Re: [gentoo-user] Reinstall

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 11 May 2022 10:57:03 BST Francisco Ares wrote:
> Hello
> 
> After a main HD failure, I'll have to reinstall Gentoo from almost zero - I
> have a full and recent copy of the /etc directory and the file
> /var/lib/portage/world in a secondary HD (along many personal backups).
> 
> Installation basics done, now it is time for an emerge world.
> 
> Although the emerge lists is as huge as expected, it doesn't even start,
> portage says there are cyclic USE flags that I should avoid at the first
> moment, but may restore afterwards.
> 
> But it doesn't say which are those USE flags that block each other.
> 
> Is there any way to find those better than brute force?
> 
> By the way, I also have a copy of all binary packages (I always use the -b
> flag while emerging any package) in that second disk. But that didn't help
> so far, even trying to use the -K flag. I thought on un-tar'ing those
> binary packages by hand, but portage will be unaware of this, not knowing
> the packages are installed.
> 
> Any hint will be greatly appreciated!
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Francisco

Try emerging @system first and see if this succeeds.  I recall something 
similar on a recent fresh (re)installation, but the USE flags causing the 
circular block were reported in the emerge output, so I was able to unset and 
reset them at the time.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Bluetooth speakers

[Michael]

On Monday, 9 May 2022 14:56:42 BST k...@aspodata.se wrote:
> Peter:
> ...
> 
> > What would help is some idea of how the whole BT system works,
> 
> ...
> 
> There are two incompatible types of bluetooth:
>  Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
>  Bluetooth Classic
> see:
>  https://www.bluetooth.com/learn-about-bluetooth/tech-overview/
> 
> You must check which generation of bluetooth your speaker uses.
> If your speaker uses the classic type, this might help you:
>  https://wiki.debian.org/Bluetooth/Alsa
> 
> ///
> 
> More info about bluetooth:
>  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth
>  https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/
> 
> ///
> 
> Current linux bluetooth tools (http://www.bluez.org/) doesn't
> handle bluetooth classic, unless you build bluez with
> --enable-deprecated configure option.
>  Also, bluez has dropped direct /dev file access for users, you
> have to set up and go through dbus regardless wether you like it
> or not.
> 
> Regards,
> /Karl Hammar

I've met some success getting BT to work and I tend to follow these basic 
steps:

1. Configure the kernel according to the BT chipset available on the PC.

2. Power the BT chip by using whatever hardware button is available and check 
dmesg identified the device and loaded whatever module and firmware is 
necessary.

3. Use 'rfkill list' to check the device is not blocked and unblock it if 
necessary.

4. Run 'rc-service -v bluetooth start'.

5. Run 'bluetoothctl' to scan, list, pair and trust any peripherals  - 
exchange a PIN to facilitate pairing as necessary.

These steps should be relatively easy to complete and GUI tools are also 
available to assist with the above.  Any problems thereafter are userspace 
related, i.e. whether the applications I use will be able to work with the BT 
peripherals.  Audio has been problematic on a particular use case, where 
neither alsa (bluez-alsa), nor pulseaudio allowed me to output audio via BT.  
Eventually I tried blueman which after a couple of restarts helped pulseaudio 
to recognise the device and output audio through it.

In all cases I prefer cables to temperamental radio connectivity and where 
quality matters, like it can be in some audio applications, I would seek to 
connect with a cable.

HTH

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Re: [gentoo-user] Bluetooth speakers

[Michael]

On Thursday, 5 May 2022 17:21:46 BST Jack wrote:
> I have a photive BT speaker that I've used successfully with plasma on
> my Artix laptop.  I can test later with my Gentoo desktop to confirm.  I
> don't remember if you use pulseaudio or not, but if so, I'd check
> pavucontrol to see if it also thinks that device is active and being
> used by whatever app is producing the sound, and also that the volume
> meter is showing any output.
> 
> Probably not relevant to you, but I've recently solved a long-standing
> problem with audio (not just BT, also wired, but mostly with the mic)
> where my system monitor (gkrellm, and specifically its gkrellmss plugin)
> had grabbed the audio device, so although pavucontrol saw that the
> device existed, it couldn't actually do anything with it, and the volume
> meter didn't even show up.  Solved in the short term by just disabling
> that plugin.
> 
> Jack
> 
> On 5/5/22 11:22, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > Hello list,
> > 
> > Is there a knack to getting my plasma desktop to operate happily with my
> > new Bluetooth speakers? I can get a connection using the Bluetooth
> > control panel, and the sound device appears in the Audio control panel,
> > but testing either speaker produces no sound.
> > 
> > The Gentoo wiki was helpful in getting everything I need (well, I thought
> > I
> > had), but still I seem to be missing one link in the chain.
> > 
> > (I still have the old M-Audio speakers with their line-in, but so far I've
> > lost two motherboard sound chips and two USB dongles while using them, so
> > I
> > wanted to try something else.)

I've never had speakers blowing the audio chips driving them.  I would have 
thought they would be protected electrically from such events occurring.  
Anyway, more to the point, I had tried to configure a laptop to connect over 
bluetooth to an AVR, but I couldn't get it to work until I installed and used 
net-wireless/blueman.  You may want to give it a spin.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Audio stopped working in KVM with libvirtmanager

[Michael]

On Saturday, 7 May 2022 14:45:06 BST Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> Audio in KVM (qemu) launched through libvirtmanager used to work fine
> last time I used it (about 3 months ago.) There has been lots of updates
> since then, including a switch from Pulseaudio to Pipewire, and
> something along the way broke it. Now I get no sound whatsoever. qemu
> doesn't even show up as an application in the audio mixer, nor in the
> output of "pw-top".
> 
> If I launch the VM directly through qemu with:
> 
>qemu-system-x86_64 [...] -audiodev id=audio1,driver=pa
> 
> then it works fine. But if I launch it through libvirtmanager, it
> doesn't. Even if I force the use of "-audiodev id=audio1,driver=pa" in
> the XML of the VM in /etc/libvirt/qemu/, it still doesn't work. There's
> no error anywhere, no warning, nothing in the logs.
> 
> Does anyone have any idea what to do?

I don't use libvirt, but use QEMU from a console.  For the last couple of 
versions I have been getting these sort of notices when I launch a Win10 VM:

ALSA lib /var/tmp/portage/media-libs/alsa-lib-1.2.6.1/work/alsa-lib-1.2.6.1/
src/pcm/pcm.c:8568:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occurred

I don't have pulseaudio on this PC, only alsa modules and pipewire with 
default settings.  The VM audio works, but it clips.  I haven't looked into it 
yet, because audio in VM is less of an issue for my use case, hence I have no 
useful suggestions (yet).  :-)


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Re: [gentoo-user] Lenovo T400 wifi scan and connect questions

[Michael]

On Monday, 29 August 2022 22:23:00 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
> 1) the output of "dmesg | grep iwlwifi" is...
> 
> [0.640780] iwlwifi :03:00.0: can't disable ASPM; OS doesn't have
> ASPM control [0.641112] Loading firmware: iwlwifi-5000-5.ucode
> [0.641332] iwlwifi :03:00.0: loaded firmware version 8.83.5.1 build
> 33692 5000-5.ucode op_mode iwldvm [0.641360] iwlwifi :03:00.0:
> CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG disabled [0.641364] iwlwifi :03:00.0:
> CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUGFS disabled [0.641367] iwlwifi :03:00.0:
> CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TRACING disabled [0.641370] iwlwifi :03:00.0:
> Detected Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN, REV=0x54 [   17.311014] iwlwifi
> :03:00.0: Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0
> [   17.424989] iwlwifi :03:00.0: Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0
> 
>   Nice to see that it detects the 5100 AGN just like lspci.  As the old
> saying goes, "use it or lose it";  I used to be able to run wifi on this
> machine manually (command line) in the past, but now I've completely
> forgotten how.  I've emerged "iw" and "wpa_supplicant".  "iw dev" shows
> 
> phy#0
> Interface wlan0
> ifindex 3
> wdev 0x1
> addr 00:26:c6:4a:b4:92
> type managed
> txpower 15.00 dBm
> 
>   Questions...
>   1) what do I do to scan and get a list of available networks?

If you have emerged wpa_supplicant with USE="qt5" you will have a GUI to 
launch its client and click on Scan to find and select a desired AP.

If not, you can run wpa_cli in a terminal.  Something like 'wpa_cli scan' and 
'wpa_cli scan_results' should show you what's available.   If you run just 
'wpa_cli' it will launch an interactive shell from which you can run:

> scan
> scan_results

'wpa_cli --help' for more subcommands and options.


>   2) how do I connect to one of the listed networks (assuming either
> it's public, or I have the password) ?

With wpa_supplicant's GUI, or with wpa_cli, but the latter is more tedious.

Run wpa_cli to get an interactive shell.  Then,

> scan
> scan_results

> add_network
0   (if there is no other network yet configured)
> set_network 0 ssid "My_blah_AP"  <== From the results
> set_network 0 psk "My_secret_passphrase"
> enable_network 0
0K

If you managed to authenticate and get an IP address you may want to save your 
settings - assuming you have enabled 'update_config=1' in your 
wpa_supplicant.conf:

> save config
OK

For permanent associations you can add BSSID and authentication credentials 
into /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf.  Have a look at '/usr/share/doc/
wpa_supplicant-*/wpa_supplicant.conf.bz2' for examples.


>   3) minor detail... The Google hits I've found all show both DVM and
> MVM support enabled.  Given that dmesg output shows "op_mode iwldvm",
> can I safely get rid of MVM support ?

I don't know what works with your wireless adaptor, but I tend to experiment 
initially by building such options as modules and see what is loaded or not 
and any warnings in dmesg.


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Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop

[Michael]

On Saturday, 20 August 2022 07:30:01 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
>   Long-story-short; I run ArcaOS (backwards compatable OS/2 successor)
> as a guest on QEMU on my desktop.  The Lenovo Thinkpad has the "vmx" cpu
> flag, so QEMU is theoretically doable.  But the mouse is extremely
> flakey, to the point of unusability, under QEMU on the Thinkpad.  I've
> tried various tweaks, but no luck.  I "asked Mr. Google", but only found
> other people with the same problem... and no solution.

I've noticed the same problem with a MSWindows VM on a laptop, but only when 
the screen resolution for the VM is anything other than full screen on the 
host.  The starting ritual to rectify this involves pressing Esc repeatedly as 
Tianocore screen starts to come up, then select 'Reset', which resizes the 
Tianocore window and when the MSWindows VM starts I use Ctrl+Alt+F to enter 
full screen mode.  If I don't do this the VM window is small(er), the 
resolution will not resize to full screen even when the window is maximised 
and the mouse is sticky/jumpy and its real position displaced on the guest's 
screen - I have to guess where it will actually land before I click on 
anything.  Other OS VM guests, e.g. Linux, *BSDs, Android, etc. do not exhibit 
this problem.


>   Plan B) According to the ARCA NOAE website
> https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/installation-planning/virtual-machine-c
> onfiguration/oracle-vm-virtualbox/ ArcaOs can be installed in a VirtualBox
> VM, masquarading as OS/2 (I did say it was backwards compatable).
> 
>   Are there any booby-traps to watch out for?  What I'm most concerned
> about is the default "qt5" USE flag.  Is VirtualBox usable without the
> qt5 GUI?

I use the Qt5 GUI on VBox which offers a very user friendly management 
interface.  However, recently I am not able to boot MSWindows OSs.  I think, 
but I'm not sure, some recent kernel settings have hardened (Spectre_v2?) and 
it seems the MSWindows OS requires access to the host which is no longer 
allowed.   VBox complains about AHCI driver corruption, kernel and system 
problems and gets into a loop of trying to auto-correct whatever has the 
problem - but fails.  I haven't tried reverting kernel settings to see if the 
MSWindows VM will be able to run normally again.  I'd be interested to find out 
if there are any workarounds to get these VBox VMs to run again, but haven't 
had time to look into it.

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Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop

[Michael]

On Saturday, 20 August 2022 18:57:38 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 09:05:32AM +0100, Michael wrote
> 
> > I've noticed the same problem with a MSWindows VM on a laptop,
> > but only when the screen resolution for the VM is anything other
> > than full screen on the host.
> 
>   Thanks.  That clue finally got me going with QEMU, but there are a few
> head scratchers that I'll gladly ignore now that QEMU is working.
> 
> Head scratcher #1) After a "native install" of the ArcaOS VM on the
> Thinkpad, the bootup on the Thinkpad screams about multiple missing
> drivers for ArcaOS, "Press Enter to continue".  Meanwhile a copy of the
> install on my Dell desktop PC boots up just fine on the ThinkPad (but
> has mouse problems).
> 
> Head scratcher #2) The "native install" of ArcaOS VM on the Thinkpad has
> multiple video resolution options, but it does *NOT* have 1280x800 to
> match the Thinkpad.  Meanwhile, the ArcaOS VM I copied from my desktop
> (1920x1080 monitor) does have a 1280x800 option!
> 
> Head scratcher #3) After struggling with the mouse, I finally managed to
> change the ArcaOS install (copied from my desktop to the ThinkPad) to
> 1280x800, and then rebooted the VM.  Once I fire up the VM, it works OK
> with the USB mouse *AS LONG AS I DO NOT GO FULLSCREEN {CTRL-ALT-F}*.  If
> I go fullscreen, the mouse goes super-flakey again.  Since both the VM
> and the laptop screen are 1280x800, I'm missing very little screen real
> estate.  Just a thin white strip across the top with the QEMU menu bar
> ("Machine View").
> 
>   So far, so good.  If you don't hear back from me, assume that I'm
> happy with the way things are going.  Once again, thanks for pointing me
> in the right direction.

You're welcome, I'm glad you got somewhere.  TBH I don't claim this is the 
right way to go about it, just the workarounds I have come up with after 
trying different resolutions on the QEMU TianoCore EFI menu, then the MSWindows 
desktop resolution menu and then switching back and forth between full screen 
and the default VM window size.  Unless I escape the TianoCore boot process to 
select Reset, the window of the VM ends up being smaller than full screen, 
inheriting the size of the TianoCore menu window, no matter what the 
resolution of either the TianoCore or the MSWindows desktop has been set at 
and the mouse is jumpy and displaced an inch or so from where I end up 
clicking.

 With VBox, while it worked, I had no such problems once VBox Additions were 
installed on the guest.

Regarding the head scratchers with your ArcaOS it may be different the guests 
graphics drivers and settings are made available/configured at installation 
time, as long as the VM container can detect these from the host.  Perhaps an 
inherited full screen is necessary for the installation to assume the 
appropriate window resolution dimensions.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Lenovo T400 wifi scan and connect questions

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 30 August 2022 23:26:00 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
>   I'm having problems, even running as root.  As per the previous
> message, the system is detecting the hardware, but wpa_aupplicant cannot
> get going.  I have a minimal /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
> 
> ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
> update_config=1

If you have enabled the wheel group and your user is a member of this group, 
then you won't need to run things as root:

DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel
DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=0
# (group can be either group name or gid)

Alternatively, you can add your users gid instead.


>   From https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wpa_supplicant#Using_wpa_cli the
> command for debugging is...
> 
> wpa_supplicant -Dnl80211 -iwlan0 -C/var/run/wpa_supplicant/
> -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -dd
> 
> ...to which I appended ">>logfile.txt 2>&1" to grab all output.  I
> waited for a minute or so, and got the logfile which I've attached.  Any
> ideas?

To state the obvious, this shows your key is not accepted:

nl80211: set_key failed; err=-22 Invalid argument

Also I can see:

key_len=0

Does this message mean you are using no passwd authentication?  If so you have 
to state explicitly:

set_network 0 key_mgmt NONE

in wpa_cli when you try to authenticate with your AP, or in /etc/
wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf add a fall back configuration at the end of 
the file for all open APs:

network={
key_mgmt=NONE
}

You can add BSSID, SSID to the above if you only want to use no authentication 
with a specific AP rather than anything which might be within range.

BTW, key and passphrase are not the same thing.  A passphrase must be entered 
in quotations, or use wpa_passphrase to generate the preshared key from it:

~ $ wpa_passphrase MY_SSID "My secret passphrase"
network={
  ssid="MY_SSID"
  #psk="My secret passphrase"
  psk=f90ff73cefa452385366f5278f64914fa832b61a5225d3c78dcd4291061b56a1
}

Re: [gentoo-user] Lenovo T400 wifi scan and connect questions

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 31 August 2022 20:15:41 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
>   During launch, wpa_supplicant blows up on...
> 
> DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel
> DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=0

Hmm ... so the example page syntax is wrong.  I wonder if I came across this 
too in the distant past.  :-/

I have this in my config and it works:

ctrl_interface_group=wheel
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant


> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wpa_supplicant#Configuration recommends...
> 
> ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel
> 
>   The 3 lines in my wpa_supplicant.conf that are not commented out are...
> 
> ctrl_interface_group=0
> ap_scan=1
> ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel
> 
>   Thank you for your help.  It works.  

Cool.  :-)


>   I live in a condo building.  As
> a regular user "wpa_cli scan" followed by "wpa_cli scan_result" shows
> approximately a couple of dozen machines.  BTW I've disabled MVM and
> wifi still works.
> 
>   One last question; I occasionally see signs in various places saying
> 
> Our network name is "foo" and password is "bar".
> 
>   My reading of the wpa_cli man page indicates I should use...
> 
> wpa_cli password foo bar
> 
> ...to log on.  Is that correct?

The wpa_cli command syntax is:

password  
   configure password for an SSID

However, I'm not sure  == SSID.  When you add a network in 
interactive mode with:

add_network

the shell outputs a network id number; e.g. 3, which you are meant to use 
thereafter to set up variables for the AP; e.g.:

set_network 3 ssid "starvebux"
set_network 3 psk "Not Free"
enable_network 3

In addition, I understand the wpa_cli command 'password', as opposed to 
variable 'psk' which is used in the interactive shell, to be for a EAP-PEAP 
authentication scheme.  For a pre-shared key you'll use interactively:

set_network 3 psk 0f0fbfdadff6271a5107a49cfb5db9e921138ee74a66b0.

or if it is a passphrase you'll enclose it in double quotes "Not Free" as 
above.

This is the reason I use the wpa_supplicant GUI when not restricted to working 
in a console, because the qt5 wpa_supplicant GUI makes it easier to click and 
fill in a PSK, compared to the multiple commands required in a terminal.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive

[Michael]

On Sunday, 28 August 2022 00:30:08 BST Dale wrote:
> Mark Knecht wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 4:37 PM Mark Knecht  > 
> > > wrote:
> > > On Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 4:21 PM Dale  > 
> > > wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > > I have looked into OpenNAS and other NAS OS stuff.  Some are on
> > 
> > USB sticks and basically, you shut it down, upgrade the USB stick,
> > insert it back into NAS and boot up.
> > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > The first version of TrueNAS I used was on a USB stick and it worked
> > 
> > fine so I'm fairly confident you'd be at least functional.
> > 
> > One last thing for now - if you do buy a used MB do some research into
> > whether it will actually boot from USB. One of the ones I bought
> > actually did not do that so I had to dig up a old DVD drive to install
> > from a CD.
> > 
> > - M
> 
> I've got a older donated machine that doesn't boot from USB too.  The
> newer donated machine does, I've booted from USB sticks before.  I'm
> going to pull the side off and see how many drives it can hold and such
> in a bit.  If I gather up enough steam.  As it is, I only need three at
> the moment, four maybe later.  Most come with six but this is a factory
> built machine.  I can't recall what it comes with. 
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

Depending on the age of the MoBo, even if it can't boot from USB, it should be 
able to boot with 'pixie'.  Set up a tftp PXE server on your LAN and the old 
MoBo will fetch the image(s) to boot with.  You can take a look here for 
ideas:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/
Installation_alternatives#Diskless_install_using_PXE_from_the_LiveCD


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Re: [gentoo-user] Limiting amount of memory a program can use.

[Michael]

On Sunday, 28 August 2022 13:56:09 BST Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Sunday, 28 August 2022 13:24:46 BST Dale wrote:
> > Is this something I do on the command line or a setting is some file
> > somewhere?  I don't even know where to start on this.  By the way, I'm
> > maxed out at 32GBs of memory for this mobo.  So adding memory isn't a
> > option.  Is there even a mobo that has a 64GB option??? :/
> 
> This may not help, but it may set you on the right track: man ulimit.
> 
> :)

I'm not sure how you can set a limit for a single application and any of its 
child processes with ulimit.  However, Control Groups (cgroups) can do this 
easily as long as it has been included in the kernel:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/OpenRC/CGroups

Also, from what I recall at least some torrent applications can limit the 
amount of uploading connections and/or throughput - but I haven't used any for 
years now.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Limiting amount of memory a program can use.

[Michael]

On Sunday, 28 August 2022 14:03:00 BST you wrote:
> On Sunday, 28 August 2022 13:56:09 BST Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Sunday, 28 August 2022 13:24:46 BST Dale wrote:
> > > Is this something I do on the command line or a setting is some file
> > > somewhere?  I don't even know where to start on this.  By the way, I'm
> > > maxed out at 32GBs of memory for this mobo.  So adding memory isn't a
> > > option.  Is there even a mobo that has a 64GB option??? :/
> > 
> > This may not help, but it may set you on the right track: man ulimit.
> > 
> > :)
> 
> I'm not sure how you can set a limit for a single application and any of its
> child processes with ulimit.  However, Control Groups (cgroups) can do this
> easily as long as it has been included in the kernel:
> 
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/OpenRC/CGroups
> 
> Also, from what I recall at least some torrent applications can limit the
> amount of uploading connections and/or throughput - but I haven't used any
> for years now.

There is also prlimit which may be more appropriate for a single command?

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[gentoo-user] Pipewire not a dependency?

[Michael]

I'm trying to understand why one laptop with Plasma which had pulseaudio 
removed, won't bring in pipewire as a dependency.  I have set USE="-
screencast", because I don't need/want this functionality, as I have done on 
other systems which nevertheless have had pipewire brought in as a dependency.

# emerge -1aNDv pipewire

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N ] media-libs/fdk-aac-2.0.2:0/2::gentoo  USE="-examples" 
ABI_X86="(64) -32 (-x32)" 2,819 KiB
[ebuild  N ] media-libs/libfreeaptx-0.1.1-r1::gentoo  ABI_X86="(64) -32 (-
x32)" CPU_FLAGS_X86="-avx2" 28 KiB
[ebuild  N ] media-libs/sbc-2.0::gentoo  USE="-static-libs" ABI_X86="(64) 
-32 (-x32)" 265 KiB
[ebuild  N ] media-libs/libldac-2.0.2.3-r1::gentoo  ABI_X86="(64) -32 (-
x32)" 74 KiB
[ebuild  N ] media-video/pipewire-0.3.56:0/0.4::gentoo  USE="X bluetooth 
dbus ssl udev -doc -echo-cancel -extra -gstreamer -jack-client -jack-sdk -lv2 
-pipewire-alsa -sound-server (-system-service) -systemd -test -v4l -zeroconf" 
ABI_X86="(64) -32 (-x32)" 1,813 KiB
[ebuild  N ] media-video/wireplumber-0.4.11-r3:0/0.4::gentoo  USE="elogind 
(-system-service) -systemd -test" LUA_SINGLE_TARGET="lua5-4 -lua5-3" 395 KiB

Total: 6 packages (6 new), Size of downloads: 5,392 KiB


Am I meant to install pipewire manually on this system?

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Re: [gentoo-user] rsync local mirror question

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 26 October 2022 03:06:19 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 11:07:14PM +0100, Michael wrote
> 
> > sync-type = rsync
> > #sync-uri = rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage
> > sync-uri = rsync://192.168.1.252/gentoo-portage
> 
>   Thanks Michael (and Adam).  I did indeed forget to update sync-uri.
> I subscribe to Netflix, which requires Google-Chrome.  It nags for
> security updates every few days, so I'll soon find out how well the
> corrected mirror setup works.
> 
>   Question:  Can I leave "GENTOO_MIRRORS" uncommented in make.conf?  The
> minimal change for my laptop would be...

Yes, you may leave your GENTOO_MIRRORS URIs as you have it, unless you don't 
want to be downloading the same source files more than once for machines in 
your LAN.

If downloading chrome source files many times a week separately for multiple 
machines is no fun, you can set up a local http proxy caching server with its 
webroot pointing to its distfiles directory.  Then in your clients' 
GENTOO_MIRRORS directive add as the first mirror your LAN Gentoo address/port.  
The only drawback is you will have to sync and then emerge --fetchonly, or --
fetch-all-uri, on the local mirror before you start emerging the various 
client PCs.  A cron job can ensure this is all done by the time you're ready 
to run sync & emerge on the rest of your clients.

You can use any number of available webservers with small footprint; e.g. 
nginx, lighttpd, boa, etc.  The http-replicator is no longer available.


> ...when at home on my LAN...
> 
> #sync-uri = rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage
> sync-uri = rsync://192.168.1.252/gentoo-portage
> 
> ...when taking the laptop out of my apartment...
> 
> sync-uri = rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage
> #sync-uri = rsync://192.168.1.252/gentoo-portage

I don't know if you can set more than one sync server, so if the first is not 
available it will try the next and so on.  When the sync URI was defined in 
make.conf this was the case.  I suppose you can try it.  If it works it'll 
save you having to manually edit the file each time you move your laptop away 
from your LAN.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Help with dracut, please

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 26 October 2022 16:47:46 BST Dale wrote:
> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > Hello list,
> > 
> > I'm installing Gentoo on a new Juno laptop, and I've reached the point of
> > booting into the new system. I have a separate /usr partition and I'm
> > using
> > dracut to create an initramfs.
> > 
> > On booting the new system I get an error I haven't heard of before: dracut
> > complaining "sysroot has no proper sysfs layout". I'm sure I've done
> > something stupid, but where do I start debugging this? Google hasn't
> > helped.
> I tried to google that message and it found nothing.  That's not good. 
> Makes me wonder what is causing that.  Made me think a bit. 
> 
> Have you double checked your fstab?  Maybe you missed updating a line,
> missed commenting something out or a typo maybe?  Any strange kernel
> options added to your bootloader?  Typo maybe?  Have you double checked
> that the file systems you use for /boot and / are built into the kernel? 

^^This^^

Otherwise it may be some corrupt fs, in which case fsck could help.




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Re: [gentoo-user] [SOLVED] rsync local mirror question

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 26 October 2022 16:48:29 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 11:07:14PM +0100, Michael wrote
> 
> > No, you shouldn't have to do any such thing.  Just make sure you
> > have set up in your '/etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo.conf' the correct
> 
> > rsync mirror and commented out the server on the Internet;  e.g.:
>   OK, I tried it on my other used Lenovo laptop (thimk2) and it works.
> But "inquiring minds want to know"...
> 
> * In your instructions '/etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo.conf' is the file
> to change sync-uri in (and it works).
> 
> * In https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Local_Mirror the file to change is
> given as /etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo-mirror.conf  There is no such
> file on my system.  Should I file a documentation bug?

Yes, I think it should be updated.  This wiki page states what's currently the 
convention:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Portage/
Files#Gentoo_ebuild_repository

However, *.conf files can be nested and portage will parse them all the same.

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Re: [gentoo-user] rsync local mirror question

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 25 October 2022 21:36:40 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
>   I followed https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Local_Mirror instructions for
> doing a local rsync mirror.  I ran commented the rsync mirrors line in
> the client's make.conf and ran "emerge --sync".  The client still
> synced from a server on the internet.  Do I need to manually force
> rsync to go local, e.g...
> 
> [thimk][root][~] rsync 192.168.1.252::
> gentoo-portage  Gentoo ebuild repository

No, you shouldn't have to do any such thing.  Just make sure you have set up 
in your '/etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo.conf' the correct rsync mirror and 
commented out the server on the Internet;  e.g.:

[snip ...]

sync-type = rsync
#sync-uri = rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage
sync-uri = rsync://192.168.1.252/gentoo-portage



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Re: [gentoo-user] [SOLVED] rsync local mirror question

[Michael]

On Thursday, 27 October 2022 01:24:24 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 05:42:24PM +0100, Michael wrote
> 
> > On Wednesday, 26 October 2022 16:48:29 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
> > > * In https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Local_Mirror the file to change is
> > > given as /etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo-mirror.conf  There is no such
> > > file on my system.  Should I file a documentation bug?
> > 
> > Yes, I think it should be updated.
> 
>   Problem; "https://bugs.gentoo.org/enter_bug.cgi; specifically says
> "Documentation: Documentation other than Wiki and translations."
> The documentation problem is on the wiki page.  Now what?

I suppose you create an account and edit it?  Or see if you can reach out to 
the last contributor and perhaps he will correct it:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Ris



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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: resolv.conf full of old info

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 19 October 2022 01:00:31 BST Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2022-10-18, Grant Edwards  wrote:
> > I've noticed that /etc/resolv.conf seems to accumulate obsolete,
> > useless info as my laptop moves from one network to another. It looks
> > like dhcpcd adds stuff when a connection comes up, but never removes
> > it when the connection goes down.
> 
> This appears to be caused by the "persistent" option in dhcpcd.conf,
> which is set by default. I commented it out, and now resolv.conf
> behaves rationally: it only contains info for network connections that
> are up.
> 
> Why would dhcpcd have the persistent option enabled by default?
> 
> --
> Grant

I think because this causes less breakage in those cases where netmount, 
remote syslog-ng, SSH clients, or root mounted NFS is in play?  This is what 
the man page says about it:

"... dhcpcd normally de-configures the interface and configuration when it 
exits.  Sometimes, this isn't desirable if, for example, you have root mounted 
over NFS or SSH clients connect to this host and they need to be notified of 
the host shutting down."

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Re: [gentoo-user] Encrypted hard drives on LVM and urgent power shutdowns.

[Michael]

On Monday, 12 September 2022 06:57:58 BST Dale wrote:
> William Kenworthy wrote:
> > If your using nut, it has to be setup - and should be regularly tested
> > to make sure it works.
> > 
> > BillK
> 
> I think upsmon is part of nut.  I keep forgetting that since the service
> is ups something.  Thing is, I've never quite figured out how to test it
> without unplugging and running down the batteries.  I do have everything
> configured and have ever since I built this puter.  I did the same on
> previous puter and UPS.  Pretty sure it will work.  When power blinks
> etc, it does notice it and logs it in messages file. Also, the upsc
> command outputs the info correctly when run.
> 
> I wish I could send a command to the UPS to fake a power failure, wait
> say one minute and then it tell puter to shutdown all on its own.  If it
> does it correctly, it should work in the event of a actual power failure
> and not run down my batteries either.  I try to keep the batteries
> topped off at all times since we do on occasion have some crazy driver
> not watching where he/she is going and hits a power pole.  Doesn't do
> the pole any good and the car seems to not enjoy it either.  :/ 
> Sometimes the driver is no longer caring about it. 
> 
> I actually wish I had a much larger external battery.  Thing is, I'm
> concerned about the charging bit.  The charging section in a UPS isn't
> really that powerful since it mostly just keeps the batteries topped
> off.  I have 7Amp/hr batteries and I think it takes like 7 or 8 hours to
> charge from almost dead.  I'd guess it is at most a 1 to 1.5 amp
> charging circuit. 

Many UPSs containing two batteries connected in series always end up with one 
battery less charged than the other.  This is because although the current 
which flows through the circuit is the same, due to Ohm's Law the voltage 
drops across each battery as the resistance decreases along the circuit.  
Therefore the first battery never gets fully charged.  The opposite happens 
with a discharge cycle.

Once every three months or every time I experience a noticeably prolonged 
power cut, I shutdown the loads, take the UPS off line, disconnect the 
batteries and top up each battery's charge with a car battery charger.  Then I 
replace them but make sure I reverse their positions.  I have found this is 
the best way to maximise their service life.

I also use the car battery charger to top up single battery UPSs, but I only 
do this twice a year.  I have found the charge these single batteries need is 
comparably shorter.


> If you know of a command to test without running down batteries, I have
> a Cyberpower UPS and I'm certainly interested.  It's only a decade or so
> old so has quite a few features.  There may be a way to do this but I've
> yet to find it. 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-)

Check the NUT command set and options, in particular upsmon.  You'll probably 
want to try issuing a 'forced shutdown' command 'upsmon -c fsd', which won't 
wait for the batteries to discharge first, like it does with upssched.  Before 
you try this, best sync your disks first and remount them read only just in 
case.

There may be some UPS specific test function too, this very much depends on 
the UPS and driver.  You can check what variables a UPS has and how to tweak 
them to cause a shutdown by running 'upsrw -l', if any of the exposed UPS 
variable are tweakable.



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Re: [gentoo-user] RE: [gentoo-user] Encrypted hard drives on LVM and urgent power shutdowns.

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 13 September 2022 06:47:21 BST Thomas Mueller wrote:
> from Laurence Perkins:
> > Some of the higher-end UPS models do have diagnostic modes for simulating
> > various events to make sure the connected systems behave as desired.  A
> > very few of the consumer-grade ones do as well.  But how to do it is
> > model specific, so you'll have to dig up the documentation.
> > 
> > Commercial-grade units also often have a DC port on the back so you can
> > plug in larger battery banks and/or hotswap battery banks during extended
> > outages.
> > 
> > If you want an arbitrarily large battery bank, just get a decent power
> > inverter heavy enough to run your load and a battery float charger that
> > can push enough amps to keep up, then put as big a stack of batteries as
> > you like between the two.  The nicer inverters will even warn you when
> > the batteries get low.
> > 
> > You can often get used batteries from the local automotive shop for just
> > the core charge.  Just because it can't provide 600 amps to start a car
> > any more doesn't mean it can't provide 60 to run your computers. 
> > Obviously they'll require more regular maintenance, but it's hard to beat
> > the price.
> > 
> > LMP
> 
> How would you physically connect the automotive battery to the computer, and
> would you need the shell of the old UPS?

Yes, you need the *contents* of the UPS shell. It contains the rectifier to be 
able to recharge the battery/batteries and the inverter to be able to feed the 
PC from the batteries.

I've also used a car battery out of an old Mini to keep equipment running 
during prolonged power outages.  I connected it in parallel to the UPS 
battery.  After the power returned, almost two days later, I disconnected it 
and recharged it with a car battery charger, which could take the higher 
amperage.  Trickle-charging should be OK via the UPS.


> I have an old Tripp-Lite UPS, batteries are dead and no longer rechargeable.

Why don't you replace them?  They are not particularly expensive, although I 
have not looked at UPS battery prices lately.


> Would you connect only the computer, or would you connect the monitor as
> well?  Would you connect networking equipment?
> 
> Tom

I connect modem, router, PC and monitor, so that whatever operation is taking 
place it can be completed, applications running ended and the PC shutdown 
manually.  If the PC is running unattended when the power interruption 
happens, eventually the upssched will shutdown the PC.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Problem logging on to wifi

[Michael]

On Friday, 9 September 2022 15:40:04 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
>   Here are the first 4 lines from scan_result at an establishment.  I've
> replaced the 3-word ccompany name with "  ".  Note that they
> share the same bssids with "BELL342".
> 
> Selected interface 'wlan0'
> bssid / frequency / signal level / flags / ssid
> 26:20:c7:c2:b7:a7   5220-53 [WPA2-PSK-CCMP][ESS] 
>  24:20:c7:c2:b7:a7   5220-53 [WPA2-PSK-CCMP][ESS]   
> BELL342 24:20:c7:c2:b7:a6   2462-28 [WPA2-PSK-CCMP][ESS]   
> BELL342 26:20:c7:c2:b7:a6   2462-46 [WPA2-PSK-CCMP][ESS]   
>   
> 
>   I've tried...
> 
> wpa_cli password "  " 
> wpa_cli password \ \  
> 
> ...and they both return "FAIL".  Any ideas on what to try next?

You could try:

wpa_cli add_network "  " 

which will return a 'network id'; e.g. 0 if your wpa_supplicant.conf is empty 
and has no AP configured in it.  Then use this 'network id' number to specify 
a password:

wpa_cli password 0 "blah-blah"

or

wpa_cli password 0 '"blah-blah"'

NOTE:  Either the "  ", or the "BELL342" SSID may be for non-
public users and it could reject your attempts to authenticate if your device 
is not whitelisted, so try the other SSID if one of them won't work.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Getting printer working, the road of Pain.

[Michael]

On Thursday, 8 September 2022 19:04:42 BST tastytea wrote:
> On 2022-09-08 12:52-0400 Alan Grimes  wrote:
> > […]
> > 
> > Right now linux is so broken that the CUPS web interface will deny
> > all attempts to administer the printer and reject any password. The
> > config file is written in moonspeak, I just need the motherfucking
> > thing to say yes when I tell it to do a thing. I expect it to take
> > 2-3 days just to get over this hurdle.
> 
> I solved this problem by replacing the contents of every 
> block with:
> 
>   Order allow,deny
>   Allow localhost
>   Allow from fd69:0:0:0:*
>   Allow from 192.168.69.*
> 
> > How can people actually go around installing linux on people's
> > computers as if they were doing them a favor when it really is this
> > bad?
> 
> It's not bad at all if you use a distribution with a better default
> configuration, pre-installed drivers and a pre-installed GUI for setting
> up the automatically detected printer in less than 5 clicks.
> Unless you have a printer from a shitty company, of course.

You'll need the right drivers for the printer you have.  This page is a good 
start for CUPS and usually it doesn't take long to connect to the printer and 
start printing.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Printing

Modern printers invariably offer their own http(s) web GUI for administration, 
which may also need configuring, but just printing alone should be achievable 
by using the guidance in the wiki above.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Cannot shutdown or reboot because of logind disconnection

[Michael]

On Saturday, 17 September 2022 12:11:56 BST tastytea wrote:
> On 2022-09-17 17:37+0800 johnstrass   wrote:
> > At 2022-09-17 14:15:51, "Walter Dnes"  wrote:
> > >On Sat, Sep 17, 2022 at 10:40:53AM +0800, johnstrass wrote
> > >
> > >> Compiling gcc uses alot of memory, sometimes only less then 10MB
> > >> left free ( I am doing this on a small yeeloong netbook with only
> > >> 1GB memory).
> > >> 
> > >  Ouch, I'm surprised it compiles at all.  The Gentoo install
> > > 
> > > handbook
> > >
> > >https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Full/Installation#MAKEOPTS
> > >has a dire warning about memory usage...
> > 
> > Yep, I've got the gcc-12.2.0 natively compiled on this netbook using
> > gcc-11.3.0, after 5+ days + a crash + 5more days.
> > 
> > I set up a large swap and I've also set up the ccache which may
> > speedup a little after the crash.
> > 
> > >>  Warning
> > >> 
> > >> Using a large number of jobs can significantly impact memory
> > >> consumption. A good recommendation is to have at least 2 GiB of RAM
> > >> for every job specified (so, e.g. -j6 requires at least 12 GiB). To
> > >> avoid running out of memory, lower the number of jobs to fit the
> > >> available memory.
> > >> 
> > >  You simply don't have enough ram.  You might reduce the pain and
> > > 
> > > the
> > >
> > >swapping by trying something like the following in make.conf
> > >(assuming you haven't already done it)
> > >
> > >
> > >MAKEOPTS="-j1"
> > 
> > I will try next time. Thanks.
> > 
> > >> If this happens, what is the best way to reboot or shutdown?
> > >> 
> > >  Try ye olde {CTRL}{ALT}{DEL}
> > 
> > I remember that I did try "CTRL+ALT+DEL" in such situations before,
> > and most times it did not work but for one or two times it worked
> > occasionally. I will try it again next time.
> 
> You could also use “Magic SysRQ”s[1] to reboot the system forcefully
> but somewhat controlled. The traditional sequence is:
>  r e i s u b(raising elephants is so utterly boring)[2]
> 
> [1] 
> [2]
>  -command-keys>

Using MAKEOPTS="-j1" will help and a bigger swap will stop it crashing with 
OOM, but a more sensible solution is to compile and build big packages like 
gcc on a faster PC as binaries, then transfer and emerge on the slow PC with 
--usepkg, or --usepkgonly options.  More info:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Binary_package_guide


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Full battery laptop only 1 hour

[Michael]

On Thursday, 15 September 2022 18:10:39 BST Laurence Perkins wrote:
> Note that most batteries these days in anything more complex than a watch
> have "smart" charge controllers and so upower or similar can read what
> their design watt-hours and current maximum capacity are.  Also, often the
> total charge or discharge rate.  That plus a little math should tell you if
> it's an aging battery or if your machine is simply failing to idle down for
> some reason.
 
> LMP

Larger capacity batteries have multiple banks in them connected in parallel.  
Some times one of the banks or its controller(?) fails and while the rest 
continue to work, the loss in capacity is a noticeable step change.  I recall 
suddenly losing ~1/3 of the battery capacity on a laptop just 3 or so happy 
years into its life.  The remaining of the battery capacity continued to 
degrade slowly and gradually over many years.  So notwithstanding the high 
consumption identified by the OP the software causes of which should be 
investigated, there could be also a problem with the battery unit itself.

BTW, short & frequent top ups of lithium-ion batteries is the best approach to 
their charging, while deep discharge can guarantee a shorter effective life.


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Re: [gentoo-user] openvpn experience, anyone?

[Michael]

On Sunday, 18 September 2022 08:52:13 BST William Kenworthy wrote:
> On 18/9/22 15:26, n952162 wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > 
> > I want to ssh over my openvpn connection, and I can't do it, the
> > connection times out.
> > 
> > I saw a reference to gentoo in the openvpn scripts in /etc/openvpn and
> > thought maybe somebody here  knows something about this.
> > 
> > Earlier my institution recommended openconnect, and I was able to use
> > ssh to login in to a host with no problem.
> > 
> > Then, for some reason (licensing?), we were switched to openvpn, which
> > works for xfreerdp but not for ssh.
> > 
> > I don't have control over the institution's firewall (but I do have for
> > the host itself)
> > 
> > Perhaps when installing the new service, they tightened up the firewall
> > rules.  But maybe there's a configuration screw I can turn, or ... maybe
> > a USE flag?
> > 
> > - - down-root : Enable the down-root plugin
> >  - - examples  : Install examples, usually source code
> >  - - inotify   : Enable inotify filesystem monitoring support
> >  - - iproute2  : Enabled iproute2 support instead of net-tools
> >  + + lz4   : Enable support for lz4 compression (as implemented in
> > app-arch/lz4)
> >  + + lzo   : Enable support for lzo compression
> >  - - mbedtls   : Use mbed TLS as the backend crypto library
> >  + + openssl   : Use OpenSSL as the backend crypto library
> >  + + pam   : Add support for PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules)
> > - DANGEROUS to
> >  arbitrarily flip
> >  - - pkcs11: Enable PKCS#11 smartcard support
> >  + + plugins   : Enable the OpenVPN plugin system
> >  - - systemd   : Enable use of systemd-specific libraries and features
> > like socket
> >  activation or session tracking
> >  - - test  : Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to
> > run tests
> >  (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be
> > toggled independently)
> > 
> > TIA
> 
> ssh and openvpn work well together.  However I am doing most of the work
> using my own configs - gentoo tries to be too clever with its vpn
> networking and Ive never been able to get it to work
> reliably/acceptably.  On some sites I have to use port 443 (https) to
> get through, and in extreme cases double wrap in ssl (using a mix of
> proxytunnel (windows host), stunnel and sslh) to disguise its a vpn but
> still separate it from regular https traffic on my firewall.  You will
> need to figure out where the ssh is getting blocked/stripped out - is
> openvpn your endpoint or theirs?
> 
> BillK

Could it also be an issue with MTU being too large?  It should be easy to test 
with:

ping -c 1 -v -M do -s 1464 

and decrease the packet size until gets through.  Then configure your client 
accordingly:

https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/271-i-can-ping-through-the-tunnel-but-any-real-work-causes-it-to-lock-up-is-this-an-mtu-problem



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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Pipewire not a dependency?

[Michael]

On Thursday, 29 September 2022 15:11:02 BST Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 28/09/2022 13:57, Michael wrote:
> > I'm trying to understand why one laptop with Plasma which had pulseaudio
> > removed, won't bring in pipewire as a dependency.  I have set USE="-
> > screencast", because I don't need/want this functionality, as I have done
> > on other systems which nevertheless have had pipewire brought in as a
> > dependency.
> Probably some other package pulls it in directly, independent of the
> screencast USE flag. For example media-sound/easyeffects.

I just looked and a pipewire(d) system has only a few additional audio 
applications, spek, vidcutter, easytag, none of which seem to bring in 
pipewire.  I think I'll have to install it manually on the system which 
doesn't bring it in as some dependency.  Somehow I was under the impression it 
comes with Plasma these days, but perhaps I have stripped down this Plasma/kde 
installation too much.

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[gentoo-user] opencl runtime

[Michael]

This message showed up after an update today:

 * Messages for package virtual/opencl-3-r2:

 * 
 * In order to take advantage of OpenCL you will need a runtime for your 
hardware.
 * Currently included in Gentoo are:
 * 
 *  * open:
 * - dev-libs/intel-compute-runtime - integrated Intel GPUs from Broadwell 
onwards. 64-bit only;
 * - dev-libs/pocl - to run OpenCL programs on your CPU, if you do not 
have a supported GPU;
 * - dev-libs/rocm-opencl-runtime - AMD GPUs supported by the amdgpu 
kernel driver. 64-bit only;
 * - media-libs/mesa[opencl] - some older AMD GPUs; see [1]. 32-bit 
support;
 * 
 *  * proprietary:
 * - dev-libs/amdgpu-pro-opencl - AMD Polaris GPUs. 32-bit support;
 * - dev-util/intel-ocl-sdk - Intel CPUs (*not* GPUs). 64-bit only;
 * - x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers[uvm] - Nvidia GPUs; specific package 
versions
 *   required for older devices [2]. 32-bit support.
 * 
 *  [1] https://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/GalliumCompute/
 *  [2] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/legacy-gpu/


On a number of stable systems with a selection of different Northern Islands 
to Sea Islands APUs/GPUs, I have media-libs/mesa installed in as a dependency.  
Given the above message and noticing dev-libs/rocm-opencl-runtime is still in 
testing, am I meant to keyword it and install it manually, or will it replace 
mesa automagically some day in the future when marked as stable?

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Re: [gentoo-user] opencl runtime

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 4 October 2022 12:49:09 BST pe...@prh.myzen.co.uk wrote:
> On Tuesday, 4 October 2022 11:15:44 BST Michael wrote:
> > On a number of stable systems with a selection of different Northern
> > Islands to Sea Islands APUs/GPUs, I have media-libs/mesa installed in as
> > a dependency. Given the above message and noticing
> > dev-libs/rocm-opencl-runtime is still in testing, am I meant to keyword it
> > and install it manually, or will it replace mesa automagically some day in
> > the future when marked as stable?
> 
> You need to add it to package.keywords. I've been running like that for some
> years, to enable GPU processing of BOINC projects on an AMD Radeon Pro
> WX5100.

Thanks Peter, I've keyworded it along with half a dozen of other dependencies 
it dragged in and it is emerging now.  Will mesa still be required, or are the 
two packages used for different purposes and can co-exist?

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Re: [gentoo-user] Dolphin and adding a option, if it exists.

[Michael]

On Thursday, 6 October 2022 08:52:04 BST Wol wrote:
> On 06/10/2022 08:33, Michael wrote:
> > On Thursday, 6 October 2022 05:39:59 BST Dale wrote:
> >> Howdy,
> >> 
> >> This may not exist.  If not, oh well.  Sometimes when I'm moving files
> >> with Dolphin, I need a added feature.  I tend to use split panes when I
> >> copy or move files.  Quite often, I want to move files from one location
> >> to another and the new file use the same name as the old file I'm
> >> replacing.  What I*wish*  I could do, move the file from one pane to the
> >> other and drag the new file on top of the old file and it replace it
> >> with the name of the old file.  As it is now, I have to bring up
> >> properties, select the name of the file, while not including the
> >> extension, and copy it, then close that window and open properties on
> >> the new file, highlight the old name, paste new name, close window, copy
> >> new file over and either delete old file or tell it to overwrite the
> >> file.  Sometimes it has a different extension and I have to delete
> >> instead.
> >> 
> >> It would be a lot faster if I could just drag it on top of file I want
> >> to replace and either it be configured to use name of old file for new
> >> file or me select in a pop up what I want to do.  Basically, move and
> >> drop instead of all the properties, copy, repeat with paste on new file
> >> and then move and maybe delete a file as well.  I went to the services
> >> window and looked for anything I could add but I didn't see anything
> >> that would do what I describe but it could be a hidden feature of one
> >> that isn't obvious.
> >> 
> >> Has anyone ever seen something that does this?  While I use dolphin, I
> >> may could use another tool if it has this feature.
> >> 
> >> Thanks.
> >> 
> >> Dale
> >> 
> >>   
> > 
> > Perhaps I'm missing something ...
> > 
> > If the old file has the*same*  name as the new file, the file manager will
> > warn you and ask you if you want to rename the new file so as it does not
> > overwrite the old file, or if you want to replace the old file.
> 
> This made me think. Some times the old tools are the best - maybe I
> ought to switch from Dolphin to Midnight Commander for my use case, and
> maybe you should too.
> 
> Okay, it doesn't do exactly what you want, but the dance you want to do
> it will make it a lot easier ...
> 
> Cheers,
> Wol

I just had a look in Dolphin configuration.  Under General/Confirmations tab 
you can select to disable asking for confirmation when you move files to 
wastebin, or when you delete files of folders.  Not sure if this is desirable, 
as you could inadvertently delete a file without thinking first, but if you 
are going to be deleting manually a lot of files, confirming this is something 
you really want to do could become so repetitive you may want to disable it at 
least for a while.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Dolphin and adding a option, if it exists.

[Michael]

On Thursday, 6 October 2022 05:39:59 BST Dale wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> This may not exist.  If not, oh well.  Sometimes when I'm moving files
> with Dolphin, I need a added feature.  I tend to use split panes when I
> copy or move files.  Quite often, I want to move files from one location
> to another and the new file use the same name as the old file I'm
> replacing.  What I *wish* I could do, move the file from one pane to the
> other and drag the new file on top of the old file and it replace it
> with the name of the old file.  As it is now, I have to bring up
> properties, select the name of the file, while not including the
> extension, and copy it, then close that window and open properties on
> the new file, highlight the old name, paste new name, close window, copy
> new file over and either delete old file or tell it to overwrite the
> file.  Sometimes it has a different extension and I have to delete
> instead. 
> 
> It would be a lot faster if I could just drag it on top of file I want
> to replace and either it be configured to use name of old file for new
> file or me select in a pop up what I want to do.  Basically, move and
> drop instead of all the properties, copy, repeat with paste on new file
> and then move and maybe delete a file as well.  I went to the services
> window and looked for anything I could add but I didn't see anything
> that would do what I describe but it could be a hidden feature of one
> that isn't obvious. 
> 
> Has anyone ever seen something that does this?  While I use dolphin, I
> may could use another tool if it has this feature. 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

Perhaps I'm missing something ... 

If the old file has the *same* name as the new file, the file manager will 
warn you and ask you if you want to rename the new file so as it does not 
overwrite the old file, or if you want to replace the old file.

If the old file has a different name, then the new file will be pasted in 
without asking.  In this case isn't it quicker to delete the file you want 
replaced and then copy/move the new file over?  Shift+Delete or right click - 
'Delete' to delete it completely or just Delete/right click - 'Move to 
wastebin' in case you delete the wrong file by mistake and want to recover it 
later.  BTW, pressing F2 after you select a file will allow you to rename it, 
without having to dive into properties.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Dolphin and adding a option, if it exists.

[Michael]

On Saturday, 8 October 2022 04:44:56 BST Dale wrote:

> I installed Yakuake and to me, it looks like Konsole but without the
> menu part at the top.  Other than that, I don't see anything special. 

Once Yakuake is running, F12 will open it in whichever virtual desktop you 
happen to be and you can continue your work in the terminal within that 
desktop.  I'm not sure what other benefits it has.


> I
> kinda wish I had a terminal with dolphin or something.  I think there is
> a way but right now, I'm getting the job done.  I'll look into that
> later.  Pretty sure it is under the tool menu.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

Yes, look at Tools>'Focus Terminal Panel', or Ctrl+Shift+F4.  I find this more 
useful than Yakuake for my typical use case,[1] or more often I just use 
Shift+F4 to open a new separate Konsole terminal in the same directory as 
Dolphin happens to be.

[1] Often I go into a directory which I have already opened in Dolphin and 
then run a series of commands in a terminal, without needing to refer back to 
dolphin.

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Re: [gentoo-user] problems emerging some ruby packages

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 11 October 2022 22:43:02 BST Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Oct 2022 16:02:52 -0400, Jack wrote:
> > For example, "emerge -1 dev-ruby/thor" gives me
> > 
> > !!! Problem resolving dependencies for dev-ruby/thor
> > ... done!
> > 
> > !!! The ebuild selected to satisfy "dev-ruby/thor" has unmet
> > requirements.
> > - dev-ruby/thor-1.2.1::gentoo USE="-doc -test" ABI_X86="(64)"
> > RUBY_TARGETS="-ruby27 (-ruby30) (-ruby31)"
> 
> ruby30 and ruby31 are in parentheses, which means they are not available.
> 
> >The following REQUIRED_USE flag constraints are unsatisfied:
> >  any-of ( ruby_targets_ruby27 ruby_targets_ruby30
> > 
> > ruby_targets_ruby31 )
> > 
> > I would expect USE_RUBY="ruby31" to translate into ruby_targets_ruby31,
> > but even explicitly adding that to package.use has no effect.
> 
> The ebuild contains USE_RUBY="ruby26 ruby27" ruby_add_bdepend "
> 
> Have you tried setting RUBY_TARGETS to ruby27 for this package?
> 
> I must say I find the whole RUBY_* thing even more troublesome than the
> PYTHON_* stuff, and that's saying something!

As per the emerge man page:

-prefix  not enabled (either disabled or removed)
[snip...]

()   circumfix   forced, masked, or removed

On a stable system with default ruby targets, I get this:

[ebuild  N ] dev-ruby/thor-1.2.1:1::gentoo  USE="-doc -test" 
RUBY_TARGETS="ruby27 (-ruby30) (-ruby31)" 95 KiB

and, dev-lang/ruby-2.7.6:2.7 is drawn in as a build dependency:

[ebuild  N ] dev-lang/ruby-2.7.6:2.7::gentoo  USE="gdbm ipv6 rdoc ssl -
berkdb -debug -doc -examples -jemalloc -jit -rubytests -socks5 -static-libs -
systemtap -tk -xemacs" 11,802 KiB

NOTE: ruby 3.0 and 3.1 are marked as testing.

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Re: [gentoo-user] problems emerging some ruby packages

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 12 October 2022 01:12:00 BST Jack wrote:
> On 2022.10.11 19:41, Michael wrote:

> > NOTE: ruby 3.0 and 3.1 are marked as testing.
> 
> I explicitly have ruby-3.1 unmasked with "=dev-lang/ruby-3.1.2-r1
> ~amd64" in package.accept_keyword, and USE_RUBY="ruby31" in make.conf.

Try setting in your /etc/make.conf this expression instead:

RUBY_TARGETS="ruby31"

as per https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Ruby

and if you have not yet switched to using it, run:

eselect ruby set ruby31


> I do not see any reference to ruby in the profile.  Is there somewhere
> else I need to unmask something?  emerge --info also says
> 'RUBY_TARGETS="ruby31"' as its only reference to a specific ruby
> version.

That's what you'd add in your make.conf, for this ruby slot to be used 
globally.


> As I said in my reply to Neil, why would this happen in just a handful
> of packages, but not in over thirty others?  mini_mime is the other
> problem package, and it does not use ruby_add_bdepend so there is only
> one line with USE_RUBY:  'USE_RUBY="ruby26 ruby27 ruby30 ruby31"'.

I think it is relevant to how these USE variables are parsed and their syntax.  
If you specify the ruby version via a USE flag, then this should be:

USE="ruby31" emerge -pv blah-blah
 

You need to specify it as above and since you want to use ruby31 wholesale on 
your system, set it in make.conf as the wiki page explains.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [SOLVED] Pipewire not a dependency?

[Michael]

On Monday, 3 October 2022 22:48:09 BST Håkon Alstadheim wrote:
> Den 02.10.2022 11:47, skrev Michael:
> > On Saturday, 1 October 2022 19:32:11 BST Daniel Sonck wrote:
> >> On zaterdag 1 oktober 2022 19:11:19 CEST Wol wrote:
> >>> On 01/10/2022 17:56, Michael wrote:
> >>>> Anyway, I ventured into pipewire because I wanted to see if Skype would
> >>>> work without pulseaudio and in this system it won't.  After I manually
> >>>> installed pipewire Skype won't access the microphone.  
> >>> 
> >>> I've got some vague feeling that pipewire is designed to happily sit
> >>> under pulseaudio. The design aim was to replace both Jack and pulseaudio
> >>> but it basically just presents a sound device to the layers above, so
> >>> just like you can stack block devices for disk access, you can stack
> >>> jack, pulseaudio and pipewire for sound.
> >> 
> >> Well, it is actually designed as a drop-in replacement and won't present
> >> audio devices in the sense pulseaudio wants to receive it. I guess it
> >> would
> >> theoretically be possible to use pulseaudio's jack sink to talk to
> >> pipewire, but pipewire has the full pulseaudio interface for pulseaudio
> >> applications.
> > 
> > At the moment only some applications support PipeWire's native API, but
> > most support PulseAudio's API.  When you come across an application like
> > Skype which expects PulseAudio, the solution is to enable
> > USE="sound-server pipewire-alsa" for PipeWire and in addition to PipeWire
> > also install media- libs/libpulse.  No other PulseAudio packages are
> > needed.
> 
> To get that, I seem to need media-sound/pulseaudio (meta package) with 
> USE="-daemon"

This USE flag setting would be required if you use pulseaudio (I don't have it 
installed) and need to avoid it fighting with pipewire over control
of audio devices.

At the present moment, because the migration to pipewire is work-in-progress, 
there are a number of options available to cover all use cases, depending on 
your system configuration and init system:

https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2022-07-29-pipewire-sound-server.html



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[gentoo-user] Re: [SOLVED] Pipewire not a dependency?

[Michael]

On Saturday, 1 October 2022 19:32:11 BST Daniel Sonck wrote:
> On zaterdag 1 oktober 2022 19:11:19 CEST Wol wrote:
> > On 01/10/2022 17:56, Michael wrote:
> > > Anyway, I ventured into pipewire because I wanted to see if Skype would
> > > work without pulseaudio and in this system it won't.  After I manually
> > > installed pipewire Skype won't access the microphone.  
> > 
> > I've got some vague feeling that pipewire is designed to happily sit
> > under pulseaudio. The design aim was to replace both Jack and pulseaudio
> > but it basically just presents a sound device to the layers above, so
> > just like you can stack block devices for disk access, you can stack
> > jack, pulseaudio and pipewire for sound.
> 
> Well, it is actually designed as a drop-in replacement and won't present
> audio devices in the sense pulseaudio wants to receive it. I guess it would
> theoretically be possible to use pulseaudio's jack sink to talk to
> pipewire, but pipewire has the full pulseaudio interface for pulseaudio
> applications.

At the moment only some applications support PipeWire's native API, but most 
support PulseAudio's API.  When you come across an application like Skype 
which expects PulseAudio, the solution is to enable USE="sound-server 
pipewire-alsa" for PipeWire and in addition to PipeWire also install media-
libs/libpulse.  No other PulseAudio packages are needed.

Thereafter an application requiring PulseAudio uses PipeWire, the latter 
emulating PulseAudio's server by using PulseAudio's API via libpulse.

I applied the above and now the microphone in Skype works again.  I assume the 
same applies to other PulseAudio friendly applications, which won't play 
nicely with PipeWire only.  I suppose at some point PulseAudio will be 
completely replaced by PipeWire and applications will update their code 
accordingly.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Pipewire not a dependency?

[Michael]

On Saturday, 1 October 2022 18:11:19 BST Wol wrote:
> On 01/10/2022 17:56, Michael wrote:
> > Anyway, I ventured into pipewire because I wanted to see if Skype would
> > work without pulseaudio and in this system it won't.  After I manually
> > installed pipewire Skype won't access the microphone.  
> 
> I've got some vague feeling that pipewire is designed to happily sit
> under pulseaudio. The design aim was to replace both Jack and pulseaudio
> but it basically just presents a sound device to the layers above, so
> just like you can stack block devices for disk access, you can stack
> jack, pulseaudio and pipewire for sound.
> 
> The big difference between a sound stack and a block stack is that a
> block stack is asynchronous and latency is (relatively) unimportant. In
> a sound stack some applications *demand* synchronicity, and latency is
> everything. Jack is extremely latency sensitive, pulseaudio buffers and
> doesn't care, and pipewire is intended to satisfy both.
> 
> So the intent was clearly to install pipewire underneath a working
> pulseaudio, and just move applications across as and when.
> 
> Cheers,
> Wol

My very limited understanding is pipewire is meant to replace pulseaudio and 
jack, rather than become part of an audio/video stack:

https://docs.pipewire.org/page_overview.html

I think applications will gradually be coded to work with pipewire, until then 
suitable pipewire plugins would be required.  Perhaps for Skype to work today 
I will also have to enable pulseaudio, at which point it will not need 
pipewire itself.  The strange thing is audio playback works great with 
pipewire, it's the microphone which does not appear to be capturing anything 
and causes Skype to disconnect.  :-/


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Pipewire not a dependency?

[Michael]

On Saturday, 1 October 2022 15:57:03 BST Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 1, 2022 at 7:51 AM Peter Humphrey  wrote:
> > On Saturday, 1 October 2022 15:08:40 BST Michael wrote:
> > > On Thursday, 29 September 2022 15:11:02 BST Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> > > > On 28/09/2022 13:57, Michael wrote:
> > > > > I'm trying to understand why one laptop with Plasma which had
> > 
> > pulseaudio
> > 
> > > > > removed, won't bring in pipewire as a dependency.  I have set USE="-
> > > > > screencast", because I don't need/want this functionality, as I have
> > > > > done
> > > > > on other systems which nevertheless have had pipewire brought in as
> 
> a
> 
> > > > > dependency.
> > > > 
> > > > Probably some other package pulls it in directly, independent of the
> > > > screencast USE flag. For example media-sound/easyeffects.
> > > 
> > > I just looked and a pipewire(d) system has only a few additional audio
> > > applications, spek, vidcutter, easytag, none of which seem to bring in
> > > pipewire.  I think I'll have to install it manually on the system which
> > > doesn't bring it in as some dependency.  Somehow I was under the
> 
> impression
> 
> > > it comes with Plasma these days, but perhaps I have stripped down this
> > > Plasma/kde installation too much.
> > 
> > I have no pipewire on this fairly standard Plasma box.
> 
> I believe that pipewire, as far as KDE users are concerned, is a
> distro choice about when to use it.
> 
> My Kubuntu boxes started using it recently. I had no issues and
> didn't need to change any settings for any application that makes
> use of sound.
> 
> YMMV,
> Mark

Thank you all for your responses.  It could be some Plasma/KDE USE flag which 
differs between my systems causing this.  Without spending a lot of time I 
wouldn't know for sure TBH.

Anyway, I ventured into pipewire because I wanted to see if Skype would work 
without pulseaudio and in this system it won't.  After I manually installed 
pipewire Skype won't access the microphone.  :-(

Re-enabling pulseaudio wants to rebuild some 30 packages including 
qtwebengine.  That's an overnight job on this old laptop.

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Re: [gentoo-user] About to have fiber internet and need VPN info

[Michael]

On Thursday, 4 August 2022 23:32:03 BST Dale wrote:

> I also ordered a router that has openvpn installed on it.  I watched
> some videos and think I can set it up to keep my traffic out of public
> view.  After I learned more about it, there's no reason to not use the
> VPN for all traffic really.  That way I'm protected a little bit even if
> a website is not secure.

If by "not secure website" you mean an unencrypted connection to a web server, 
then such an insecure website remains insecure and so does your connection to 
it, whether the leg from your router to the VPN concentrator is encrypted or 
not.

What kind of protection are you seeking - what is your threat model?


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Re: [gentoo-user] pulseaudio - pipewire

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 3 August 2022 17:22:13 BST Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 3, 2022 at 9:15 AM hitachi303 
> 
> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > so there is a eselect news "2022-07-29-pipewire-sound-server" telling
> > that changes have been made.
> > 
> > I care about having sound but don't care to much about how it is
> > working. Any suggestions which path will lead me to the goal of having
> > the least trouble in future?
> > Like is pulseaudio going to disappear so I will have do switch anyway?
> > Is pipewire that new that it'll be buggy for the years to come?
> > 
> > Regards
> 
> Many other distros are using it without major problems.
> 
> Ubuntu still ships PulseAudio for its long term version which is what I use
> but I've
> not heard of any problems with the leading edge version.

I've been using pipewire with default settings and USE="-pulseaudio" in 
make.conf.  It works fine for my basic needs.

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Re: [gentoo-user] About to have fiber internet and need VPN info

[Michael]

On Friday, 5 August 2022 21:45:25 BST Dale wrote:
> Michael wrote:
> > What kind of protection are you seeking - what is your threat model?
> 
> I'm mostly wanting it so people can't just look and see what I'm doing
> or where I am, mostly my ISP.  

In this case 'people' and your ISP will see you are connecting to the remote 
VPN, but not what website you visit thereon.

The website you visit will not see your real IP, but the exit IP of the VPN 
node.  This may break some websites and streaming services who only allow 
connections from specific jurisdictions.


> I do a little torrenting and such too.
> ;-)  That said, even if I go to my bank's website which is https, it
> will also go through a VPN which also encrypts the traffic.  My bank is
> secure as far as I know but having more protection added can't be a bad
> thing. 

All connections to banks are encrypted end-to-end for decades now and the 
encryption has becoming stronger over the years.


> I'm torn between torguard and surfshark.  I'm not sure where torguard is
> located but surfshark is in the Netherlands I think.  Outside US
> jurisdiction and from what I've read, they never give info to anyone
> about their customers traffic.

Yeah, that's what they all say - their business model depends on it.  State 
sponsored actors are likely to know what the need to know anyway, with or 
without the explicit VPN providers collaboration.  ;-)


> I'm still researching torguard.  Maybe
> someone here knows where they are located???

I understand they are a US based provider in Florida:

Vpnetworks, LLC
618 E South St
Orlando, FL 32801

 but they have VPN servers all over the globe.  Some are virtual servers and 
are NOT physically located in the countries they claim.  The fact it is 
located in the USA it means the authorities can request client list 
information.  VPN providers in jurisdictions like BVI, Panama, or even 
Switzerland might stand a better chance.

Anyway, this is a moot point.  If a VPN provider protects your traffic from 
'people', who protects your traffic from the ... VPN people?!  LOL!

I don't use VPNs, but the interwebs are buzzing with reviews and suggestions.  
If torrenting is a requirement, then associated forums and mailing lists would 
provide advice on what works best for your use case.

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Re: [gentoo-user] About to have fiber internet and need VPN info

[Michael]

On Saturday, 6 August 2022 12:08:30 BST Dale wrote:
> Dale wrote:
> > Michael wrote:
> >> On Saturday, 6 August 2022 07:07:26 BST Dale wrote:
> >>> Well, that settles that then.  I guess it will be Surfshark.  Pretty
> >>> sure it is in the Netherlands but may be wrong on country.  I just
> >>> recall it being outside US jurisdiction.  I also read they have been
> >>> audited by independent people to ensure they have no logs even if asked.
> >> 
> >> Surfshark gets good reviews and it offers the wireguard protocol with the
> >> ChaCha20 cipher for better encryption and performance.  However, the
> >> Netherlands is part of the EU and 14 eyes, so I would think similar state
> >> powers exist to access your private communications and the ISPs would
> >> have no way of refusing and staying in business.  Surfshark offers a
> >> warrant canary, but it looks more like a marketing statement to me when
> >> you compare it to something like the Qubes digitally signed canaries.
> > 
> > I forgot about the 14 eyes thing.  Do you know of one outside that that
> > is good?  The bad thing about most, they are pricey if done by the month
> > for testing.  You only get a good deal if you subscribe for a year or
> > even two years.  I don't want to subscribe and then find out it is a bad
> > one. 
> > 
> > Dale
> > 
> > :-)  :-) 
> 
> I did a quick google search and Surfshark is based in British Virgin
> Islands and is outside the eyes countries.  I was thinking it was
> Netherlands but wasn't sure.

You were thinking correctly at the start.  Surfshark is located in the 
Netherlands since 2018 and has been bought out by Nord Security, who owns 
NordVPN.


> When I searched for VPN outside 14 eyes
> country, Surfshark is highly rated.  Depending on the site, it's in the
> top few each time. 
> 
> https://earthweb.com/vpn-outside-14-eyes/
> 
> https://www.privateproxyguide.com/best-vpn-outside-14-eyes/
> 
> Unless there is some good reason to avoid, still thinking of using it. 

The more you try to escape the 14 eyes Big Brother, the closer you may fall 
into the hands of various authoritarian regimes.  LOL!  Even VPNs like NordVPN 
which operates within the jurisdiction of Panama (let's not forget it is 
Langley's doorstep), it also has offices in the UK, Netherlands and Lithuania.  
I wonder why . . .

Total privacy on the Internet is improbable.  If your only concern is to 
retain your privacy from your ISP with regards to your Internet connections, 
then most/any VPN service will offer this benefit by obfuscating your IP 
address.  Your browsing patterns, browser User Agent, addons and umpteen other 
OS and application fingerprints won't be obfuscated beyond the VPN server.  
Therefore your identity can only be protected so much and no more.



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Re: [gentoo-user] About to have fiber internet and need VPN info

[Michael]

On Saturday, 6 August 2022 07:07:26 BST Dale wrote:
> Michael wrote:
> > All connections to banks are encrypted end-to-end for decades now and the
> > encryption has becoming stronger over the years.
> 
> That is likely true.  I still remember Snowden tho.  We don't know what
> backdoors are in use even for bank encryption.

It's safer to assume state actors have full access to bank information.  The 
hope is bad guys don't get access too!  ;-)


> Thing is, open source
> tools are harder to fall into that trap since everyone can see what the
> code is.  If a backdoor is forced in, it will be known to a lot of
> people and then that tool won't be used.  It's sort of funny in a way,
> they more Govts and others try to restrict things, the more tools there
> is to get around it.  From what I've read, most VPNs use open source
> tools.  Most even use the current best and would upgrade if needed. 
> That gives me some extra protection in the event my bank or any other
> website falls behind on updating theirs. 

A VPN gives no end-to-end protection whatsoever in this scenario.  All you get 
is protection in the network connection between your PC and the VPN server.  
>From the VPN server onward to your bank, the connection will be no more 
protected than whatever encryption protocol the bank offers.  Only a VPN 
server offered by your bank for connections to their network would afford 
additional protection in this scenario.


> Basically, I don't trust Govt with much of anything.  If they say they
> don't do something bad, you can pretty much bet they are doing exactly
> that or even worse. 

Heh!  After the Snowden revelations any such suspicions could be taken as a 
certainty.


[snip ...]
> Well, that settles that then.  I guess it will be Surfshark.  Pretty
> sure it is in the Netherlands but may be wrong on country.  I just
> recall it being outside US jurisdiction.  I also read they have been
> audited by independent people to ensure they have no logs even if asked. 

Surfshark gets good reviews and it offers the wireguard protocol with the 
ChaCha20 cipher for better encryption and performance.  However, the 
Netherlands is part of the EU and 14 eyes, so I would think similar state 
powers exist to access your private communications and the ISPs would have no 
way of refusing and staying in business.  Surfshark offers a warrant canary, 
but it looks more like a marketing statement to me when you compare it to 
something like the Qubes digitally signed canaries.


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Re: [gentoo-user] About to have fiber internet and need VPN info

[Michael]

On Sunday, 7 August 2022 07:06:55 BST William Kenworthy wrote:
> On 6/8/22 20:42, Michael wrote:
> > On Saturday, 6 August 2022 12:08:30 BST Dale wrote:
> > ...
> > 
> > The more you try to escape the 14 eyes Big Brother, the closer you may
> > fall
> > into the hands of various authoritarian regimes.  LOL!  Even VPNs like
> > NordVPN which operates within the jurisdiction of Panama (let's not
> > forget it is Langley's doorstep), it also has offices in the UK,
> > Netherlands and Lithuania. I wonder why . . .
> > 
> > Total privacy on the Internet is improbable.  If your only concern is to
> > retain your privacy from your ISP with regards to your Internet
> > connections, then most/any VPN service will offer this benefit by
> > obfuscating your IP address.  Your browsing patterns, browser User Agent,
> > addons and umpteen other OS and application fingerprints won't be
> > obfuscated beyond the VPN server. Therefore your identity can only be
> > protected so much and no more.
> Also, leakage is almost inevitable ... DNS, content distribution
> networks, browser fingerprinting, timezones, paying online with a US
> credit card, US delivery address and just simple mis-configuration
> exposing you to risk etc.  My impression as a long time openvpn user is
> that TOR and the TOR browser might be the closest to secure for your
> purposes? Also, keep in mind that things like online shopping will cost
> you more overseas because if you are successful in hiding you are in the
> US you will get the international surcharges, or in some cases ordering
> IT stuff from the US you have to fill out export clearances (once even
> for sparkfun hobby stuff!) :) ... then if you pay with a US card and/or
> have a US delivery address they have got you anyway - in fact being in
> Oz I gave it up as being no gain, too much pain to use a VPN try and get
> cheaper US shopping. I found myself having to maintain two totally
> independent systems with one in a locked down VPN with US settings with
> all traffic actively blocked from the local network, and use US shipping
> and packaging firms that offered facilities to buy on my behalf.  That
> is much harder than you think - trusting the end points is only one
> small part of the problem you are trying to solve and from the Gov
> monitoring point of view almost certainly a waste of time anyway as they
> have massive resources. The best you can hope for with openvpn is SSL
> point to point level security.  Just use HTTPS, a good browser and be
> part of the crowd - if you are trawling suspect/socially compromising
> websites you do not want anyone to see you going to, no matter what you
> do there will always be a risk and as a VPN user you are a more likely
> target for a closer look anyway.  I am sure the bigger online VPN
> providers would be monitored closely - at least TOR is likely to help
> more than a plain VPN.
> 
> BillK

TBH I don't think even TOR is to be trusted 100%.  There must be 100s if not 
1000s of honeypot TOR servers set up with the purpose of harvesting comms and 
associating entry and exit patterns as part of regular internet surveillance 
work.

The best a well configured VPN tunnel can offer is a secure connection between 
client and VPN server, which is handy if you are out and about using untrusted 
and insecure WiFi hotspots.  In such a case, having configured your home/office 
router as a VPN server for free will allow you to use your client device as a 
roadwarrior, which should be just as effective as using some remote VPN 
service.

The only other reason for using a VPN service is to present a different 
geolocation for the purpose of overcoming country-specific website 
restrictions.  In this case a VPN service works effectively as a proxy server 
in changing your IP address.

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Re: [gentoo-user] About to have fiber internet and need VPN info

[Michael]

On Sunday, 7 August 2022 19:27:42 BST Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 7, 2022 at 11:36 AM Michael  wrote:
> > The best a well configured VPN tunnel can offer is a secure connection
> > between client and VPN server, which is handy if you are out and about
> > using untrusted and insecure WiFi hotspots.
> > 
> > The only other reason for using a VPN service is to present a different
> > geolocation for the purpose of overcoming country-specific website
> > restrictions.
> 
> I think ONLY is a bit strong here.  A VPN effectively makes it
> impossible for your ISP to know who you're talking to, and it obscures
> your IP from hosts you are connecting to.

Yes, fair point.  I was thinking why would you go to such an effort just to 
obscure your comms from your ISP.  I'm not saying there aren't use cases 
supporting this endeavor.  I was thinking more about political activists 
operating under oppressive regimes where state-level surveillance would be the 
threat model.  In this case I would think state actors wouldn't rely on ISPs 
alone to share such information, although ISP's data would be tapped into for 
good measure.


> Sure, there are ways to defeat this, but most of them are only
> applicable for state-level actors, and the methods available to
> ordinary companies can only identify at best a unique browser profile,
> which only lets them correlate traffic with those they share info with
> to the degree that you use a single browser profile across those
> platforms.  For non-web traffic there are generally fewer attacks
> available.  Many of the attacks that are often cited like DNS-based
> attacks are not that difficult to prevent (eg by ensuring your DNS
> traffic goes out over the VPN).

Yes, careful VPN implementations would guard against DNS leaks and the like.


> If there are sites you browse using a different browser profile
> (ideally on a VM/etc), and you never use that browser profile for
> ecommerce or activity associated with your normal social media
> accounts, then it is unlikely that those sites will actually be able
> to identify you.
> 
> Really the biggest pain with the VPNs is the number of websites that
> actively try to block connections from them or flood you with
> CAPTCHAs.  Many more mainstream social media sites/etc also
> effectively require association with a mobile phone number, or trigger
> this behavior if they don't like your IP address.  Obviously VPNs can
> be abused to attack hosts or evade bans and generally cause trouble,
> which is a frustration for those who simply don't want companies to
> know who you are.
> 
> Bottom line is that just because the NSA can track your connections
> doesn't mean that every random webserver on the planet can do so.  The
> few government agencies that are likely to be that well-connected are
> also very interested in keeping the extent of their capabilities
> hidden from each other, and so when they intercept your data they're
> going to guard it even more carefully than you would.

I would sincerely hope so.  Can't vouch their contractors and subcontractors 
would do the same in all cases though.


> A solution doesn't need to be able to defeat the NSA to be useful.

ACK.  It boils down to use cases and requirements.  I suppose people who seek 
to avoid state surveillance would probably use multilayered encryption and 
steganography, or better stay off the Internet all together?  ;-)

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Re: [gentoo-user] Backup program that compresses data but only changes new files.

[Michael]

On Monday, 15 August 2022 11:58:14 BST Gerrit Kühn wrote:
> Am Mon, 15 Aug 2022 12:50:37 +0200
> 
> schrieb Gerrit Kühn :
> > Being a happy restic user myself, I'd like to mention that compression is
> > available meanwhile
> > (https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/047_tuning_backup_parameters.html
> > #compression). However, the feature is rather new, I did not use it so
> > far.
> 
> https://forum.restic.net/t/compression-support-has-landed-in-master/4997
> 
> Just adding another link to the official announcement from earlier this
> year.
> 
> 
> cu
>   Gerrit

I think In Dale's use case compression is a solution seeking to address the 
problem of not enough storage space for backups, but it only makes sense if 
the data can be effectively and efficiently compressed.  He mentioned 99.99% 
of his backup data is video.  Video files are not particularly compressible, 
although small space savings can be achieved.  For example using basic enough 
zst parameters '-19 --rsyncable -z' I got just a 1.6% file reduction:

Frames  Skips  Compressed  Uncompressed  Ratio  Check
 1  088.9 MiB  90.3 MiB  1.016  XXH64

Even if compression delivers some small space saving, given Dale's new faster 
Internet link and local video storage tendencies, compression will only kick 
the can down the road.  If these are not private or rare videos and remain 
available on public streaming platforms, perhaps local storage is no longer 
necessary?

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Re: [gentoo-user] About to have fiber internet and need VPN info

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 9 August 2022 00:35:05 BST Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:04:53 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > > So government level actors spying on your banking just go to the
> > > bank.  And they've been getting more nosey in recent years.  Last I
> > > heard, any transaction over $600 gets automatically reported to them,
> > > and they keep talking about lowering that threshold.
> > 
> > Thank goodness I don't live in the good ol' US of A. The land of the
> > free? Hm...
> 
> We still have the protections introduced by the EU. Let's hope the
> government aren't about to tear them up... oh, they are.

My understanding is the UK (and EU) are all the same if not worse in this 
respect.  Law stipulated protections on data privacy mostly apply to private 
companies, but do not exclude access to your data by governments.  As far as I 
recall there's not even a need to seek approval by a judge to do so anymore, 
although there will be some rudimentary 'supervision' of operatives by more 
senior ... operatives.  Ha!

It's probably safer to assume Internet and privacy are effectively quite 
orthogonal.

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Re: [gentoo-user] virtualbox woes

[Michael]

On Monday, 1 August 2022 01:46:32 BST Matthew Sacks wrote:
> The vbox log and screenshot are all I have to go off. Next time I”ll provide
> that upfront. New to these parts (gentoo lists).

No problem.  :-)

> It crashes on boot actually to answer your question.

I've always run VBox on a linux host, so I am not familiar with MSWindows host 
peculiarities.  However, I would think VBox on MSWindows would/should be plug 
'n play.

From what you've shown you're experiencing a kernel crash of the VM at boot.  
I'd start by looking at the configuration of the linux kernel you're trying to 
boot and at the same time consider the settings of the VM appropriate for your 
hardware, e.g. use AHCI/NVMe for storage instead of PIIX, add more than one 
CPU, adequate memory, etc.

Starting with these recommendations for Gentoo guests should get you in the 
right ballpark:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/VirtualBox#Gentoo_guests

PS.  When you boot the Live media within the VM to install Gentoo make sure 
you boot it as legacy BIOS or as UEFI and configure VBox to match.


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Re: [gentoo-user] --sync

[Michael]

On Monday, 1 August 2022 10:43:55 BST tastytea wrote:
> On 2022-08-01 07:58+0100 Michael  wrote:
> > […]
> > 
> > 2. These days rsync uses hashes and gpg to check the integrity of
> > portage and will flag up a warning in case of file tampering, or
> > corrupt data.  As far as I know such a solution doesn't exist with
> > git.
> 
> Verification can be turned on with
>   sync-git-verify-commit-signature = yes
> in repos.conf.[1] This does not seem to be enabled by default.[2]
> 
> [1]
> <https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Portage/Repository_verification#git>
> [2] <https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Portage_Security#git-mirror_repositories>

I see ... this is an improvement from what I recall it to be.  Thanks for 
pointing it out.  Perhaps I should start using git again.  :-)

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Re: [gentoo-user] --sync

[Michael]

On Monday, 1 August 2022 06:09:07 BST n952162 wrote:
> On 7/31/22 21:51, n952162 wrote:
> > I've been running gentoo for years now, and every time I go to --sync,
> > it's really a painful process.
> > 
> > The process can take *very* before you find out if it succeeded or not.
> > 
> > I try different repos.conf servers - one works for a while, then
> > doesn't, then later, the new one doesn't work anymore and the old one
> > works again.
> > 
> > I've asked here about it multiple times and get the answers
> > 
> > - "I don't have a problem"
> > 
> > - "just change the server"
> > 
> > - "keep trying"
> > 
> > It can take several hours before it finally works
> > 
> > It seems like a time-out problem.  Or maybe a memory problem ... In any
> > case, it doesn't seem like it ought to be difficult to at least know
> > what the problem is.
> > 
> > Or?
> 
> Thanks all, for the various suggestions, I'll try each.

Two points to consider when choosing git to sync your portage tree:

1. It used to be the case the first time you run git it would try to download 
GB of commits history and take ages to do so on a slow connection.  The 
solution used to be to add "EGIT_CLONE_TYPE=shallow" in your make.conf, but 
I'm not sure if this is still needed (I don't use git).

2. These days rsync uses hashes and gpg to check the integrity of portage and 
will flag up a warning in case of file tampering, or corrupt data.  As far as I 
know such a solution doesn't exist with git.

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[gentoo-user] Locating CONFIG_ZONE_DEVICE

[Michael]

I got this message:

 * Messages for package dev-libs/roct-thunk-interface-5.3.3:

 *   CONFIG_ZONE_DEVICE: is not set when it should be.
 * Please check to make sure these options are set correctly.
 * Failure to do so may cause unexpected problems.

and stated searching for ZONE_DEVICE in my kernel config, but can't find it:

 $ grep ZONE_DEVICE /usr/src/linux/.config
 $
 $ grep ZONE /usr/src/linux/.config
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ZONED=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEBUG_FS_ZONED=y
CONFIG_ZONE_DMA=y
CONFIG_ZONE_DMA32=y
# CONFIG_NF_CONNTRACK_ZONES is not set
# CONFIG_DM_ZONED is not set
# CONFIG_ZONEFS_FS is not set
 $

Any idea where it might be hiding?

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Re: [gentoo-user] Locating CONFIG_ZONE_DEVICE

[Michael]

On Friday, 23 December 2022 10:09:10 GMT Peter Böhm wrote:
> It is in:
> Memory Management options  --->
> 
> and you will see it only if you have enabled this:
> 
> Depends on: MEMORY_HOTPLUG [=y] && MEMORY_HOTREMOVE [=y] &&
> SPARSEMEM_VMEMMAP [=y] && ARCH_HAS_PTE_DEVMAP [=y]

Thanks!  I found it.  :-)

~ $ grep ZONE_DEVICE /usr/src/linux/.config
CONFIG_ZONE_DEVICE=y

> You can ALWAYS search with a / in make menuconfig (leading CONFIG_ is not
> necessary).

Hidden options do not show up until precedents have been enabled.  I had to 
enable a couple of the HOTPLUG options and then it showed up.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Missing line-drawing characters on re-install

[Michael]

On Friday, 30 December 2022 13:29:30 GMT Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 30, 2022 at 01:05:26PM +0000, Michael wrote
> 
> > I can't recall what else you have eliminated as the cause of this
> > rendering problem.  Have you checked:
> > 
> > 1. VT console.
> > 2. Different terminal (urxvt, xterm, gnome terminal, konsole, etc.).
> > 3. Different DE/Window Manager.
> 
>   A bit of digging.  For text tty's (tty1, tty2, etc) I use solar24x32
> as the font.  On a text tty both mc and mutt work fine (line-drawing)
> natively without any hacks.  They also work fine on urxvt without any
> hacks.  Note that the ebuild that provides urxvt is called, wait for it,
> 
> rxvt-unicode
> 
>   It looks like urxvt is designed from square 1 to handle unicode, and
> xterm is not.

OKie dOKie, it is a terminal rendering issue then.  I'm not on a PC with mutt 
right now, so can't confirm, but these are the xterm USE flags I use here:

~ $ equery u x11-terms/xterm
[ Legend : U - final flag setting for installation]
[: I - package is installed with flag ]
[ Colors : set, unset ]
 * Found these USE flags for x11-terms/xterm-376:
 U I
 - - Xaw3d  : Add support for the 3d athena widget set
 + + openpty: Use openpty() in preference to posix_openpt()
 - - sixel  : Enable sixel graphics support
 - - toolbar: Enable the xterm toolbar to be built
 + + truetype   : Add support for FreeType and/or FreeType2 fonts
 + + unicode: Add support for Unicode
 - - verify-sig : Verify upstream signatures on distfiles
 - - xinerama   : Add support for querying multi-monitor screen geometry 
through the Xinerama API

I rarely use xterm and can't recall how it behaves with mutt, so I'm not sure 
if the above flags would make any difference.  If xterm is your favourite 
terminal you may want to give these flags a spin.

Re: [gentoo-user] Scanner and weird streaking

[Michael]

On Friday, 30 December 2022 13:42:04 GMT Dale wrote:
> Michael wrote:
> > On Friday, 30 December 2022 02:28:32 GMT Dale wrote:
> >> Howdy all,
> >> 
> >> I have a HP scanjet 4570c flatbed scanner.  I bought it used years ago
> >> and most of the time, it works just fine.  On occasion tho, I get
> >> something weird.  When I scan something, it adds some pinkish colored
> >> streaks.  I took a scrap sheet of paper and scanned the back of it. I
> >> used a magic marker on some text that was there, also drew a smiley face
> >> on it as well.  Anyway, the side with print is on the opposite side.
> >> Basically, it is also seeing the back side of the paper.  I'm not sure
> >> if that could cause this weird streaking but wanted to mention it.
> > 
> > I've come across the pink hue artefact on an old HP scanner, but can't
> > recall the model.  It is not related to the print of the opposite side
> > becoming visible, which is caused by a high light exposure setting.  You
> > need to reduce the exposure to a level where you can see the primary
> > print clear enough, without the back side bleeding through.
> 
> I kinda figure that.  It is pretty bright.  I don't recall seeing a
> setting for it but I may not have seen it.  I mostly tried different
> color settings, resolution and such.  Goes to show tho, it is
> sensitive.  ;-) 

If the scanner front end doesn't offer an exposure tweak, you could try post-
processing of the scanned image using Gimp, or some other image editing 
software.  Reduce exposure until the reverse side print dissipates, while the 
front remains clear enough.

Alternatively, on a simpler set of controls playing with brightness and 
contrast could get you close enough.


> >> At first, I thought it was something on the glass so I disassembled the
> >> thing and cleaned it as best as I could.  When I put it back together, I
> >> concentrated on the back side of the glass, since I have to disassemble
> >> it to clean it.  I also clean the side the document goes on regularly.
> >> If it changed, I can't tell it.  Another odd thing, the streaks change
> >> depending on the document.  Sometimes you can barely see it, other times
> >> it is awful.  I've not been able to reason out what makes the difference
> >> tho.
> > 
> > Cleaning the glass won't affect the pink hue.  I dismantled the scanner
> > and
> > cleaned the glass too, with no improvement.
> > 
> >> I've got about the same results using Scanlite, Scanpage and XSane
> >> software.  XSane may be a tiny bit better but it does vary at times.
> >> There's not a lot of settings available.  I tend to use either 100dpi or
> >> 300 dpi for resolution thingy. I fiddled around a bit but it doesn't
> >> seem to help.  This is a link to the page I described above.  It's a
> >> little sizey so I didn't want to attach, for those who have email
> >> clients that puke a lot.  lol
> >> 
> >> https://freeimage.host/i/HTQLpWb
> >> 
> >> You may notice that it is a little heavier at the top and gets lighter
> >> as it goes down.  I've checked the glass, I can't find anything that
> >> would cause this.  Is my scanner just going bad?  Am I doing something
> >> wrong with a setting or something?  Any ideas?  Thoughts?
> > 
> > The pink hue is probably due to the scanner bar going bad.  Some fixes,
> > which did not work in my case, are as follows:
> > 
> > 1. Reset internal chipset:  Plug it in, switch it on, then pull the power
> > lead, followed by the USB.  Wait for a minute or longer to discharge, then
> > reconnect, power on and try to see if the problem is fixed.
> > 
> > 2. Overheating: More of a problem in the summer.  Use a desk fan while
> > operating to see if it makes a difference.
> > 
> > If none of the above work, then the scanner bar needs replacing.  Probably
> > time for a new scanner, unless you can find a donor scanner for the
> > scanner
> > bar.
> 
> Well, bummer.  I was afraid it was going bad.  I knew it moved the light
> thing back and forth and all but know there is a lot more to it than
> that.  If it was a consistent streak, I'd think a bad CCD or whatever
> that chip that grabs the image is called nowadays.  This tho, wasn't
> looking like that. 
> 
> I may disassemble it again and check all the cables. Disconnect and
> reconnect everything and hope for a bad or lose connection.  Now let us
> pray. 

The pink hue is visible signal noise captured in the image.  This may be 
internal, the scanner sensor is drifting outside its spec, or it cou

Re: [gentoo-user] Scanner and weird streaking

[Michael]

On Friday, 30 December 2022 02:28:32 GMT Dale wrote:
> Howdy all,
> 
> I have a HP scanjet 4570c flatbed scanner.  I bought it used years ago
> and most of the time, it works just fine.  On occasion tho, I get
> something weird.  When I scan something, it adds some pinkish colored
> streaks.  I took a scrap sheet of paper and scanned the back of it. I
> used a magic marker on some text that was there, also drew a smiley face
> on it as well.  Anyway, the side with print is on the opposite side. 
> Basically, it is also seeing the back side of the paper.  I'm not sure
> if that could cause this weird streaking but wanted to mention it.

I've come across the pink hue artefact on an old HP scanner, but can't recall 
the model.  It is not related to the print of the opposite side becoming 
visible, which is caused by a high light exposure setting.  You need to reduce 
the exposure to a level where you can see the primary print clear enough, 
without the back side bleeding through.


> At first, I thought it was something on the glass so I disassembled the
> thing and cleaned it as best as I could.  When I put it back together, I
> concentrated on the back side of the glass, since I have to disassemble
> it to clean it.  I also clean the side the document goes on regularly. 
> If it changed, I can't tell it.  Another odd thing, the streaks change
> depending on the document.  Sometimes you can barely see it, other times
> it is awful.  I've not been able to reason out what makes the difference
> tho. 

Cleaning the glass won't affect the pink hue.  I dismantled the scanner and 
cleaned the glass too, with no improvement.


> I've got about the same results using Scanlite, Scanpage and XSane
> software.  XSane may be a tiny bit better but it does vary at times.
> There's not a lot of settings available.  I tend to use either 100dpi or
> 300 dpi for resolution thingy. I fiddled around a bit but it doesn't
> seem to help.  This is a link to the page I described above.  It's a
> little sizey so I didn't want to attach, for those who have email
> clients that puke a lot.  lol 
> 
> https://freeimage.host/i/HTQLpWb
> 
> You may notice that it is a little heavier at the top and gets lighter
> as it goes down.  I've checked the glass, I can't find anything that
> would cause this.  Is my scanner just going bad?  Am I doing something
> wrong with a setting or something?  Any ideas?  Thoughts?

The pink hue is probably due to the scanner bar going bad.  Some fixes, which 
did not work in my case, are as follows:

1. Reset internal chipset:  Plug it in, switch it on, then pull the power 
lead, followed by the USB.  Wait for a minute or longer to discharge, then 
reconnect, power on and try to see if the problem is fixed.

2. Overheating: More of a problem in the summer.  Use a desk fan while 
operating to see if it makes a difference.

If none of the above work, then the scanner bar needs replacing.  Probably 
time for a new scanner, unless you can find a donor scanner for the scanner 
bar.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Missing line-drawing characters on re-install

[Michael]

On Friday, 30 December 2022 04:08:51 GMT Walter Dnes wrote:
>   I'm b-a-a-a-a-ck... on my regular desktop.  I re-installed with
> unicode enabled and locale corrected.  Some rough edges, specifically no
> line-drawing characters.  See attached image.  Mutt is supposed to have
> horizontal lines from right after the ")" up to the ">".  Similarly mc
> is supposed to have vertical and horizontal line drawing characters
> separating and surrounding the two panels.  I can use "mc -a" to get a
> decent emulation with "+", "_", and "|" in place of line-drawing
> characters.  Similarly mutt has the "set ascii_chars" option to get an
> ugly version of line-threading.  Since this problem shows up on more
> than one app, I assume that it's a general system problem.  Any ideas on
> how to get real line-drawing characters back?

I can't recall what else you have eliminated as the cause of this rendering 
problem.  Have you checked:

1. VT console.
2. Different terminal (urxvt, xterm, gnome terminal, konsole, etc.).
3. Different DE/Window Manager.

Also may be worth trying Wayland as opposed to Xorg, in case the video card 
driver likes one more than the other.

Re: [gentoo-user] Locating CONFIG_ZONE_DEVICE

[Michael]

On Friday, 23 December 2022 13:30:22 GMT Morgan Wesström wrote:
> > Hidden options do not show up until precedents have been enabled.  I had
> > to
> > enable a couple of the HOTPLUG options and then it showed up.
> 
> You can press the letter Z to toggle the display of hidden items.
> 
> /Morgan

Thanks!  I didn't know this.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Duel boot - How to verify boot loader updates?

[Michael]

On Thursday, 8 December 2022 20:55:30 GMT Mark Knecht wrote:
> Hi,
>This is a bit of a conceptual question, simplified but based on a
> machine I do own, from someone who knows very little about boot loader
> implementations. (I.e. - me) Thanks in advance for any pointers you can
> provide.
> 
>Assume a machine with two separate M.2 SSDs. The M.2 devices are
> identical in size and from the same manufacturer. For the sake of
> discussion they are partitioned identically and they both have the same
> distro installed. One is stable, the other is bleeding edge. For simplicity
> there are no other disk drives involved in either installation. Both
> installs have the same boot loader, grub2 I guess, and both have
> configurations that boot themselves by default but offer the other drive as
> a second option.
> 
>Assume the bleeding edge system (or the other - it doesn't matter to me)
> gets a grub2 update, and further assume the update is either automatic or
> done by someone other than yourself. Whoever did the updates 'tests' the
> machine by booting into both versions, and both versions are tested as
> default in BIOS so that no matter what everything appears to be working.
> 
>THE QUESTION: After the fact, if I wanted to look at the two
> installations in detail, how would I determine that the grub update was
> done to the installation doing the update and not done to the other
> (nearly) identical installation?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Mark

Once booted into one of the OSs you could run something like 'eix -l grub' or 
'emerge --search grub' to see which version has been installed.  I don't 
recall there being a GRUB filesystem specific pointer as to what version it is 
when just looking at the installed GRUB files.

To check the GRUB version of the second OS without booting into it, you can 
grep for grub in its /var/log/emerge.log

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Re: [gentoo-user] NAS and replacing with larger drives

[Michael]

On Thursday, 8 December 2022 20:44:56 GMT Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Thu, Dec 08, 2022 at 06:36:14PM + schrieb Wols Lists:
> > >  > I've pretty much reached a limit on my backups.  I'm up to a 16TB
> > >  > hard
> > >  > drive for one and even that won't last long.  Larger drives are much
> > >  > more costly.  A must have NAS is quickly approaching.  I've been
> > >  > searching around and find some things confusing.  I'm hoping someone
> > >  > can
> > >  > clear up that confusion.  I'm also debating what path to travel down.
> > >  > I'd also like to keep costs down as well.  That said, I don't mind
> > >  > paying a little more for one that would offer a much better option.
> > >  > 
> > >  > Path one, buy a NAS, possibly used, that has no drives.  If possible,
> > >  > I
> > >  > may even replace the OS that comes on it or upgrade if I can.  I'm
> > >  > not
> > >  > looking for fancy, or even RAID.  Just looking for a two bay NAS that
> > >  > will work.  First, what is a DAS?  Is that totally different than a
> > >  > NAS?  From what I've found, a DAS is not what I'm looking for since I
> > >  > want a ethernet connection and the ability to control things over the
> > >  > network.  It seems DAS lacks that feature but not real sure.  I'm not
> > >  > sure I can upgrade the software/OS on a DAS either.
> > >  > […]
> > > 
> > > DAS is direct-attached-storage. I don't think you want that.
> > 
> > Depends. If it fits in the safe, and can be connected using one of these
> > eSATA thingy connectors, it might be a very good choice.
> > 
> > […]
> > 
> > I get the impression Dale isn't actually PLANNING his disk storage. It's
> > just a case of "help I'm downloading all this stuff where do I put it!!!"
> 
> Haha, thanks for the laugh.

Actually this had me thinking what is the need to back up the ... Internet?  
If all this never-ending and recently accelerated download activity by Dale 
will continue and most of these video/audio files are available on some 
streaming server on the Internet, WHY do they need to be backed up locally?

I appreciate some of these video files may be rare finds, or there may be a 
risk some of these may be taken off the interwebs sooner or later.  This 
should leave a rather small subset of all downloads, which may merit a local 
backup, just in case.  I'd thought the availability of higher fiber download 
speeds negates the need for local backups, of readily downloadable media.

Of course, with personal and private data, plus configuration files, the 
backup need is clearer and the strategy simpler.

Perhaps the whole backup strategy for files downloaded from the Internet, Vs 
personal files, needs some critical (re)thinking.


> > Get yourself a basic 4-way DAS/JBOD setup, PLAN where you're putting all
> > this stuff, and plug in and remove drives as required. You don't need all
> > these huge drives if you think about what you're going to do with it all.
> 
> That’s actually a good idea. Either use a hot swap frame for an internal 5¼″
> PC bay, a desktop dock for bare drives or a multi-bay enclosure. The market
> is big, you have lots of choices. USB (with or without integrated hub),
> eSATA, one or two bays, etc: https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=hddocks
> 
> Advantages:
> - no separate system to maintain just for storage: save $$$, time and power
> - very flexible: no chassis limitation on number of disks
> - no bulky external enclosures, each using a different power brick and cable
> - minimum volume to put into a safe (just get or make a bulk storage case)
> 
> Disadvantages:
> - not as “fancy” as a NAS
> - possibly not all disks can be used at the same time
> - physical handling of naked disks takes more care
> - LVM is not practical, so use each disk separately
> - you gotta remember which files are where¹
> - SATA connectors aren’t made for very many insertion cycles (I think the
>   spec says 50?), which doesn’t mean they endure much more, but still …
> 
> > (And while it takes time and hammers the system, I regularly record off
> > the
> > TV getting a 2GB .ts file, convert it to mp4 - same resolution - and
> > reduce
> > the size by an order of magnitude - maybe more.
> 
> Well, ts uses mpeg2 encoding, just like old video DVDs, which is very
> inefficient when compared with modern h264/h265. Modern digital TV broadcast
> uses h264 by now.

Depending on the PVR make/model I've seen 1080p resolution recordings with 
.m2ts and .ts file extensions, while the codecs inside them are the same.  
Here's the ffprobe output of a .ts recording containing a h264 video I 
captured recently off terrestrial TV transmission:

Input #0, mpegts, from '20221209 0147 - BBC ONE HD - Weather for the Week 
Ahead.ts':
  Duration: 00:13:01.44, start: 48999.919856, bitrate: 3744 kb/s
  Program 17540 
  Stream #0:0[0x19c9]: Video: h264 (High) ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), 
yuv420p(tv, bt709, progressive), 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 
90k tbn, 50 tbc
  Stream 

Re: [gentoo-user] media-libs/babl-0.1.96-r1 compile dies during emerge @world

[Michael]

On Monday, 12 December 2022 08:29:50 GMT Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 09:00:42AM +0100, netfab wrote
> 
> > Le 12/12/22 à 07:30, Walter Dnes a tapoté :
> > >   I don't think they should make any difference, but included for
> > > 
> > > completeness.  File-attached is the gzipped build log...
> > > 
> > > (vapigen-0.56:375): GLib-CRITICAL **: 00:58:53.271: PCRE library is
> > > compiled without UTF8 support
> > 
> > You should try to first upgrade/rebuild the dev-libs/glib package.
> > 
> > https://bugs.gentoo.org/883877
> 
>   No change.  dev-libs/glib-2.74.1-r1:2::gentoo was a straight rebuild;
> no upgrade; no USE-flag changes; and the babl compile still dies.  What
> is the "GLib-CRITICAL" bit about PCRE with no UTF8 support?

I don't know about the UTF8 error and if it is related to your failure, but 
since it complains about the vala compiler, it may be worth rebuilding it 
first?  

emerge -1aDv dev-lang/vala


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Re: [gentoo-user] Duel boot - How to verify boot loader updates?

[Michael]

On Friday, 9 December 2022 17:17:24 GMT Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 9, 2022 at 4:07 AM Arve Barsnes  wrote:
> > On Fri, 9 Dec 2022 at 11:55, Michael  wrote:
> > > To check the GRUB version of the second OS without booting into it, you
> 
> can
> 
> > > grep for grub in its /var/log/emerge.log
> > 
> > Or see what version is named in the /usr/share/doc/grub-2.?? folder name.
> > 
> > On the other hand, if the question is *really* about knowing if
> > grub-install has been run on one of the machines, I don't know if
> > there is a way. Probably look at change dates on the files in
> > /boot/grub/?
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Arve
> 
> Thanks to both of you for your responses. I appreciate them, although I
> don't think they get as far down in the weeds as I was wondering about.
> 
> My understanding of the boot loader - and maybe I'm using the wrong
> terminology so if I am someone please correct me - is that at the start
> of boot BIOS tells the processor to read some part of the disk and it is
> the code read there that gets the whole process kicked off and
> out of BIOS's control.
> 
> I'm wondering about that first bit of code being written by installation
> #2's update into the initial section of installation #1's disk.
> 
> Rethink the picture a bit and make installation #1 Windows and
> installation #2 Linux. Assume that after updating each install, and
> further assume both installs made some very minor change to their
> own first bits of code on the disk, and assume everything still
> boots correctly, BUT assume that one of the updates actually
> wrote into the other install's initial boot code and replaced it with
> their own because it was confused about which disk it was
> supposed to put this on. How would I be able to determine that
> this happened?
> 
> It's not totally a thought experiment. One machine I have which
> is dual boot recently complained that the original disk grub was
> installed on had changed when in fact there hadn't been any
> hardware changes and I had to carefully figure out how to
> answer a couple of questions. After the fact I started to wonder
> about this edge case.
> 
> I think it comes down to reading what's on the disk with a
> hex editor possibly but I know nothing about what to expect
> there.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark

Before I venture a potentially wrong answer, could you please clarify if we 
are talking about a UEFI MoBo, or a legacy BIOS MoBo.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Duel boot - How to verify boot loader updates?

[Michael]

On Friday, 9 December 2022 18:39:33 GMT Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 9, 2022 at 10:57 AM Michael  wrote:
> > On Friday, 9 December 2022 17:17:24 GMT Mark Knecht wrote:
> 
> 
> > > It's not totally a thought experiment. One machine I have which
> > > is dual boot recently complained that the original disk grub was
> > > installed on had changed when in fact there hadn't been any
> > > hardware changes and I had to carefully figure out how to
> > > answer a couple of questions. After the fact I started to wonder
> > > about this edge case.
> > > 
> > > I think it comes down to reading what's on the disk with a
> > > hex editor possibly but I know nothing about what to expect
> > > there.
> > > 
> > > Thanks,
> > > Mark
> > 
> > Before I venture a potentially wrong answer, could you please clarify if
> > we are talking about a UEFI MoBo, or a legacy BIOS MoBo.
> 
> The specific machine where this happened is UEFI.
> 
> Thanks

Without more information on the errors GRUB produced I can't comment on the 
specific experience you had, other than to say you can install GRUB on a 
different disk/partition than the one the OS is on.  Perhaps GRUB complained 
about being updated from a different OS used for its installation?

Anyway, let's briefly clarify the BIOS startup process you mentioned, if only 
to explain why I don't think this is related to the errors you mentioned.

On legacy boot systems the BIOS code is quite limited in what it can do.  It 
just jumps to the 1st disk, first sector (LBA 0) and runs what it finds there.  
This era of technology used the MBR disk partitioning scheme and the first 
sector contained the boot loader code as well as the disk partition table.

Modern UEFI systems use more capable EFI firmware (a.k.a. BIOS) and normally a 
GPT formatted disk.  This modern system does not require any boot loader code 
to be written in LBA 0.  The boot loader code is part of the UEFI firmware 
itself and is capable of loading and executing EFI compatible 'applications' 
stored in the FAT 32 formatted EFI/ partition (ESP) on the first disk.  GRUB's 
EFI executable 'grubx64.efi' stored in the ESP on the first disk is loaded and 
executed by the MoBo's UEFI firmware.

If I were to hazard a guess, the GRUB error messages you received are not 
related to the BIOS init sequence, but the GRUB configuration.  Probably some 
mismatch between the filesystem UUID, GRUB's root prefix and perhaps the 
PARTUUID between the current OS and the one used to clone/install GRUB in the 
OS at the beginning.  You could try to decipher this manually, by running 
blkid, to list your partitions and their respective UUID and PARTUUID.  Then 
editing grub.cfg and/or any files if necessary under /etc/default/

On the other hand, it would be easier to reinstall grub on the OS you are 
currently booted into, with 'grub-install' followed by 'grub-mkconfig' to 
update its grub.cfg file.  This should straighten out any discrepancies.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Major problems with libpcre / UTF8

[Michael]

On Friday, 16 December 2022 18:42:41 GMT Walter Dnes wrote:
>   Thanks everybody.  I had "-unicode" in my USE flags all these years.
> "emerge --changed-use --deep --update @world" has 11 ebuilds scheduled.
> and is running OK.  Again, I apologize for a possible duplicate post or
> bounces as the mail host I use was down yestersday.
> 
>   A few minutes later... everything rebuilt with "+unicode" in make.conf
> I have 'unicode="YES"' in /etc/rc.conf.  No improvements in my system.
> "xterm" still hows as "xem".  How does "emerge -e @world" sound?  That's
> 615 packages.

Have you sorted out your locale to include UTF-8?

Check this page:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Localization/Guide




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Re: [gentoo-user] NAS and replacing with larger drives

[Michael]

On Sunday, 18 December 2022 15:12:37 GMT Dale wrote:
> Mark Knecht wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 4:42 PM Dale  > > wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > > My reasoning is simple, I'm already familiar with LVM and how to
> > 
> > manage it.  
> > 
> > 
> > Take the machine, wipe it and build a NAS from scratch with Gentoo. If
> > all you want is an NFS mount that won't be difficult. Add an NFS
> > server, export your mount and you're done, right? Managing it over the
> > long term will be far more work than TrueNAS but you will be
> > comfortable with changing disks and adding network cards which
> > is important to you. Life is too short to deal with things you really
> > don't enjoy.
> > 
> > I would not suggest you look at Ubuntu Server because it's NGL. 10
> > minutes to install, 3 minutes to figure out how to add the NFS server.
> > However it's a different package manager and truly not as nice as
> > emerge/portage so you probably won't like that part of NGL either. I
> > truly don't like apt, but it works if I stay in my lane so I've
> > learned to do that, the advantage being I've never had to build a
> > package from scratch and I've never in 5 or 6 years had an update fail.
> > 
> > Wipe the machine. You'll be happier.
> > 
> > Best wishes,
> > Mark
> 
> Well, I finally got it so I could do a backup.  I didn't need a hammer
> but the thought crossed my mind.  lol  Even tho I now have a 1GB network
> card, it's still really slow.  It shows up as a 1GB connection on both
> my Gentoo machine and the NAS machine.  This is a example of the speeds
> I'm seeing.  Just snippets. 
> 
> 
> 277,193,507 100%   16.18MB/s0:00:16
> 519,216,571 100%   18.86MB/s0:00:26
> 738,078,565 100%   23.54MB/s0:00:29
> 
> 
> As you can see, the files sizes are large enough it should do better. 
> When I use iftop, it shows it isn't doing anywhere near the speed it
> should, maybe 1/4th or so.  I'd expect at least double or triple that
> speed.  In all honesty, I'd think the hard drive would be the limiting
> factor.  Even on my Gentoo rig I only get about 50 to 60MBs/sec for
> encrypted drives.  I think the encryption slows that down.  When copying
> from a plain drive to a plain drive, I get 100MBs/sec or so. 
> 
> I can't figure out why it is so slow tho.  The NAS rig is a 4 core CPU
> and 8GBs of memory.  It should have enough horsepower under the hood. 
> Maybe it is something I'm not aware of.  It is a older rig so maybe it
> isn't SATA's fastest version, maybe even the original or something.  I
> can't find anything in lspci or dmesg so not real sure where to look on
> BSD. 
> 
> Anyway, it's progress for now at least.  ;-)  At this rate, it'll be
> done in about a week, maybe.  o_O
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

Has it auto-negotiated a full-duplex connection at 1Gbps?  Run ifconfig and 
check the output, it should say something like:

media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT )

If not, then you may need to set this up manually.

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Re: [gentoo-user] NAS and replacing with larger drives

[Michael]

On Saturday, 10 December 2022 16:30:03 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> On 10/12/2022 16:19, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> > Where do we confuse those two? We specifically talked of codecs and
> > “contain”.
> 
> "I didn't know .ts could contain h264".
> 
> If .ts is the container, then surely the assumption is it can contain
> any codec? If not, why not?

Not any codec.  Some container formats are only compatible with certain 
codecs, or rather the other way around.  Have a look here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_container_formats

I suppose the answer to 'why not' boils down to the whatever structure and 
data the container format is designed to be compatible with, but I don't know 
more than this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Informatik-Containerformate-Beispiele.svg



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Re: [gentoo-user] Dolphin and adding a option, if it exists.

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 23 November 2022 18:17:53 GMT Dale wrote:
> Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> > Am Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 06:16:12AM -0600 schrieb Dale:

> >> P. S.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to change the resolution of all
> >> videos in a directory.  Usually going from 1080p to 720p.  If you have a
> >> script for that, awesome.
> > 
> > I use ffmpeg for all my encoding stuff, and have been using wrapper
> > scripts
> > for years now to make things easier. However, none of them has resized
> > yet.
> > It’s not difficult to configure, but the wrapper needs much more logic. As
> > in: find out the current resolution, see if it is actually larger, then
> > calculate the new resolution while keeping the aspect intact and so on.
> 
> I found commands for it but not a way to process lots of videos.  Right
> now, I use the queue feature of handbrake.  I set up a preset to make it
> the same each time.  I set it to 720p and about 3MB data rate.  Should
> be OK for my 32" TV. 

It depends how close you sit to the 32" screen.  The closer you are the higher 
the resolution needed to avoid seeing individual pixels.  If the size of the 
file is not important, I'd leave it at 1080p.  You never know, you may obtain 
a bigger TV in the future.

With ffmpeg you can use its scale filter to retain the same aspect ratio, but 
reduce the height:

ffmpeg -i blah-1080.mp4 -vf scale=-1:720 -codec:v libx264 -crf 0 -codec:a aac 
blah-720.mp4

NOTES:

1. Run ffprobe to see what the original video codecs are and use an 
appropriate video/audio codec to suit your desired output.  The video will 
have to be transcoded to a lower resolution, but the audio can be just copied 
over.

2. The -crf controls the quality of the quantizer - default is 23.  I've set 
it at 0 to make it lossless, but this takes longer to process.  You could 
instead use some tuning preset provided in the H.264 encoding guide linked to 
below:

https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#scale

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Scaling

http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264


Once you find your desired stanza to arrive at some optimal size-quality-
processing time, you can modify Frank's script to resize and rename your 
videos.


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Re: [gentoo-user] I915 mobile firmware

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 16 November 2022 01:19:24 GMT Lee wrote:
> And lsusb, lspci,..(I think they're both readily available)
> 
> Lee 

lsusb won't offer much info on a CPU ...

lscpu should be more appropriate.





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Re: [gentoo-user] I915 mobile firmware

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 15 November 2022 16:59:59 GMT Peter Humphrey wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> My new laptop shows this from /proc/cpuinfo:
> 
> --->8
> processor   : 0
> vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
> cpu family  : 6
> model   : 154
> model name  : 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H
> stepping: 3
> microcode   : 0x421
> --->8
> 
> I've been hunting around to find which modules I need to load from
> sys-kernel/ linux-firmware, and it isn't at all clear.
> 
> Some sources say that the processor is a mobile complement to Alder Lake
> 11th gen, but I also see it as just Tiger Lake. The web seems full of
> helpful information, but not quite helpful enough for me.:-(

Intel's website mentions this 12th Gen CPU was *formerly* known as Alder Lake, 
was released in Q1 2022, but does not make it clear what it is now named as:

https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/products/sku/132228/intel-core-i712700h-processor-24m-cache-up-to-4-70-ghz/specifications.html

So, I'd be inclined to take their word for it.  This Wikipedia lists the 
processor as a mobile Alder Lake:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alder_Lake#Alder_Lake-H

The Tiger Lake processors are 11th Gen and their model numbering start with 
11***.

This page also confirms your family and model number as per cpuinfo use the 
Golden Cove (P-cores) microarchitecture:

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/alder_lake#CPUID

sys-apps/dmidecode will provide additional information to determine the 
specifics of what the MoBo firmware reports.



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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Upgrading from 5.14 to 6.0 version

[Michael]

On Monday, 21 November 2022 16:50:14 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2022-11-21, Michael  wrote:
> > On Monday, 21 November 2022 16:11:13 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> >> I did have to give up the option of having multiple X11
> >> screens. The proprietary NVidia driver supported multiple screens,
> >> but the drivers for built-in Intel and Radeon drivers don't seem
> >> to.
> > 
> > AMD APUs with embedded radeon graphics work fine here with two
> > monitors (DVI + HDMI ports).
> 
> Yes, multiple montors work fine with both Intel and Radeon embedded
> graphics with Xorg drivers.
> 
> It's multiple X11 screens that isn't supported.  An X11 screen is the
> entity that's managed by single window manager and comprises what's
> usually called "a desktop". A screen can include multiple monitors.
> 
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/multihead#Separate_screens

You're right, I thought you meant two different monitors in Xinerama style.  I 
didn't know anyone who still uses separate displays (screens) these days.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Upgrading from 5.14 to 6.0 version

[Michael]

On Monday, 21 November 2022 16:11:13 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2022-11-21, Dale  wrote:
> > I did re-emerge the nvidia drivers for the old kernel. [...]
> > 
> > If I get bored, and it warms up a little, I may build a 5.19 kernel. 
> > Thing is, by the time I get around to rebooting, nvidia may have updated
> > and the new one I already got will work.  :/
> 
> About 15 years ago, after a bad experience with ATI dropping Linux
> driver support for a card that was only a year old (and no luck
> getting the open source driver to work reliably), 

I had a similar experience about the same time, ATI proprietary drivers 
stopped working and the kernel driver was performing poorly - tearing when 
playing videos, etc.  Within a few months the kernel driver improved 
significantly and saved me the cost of buying another graphics card.


> I switched to NVidia
> (mostly Qaudro cards -- fanless until that ceased to be an
> option). They always worked great using the NVidia blob drivers, but
> using NVidia drivers was a constant source of minor pain. Often kernel
> updates had to be postponed until NVidia driver support caught up, and
> they too dropped support and forced me to replace a board that was
> still working perfectly.
> 
> Eventually, I just gave up and started using built-in Intel
> graphics. Life was much easier. A high-end gamer probably wouldn't be
> happy, but my mid-range mainboard happily drove three decent-sized
> displays (two DVI and one DP) at their native resolutions. I find the
> same to be true on my newer AMD system with built-in Radeon Vega
> graphics. It too "just works" with the in-kernel-tree support and
> open-source Xorg drivers.

By accident rather than design I ended up using mostly Radeon cards over the 
years.  I also had a laptop with Intel graphics.  Both intel and radeon have 
been working without problems with kernel drivers, but I am not a gamer to 
stress them to their limit.


> I did have to give up the option of having multiple X11 screens. The
> proprietary NVidia driver supported multiple screens, but the drivers
> for built-in Intel and Radeon drivers don't seem to.
> 
> --
> Grant

AMD APUs with embedded radeon graphics work fine here with two monitors (DVI + 
HDMI ports).

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Upgrading from 5.14 to 6.0 version

[Michael]

On Monday, 21 November 2022 18:12:41 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2022-11-21, Michael  wrote:
> > On Monday, 21 November 2022 16:50:14 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> >> On 2022-11-21, Michael  wrote:
> >> > On Monday, 21 November 2022 16:11:13 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> >> >> I did have to give up the option of having multiple X11
> >> >> screens. The proprietary NVidia driver supported multiple screens,
> >> >> but the drivers for built-in Intel and Radeon drivers don't seem
> >> >> to.
> >> > 
> >> > AMD APUs with embedded radeon graphics work fine here with two
> >> > monitors (DVI + HDMI ports).
> >> 
> >> Yes, multiple montors work fine with both Intel and Radeon embedded
> >> graphics with Xorg drivers.
> >> 
> >> It's multiple X11 screens that isn't supported.  An X11 screen is the
> >> entity that's managed by single window manager and comprises what's
> >> usually called "a desktop". A screen can include multiple monitors.
> >> 
> >> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/multihead#Separate_screens
> > 
> > You're right, I thought you meant two different monitors in Xinerama
> > style.  I didn't know anyone who still uses separate displays
> > (screens) these days.
> 
> I found it very helpful when I dealing with interruptions (which is
> about 50% of a typical day). I could flip one of the screens to a new
> virtual desktop (while leaving my email and web browser as-is on the
> other screen), deal with the interruption, then flip that screen back
> to the desktop containing whatever I was origininally working on.
> 
> My office setup had three screens, each with four virtual desktops.
> 
> When using multiple screens, you develop the habit of using one screen
> for common, always-on stuff (e.g. email, web browser) and the other
> screen(s) for working on code (or whatever).

I found Enlightenment to be most versatile in this respect.  Unlike say 
Plasma, which has two monitors locked on the same virtual desktop and when you 
switch to another virtual desktop *both* monitors flip over, in Enlightenment 
each monitor can switch to a different virtual desktop independently.  Like 
you, I keep always-on stuff on the left monitor, while switching between 
different virtual desktops on the right monitor.


> There are two main drawbacks to the multiple-screen setup:
> 
>  * You can't drag a window from one screen to the other. With the
>monitor sizes that are common now, that's not as big an annoyance
>as it used to be.

With Enlightenment you can move windows across monitors, irrespective of the 
virtual desktop each monitor displays.


>  * There are a few brain-dead (but vital) applications (e.g. Chrome)
>that refuse to allow a user to run either multiple instances of the
>application or allow windows on multiple screens (or X
>servers). I'm a bit baffled by that restriction, but I'm sure it
>allowed the developers to take some shortcut that saved 12 bytes of
>data and 10 or 15 lines of code (out of many hundreds of megabytes
>of occupied RAM and millions lines of code).
> 
> That said, you're right: using mulitple screens is no longer common.
> It's not even supported by many desktops these days. I switched from
> XFCE to openbox when XFCE dropped support for multiple screens.
> 
> --
> Grant



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Re: [gentoo-user] Remove NetworkManager without breaking cinnamon ?

[Michael]

You should start a new thread for your topic, instead of replying to an 
existing thread to avoid messing up messages listed by thread.

Regarding your question:  Cinnamon has a hardwired dependency on 
networkmanager.  I understand you can mask the networkmanager service or 
remove it, but bits of it remain (nm-applet) and have to be disabled.  Have a 
look here:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/555630/how-can-i-get-rid-of-the-networkmanager-applet-if-i-use-wicd

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Cinnamon#Disable_the_NetworkManager_applet


On Saturday, 14 January 2023 10:41:56 GMT mehdi chemloul wrote:
> Hi, (i'm a endUser) i try to remove NetworkManager but it's seems to
> have somes dependencies with cinnamon-control-center ? It's possible
> without break cinnamon or worst ...?
> 
> Cheers.
> 
> Rumpelstilschien

Re: [gentoo-user] Last rites: app-admin/gkrellm & plugins

[Michael]

On Saturday, 28 January 2023 08:05:47 GMT Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Jan 2023 00:20:03 -0600, Dale wrote:
> > Second, if no one takes it over, what could be used in its place?  I'll
> > be honest, I don't know of anything that could replace it but I've never
> > thought about looking either.  I'm looking into app-admin category but
> > don't see anything obvious to replace it.
> 
> The only thing I've found that comes close is app-admin/conky - it's nice
> but a bit awkward to set up. The last time I troed it was a few years ago
> and there was the odd issue so I went back to GkrellM.

I haven't looked for a replacement of gkrellms for some years now.  At the 
time I was trying out different desktops and gkrellms was having some problems 
integrating with some of them.

I've tried conky and have seen/tried Desktop Info, wxWidgets, Übersicht and 
even xrootwindow.  For my needs no other offering comes remotely close to the 
gkrellms in terms of helping me with a single glance to spot issues with my 
system.  It is akin to the clocks on a car dashboard.  Yes, I can drive 
without them, but other than noise and vibration I'd have no other feedback 
from the engine.  Whenever I'm on a desktop without gkrellms (e.g. MacOS), I 
find myself instintively searching for it and even getting frustrated gkrellms 
is not there.

Since my coding ability is even worse than Dale's I join him in kindly asking 
for a maintainer/dev to take it on and keep it running.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Last rites: app-admin/gkrellm & plugins

[Michael]

On Saturday, 28 January 2023 11:12:26 GMT Dale wrote:
> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Saturday, 28 January 2023 09:17:35 GMT Michael wrote:
> >> Since my coding ability is even worse than Dale's I join him in kindly
> >> asking for a maintainer/dev to take it on and keep it running.
> > 
> > I too am finding it hard to imagine life without gkrellm. I think it needs
> > more than just a maintainer though - it needs a replacement for upstream
> > as well.
> I agree.  It needs someone to take care of it not only for Gentoo but
> for other distros as well.  It will be more than just keeping the ebuild
> up to date.  I'm hoping that someone somewhere will take it up.  I'd
> think it is used by a lot of people.  Surely someone can do coding
> updates as well.  Only needs one, maybe two, people. 
> 
> I found a video on conky.  Link below.  It's kinda scattered so I found
> myself skipping ahead.  There is a few times where it shows what it
> looks like.  Set up could be a nightmare for someone like me.  It sounds
> pretty complicated. 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHtpLEoRKmg
> 
> Home page has a couple screenshots too. 
> 
> https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky#screenshots
> 
> Conky may work but I don't see me liking it as much as I do gkrellm. 
> 
> I hope someone will take it over and keep gkrellm running.  Maybe then a
> dev can keep the ebuilds updated.  Given the original guy died, someone
> has to replace him for sure. 
> 
> Let's keep our fingers crossed.  ;-)
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

I haven't used conky for some years now, its development must have improved 
since.  I recall some problem when setting it up as dockable.  It didn't play 
nice with other windows - but that may had something to do with the window 
manager I was using back then.  Anyway, even after spending time configuring 
it to suit my requirements, I found gkrellms to be better in every respect.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Bouncing messages

[Michael]

On Sunday, 22 January 2023 22:33:50 GMT Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Thursday, 19 January 2023 09:30:34 GMT I wrote:
> > I'll see it it's my ISP who's bouncing the message.
> 
> It looks as though they did reject the mail. I asked them please to let it
> through just this once, and now it's sitting on their server (my ISP's).
> Unfortunately, my local postfix is rejecting it because it's over "a fixed
> limit". I tried turning up the two likely-looking limits in /etc/postfix/
> bounce.cf.default, but that just removed the error message - the mail
> remained at my ISP.
> 
> What else can I try?
> 
> I use fetchmail to collect the POP3 mail and forward it to postfix for
> dovecot to serve as SMTP. This is the first trouble I've had with it and
> external mail.

If you want to try an old school approach, but with a more modern encryption 
method, you could try 'openssl s_client' and then list messages and retrieve 
the one you're interested in.  Something like this:

openssl s_client -connect pop.some_server.com:995 -crlf -starttls pop3

then use server commands[1] as you would over a telnet connection, e.g.

USER peter

PASS s3cr3tPa77

STAT
LIST
RETR 5
DELE 5
QUIT

The TOP command may also be useful if you wish to only check the top few lines 
of a (large) message to decide if you want to retrieve the rest of it.

TOP 5 10

Or if your ISP offer a webmail front end to their server, it should be easier 
to access the message with a browser.

[1] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1939.txt

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: e2fsck -c when bad blocks are in existing file?

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 8 November 2022 17:55:51 GMT Laurence Perkins wrote:
> >-Original Message-
> >From: Grant Edwards 
> >Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2022 6:28 AM
> >To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> >Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: e2fsck -c when bad blocks are in existing file?
> >
> >On 2022-11-08, Michael  wrote:
> >> On Tuesday, 8 November 2022 03:31:07 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> >>> I've got an SSD that's failing, and I'd like to know what files
> >>> contain bad blocks so that I don't attempt to copy them to the
> >>> replacement disk.
> >>> 
> >>> According to e2fsck(8):
> >>>-c This option causes e2fsck to use badblocks(8)  program  to
> >>> do
> >>>  
> >>>  a read-only scan of the device in order to find any bad blocks.  If
> >>> 
> >>> any bad blocks are found, they are added to the bad  block  inode to
> >>> prevent them from being allocated to a file or directory.  If this
> >>> option is specified twice, then the bad block scan  will  be done
> >>> using a non-destructive read-write test.
> >>> 
> >>> What happens when the bad block is _already_allocated_ to a file?
> >> 
> >> Previously allocated to a file and now re-allocated or not, my
> >> understanding is with spinning disks the data in a bad block stays
> >> there unless you've dd'ed some zeros over it.  Even then read or write
> >> operations could fail if the block is too far gone.[1]  Some data
> >> recovery applications will try to read data off a bad block in
> >> different patterns to retrieve what's there.  Once the bad block is
> >> categorized as such it won't be used by the filesystem to write new data
> >> to it again.>
> >Thanks. I guess I should have been more specific in my question.
> >
> >What does e2fsck -c do to the filesystem structure when it discovers a bad
> >block that is already allocated to an existing inode?
> >
> >Is the inode's chain of block groups left as is -- still containing the bad
> >block that (according to the man page) "has been added to the bad block
> >inode"?  Presumably not, since a block can't be allocated to two different
> >inodes.
> >
> >Is the "broken" file split into two chunks (before/after the bad
> >block) and moved to the lost-and-found?
> >
> >Is the man page's description only correct when the bad block is currently
> >unallocated?
> >
> >--
> >Grant
> 
> If I recall correctly, it will add any unreadable blocks to its internal
> list of bad sectors, which it will then refuse to allocate in the future.
> 
> I don't believe it will attempt to move the file to elsewhere until it is
> written since: A)  what would you then put in that block?  You don't know
> the contents. B)  Moving the file around would make attempts to recover the
> data from that bad sector significantly more difficult.

As far as I know trying to write raw data directly to a bad block e.g. with dd 
or hdparm will trigger the disk's controller firmware to reallocate the data 
from the bad block to a spare.  I always thought e2fsck won't write data in a 
block unless it is empty.  badblocks -w will write test patterns to blocks and 
also trigger data reallocation on any bad blocks.  badblocks -n, which 
corresponds to e2fsck -cc will only write to empty blocks and it may or may 
not trigger a firmware reallocation.

I'm not sure what happens at a filesystem level, when one bad block within an 
extent is reallocated.  The extent and the previously contiguous blocks will 
no longer be contiguous.  Does the hardware expose some SMART data to inform 
the OS/fs of the reallocated block, to perform a whole extent remapping?


> This is, however, very unlikely to come up on a modern disk since most of
> them automatically remap failed sectors at the hardware level (also on
> write, for the same reasons).  So the only time it would matter is if you
> have a disk that's more than about 20 years old, or one that's used up all
> its spare sectors...
> 
> Unless, of course, you're resurrecting the old trick of marking a section of
> the disk as "bad" so the FS won't touch it, and then using it for raw data
> of some kind...
> 
> You can, of course, test it yourself to be certain with a loopback file and
> a fake "badblocks" that just outputs your chosen list of bad sectors and
> then see if any of the data moves.  I'd say like a 2MB filesystem and write
> a file full of 00DEADBEEF, then make a copy, blacklist some sectors, and
> hit it with your favorite binary diff command and see what moved.  This is
> probably recommended since there could be differences between the behaviour
> of different versions of e2fsck.
> 
> LMP



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Re: [gentoo-user] e2fsck -c when bad blocks are in existing file?

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 8 November 2022 18:24:41 GMT Wols Lists wrote:

> MODERN DRIVES SHOULD NEVER HAVE AN OS-LEVEL BADBLOCKS LIST. If they do,
> something is seriously wrong, because the drive should be hiding it from
> the OS.

If you run badblocks or e2fsck you'll find the application asks to write data 
to the disk, at the end of the run.  Yes, the drive's firmware should manage 
badblocks transparently to the filesystem, but I have observed in hdparm 
output reallocations of badblocks do not happen in real time.  Perhaps the 
filesystem level badblocks list which is LBA based, acts as an intermediate 
step until the hardware triggers a reallocation?  Not sure.  :-/



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Re: [gentoo-user] PHP, Haru, Ghostscript, Courier, and Nimbus

[Michael]

On Monday, 7 November 2022 11:56:34 GMT Matthias Hanft wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> since many years, I'm using PHP (currently 7.4) and the (self-
> compiled) Haru extension to produce PDF invoices on my server.
> 
> Internally, Haru seems to use Ghostscript, because:
> 
> - up to app-text/ghostscript-gpl-9.55.0-r2, when you look at the
>   PDF "properties" and then the "fonts" tab, there is "Courier",
>   "Helvetica" and "Helvetica-BoldOblique" - just as requested in
>   my PHP script like
>$myPdf=new HaruDoc();
>[...some page settings...]
>$myFont=$myPdf->getFont('Courier', 'WinAnsiEncoding');
> 
> - from app-text/ghostscript-gpl-9.56.1-r3 on, everything looks like
>   before, but in the "properties/fonts" tab of the resulting PDF,
>   the fonts are now "NimbusMonoPS-Regular", "NimbusSands-BoldItalic"
>   and "NimbusSans-Regular".
> 
> I have already found this "translation" in the file
> /usr/share/ghostscript/9.56.1/Resource/Init/Fontmap.GS but there is
> obviously no relevant difference in that file between 9.55 and 9.56.
> 
> Some of my customers now seem to have trouble if the fonts in the
> PDF properties are named "Nimbus" instead of "Courier" - they just
> see some hieroglyphics when displaying the PDF.
> 
> Any idea that's going wrong here?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> -Matt

If your customers do not have Nimbus fonts available on their OS/PDF viewer, 
the viewer application will proceed using font substitution.  It will use 
whichever font family it thinks is the closest match, I would assume 
Helvetica.  Their application appears to get confused and substitute the 
Nimbus fonts with something else.  In any case, the solution to this is to 
embed the Nimbus fonts in the PDF file.

 

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Re: [gentoo-user] Frame buffer setup

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 2 November 2022 15:20:14 GMT Peter Humphrey wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> Would someone please remind me of what frame-buffer kernel settings I need
> for an i915 driver? I'm going round in circles, but whatever I try, this
> new laptop shows the initramfs-loaded message, then remains blank apart
> from that. I can see disk activity, and the machine responds to
> CTRL-ALT-DEL as expected; just no display.

Have a look at this page in general, paying special attention to this section:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Intel#Black_screen


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Re: [gentoo-user] e2fsck -c when bad blocks are in existing file?

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 8 November 2022 03:31:07 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> I've got an SSD that's failing, and I'd like to know what files
> contain bad blocks so that I don't attempt to copy them to the
> replacement disk.
> 
> According to e2fsck(8):
> 
>-c This option causes e2fsck to use badblocks(8)  program  to  do
>  a read-only scan of the device in order to find any bad blocks.  If any
> bad blocks are found, they are added to the bad  block  inode to  prevent
> them from being allocated to a file or directory.  If this option is
> specified twice, then the bad block scan  will  be done using a
> non-destructive read-write test.
> 
> What happens when the bad block is _already_allocated_ to a file?
> 
> --
> Grant

Previously allocated to a file and now re-allocated or not, my understanding 
is with spinning disks the data in a bad block stays there unless you've dd'ed 
some zeros over it.  Even then read or write operations could fail if the 
block is too far gone.[1]  Some data recovery applications will try to read 
data off a bad block in different patterns to retrieve what's there.  Once the 
bad block is categorized as such it won't be used by the filesystem to write 
new data to it again.

With SSDs the situation is less deterministic, because the disk's internal 
wear levelling firmware moves things around according to its algorithms to 
remap bad blocks. This is all transparent to the filesystem, block addresses 
sent to the fs are virtual anyway.  Bypassing the firmware controller to 
access individual cells on an SSD requires specialist equipment and your own 
lab, although things may have evolved since I last looked into this.

The general advice is to avoid powering down an SSD which is suspected of 
corruption, until all the data is copied/recovered off it first.  If you power 
it down, data on it may never be accessible again without the aforementioned 
lab.

BTW, running badblocks in read-write mode on an ailing/aged SSD may exacerbate 
the problem without much benefit by accelerating wear and causing additional 
cells to fail.  At the same time you could be relying on the suspect disk 
firmware to access via its virtual map the data on some of its cells.  Data 
scrubbing (btrfs, zfs) and recent backups would probably be a better strategy 
with SSDs.


[1] https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/BadBlockHowto

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: e2fsck -c when bad blocks are in existing file?

[Michael]

On Saturday, 12 November 2022 16:44:05 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2022-11-12, Michael  wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 9 November 2022 16:53:13 GMT Laurence Perkins wrote:
> >> Badblocks doesn't ask to write anything at the end of the run.  You
> >> tell it whether you want a read test, a write-read test or a
> >> read-write-read-replace test at the beginning.
> > 
> > Not to labour the point, but 'e2fsck -v -c' runs a read test and at
> > the end it informs me "... Updating bad block inode", even if it
> > came across no read errors (0/0/0) and consequently does not prompt
> > for a fs repair.
> 
> That's _e2fsck_ thats doing the writing at the end, not badblocks. The
> statement was that _badblocks_ doesn't ask to write anything at the
> end of the run.

Thanks for correcting me, the badblocks man page also makes this clear.  
Unless an output file is specified, it will only display the list of bad 
blocks on its standard output.  It's been a while since I had to run badblocks 
and forgot its behaviour.

Have your questions been answered satisfactorily by Lawrence's contribution?

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Upgrading from 5.14 to 6.0 version

[Michael]

On Monday, 14 November 2022 21:05:57 GMT Dale wrote:

> Thing is, I may go a year, sometimes more, without updating the kernel. 
> If I rebooted often, I could see using a LTS kernel.  If a kernel can
> run for months with no problems, it's stable enough for me.  Plus my
> hardware works.

Keeping the same kernel running for long periods can leave you exposed to 
security vulnerabilities.  Either stable or LTS kernels will be similarly 
exposed, if their latest backported versions are not booted with.  I 
appreciate you're not running a public server so your profile is not as much 
at risk, but bad code in some application which hasn't been patched up could 
still leave you exposed.


> I have even built a kernel but never actually booted it.  By the time I
> get around to rebooting, I've had to build another kernel.  I generally
> always work from a known stable config tho.  The only reason I wouldn't
> is if I build a new system and have to start from scratch.  I've also
> had times when I had to update because my video drivers wouldn't build
> with a older kernel version that I'm running.  That doesn't happen to
> often but I recall running into that at least once. 

Shutting down your desktop applications and rebooting with a new kernel takes 
no longer than a couple of minutes.  I mean even busy bank customer web 
portals have planned downtime.


> Either way, biggest question was if there was some known breakage
> between my old version and a newer version.  Maybe the one I tried just
> had some weird problem that only affected me or I just missed something
> during the oldconfig.  I wish I could recall the error.  Who knows on
> that. 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

Did you diff your current good kernel .config and the new failed to boot 
kernel .config, to find out what options/modules have changed.  Besides any 
booting errors, this could point you to something which was missed in the new 
kernel, or perhaps shouldn't have been configured.  That's how I go about 
finding the cause of a non-booting kernel in the rare occasions I end up with 
a lemon.

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Re: [gentoo-user] e2fsck -c when bad blocks are in existing file?

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 9 November 2022 16:53:13 GMT Laurence Perkins wrote:
> >
> >-Original Message-----
> >From: Michael  
> >Sent: Wednesday, November 9, 2022 12:47 AM
> >To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> >Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] e2fsck -c when bad blocks are in existing file?
> >
> >On Tuesday, 8 November 2022 18:24:41 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> >
> >
> >> MODERN DRIVES SHOULD NEVER HAVE AN OS-LEVEL BADBLOCKS LIST. If they 
> >> do, something is seriously wrong, because the drive should be hiding 
> >> it from the OS.
> >
> >
> >If you run badblocks or e2fsck you'll find the application asks to write
> >data to the disk, at the end of the run.  Yes, the drive's firmware should
> >manage badblocks transparently to the filesystem, but I have observed in
> >hdparm output reallocations of badblocks do not happen in real time. 
> >Perhaps the filesystem level badblocks list which is LBA based, acts as an
> >intermediate step until the hardware triggers a reallocation?  Not sure. 
> >:-/
 
> >
> 
> Badblocks doesn't ask to write anything at the end of the run.  You tell it
> whether you want a read test, a write-read test or a
> read-write-read-replace test at the beginning.
 
Not to labour the point, but 'e2fsck -v -c' runs a read test and at the end it 
informs me "... Updating bad block inode", even if it came across no read 
errors (0/0/0) and consequently does not prompt for a fs repair.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Setting a fixed nameserver for openvpn

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 7 March 2023 18:11:01 GMT Dale wrote:
> Michael wrote:
> > On Sunday, 5 March 2023 18:41:10 GMT Dale wrote:
> >> Howdy,
> >> 
> >> I use Surfshark and every once in a while, my VPN loses its connection.
> >> I sent the info from messages to Surfshark but the info they sent back
> >> on how to set the nameserver info doesn't really work with Gentoo.  I
> >> suspect they are used to systemd stuff.  Anyway, I tried to follow in a
> >> more Gentoo way but it still didn't work.  Then I googled, searched the
> >> Gentoo wiki and tried some of those things, still refuses to use the
> >> manually entered nameserver.  I've tried resolv.conf, resolvconf.conf
> >> and resolv.conf-tun0.sv.  I installed openresolv to see if that would
> >> help.  Nope.
> > 
> > AFAIR, you're meant to pull down from the openvpn server the DNS resolvers
> > you're meant to use with their service, unless you have your own reasons
> > for wanting to override these and set up your own DNS resolvers.  Have
> > you looked in /etc/openvpn/ for a suitable setting in the configuration
> > file?  I'm sure it will be set to automatically pull down the DNS
> > resolvers and the Up script will set these up for your system when you
> > start openvpn.
> 
> This started because I changed to doing OS updates every other weekend. 
> That means two weeks of login, two weeks of the VPN being active etc
> etc.  When doing that, the VPN would lose connection after a good
> while.  Sometimes it would go the whole two weeks with no problems but
> on occasion it would lose connection.

When a connection goes down the openvpn client log would provide the reason 
for it.  It makes sense to start from there any troubleshooting effort.  The 
DNS resolvers used within the tunnel may be a symptom, rather than the cause.


> I wrote a email to make them
> aware to see if this is expected behavior, if I had bad settings or
> something was wrong on their end.  That's when I got the info in the
> original post, to change DNS servers.  I'm not sure what that has to do
> with anything but . . .

Heh!  Same here, unless the server side logs indicated this was where the 
problem actually occurred with your connection.


> You know how awful I am with scripts.  Still, I read through the up
> script and even to me, it looks like it is set up to get DNS servers
> during the connection setup.  This is the part I see. 
> 
> 
> elif [ "${opt}" != "${opt#dhcp-option DNS *}" ] ; then
> NS="${NS}nameserver ${opt#dhcp-option DNS *}\n"
> 
> 
> To me, it seems like it is getting the DNS info and putting it
> somewhere.  It appears that wherever it puts it, it is the only place it
> looks because nothing I change changes where it goes for DNS info.  To
> be honest, I don't know why it should have to be changed.  One would
> think that the DNS info they send should work fine otherwise why set it
> up that way. 

DNS resolvers will be added to your resolv.conf when the tunnel comes up.

Instead of messing up with the scripts and hardcoding nameserver IP addresses, 
have you done any troubleshooting to find out what part of the connection goes 
down?  Is the tunnel still up?  Can you ping IP addresses through the tunnel? 
etc.


> >> This is what I got from Surfshark:
> >>> I would recommend changing the DNS addresses on your Linux device. You
> >>> can simply do that by following the steps below.
> >>> 
> >>> First, you need to open the terminal with the CTRL + ALT + T
> >>> combination and type in the following commands:
> >>> sudo rm -r /etc/resolv.conf
> >>> sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf
> > 
> > Normally, you would not have to do this manually.  The Up script will
> > enter
> > the resolver IP addresses in your resolv.conf.  If it doesn't, then check
> > your configuration and your openvpn script.
> 
> I tried to edit the openvpn.conf file to manually set the nameserver but
> it puked on my keyboard and refused to even connect.  I think we are
> back to the server I connect to requires its info to be used and if it
> isn't, it refuses to complete the connection.  Everything I try results
> in a error and connection refused.  It could even be a security setting
> that requires this. 

I recall the openvpn.conf has an entry to specify pulling down the DNS 
resolvers from the server as it is establishing the tunnel.  Here's some 
troubleshooting to confirm if this is the problem, after you reset to defaults 
everything you interfered with in the openvpn.conf settings.


> Either way, either this can't be changed and the VPN connect or there is
> 

Re: [gentoo-user] Tailing compressed build logs

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 7 March 2023 07:52:01 GMT Mickaël Bucas wrote:
> Le mar. 7 mars 2023 à 05:36, Bryan Gardiner  a écrit :
> > Hi folks,
> > 
> > How can I follow Portage's compressed build logs in real time as they
> > are generated?
> > 
> > I keep build logs and use FEATURES=compress-build-logs so that they
> > don't get too large.  I can peek at how a build is going with zless on
> > build.log.gz, which doesn't update (understandably), but I would
> > really like to be able to watch a log with some "tail -f" equivalent.
> > I get streaming output with
> > 
> > tail -c +1 -f build.log.gz | od -t x1
> > 
> > but the following hangs with no output:
> > tail -c +1 -f build.log.gz | gunzip
> > 
> > even with a build log that is 72KB compressed (2.4MB uncompressed),
> > which should be larger than any pipe buffers...  Any idea why gunzip
> > can't handle this, or what I should I should be doing instead?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Bryan
> 
> Hi
> 
> Reading the man page, "zless" is just a wrapper around "less".
> You can check with:
> $ file $(which zless)
> /usr/bin/zless: POSIX shell script, ASCII text executable
> $ less $(which zless)
> 
> So it should support the same options including typing "F" at the end
> of a file to keep trying to read when the end of file is reached.
> 
> I made a small test, but it didn't work:
> # Create a growing file
> $ yes | nl | gzip > zless-test.gz &
> # Try to follow at the end
> $ zless zless-test.gz
> 
> With ">" to go to the end and "F" to continue, I didn't get the
> expected behavior, it stood still at the point I was viewing.
> I don't know if it's really a bug or if I made a mistake...
> (Don't forget to stop the growing file :) )
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Mickaël Bucas

You could try:

tail -c +1 -f build.log.gz | gunzip | less 

I think it should work, but I haven't tried it.

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Re: [gentoo-user] glibc can't find /lib/libdl.so.2

[Michael]

On Saturday, 18 March 2023 19:37:50 GMT Peter Böhm wrote:
> Michael,
> 
>  is this a systemd machine ? If yes: We had the same problem before some
> days in our Gentoo forum:
> 
> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1162393.html
> 
> Here it was SystemCallFilter from systemd.
> 
> Regards,
> Peter

Thanks Peter, no this is a openrc system.  I don't even understand what a 
SystemCallFilter thing is ...  :-/

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Re: [gentoo-user] glibc can't find /lib/libdl.so.2

[Michael]

On Sunday, 19 March 2023 02:46:18 GMT Matt Connell wrote:
> On Sat, 2023-03-18 at 18:36 +0000, Michael wrote:
> > The kernel has IA32_EMULATION compiled in:
> > 
> >  # grep IA32_EMULATION /usr/src/linux/.config
> > CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION=y
> 
> Small nit-pick: Is it enabled in the kernel that is actually running?  
> 
> zgrep CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION /proc/config.gz

I don't have IKCONFIG in the kernel, but I did check in the first instance 
which kernel I had booted with.


> > and /lib/libdl.so.2 appears to be present and correct
> 
> Is the file (or the filesystem, or the disk) possibly corrupted?  The
> "cannot real file data: Input/output error" is troubling.  I would try
> fsck'ing the file system from a live USB if possible.

Yes!  This was the problem.  I have a corrupted partition and all sort of 
files can't be accessed.  :-(

Now to see how old the backup I have is and take it from there.  Thanks for 
pointing me in the right direction.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Setting a fixed nameserver for openvpn

[Michael]

On Wednesday, 8 March 2023 18:30:55 GMT Dale wrote:

> It starts at about 13:54. It seems to try to reconnect but can't. I got this
> by using tail -n and then grep openvpn on the end.
> 
> 
> Mar  1 13:53:32 fireball openvpn[27908]:
> [us-hou-v029.prod.surfshark.com] Inactivity timeout (--ping-restart),
> restarting
> Mar  1 13:53:32 fireball openvpn[27908]: /etc/openvpn/down.sh tun0 1500
> 1584 10.8.8.9 255.255.255.0 restart
> Mar  1 13:53:32 fireball openvpn[27908]: SIGUSR1[soft,ping-restart]
> received, process restarting
> Mar  1 13:53:32 fireball openvpn[27908]: Restart pause, 5 second(s)
> Mar  1 13:53:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: NOTE: the current
> --script-security setting may allow this configuration to call
> user-defined scripts
> Mar  1 13:53:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: Outgoing Control Channel
> Authentication: Using 512 bit message hash 'SHA512' for HMAC authentication
> Mar  1 13:53:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: Incoming Control Channel
> Authentication: Using 512 bit message hash 'SHA512' for HMAC authentication
> Mar  1 13:53:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: TCP/UDP: Preserving recently
> used remote address: [AF_INET]37.19.221.71:1194
> Mar  1 13:53:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: Socket Buffers:
> R=[212992->425984] S=[212992->425984]
> Mar  1 13:53:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: UDP link local: (not bound)
> Mar  1 13:53:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: UDP link remote:
> [AF_INET]37.19.221.71:1194
> Mar  1 13:54:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: TLS Error: TLS key negotiation
> failed to occur within 60 seconds (check your network connectivity)

Here's your problem ^^^

> Mar  1 13:54:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: TLS Error: TLS handshake failed

This is your error.


> Mar  1 13:54:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: /etc/openvpn/down.sh tun0 1500
> 1653 10.8.8.9 255.255.255.0 restart
> Mar  1 13:54:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: SIGUSR1[soft,tls-error]
> received, process restarting
> Mar  1 13:54:37 fireball openvpn[27908]: Restart pause, 5 second(s)
> Mar  1 13:54:42 fireball openvpn[27908]: NOTE: the current
> --script-security setting may allow this configuration to call
> user-defined scripts
> Mar  1 13:54:42 fireball openvpn[27908]: Outgoing Control Channel
> Authentication: Using 512 bit message hash 'SHA512' for HMAC authentication
> Mar  1 13:54:42 fireball openvpn[27908]: Incoming Control Channel
> Authentication: Using 512 bit message hash 'SHA512' for HMAC authentication
> Mar  1 13:54:42 fireball openvpn[27908]: TCP/UDP: Preserving recently
> used remote address: [AF_INET]107.179.20.179:1194
> Mar  1 13:54:42 fireball openvpn[27908]: Socket Buffers:
> R=[212992->425984] S=[212992->425984]
> Mar  1 13:54:42 fireball openvpn[27908]: UDP link local: (not bound)
> Mar  1 13:54:42 fireball openvpn[27908]: UDP link remote:
> [AF_INET]107.179.20.179:1194
> Mar  1 13:55:42 fireball openvpn[27908]: TLS Error: TLS key negotiation
> failed to occur within 60 seconds (check your network connectivity)
> Mar  1 13:55:42 fireball openvpn[27908]: TLS Error: TLS handshake failed

Have a look here for suggestions:

https://openvpn.net/faq/tls-error-tls-key-negotiation-failed-to-occur-within-60-seconds-check-your-network-connectivity/


> The weird thing, I can stop openvpn, then start it again just seconds later
> and it works fine for a good long while.

Right, the problem is with renegotiating a connection, after it times out and 
it fails to agree TLS keys.  I seem to recall a bug with this, but I think it 
would/should have been fixed by now.


> I got this config file from Surfshark.  I think it's public so I guess
> there's no harm posting as is. 
> 
> 
> client
> dev tun
> proto udp
> remote us-hou.prod.surfshark.com 1194
> resolv-retry infinite
> remote-random
> nobind
> tun-mtu 1500
> tun-mtu-extra 32
> mssfix 1450
> persist-key
> persist-tun
> ping 15
> ping-restart 0
> ping-timer-rem
> reneg-sec 0
> 
> remote-cert-tls server
> 
> auth-user-pass /etc/openvpn/login.conf
> mute-replay-warnings
> 
> #comp-lzo
> verb 3
> pull
> fast-io
> cipher AES-256-CBC
> 
> auth SHA512
> 
> 
> I don't see anything about DNS/nameserver/resolv.conf there but I may be
> missing it.  When I tried to add that detail, it refused to start at all
> and puked on my keyboard.  It was very unhappy with me telling it what DNS
> IP to use. That up script it runs is pretty complicated looking.  I'm kinda
> nervous about messing with it.

There is no DNS problem at all.  The problem is related to your client 
renegotiating keys to encrypt the tunnel with and failing to do so.  Have a 
look at the above URL and see if any of the solutions suggested there points 
you in the right direction.


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[gentoo-user] Plasmashell Wayland crash

[Michael]

Over the last couple of weeks I noticed an intermittent and annoying problem.  
Plasma running on Wayland crashes when I move the mouse towards the tooltray 
or bottom panel.

Windows remain open, but all the tabs and KDE menu are gone, along with the 
wallpaper.  I drop into a console and restart the display-manager service, to 
be able to login again into Plasma-Wayland.

I don't understand why this problem has started recently and this is the only 
system it happens.  Other machines work fine.  This is what I see in the 
~/.local/share/sddm/wayland-session.log file after a crash:

Cannot initialize model with data QJsonObject(). missing: QJsonValue(string, 
"urls")
qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()
qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()
qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()
qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()
qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Executing search "kmail2-1066726089-
SearchSession"
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Search  "kmail2-1066726089-SearchSession" 
done (without remote search)
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Executing search "contactsCompletionSession"
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Search  "contactsCompletionSession" done 
(without remote search)
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Executing search "contactsCompletionSession"
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Search  "contactsCompletionSession" done 
(without remote search)
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Executing search "kmail2-1066726089-
SearchSession"
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Search  "kmail2-1066726089-SearchSession" 
done (without remote search)
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Executing search "kmail2-1066726089-
SearchSession"
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Search  "kmail2-1066726089-SearchSession" 
done (without remote search)
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Executing search "kmail2-1066726089-
SearchSession"
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Search  "kmail2-1066726089-SearchSession" 
done (without remote search)
org.kde.pim.ksmtp: SMTP Socket error: QAbstractSocket::RemoteHostClosedError 
"The TLS/SSL connection has been closed"
org.kde.pim.ksmtp: SMTP Socket error: QAbstractSocket::RemoteHostClosedError 
"The remote host closed the connection"
Could not find the Plasmoid for Plasma::FrameSvgItem(0x7f1b78014330) 
QQmlContext(0x55ea6da06360) QUrl("file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/
org.kde.plasma.notifications/contents/ui/global/Globals.qml")
Could not find the Plasmoid for Plasma::FrameSvgItem(0x7f1b78014330) 
QQmlContext(0x55ea6da06360) QUrl("file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/
org.kde.plasma.notifications/contents/ui/global/Globals.qml")
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.notifications/contents/ui/
NotificationItem.qml:222:21: QML SelectableLabel: Binding loop detected for 
property "implicitWidth"
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Executing search "searchUpdate-1679350681"
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Search  "searchUpdate-1679350681" done 
(without remote search)
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Search update for collection 
"OpenInvitations" ( 96 ) finished: all results:  0 , removed results: 0
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Executing search "searchUpdate-1679350681"
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Search  "searchUpdate-1679350681" done 
(without remote search)
org.kde.pim.akonadiserver.search: Search update for collection 
"DeclinedInvitations" ( 97 ) finished: all results:  0 , removed results: 0
kf.plasma.quick: Couldn't create KWindowShadow for 
ToolTipDialog(0x55ea6d71a530)
kf.plasma.quick: Couldn't create KWindowShadow for 
ToolTipDialog(0x55ea6d71a530)
kf.plasma.quick: Couldn't create KWindowShadow for 
ToolTipDialog(0x55ea6d71a530)
error in client communication (pid 4322)
wl_display@1: error 0: invalid object 254
The Wayland connection experienced a fatal error: Invalid argument
Service  "org.kde.StatusNotifierHost-4322" unregistered

Any idea what causes this and how I could fix it?

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[gentoo-user] glibc can't find /lib/libdl.so.2

[Michael]

It's only been a couple of weeks since I updated this system, so I don't know 
why it fails with a glibc update, while other systems have no problem:

>>> Emerging (1 of 62) sys-libs/glibc-2.36-r7::gentoo
 * glibc-2.36.tar.xz BLAKE2B SHA512 size ;-) ...
[ ok ]
 * glibc-2.36-patches-9.tar.xz BLAKE2B SHA512 size ;-) ...  
[ ok ]
 * locale-gen-2.22.tar.gz BLAKE2B SHA512 size ;-) ...   
[ ok ]
 * Checking whether python3_11 is suitable ...
 *   >=dev-lang/python-3.11.1-r1:3.11 ...   
[ ok ]
 * Using python3.11 to build (via PYTHON_COMPAT iteration)
>>> Unpacking source...
 * Checking general environment sanity.
make -j5 -l6 glibc-test
x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-gcc -m64 -march=native -pipe -O2 -fcf-protection=none -
Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed -march=native -pipe -O2 -fcf-protection=none   -Wl,-O1 
-Wl,--as-needed  glibc-test.c   -o glibc-test
 * Checking that IA32 emulation is enabled in the running kernel ...
/var/tmp/portage/sys-libs/glibc-2.36-r7/temp/check-ia32-emulation.elf32: error  
[ !! ]oading shared libraries: /lib/libdl.so.2: cannot read file data: Input/
output error
 * ERROR: sys-libs/glibc-2.36-r7::gentoo failed (unpack phase):
 *   CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION must be enabled in the kernel to compile a multilib 
glibc.
 *
 * Call stack:
 * ebuild.sh, line  136:  Called src_unpack
 *   environment, line 3766:  Called sanity_prechecks
 *   environment, line 3486:  Called die
 * The specific snippet of code:
 *   [[ $STAT -eq 0 ]] || die "CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION must be 
enabled in the kernel to compile a multilib glibc.";
 *

The kernel has IA32_EMULATION compiled in:

 # grep IA32_EMULATION /usr/src/linux/.config
CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION=y

and /lib/libdl.so.2 appears to be present and correct:

 $ ls -l /lib/libdl.so.2 
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13660 Nov 20 13:59 /lib/libdl.so.2

So, why does it fail and more importantly ... how can I get past it?  ;-)

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Re: [gentoo-user] After upgrade no login screen anymore

[Michael]

On Saturday, 11 March 2023 12:03:41 GMT Alexander Puchmayr wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> After having done a world update, neither sddm nor lightdm do start an
> Xserver anymore. The X server itself runs fine, I can start it from the
> console and I after setting DISPLAY properly can even start programs using
> it, but the login managers do not start X for some reason.
> 
> No hint so far in the logs, and no ideas where I should looking.
> 
> The system is running inside a virtualbox VM, with Win10 as host operating
> system.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Thanks
>Alex

Asking the obvious, but is display-manager service running?

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Re: [gentoo-user] Setting a fixed nameserver for openvpn

[Michael]

On Monday, 6 March 2023 08:24:35 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> On 06/03/2023 08:08, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Mon, 6 Mar 2023 07:54:51 +, Wols Lists wrote:
> >> There's another file - can't remember its name - that tells your
> >> resolver what to try in what order - the hosts file, dns, what dhcp
> >> told you, etc etc, so your resolver might not be using dns the way you
> >> think.
> > 
> > Do you mean /etc/nsswitch.conf?
> 
> Ah yes. Any idea why Firefox seems to ignore it? Whenever I try to
> browse to local machines in /etc/hosts, firefox gives me a google search
> page which is a bloody nuisance. If I type a VALID ADDRESS in the
> ADDRESS BAR, that's where I expect to go! Not some damn random search page!
> 
> Cheers,
> Wol

I suspect the behaviour you noticed is related to FF functionality like TRR 
(Trusted Recursive Resolver) farming all your DNS queries over to the 
cloudfarce honeypot.

Have a look here if you want to disable it:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox/Privacy#Disable/
enforce_'Trusted_Recursive_Resolver'


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Re: [gentoo-user] Setting a fixed nameserver for openvpn

[Michael]

On Monday, 6 March 2023 12:05:40 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> On 06/03/2023 11:08, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Monday, 6 March 2023 10:56:37 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> >> On 06/03/2023 10:06, Michael wrote:
> >>> I suspect the behaviour you noticed is related to FF functionality like
> >>> TRR
> >>> (Trusted Recursive Resolver) farming all your DNS queries over to the
> >>> cloudfarce honeypot.
> >>> 
> >>> Have a look here if you want to disable it:
> >>> 
> >>> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox/Privacy#Disable/
> >>> enforce_'Trusted_Recursive_Resolver'
> >> 
> >> Thanks. That led me to network.trr.allow-rfc1918, which provided your
> >> name has a dot in it ! appears to resolve addresses from /etc/hosts. I
> >> guess that actually means firefox uses your local resolver first, and if
> >> it returns an rfc1918 address, will use it.
> >> 
> >> Surely that should be the default! It shouldn't break a PRIVATE network
> >> in the name of security !!!
> > 
> > It is the default here, in www-client/firefox-110.0.1 .
> 
> I'm running amd not ~amd, and I've got FF 102esr. As soon as I changed
> it to allow rfc1918, it started working ...
> 
> Cheers,
> Wol

As I understand it the purpose of this setting is to avoid web attacks being 
able to redirect to local private addresses, which may be hosting vulnerable 
services - a.k.a. 'DNS-rebinding'.  The default setting is 'false' in FF 
102.8.0, but if you have disabled TRR it appears the effects of 
network.trr.allow-rfc1918 are disabled too.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Setting a fixed nameserver for openvpn

[Michael]

On Sunday, 5 March 2023 18:41:10 GMT Dale wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> I use Surfshark and every once in a while, my VPN loses its connection. 
> I sent the info from messages to Surfshark but the info they sent back
> on how to set the nameserver info doesn't really work with Gentoo.  I
> suspect they are used to systemd stuff.  Anyway, I tried to follow in a
> more Gentoo way but it still didn't work.  Then I googled, searched the
> Gentoo wiki and tried some of those things, still refuses to use the
> manually entered nameserver.  I've tried resolv.conf, resolvconf.conf
> and resolv.conf-tun0.sv.  I installed openresolv to see if that would
> help.  Nope.

AFAIR, you're meant to pull down from the openvpn server the DNS resolvers 
you're meant to use with their service, unless you have your own reasons for 
wanting to override these and set up your own DNS resolvers.  Have you looked 
in /etc/openvpn/ for a suitable setting in the configuration file?  I'm sure 
it will be set to automatically pull down the DNS resolvers and the Up script 
will set these up for your system when you start openvpn.


> This is what I got from Surfshark:
> > I would recommend changing the DNS addresses on your Linux device. You
> > can simply do that by following the steps below.
> >  
> > First, you need to open the terminal with the CTRL + ALT + T
> > combination and type in the following commands:
> > sudo rm -r /etc/resolv.conf
> > sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

Normally, you would not have to do this manually.  The Up script will enter 
the resolver IP addresses in your resolv.conf.  If it doesn't, then check your 
configuration and your openvpn script.




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Re: [gentoo-user] updating /boot directory EFI

[Michael]

On Monday, 17 April 2023 00:29:49 BST Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> Wol  writes:
> > On 16/04/2023 22:30, Mitch D. wrote:
> >> Wol, can you elaborate on why you think Grub is deprecated on EFI
> >> systems?
> > 
> > Because EFI is a boot manager?
> 
> That is not the case any more than the classic IBM PC boot procedure is.
> There is technical capability for UEFI firmware to act in such a manner,
> but, in practice, this is not at all the case.
> 
> The technical capability comes from the fact that boot entities have a
> lil' bit of metadata attached to them.

The ability of UEFI to boot linux kernels, as long as they are built with the 
EFI boot stub enabled, may render 3rd party boot managers and their boot 
loaders redundant.  However, as already mentioned below, the flexibility and 
customisability of GRUB and other boot manager exceeds any UEFI firmware I've 
come across.


> > Why chain-load boot managers?
> 
> In theory, EFI implementations should provide boot
> managers. Unfortunately, in practice these boot managers are often so
> poor as to be useless. The worst I've personally encountered is on
> Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI, which provides you with no boot options
> whatsoever, beyond choosing the boot device (hard disk vs. optical disc,
> for instance). I've heard of others that are just as bad. For this
> reason, a good EFI boot manager—either standalone or as part of a boot
> loader—is a practical necessity for multi-booting on an EFI
> computer. That's where rEFInd comes into play.
>   - https://rodsbooks.com/refind/

I've stopped using GRUB and have been using the UEFI firmware to boot directly 
Gentoo for more than 10 years now.  Given I have also flashed some of the 
MoBos' chipset with new UEFI firmware a dozen times or more, I have not 
experienced any MoBo failures as yet.  Also, the ESP partition formatted with 
FAT32 has remained quite resilient too.  No loss of data or fs corruption yet 
(keeps fingers crossed and checks backups).

My particular systems setup and use case suits this approach, but I appreciate 
people who multiboot daily/frequently, or need to boot LiveISOs off the disk 
may find GRUB and friends to be a more suitable solution.

Re: [gentoo-user] updating /boot directory EFI

[Michael]

On Monday, 17 April 2023 14:31:08 BST Mark Knecht wrote:

> My needs are quite simple but efibootmgr, set up by the Kubuntu install
> on a separate M.2 from the Windows install the machine came with, works for
> me. I always start the day in Kubuntu, then reboot to Windows if I'm working
> on music:
> 
> 1) The simple view of the two installations:
> 
> mark@science2:~$ efibootmgr
> BootCurrent: 0003
> Timeout: 1 seconds
> BootOrder: 0003,
> Boot* Windows Boot Manager
> Boot0003* ubuntu
> mark@science2:~$
> 
> 2) The more complicated view with GUIDs and such:
> 
> mark@science2:~$ efibootmgr -v
> BootCurrent: 0003
> Timeout: 1 seconds
> BootOrder: 0003,
> Boot* Windows Boot Manager
>  HD(1,GPT,2052c843-0057-494a-a749-e8ec3676514a,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EF
> I\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI)WINDOWS.x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.
> e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4
> .e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}
> Boot0003* ubuntu
>  HD(1,GPT,2052c843-0057-494a-a749-e8ec3676514a,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\UBUN
> TU \SHIMX64.EFI)
> mark@science2:~$

This shows the efibootmgr is using the first disk and boots the Windows 
BOOTMGFW.EFI, or Ubuntu's shimX64.efi from there.


> 3) To get to Windows I can choose it in the OS screen if I'm sitting there
> but the most reliable way for me to get from Kubuntu to Windows is to just
> tell the system to go to Windows at the next boot using a batch file in
> Kubuntu:
> 
> mark@science2:~$ cat bin/RebootWindows
> sudo efibootmgr -n 
> reboot
> mark@science2:~$
> 
> The 'problem' with this setup is that all of the grub/efibootmgr stuff
> is on both drives 

Are you sure?


> and I'm never sure which drive is being used at
> which time as I have Kubuntu on nvme1 and Windows boot
> manager on nvme0 which I'm never comfortable with but the
> Ubuntu stuff figured it out so I don't argue. Pity me if I ever have to
> do a reinstall.
> 
> mark@science2:~$ df -h
> Filesystem  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> tmpfs   3.2G  3.7M  3.2G   1% /run
> /dev/nvme1n1p3  916G  622G  248G  72% /
> tmpfs16G   66M   16G   1% /dev/shm
> tmpfs   5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
> /dev/nvme0n1p1   96M   32M   65M  33% /boot/efi

This is where the ESP is mounted, but you'll find /boot directory is on your /
dev/nvme1n1p3 block device, along with your kernels, initrd images and 
vimlinuz symlinks.

Your GRUB EFI bootable image is on /dev/nvme0n1p1, under /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/

> tmpfs   3.2G   64K  3.2G   1% /run/user/1000
> mark@science2:~$

I would think Ubuntu installed GRUB on nvme0n1p1 ESP, which it detected by 
scanning your disks.  If your nvme0n1p1 fails and has to be removed, you will 
need to create a new ESP somewhere on the ubuntu disk and then you can 
reinstall GRUB after you reboot with a LiveUSB, or while still running ubuntu.

Re: [gentoo-user] updating /boot directory EFI

[Michael]

On Monday, 17 April 2023 17:52:25 BST Mark Knecht wrote:

> One thing I haven't decoded is why Windows is  and Kubuntu is 0003.

See below ...


> I now better understand Mitch D.'s point that the pointers to which OS to
> boot are not in a disk file, like the old grub configuration, but rather in
> Flash memory on the motherboard. I suppose the numbering is just the
> luck of the draw, or that 0001 and 0002 were used at one time and no longer
> present, but that's just a guess.

Exactly the latter, they are no longer present.  I copy kernel images manually 
to /boot/EFI/Gentoo/ and run 'efibootmgr --create' to add entries to the UEFI 
boot menu with my choice of labels.  They are added being numbered 
incrementally.  If I remove some of the older menu entries, their 
corresponding numbers are also removed and become available for any new 
bootable .efi images I may add in the future.

In addition, if I boot with any USB drives attached, the UEFI firmware will 
scan such devices and add any bootable images to the UEFI boot menu stored in 
NVRAM, by numbering such images incrementally.  This will further increase the 
numbers of boot menu entries, which once the USB devices are removed their 
entry number will become vacant and available to be reallocated.

Re: [gentoo-user] Can some config files be automatically protected from etc-update?

[Michael]

On Monday, 17 April 2023 20:28:01 BST Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 11:26 AM Walter Dnes  wrote:
> >   Now that the (no)multilib problem in my latest update has been solved,
> > 
> > I have a somewhat minor complaint.  Can I get etc-update to skip certain
> > files?  My latest emerge world wanted to "update"...
> > 
> > 1) /etc/hosts (1)
> > 2) /etc/inittab (1)
> > 3) /etc/mtab (1)
> > 4) /etc/conf.d/consolefont (1)
> > 5) /etc/conf.d/hwclock (1)
> > 6) /etc/default/grub (1)
> > 7) /etc/ssh/sshd_config (1)
> > 
> > ...hosts is critical for networking.  consolefont allows me tp use the
> > true text console with a readable font, etc, etc.  I have my reasons
> > for making certain settings, and keeping them that way.
> 
> In my experience with all distros I go outside the distro for this
> sort of issue. Put a copy somewhere, white a little script that
> does a diff on the files you feel are important enough and run
> a cron job hourly that looks for any differences.
> 
> HTH,
> Mark

The emerge specific solution is to set the list in your CONFIG_PROTECT 
variable in /etc/make.conf, as per the example provided here:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Working/EnvVar

Re: [gentoo-user] Manifest verification failed

[Michael]

On Saturday, 22 April 2023 08:48:12 BST hitachi303 wrote:
> Am 22.04.23 um 08:10 schrieb the...@sys-concept.com:
> > On 4/21/23 23:09, the...@sys-concept.com wrote:
> >> I'm trying "emerge --sync" (few times) but I get this error:
> >> 
> >> !!! Manifest verification failed:
> >> OpenPGP verification failed:
> >> gpg: Signature made Sat 22 Apr 2023 04:39:56 AM UTC
> >> gpg:using RSA key
> >> E1D6ABB63BFCFB4BA02FDF1CEC590EEAC9189250
> >> gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
> >> 
> >> 
> >> Action: sync for repo: gentoo, returned code = 1
> >> 
> >> GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/gentoo-distfiles/
> >> http://gentoo.osuosl.org/
> >> ftp://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/gentoo-distfiles/
> >> http://linux.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/download/gentoo-mirror/
> >> ftp://linux.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/gentoo-mirror/
> >> ftp://ftp.spline.inf.fu-berlin.de/mirrors/gentoo/
> >> http://ftp.spline.inf.fu-berlin.de/mirrors/gentoo/;
> > 
> > I see others have similar issues as well.
> > 
> > "emerge-webrsync"  worked
> 
>  From time to time this happens to me as well. Mostly I end up removing
> everything in PORTDIR (for me: "/var/db/repos/gentoo") and running
> emerge --sync again. My uneducated guess is that something wasn't
> removed or copied correctly.

Also check you're not running out of space.

Re: [gentoo-user] file system for new machine

[Michael]

On Saturday, 29 April 2023 12:45:31 BST Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at 01:20:52PM +0800 schrieb William Kenworthy:

> > That
> > said btrfs has its less than stellar moments.  I still have systems that
> > use ext4 and they "seem" reliable for light duty but I make sure I have
> > backups and do not trust them with anything important - been bitten too
> > many times!
> In what kind of situations did you encounter these problems?

Can't speak for William, but it was a case where using older/early versions of 
btrfs tools from some live-USB you found at the bottom of your bin of spares 
could cause worse damage and data loss on btrfs.  I recall the devs 
recommending to always use the latest version if you were attempting a 
recovery of a damaged fs and seek advice if in doubt.