[gentoo-user] Combining multiple pointer devices into one

[Willie Wong]

Hi list, 

When I look at /dev/input I see the devices mice, mouse0, mouse1,
mouse2, mouse3. The first one, mice, seems to be a combination of all
other mouse devices. 

On the console I want to use gpm to get a pointer, but gpm can only
take one MOUSEDEV entry at a time (as far as I know), so currently I
have it set on /dev/input/mice. Ideally, however, I only want to use
mouse0 and mouse2 on the console (mouse1 is actually a touchscreen and
its output is "junk" from the point of view of the ps2 driver, and
actually causes problems). 

How does one create, using udev, an input device that aggregates just
the data from mouse0 and mouse2? 

Thanks, 

W
-- 
Willie W. Wong ww...@math.princeton.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire 
 et vice versa   ~~~  I. Newton

Re: [gentoo-user] the same hard-drives, different number of sectors...

[James Broadhead]

On 27 October 2011 20:35, Mark Knecht  wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Jarry  wrote:
>> Hi, perhaps someone could explain this to me:
>>
>> I have bouth two the same hard-drives. The same model
>> (Hitachi HUA722050CLA330), the same firmware (JP20A3EA),
>> the same size (500GB). Well, not exactly. Both hdparm
>> and fdisk report different number of sectors (976771055
>> versus 976773168). Although not a big difference, yet
>> I expected them to be exactly the same (want to use
>> them for raid1).
>>
>> So how is it possible they do not have the same number
>> of sectors? I have bought them from one supplier, even
>> their serial numbers are very close (only the last 2
>> characters out of 24 are different)...
>>
>> Jarry
>
> Maybe one has some stuff mapped out due to bad blocks found during
> manufacturing or something like that? Not sure what it will tell you
> but have you run smartctl on the drives and looked around at what they
> tell you to find any differences?
>
> - Mark

During normal operation, if a bad block is detected, that sector is
marked as 'bad', and a one of the free sectors (which are additional
to your totals) is allocated to replace it. This is called
Re-Allocating Sectors, and according to the Google paper[1], which
seems to be the only authoritative (non-marketing, non
industry-funded) source on hard-drive failure, re-allocated sectors
are indicative of impending drive failure. You can check your
Re-Allocated sector count using smartmontools (but I recommend that
you try gsmartcontrol in sunrise, which makes life easier).

This is made more complicated by the fact that if bad sectors (below a
manufacturing threshold) are detected in factory testing, they will
re-allocate them, and reset the SMART counter to Zero (the drive _is_
brand new after all!). Thus, you can buy two of the exact same model
of drive, and yet have different numbers of available sectors.

It is also possible that something entirely different is at play.

[1] labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

Re: [gentoo-user] Calls compiler directly, and strange parameters passed. Is this a bug?

[James Broadhead]

On 29 October 2011 01:03, Michael Mol  wrote:
> Is this incorrect? Does it qualify as a bug?

Yes. The ebuild should respect your CFLAGS unless there is a USE flag
to enable/disable them. The counter to this is when a package won't
build without specific flags, then disregarding the user is okay.
Since this is over-optimising (rather than under-), this probably
isn't the case.

File a minor bug, and if you're super-interested, please take a look
at ebuild writing. I get the feeling that maintaining calibre is a bit
messy, I'm sure that they'd appreciate the help.

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive RPMs and data speed.

[James Broadhead]

On 27 October 2011 09:15, Dale  wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> I'm wanting to get a hard drive that is pretty good size.  I'm looking for
> about 1 to 2TBs or so.  Thing is, a lot of them seem to be 5900 or even 5400
> rpm drives.  I realize that the data on there is packed pretty tight so I
> want to ask a few people that may have one or more of these things a few
> questions.  Are they as fast as a slower RPM drive?  Would they be fast
> enough to play HD videos and such?  I have quite a few 1080 HD videos.  I
> don't want the drive to cause issues.

Ignoring your question somewhat, since the hdparm test won't actually
get you 'effective' throughput, only 'ideal'.

( (4.4*1024*1024*1024) / (120*60) ) / 1024
640.796

So a 4.4GiB movie that lasts 2 hours would require a sustained drive
throughput of 640KiB/s  - which is pretty achievable.

My experience says that it doesn't matter how slow a drive you use,
provided that you beef up mplayer's cache size and minimum cache
threshold, since my laptop has a slow drive that likes to power down,
but loads of RAM.

>> grep cache /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf
# cache settings
# Use 8MB input cache by default.
cache = 131072
# Prefill 20% of the cache before starting playback.
cache-min = 20.0
# Prefill 50% of the cache before restarting playback after the cache emptied.
cache-seek-min = 50

Re: [gentoo-user] Which desktop antivirus?

[James Broadhead]

On 30 October 2011 15:29, Mick  wrote:
> On Sunday 30 Oct 2011 13:32:26 James Broadhead wrote:
>> I'm surprised that no one has mentioned rkhunter yet
>
> I have ...

Oops, sorry! I was reading the thread on my phone, and must have missed it.

JB

Re: [gentoo-user] Combining multiple pointer devices into one

[James Broadhead]

On 31 October 2011 09:13, Willie Wong  wrote:
> When I look at /dev/input I see the devices mice, mouse0, mouse1,
> mouse2, mouse3. The first one, mice, seems to be a combination of all
> other mouse devices.
>
> On the console I want to use gpm to get a pointer, but gpm can only
> take one MOUSEDEV entry at a time (as far as I know), so currently I
> have it set on /dev/input/mice. Ideally, however, I only want to use
> mouse0 and mouse2 on the console (mouse1 is actually a touchscreen and
> its output is "junk" from the point of view of the ps2 driver, and
> actually causes problems).
>
> How does one create, using udev, an input device that aggregates just
> the data from mouse0 and mouse2?

Do you mean for X, or a /dev/ node for gpm ? Like /dev/input/most_mice ?

For the first, this is configurable in xorg.conf. No clue about the second.

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive RPMs and data speed.

[Dale]

James Broadhead wrote:

On 27 October 2011 09:15, Dale  wrote:

Howdy,

I'm wanting to get a hard drive that is pretty good size.  I'm looking for
about 1 to 2TBs or so.  Thing is, a lot of them seem to be 5900 or even 5400
rpm drives.  I realize that the data on there is packed pretty tight so I
want to ask a few people that may have one or more of these things a few
questions.  Are they as fast as a slower RPM drive?  Would they be fast
enough to play HD videos and such?  I have quite a few 1080 HD videos.  I
don't want the drive to cause issues.

Ignoring your question somewhat, since the hdparm test won't actually
get you 'effective' throughput, only 'ideal'.

( (4.4*1024*1024*1024) / (120*60) ) / 1024
640.796

So a 4.4GiB movie that lasts 2 hours would require a sustained drive
throughput of 640KiB/s  - which is pretty achievable.

My experience says that it doesn't matter how slow a drive you use,
provided that you beef up mplayer's cache size and minimum cache
threshold, since my laptop has a slow drive that likes to power down,
but loads of RAM.


grep cache /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf

# cache settings
# Use 8MB input cache by default.
cache = 131072
# Prefill 20% of the cache before starting playback.
cache-min = 20.0
# Prefill 50% of the cache before restarting playback after the cache emptied.
cache-seek-min = 50




I have the same here too.  Like minds maybe?  o_O

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive RPMs and data speed.

[James Broadhead]

On 31 October 2011 10:58, Dale  wrote:
> James Broadhead wrote:
>> # Use 8MB input cache by default.
>> cache = 131072
>
> I have the same here too.  Like minds maybe?  o_O

I _think_ that it's the highest power-of-two that mplayer will allow
... so maybe not.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Hard drive RPMs and data speed.

[Alex Schuster]

Michael Mol writes:

> My point is that the numbers aren't what mattered here. My point is
> that SAMSUNG sold me a shoddy product, replaced it with another
> instance of the the same shoddy product, wouldn't replace it again,
> and never addressed a detailed technical report of a systemic problem
> in the same. Bad tech, bad customer service, and it looked like this
> was a more common scenario than among other manufacturers. All of it
> boiled down to a nasty case of being a bad candidate for spending time
> and money.

Samsung, uh? Here's my story of today. My fried just bought two external
USB drives. I wanted to know which brand the HD is, so I checked with
hdparm -I, and googled for SAMSUNG HD204UI. I found a story about a bug
which makes the drive sometimes forget to write a block when it is
attached to a SATA adapter in AHCI mode and when the ATA command
"IDENTIFY DEVICE" is sent (like in hdparm -I or when using the
smartmontools). There is a firmware patch for this, this is good. But on
the annoying side:

- You need to make a DOS boot floppy and copy the patch there. I don't
  know how exactly to do this, and I read about people using Linux who
  needed over an hour for this or even failed. Can't they just let me
  download an image I can boot from?

- It doesn't work over USB, so I would have to install the drive in a PC.

- The new firmware has exactly the same revision number. How stupid is
  this?? I cannot even find out whether the drives have the problem or
  not. Except by trying to reproduce the problem.

Here's a link to the but I described, but It's German only.
http://www.heise.de/ct/meldung/Firmware-Patch-fuer-Samsung-Festplatte-EcoGreen-F4-HD204UI-Update-1150154.html
I also read some angry comments about Samsung there. Question is, are
other manufacturers better? And wasn't Samsung Electronics bought by
Seagate anyway?


Any idea whether an external USB drive case might count as a SATA
controller in AHCI mode? I tried to trigger the bug, but that did not
happen, so I guess it's fine, at least when being in the USB case.

Another problem is that data access frequently stalls on her PC, like when
transferring data or doing a mke2fs. After a while, this message appears
in syslog, and the process continues for a while, until it happens again:

usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7

Same problem with a GRML boot cd and on another USB port. Happens with
both drives. But it is fine on my PC. 

Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Hard drive RPMs and data speed.

[Michael Mol]

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 12:21 PM, Alex Schuster  wrote:
> Michael Mol writes:
>
>> My point is that the numbers aren't what mattered here. My point is
>> that SAMSUNG sold me a shoddy product, replaced it with another
>> instance of the the same shoddy product, wouldn't replace it again,
>> and never addressed a detailed technical report of a systemic problem
>> in the same. Bad tech, bad customer service, and it looked like this
>> was a more common scenario than among other manufacturers. All of it
>> boiled down to a nasty case of being a bad candidate for spending time
>> and money.
>
> Samsung, uh? Here's my story of today. My fried just bought two external
> USB drives. I wanted to know which brand the HD is, so I checked with
> hdparm -I, and googled for SAMSUNG HD204UI. I found a story about a bug
> which makes the drive sometimes forget to write a block when it is
> attached to a SATA adapter in AHCI mode and when the ATA command
> "IDENTIFY DEVICE" is sent (like in hdparm -I or when using the
> smartmontools). There is a firmware patch for this, this is good. But on
> the annoying side:

That could very likely be the nature of the initial symptom for my
second failed drive. I recall being angry about silent corruption,
with SMART not reporting anything interesting. Drive failed
differently later on, IIRC. I still have it in the same eSATA external
enclosure I was using at the time. I'll have to look.

>
> - You need to make a DOS boot floppy and copy the patch there. I don't
>  know how exactly to do this, and I read about people using Linux who
>  needed over an hour for this or even failed. Can't they just let me
>  download an image I can boot from?

Any idea if it works from FreeDOS?

>
> - It doesn't work over USB, so I would have to install the drive in a PC.

Does the enclosure doens't contain an eSATA port? That's almost
certain to be a direct passthrough.

>
> - The new firmware has exactly the same revision number. How stupid is
>  this?? I cannot even find out whether the drives have the problem or
>  not. Except by trying to reproduce the problem.

Sounds like the only way you can be certain the drives don't have the
problem is by installing the patched firmware.

>
> Here's a link to the but I described, but It's German only.
> http://www.heise.de/ct/meldung/Firmware-Patch-fuer-Samsung-Festplatte-EcoGreen-F4-HD204UI-Update-1150154.html
> I also read some angry comments about Samsung there. Question is, are
> other manufacturers better? And wasn't Samsung Electronics bought by
> Seagate anyway?
>
>
> Any idea whether an external USB drive case might count as a SATA
> controller in AHCI mode? I tried to trigger the bug, but that did not
> happen, so I guess it's fine, at least when being in the USB case.

The drive inside is SATA, so the USB enclosure is translating USB
mass-storage commands to commands the SATA drive can understand.
AFAIK, AHCI vs Legacy mode is a function of the SATA *controller*, not
of the drive itself; legacy mode takes an older protocol, converts it
to SATA commands, and then dispatches those SATA commands. I'll
venture a guess that when going through Legacy mode, whatever commands
trigger the bug aren't used in the Legacy->SATA conversion, whereas
AHCI, with its closer-to-metal nature, exposes those commands for use.
Whether or not the USB enclosure will trigger those bugs would depend
on whether or not the USB Mass Storage<->SATA translation uses those
commands or not.

(In my mind, this is feels like the old AGP->PCI Express transition.
Early PCIe video cards were actually AGP cards with an AGP->PCIe
bridge/adapter chip onboard, because it was faster and cheaper to get
to market by throwing an adapter component in the sequence. However, I
don't know enough about the ASIC market for USB hard drive enclosures
to know whether chips with adapter layers (like that legacy->SATA
command translation, but at a hardware level, making it
USB->legacy->SATA) will be the cheaper part to source than chips which
convert more directly between the USB Mass Storage and SATA
protocols.)


>
> Another problem is that data access frequently stalls on her PC, like when
> transferring data or doing a mke2fs. After a while, this message appears
> in syslog, and the process continues for a while, until it happens again:
>
> usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7

That looks incredibly familiar. I kept getting those, and then
switched to my enclosure's eSATA port. That's when the drive started
giving me different problems. At the time, I'd assumed it was the
enclosure's USB components at fault.

>
> Same problem with a GRML boot cd and on another USB port. Happens with
> both drives. But it is fine on my PC.


It sounds like the drives might be salvageable with a firmware patch,
now. I'd suggest extracting the drives, plugging them into a PC,
updating the firmware, and then putting them back in the enclosure.
That way, you're certain the drives don't still hav

[gentoo-user] serious kernel bug in 3.1.0 : RAID10

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Ok, not gentoo-specific, but I think you forgive this OT-posting if it
helps at least one gentoo-user to keep his data safe:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1209036

Stefan

Re: [gentoo-user] Combining multiple pointer devices into one

[Willie Wong]

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 09:57:10AM +, James Broadhead wrote:
> On 31 October 2011 09:13, Willie Wong  wrote:
> > When I look at /dev/input I see the devices mice, mouse0, mouse1,
> > mouse2, mouse3. The first one, mice, seems to be a combination of all
> > other mouse devices.
> >
> > On the console I want to use gpm to get a pointer, but gpm can only
> > take one MOUSEDEV entry at a time (as far as I know), so currently I
> > have it set on /dev/input/mice. Ideally, however, I only want to use
> > mouse0 and mouse2 on the console (mouse1 is actually a touchscreen and
> > its output is "junk" from the point of view of the ps2 driver, and
> > actually causes problems).
> >
> > How does one create, using udev, an input device that aggregates just
> > the data from mouse0 and mouse2?
> 
> Do you mean for X, or a /dev/ node for gpm ? Like /dev/input/most_mice ?
> 
> For the first, this is configurable in xorg.conf. No clue about the second.

The second. Like you said, in xorg.conf I can select multiple pointer
devices, so there's no need to worry about X (and in fact the X events
driver is capable of dealing with the touchscreen). So yes, I would 
like something in the spirit of /dev/input/all_but_one_mice. 

Thanks

W
 

-- 
Willie W. Wong ww...@math.princeton.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire 
 et vice versa   ~~~  I. Newton

[gentoo-user] Error using "safely remove" for every USB DEVICE.

[Carlos Sura]

Hello Mates,

I'm getting this error: http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/5359/usberror.jpg

Everytime I try to use: "Safely Remove" option, in every USB device, I'm
not losing data -I guess- because I have not noticed, but, I really don't
know why is this happening, and well.. I would like to know if there any
way to fix it, and why is this happening. (I've already googled, nothing
interesting).

Regards,

-- 
Carlos Sura.-
www.carlossura.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: DVD->mp4 - handbrake vs something else

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Grant Edwards
 wrote:
> On 2011-10-30, Mark Knecht  wrote:

>> I'd like to see about reducing the file size a bit if
>> possible. At the same time the native resolution of the Fire is
>> 1024x600 so I'm wondering about whether I can make the movies look
>> better by making the mp4 file somehow know about that size.
>
> If you mean you want the files encoded at a resolution of 1024x600,
> you can tell handbrake what output resolution you want.  You'll get
> far better results by encoding to the desired resolution, format and
> bit-rate you want the first time than you will re-encoding a second
> time.
>
> You can create your own presets with whatever encoding settings you
> want.
>
> --
> Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! World War III?

Hi Grant,
   I've got to say I'm really impressed with Handbrake overall. It
just works, most especially if you use one of the presets. I've had
only one problem with any of my experiments which was that files
encoded using the High profile cause xine to crash with some sort of
floating point error. I don't personally care about the high profile
so to me it's a non-issue.

   One thing I haven't been able to figure out so far is where you
change the presentation size. I presume that presentation size is the
one I want to change to 1024x600 as that's the native resolution of
the Kindle. However I discovered where I unlock those setting in
Handbrake. Do you know?

   Anyway, it's a very nice little program for anyone else who's GUI
oriented like me.

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Error using "safely remove" for every USB DEVICE.

[Felix Kuperjans]

Hello Carlos,

this error is just telling you that udisks did not succeed in powering
down the USB device, but actually it was unmounted cleanly (so no data
will be lost).

The reason is most likely a missing kernel option:

"USB runtime power management (autosuspend) and wakeup" in "Device
Drivers" -> "USB support".
Note that this option only shows up when "Run-time PM core
functionality" in "Power management and ACPI options" is enabled.

Maybe someone could make the ebuild check for this option and issue a
warning if it is unset?

Regards,
Felix

Am 01.11.2011 02:13, schrieb Carlos Sura:
> Hello Mates,
>
> I'm getting this
> error: http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/5359/usberror.jpg
>
> Everytime I try to use: "Safely Remove" option, in every USB device,
> I'm not losing data -I guess- because I have not noticed, but, I
> really don't know why is this happening, and well.. I would like to
> know if there any way to fix it, and why is this happening. (I've
> already googled, nothing interesting).
>
> Regards,
>
> -- 
> Carlos Sura.-
> www.carlossura.com 
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Error using "safely remove" for every USB DEVICE.

[Carlos Sura]

On 31 October 2011 19:30, Felix Kuperjans  wrote:

>  Hello Carlos,
>
> this error is just telling you that udisks did not succeed in powering
> down the USB device, but actually it was unmounted cleanly (so no data will
> be lost).
>
> The reason is most likely a missing kernel option:
>
> "USB runtime power management (autosuspend) and wakeup" in "Device
> Drivers" -> "USB support".
> Note that this option only shows up when "Run-time PM core functionality"
> in "Power management and ACPI options" is enabled.
>
> Maybe someone could make the ebuild check for this option and issue a
> warning if it is unset?
>
> Regards,
> Felix
>
>
Hello Felix,

Thank you for your answer and your explanation, I was a little bit confused
about this; I will check my Kernel configuration and rebuild with these
options, to avoid this messages.

It would be great if it could show a warning if this  options are unset (to
let us know)

Regards,

-- 
Carlos Sura.-
www.carlossura.com

[gentoo-user] Re: DVD->mp4 - handbrake vs something else

[Grant Edwards]

On 2011-11-01, Mark Knecht  wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Grant Edwards

>> If you mean you want the files encoded at a resolution of 1024x600,
>> you can tell handbrake what output resolution you want. ??You'll get
>> far better results by encoding to the desired resolution, format and
>> bit-rate you want the first time than you will re-encoding a second
>> time.
>>
>> You can create your own presets with whatever encoding settings you
>> want.
>
> I've got to say I'm really impressed with Handbrake overall. It just
> works, most especially if you use one of the presets. I've had only
> one problem with any of my experiments which was that files encoded
> using the High profile cause xine to crash with some sort of floating
> point error. I don't personally care about the high profile so to me
> it's a non-issue.
>
> One thing I haven't been able to figure out so far is where you
> change the presentation size.

I think it's the -w and -l options for width and height, respectively.

I only use the CLI version (https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/CLIGuide),
but I'm sure there's somewhere in the GUI to set all that stuff as well.
I think that web page is a bit out of date, so do "HandbrakeCLI
--help" for a current set of options.

> I presume that presentation size is the one I want to change to
> 1024x600 as that's the native resolution of the Kindle. However I
> discovered where I unlock those setting in Handbrake. Do you know?

-w and -l set the output file's width/height (in pixels).  If your
pixels are square, then I think that's all you need.  If your pixels
aren't square, then I think you need some other options.

You can get a list of the exact settings for each of the presets by
doing HandBrakeCLI --preset-list.

> Anyway, it's a very nice little program for anyone else who's GUI
> oriented like me.

I don't have the GUI version installed, so I'm afraid I can't help
with that end of it, but IIRC the GUI will let you create your own
presets.  I don't think the CLI version does custom presets, but it
would be easy enough to copy the settings from one of the built-in
presets into a file, and edit them until you get a command line that
works the way you want.

Once you've figured out good settings for your device, submit a patch,
and next time maybe HandBrake will already "just know" what to do. :)

-- 
Grant

[gentoo-user] Consistency checking

[meino . cramer]

Hi,

I know of three commands to check the consistency of a Gentoo system:


eix-sync && emerge --color=n -p -v --newuse --update --deep world
emerge -p -v --depclean
revdep-rebuild --ignore -p -v

of course, one has to remove the -p and -v flags after checking the
putput of the commands.

What else can be checked and should be checked from time to time or
after each update?

Thank you very much in advance for any help!

Best regards,
mcc