Re: [gentoo-user] SDDM tmp file goes missing?

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2024/01/05 at 11:46am, Arve Barsnes wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Jan 2024 at 10:57, Andreas Fink  wrote:
> > It's the anacron job in /etc/cron.daily/systemd-tmpfiles-clean that
> > cleans files in the tmp folder.
> > There has also been a news item about the change on November 21st 2022.
> >
> > You might have to adapt the files that should not be cleaned by the
> > automatic cleanup (or disable automatic cleanup).
> 
> Good shout. Upstream has created a fix, but it is not in a release (yet).
> 
> https://github.com/sddm/sddm/commit/b002d02bbe9281b8362fa549991b7581b7758668
> 
> I'll try that and see if my version of the problem appears again.

Thanks for finding that. I love patches that I can actually
understand. I've also applied the fix. 

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)

ESOL Coordinator, The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Educator, Columbus State Community College

Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998)
Linux user since 1998
Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] SDDM tmp file goes missing?

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2024/01/05 at 10:57am, Andreas Fink wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Jan 2024 08:04:49 +0100
> Arve Barsnes  wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 5 Jan 2024 at 02:49, Spackman, Chris  wrote:
> > > Any thoughts on possible causes or fixes?
> >
> > I've also had this happen a few times over the last months, with error
> > mails about SDDM tmp files from cron. Just wanted to pipe in and say
> > that I don't have either rkhunter or keepassxc, so they must be
> > unrelated. Running on openbox.
> >
> > I also have the 'unable to open new GUI apps' problem on a Plasma
> > machine now and then. I had not connected the two, but maybe the same
> > root cause.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Arve
> >
> 
> It's the anacron job in /etc/cron.daily/systemd-tmpfiles-clean that
> cleans files in the tmp folder.
> There has also been a news item about the change on November 21st 2022.
> 
> You might have to adapt the files that should not be cleaned by the
> automatic cleanup (or disable automatic cleanup).

Thanks! That must be the issue. Applying the config files that Arve
suggested now.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)

ESOL Coordinator, The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Educator, Columbus State Community College

Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998)
Linux user since 1998
Linux User #137532

[gentoo-user] SDDM tmp file goes missing?

[Spackman, Chris]

Good evening,

I few times (like maybe 3 or 4) over the last 4 or 5 months or so, I've
woken up to a slightly broken X11 session. Nothing GUI has permission to
access, starting in a terminal gives this message:

> Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified

I originally thought it was caused by an xscreensaver crash, but I've
not been using it, and still woke up to this problem this morning. I've
no idea the cause, and I'm sure everything was okay when I went to bed
last night.

The biggest hint came from rkhunter and anacron - rkhunter runs during
the night, and when this issue happens, I get an email that includes
something like:

> run-parts: /etc/cron.daily/rkhunter exited with return code 1 
>
> Opening file "/tmp/keepassxc-chris.socket" failed, ignoring: No such device 
> or address   
> Opening file "/tmp/sddm-:0-NpHoUj" failed, ignoring: No such device or 
> address 

I've not checked keepassxc (running, in the system tray) after this, but
everything GUI (that I have tried) that was already running continues to
run okay, but nothing new can start. Not sure if SDDM is a cause or a
symptom, but /tmp/ should usually have something like this:

> chris:~$ ll /tmp/ | grep sddm
> srwxrwxrwx 1 sddmsddm  0 Jan  4 06:56 dbus-blahblah
> srwx-- 1 sddmsddm  0 Jan  4 06:56 sddm-:0-blahblah
> srwxr-xr-x 1 rootroot  0 Dec 24 13:15 sddm-auth-blah-blah-blah

Best guess, this seems to happen after 10 days to 3 weeks of uptime, but
only recently. In the past, I've had as much as a month or so of uptime
(usually logged into Fluxbox on X11) without issues.

When this happens, I log out of Fluxbox, log back in, and all is well
again. 

I've not updated in the last few days, so that doesn't seem likely as a
cause for the most recent occurrence.

Any thoughts on possible causes or fixes?

Thanks.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)

ESOL Coordinator, The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Educator, Columbus State Community College

Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998)
Linux user since 1998
Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] slim gives me blank screen after entering wrong password

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2023/04/07 at 11:40am, the...@sys-concept.com wrote:
> On 4/7/23 11:06, Spackman, Chris wrote:
> > On 2023/04/06 at 06:53pm, the...@sys-concept.com wrote:
> >> I'm starting X server via "slim" (XFCE4).  When I enter a wrong
> >> password the slim will not restart, it gives me black screen.  Trying
> >> to restart "xdm" over ssh does not help, I need to reboot the
> >> computer.
> > 
> > Have you tried restarting the 'display-manager' service instead? IIRC,
> > it replaced xdm.
> 
> You are correct, I'm suing "display-manager" not xdm.  So I was
> restarting the wrong one :-/ that is why it didn't work. One of those
> days.

> And to login it uses "lightdm"
> Thank you for the pointer.

I figured that might be it because I did the exact same thing the first
few times after the switch.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)

ESOL Coordinator, The Graham Family of Schools
ESOL Educator, Columbus State Community College

Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998)
Linux user since 1998
Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] slim gives me blank screen after entering wrong password

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2023/04/06 at 06:53pm, the...@sys-concept.com wrote:
> I'm starting X server via "slim" (XFCE4).  When I enter a wrong
> password the slim will not restart, it gives me black screen.  Trying
> to restart "xdm" over ssh does not help, I need to reboot the
> computer.

Have you tried restarting the 'display-manager' service instead? IIRC,
it replaced xdm.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)

ESOL Coordinator, The Graham Family of Schools
ESOL Educator, Columbus State Community College

Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998)
Linux user since 1998
Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] viewer for "ps" postscript files

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2021/12/23 at 01:57pm, the...@sys-concept.com wrote:
> I have latest ghostscript installed: ghostscript-gpl-9.55.0-r1
> 
> When I try to view a postsript file from command line: gs W-9_Form.ps
> It works OK, but when I try to open same file in Xfce desktop it opens
> and closes instantly.

My guess would be that in XFCE, gs is successfully doing whatever
(showing, interpreting, ??) in a terminal window and then immediately
closing when done.

Have you tried a GUI such as Okular or Evince? They both support viewing
.ps files.

In Thunar, just right click on the file and choose "Open with >" and
either Okular or Evince if they are listed, or "Open with Other
Application ..." if they aren't. (But if they aren't listed, you might
have to install them, or a similar GUI viewer.)

> I use hylafax + YajHFC and when I try to open some files I get an error:

I honestly have no idea about hylafax and YajHFC. Unless there is more
here than just trying to view a .ps file (or you are working in a very
restricted environment), they are probably not the best tool.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)   ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL EducatorColumbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Movie editing softeware

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2021/12/21 at 07:17pm, Wols Lists wrote:
> On 21/12/2021 18:49, Spackman, Chris wrote:

> > 2b. press the "export video" button at the bottom of the window. Here,
> >  for me, the defaults work fine.
> 
> The problem is 2b. For me, it's an extremely simple case of "I gave you 
> a dot ts file, I want a dot ts file back".
> 
> The act of importing the ts file into the project seems to throw that 
> information away. I know a .ts is some sort of a container, with streams 
> and whatnot, but I don't have a clue what's in it. Why should I?
> 
> All I know is I want to end up with EXACTLY the same sort of file I 
> started with, and this seems exactly what most video editors don't have 
> a clue how to do!
> 
> (Like a word .docx - I don't give a monkeys what's inside it, I don't 
> need to, word takes care of all that. Why can't any half-decent video 
> editor do the same?)
> 
> And yes, I have tried. You're hearing the screams of frustration from 
> countless failed attempts.

Video files are certainly horribly complex. I promise I am no expert at
all, but I have been fooling with them for decades, so I suppose I
probably know a lot more than I realize, and more than most people who
haven't been at it that long.

I think the problem is that the files have both a container and a
format. Matroska, if i understand correctly, is a container. It could
hold video, audio, and even subtitles, in any of several formats.

This is unlike a DOCX file, for example, which is always a zip file with
xml (and other) files in expected formats. The closest to the situation
you are seeing is if MS Office opened an ODT file (from LibreOffice) and
always saved it - without asking - as a DOCX file.

Even more out there would be if LO would accept ODT files that were
tarred and gzipped instead of just plain zipped and that also could have
html, markdown, or org formats instead of xml inside the tar.gz
file. (that would an interesting world, i think)

I hadn't realized it until you brought it up, but it is odd that so many
video programs don't have a "save in the same format as the original"
option. I'm sure ffmpeg can probably do it easily, but then we're back
to the original issues with trying to get the cutting lined up neatly.

Good luck.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)   ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL EducatorColumbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Movie editing softeware

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2021/12/21 at 05:13pm, Wols Lists wrote:
> On 21/12/2021 16:07, Spackman, Chris wrote:
> > On 2021/12/20 at 11:17am, William Kenworthy wrote:
> >> Hi, what is a usable piece of software in portage to do a quick edit of
> >> a movie? (cut start/end and maybe splice a bit in/out of the middle?)

> > I've not seen anyone mention OpenShot. It is in portage, but masked for
> > some reason.

> > As someone else mentioned, you do have to create a project and then
> > export. Really, though, the "create project, make export choices" is
> > only like an extra minute or two of your time. I usually don't even save
> > the project for just some simple trimming.
 
> It may be a minute or two of YOUR time.
> 
> For someone who doesn't "DO" video editing, it can easily turn into 
> hours of debugging trying to work out what does (or doesn't) work.
> 
> Sorry, but you can't assume we're all video whizzes like you ... :-) 
> That's why we want something dummy-proof!

Wow, sorry, didn't realize this was such a sore issue. Especially
considering we've already discussed several command line programs in
this thread. 

To export:

1. press the red circular "export video" button (or go to File =>
   Export Project => Export Video);

2a. [optional] change the name of the video in the export window that
pops up;

2b. press the "export video" button at the bottom of the window. Here,
for me, the defaults work fine.

I did it three times in less than a minute, double checking the accuracy
for this post. So, not a huge inconvenience.

Of course, if the defaults do NOT work for you, then you do not want
something "dead easy", you want something that will read your mind and
do what you want, somehow, automagically.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)   ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL EducatorColumbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Movie editing softeware

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2021/12/20 at 11:17am, William Kenworthy wrote:
> Hi, what is a usable piece of software in portage to do a quick edit of 
> a movie? (cut start/end and maybe splice a bit in/out of the middle?)

I've not seen anyone mention OpenShot. It is in portage, but masked for
some reason.

As someone else mentioned, you do have to create a project and then
export. Really, though, the "create project, make export choices" is
only like an extra minute or two of your time. I usually don't even save
the project for just some simple trimming.

Alternatively, there are sites that do video editing. I like veed.io
just because it can add and then translate subtitles (which I need for
my job), but I'm sure there are many others.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)   ch...@osugisakae.com

ESOL CoordinatorThe Graham Family of Schools
ESL EducatorColumbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Odd Chrome behavior when dragging tab to create new window

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2021/09/27 at 11:07pm, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2021-09-27, Spackman, Chris  wrote:
> 
> > If it is still working, that is great news for users of
> > Chromium-based browsers that aren't Google Chrome, but I don't think
> > it is safe to expect the behavior to continue.
> 
> It's Google. It's not safe to expect _any_ behavior to continue. :)

It's funny because it's true. 

*Sigh*

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)   ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Odd Chrome behavior when dragging tab to create new window

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2021/09/27 at 07:31pm, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Sep 2021 11:23:58 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:

> > I couldn't (easily - I'm very busy right now) figure out how to get
> > Chrome and Chromium to sync bookmarks and passwords and I want
> > Windows, Android and Linux (all flavors) to be in sync if possible.

> I use Chromium on my computers and Chrome on my phone and the
> bookmarks are kept in sync without any action on my part. It seems
> there is no difference between Chrome and Chromium in this regard.

Is sync still working? I thought that Google had closed whatever
loophole had allowed not-Chrome browsers to sync with Google Chrome.

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/122570052/sync-and-login-no-longer-works-in-chromium?hl=en

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/01/chromium-sync-google-api-removed

I also remember that on the Twit network, either This Week In Tech or
maybe Security Now talked about Google closing that "bug".

If it is still working, that is great news for users of Chromium-based
browsers that aren't Google Chrome, but I don't think it is safe to
expect the behavior to continue.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)   ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Chrome - no system title bar or boarders

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2021/09/24 at 09:42am, Mark Knecht wrote:


> Kubuntu updated Chrome this morning but the problem still exists.

I use Fluxbox and had the same issue. Found this today:

https://piunikaweb.com/2021/09/23/google-chrome-94-use-system-title-bar-and-borders-checkbox-broken/

To fix the problem:



  you will need to head over to the chrome://flags page and find the
  “use-ozone-platform” setting.

  Make sure to change it from default to disabled, restart your Chrome
  browser and you will be good to go."



I can confirm that this worked for me here.

It seems to be a Google Chrome bug that is fixed / being fixed in the
next version (also from the above link).

I have NOT tried this fix on KDE.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)   ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Odd Chrome behavior when dragging tab to create new window

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2021/03/12 at 02:57pm, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2021-03-12, Grant Edwards  wrote:

> > When I drag a tab out of it's parent window to create a new window
> > [...] instead of staying where it's put the new window will follow
> > the mouse cursor around the desktop anytime Chrom(e|ium) has focus.
> [...]
> > If I press ctrl-alt-backspace this behavior will stop, and the new
> > window will behave normally.

> I just realized that any keypress will cause the weird behavior to
> stop.

I have the same problem. Started recently. Right clicking on the tab and
choosing "Move tab to new window" (if there is only one window) or "Move
tab to another window" => "New window" (if there is already more than
one window) works without problem.

I've no idea what is causing the problem. Fluxbox is my window manager.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)   ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Moving from Lastpass to Bitwarden

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2021/02/17 at 06:51am, Dale wrote:

> I simply googled for 'alternatives to Lastpass' and Bitwarden was one of
> a few that came up.  Several links were articles comparing the two.  If
> a person doesn't like what Lastpass is doing, it won't take much to find
> other password managers.  They may pick something besides Bitwarden but
> still, they have the option of switching. 

I recently switched from LastPass to Bitwarden and this is exactly what
I did. Many articles rated both highly, making me feel better about
Bitwarden. I also liked that it is open source AND more affordable. I
wish I could run my own server, but my security-foo is not strong enough
to risk exposing not only my computer, but my passwords to the entire
internet. 

However, there is another option that I've not seen anyone mention
(apologies if I missed it): use local password manager (such as the
excellent KeePassXC) for financial / very important sites, and an
in-browser, Internet-connected manager for general sites of little
consequence (like Slashdot, for example). I personally keep everything
in KeePassXC and a subset of frequently used, non-financial sites in
Bitwarden. I'm much more likely to log into a news site or perhaps even
a shopping site from various computer. But, banking sites or other
financial sites? ONLY from my Gentoo computer, because I am most
confident of its security.

Similarly, use different browsers for different purposes. I use Firefox
for daily browsing, with hardcore security installed (ublock matrix, for
example). Google Chrome is only for Google sites. Another browser is for
banking and other shopping. Still has strong security, but not as strong
because, at least for me, that tends to break those sites. Also, this
browser only ever goes to those sites.

In short, I guess I'm saying there is no need for either / or
thinking. There are lots of ways to approach security.

> I logged into my credit card on my cell phone, about the only thing I
> use on my cell phone anyway, it worked OK once I figured out how to
> get it to fill the info in.  I might add, Lastpass has issues with
> that site as well.  If I didn't know better, I'd think the website
> tries to prevent people from using a password manager.

I agree - sites should be encouraging password managers, not
discouraging them. I forget which site is was, but I had to deal with
one that somehow disabled copy and paste (even with middle mouse button)
in the password set up / change field. I used pwgen to make a 25
character random password and then had to type the monster into the
site, twice! I'm sure most other people (less careful types) would just
have switched to an easier password. Luckily / Oddly, the site did allow
pasting into the password field for regular log in.

-- 
Chris Spackman (he / him)   ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] A new Linux back door

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2020/08/14 at 07:27am, Dale wrote:

> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > I saw this today:
> >
> > https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/08/13/174237/fbi-and-nsa-expose-new-linux-malware-drovorub-used-by-russian-state-hackers?
> > utm_source=slashdot_medium=twitter
> >
> > Has anyone any more info?

> It seems to affect only older kernels, before 3.7.  So if you are
> above that, which I would think most Gentoo users would at least be in
> the 4 range or higher, then you should be OK. I checked and the oldest
> kernel version is 4.4 here.  That's for gentoo-sources.  Of course,
> one could download the original kernel sources I guess. 

I think the 3.7 version is just because that was when kernel module
signing was introduced?

According to Ars:

  The advisory also urged that, at a minimum, servers run Linux kernel
  version 3.7 or later so that organizations can use improved
  code-signing protections, which use cryptographic certificates to
  ensure that an app, driver, or module comes from a known and trusted
  source and hasn’t been tampered with by anyone else.

  Additionally, system owners are advised to configure systems to load
  only modules with a valid digital signature making it more difficult
  for an actor to introduce a malicious kernel module into the system,”
  the advisory stated.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/nsa-and-fbi-warn-that-new-linux-malware-threatens-national-security/

So, it sounds like you are not immune if you have 3.7+, just that you do
have some additional tools you could use to protect yourself. I use
Gentoo just at home for personal use, and it never even occurred to me
to use digital sigs for kernel modules.

I found this: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Signed_kernel_module_support
but haven't had time to try it yet. Does anyone have experience with
digitally signing kernel modules on Gentoo?

-- 
Chris Spackman (he/him) ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Testing a used hard drive to make SURE it is good.

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2020/06/15 at 11:07am, Dale wrote:

> I finally bought a 8TB drive.  It is used but they claim only a short
> duration.  Still, I want to test it to be sure it is in grade A shape
> before putting a lot of data on it and depending on it.  I am familiar
> with some tools already.  I know about SMART but it is not always 100%. 
> It seems to catch most problems but not all.  I'm familiar with dd and
> writing all zeores or random to it to see if it can in fact write to all
> the parts of the drive but it is slow. It can take a long time to write
> and fill up a 8TB drive. Days maybe??  I googled and found a new tool
> but not sure how accurate it is since I've never used it before.  The
> command is badblocks.  It is installed on my system so I'm just curious
> as to what it will catch that others won't.  Is it fast or slow like dd?

If you have a few days, I'd run spinrite
(https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) on it. It is very slow but very
good at checking and repairing disks. (Gibson is working on an updated
version that will be much, much faster.) No joke that you would have to
leave the current version running for several days (at least) for an 8TB
drive, if you ran the most comprehensive test.

Aside from time, the drawback is that spinrite costs money.

I've used badblocks and it is not fast, but not nearly as slow as
spinrite. IIRC, it took maybe a few hours for a 250GB drive. That said,
I've been lucky not to have a huge number of problems with drives, so I
can't say how much either has helped.

-- 
Chris Spackman  ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Idea for Videoconferencing (Video part)

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2020/04/03 at 11:16am, Petric Frank wrote:

> Problem: Usually the camera is outside of the screen. The user
> normally looks at the screen. As result the communication partner(s)
> see him not looking at the camera.

> Idea: Use two cameras positioned left and right or top and bottom of
> the screen. Combine the two video streams and generate a third stream
> having a virtual camera positioned at the middle of the screen.

> Result: Better communication. The partners always looking in their
> eyes. At the same time the screen contents can be viewed.

I think this would be fun to try, but I don't have any idea the actual
feasibility.

Moreover, I believe Apple tried something similar, very briefly, with
Face Time. I think it just used processing to try to "fix" where the
eyes were looking. My understanding is that it creeped everyone out and
no one liked it. Probably an uncanny vallley thing. So, they dropped
it. (IIRC, I heard that on TWIT a while back.)

Maybe two cameras could do it better, though?

-- 
Chris Spackman  ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] Firefox and script block tool/addon

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2020/02/17 at 02:31am, Dale wrote:
> Dale wrote:

> I been playing with this add-on and watched some videos on it.  While
> it does some things better, it just isn't specific enough for what I
> need.   In some cases, if I blocked scripts with it, some sites
> wouldn't work at all or caused other issues. In a way it's better than
> noscript but it still just doesn't go far enough.  I wish adblock
> would list elements the way it used to.  That worked great because I
> could block scripts on a individual basis.  Allow the ones I need and
> block the ones that cause issues. 

I'm really surprised that umatrix (not ublock origin!) can't do what you
need. As you note, it is much more granular than NoScript. Blocking
elements at the subdomain level, you'd think, would be granular enough
for most web pages.

Are you saying you want to additionally allow / block scripts not just
on a per-subdomain basis but on a per-individual-script basis? I've been
using things like NoScript and uMatrix for many years, and I don't think
even I would want to deal with that. How would you know which ones to
allow? The Reg is showing 7, of which I allow 3. The Guardian has like
28, of which I allow 19. It would not be fun to try to go through all of
those to figure out which ones are absolutely necessary. You'd be
examining, allowing, and reloading 20 times per site, at first.

Maybe the Tor Browser people would be interested in working on such an
add on? 

-- 
Chris Spackman  ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] External hard drive and idle activity

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2020/01/01 at 08:00pm, Dale wrote:
> Grant Taylor wrote:
> > On 1/1/20 5:09 PM, Dale wrote:

> > Note:  umount will normally block until buffers are flushed to disk.
> >
> >> Is it safe to turn it off even tho it is doing whatever it is doing?
> >
> > I wouldn't.
> >
> >> Should I wait?
> >
> > I would.
> >
> >> Does it matter?
> >
> > Maybe.

[snip]

> If I touch the enclosure and feel it doing something, I leave it on,
> just in case.  I actually been wondering about this for a while. 
> Sometimes it will stop after a couple minutes, sometimes it is still
> doing its thing 30 minutes later.  In the case of the first, I was
> concerned about files being cached etc.

I have a similar drive (8TB external. WD, iirc). It did something
similar - it would seem to still be in use even after I umounted it -
and I wasn't sure if it was okay to unplug (no physical off
switch). Somewhere I found this command to shut down the drive:

udisksctl power-off --block-device /dev/sdx

I didn't see that command mentioned in the thread yet. I've been using
it, after umount, for about 8 months for roughly weekly backups and
some misc storage. So far, I've not seen any problems with it. The drive
immediately shuts down, and there haven't been any data or performance
issues.

But because no one else has mentioned it, I wonder udisksctl is not the
best tool in this case?


-- 
Chris Spackman  ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
Japan Exchange and Teaching Program   Wajima, Ishikawa 1995-1998
Linux user since 1998 Linux User #137532

Re: [gentoo-user] ryzen and c-state poweroffs?

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2019/05/04 at 08:34am, Mick wrote:

> Did you try Ctrl+Alt+SysRq + R,E,I,S,U,B to reboot it more gracefully rather 
> than pressing the power button?

> Regarding kernel parameters, you could try:

> idle=nomwait

> since dmesg indicates there's something wrong with it and hope a future 
> firmware release will address this bug.

Great idea, thanks. I looked into that a bit but didn't get a chance to
try it (and honestly, only half understood what I was reading). The
computer developed other problems that made me just give up and return
it.

I'm ordering one from System 76 instead - hopefully a computer build for
Linux will not come with any of these issues out of the box.

Thanks for your help.

-- 
Chris Spackman  ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
MA TESOL Adjunct   Ohio Dominican University

Re: [gentoo-user] ryzen and c-state poweroffs?

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2019/05/04 at 05:39am, Emmanuel Vasilakis wrote:



> I'm not in any way familiar with these processors (only recently I've
> been thinking about upgrading to Ryzen, so I've made some research
> online. 

> Have you seen this: https://github.com/qrwteyrutiyoup/ryzen-stabilizator ?

Thank you, I had not seen that. 

> Is it a first gen processor, or a 2XXX one?

Not sure.

Thanks for the advice. I actually ended up returning the computer. It
started crashing in addition to this problem, so it was no longer worth
my time to try to figure out.

-- 
Chris Spackman  ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
MA TESOL Adjunct   Ohio Dominican University

[gentoo-user] ryzen and c-state poweroffs?

[Spackman, Chris]

All,

I set up a new AMD computer (moved disk from previous Intel
computer). After some struggles with bios settings, I got it to boot
properly and updated for the new hardware. All seemed fine, but then it
started "crashing" when left alone. From Googling, it seems that it has
something to do with the bios powering down drives that aren't in use,
but then not being able to power them back up. 

When it "crashes" (goes into a coma?), I have to use the power button to
turn it off and then back on. As it starts up, the root partition is
clean, but home has to be recovered - which seems to indicate that it is
indeed an issue with the mobo/bios turning off the root drive.

I found a Linux site that suggested this line in dmesg as a symptom:

> [Firmware Bug]: ACPI MWAIT C-state 0x0 not supported by HW (0x0)

The solution was to turn of C-states in the bios. I forget the exact
wording right now, but I could not find it in my bios. I tried to turn off
everything that seemed related to power saving, but several did not have
an "off" option. So, I am still getting the error.

For now, I set up a cron job to move a file from /root to /tmp every 15
minutes. This seems to work, but it is obviously not a long term
solution. 

I checked for a bios update, but there was not one available.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there maybe a /sys/ or /proc/ file
I can tweak to avoid bios powering things off?

Thanks.

-- 
Chris Spackman  ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
MA TESOL Adjunct   Ohio Dominican University

Re: [gentoo-user] pam issues with crontab and xscreensaver

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2019/04/26 at 10:14am, Spackman, Chris wrote:

> But, xscreensaver cannot recognize my password. It just says incorrect
> (or permission denied?)  and will not unlock. I had to switch to vt1,
> log in, and kill xscreensaver.
> 
> Similar with "crontab -e" (as a regular user). It tells me I do not have
> permission:
> 
> "You (chris) are not allowed to access to (crontab) because of pam
> configuration."

Nevermind. Not sure what changed, but a re-emerge of pam fixed both
issues. Very weird.

Thanks.

-- 
Chris Spackman  ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
MA TESOL Adjunct   Ohio Dominican University

[gentoo-user] pam issues with crontab and xscreensaver

[Spackman, Chris]

I recently moved my gentoo install from an old drive to a newer drive,
and then into a new computer. I used rsync to copy the system over to
the new drive. That all worked mostly no problem and the everything
boots up and runs fine on the new computer.

But, xscreensaver cannot recognize my password. It just says incorrect
(or permission denied?)  and will not unlock. I had to switch to vt1,
log in, and kill xscreensaver.

Similar with "crontab -e" (as a regular user). It tells me I do not have
permission:

"You (chris) are not allowed to access to (crontab) because of pam
configuration."

In the logs, I get:

"unix_chkpwd[4603]: could not obtain user info (chris)"

I don't believe anything has changed in the configs. I didn't make any
changes, and emerge hasn't recently mentioned anything needing
etc-update.

/etc/pam.d/xscreensaver is just:

authinclude system-auth

/etc/pam.d/crond has more in it:

auth   includesystem-auth
accountrequired   pam_access.so
accountincludesystem-auth
sessionrequired   pam_loginuid.so
sessionincludesystem-auth

This was all working fine yesterday before the switch. I used crontab -e
to turn off a few things in my cron before starting the rsync.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks.

-- 
Chris Spackman  ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
MA TESOL Adjunct   Ohio Dominican University

Re: [gentoo-user] Cups can't see my USB printer

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2019/02/17 at 11:39am, IMAP wrote:

> After a long spell of no printing, I'm trying to get my mono laser
> working again. I'm in the lp group, and the USB interface seems to be
> working:

> # lsusb | grep Kyocera
> Bus 003 Device 008: ID 0482:000e Kyocera Corp. FS-1020D Printer

> But the KDE system settings applet can't see the printer, nor can
> Firefox at http://localhost:631/. I've tried adding a manual
> configuration, but the printer is still not found.

Check the permissions on the device. I have a similar problem where for
some reason the permissions on the device get changed to root:usb. It
should be root:lp - at least, when I change to root:lp, the printer
immediately starts working just fine.

# lsusb
to find the device, bus 003, device 008 in your case

# ls -l /dev/bus/usb/003/008
to confirm permissions

# chown root:lp /dev/bus/usb/003/008
to change the permissions

I'm not sure when this started, but I first noticed it a few weeks
ago. Not a huge issue, so I've not put much effort into trying to find
the cause, I'm afraid.


-- 
Chris Spackman  ch...@osugisakae.com

ESL Coordinator The Graham Family of Schools
ESL Instructor  Columbus State Community College
MA TESOL Adjunct   Ohio Dominican University

Re: [gentoo-user] New profile 17: How urgent is the rebuild of world technically?

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2017/12/03 at 06:55am, Dale wrote:
 
> I think I get what you are saying.  If for example you start a
> emerge -e world, a emerge -uDN world or something and then stop it
> before it finishes, running emerge --resume should pick up where you
> left off.

Another helpful option, which I don't think has been mentioned yet, is
--skipfirst. With --resume, this is helpful when a relatively
unimportant package fails to compile. Emerge will skip the one that
failed (because it would be the first one in the resumed emerge) and
continue on. Later, I go back and see about getting the failed package
to work. I don't think that --skipfirst is a good idea if an important
package (one that will affect many other packages) fails. But, I am
not an expert on that stuff.

So, if:

emerge -e @world

fails (on a relatively unimportant package), you could use:

emerge --resume --skipfirst

to continue. I am actually almost 75% done with the system rebuild and
have had to do this so far with cdrdao and spideroak-bin (which
probably doesn't matter as it is a -bin package).

-- 
Chris Spackman

GNU Terry Pratchett

Re: [gentoo-user] glibc-2.24-r2 failed (install phase)

[Spackman, Chris]

On 2017/06/16 at 09:55am, Mick wrote:
> On Friday 16 Jun 2017 04:05:17 tu...@posteo.de wrote:
> > On 06/15 08:18, tu...@posteo.de wrote:
> > > On 06/15 12:16, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 11:56 AM,   wrote:
> > > > > Hi,
> > > > > 
> > > > > While updateing glibc-2.24-r2 failed to install.
> > > > > 
> > > > > These are the last few lines of that process:
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > al/execinfo.c.texi
[snip]
> > > > > [Makefile:12: install] Error 2
> > > > > 
> > > > >  * ERROR: sys-libs/glibc-2.24-r2::gentoo failed (install phase):
> > > > >  *   emake failed
> > > > >  *
> > > > > 
> > > > > If anything more is wanted, I will be happy to post the wanted logs.
> > > > > But I want to prevent to logbomnb the mailinglist in beforehand... ;)
> > > > 
> > > > What version of sys-apps/texinfo do you have installed?
> > > 
> > > [I] sys-apps/texinfo
> > > 
> > >  Available versions:  4.13-r2 5.2 6.1 (~)6.3 {nls static}
> > >  Installed versions:  6.3(06:29:05 AM 02/18/2017)(nls -static)
> > >  Homepage:https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
> > >  Description: The GNU info program and utilities
> > 
> > I installed this version:
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > [I] sys-apps/texinfo
> >  Available versions:  4.13-r2 5.2 6.1 [m](~)6.3 {nls static}
> >  Installed versions:  6.1(03:39:36 AM 06/16/2017)(nls -static)
> >  Homepage:https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
> >  Description: The GNU info program and utilities
> > 
> > and the same (see above) happens.
> 
> Did you try reinstalling sys-apps/texinfo, before glibc?

I had a similar issue with texinfo just yesterday, but not with glibc
- I was unable to emerge almost anything. In my case, I think texinfo
was a symptom, not the problem. Perhaps it is similar in your case?

I ran "perl-cleaner --all" once or twice, did an "emerge --deep -av
--newuse @world" which found one package to update, and then maybe
perl-cleaner again, and finally, "emerge --deep -avu @world" was able
to upgrade / reinstall texinfo. After that, I was able to emerge
new packages just fine.

So, point is - maybe try running something like perl-cleaner,
revdep-rebuild, or the such?

-- 
Chris Spackman

GNU Terry Pratchett