of Linux was that it
didn't have a Registry.

So now Linux does have a Registry, and perhaps it's even more complex and
opaque than the one in Windows. I assume this is what the Lennart disciples
mean when they say (with a look of ecstasy on their faces) that systemd has
finally made Linux a "modern" operating system.
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Re: [DNG] openvpn systemd

[Robert Storey]

This got me wondering...do you we have a How-To for setting up OpenVPN on
Devuan? I'm using wicd for my Internet connection, which as I understand
doesn't support OpenVPN directly, but there is supposed to be a way to make
it work. I haven't investigated that thoroughly, but when I google "openvpn
Devuan" I keep getting links for setting up Debian, with systemd.

Sorry if this has been asked and answered before, but I didn't find it
doing a search. It's a question that's likely to come up again and again,
so if not documented, I should first get it working and then write it up
myself. I'd be happy to do so.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] F1 and special usernames on the login screen

[Robert Storey]

golinux said:

> Thanks for reminding me about reisuo/b. Is reisuo/b really enabled on
devuan by
> default?  Seems like I tried it a while back and it didn't work.  So I
checked
> /etc/sysctl.conf and the line needed wasn't there (neither was there any
other
> uncommented line).  So my question is . . . if reisuo/b is enabled by
default in
> devuan is it located elsewhere and does kernel.sysrq = 1 work for both
reisuo and
> reisub?  Or are they different?  (A quick search has me thinking that one
line works
> for both.)

Hi golinux,

Alt-reisub/o seems to be working for me, and I didn't do anything to enable
it.

If you look in /etc/sysctl.d there is a file README.sysctl which basically
says you can create and name config files in this directory just about
anything. Here are the notes which I've kept for Ubuntu from back in the
pre-systemd days:

-

open sysctl.d using 'open as root'
edit 10-magic-sysrq.conf
comment out the ridiculous default, replace it with the code to allow all
sensible 'magic' keys
("1 - enable all functions of sysrq". You might like to give it extra
thought. I don't.)
CODE: SELECT ALL
#kernel.sysrq = 127
kernel.sysrq = 1

save it, and remember to come out of elevated priviledges.
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Re: [DNG] F1 and special usernames on the login screen

[Robert Storey]

Didier Kryn said:

> In any case, any person who has the possibility to push the power
> button or cut the power cord should be given the opportunity to click
> the halt button instead. ctrl-alt-f1+ctrl-alt-del can  be used to
> reboot, but there's nothing to halt.

I'd actually forgotten about ctrl-alt-f1+ctrl-alt-del
...must be getting old.

Not that I want to do so, but can ctrl-alt-f1+ctrl-alt-del be disabled by
the sysadmin?

For "halt," there are always magic keys, as long as that's not disabled by
the sysadmin...

Alt-SysRq reisuo

I definitely like the idea that this is enabled by default in Devuan. I
actually use it quite a lot.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Need for documentation (golinux)

[Robert Storey]

I think I understand the issue well enough to sum it up nicely, so if no
one objects, should I just go ahead and file a bug report? If we're about
to dump Slim for lxdm or lightdm or whatever, I needn't bother, but if we
plan to keep Slim for release 1.0, I'd like to see the issue addressed.
Looks like an easy enough thing to fix - all we need is to change the login
screen graphic to document the available options. I think I can write up
the proposed documentation change myself and then submit it.

I have not yet used Devuan's bug reporting system - I just looked at the
site now and I signed up for a git account. This this is a Slim issue,
should I report it here:

https://git.devuan.org/devuan/slim/issues

Please tell me if I'm doing this right. If no objections within next 24
hours, I'll proceed.

Thank you, and apologies for my inexperience with git.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Need for documentation (golinux)

[Robert Storey]

Re: [DNG] Need for documentation (golinux)

> Robert Storey <robert.sto...@gmail.com>
>> Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2016 04:04:59 + (UTC)
>> From: Go Linux <goli...@yahoo.com>
>>
>>>From /usr/share/doc/slim/README :
>>
>>Special usernames (commands configurable in the config file):
>>- console: start console login
>>- exit: exit SLiM
>>- halt: halt the system
>>- reboot: reboot the system
>
> Hi golinux,
>
> Thank you for this, it's useful information. However, just like the issue
on using F1 to scroll through available
> window managers, the above isn't obvious and is easily missed (after all,
I missed it). True, I'm not the geekiest
> Linux user alive, but I'm not a novice either.
>
> So I think it would be nice if there was a little "Help" box stuck in the
graphic login screen which contained all of
> the above info. It wouldn't have to be very intrusive, but there is
enough screen real estate to accommodate it, I think.
>
> Should I be filing a bug report to push this issue? Hardly seems like a
true "bug," but I do think it's important.

Hmm...I should have actually tried those commands before I shot off my
mouth. Now I see more problems...

The commands "console" and "exit" work, in the sense that you'll get a
console from where you can log in, though I see no advantage in that. You
could use Ctrl-Alt-F2 though F6 to do the same thing (and Ctrl-Alt F7 to
get back to the original login desktop). You still have to log in first
before you can reboot or shutdown.

The commands "halt" and "reboot" do not seem to work. SLIM asks me for a
password for user "halt" and user "reboot" which is less than useful, since
no such users exist.

There is an error in file /usr/share/doc/slim/README, it says:

CONFIGURATION
/usr/etc/slim.conf is the main configuration file.

Of course, that should say:
/etc/slim.conf is the main configuration file.

best regards,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Need for documentation (golinux)

[Robert Storey]

> Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2016 04:04:59 + (UTC)
> From: Go Linux 
>
>>From /usr/share/doc/slim/README :
>
>Special usernames (commands configurable in the config file):
>- console: start console login
>- exit: exit SLiM
>- halt: halt the system
>- reboot: reboot the system

Hi golinux,

Thank you for this, it's useful information. However, just like the issue
on using F1 to scroll through available window managers, the above isn't
obvious and is easily missed (after all, I missed it). True, I'm not the
geekiest Linux user alive, but I'm not a novice either.

So I think it would be nice if there was a little "Help" box stuck in the
graphic login screen which contained all of the above info. It wouldn't
have to be very intrusive, but there is enough screen real estate to
accommodate it, I think.

Should I be filing a bug report to push this issue? Hardly seems like a
true "bug," but I do think it's important.
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Re: [DNG] Installer Devuan Jessie 1.0 fails

[Robert Storey]

> Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 18:21:40 +0200
> From: <emnin...@riseup.net>
> To: dng@lists.dyne.org
> Subject: Re: [DNG] Installer Devuan Jessie 1.0 fails
> Message-ID: <20160615182140.40c99387.emnin...@riseup.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> Am Wed, 15 Jun 2016 01:26:45 +
> schrieb Robert Storey <robert.sto...@gmail.com>:

>> Hi Robert!
>>
>> Note that my following comments apply only to a graphical install,
>> full-desktop version, which is actually the only kind I've attempted
>> so I can't say what would happen with a minimal install in
>> text-mode...
>
> In the end i went back to your suggestion: But it fails as well. Would
> you say 10 attempts of installing, installing  the base system
> are enough?
>
> On me it fails always at the same point and always with the same error.
> (For the record: libjson-c2 is needed by rsyslog but not installed).

It typically takes me about 3 or 4 attempts for the installer to succeed.
One thing to note: I have two ways of connecting to the Internet, either my
hard-wired ADSL or using my wifi with my smartphone as the wireless access
point. Where I live, my ADSL is very slow, the wifi/smart phone is faster.
And I noticed that I have greater success with the smart phone. I assume
that this is because there is less latency. I said "3 or 4 attempts for the
installer to succeed" and that is with the smart phone. On my slower ADSL,
it takes so long and times out so much that I give up in frustration.

Maybe closely related to this: I have my own little website (
http://outsideinn.tw) and when I upload graphic files to it using
Filezilla, I run into the same sort of issue - some files upload, but there
are timeouts and network error messages, but if I just re-run all the files
eventually upload. However, for this to succeed, I must choose the option
to "resume" (as opposed to the option "overwrite"), otherwise I will see
failure upon failure. Again, I think the issue is network latency - if I
choose smartphone/wifi which is faster than ADSL, I almost never see this
problem. If I'm not mistaken, the failure messages I am experiencing at the
slower speeds is the result of a network timeout.

I'm not a good programmer and thus not capable of writing a better
installer, but I would like to suggest the possibility of taking the Ubuntu
approach which allows the option to complete an installation with no
network connection, using files on the CD as the base. Then, an
update/upgrade after rebooting.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Installer Devuan Jessie 1.0 fails

[Robert Storey]

>
> Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 11:21:20 +0200
> From: 
> To: dng@lists.dyne.org
> Subject: Re: [DNG] Installer Devuan Jessie 1.0 fails
> Message-ID: <20160615112120.5a0ca29a.emnin...@riseup.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> Am Wed, 15 Jun 2016 01:26:45 +
> schrieb dng-requ...@lists.dyne.org:
>
> Hi Robert!
>
> Even if it's not really good news, it's a kind of confort, that this
> problem does not happen only to me ;) And seems Didier Kryn experiments
> the same.

Yes, I'm also (sort of) relieved that I'm not the only one experiencing
this. Thought I was going crazy!

> But if so: Shouldn't we investigate the installer? I mean, it's not
> really user friendly to have an installer subject to that kind of
> errors.

Yes, I think that this IS important to fix. Even though I was able to work
around the problem, there are many others out there who will give up at the
first sign of trouble and head straight back to the comfort of Poettering
Linux.

> schrieb Simon Walter :
>
> Hi Simon!
>
> > Since it is a universal OS. I would suggest we disable the graphical
> > installer if it causing people to be put off. This may sound like
> > heresy, but the text base installer is not minimal and it is fully
> > functional.
>
>
> My problem (the failure while installing the base system) happens in
> both, the graphical and the text mode installer.
>
> I'd suspect there's something wrong with the underlying routines (as
> also L. Nodden noted).

Although I didn't try the text-mode installer, I suspect that's not the
problem. I'm still guessing it's network latency that trips up the
installer, though I could certainly be wrong.

One thing I have noticed is that the Devuan installer gives you a
completely up-to-date system when it's finished. There's no need to run
"apt-get update" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" after installation. I presume
that's because the installer downloads every package it's going to install.
I didn't see an option to NOT do this. On Ubuntu, for example, you can
choose to not even connect to the Internet while installing, though after
the first boot you'd be wise to update/upgrade. Perhaps the Devuan
installer should offer this option? Or is that a bad idea?

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Installer Devuan Jessie 1.0 fails

[Robert Storey]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:50:55 +0200
 wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> I have an urgent problem with the Devuan Jessie 1.0 installer:
>
> When it comes to install the basic system at a certain point the
> installation stops with an error. On console 4 i see the following
> error msg:
>
> .
> dpkg: error processing package rsyslog (--configure):
>  dependency problems -leaving unconfigured
> Errorswere encountered while processing:
>  rsyslog
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of rsyslog:
>  rsyslog depends on libjson-c2 (>= 0.10); however:
>   Package libjson-c2 is not installed.
> .

Note that my following comments apply only to a graphical install,
full-desktop version, which is actually the only kind I've attempted so I
can't say what would happen with a minimal install in text-mode...

I've gotten this error on EVERY install I've done with Devuan, both laptop
and desktop computer. However, recovery from the error was fairly
straightforward, just go back to the screen to install the basic system,
run it again (note: do not exit the installer!). Sometimes the error will
still recur, but just keep going back and run it again, it will succeed. I
believe what's happening is that the installer is downloading most of the
files it needs but fails to download some, so by re-running it goes back
and gets the rest of the files, it does not start from the very beginning
and re-download everything. As to why it fails go get those files on the
first run, I can't say, but it is downloading a lot and I'm guessing that
any network latency is causing this problem.

Note that I am in Taiwan and since there is no local Devuan mirror here (I
think), I'm downloading from the US server. This means a lot of network
latency. Devuan users in the USA might not be seeing this error, and ditto
for Europeans if there is a mirror in Europe. Getting back to my situation,
even if there is a Devuan mirror in Japan it wouldn't help me because as I
understand it, our network traffic to Japan is routed via the USA.

best regards,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Devuan Top100 on DistroWatch

[Robert Storey]

> Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 11:51:38 +
> From: hellekin 
> To: dng@lists.dyne.org
> Subject: [DNG] Devuan Top100 on DistroWatch
> Message-ID: <57501dca.6090...@dyne.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> Today Devuan is number #91 on DistroWatch.com!  We made it to the Top
> 100 is the first 3 days of presence on DW.  Sweet!
>
> http://distrowatch.com/devuan

It's a good start and I think there are a lot of people out there who are
interested in Devuan, or anything else that could help them escape the
ravages of systemd. There are even a lot of people (including me) who are
taking a second look at FreeBSD as a Plan B. But anyway, for Devuan to
attract more hits on DistroWatch (not to mention more people willing to
install), there has to be some news about it, so I hope that a beta-2 will
be coming along in the not too distant future.

And yes, I know that represents a lot of work for the developers, but I
assure you that it's much appreciated.

I noticed just recently that my dependable antiX installation got
semi-broken after a dist-upgrade, on two machines. Seems that a lot of
stuff is not in their default repositories. I hope it's just a fluke, but
anyway, I'm getting ready to make a massive move to either Devuan and/or
FreeBSD (waiting for release 11, due out at the end of summer).

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Converting audio to AAC using Soundconverter

[Robert Storey]

> From: Adam Borowski 
> To: dng@lists.dyne.org
> Subject: Re: [DNG] Converting audio to AAC using Soundconverter
>
> Re: [DNG] Converting audio to AAC using Soundconverter
> If your target machine is anything non-ancient, you want opus, it
thoroughly
> beats both mp3 and aac at any bitrate.  Even I, with untrained ears and
> shitty gear, can ABX 320kbit mp3 on some samples.  Never tried with aac
but
>it's said to be similar.  On the other hand, pretty few people can ABX opus
> at just 96k, so encoding at 128k is fine if you're paranoid about quality.
> Yes, it is that much better.

Hi Adam, thanks for bringing Opus to my (our) attention. I looked it up and
it does sound enticing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format)

However, looking at https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ there doesn't seem to be
anything about converting files to Opus. I do realize that converting an
MPS to Opus isn't going to improve its sound quality, it's new encodings
that should make the difference. However, I can see some benefit in knowing
how to do the conversion so that all the sound files can be in the same
format. Just wondering if you have any useful links?

cheers,
Robert
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[DNG] encryption

[Robert Storey]

Maybe we had this discussion before and I missed it. I did a Google search
and didn't find it. Anyway, here is my question...

I want to create one encrypted folder on my hard drive. I don't necessarily
need heavy-duty industrial-strength encryption, but "secure" is nice.
Reliability is very important - I don't want it to break so I wind up
losing data.

In the past I've used TrueCrypt, and I didn't have to search long to find
this page:

https://wiki.debian.org/TrueCrypt/Install/Wheezy

For those too lazy to click the link, it says that TrueCrypt is still
available but no longer under active development. There is a link to some
downloadable tar archives on SourceForge. From the looks of it, there are
NO dependencies, and since there is no further development there should be
no danger that TrueCrypt will get Potterized.

It also says on that page that there newer alternatives to TrueCrypt,
ie cryptsetup/LUKS and EncFS. Both of those packages have some
dependencies, which is why I hesitate. I can easily envision a future
scenario where udev (and thus systemd) suddenly become mandatory, or else
forget being able to access your data.

So I'm wondering, am I right to just go with TrueCrypt, or am I being
ridiculously paranoid? And what are we planning to do with Devuan.

Again, apologies if it was already discussed.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] what Emacs really is, jokes aside.

[Robert Storey]

Just for fun...

Not everyone knows this, but Emacs can be your psychiatrist. If you haven't
tried it yet, take a look at "doctor"

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsDoctor
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Re: [DNG] what Emacs really is, jokes aside.

[Robert Storey]

> Emacs is an excellent user interface, development environment, and
> desktop for ancient, text-only terminals.  That's what it was for back
> in the day.  That's what it still is.
>
> But people seem to be able to afford better terminals

For me, Emacs is a lot more than a development environment, though it's
good for that too. I've written whole books using Emacs as my editor, and
it's ability to handle unicode (and thus, foreign scripts) has been a
Godsend. I've mentioned a couple of times that I live in Taiwan, and Emacs
has great Chinese-input capabilities - superb for editing the html pages on
my bilingual website.

Kudos to all the folks who have worked on Emacs through the years.
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Re: [DNG] Evince

[Robert Storey]

I'd love to install Atril, but after an "apt-get update" and "apt-get
dist-upgrade" it's no longer in the repositories for AntiX. I'm not sure
why that is.
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Re: [DNG] OpenRC and Devuan

[Robert Storey]

For whatever it's worth, I'm fully supportive of the idea of defaulting to
a simpler init system such as S6, Epoch, Runit, you-name-it. I can't speak
for anyone else, of course, but I tend to think the sort of people who are
attracted to Devuan see the virtue of simplicity. The main reason why we
disdain systemd is because it's a mass of incomprehensible spaghetti code
with dependencies up the ying-yang, and all that entails (ie a huge
potential attack surface, dependency on Red Hat's "good will" for
maintenance, etc).

The main issue with switching from sysvinit to something else is just
finding someone willing to do the work. I don't feel very qualified myself.
I'm not sure if SteveL was volunteering or suggesting we organize
something, but anyway, the idea of S6, Epoch, Runit or similar simple and
comprehensible init systems appeals to me.

cheers,
Robert
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[DNG] supersized torrent

[Robert Storey]

If I wasn't so befuddled with that devuan.org blocking issue by my ISP, I
would have mentioned this earlier. There was the following post on
Distrowatch, and my reply (as user "Paraquat"):

27 • @24 Devuan (by Paraquat on 2016-05-02 15:37:11 GMT from Asia)
>24 • Devuan (by Napoli Bona
> on 2016-05-02 14:39:55 GMT from North America)
> So I thought I would try out Devuan and noticed that they
> suggested using the torrent.
> I started the torrent and discovered that the file size
> is 10.55 GB! Is this the largest distro ever? Just saying...

Hi Napoli. At first I got confused by that too, but on more careful
inspection, I saw that the torrent link included all the different versions
of Devuan: ie i386, amd64 (both CD and DVD versions), Raspberry Pi, Odroid,
various other development boards, etc. So you need to go through your
torrent program and unclick the versions you don't want. I think I'll
suggest to the mailing list that they separate these downloads to different
.torrent files.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] My ISP is blocking devuan.org

[Robert Storey]

Whoops, right after I sent my message, I see the post from BohwaZ

> Same problem here in Australia, ISP is Optus. Haven't been working
> since the new website/beta.
>
> The problem is with your provider routing apparently:

Ah, so it's NOT only Chunghwa Telecom. About that "systemd bomb"...who
knows?

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] My ISP is blocking devuan.org

[Robert Storey]

Stephanie Daugherty wrote:
>
> Check for possible accidental causes - routing issues, PMTU blackholes,
and
> other oddities that could be innocent mistakes - never assume malice when
> stupidity will do.

Hi Stephanie, and thanks for the reply.

It may well be an innocent mistake on someone's part, but anyway, I can now
confirm that my ISP seems to have blocked devuan.org. I am now at my place
of business, and we have ADSL here with the same provider that I use at
home, and devuan.org is blocked. I'm using a different computer this time,
a different router, and a different OS, but same result - the site is
inaccessible.

Just for the record, my smart phone provider is Taiwan Mobile, and they are
working fine. I won't name the errant ISP yet until I've talked to them.

The one thing I don't have yet in my hot little hands is a smart phone
serviced by the same ISP that provides our ADSL. So I'm going to head over
to the phone company right now and badger the staff to see if they can
access devuan.org on their smart phones. I'll let you all know how that
works out.

I'll report back soon.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Beta

[Robert Storey]

>
> Yes! Thank you! It's good to see devuan.org now goes to beta.devuan.org.
> Good stuff.

Sadly, all I'm getting is this message:

"This webpage is not available"

But still hoping to see the beta soon. Can't wait to install it.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Debian is no longer GNU/Linux?

[Robert Storey]

> Lars Noodén wrote:
>
> I ran into minor graphics problems last year when I tried Debian
> GNU/kFreeBSD on a notebook, but other than that it seems good to go.  If
> I had servers, I would be running it already.  Though I am only keeping
> half an eye on it for now, but do plan to at least try UbuntuBSD when it
> gets a little further to see how it goes on that notebook.

Lars, not sure if your problem is the same as mine, but I assume that any
OS running the FreeBSD kernel will also inherit any driver issues of that
kernel. I guess that applies to GNU/kFreeBSD and UbuntuBSD.

FreeBSD version 10.x doesn't support the Intel Haswell graphics
architecture. Both my machines use this chip, so they must run VESA
graphics, which performs poorly as I learned when I installed it. This has
effectively prevented me from using FreeBSD for the time being. However,
11-CURRENT is supposed to be adding Haswell support, and I will definitely
be testing it soon. As I understand the situation, FreeBSD 11.0 is due out
in June or July this year, so not much longer to wait.

cheers,
Robert
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[DNG] Subject: Re: useradd defaults

[Robert Storey]

>> I'm getting a bit uncomfortable about starting this thread, because upon
>> reflection, it seems that one consequence of setting the system-wide may
>> be that the 027 umask will end up having some system account creating a
>> file that should be world-readable or world-executable, but because of
>> the umask, it now would not be, and so would break stuff. My intent was
>> to protect data of one user from other users, which could be done by
>> making the change in .profile or even in the default .bashrc.
>>
>
> I was actually waiting for somebody to realise this before answering
> your email. In a "Universal OS" there is much more than the
> preferences of single specific users, or specific applications, or
> specific environments. There is the necessity to accommodate a huge
> number of different scenarios and use cases. In short, that's why you
> have the umask set by default to 022. Any user can change this
> behaviour to a more restrictive one, if they need so.

Yes indeed - permission errors are among the most common difficulties that
inexperienced users encounter when they first start with Linux. Long ago, I
tried setting my own umask to 077, thinking that it would enhance my
security. Didn't occur to me until later that it broke all the web pages I
created and uploaded to my site, since no one but me could read them. Once
I realized it, I was able to fix the problem with chmod, but it was easy
enough to forget to do that when creating a new page, and I eventually
decided the only sane solution was to go back to umask 022, which was the
default.

I ran into the above problem after I'd been using Linux for about five
years, and I understood the cause once somebody complained to me that he
couldn't read my site even though I still could. However, had I run into
this difficulty earlier in my Linux career, I probably would not have been
able to figure out the cause, and would have concluded that "Linux is no
good." So I favor keeping the default umask at 022, and let users tweak
their own .bashrc and .profile if they want more restrictive security.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] xscreensaver issues (including hardcoded DEBIAN!)

[Robert Storey]

> Adam Borowski wrote:
>
>  On Fri, Apr 01, 2016 at 12:58:23PM -0400, Boruch Baum wrote:
>> Just looking at issues with the devuan default desktop's screensave, and
>> its config file:  ~/.xscreensaver file, posted here for the attention of
>> the maintainers and the interest of members of the list.
>>
>> 1] Obnoxious nag messages - All logins to the devuan default desktop
>> begin with not one but two separate nag messages from xscreensaver. The
>> first "warns" the user that the version is out of date. The second
>> "warns" the user that the sysadmin is doing a dis-service by keeping it
>> out of date.
>>
>> 2] forced config screen - after the two obnoxious nag messages, one is
>> forced to be confronted with the xscreensaver customization screen
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=819703
>
> It's a time bomb by xscreensaver's upstream author.  And like micq before,
> it looks like xscreensaver needs to be replaced or forked.  Obviously,
using
> gnome-screensaver is not an option as that pulls in a good part of Gnome3
> including systemd.

I'd just like to mention that Xscreensaver is one of those obnoxious
"convenience features" that I'm always trying to disable. So at least from
my point of view, if it's not installed by default, I'm fine with that. But
I realize that others may want it.
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Re: [DNG] Speaking of Window Managers

[Robert Storey]

Steve Litt wrote:
‎
>>Here's info on dmenu:
>
>dmenu is made by suckless.org:
>http://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/
>
>>Hotkey to bring up Dmenu?
>
>Alt+p, default in dwm (and some other).
>
>Hotkey to bring up window list sorted by workspace?

Just one thing I want to say about hotkeys, is that it would be nice if it
was clear how to disable or modify them. I am right now using antiX with
icewm, and although I really like it, there are some hotkeys I don't need
which actually conflict with what I do. Fortunately, I did figure out how
to disable them.

In particular, ctrl-alt-s brings up a screenshot in antiX, but that
conflicts with a useful key combination in Emacs which I use regularly
(search for regular expressions). In case anyone else wants to know, you
have to disable this script to kill that hotkey:

/usr/local/bin/antixscreenshot.sh

Rather than delete the script, I disabled it with...

chmod -x

...and now Emacs works fine.
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Re: [DNG] xserver-xorg-core in Debian unstable now requires libsystemd0

[Robert Storey]

> From: Clarke Sideroad 
> To: "dng@lists.dyne.org" 
> Subject: Re: [DNG] xserver-xorg-core in Debian unstable now requires
> libsystemd0
> Message-ID: <56ac51e1.6020...@gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> In a similar vein Calculate Linux has IMO well put together group of
> versions based on and compliant with Gentoo with rather elaborate Layman
> overlays, openRC, eudev and no systemd.
> Simple setup and install, probably easier than Debian, the install
> process does not take long unlike the parent Gentoo.
> It also has an updater.
> If one uses the somewhat frowned upon Porthole package manager things
> are almost as easy as Synaptic or at least like Synaptic you can quickly
> see what is available.
> Other Gentoo Layman overlays can be added, but of course at that point
> one must be more careful as it is similar to adding outside repositories
> in a Debian based distro

Thanks for mentioning Calculate Linux. While waiting for Devuan to be
released, I've been looking for something else non-systemd to play with. At
the moment, I'm getting by with antiX, but Calculate could be interesting.
I'm downloading Calculate right now, and at some point I'll write up my
experience with it

Again, still hoping to see a Devuan beta soon. Also waiting for a
devastating zero-day exploit that will leave the systemd tribe with egg on
their faces...not that I'd really want to see that, cough, cough.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Purchasing a new computer/laptop

[Robert Storey]

With desktop computers, it's not too hard to find one with FreeDos
installed by default, or no OS. Linux usually works fine on these machines.

A few years ago I bought a Toshiba Satellite laptop with FreeDos installed
by default, and it was cheap. No money to Microsoft, and Linux worked like
a charm. But I don't know if Toshiba still sells these Windows-free models
now.

With Microsoft screwing things up with SecureBoot, I've wondered if a Mac
might be less risky. I found a good thread about this on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2sm5yk/more_and_more_people_at_my_uni_are_running_linux/

Since the Mac doesn't have a ctrl key, the following was a particularly
relevant post:

> I've mapped the left Cmd key on my MacBook Pro to Ctrl like so:
> xmodmap -e "remove mod4 = Super_L" xmodmap -e "add control = Super_L"
> Put that in the startup script for your X session, and you should be fine!

This little article also seems very relevant to this topic:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/choose-best-laptop-linuxubuntu/

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Purchasing a new computer/laptop

[Robert Storey]

Simon Hobson <li...@thehobsons.co.uk>
To: dng@lists.dyne.org
Subject: Re: [DNG] Purchasing a new computer/laptop
Message-ID: <319f6090-0a9b-47d4-84b3-1d1a8b297...@thehobsons.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Robert Storey <robert.sto...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Since the Mac doesn't have a ctrl key, the following was a particularly
relevant post:

> Really ?
> Mine does, there between the fn and alt keys - standard UK keyboard on a
MacBook
> Pro. I think it will be model/keyboard specific. You can always plug in a
different
> keyboard.

Hi Simon. You're right, at least newer Macs have a ctrl key. Older ones
didn't, but it's been many years since I had one. I guess now the cmd key
is equivalent to the unused "Windows" key I see staring me in the face
right now.

So maybe I should ask: Have you tried installing Linux on your MacBook? If
so, how was the experience? Any advice about that? Any nonsense to deal
with similar to Microsoft's "secure boot"? (if you answered those questions
already in another post, I"m sorry, I missed it).

Anyway, expensive though it might be, I'd consider a MacBook in the future,
especially if I could dual-boot it with Linux.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Input Method Framework

[Robert Storey]

   writes:

> Hi dear list,

> Thanks again for all the work u did on Dev1 and tell me if I can help
> in anyway.

> I followed devuanfanboy howto, removed dbus and installed fluxbox（was
> under xfce b4）

> Thing is Im using Japanese a lot and need anthy or similar.

I need Chinese input myself (I live in Taiwan), and for now I'm also using
Emacs as my input method. However, Emacs is too complex for my wife, so
I've got her using gcin. As far as I can tell, it does not depend on dbus
(I could be wrong about that, but "apt-cache show gcin" doesn't list dbus).
Although I don't use it for Japanese, I understand that gcin supports it.
According to the package description:

Description-en: GTK+ based input method for Chinese users
 gcin is a GTK+ based input method which focused mainly on Traditional
 Chinese. However, it is also very useful for Simplified Chinese, Japanese,
 and many other languages

So maybe you'll want to look into that.

cheers,
Robert
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[DNG] lilo development has ended

[Robert Storey]

Hi everyone. It's been a long time since I posted here, but don't worry, I
haven't gone over to the Dark Side (ie Systemd). I've just been quietly
waiting for Devuan-beta, and in the meantime have tried to keep out of the
way of the Devuan developers rather than waste their time with my ignorant
prattle. At the moment, I'm still happily using antiX, which is thankfully
systemd-free.

Now with that out of the way...

Steve Litt said:

> Grub is the systemd of bootloaders. It's all about pretty colors, nice
> images, and hiding the fact that processes are being instantiated.
>
> What's so sad is that grub 1 was wonderful. One file, everything was
> easy and obvious. Grub2 has different but similar executables, and you
> go traipsing all over a tree of numbered files to change every little
> thing, or else unauthorizedly change the already compiled version and
> hope nothing overrides it.

I couldn't agree more. It's a bit sad that even antiX now defaults to
Grub2, but I manage to keep everything working with Grub1. There is still
the grub-legacy package in Debian, but just to be safe from some
systemd-like stealth operation, I actually keep a small partition with
Puppy Linux installed - it uses Grub1 by default, so I let that be my boot
loader partition. I don't really use Puppy for much else, even though it's
kind of "cute." There are still a few other distros that have Grub1 as the
default (PCLinuxOS, I believe).

Of course, this solution probably won't work if you've formatted your hard
drive with GPT. I'm sticking with MBR for now, even though I don't really
have anything against GPT as such. I'm fortunate in that my computer
supports BIOS booting - I dread this "secure boot" EFI thing that Microsoft
has imposed on the world.

There are some questions I'd like to ask some of you tech-saavy folks about
boot loaders/ boot managers...

1) Any opinions about rEFInd?
http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

2) Any opinions about SYSLINUX?

Rod Smith (author of rEFInd) has a good but brief info page on EFI boot
loaders...

http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/

...but I admit to being a bit confused on which to use.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Distrowatch

[Robert Storey]

> From: Nuno Magalhães 
>
> Unfortunately it only allows you to search by package, leaving you
> with a lot of non-linux and inactive distros - and no ranking.
> But it's a nice feature.

Yes, but biggest problem is that it misses some good non-systemd distros
like Gentoo and Manjaro-OpenRC because those do include the systemd
packages but it's use is optional.

Still, it's interesting to hear that so many visitors to DistroWatch are
interested in avoiding systemd. There is definitely an audience there for
Devuan, waiting with bated breath for version 1.0.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] Congratulations to the Devuan team

[Robert Storey]

About vdev...

It looks like it's almost ready for prime time, but that further testing is
needed to work out any bugs. So I'd like to throw out a little suggestion
to expedite that.

Could someone come up with a package so that we can install vdev on Debian?
In my case, I'm currently using antiX as my stable operating system. I
would be willing to install vdev on it and put it through its paces,
reporting back any suspected bugs I encounter.

Barring a specific package, then maybe some published instructions and a
download for installing it on Debian.

It sounds to me like vdev could be a game changer, so I'm enthused about
installing it and doing what I can to make it a new standard.

As I've mentioned before, I do occasionally write for DistroWatch, so if I
can get a positive experience with vdev, I'd do an article on that.
Hopefully, this would encourage others to download and install vdev,
helping to move along its widespread adoption.

Kudos to all the Devuan developers.

 - Robert
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Re: [DNG] Devuan compared to AntiX

[Robert Storey]

As (bad) luck would have it, I just received an email from Jesse Smith (who
writes the DistroWatch Weekly Review) informing me that he already wrote a
review of antiX and it will be published this Monday. It would be too late
to withdraw it now, since that would leave him without a review for this
coming week.

That doesn't mean that I won't be writing a review of antiX eventually. But
it does mean it will have to wait at least a few months, since it wouldn't
do to publish two reviews of the same distro back-to-back on DistroWatch.
Of course, if antiX comes up with a new release, that would change matters.

All that said, I want to thank those who responded. I did pick up some good
tips, especially the one to use updatedb plus locate to track down any
systemd cruft. Don't know why I didn't think of that. On the other hand, it
is not clear to me though how much it matters when there are subdirectories
labeled /etc/systemd, /lib/systemd, and /var/lib/systemd. Running dpkg
--get-selections grep systemd shows nothing on antiX. The developer,
anticapitalista, says that systemd-shim is not installed on antiX. That
leads me to another question: what exactly does systemd-shim do? Is it just
a package to trick other packages with dependencies on systemd, without
actually installing systemd? I don't really know, but it's something I need
to explore if I want to write intelligently about this subject.

My next review will probably be about Void Linux. Jesse wrote a very brief
review of Void a few months ago, in which he basically said it didn't run
on his machine, so he dismissed it as not ready. That was actually a
piss-poor review. I'm particularly interested in Void since there is a
version that runs on the Raspberry Pi 2. The main OS for the Raspberry Pi
is Raspbian, which is essentially Debian, now infected with systemd. Since
I'm a fan of the Raspberry Pi, I definitely want to see another distro
available for it that is systemd-free. There is also FreeBSD for the Pi,
though I understand it is very much a work in progress, but I'm interested
in anything not systemd so I'll keep it on the back burner.

Other suggestions for non-systemd software are welcome. The main criteria
is that it actually has to be something useful, something that I might
install and use daily. Thus, far-out stuff like Minix is not a
consideration, even if it's fun to play with.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [DNG] automount Was: Re: A better default windows manager

[Robert Storey]

  On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 10:18 PM, Steve Litt
  sl...@troubleshooters.com wrote:
  You can roll your own automount with one day's work using
  inotify-wait, dmesg, sudo, lsblk, and the mount command.
  Works without X or window manager. Heck, I'll do it myself
  if more than 20 people want it.

 Count me in, now we are three wanting it, including yourself.

Well, I definitely want it. Not sure if I'm counted in the original three,
or if I make four.

2015-07-27 11:45 GMT+02:00 Jaromil jaro...@dyne.org:
 On Mon, 27 Jul 2015, Svante Signell wrote:
 On Sun, 2015-07-26 at 23:17 -0500, T.J. Duchene wrote:
  If I might say so, I HATE automount.  Click to mount is fine, but
  automounting peripheral drives like jump drives, CDs and whatnot is an
  inexcusable security risk, in my opinion, even under a UNIX.

No one is more paranoid when it comes to security than me. But as for the
security risk of automount, I only see it as a problem if we are talking
about a multi-user system in an organization. A single user at home is a
likely scenario for many of us.

Ideally, automount is something that a user should be able to easily
configure. If you'd rather have click-to-mount or fully manual mount,
that's fine. I don't see why it should be any more difficult than editing a
text configuration file (or clicking a box in a gui) to change the setting.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] Secure boot?

[Robert Storey]

 Nobody yet knows how many Windows 10 compliant manufacturers will
 eliminate the off-switch for Secure Boot. Could be 90%, for all we know.
 If we don't support secure boot hardware, we're telling people not to
 use Linux on commodity off the shelf hardware. Pay double for System76.
 Won't be well received.

 We need *some* way to run on secure-boot-only hardware.

I agree entirely, but I just want to add that last year I bought a new
laptop and went specifically looking for a machine that did NOT have
Windows pre-installed. I found a Toshiba Satellite C50-B with no OS on the
hard drive. Reasonable price too - if I had wanted Windows it would have
been an additional US$100.

That's the good news. The bad is that I live in Taiwan, home of Acer and
ASUS, I could not find a single laptop made by those manufacturers without
pre-installed Windows. It was ironic that I had to buy an imported Japanese
computer rather than a domestically produced one, though in this case there
was little difference in price since the US$100 I saved by not buying a
Windows license put the Toshiba into the same price range as Acer and ASUS
machines with the same specs.

Of course, the vast majority of the laptops sold in the world come with
with Windows pre-installed, so Devuan has to support some kind of solution
that works for all those machines.

regards,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] automounting in a window manager

[Robert Storey]

James Powell wrote:
 Doesn't udevil have a port on BSD? Off kilter question but
if the answer is yes, then I can expand the idea I have.

A Google search turned up this:

http://ftp4.se.freebsd.org/pub/ubuntu/pool/universe/u/udevil/

Not sure if that is what you're looking for. Hope it helps.

cheers,
Robert
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[Dng] DistroWatch review of Manjaro-OpenRC

[Robert Storey]

Now that Ubuntu and Debian have decided to go over to the Dark Side (ie
systemd), I've been looking for a replacement at least until Devuan is
released. I believe it was Steve Litt who made a post suggesting that
Manjaro-OpenRC was very good, so I checked it out. Long story made short,
it is indeed very good and has now replaced Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop
machines.

I very occasionally write reviews for DistroWatch, and decided that
Manjaro-OpenRC was a worthy topic to write about. So I wrote the review and
I'm told by the site owner that it will be published tonight (Taiwan time
around 7 PM, early Monday morning if you're in the Western hemisphere). A
lot of you probably read DistroWatch and would have found the article on
your own, but I thought I should mention it. Feedback on the story is
welcome (even negative feedback).

regards,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] automounting in a window manager

[Robert Storey]

First, thanks to all who replied.

To me, the ideal solution would be if this was a user-configurable option.
Would be great if you could, for example, just stick something into .bashrc
for any user to allow automounting of USB devices, no matter which DE or
window manager was being used. But I know it doesn't work that way. Just
saying, it would make sense.

pmount - yes, thanks for reminding me. I've used it eons ago. But all it
does is allow one to mount a device without needing sudo. Still not really
automounting.

No one mentioned udevil. I just found it. Also not the same as
automounting, but check out the interesting git home page:

https://ignorantguru.github.io/udevil/

cheers,
Robert
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[Dng] automounting in a window manager

[Robert Storey]

With all the recent discussion about DEs (Cinnamon, Gnome, Mate, etc), I
just thought I'd throw this in here...

For the longest time, I simply used a window manager. In the beginning, it
was FVWM, but later I took a liking to IceWM. As opposed to a full-blown
Desktop Environment, I liked the speed and simplicity of a window manager.

The only drawback is that window manager doesn't seem to do automounting of
plugged-in devices. I went looking for a solution, and found this page:

https://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Automounting

It says, among other things, that udev can be configured to handle
automounting. That's nice, but since systemd has polluted udev beyond
repair, I'm wondering if Devuan can be set up to handle it better, perhaps
with vdev. Or is there a better way?

I believe that people who are opposed to systemd are similar to me - we
prefer simplicity over complex solutions, and are not impressed by bells
and whistles. Thus, I think people who are attracted to Devuan would be a
good market for a simple desktop based on IceWM.

Just something to think about.

Hope you are all having a nice weekend.

 - Robert
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Re: [Dng] dev-list

[Robert Storey]

Apollia wrote:

 I'm also glad there is a forum: http://talk.devuan.org/

 I actually prefer forums over mailing lists in general because forums
 seem to be more organized, which makes it easier for people to avoid
 anything they're uninterested in.

I didn't realize we had a forum. And I agree that it would be more
organized to post questions/comments that way. Indeed, we could have one
section of the forum for developer discussions, one area for general
questions, etc. Which begs the question: should we just retire the mailing
list(s) and start using the forum?

Anyway, now that I know of the forum's existence, I just went and signed
up. No posts yet, of course, but when there's an alpha release, I'll be
ready to direct my questions there.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] dev-list

[Robert Storey]

 Good point.  But I thought the reason for the suggestion was because of
 the amount of fairly useless chatter on this list that the devs have to
wade
 through.  (Honestly, it annoys me too.)  If there is a -dev list, I would
sign up
 to see what's happening but it's unlikely I would participate because I'm
 not really qualified to do so.

All good points. Just want to add though that probably one of the causes of
all the idle chatter is that we in the audience don't yet have Devuan in
our hot little hands, so we have no technical questions, no bug reports,
etc. All we can do for entertainment chat about what Richard Stallman
thinks of systemd, suggest that Pottering is evil, and enquire about when
Devuan-alpha will be released. I try to avoid those silly discussions, but
have occasionally broken down and participated.

Once we have the alpha in our hot little hands, we can begin to discuss the
real technology, and stop wasting developers' time with trivia. And I may
finally start my long-awaited project to help writing the documentation.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] Would like to help with Devuan

[Robert Storey]

From: JeremyBekka C jrchristop...@gmail.com

 I hope this is the right place to post this question, but I am looking for
 some advice on how to gain the necessary technical skills to help with
 future development of Devuan.

Hello Jeremy. Yes, this is as good a place as any to post your question.

A good place to learn your way around Linux in general and Debian in
particular is to plough through the Debian Reference Manual:

https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/

Not all of it will interest you, and some of the advanced stuff is probably
unnecessary for your enjoyment of Debian. But all things considered, it's a
pretty good manual.

At the moment, I don't think it delves into systemd, though that will
change, I expect. Maybe you'll want to grab the pdf version and save it to
your hard disk, because in the future it may become so encumbered with
systemd crap that you won't want to read it.

In addition to this reference manual, you can do a search for various Unix
primer material. There's quite a bit of that, and it will help you to
learn your way around the command line. Do note that there are various Unix
shells, but most distros use the Bash shell by default, so that's where
you'd want to concentrate your efforts.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] devuan security wishlist item

[Robert Storey]

 Wasn't there a whole seqence of ctrl-alt-letter things to gradually
 shut down the entire system, layer by layer?  Antybody still know
 these, and are they still there?

Ah yes, the magic keys.

Holding down Alt and SysRq (which is the Print Screen key) while slowly
typing REISUB will get you safely restarted. REISUO will do a shutdown
rather than a restart.

I don't know about Debian (because currently not installed), but in Ubuntu
this useful feature is disabled by default. It can be turned on easily
enough. As root open file /etc/sysctl.d/10-magic-sysrq.conf and comment out
or modify the line that says:

kernel.sysrq = 176

(note: might not be 176)

and change it to:

kernel.sysrq = 1

Reboot, and you're done.

Another ctrl-alt combination that's disabled in Ubuntu is the ability of
ctrl-alt-backspace to break out of X and take you to the login prompt. You
can enable it by adding the following line to .bashrc and .bash_profile:

/usr/bin/setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] Devuan's release date ?

[Robert Storey]

 I agree that we need to have good documentations to minimise mistakes.
 But without a good base for the documentations, I don't think it is
 worth to start writing them now. It will make sense to write Devuan
 documentations after it is being released and stabilised.

 Cheers,
 Anto

I just want to add that in the not-too-distant past, I was a professional
writer, though nowadays I do little that I would describe as useful. But
I would be willing to help write the Devuan documentation - I think it's
something I could do. I have to agree with Anto that it's kind of pointless
to start writing it now, since none of us yet knows just what Devuan will
look like when it's stable.

Well, I could start writing it by the time we get to a beta release - it
doesn't have to be 100% stable. But right now in pre-alpha times, I can't
write anything that would be more than speculation. So I'll wait patiently.
As has been said, release when it's ready.

cheers,
Robert

If it's beautifully arranged on the plate, you know someone's fingers have
been all over it.
 - Julia Child
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Re: [Dng] [OT]I have been liberated!

[Robert Storey]

 You're s demotivating! Systemd was never a problem, it's wonderful,
 you're just a troll! Just go with the program and use it: This is the
 21st century, so we need a 21st century init system. Systemd is
 modular, it's comprised of nothing but modules. I think Don Armstrong
 should kick you off of Debian-User. If you don't like Debian, make your
 own!

Systemd, the Linux Mutilator. It's got what trolls crave. It's got
electrolytes.

http://www.brawndo.com/
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Re: [Dng] Why daemontools is so cool

[Robert Storey]

Thanks for telling us about this. I hadn't heard of daemontools before.

I did an apt-cache show daemontools and interestingly it suggests
runit. I presume that Devuan will at least include daemontools and
possibly runit, which should be a fascinating combination to play with.

Can't wait to get Devuan installed.

cheers,
Robert

Quote of the day for systemd fans...

No society has to be dragged kicking and screaming down the slope of
decline and fall; one and all, they take that slope at a run, yelling in
triumph, utterly convinced that the road to imminent ruin will lead them to
paradise on Earth.
 - John Michael Greer
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Re: [Dng] vdev status update and milestone

[Robert Storey]

 From: Jude Nelson
 Hey everyone,

 I'm pleased to announce that vdev can successfully boot to a console on
the
 Devuan vagrant image!  It creates all requisite device files and loads all
 requisite kernel drivers, both for the pre-boot initramfs environment (so
 init can mount root) and in the early boot environment (while root is
 mounted read-only).  I'd like to thank you all for your patience and
 support, with a special shoutout to the individual who goes by the name
 Scooby on this list who helped me find and fix early-boot bugs.

Thanks for the update. Just want to let you know that your efforts are
very much appreciated. Totally awesome, and double thumbs up!

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] Puppy Linux-related thoughts

[Robert Storey]

Puppy Linux is interesting. I used it for awhile and liked that it was
fast, and fun. A bit lacking in software, but with the Slacko packages you
can make it better. My main concern about it was that it logs you in as
root (without even a password). A lot of people have expressed concern
about this apparent security hole, but Puppyistas are insistent that it's
no problem. I remain somewhat sceptical. Anyway, kudos to the developers
for remaining systemd-free. On the other hand, I just took a look at their
forum, and I was dismayed to see several posts by users practically
demanding that systemd be brought into Puppy. Hopefully, the developers
will resist the urge to surrender.

Wolfgang Pirker wrote:
 There is also AntiX. The main developer behind it seems also not to be
 happy about how Debian Jessie users are forced to use SystemD:
 http://antix.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=6t=5280

(if anyone is more interested about a AntiX (Jessie-based) release
 without SystemD - a Beta release:
  http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08851 )

Wow! I'm familiar with AntiX, having used it long ago, but I hadn't
realized that the latest beta is Jessie-based and systemd-free. So now I
have to ask: Isn't that pretty much what we're doing here with Devuan?
Perhaps I should rephrase that: In what ways is AntiX different from
Devuan? And is there any possibility of collaborating with Anticapitalista
(the developer)?

cheers,
Robert
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[Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Robert Storey]

Hopefully, it's just a rumor, though it sounds real.

Indeed, I've been wondering why RMS hasn't commented on systemd long ago
when it became obvious that it would effectively dump his beloved Hurd
project into the trash can. If he really called someone a troll for
asking his opinion of systemd, then my feeling about RMS has gone down a
couple of notches.

Well, RMS doesn't do anymore development work as far as I know, so maybe
his opinion doesn't matter. Still, as a well-known time-honored
spokesperson for free software (I know he doesn't want us calling it
open source) I would have expected better. Pity.

cheers,
Robert
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[Dng] release names

[Robert Storey]

Just want to say that I really like this idea of naming releases after
minor planets, such as Ceres. It's a way cool idea. I nominate
pseudo-planet Sedna for a future Devuan release. Not sure how many of these
planets exist, but if we run out of planet names, there's always the many
moons of the solar system (165 by last count). And then there are the
comets.

Quite frankly, I always thought it was rather lame to name Debian releases
after the toys in Toy Story. Then again, I thought the movie was lame too.

Looking forward to Ceres,
Robert
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[Dng] KDE systemd lock-in

[Robert Storey]

I'm just wondering how this is going to affect KDE apps. I have several KDE
apps installed on my current system, and really like them. It would be a
pity if I couldn't use them in the future, though some of them could easily
be replaced with non-KDE equivalents. I also have to wonder about Gnome
apps, as I have several of those which are very useful.
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[Dng] UEFI secure boot not secure

[Robert Storey]

Hi, this is a little off-topic, but still relevant I think. You all might
remember that about a month ago I made a post about how I had partitioned
my laptop hard drive GPT-style, which requires UEFI boot. I did this mainly
to learn about GPT and UEFI, not because I wanted to dual-boot with Windows
(because I don't in fact use Windows, at all). My post was just to ensure
that Devuan would be able to handle UEFI boot.

A few people later replied that MBR boot was at least as good, if not
better. I didn't really think that it mattered, so I don't have anything to
say about that. But then today I saw this:

New Vicious UEFI Bootkit Vulnerability Found for Windows 8
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/19/win8_rootkit/

That got my attention. And with a little more googling, I learned that UEFI
boot in fact is quite a bit more likely to compromised than BIOS boot,
because you can place rootkits undetectable for the OS in the preload.
Microsoft's answer to this is to enable secure boot, but now it seems
that even that has been compromised.

Your best protection would be to own a motherboard that only has BIOS boot
capability. But such boards are now becoming scarce, though you can still
find that in new server motherboards (such as those made by Tyan) On
consumer motherboards, BIOS is pretty much history. Nevertheless, a UEFI
motherboard is probably safe (or at least safer) if you disable UEFI boot
and enable CSM (compatibility support module) so that you can partition the
drive MBR style. Doing that, of course, means that you don't get to take
advantage of the dubious benefits of GPT partitioning, but unless your hard
drive is larger than 2TB, I don't think you'll notice the difference.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] Boot loader?

[Robert Storey]

On Fri,On Fri, 30 Jan 2015, Steve Litt wrote:
 Is it just me, or is Grub2 as complex and error prone as systemd?

 I'm wondering if we can have alternate boot loaders.

 SteveT


I'm sure you know it already, but it is definitely worth pointing out
the classic LILO is still maintained

Though it isn't as horrible as Systemd, I agree that Grub2 is a nightmare.
I would be willing to call it the Systemd of boot loaders. But as I
understand it, Grub2 is now the default in Debian, isn't it?

Grub1, or Grub Legacy as it's now called, is fine. But if any distro
wants to use it, I strongly suggest the patched version which supports UEFI
booting (as well as old-fashioned MBR booting). As I mentioned in a recent
post, my attempt to boot AntiX (a Debian distro which uses Grub1 as
default) failed because I had my laptop set up to use UEFI booting. I ran
into the same problem with PCLinuxOS for the same reason. The patched
version of Grub1 has been around for a few years now, but is seldom used.

Despite its age, LILO is good. Slackware uses it by default, and I had no
issues when I tried booting it UEFI style. You do have to make sure to have
ELILO available if you want to use it with UEFI.

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] Dng Digest, Vol 4, Issue 35

[Robert Storey]

RLFrost said:

 Just to clear up the EFI misconception, Debian can be installed on EFI
 computers.  I run it on three of my own-- 2 Acer desktops and 1 ASUS
 laptop.  I use rEFind as a boot manager, as it it very straightforward,
 and does a very nice job with all OS entries.  I understand that there
 are instructions for installing Debian with GRUB only floating around,
 but I don't find it necessary.

Hi RL. Your post puzzled me, but it forced me to dig deeper, and I think I
found the reason why both Debian and PCLinuxOS refused to boot. The version
of Debian I was using (actually antiX) uses Grub1 (ie: Grub-Legacy) rather
than Grub2 to boot. PCLinuxOS also uses Grub1. As I understand it, generic
Grub1 will not do UEFI boot, though there are unofficial modified versions
which will.  Slackware uses Lilo to boot which doesn't support UEFI, but
switches to Elilo if it encounters UEFI which can handle it.

So I guess the lesson in all this for Devuan is that it should not use
Grub1 (unless it's a modified version). Default should be Grub2, or else
Lilo/elilo combination like Slackware.

Thanks for the heads-up on this, seems that I was barking up the wrong tree.

regards,
Robert

On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 8:00 PM, dng-requ...@lists.dyne.org wrote:

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 Today's Topics:

1. UEFI, GPT (Robert Storey)
2. Re: libsysdev preview (Isaac Dunham)
3. Re: libsysdev preview (Jude Nelson)
4. UEFI, GPT (rlfrost)


 --

 Message: 1
 Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 11:27:01 +0800
 From: Robert Storey robert.sto...@gmail.com
 To: dng@lists.dyne.org
 Subject: [Dng] UEFI, GPT
 Message-ID:
 CAC39vt1wFMwoSC1ir0qZZe6AUejnDVT4E-2zwYSxuwuX=
 ce...@mail.gmail.com
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

 Steve Litt said:

  I've heard anecdotes of the UEFI system writing to persistant memory on
  the motherboard in a way that an app misusing UEFI could brick the
  motherboard. Therefore, the only time I use UEFI is when I absolutely
  must have Windows on the laptop, and the Windows that came on the
  laptop requires UEFI.

 Steve, I did some follow-up on this issue, and I see what you're talking
 about. It's an issue that effects some Samsung laptops, but may affect
 others:

 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1234580

 Good to know about, and somewhat cools my enthusiasm for UEFI and GPT. But
 we'll still probably have to learn to live with UEFI/GPT, because it's now
 the default setup on so many machines, especially laptops, and there are
 those who think they must have Windows installed alongside Linux.

 Though I live without Windows just fine, I need to help others who still
 haven't quite kicked the habit. So I'll continue my experiment with
 UEFI/GPT dual-booting, and hopefully will find a way to make it work with
 Devuan.
 -- next part --
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 --

 Message: 2
 Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 19:55:34 -0800
 From: Isaac Dunham ibid...@gmail.com
 To: Jude Nelson jud...@gmail.com
 Cc: dng@lists.dyne.org dng@lists.dyne.org
 Subject: Re: [Dng] libsysdev preview
 Message-ID: 20150120035527.GA5071@newbook
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

 On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 08:56:10PM -0500, Jude Nelson wrote:
  Regarding the architecture, I have a design document here:
  http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2015/01/introducing-vdev.html  Is this
 what
  you're looking for?  Or did you want a more low-level document describing
  the implementation details?

 I was asking about implementation details (something like the HACKING
 document that many projects have, giving an overview of how it works
 internally).

 Being mainly acquainted with C, I might not be able to follow it myself,
 but it may well be useful for people who want to contribute.

  Regarding whitespace, my style is based on Stroustrup's adaptation of
 KR.
  I add whitespace where I do because it helps me read code better and add
  comments.

 Ah.
 I find that the Linux kernel style (also based on KR) seems most clear
 to me; it seems quite different on the surface.
 (Styles are styles, though. There's always variation.)

  Looking forward to seeing what you do with libsysdev :)  I'm seriously
  considering moving libudev-compat out of vdev entirely, and having it use
  libsysdev as a backend (either way, I don't want

[Dng] UEFI, GPT

[Robert Storey]

Gravis said:

 the first release will be almost the same as debian with the
 exception of packages needing systemd.  after that i dont
 know but we would need hardware to test on to make any
 direct changes.

Hi Gravis. Yes, that's kind of what I figured. I'll do a little more
exploring on the Debian forum to see if someone has a suggested workaround,
but my current limited experience indicates that Debian is incompatible
with UEFI boot, even with secure boot disabled, and Debian is hardly unique
in this respect. For some people, that may be a show stopper, since
GPT-partitioned disks are now the norm when you buy a new computer.

Steve T said:

 I've heard anecdotes of the UEFI system writing to persistant memory on
 the motherboard in a way that an app misusing UEFI could brick the
 motherboard. Therefore, the only time I use UEFI is when I absolutely
 must have Windows on the laptop, and the Windows that came on the
 laptop requires UEFI.

Hi Steve. Thank you for raising this issue, as I hadn't heard about it
previously. If true, this could be a serious security threat. That makes me
wonder: do professional sysadmins (Note: I am not one) avoid GPT, and is
this the reason?

 Of course, your use case is dual booting with the Windows that came
 packaged with your laptop, and I think that might require UEFI. But
 pure Linux/BSD situations, consider doing what I do and using the
 ancient MBR system until UEFI becomes more solid.

Actually, I don't have Windows installed - I managed to buy a Toshiba
Satellite sans Windows. So at the moment I'm dual-booting only Ubuntu and
Slackware. However, my purpose in using UEFI/GPT on this machine was to
learn about it, because I do indeed get called upon by friends to set up
their computers with a Windows/Linux dual-boot. Until recently, I had no
trouble doing that, since I'm pretty familiar with the MBR system. However,
people are now bringing me new laptops with UEFI/GPT, and I'm at a loss as
to how it works. Thus, I'm now trying to master this new tech, and I was
rather surprised to find that Debian and PCLinuxOS both choked and died on
UEFI.

 On my desktop, what I do is have root (/) be a relatively small SSD
 that can maintain its full size with an MBR boot. That drive
 has /usr, /etc, and basically all of the OS that doesn't get written.
 Then I have a separate, huge disk, for changeable data, such as /home
 as one example, and I format that GPT (but it's not UEFI because it
 doesn't boot).

That's a good suggestion, and I'll keep it in mind if I switch over my
desktop, which at the moment is still partitioned with MBR. However, it
won't help with the laptop since I don't think it has space inside to
accomodate two drives.

Thanks again to all the people working on Devuan. I look forward to testing
the first alpha released as soon as it hits the servers.

cheers,
Robert
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[Dng] UEFI, GPT

[Robert Storey]

Steve Litt said:

 I've heard anecdotes of the UEFI system writing to persistant memory on
 the motherboard in a way that an app misusing UEFI could brick the
 motherboard. Therefore, the only time I use UEFI is when I absolutely
 must have Windows on the laptop, and the Windows that came on the
 laptop requires UEFI.

Steve, I did some follow-up on this issue, and I see what you're talking
about. It's an issue that effects some Samsung laptops, but may affect
others:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1234580

Good to know about, and somewhat cools my enthusiasm for UEFI and GPT. But
we'll still probably have to learn to live with UEFI/GPT, because it's now
the default setup on so many machines, especially laptops, and there are
those who think they must have Windows installed alongside Linux.

Though I live without Windows just fine, I need to help others who still
haven't quite kicked the habit. So I'll continue my experiment with
UEFI/GPT dual-booting, and hopefully will find a way to make it work with
Devuan.
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[Dng] UEFI, GPT

[Robert Storey]

Hello everyone. This is my first post, though I've been lurking on the
mailing list for awhile. Until now I've been content to shut up and let
more knowledgeable folks discuss the technical details, but today I
encountered an issue which hasn't been discussed here yet: support for UEFI
boot (as opposed to BIOS) and a hard disk partitioned as GPT (as opposed to
MBR).

I have two computers, one desktop and one laptop, and before today I kept
them both partitioned MBR style. Both are set up for multi-booting
different Linux distros, particularly important now that I'm looking to
experiment with alternatives to Debian since it got infected with systemd.

Anyway, today I decided that it was about time I switched from MBR to GPT,
so I went ahead and did that (for the laptop only). Took me most of the day
to get that working since I've had no previous experience with GPT. I
discovered that in order to do this, I had to turn off CSM/legacy options
to prevent accidentally booting in BIOS - getting GPT to work seems to
require using UEFI to boot. Note that I did NOT turn on secure boot - it is
disabled.

Another thing I discovered is that I couldn't get Debian to install (or
even boot from a USB stick) once I had configured the hard drive with GPT.
I wound up installing Ubuntu successfully. I learned that it was necessary
to add a boot manager (aside from Grub2, which acts as a boot loader) - I
chose to use rEFInd. If you're not already familiar with rEFInd, you can
find out all about it here: http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

Anyway, the important point is that Debian with UEFI/GPT was a disaster.
Since I was setting up for multi-booting, I tried a number of other
distros, and found that the problem is not limited to Debian. PCLinuxOS
also failed to boot, even from a memory stick. Slackware Linux installed
just fine. However, Salix (which is a Slackware derivative boasting a fancy
live CD interface) had problems - it booted, but couldn't start Xorg.

So the purpose of my post today is to plead with the developers to make
sure that Devuan will work fine on UEFI/GPT, unlike Debian which seems to
choke on it.

Thank you for this mailing list, and the great work you are doing on Devuan.

best regards,
Robert Storey
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