scilinux 6 install fail
I currently have a working CentOS 5.6 system on my workstation. Because CentOS 6 is not yet released, despite the release of RHEL 6.1, I am attempting to switch to SciLinux 6. As both CentOS and SciLinux are RHEL clones (and thus relatively hardened production professional distributions, not enthusiast toys), they should be compatible. I am running CentOS in 32 bit mode, but I am installing SciLinux 6 as 64 bit mode (X86-64) on a quad core X86-64 AMD workstation, with the intention of loading the full 32 bit compatibility mode. After manually configuring the network and the drive layout from a bootable SciLinux 6 X86-64 DVD, the install fails. The error message indicates a probable bug in anaconda (the RH installer). I have attached the error output log to this email. Any help greatly would be appreciated as I need this workstation as both a general purpose machine and as a test platform for code before loading it on our compute engines. Yasha Karant ykar...@csusb.edu
Re: scilinux 6 install fail
I am not installing from a network share; I am installing from a DVD that was tested. Please look at the anaconda diagnostics. On 06/15/2011 12:34 PM, curriegrad2004 wrote: If you're attempting to install from a network share using the DVD, it will fail. Your other option is to make anaconda boot off from the network and specify your network repositories that way. On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: I currently have a working CentOS 5.6 system on my workstation. Because CentOS 6 is not yet released, despite the release of RHEL 6.1, I am attempting to switch to SciLinux 6. As both CentOS and SciLinux are RHEL clones (and thus relatively hardened production professional distributions, not enthusiast toys), they should be compatible. I am running CentOS in 32 bit mode, but I am installing SciLinux 6 as 64 bit mode (X86-64) on a quad core X86-64 AMD workstation, with the intention of loading the full 32 bit compatibility mode. After manually configuring the network and the drive layout from a bootable SciLinux 6 X86-64 DVD, the install fails. The error message indicates a probable bug in anaconda (the RH installer). I have attached the error output log to this email. Any help greatly would be appreciated as I need this workstation as both a general purpose machine and as a test platform for code before loading it on our compute engines. Yasha Karant ykar...@csusb.edu
Re: scilinux 6 install fail with log
This one is from a SL6 install. SL and CentOS are both RHEL. I keep the system utilities stock (the same as TUV, RHEL in this case), except for the use of the graphics card driver from the graphics card vendor, not generic X (e.g., on this machine, the Nvidia driver for linux X). I am switching to SL over CentOS because (1) we do not have funding luxury to license the binaries from RH and (2) CentOS 6 is not yet available despite RHEL 6.1 already having been released. Other than re-branding, SL and CentOS both claim to be RHEL clones -- I know that the RPMs that work on RHEL release X work just as well on both CentOS and SL of the same release. (Why not SL over CentOS? A matter of history, not a specific choice. With the upcoming demise of Fermilab as a direct experimental facility, hopefully the EU will continue to fund CERN and not be shortsighted as USA neoliberal Republican Tea Partists force upon the USA, and thus maintain support for SL.) I did not reformat / , /var, /usr . Must these be reformatted? Will X86-64 SL6 allow me to keep these as ext2 (no journal)? Thanks, Yasha Karant On 06/16/2011 01:43 AM, Stephan Wiesand wrote: At least this one is not from an SL6 install: On Jun 15, 2011, at 22:25, Yasha Karant wrote: /mnt/sysimage/root/install.log: Installing setup-2.5.58-7.el5.noarch warning: setup-2.5.58-7.el5: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e8562897 Installing filesystem-2.4.0-3.el5.i386 Installing desktop-backgrounds-basic-2.0-41.el5.centos.noarch Installing kernel-headers-2.6.18-194.el5.i386 Installing centos-release-notes-5.5-0.i386 Is ist possible that you try to install without reformatting /, /var/ and /usr?
Re: scilinux 6 install fail with log
From the reply below: I figure it's possible to choose "advanced" partitioning and simply uncheck "format" for all existing partitions while choosing the old mountpoints. Technically, that's an unsupported upgrade, while you don't have to boot with an "upgradeany" kernel parameter or choose "update existing linux installation" in the anaconda GUI. And I figure it's what happened here. End quote. That is correct. It also is correct that RHEL and any faithful clones (such as CentOS and SL) does not allow a major release upgrade, only a minor release. Assuming one has a decent data rate network connection, up to and including RHEL 5.6 (in my case, via CentOS 5.6) minor upgrades (e.g., RHEL 5.5 to RHEL 5.6) could be done by internal update mechanism without requiring a DVD (installation media) or a reformatting of any partition (unless, of course, the size of the partition was too small -- almost unheard of with the current price of a 1 TByte SATA drive). For a major release, one must use the media or other specialized means and requires a full upgrade. However, when I went from RHEL 4 to RHEL 5 (via CentOS), I did not have to reformat and the installation was successful -- overwriting files that had the same function but newer versions. This is not working with SL6 from Centos 5 (RHEL 6 from RHEL 5) and presumably will not work with CentOS 6 when it is available nor with RHEL 6 were we to license the media for fee. It would be useful if this were made clear -- if it is stated that these entities: / , /var , /usr must be reformatted, I apologize for missing this statement in the release notes. At this point, I must copy a whole number of directories to partitions/drives that do not need to be reformatted (e.g., /usr/local, /opt , /home that I keep in separate ext2 partitions) to preserve a number of utilities that I will then cp -pr (or tar) back to whatever SL 6 does. Before I begin, are there any things other than these (/, /var, /usr) that must be reformatted? Yasha Karant On 06/16/2011 11:51 AM, Stephan Wiesand wrote: On Jun 16, 2011, at 20:39 , Connie Sieh wrote: On Thu, 16 Jun 2011, Urs Beyerle wrote: On 06/16/2011 06:58 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: This one is from a SL6 install. SL and CentOS are both RHEL. I keep the system utilities stock (the same as TUV, RHEL in this case), except for the use of the graphics card driver from the graphics card vendor, not generic X (e.g., on this machine, the Nvidia driver for linux X). I am switching to SL over CentOS because (1) we do not have funding luxury to license the binaries from RH and (2) CentOS 6 is not yet available despite RHEL 6.1 already having been released. Other than re-branding, SL and CentOS both claim to be RHEL clones -- I know that the RPMs that work on RHEL release X work just as well on both CentOS and SL of the same release. (Why not SL over CentOS? A matter of history, not a specific choice. With the upcoming demise of Fermilab as a direct experimental facility, hopefully the EU will continue to fund CERN and not be shortsighted as USA neoliberal Republican Tea Partists force upon the USA, and thus maintain support for SL.) I did not reformat / , /var, /usr . Must these be reformatted? Yes, otherwise you will have a mixture of the old system (CentOS5?) and the new SL6 system on /, /var, /usr. This will definitely not work. If you want to keep old data you have to do an update instead of an install. But I don't know if CentOS5 can be update to SL60 with SL60 install DVD. My guess is that this will not work. An update from "5" to "6" is NOT supported by either RedHat or SL. RedHat has code to specifically not allow it. Others have tried to "force" an upgrade and were not successful. I figure it's possible to choose "advanced" partitioning and simply uncheck "format" for all existing partitions while choosing the old mountpoints. Technically, that's an unsupported upgrade, while you don't have to boot with an "upgradeany" kernel parameter or choose "update existing linux installation" in the anaconda GUI. And I figure it's what happened here. - Stephan To be save make a backup before you format the partitions. Will X86-64 SL6 allow me to keep these as ext2 (no journal)? I think if you choose custom partitioning you can format your partitions with ext2. Just curious, what's the reason to use "old" ext2? Cheers, Urs -Connie Sieh
Re: scilinux 6 install fail with log
From what you are writing, it seems as if the only sane thing to do is to put in a fresh, unformatted harddrive (unfortunately, my department will not buy me a spare and none of my existing grants will cover this unless I play some games), install RHEL N+1 for the migration from RHEL N (where N is a major release, not just N.m) , and then copy all of the important things from the RHEL N to the RHEL N+1 partitions/directories as root, doing chown, chgrp as required. A colleague who uses the SUSE equivalent of RHEL (not the SUSE equivalent of Fedora) tells me that this is not necessary when going from SUSE N to SUSE N+1. For example, he had SUSE N 32 bit and moved to SUSE N+1 X86-64 and installed the SUSE N+1 32 bit compatibility libraries (so 32 bit applications would execute), and had none of these problems. As far as I can tell, there is no licensed-for-free binary clone distribution of the SUSE equivalent of RHEL (unlike CentOS and SL for RHEL), although as with RH, under the Linux, GNU, and similar licenses, SUSE (that is, Novell) is required to make the full source package required to build the binaries available without cost (unless one wants the source distributed on physical media). Am I correct concerning SUSE? Also, thank you for touch /.autorelabel; reboot as I install SELinux but make it fully non-enforcing (notifying me of issues, not stopping them). This is necessary at my institution because the institution issues certificates from a non-valid CA, not wishing to pay the fees for a valid CA. Regards, Yasha On 06/16/2011 01:53 PM, Stephan Wiesand wrote: On Jun 16, 2011, at 22:03 , Yasha Karant wrote: From the reply below: I figure it's possible to choose "advanced" partitioning and simply uncheck "format" for all existing partitions while choosing the old mountpoints. Technically, that's an unsupported upgrade, while you don't have to boot with an "upgradeany" kernel parameter or choose "update existing linux installation" in the anaconda GUI. And I figure it's what happened here. End quote. That is correct. It also is correct that RHEL and any faithful clones (such as CentOS and SL) does not allow a major release upgrade, only a minor release. Assuming one has a decent data rate network connection, up to and including RHEL 5.6 (in my case, via CentOS 5.6) minor upgrades (e.g., RHEL 5.5 to RHEL 5.6) could be done by internal update mechanism without requiring a DVD (installation media) or a reformatting of any partition (unless, of course, the size of the partition was too small -- almost unheard of with the current price of a 1 TByte SATA drive). For a major release, one must use the media or other specialized means and requires a full upgrade. However, when I went from RHEL 4 to RHEL 5 (via CentOS), I did not have to reformat and the installation was successful -- overwriting files that had the same function but newer versions. You were lucky, or so it seemed. But you have files from the CentOS4 installation still sitting in your filesystems. You probably even have CentOS4 packages recorded in your rpmdb created during the CentOS4 installation. The actual failure stopping the SL6 installation is that this rpmdb cannot be opened by the SL6 installer... This is not working with SL6 from Centos 5 (RHEL 6 from RHEL 5) and presumably will not work with CentOS 6 when it is available nor with RHEL 6 were we to license the media for fee. It would be useful if this were made clear -- if it is stated that these entities: / , /var , /usr must be reformatted, I apologize for missing this statement in the release notes. At this point, I must copy a whole number of directories to partitions/drives that do not need to be reformatted (e.g., /usr/local, /opt , /home that I keep in separate ext2 partitions) to preserve a number of utilities that I will then cp -pr (or tar) back to whatever SL 6 does. Before I begin, are there any things other than these (/, /var, /usr) that must be reformatted? This list was gathered by skimming through the logs you provided. It's not necessarily complete. Connie mentioned /boot already. Keeping /tmp may or may not work. Keeping /home will probably work for installation but may cause problems later. If you keep any partitions without reformatting, "touch /.autorelabel; reboot" is probably the first thing you should do after successful installation, unless you disable SELinux. Regards, Stephan Yasha Karant On 06/16/2011 11:51 AM, Stephan Wiesand wrote: On Jun 16, 2011, at 20:39 , Connie Sieh wrote: On Thu, 16 Jun 2011, Urs Beyerle wrote: On 06/16/2011 06:58 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: This one is from a SL6 install. SL and CentOS are both RHEL. I keep the system utilities stock (the same as TUV, RHEL in this case), except for the use of the graphics card driver from the graphics card vendor, not generi
Re: scilinux 6 install fail with log
Because I now need full X86-64 functionality, although many binaries are still 32 bit. My workstation changed from a dual-core Intel (HP professional unit) to a current 4 core AMD that we built as a kit computer in a quality Antec gaming case. We could not afford (no budget, no budget justification) the cost of the equivalent HP. I have an external grant that supplies us with a new Nvidia Tesla GPU compute engine (specifications available in private communication if you wish), and I then got a grant from Nvidia that included a Tesla C2070 as a development node in my own workstation (I use a different Nvidia card for graphics, also CUDA capable). However, to use the Tesla, I needed a newer workstation. I used all of my existing drives, including the CentOS 5 system disk, and the machine booted cleanly. But, this was an interim solution until I switch to a full 64 bit implementation (our compute engine will be using SL 6 X86-64 as a RHEL 6 clone), and now is the time to switch. I was thinking of switching to Centos 5 X86-64, but it seemed to me if I go to all that trouble, I will use RHEL 6 (SL 6 as CentOS 6 is still not available in production release). As part of this grant, we got a number of stereoscopic 3D visualisation workstations using the Nvidia system (and thus not suitable for individuals with epilepsy) -- we installed SL 6 X86-64 along with 32 bit compatibility libraries with no major problems. (One minor problem I have not yet addressed: using 32 bit Firefox 4 current and the current Flash plugin, Flash does not work properly.) Regards, Yasha Karant Director Institute for Applied Supercomputing Professor School of Computer Science and Engineering URL: http://www.cse.csusb.edu/ykarant/home.html On 06/16/2011 02:00 PM, Stephan Wiesand wrote: On Jun 16, 2011, at 22:03 , Yasha Karant wrote: At this point, I must copy a whole number of directories to partitions/drives that do not need to be reformatted (e.g., /usr/local, /opt , /home that I keep in separate ext2 partitions) to preserve a number of utilities that I will then cp -pr (or tar) back to whatever SL 6 does. None of those is safe to keep without reformatting. Why not stay with CentOS5 if preservation is a major objective?
Re: Slightly OT - nVidia for scientific computation
I am somewhat familiar with CUDA 4 having just taught a course involving this material. Contact me off-list if you wish. Yasha Karant On 06/17/2011 05:31 PM, Keith Lofstrom wrote: The nVidia graphics card coprocessors with the closed-but-zero-cost CUDA programming language are a cheap way to buy a few teraflops of single precision array computation. I am considering some of those for some nanoparticle surface bombardment calculations, and also for some phased array antenna calculations. The learning curve looks steep, though. Is anyone on this list familiar with these? Are there repositories of open source example tools, calculations, discussion lists, etc? And (hope against hope) is there an open source replacement for CUDA out there? Other suggestions to lower the learning curve? Keith
hwmonitor or equivalent for SL 6 x86-64
I am very close to getting a fully functional (for my needs) SL 6 X86-64 workstation that supports both 64 bit and 32 bit applications. Three things I have not been able to find: 1. a way to list the detected hardware on the system via a GUI or even as a long and often unreadable text file. Supposedly, RHEL 6 has hwbrowser to replace the application available on RHEL 5 and clones, but I have not found this. Any suggestions? 2. The grub or whatever switch / configuration file so that the actual boot process and starting processes list (including any failures) is displayed to the console rather than simply some icon (spinning under noveau, progress bar under regular xorg including the Nvidia proprietary driver). 3. how to make the proprietary Adobe Flash plugin work. This worked fine under 32 bit RHEL 5. I have gotten 32 bit Thunderbird to work so that I can use the goggle calendar connector for Lightning, 32 bit Firefox 4 to work (so I can get updates from Mozilla rather than waiting for a RPM to be ported from the Firefox source), etc., but the 32 bit Flash plug-in still misplays on the screen. Thanks, Yasha Karant
Re: hwmonitor or equivalent for SL 6 x86-64
I have installed lshw. lshw does seem to give an extensive listing, but lshw-gui does not seem to give much. As with lshw, does lshw-gui need to be run by root? Also, I have a real 1.44 Mbyte floppy drive installed that goes to the floppy drive controller on the mother board (this particular MSI motherboard has SATA, EIDE, and floppy controllers and connectors on the motherboard). It worked fine under RHEL 5 (CentOS 5.6) on this motherboard. Under RHEL 6 (SL 6), I find: ls -la /dev/fd/* ls: cannot access /dev/fd/255: No such file or directory ls: cannot access /dev/fd/3: No such file or directory lrwx--. 1 ykarant ykarant 64 Jun 18 19:49 /dev/fd/0 -> /dev/pts/0 lrwx--. 1 ykarant ykarant 64 Jun 18 19:49 /dev/fd/1 -> /dev/pts/0 lrwx--. 1 ykarant ykarant 64 Jun 18 19:49 /dev/fd/2 -> /dev/pts/0s but I cannot seem to access these via a mount, even as root, to access a MS-DOS floppy. Obviously, I am doing something wrong, but what? Moreover, the mtools (that provides MS-DOS compatibility) used to access the floppy drive as A: but now does nothing. Presumably, once I understand how to access the floppy drive, things will work. Would a ln -s /dev/floppy to /dev/fd/0 as well as a ln -s /dev/fd0 to /dev/fd/0 work? Note that the output of lshw does not show the floppy drive, although the hardware listing utility of RHEL 5 did show this. This is the same hardware with no change to the motherboard BIOS -- the motherboard BIOS utility does show the floppy. I realize that this might have to be re-done upon the next upgrade (to SL 6.1), but otherwise should work until /dev is overwritten. Yasha Karant On 06/18/2011 01:16 AM, Hervé Riboulot wrote: Hello, 1- Hardware browser: lshw and lsw-gui, from the rpmforge repository, provide a detailed view of the various components of the hardware. [snip]
VirtualBox under SL 6 X86-64
I am running VirtualBox current production release as a replacement for VMWare workstation. Under 32 bit RHEL 5, all of the hardware worked, including USB on the identical workstation (hardware platform) as I now have. Using the same configuration (including changes to the groups file), but now installing VirtualBox current production release for RHEL 6 X86-64, I cannot access the USB devices. I can indirectly through shared folders from the MS Win guest to the linux host, but for certain uses, MS Win requires a direct mount, not a shared folder / network mount. Is anyone running SL6 X86-64 with VirtualBox and accessing the USB drive? If so, have you also configured VirtualBox, a MS Win guest, and SAMBA on the same physical machine to allow the MS Win guest to print to the linux host printer(s)? Yasha Karant
Re: VirtualBox under SL 6 X86-64
Hi Alex, Running VirtualBox as root is what I had to do several years ago. During that epoch, I did not use VirtualBox but remained with VMWare Workstation that did not require this very dangerous approach. A few releases back, VirtualBox fixed the situation. The problem was present with RHEL 4 and early RHEL 5 until VirtualBox somehow did something to fix the situation. Now, with RHEL 6, the problem is back. It is extremely dangerous to run any user application routinely as root, and I refuse to do this as a routine approach. (Obviously, there are specific operations that must be done as root, and I routinely do these but with great caution and care -- root operations can be very dangerous to OS stability if errors are made.) Regards, Yasha On 06/18/2011 11:13 PM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 06/18/2011 09:46 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: Hi Alex, I have installed the guest additions. On the same hardware platform using the same release of Virtual Box under RHEL 5.6 32 bit (CentOS 5.6), everything worked except for SAMBA issues (basically, figuring out what network interfaces were being used for MS Win XP Pro SP 3 to connect via the Virtual Box virtual network interfaces that are seen by the guest.) Now under RHEL 6 X86-64 (SL 6) with a new install of Virtual Box (same release number of VirtualBox) for RHEL 6 X86-64, the USB devices are not working. I greatly would appreciate the details of what you did. I need to make a new VM (e.g., a new file under linux) to install MS Win 7 Pro, but I want to make certain that the MS Win XP VM is working first. Thanks, Yasha On 06/18/2011 08:36 PM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 06/18/2011 09:35 PM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 06/18/2011 09:06 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: I am running VirtualBox current production release as a replacement for VMWare workstation. Under 32 bit RHEL 5, all of the hardware worked, including USB on the identical workstation (hardware platform) as I now have. Using the same configuration (including changes to the groups file), but now installing VirtualBox current production release for RHEL 6 X86-64, I cannot access the USB devices. I can indirectly through shared folders from the MS Win guest to the linux host, but for certain uses, MS Win requires a direct mount, not a shared folder / network mount. Is anyone running SL6 X86-64 with VirtualBox and accessing the USB drive? If so, have you also configured VirtualBox, a MS Win guest, and SAMBA on the same physical machine to allow the MS Win guest to print to the linux host printer(s)? Yasha Karant Hi Yasha, I've have SL6 X86_64, Virtualbox, and running a WinXP-Pro VM working with direct access to USB drives. It seems to me it didn't work out of the box, but I had to install the guest additions in the VM itself to make that work. If you already have installed the guest additions in Windows, or try it and it doesn't work for you, let me know and I'll figure out and document how I did it for you. Sorry I don't know about the printer issue and Samba, I've never tried that. Regards, Alex Hi Yasha, ok, I figured it out, sort of. I have to run virtualbox as root user to get access to the USB sub-system. I don't know why, because nothing ever gets installed as root, my user is a member of the vboxusers and wheel groups, and has full permissions as this is my personal computer and nobody else uses it. That being said; that for some reason, regular users don't seem to get permissions to get direct access to the USB sub-system in a VM but there has to be some way to make that happen, which maybe someone else on the forum knows which group you need to belong to or what permissions need to be changed on what file(s). It isn't such a big problem for me, but it isn't an ideal scenario running anything as root. So, anyone else know how to get this working as a regular user? Regards, Alex
/dev/floppy (was: Re: hwmonitor or equivalent for SL 6 x86-64)
I physically will test the actual success of the procedure documented below on Monday at my office. However, using the network, I have performed the operation you suggested (modprobe floppy) as root; here is the output via script: ^[]0;ykarant@jb344:/home/ykarant^G[root@jb344 ykarant]# modprobe floppy ^[]0;ykarant@jb344:/home/ykarant^G[root@jb344 ykarant]# ls -la /dev/floppy lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 3 Jun 19 09:50 ^[[0m^[[01;36m/dev/floppy^[[0m -> ^[[40;33;01mfd0^[[0m ^[]0;ykarant@jb344:/home/ykarant^G[root@jb344 ykarant]# ls -la /dev/fd0 brw-rw. 1 root floppy 2, 0 Jun 19 09:50 ^[[0m^[[40;33;01m/dev/fd0^[[0m ^[[m^[]0;ykarant@jb344:/home/ykarant^G[root@jb344 ykarant]# exit exit Script done on Sun 19 Jun 2011 09:51:49 AM PDT The above may be unreadable (I used cat -v to convert the control characters to printable characters). However, after modprobe floppy, /dev/floppy appears and this is a link to the actual device, /dev/fd0 I fully understand that the /dev entries are created at boot time if the driver actually is present (generally, in kernel space, but there are exceptions where a driver crosses between kernel and user space). As it is clear that the driver is present, why is the driver not autoloaded during boot if the hardware is present? In which file(s) in SL6 does one make the modification to force the existence of /dev/fd0 at each boot? As far as I can tell, SL6 is loading drivers for all of the other physical hardware on the unit. The issue with /dev/fd/x is clear after reconsideration of the link to a pts; however, this is in my opinion an example of a poor naming convention (perhaps for historical reasons) to what appears to be overloading in the OO sense. (If you ask why I need a floppy and a zip drive, it is to read archival media, some mine, mostly colleagues, without having to find the appropriate USB or IEEE 1394 external interface device, manipulating cables, and having a figurative octopus on my desk. Most of our current workstations have neither a floppy nor a zip drive. The zip drive that is an IDE device was detected and mapped by SL6 to a /dev/sd as former RHEL release /dev/hd devices are now mapped to /dev/sd devices.) Thanks, Yasha Karant On 06/19/2011 12:22 AM, Stephan Wiesand wrote: On Jun 19, 2011, at 04:59 , Yasha Karant wrote: I have installed lshw. lshw does seem to give an extensive listing, but lshw-gui does not seem to give much. As with lshw, does lshw-gui need to be run by root? Also, I have a real 1.44 Mbyte floppy drive installed that goes to the floppy drive controller on the mother board (this particular MSI motherboard has SATA, EIDE, and floppy controllers and connectors on the motherboard). It worked fine under RHEL 5 (CentOS 5.6) on this motherboard. Under RHEL 6 (SL 6), I find: ls -la /dev/fd/* ls: cannot access /dev/fd/255: No such file or directory ls: cannot access /dev/fd/3: No such file or directory lrwx--. 1 ykarant ykarant 64 Jun 18 19:49 /dev/fd/0 -> /dev/pts/0 lrwx--. 1 ykarant ykarant 64 Jun 18 19:49 /dev/fd/1 -> /dev/pts/0 lrwx--. 1 ykarant ykarant 64 Jun 18 19:49 /dev/fd/2 -> /dev/pts/0s but I cannot seem to access these via a mount, even as root, to access a MS-DOS floppy. Obviously, I am doing something wrong, but what? Moreover, the mtools (that provides MS-DOS compatibility) used to access the floppy drive as A: but now does nothing. Presumably, once I understand how to access the floppy drive, things will work. Would a ln -s /dev/floppy to /dev/fd/0 as well as a ln -s /dev/fd0 to /dev/fd/0 work? Probably not ;-) Try "echo 'I am not a floppy drive'> /dev/fd/1" for a hint what these actually are. Note that the output of lshw does not show the floppy drive, although the hardware listing utility of RHEL 5 did show this. This is the same hardware with no change to the motherboard BIOS -- the motherboard BIOS utility does show the floppy. Do floppy devices appear after "modprobe floppy"? I realize that this might have to be re-done upon the next upgrade (to SL 6.1), but otherwise should work until /dev is overwritten. It's created at boot time.
Re: VirtualBox under SL 6 X86-64
There is a long thread on this topic on: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=33268 on page 2 (with a URL of: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=33268&sid=d55ee7c6fce4a214961f00c766b90919&start=15 ) on Board index ‹ General ‹ VirtualBox on Linux Hosts with a specific topic of VirtualBox guest USB inoperative on RHEL 5.5 64-bit host Note that this problem did not happen on RHEL 5.5 32-bit host based upon my direct experience (CentOS 5.5 and 5.6, but presumably as SL and CentOS are faithful to RHEL, the issue would be common to all three using X86-64 distributions). The most salient explanation I quote here: Re: VirtualBox guest USB inoperative on RHEL 5.5 64-bit host Postby zzz » 7. Oct 2010, 00:03 This comment relates mostly to CENTOS/REDHAT distributions. As mentioned in many previous posts the problem is usually with the permissions on usbfs. Centos mounts the usbfs first thing during boot. Once /proc/bus/ubs is mounted, its permissions cannot (so I have heard) really be changed. Thus, changing fstab or several other suggestions do not seem to work with this operating system. It turns out the the original mount is in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit. All you have to do is edit this file and add the group and its permissions to the mount instruction. Here is an example, of the changes where the group id is devgid=501 which is the group id of vboxusers. In /etc/rc.d, edit rc.sysinit Replace the two lines mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb and modprobe usbcore >/dev/null 2>&1 && mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb With modprobe usbcore >/dev/null 2>&1 && mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb -o devgid=501,devmode=664 mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb -o devgid=501,devmode=664 Note that you can get the gid of vboxusers by doing "grep vboxusers /etc/group". If it is not 501, then replace 501 with the correct gid. Also, make sure that you are a member of the group: "gpasswd -a youruserid vboxusers" End quote. I will try the above on Monday 20 June 2011 and report if it works. If so, may I strongly urge the SL6 documentation persons to please make a note of this, and perhaps considering changing SL6 from RHEL6 in this regard, documenting the change in the release notes? Yasha Karant On 06/19/2011 05:32 AM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 06/19/2011 06:31 AM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 06/19/2011 01:08 AM, Jason Bronner wrote: alex, instead of giving Virtual Box root or even sudo access might it not be more secure to use the VMWare Player only app. since it doesnt seem to have the problems associated with hardware recog. and lock users into a specific hardware config / shares / security template? i've never actually used virtual box for anything as i've had generally good luck with VMware in the past in addition to the numerous VMWare apps for creating blank layouts, cloning, and whatnot. I like using them for test-platform appliances between compiles to ensure our updates actually update and dont break the accounting systems. (Player's free, and there's EL binaries available.) Hi, Thanks for the info, I'm going to try out VMWare Player now and see how that goes. I used to like VMFusion for the Mac, so I'm thinking I'll like it. I never have liked running much of anything under root unless I absolutely have to. There are also a couple of intersting other comments about USB access being fine with a Solaris install and it working without root in previous versions of Virtualbox. It seems to me I didn't have that problem with F13 or F14 either. Thanks all, Alex
Re: /dev/floppy
Thank you. The first reference shows: Product:Fedora Component(s): kernel (Show other bugs) Version(s): 14 Platform: x86_64 Linux I could not find a similar item in the second reference. If I correctly understand the first reference, the issue is restricted to X86-64, and thus must be an issue either with the way the 64 bit kernel handles the 64 bit instruction set architecture extensions to the 32 bit architecture, the 64 bit compiler, or a specification error in the driver when used in 64 bit mode (e.g., a long unsigned int that must be 32 bits but is mapped to a 64 bit value in error in the device driver source code or the linkage between the driver and the rest of the kernel). Does anyone know the correct syntax and file entry to make the kernel automatically load the driver during boot? Thanks, Yasha Karant On 06/19/2011 11:25 AM, Garrett Holmstrom wrote: On 2011-06-19 10:27, Yasha Karant wrote: I fully understand that the /dev entries are created at boot time if the driver actually is present (generally, in kernel space, but there are exceptions where a driver crosses between kernel and user space). As it is clear that the driver is present, why is the driver not autoloaded during boot if the hardware is present? The kernel team chose to stop loading the floppy driver automatically due to problems with certain floppy disk controllers. [0] [1] In which file(s) in SL6 does one make the modification to force the existence of /dev/fd0 at each boot? As far as I can tell, SL6 is loading drivers for all of the other physical hardware on the unit. You should be able to create a file in /etc/modprobe.d that makes the floppy driver load automatically when a floppy drive is around, though I have no idea what the syntax for that is. [0] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=599127 [1] http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=kernel.git;a=blob;f=die-floppy-die.patch
A Permanent SL ow To s (was: FAQ VirtualBox under SL 6 X86-64)
I have looked at https://www.scientificlinux.org/documentation/faq/ and cannot find what I am suggesting in this posting. As you read below, my "easter egg hunt" seems to have found a solution to a specific problem with RHEL 6 X86-64, including SL 6. I am assuming that my experience is not unique, and that a hunting/search through the archives of this list probably would yield solutions to other issues (such as how to add /dev/floppy to SL 6 that was present in previous major RHEL releases). Would the Fermilab/CERN maintainers of the SL 6 documentation consider collecting all of these solutions in one place? Assuming that subscribers to this list are professionals (including students from the various research and support groups that may be doing the actual technical work), rather than having the maintainers sift this list, the users of this list could have a special drop box email address for items that need consideration. The cumulative solution list would include references and the evidence for successful tests (e.g., Hunt's note below). Red Hat does not provide this sort of information as public knowledge because Red Hat uses support (this sort of information) as a revenue generator. Is this possible? Yasha Karant On 06/19/2011 04:35 PM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 06/19/2011 11:54 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: There is a long thread on this topic on: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=33268 on page 2 (with a URL of: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=33268&sid=d55ee7c6fce4a214961f00c766b90919&start=15 ) on Board index ‹ General ‹ VirtualBox on Linux Hosts with a specific topic of VirtualBox guest USB inoperative on RHEL 5.5 64-bit host Note that this problem did not happen on RHEL 5.5 32-bit host based upon my direct experience (CentOS 5.5 and 5.6, but presumably as SL and CentOS are faithful to RHEL, the issue would be common to all three using X86-64 distributions). The most salient explanation I quote here: Re: VirtualBox guest USB inoperative on RHEL 5.5 64-bit host Postby zzz » 7. Oct 2010, 00:03 This comment relates mostly to CENTOS/REDHAT distributions. As mentioned in many previous posts the problem is usually with the permissions on usbfs. Centos mounts the usbfs first thing during boot. Once /proc/bus/ubs is mounted, its permissions cannot (so I have heard) really be changed. Thus, changing fstab or several other suggestions do not seem to work with this operating system. It turns out the the original mount is in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit. All you have to do is edit this file and add the group and its permissions to the mount instruction. Here is an example, of the changes where the group id is devgid=501 which is the group id of vboxusers. In /etc/rc.d, edit rc.sysinit Replace the two lines mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb and modprobe usbcore >/dev/null 2>&1 && mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb With modprobe usbcore >/dev/null 2>&1 && mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb -o devgid=501,devmode=664 mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb -o devgid=501,devmode=664 Note that you can get the gid of vboxusers by doing "grep vboxusers /etc/group". If it is not 501, then replace 501 with the correct gid. Also, make sure that you are a member of the group: "gpasswd -a youruserid vboxusers" End quote. I will try the above on Monday 20 June 2011 and report if it works. If so, may I strongly urge the SL6 documentation persons to please make a note of this, and perhaps considering changing SL6 from RHEL6 in this regard, documenting the change in the release notes? Yasha Karant On 06/19/2011 05:32 AM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 06/19/2011 06:31 AM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 06/19/2011 01:08 AM, Jason Bronner wrote: alex, instead of giving Virtual Box root or even sudo access might it not be more secure to use the VMWare Player only app. since it doesnt seem to have the problems associated with hardware recog. and lock users into a specific hardware config / shares / security template? i've never actually used virtual box for anything as i've had generally good luck with VMware in the past in addition to the numerous VMWare apps for creating blank layouts, cloning, and whatnot. I like using them for test-platform appliances between compiles to ensure our updates actually update and dont break the accounting systems. (Player's free, and there's EL binaries available.) Hi, Thanks for the info, I'm going to try out VMWare Player now and see how that goes. I used to like VMFusion for the Mac, so I'm thinking I'll like it. I never have liked running much of an
Re: which repos are good?
Two questions on repositories: 1. How does one in fact install a repository on SL 6? On RHEL 5 (CentOS 5) there were RPMs that installed specific repositories, or detailed instructions included access to GPG security authentication keys. I have not even been able to find how to install the additional repositories that came with SL 6 that I did not select during the actual installation of the system from the bootable install DVD. Must I "upgrade" from the bootable DVD? Are the RPMs for the SL repos on the DVD? 2. The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton evidently also has a RHEL clone, currently RHEL 6.1. URL: http://puias.math.ias.edu/ The distro states: Custom Red Hat® Distribution and Mirror. A project of members of the computing staff of Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. Introduction This project was started long before CentOS or other projects were available. Even if you do not install the core distribution, the Addons, Computational and Unsupported repositories may be of use to you. End quote. As with SL, PUIAS evidently has professional institutional support, unlike say CentOS or the DAG repository. I am not complaining about the quality of either CentOS or DAG, but an institutional professional staffing commitment often leads to a professional result, particularly when done by a professional entity (e.g., Fermilab/CERN or the Institute for Advanced Study). I found PUIAS because I was looking for a package that I had built from source on CentOS from the actual tar.gz source (not a RPM) from the source download site and I currently have neither my personal time nor staff to go down that path right now. If I can find a prebuilt RPM, this would be much easier. The PUIAS RPM for what I need generates a large number of dependencies for other utilities not included in the base SL repository but present on PUIAS, and it is likely that each of these RPMs calls for yet more dependencies. How does one add, say, PUIAS as a repository search path with precedence being given to SL over PUIAS except as needed? A simple answer such as "import a key" or "install a XML repodata file" are not sufficient unlike using RPM to install a rpm file -- where (what directory/file) and how (what commands) specifically are needed to accomplish this task? Note that PUIAS packages end with el6.x86_64.rpm as a RHEL 6 X86-64 package should. Yasha Karant On 06/20/2011 08:55 PM, Kevin Thomas wrote: I installed SL6 (i386) tonight in a virtual machine for testing and I decided to run a yum update and was surprised that it failed because it was having trouble contacting the repos. Below is a snippet of what I'm talking about. What repos are valid and why am I seeing this? Total download size: 132 M Is this ok [y/N]: y Downloading Packages: http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - "" Trying other mirror. http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - "" Trying other mirror. http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - "" Trying other mirror. ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - "" Trying other mirror. http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-autoipd-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - "" Trying other mirror. http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-autoipd-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - "" Trying other mirror. http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.0/i386/updates/security/avahi-autoipd-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 56 - "" Trying other mirror. (2/52): avahi-autoipd-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm | 33 kB 00:00 (3/52): avahi-glib-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm | 19 kB 00:00 (4/52): avahi-libs-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm | 53 kB 00:00 (5/52): avahi-ui-0.6.25-11.el6.i686.rpm | 30 kB 00:00 (6/52): dbus-1.2.24-4.el6_0.i686.rpm | 210 kB 00:00 (7/52): dbus-libs-1.2.24-4.el6_0.i686.rpm | 127 kB 00:00 (8/52): dbus-x11-1.2.24-4.el6_0.i686.rpm | 38 kB 00:00 (9/52): dhclient-4.1.1-12.P1.el6_0.4.i686.rpm | 334 kB 00:00 (10/52): firefox-3.6.17-1.el6_0.i686.rpm | 14 MB 00:08 (11/52): gdm-2.30.4-21.el6_0.1.i686.rpm | 1.0 MB 00:01 (12/52): gdm-libs-2.30.4-21.el6_0.1.i686.rpm | 93 kB 00:00 (13/52): gdm-plugin-fingerprint-2.30.4-21.el6_0.1.i686.r | 95 kB 00:00 (14/52): gdm-user-switch-applet-2.30.4-21.el6_0.1.i686.r | 104 kB 00:00 (15/52): glibc-2.12-1.7.el6_0.5.i686.rpm | 4.3 MB 00:03 (16/52): glibc-common-2.12-1.7.el6_0.5.i686.rpm | 14 MB 00:08 (17/52): kernel-2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.i
Re: which repos are good?
On 06/21/2011 09:35 AM, Connie Sieh wrote: Thank you for the prompt response. Presumably by "de-RPMing" (extracting the full contents) of a repo specification RPM, one could modify the RPM, along with a new name, such that the RPM would now point to a different repository (say, the Princeton one), assuming that all of the files internal to the RPM are ASCII text (e.g., XML, etc.) that can be edited with an ordinary text editor, or that can be downloaded from the site one wishes to repositorize (e.g., an authentication key file). Assuming the above to be true, what RPM command creates the repo RPM -- that is, from a set of modified/new files that are the internals of a repo RPM file, how does one recreate the repo RPM file? Is there a hierarchical mechanism for repos, say forcing a SL system to use the official SL repos first (and files therein) before using what purport to be the nominal equivalent at a secondary sub-SL repo? That is, if file/utility FOO.revrelN is available in a SL RPM and also in another repo RPM, use the SL rpm rather than the secondary repo rpm? If however, the new utility requires FOO.revrelN+k only available from the secondary, use the new one, preferably with a warning (so that the new RPM could be backed out if it is incompatible with the rest of the system, or loaded into a specific path environment only for the new application)? My general experience is that RPMs for the same base release (e.g., el6 for SL 6) built by reputable professionals seem to work -- I have installed kernel drivers this way when the driver would not build on my system but did in fact work with the kernel I was using. Yasha Karant On Tue, 21 Jun 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: Two questions on repositories: 1. How does one in fact install a repository on SL 6? On RHEL 5=20 (CentOS 5) there were RPMs that installed specific repositories, or=20 detailed instructions included access to GPG security authentication=20 keys. I have not even been able to find how to install the additional=20 repositories that came with SL 6 that I did not select during the actual=20 installation of the system from the bootable install DVD. Must I=20 "upgrade" from the bootable DVD? Are the RPMs for the SL repos on the DV= D? There are rpms which "provide" other repos. epel-release adobe-release-i386 elrepo-release rpmforge-release There is documentation on this at /usr/share/doc/sl-release-notes-6.0/index.html -Connie Sieh
How to modify desktop menus
I was attempting to modify the menus on the default Gnome desktop of SL 6. In RHEL 5, this feature was available by default through a GUI rather than editing files in the various menu configuration directories. The application that supplies a GUI to do this is not loaded by default into RHEL 6. Here is the relevant information: The package in question is called alacarte and may be installed either using the command line or the Add/Remove Software tool. The actual invocation of alacarte is: /usr/bin/python2.4 -OOt /usr/bin/alacarte or whatever is the current version of python on the system Yasha Karant
Re: {off topic} Firefox 5
Dr Aitchison, You are in the EU. In the EU, Microsoft has been found to be a monopoly and more than simple money damages (cost of doing business that merely is passed onto customers with a profit margin markup). As a result, in the EU Microsoft Windows may not be licensed for fee ("sold") with only MS Internet Explorer installed, but instead allowing the user/installer to have a choice of end-user browser application. Moreover, it is extremely unusual in my experience to find commercial (let alone government or non-profit) URLs from the EU that recommend or tacitly require MS Internet Explorer and will not display properly in other browsers -- this MS only dependence is still too common in the USA. However, in the USA, most desktop workstations either are under monopoly software or Mac OS X, with the monopoly having a large segment. Most MS Win users in the USA have and use MS Inet Exp because the USA does not force MS not to install MS Inet Exp by default, and are more or less fully captive to the monopoly (not even using OpenOffice). On my own machines, I have Firefox, its sibling Seamonkey, Konqueror, and Opera. Using Virtualbox running (currently) a MS Win XP Pro guest, I have MS Internet Explorer more or less current, and under Linux, I use Crossover (supported Wine) to run an obsolete MS Inet Exp (current, latest MS software does not always work with Wine). I keep these both for reference and to access MS only sites. It is reassuring to read that in the EU, the monopoly sanctions against MS are working to some extent, with actual market penetration of competitors. Yasha Karant On 06/22/2011 12:30 AM, Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote: On Tue, 21 Jun 2011, Phong Nguyen wrote: Mozilla has committed to a six-week rapid-release schedule starting with Firefox 5; Firefox 6 is schedule for release on August 16. More details here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease In particular As part of the faster cadence, FF5.0 automatically EOL's when FF6.0 is released with users getting silent updates. so somewhere around mid August FF5 will be retired and users assumed to be on FF6. They recognize that FF3 and FF4 users are entitled to much more notice of end of line. I see a substantial upswing in corporate use of Opera (konqueror too ?).
Re: 6.1 beta
Stephan, I am very confused about one statement you make: Systems should be reinstalled from scratch after the release though. From my experience with RHEL (and before that, RH rom RedHat when RedHat would distribute production binary distributions, not just enthusiast Fedora, as well as my experience with Debian), a minor release could be handled through the distribution update mechanism without requiring a re-install. In the case of RHEL, a major release (e.g., RHEL 5 to RHEL 6) could not be handled through the upgrade/update mechanism, but a minor one (e.g., RHEL 5.5 to RHEL 5.6) could be. I have done minor release updates many times without issue, although certain specifics must be redone with the release of a new kernel (e.g., rebuilding in the case of my personal workstation Virtualbox and the Nvidia drivers so that I can use Nvidia CUDA). Regards, Yasha Karant On 06/23/2011 08:43 AM, Stephan Wiesand wrote: Hello, On Jun 23, 2011, at 14:48 , Jolynn Schmidt wrote: I am interested in testing 6.1 Beta, but want to understand how hard it is to migrate to 6.1 final when it comes out. In general I like to have a local mirror of the repo and build from that. Is it straight forward to migrate my mirrors from the Beta repos to the final? AKA, do I just update the URL and re-sync? we're doing this every time: cp -al 6rolling 6.1; rsync ... The cp -al is very cheap and minimizes the cost of the rsync. Systems should be reinstalled from scratch after the release though. Regards, Stephan
Re: 6.1 beta
My apologies, you completely are correct. I misunderstood the question to apply to the production release (that already has happened at RH). I personally never test or develop a beta release of a system or system software on a production platform, but rather on a beta testing hardware platform dedicated for the purpose, and on these, a full (re-)install always is done. Yasha Karant On 06/23/2011 10:53 AM, Jos Vos wrote: On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 10:48:59AM -0700, Yasha Karant wrote: I am very confused about one statement you make: Systems should be reinstalled from scratch after the release though. Upgrading from a BETA to a FINAL release has never been supported for RHEL and I think this is meant here. So, this message was not about 6.0 to 6.1, but about 6.1beta to 6.1, AFAICS.
Re: Floppy drive support
I do not know how Fedora automatically mounts removable media, but I know that RHEL 5 would automount a MS FAT file system on a floppy drive. What files need to be configured in RHEL 6 (e.g., SL 6) for automounting of the internal floppy once the floppy device is created? A USB floppy appears to be automounted once media is installed. The Zip drive on my machine uses a IDE interface and IDE in RHEL 6 no longer is automounted as a hd but is mapped to a sd , but otherwise works fine and automounts. However, the internal floppy uses the floppy interface on the mother board, neither IDE nor SATA. Finally, for those times when a colleague gives me an Apple format floppy (not a MS format), generally from Mac OS prior to Mac OS X (e.g., not BSD based but based on the old proprietary Apple Mac OS), is there any additional file system for RHEL 6 that still will recognize an Apple format? There was for RHEL 5 and preceding releases. Thanks, Yasha Karant On 06/26/2011 09:46 PM, Todd And Margo Chester wrote: Hi All, In Fedora Code 15 and SL6, floppy drives are no longer automatically supported. Rats ... If I "#modprobe floppy", I get my /dev/fd0 back. I can then manually mount floppy drive disks. But I do not get the bazillions of /dev/fd* entries in /dev. Just the one /dev/fd0. And, my floppy drive does not show up in my Xfce 4.8 file manager, before or after the modprobe. Do I need to yum something? Did I miss a driver? I can manually mount disks. Many thanks, -T
LabPlot
Does anyone have a working copy and/or RPM of LabPlot for RHEL 6 (SL 6) x86-64? URL: http://labplot.sourceforge.net/ In the past, I have built this application from source. With SL 6, I get the following message from configure: checking for KDE... configure: error: in the prefix, you've chosen, are no KDE headers installed. This will fail. So, check this please and use another prefix! despite having loaded all the SL KDE development packages, having /usr/lib64/kde4 and /usr/include/kde4 present. Any assistance would be appreciated. Yasha Karant
Re: LabPlot
Not the fix: [root@jb344 yum.repos.d]# yum install qt3-devel Configuration file /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/fastestmirror.conf not found Unable to find configuration file for plugin fastestmirror Loaded plugins: changelog, downloadonly, kabi, protect-packages, refresh-packagekit, security Loading support for Red Hat kernel ABI Setting up Install Process Package qt3-devel-3.3.8b-29.el6.x86_64 already installed and latest version Nothing to do On 06/27/2011 12:28 PM, Chris Tooley wrote: On 11-06-27 12:10 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: Does anyone have a working copy and/or RPM of LabPlot for RHEL 6 (SL 6) x86-64? URL: http://labplot.sourceforge.net/ In the past, I have built this application from source. With SL 6, I get the following message from configure: checking for KDE... configure: error: in the prefix, you've chosen, are no KDE headers installed. This will fail. So, check this please and use another prefix! despite having loaded all the SL KDE development packages, having /usr/lib64/kde4 and /usr/include/kde4 present. Any assistance would be appreciated. Yasha Karant Try installing kde3 development files, it looks like that program was last edited in 2008, and may not understand kde4. I'm not a kde programmer so I don't know if kde4 is backwards compatible with kde3 or not. In SL6, that would be "yum install qt3-devel" (afaik) Hope that works for you! -Chris
SL 6 IA-32 and X86-64 polymorphism
I found on the web: Unlike Debian based distributions, Red Hat and distributions based on it organize lib directories in a way that lets you install a 32 bit package of .so files on an x86_64 system without any conflict with the 64 bit build of the same package, which may also be installed. AND: The Debian system dynamic library linker has been modified so that when a 32-bit application requests access to a library, Debian provides the 32-bit version of the library if it is available instead of the normal 64-bit version that the native applications require. This works if the ia32 packages which provide a sub-set of standard Debian libraries compiled in 32-bit mode have been installed. (NB: I am not using a Debian distro, but the SL 6 RHEL 6 distro. The quote is for clarity.) End quote. Unfortunately, this does not always seem to be the case in direct practical experience. Two questions: 1. How to install the SL6 release so that the System -> Administration -> Add/Remove Software will list both the 64 bit and 32 bit libraries? I have tried sl-release-6.0-6.0.1.i686.rpm and this does not cause these library choices to be displayed. I suspect this is because from the sl.repo file, the stanza name=Scientific Linux $releasever - $basearch always puts the actual base kernel ISA into the $basearch, so only X86_64 appears. I tried to make a separate repo file that would force the IA-32 libraries to be listed, and although I enabled the new repo using System -> Software Sources in the Add/Remove Software application, no such library RPMs appeared. 2. Many packages that must be built from source rely upon configure and for various reasons, paths such as /usr/lib , not /usr/lib64 that is the X86-64 path, appear. This is an issue with appropriate scope specific polymorphism. Will the following idea address this issue? Two unique paths for libraries and include files: foo32 and foo64 with foo being the appropriate path identifier. At the actual time when a decision as to which foo to use, set foo to either foo32 or foo64 but let the application (e.g., configure and the files needed for configure to "configure") only find foo . Thus /lib could be either /lib32 or /lib64 depending upon whether a 32 or 64 bit application was needed, etc. This is still much simpler than a chroot mechanism of keeping two identical operating systems and application environments on the same machine, one IA-32 and the other X86-64. Obviously, utilities such as ld (mentioned in a Debian context above) must be aware of the differences, as must compilers when creating appropriate object or executable file internal headers. Yasha Karant
Re: Free, open source, full-featured mail server solution for Scientific Linux 5.x
The issue of the intellectual property license is very real; I believe that a fundamental difference between the BSD license and many of the other "free" licenses that operate using Linux and/or the GPL is the strict ability to commercialize for profit a BSD licensed product. However, I do not think all of the utilities upon which the iRedMail product is based exclusively are BSD, and thus iRedMail may have some issues, even with a "public domain" implementation. Unfortunately, the GPG and related authentication methods are not fully resistant to compromise; a primary server or a mirror could be compromised with a false signature as well as checksums for the compromised system, one could face a man-in-the-middle compromise again substituting correct but compromised authentication systems for compromised data/source code/information, or other compromises are possible. A more trustworthy, but still not compromise proof method, is to distribute physical media by traceable courier -- this method works unless the attacker is extremely determined (e.g., the intelligence/disinformation/cyber-warfare services of a nation-state or equivalent) or the recipient is extremely naive (e.g., using media from an origin in a nation-state known to be lax about matters of fraud or media the origin of which cannot be traced). However, as pointed out by Kadel-Garcia, the iRedMail distribution authentication method is very prone to compromise, even from the source. Yasha Karant On 06/28/2011 06:24 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote: On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 3:08 AM, Zhang Huangbin wrote: On Jun 28, 2011, at 1:41 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote: On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 12:10 AM, Zhang Huangbin wrote: Dear Scientific Linux users, Just want to let you know, there's a free and open source mail server solution, iRedMail, works well on Scientific Linux 5.x, supports both i386 and x86_64. Web site: http://www.iredmail.org/ And Postfix. And Sendmail. And Exim. And Qmail. And look, it's available only as an installer which reaches out and downloads things from your website without actually mentioning what they are in advance. Wow, I could go on with the obvious issues from the website, but given that there's not even a GPG signature for the installation widget, this is actively unsafe. Sorry about unclear description. That is, perhaps, the *least* of the problems. Downloading unsigned binary packages from a third-party for a production system like email services is begging for trouble. All we need is your domain hijacked, and your clients will be installing rootkits without your or their awareness. iRedMail is just shell scripts, it will install and configure mail server related components automatically for you. That's why i call it a 'solution' instead of a 'software'. Source code of iRedMail is available in Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/iredmail/source/list And the *source* should be published Used major components: - Postfix (SMTP) - Dovecot (POP3, IMAP, Managesieve) - Apache (Web server) - MySQL (Storing application data and/or mail accounts) - OpenLDAP (Storing mail accounts) - Amavisd + SpamAssassin + ClamAV (anti-spam, anti-virus) - Roundcube (Webmail) - Awstats (Apache and Postfix log analyzer) Good. Now put that on your web page, please. Since RHEL doesn't provide all of them, iRedMail project has to provide some of them. As we mentioned in README[1] file under yum repository directory, most of them comes from third-party repositories, some were packed by iRedMail project, SRPMS are avalable: See above. It should really be in the web page, *long* before setting up yum repositories. Most packages come from: - Dag Wieers: http://packages.sw.be/ - EPEL: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/ - ATrpms.net: http://atrpms.net/ Thank you all :) Packages which contains 'ired' tag in package name are packed by iRedMail project, you can find source RPM here: http://iredmail.org/yum/srpms/ Which should be. wait for it.. on the web page. I also note that the packages there lack GPG signatures. Worse is your listing for 'License' under your SRPM's. "Public Domain and BSD" is not a license. It's a legal morass, begging for a client to step in it and lose a boot. Pick one! iRedMail will verify packages with command 'md5sum'[2] after downloaded to make sure they're truly downloaded from iredmail.org. Which is not the same as a GPG signature. That's merely a transmission verification, not a sign that the original package actually came from anyone you trust. The lack of a checksum for the installer tarball is, in particularly, hazardous, since a malicious person could replace the contents of *that*. Security takes attention. This lack of attention to basic security steps is frightening in a tool that expects to in
USB 3
From: http://rhel7.net/ RHEL 6.1 Released Posted on Thursday 19th May at 2:22pm UTC Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 has today been released by Red Hat. This is the first major update since the release of version six in November. In addition to many bugfixes this release includes full support for USB3 (previously it was a technology preview), support for hot-adding of memory and CPUs on Nehalem-EX and many driver updates. More information is available in the press release and release notes. To download visit RHN. End quote. Does X86-64 SL 6 support USB 3? If not out of the box, can this be added and if so, how (URL with appropriate documents and lists of any needed RPMs)? I have USB 3 on the hardware, but an automatic generation of /dev/sdX only appears when I use USB 2, despite having a USB 3 interface on the external USB drive connected to the machine. Yasha Karant
How to use a local SL 6 printer with VirtualBox MS Win XP Pro
Is anyone using Virtualbox 4 on a SL 6 x86-64 host running a MS Win XP Pro guest (presumably IA-32)? If so, has anyone successfully gotten MS Win to recognize a local printer attached (and working under CUPS) to the SL 6 host to print to it? I am trying to get Samba running on SL 6 to do this; it worked fine under VMware Workstation on RHEL 5 (CentOS 5). I have installed two virtual NICs under VirtualBox, one configured NAT, the other host only adapter, and have checked for the IPv4 addresses assigned to both the SL 6 side (vboxnet0) as well as on the MS Win side (via ipconfig under the command prompt window). I can ping from the MS Win side to both the MS Win host only IP address and to the SL 6 host only IP address, and can ping from the SL 6 side to the SL 6 host only address but not the MS Win host only address. Firefox, etc., seems to work under the MS Win guest, making me believe that I have Internet connectivity. I cannot find xsmbrowser for SL 6. I do have webmin and swat installed, and have tested that there is a local SMB server using konqueror to smb: . I can supply the smb.conf file I that will help, or would appreciate a working sample from anyone who has printer working as I am attempting to do. Thanks, Yasha Karant
Re: How to use a local SL 6 printer with VirtualBox MS Win XP Pro
Although I have access to true network printing resources, for the local printer attached to my local workstation, I do *NOT* want to make my printer accessible over the physical LAN to anyone. I also do not in general need the MS Win XP guest to print to our true network printing resource that is limited to specialized work my ordinary black toner laser printer cannot properly handle. However, if I can use the internal vboxnet0 "interface" and IP address for printing, this scheme will work, and as well as Samba (presumably I can deactivate Samba in this case as Virtualbox shared folders provide access to the file system of the Linux host). What specifics cover exporting the local printer, still accessible as as local printer over a physical printer connection (presently, a USB port), over the logical vboxnet0 interface? Does the Virtualbox "machine" then connect to the IP address of vboxnet0 displayed by the Linux host command ifconfig -a ? A URL with the specifics will suffice. On 06/29/2011 03:51 PM, JR van Rensburg wrote: It's easier to set up a tcp/ip printer to the cups server. Add a network printer> http printer in winXP for the correct ipaddress and use port 631 (for cups print server). On Wed, 2011-06-29 at 15:37 -0700, Yasha Karant wrote: Is anyone using Virtualbox 4 on a SL 6 x86-64 host running a MS Win XP Pro guest (presumably IA-32)? If so, has anyone successfully gotten MS Win to recognize a local printer attached (and working under CUPS) to the SL 6 host to print to it? I am trying to get Samba running on SL 6 to do this; it worked fine under VMware Workstation on RHEL 5 (CentOS 5). I have installed two virtual NICs under VirtualBox, one configured NAT, the other host only adapter, and have checked for the IPv4 addresses assigned to both the SL 6 side (vboxnet0) as well as on the MS Win side (via ipconfig under the command prompt window). I can ping from the MS Win side to both the MS Win host only IP address and to the SL 6 host only IP address, and can ping from the SL 6 side to the SL 6 host only address but not the MS Win host only address.
Any success with USB 3?
Perhaps my previous query was unclear. Has anyone been successful with the use of USB 3 with SL 6, particularly for USB 3 access to disk drives? Yasha Karant
Re: How to use a local SL 6 printer with VirtualBox MS Win XP Pro
Pursuant to the post below: What is the list etiquette concerning interspersed replies (post 1 paragraph A, post 2 reply after A, post 1 paragraph B, post 2 reply after B, etc., with recursive iteration)? Such an approach often provides real information indexing issues with threaded lists. I use IA-32 Linux Thunderbird current (3.1.11); Tbird does not show this to me, merely the current Subject and the current To fields. Evidently using an existing email as a template in Tbird does not change all of the SMTP headers in an appropriate fashion. Note that I install Tbird, Firefox, Opera, and Seamonkey from the Mozilla site, not from any distro specific port -- although this may introduce incompatible bug situations (rare), I get the most current security fixes before a distro maintainer usually can respond. I will put questions first if this is the etiquette of the Scilinux list, although such an approach does not make for a consistent or logical progression of a narrative (e.g., motivation for a question). Thanks, Yasha Karant On 06/30/2011 05:48 AM, Dan M. wrote: On Wednesday 29 June 2011 18:37:18 Yasha Karant wrote: Is anyone using Virtualbox 4 on a SL 6 x86-64 host running a MS Win XP Pro guest (presumably IA-32)? Thanks, Yasha Karant I wasn't going to nitpick but as this is the second time in as many days I have noticed it, can you please start a new thread(Subject) with your questions? I don't know what is happening, but my guess is you are replying to a thread and just changing the subject. Examples: In Kmail this subject is being threaded under the original "ntp-perl" subject and another(Your USB3 question) is in the "Virtualization question" subject. Thanks Dan
Re: How to use a local SL 6 printer with VirtualBox MS Win XP Pro
Allowing SMB shares on VMWare workstation was secure, as the "LAN" being used entirely was logical internal to the machine and environment; no real external LAN access was allowed as the physical NIC(s) on the machine were never exposed nor directly communicating with the logical internal network. I was hoping to able to do the same thing with VirtualBox. However, I cannot find any equivalent to xsmbrowser for either Linux or MS Win XP Pro so that I can find the "real" share, etc., name fields that MS Win finds. Yasha Karant On 06/30/2011 01:03 AM, JR van Rensburg wrote: On Wed, 2011-06-29 at 20:47 -0700, Yasha Karant wrote: Although I have access to true network printing resources, for the local printer attached to my local workstation, I do *NOT* want to make my printer accessible over the physical LAN to anyone. I also do not in general need the MS Win XP guest to print to our true network printing resource that is limited to specialized work my ordinary black toner laser printer cannot properly handle. However, if I can use the internal vboxnet0 "interface" and IP address for printing, this scheme will work, and as well as Samba (presumably I can deactivate Samba in this case as Virtualbox shared folders provide access to the file system of the Linux host). I would have thought that opening only port 631 for a specific address on the main network would be more secure than allowing smb shares. You can limit access to the printer in the cups web interface. What specifics cover exporting the local printer, still accessible as as local printer over a physical printer connection (presently, a USB port), over the logical vboxnet0 interface? Does the Virtualbox "machine" then connect to the IP address of vboxnet0 displayed by the Linux host command ifconfig -a ? A URL with the specifics will suffice. If you try setting up a new printer in cups, it will give you examples of address setups. As far as the ipaddress goes, it will depend on the routing you have set up for the guest. The ipaddress of the printer needs to be the same address you have set for the server machine that has the printer. I haven't tried it in a virtual environment, but I should imagine that you could set up the cups print to use an ipaddress that is visible to the guest. The vbox guest address should be visible to the SL6 host machine if you have set the virtual networks correctly.
Re: Any success with USB 3?
How do I tell? The "disk" is not a dedicated external disk any more as these were getting too expensive. Rather, it is a Thermaltake BlacXDuet 5G Dual HDD docking station that accepts two SATA drives, 2.5 in and 3.5 in in all capacities. URL: http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?C=1346&ID=2047 I append the output from lshw with what I believe to be irrelevant sections removed. As to the kernel, uname -a reports: 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Note that this motherboard has a number of USB ports, only one of which is USB 3 . When I plugged-in the USB 3 cable from the dock, the dock recognized USB 3 (there is a blue SUPERSPEED text that illuminates), but the drive did not appear as /dev/sde . However, this did automatically happen for a USB 2 port (please see the lshw report below). As the bulk drive had only the drive low-level format, but no partitions or file systems per so, I am using dd to copy what I need . Thanks, Yasha Karant BTW: if this thread is "hijacked", my apologies. Evidently Thunderbird does not allow one to use a simple copy mechanism and subsequent clean-up without extensions of which I am unaware, unlike much older straight text (curses) based applications such as elm or mutt. At my university, the primary internal email services are not generally used for threaded use and thus the matter was never brought to my attention. lshw reports: description: Motherboard product: 870A-G55 (MS-7599) vendor: MSI [big snip] *-usb:0 description: USB Controller product: uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller vendor: NEC Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@:02:00.0 version: 03 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi msix pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=xhci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:18 memory:f5efa000-f5efbfff *-usbhost product: xHCI Host Controller vendor: Linux 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 xhci_hcd physical id: 1 bus info: usb@8 logical name: usb8 version: 2.06 capabilities: usb-3.00 configuration: driver=hub slots=4 speed=5000Mbit/s [big snip] *-usb:5 description: USB Controller product: SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller vendor: ATI Technologies Inc physical id: 13.2 bus info: pci@:00:13.2 version: 00 width: 32 bits clock: 66MHz capabilities: pm debug ehci bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=ehci_hcd latency=64 resources: irq:19 memory:f5cfec00-f5cfecff *-usbhost product: EHCI Host Controller vendor: Linux 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 ehci_hcd physical id: 1 bus info: usb@2 logical name: usb2 version: 2.06 capabilities: usb-2.00 configuration: driver=hub slots=6 speed=480Mbit/s *-usb description: Mass storage device product: USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge vendor: JMicron physical id: 4 bus info: usb@2:4 logical name: scsi7 version: 1.00 serial: 2469CB506135 capabilities: usb-2.10 scsi emulated scsi-host configuration: driver=usb-storage maxpower=2mA speed=480Mbit/ *-disk description: SCSI Disk physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@7:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/sde size: 931GiB (1TB) On 06/30/2011 09:02 AM, Connie Sieh wrote: On Thu, 30 Jun 2011, Troy Dawson wrote: On 06/29/2011 10:59 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: Perhaps my previous query was unclear. Has anyone been successful with the use of USB 3 with SL 6, particularly for USB 3 access to disk drives? Yasha Karant It was clear, but if nobody has any USB3 motherboards and UBS3 What USB 3 chipset are you using and what usb 3 chipset does the "disk" have? -Connie Sieh equipment, it's really hard to tell you. Troy
Thunderbird and threaded listserver email (was: Re: How to use a local SL 6 printer with VirtualBox MS Win XP Pro)
Tbird integrates Lightning that supports Google calendar. I do not run MS Win and thus have no proper access to MS Win (or MS Win plus Mac OS X) binary only clients often rammed down our throats at my institution unless I use VirtualBox to run a MS Win guest, a practice I do only in desperation (e.g., when a co-author insists on using MS Office products and OpenOffice does not fully respect every formatting detail of the MS format). I have configured SL 6 with appropriate libraries, etc., to fully execute IA-32 Linux Tbird including Lightning -- some of the Tbird options/add-ons evidently do not work properly in the X86-64 version. I assume that by modifying the subject line to more accurately reflect the current topic (not a VirtualBox accessible printer), the threaded email clients will still not reflect the correct thread information. Is there a (an easy) way to fix this? On 06/30/2011 09:13 AM, Beartooth Comcast wrote: On Thu, 30 Jun 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: What is the list etiquette concerning interspersed replies (post 1 paragraph A, post 2 reply after A, post 1 paragraph B, post 2 reply after B, etc., with recursive iteration)? Such an approach often provides real information indexing issues with threaded lists. I use IA-32 Linux Thunderbird current (3.1.11); [] How committed are you to Tbird? I've been unable to find an rpm for Pan that doesn't hit dependency hell with SL; if there is one, you might want to give it a try instead.
Top posting versus bottom posting (was: Re: How to use a local SL 6 printer with VirtualBox MS Win XP Pro)
I respectfully disagree -- please jump to the bottom per your comment. On 06/30/2011 10:02 AM, Alan Bartlett wrote: On 30 June 2011 17:43, Dan M. wrote: On Thursday 30 June 2011 12:30:08 Alexander Hunt wrote: Hi, I'm not seeing any issue with threading here; all of the subject lines in Yashas emails are relevant to the topic in the body. Just for info I use Thunderbird as well, but the sl-security version. Regards to all, Alex Here is the offending header portion: To: "scientific-linux-us...@fnal.gov" Subject: How to use a local SL 6 printer with VirtualBox MS Win XP Pro References: <545430358.74671.1309378877083.javamail.r...@linzimmb05o.imo.intelink.gov> <4e0b96cb.3000...@fnal.gov><4e0b9bd8.7040...@uvic.ca> --> In-reply-to:<4e0b9bd8.7040...@uvic.ca> <--- Sender: owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov Precedence: list It's just good practice to create a new email and not reply wiping the information out, as it not all email clients work in the same manner. Much like sending HTML messages to a listserv. /Dan All, Whilst nits are being picked out, will you please also desist from "top posting". Trim the post to which you are replying and then "bottom post". Alan. Under the conditions that "snipping" allows one to still get the full context of an email history exchange -- often with information/comments interspersed within the body of various preceding email posts -- then it is justified. Otherwise, I find that I cannot reconstruct the detailed issues. If there is no interspersed emails, then threading will (more or less) allow your suggestion to work. As for top or bottom posts, I and many others with whom I have discussed this point over a number of years prefer top posting so that one can immediately get to the new information, rather than going to the bottom of a perhaps otherwise unintelligible set of exchanges. The issue is akin to that of reverse or forward chronology in a Curriculum Vitae. Yasha
Re: Top posting versus bottom posting
On 06/30/2011 01:03 PM, Robert P. J. Day wrote: On Thu, 30 Jun 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: As for top or bottom posts, I and many others with whom I have discussed this point over a number of years prefer top posting so that one can immediately get to the new information, ... with all due respect, grow the f**k up. top vs bottom posting has been a settled issue for *years*, and anyone who still thinks that their personal preferences have any value whatsoever needs to go back to AOL, and leave technical mailing lists to the grownups. rday It is not duly respectful to anyone to use language such as you have in posted, professional discourse, irrespective of the comments or opinion of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. I was discussing this very matter with a colleague but half an hour ago; he/she serves as an editor on a well respected international academic journal. Her/his opinion is that top posting is the only appropriate method. Thus, there are differences of opinion. May we all settle this once and for all if it is insisted that based on one's response ordering, threading, etc., work will be put into the dustbin (/dev/null, spam, trash, whatever)? May the "owner/s" of this list put forward official standards of etiquette as well as clarity about the matter of threading, and the correct method(s) so that threading will be respected? Yasha Karant
Re: Java SE 6 for SL6?
I have installed the jre6u24 with no issue; it may be a 32 bit version so that it works with 32 bit Firefox 5. Yasha Karant On 07/01/2011 08:52 AM, Kenneth Hoste wrote: Hello, I was looking into installing a Java JDK 1.6.0 on our Scientific Linux 6 systems, and found it to fail. We need to install Java under a non-default path, e.g. /path/to/java, and therefore extract the RPM found on the Oracle website from the RPM binary installer using: ./jdk-6u26-linux-x64-rpm.bin -x We then install the RPM obtained this way as follows: rpm --initdb --dbpath /rpm --root /path/to/java rpm -i --dbpath /rpm --root /path/to/java --relocate /=/path/to/java --nopre --nopost --nodeps jdk-6u26-linux-amd64.rpm The last command is failing with: error: Unable to change root directory: Operation not permitted This way of installing the Java JDK has worked fine in our previous SL5 setup. I should add that RHEL6 or SL6 is not listed as supported on the Oracle website, see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/system-configurations-135212.html . Has anyone been able to install an Oracle Java JDK 6 RPM on SL6 (or RHEL6)? greetings, Kenneth kenneth.ho...@ugent.be
Re: Java SE 6 for SL6?
To the best of my recollection, I did a su (I typically do not use sudo) in a terminal screen, and then rpm -Uhv foo.rpm . Yasha Karant On 07/01/2011 09:16 AM, Kenneth Hoste wrote: On 07/01/2011 06:09 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: I have installed the jre6u24 with no issue; it may be a 32 bit version so that it works with 32 bit Firefox 5. Did you install it in a similar way, i.e. in a non-default path after extracting the RPM from the binary installer? K. Yasha Karant On 07/01/2011 08:52 AM, Kenneth Hoste wrote: Hello, I was looking into installing a Java JDK 1.6.0 on our Scientific Linux 6 systems, and found it to fail. We need to install Java under a non-default path, e.g. /path/to/java, and therefore extract the RPM found on the Oracle website from the RPM binary installer using: ./jdk-6u26-linux-x64-rpm.bin -x We then install the RPM obtained this way as follows: rpm --initdb --dbpath /rpm --root /path/to/java rpm -i --dbpath /rpm --root /path/to/java --relocate /=/path/to/java --nopre --nopost --nodeps jdk-6u26-linux-amd64.rpm The last command is failing with: error: Unable to change root directory: Operation not permitted This way of installing the Java JDK has worked fine in our previous SL5 setup. I should add that RHEL6 or SL6 is not listed as supported on the Oracle website, see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/system-configurations-135212.html . Has anyone been able to install an Oracle Java JDK 6 RPM on SL6 (or RHEL6)? greetings, Kenneth kenneth.ho...@ugent.be
Re: LabPlot
On 07/01/2011 11:04 AM, n...@li.nux.ro wrote: Yasha Karant writes: Does anyone have a working copy and/or RPM of LabPlot for RHEL 6 (SL 6) x86-64? URL: http://labplot.sourceforge.net/ In the past, I have built this application from source. With SL 6, I get the following message from configure: checking for KDE... configure: error: in the prefix, you've chosen, are no KDE headers installed. This will fail. So, check this please and use another prefix! despite having loaded all the SL KDE development packages, having /usr/lib64/kde4 and /usr/include/kde4 present. Any assistance would be appreciated. Yasha Karant Here's one way of doing it without compiling anything (my preferred way :> ) http://www.nux.ro/archive/2011/07/Install_LabPlot_on_EL6.html The URL states: Install LabPlot on EL6 1st July 2011 Installing LabPlot on EL6 can be a bit daunting as compiling from source can be problematic due to odd dependency issues, however the packages from Fedora 14 install and work just fine, provided you have EPEL enabled: mkdir /tmp/labplot; cd /tmp/labplot wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/14/Everything/x86_64/os/Packages/LabPlot-1.6.0.2-8.fc12.x86_64.rpm http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/14/Everything/x86_64/os/Packages/LabPlot-doc-1.6.0.2-8.fc12.x86_64.rpm yum localinstall --nogpgcheck ./LabPlot-* And voila! As I said this operation requires the EPEL repo enabled for some packages (electronics-menu and liborigin) so make sure your system has it. End URL. Who has used the EPEL repo? Does this repository create conflicts (e.g., installing incompatible or very "buggy" RPMs) with RHEL 6 (e.g., SL6)? Note that I have successfully moved a recent Lab Plot that I built on RHEL 5.5 IA-32 (CentOS 5.5) that ran under RHEL 5.6, and runs under RHEL6 X86-64 provided I copy all of the needed IA-32 libraries into the correct directories. The IA-32 libraries in question do not seem to cause any instabilities with X86-64 SL 6. Yasha Karant
Re: Enough with the frivolous emails
On 07/01/2011 01:03 PM, John H. Outlan CPA wrote: Sent from T-Mobile G2, please excuse any typos On Jul 1, 2011 10:03 AM, "Steven Haigh" mailto:net...@crc.id.au>> wrote: > > On 1/07/2011 11:51 PM, Troy Dawson wrote: >> >> I know that talking about some of these things makes it feel more like a >> community, but that is not what this mailling list is for. > > > I would also suggest that people wanting to continue the whole posting style debate or just general things not specifically related to SL do so on the unofficial forums. > > Here is a good start: > http://scientificlinuxforum.org/index.php?showforum=7 > > -- > Steven Haigh > > Email: net...@crc.id.au <mailto:net...@crc.id.au> > Web: http://www.crc.id.au > Phone: (03) 9001 6090 - 0412 935 897 > Fax: (03) 8338 0299 That's fine. But any rudeness will result in a ban. That's why we are there in the first place. Just kill 'em with kindness ;) I too agree and was rather surprised to find this much discourse on the subject on a professional list, unless there is a posted protocol/etiquette guideline from the list owner. I also was surprised to see the use of language not maintaining decorum on a professional list. One can disagree using polite professional language. I apologize for touching off a "hornets' nest", but I personally prefer to top post, as do many colleagues with whom I have discussed the matter. Yasha Karant
MUA specifics
Which mail user agents (MUA, written as mua by another poster) properly respect the threading that some readers of the SL list require upon using an existing email message as an ad hoc form for posting to the list? This is not a frivolous question -- for example, is this email causing a "hijacked thread" or "Change topic or new post..."? If not, I have found a method that works under Linux Thunderbird 3 current without a template. If there is a means to post screenshots, I can demonstrate. If it is not working, back to further experimentation. Yasha Karant
USB 3 external hard drive not present
I have verified that the USB 3 kernel module is loaded and that USB 3 is displayed by lshw . When I plug a USB 3 enable external drive into the USB 3 port, the drive acknowledges the presences of USB 3 (for this unit, the text SUPERSPEED illuminates). However, there is no created USB /dev/sde . When I plug the same external drive into a USB 2 port, the USB 3 acknowledgement is not displayed, but there is a created USB /dev/sde. Here are the relevant sections of the output from lshw: Comment: USB 3 present, module xhci_hcd appears *-usb description: USB Controller product: uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller vendor: NEC Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@:02:00.0 version: 03 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi msix pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=xhci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:18 memory:f5efa000-f5efbfff *-usbhost product: xHCI Host Controller vendor: Linux 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 xhci_hcd physical id: 1 bus info: usb@8 logical name: usb8 version: 2.06 capabilities: usb-3.00 configuration: driver=hub slots=4 speed=5000Mbit/s Comment: /dev/sde creation under USB 2 *-usb:5 description: USB Controller product: SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller vendor: ATI Technologies Inc physical id: 13.2 bus info: pci@:00:13.2 version: 00 width: 32 bits clock: 66MHz capabilities: pm debug ehci bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=ehci_hcd latency=64 resources: irq:19 memory:f5cfec00-f5cfecff *-usbhost product: EHCI Host Controller vendor: Linux 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 ehci_hcd physical id: 1 bus info: usb@2 logical name: usb2 version: 2.06 capabilities: usb-2.00 configuration: driver=hub slots=6 speed=480Mbit/s *-usb description: Mass storage device product: USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge vendor: JMicron physical id: 4 bus info: usb@2:4 logical name: scsi8 version: 1.00 serial: 2469CB506135 capabilities: usb-2.10 scsi emulated scsi-host configuration: driver=usb-storage maxpower=2mA speed=480Mbit/s *-disk description: SCSI Disk physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@8:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/sde size: 931GiB (1TB) capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos configuration: signature=706a2c16 End lshw output. What else must I do so that the xhci_ehd driver does the same as the ehci_ehd driver, and activates an appropriate use of the usb-storage driver? Yasha Karant
USB 3 external hard drive not present [2]
On 07/05/2011 10:24 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: I have verified that the USB 3 kernel module is loaded and that USB 3 is displayed by lshw . When I plug a USB 3 enable external drive into the USB 3 port, the drive acknowledges the presences of USB 3 (for this unit, the text SUPERSPEED illuminates). However, there is no created USB /dev/sde . When I plug the same external drive into a USB 2 port, the USB 3 acknowledgement is not displayed, but there is a created USB /dev/sde. Here are the relevant sections of the output from lshw: Comment: USB 3 present, module xhci_hcd appears *-usb description: USB Controller product: uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller vendor: NEC Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@:02:00.0 version: 03 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi msix pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=xhci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:18 memory:f5efa000-f5efbfff *-usbhost product: xHCI Host Controller vendor: Linux 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 xhci_hcd physical id: 1 bus info: usb@8 logical name: usb8 version: 2.06 capabilities: usb-3.00 configuration: driver=hub slots=4 speed=5000Mbit/s Comment: /dev/sde creation under USB 2 *-usb:5 description: USB Controller product: SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller vendor: ATI Technologies Inc physical id: 13.2 bus info: pci@:00:13.2 version: 00 width: 32 bits clock: 66MHz capabilities: pm debug ehci bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=ehci_hcd latency=64 resources: irq:19 memory:f5cfec00-f5cfecff *-usbhost product: EHCI Host Controller vendor: Linux 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 ehci_hcd physical id: 1 bus info: usb@2 logical name: usb2 version: 2.06 capabilities: usb-2.00 configuration: driver=hub slots=6 speed=480Mbit/s *-usb description: Mass storage device product: USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge vendor: JMicron physical id: 4 bus info: usb@2:4 logical name: scsi8 version: 1.00 serial: 2469CB506135 capabilities: usb-2.10 scsi emulated scsi-host configuration: driver=usb-storage maxpower=2mA speed=480Mbit/s *-disk description: SCSI Disk physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@8:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/sde size: 931GiB (1TB) capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos configuration: signature=706a2c16 End lshw output. What else must I do so that the xhci_ehd driver does the same as the ehci_ehd driver, and activates an appropriate use of the usb-storage driver? Yasha Karant In addition to the above information, dmesg reports: xhci_hcd :02:00.0: Timeout while waiting for stop endpoint command xhci_hcd :02:00.0: Timeout while waiting for a slot Note that the USB 3 device is recognized on a USB 2 port according to dmesg: usb 2-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3 usb 2-4: New USB device found, idVendor=152d, idProduct=0551 usb 2-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=5 usb 2-4: Product: USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge usb 2-4: Manufacturer: JMicron usb 2-4: SerialNumber: 2469CB506135 usb 2-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices usb-storage: device found at 3 usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage USB Mass Storage support registered. usb-storage: device scan complete scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access SAMSUNG HD103SJ PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 CCS sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0 I have searched for this issue on the web, and only found a comment from an Ubuntu forum that suggested posting a bug against the relevant kernel . Does anyone have experience with this problem and/or a suggested fix? Is anyone successfully automounting an USB 3 external hard drive? This machine has kernel 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 . Yasha Karant
swf background image
I downloaded a stereoscopic 3D viewer for linux, SIV. This came from URL http://www.mygnu.de/index.php/2009/04/siv-10-released/ but unfortunately something added tagcloud.swf from the above URL to both Firefox and Thunderbird as permanent background images. I do not know if this is a RHEL 6 issue, a Mozilla issue, etc. Does anyone know how to get rid of this thing? I probably can delete the tab with the URL on it in Firefox and then log out / log in to restart my Xsession (ctrl-alt-backspace does not seem to work in RHEL 6 to do this, but this may be an issue with the Nvidia proprietary driver) to get rid of this obnoxious feature. Is there another means? Firefox 5 current, Thunderbird 3 current, from mozilla, not from a Linux repository. Yasha Karant
Re: Java SE 6 for SL6?
On 07/01/2011 10:13 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: To the best of my recollection, I did a su (I typically do not use sudo) in a terminal screen, and then rpm -Uhv foo.rpm . Yasha Karant On 07/01/2011 09:16 AM, Kenneth Hoste wrote: On 07/01/2011 06:09 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: I have installed the jre6u24 with no issue; it may be a 32 bit version so that it works with 32 bit Firefox 5. Did you install it in a similar way, i.e. in a non-default path after extracting the RPM from the binary installer? K. Yasha Karant On 07/01/2011 08:52 AM, Kenneth Hoste wrote: Hello, I was looking into installing a Java JDK 1.6.0 on our Scientific Linux 6 systems, and found it to fail. We need to install Java under a non-default path, e.g. /path/to/java, and therefore extract the RPM found on the Oracle website from the RPM binary installer using: ./jdk-6u26-linux-x64-rpm.bin -x We then install the RPM obtained this way as follows: rpm --initdb --dbpath /rpm --root /path/to/java rpm -i --dbpath /rpm --root /path/to/java --relocate /=/path/to/java --nopre --nopost --nodeps jdk-6u26-linux-amd64.rpm The last command is failing with: error: Unable to change root directory: Operation not permitted This way of installing the Java JDK has worked fine in our previous SL5 setup. I should add that RHEL6 or SL6 is not listed as supported on the Oracle website, see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/system-configurations-135212.html . Has anyone been able to install an Oracle Java JDK 6 RPM on SL6 (or RHEL6)? greetings, Kenneth kenneth.ho...@ugent.be For SL 6 X86-64, rpm -qa reports: jdk-1.6.0_26-fcs.i586 From http://javatester.org/version.html Java Version 1.6.0_26 from Sun Microsystems Inc. for Firefox 5 current, Linux IA-32 version from firefox-5.0.tar.bz2 Note that I use the IA-32 version, not the X86-64 version, of Firefox and Thunderbird. Yasha Karant
USB 3 external disk works under OpenSUSE current
I have been attempting to get a USB 3 external disk to work under X86-64 SL 6 . lsusb reports a USB 3 port. However, when the drive is inserted into the USB 3 port, lsusb simply hangs and the drive does not appear nor mount. On hardware using the same motherboard and processor as my workstation, we also have installed OpenSUSE current (not Enterprise SUSE that is the competitor to RHEL, e.g., SL). The USB 3 external disk works and is seen as USB 3. Here is a copy of the relevant typescript: Script started on Wed 06 Jul 2011 04:19:19 PM PDT ^[]2;admin@ahprc1:~^G^[]1;ahprc1^Gadmin@ahprc1:~> lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 002: ID 045e:00cb Microsoft Corp. Basic Optical Mouse v2.0 Bus 004 Device 002: ID 045e:00dd Microsoft Corp. Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 V1.0 Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 008 Device 002: ID 152d:0551 JMicron Technology Corp. / JMicron USA Technology Corp. ^[]2;admin@ahprc1:~^G^[]1;ahprc1^Gadmin@ahprc1:~> uname -a Linux ahprc1 2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2011-02-21 10:34:10 +0100 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux ^[]2;admin@ahprc1:~^G^[]1;ahprc1^Gadmin@ahprc1:~> mount devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=4056988k,nr_inodes=1014247,mode=755) tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,relatime) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000) /dev/sda5 on / type ext2 (rw,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,acl) proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime) debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime) /dev/sda7 on /home type ext2 (rw,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,acl) securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,relatime) fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime) gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/admin/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=100) /dev/sdb7 on /media/_usr_local type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb6 on /media/_vmware type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb1 on /media/9aaab62a-50eb-4a36-a95c-02ed44d27881 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb8 on /media/_opt1 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb12 on /media/88b09855-c009-4cbd-b055-5bda1ec6d432 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb3 on /media/_home1 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb11 on /media/_usr11 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb9 on /media/68cc9e91-1115-4eeb-8e55-bf0f22f6ac26 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb5 on /media/167ee03e-960b-4c7e-8aba-b62f49d13834 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb2 on /media/848f55af-9e8c-4f46-bf62-5fd2eb577eb6 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) ^[]2;admin@ahprc1:~^G^[]1;ahprc1^Gadmin@ahprc1:~> exit exit Script done on Wed 06 Jul 2011 04:20:20 PM PDT Although the account is called "admin", admin is just a regular user on the machine upon which the output was generated; I did not need to use any root privileges. A significant difference between the two machines is the kernel: 2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop x86_64 for OpenSUSE and 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 for SL 6 2.6.37 seems to work, 2.6.32 does not . Can I install a 2.6.37 x86_64 kernel on SL 6? If it does not boot, will grub during boot give me the usual option of selecting the kernel to boot and boot the existing 2.6.32 kernel? Yasha Karant
Re: USB 3 external disk works under OpenSUSE current
On 07/06/2011 10:58 AM, Jimmy Cullen wrote: Before changing kernels, I would run an openSUSE liveCD to test if it sees the USB3 device. Its a quick and simple way to rule out a hardware problem. Jimmy On 6 July 2011 18:34, Yasha Karant wrote: I have been attempting to get a USB 3 external disk to work under X86-64 SL 6 . lsusb reports a USB 3 port. However, when the drive is inserted into the USB 3 port, lsusb simply hangs and the drive does not appear nor mount. On hardware using the same motherboard and processor as my workstation, we also have installed OpenSUSE current (not Enterprise SUSE that is the competitor to RHEL, e.g., SL). The USB 3 external disk works and is seen as USB 3. Here is a copy of the relevant typescript: Script started on Wed 06 Jul 2011 04:19:19 PM PDT ^[]2;admin@ahprc1:~^G^[]1;ahprc1^Gadmin@ahprc1:~> lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 002: ID 045e:00cb Microsoft Corp. Basic Optical Mouse v2.0 Bus 004 Device 002: ID 045e:00dd Microsoft Corp. Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 V1.0 Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 008 Device 002: ID 152d:0551 JMicron Technology Corp. / JMicron USA Technology Corp. ^[]2;admin@ahprc1:~^G^[]1;ahprc1^Gadmin@ahprc1:~> uname -a Linux ahprc1 2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2011-02-21 10:34:10 +0100 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux ^[]2;admin@ahprc1:~^G^[]1;ahprc1^Gadmin@ahprc1:~> mount devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=4056988k,nr_inodes=1014247,mode=755) tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,relatime) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000) /dev/sda5 on / type ext2 (rw,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,acl) proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime) debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime) /dev/sda7 on /home type ext2 (rw,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,acl) securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,relatime) fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime) gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/admin/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=100) /dev/sdb7 on /media/_usr_local type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb6 on /media/_vmware type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb1 on /media/9aaab62a-50eb-4a36-a95c-02ed44d27881 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb8 on /media/_opt1 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb12 on /media/88b09855-c009-4cbd-b055-5bda1ec6d432 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb3 on /media/_home1 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb11 on /media/_usr11 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb9 on /media/68cc9e91-1115-4eeb-8e55-bf0f22f6ac26 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb5 on /media/167ee03e-960b-4c7e-8aba-b62f49d13834 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sdb2 on /media/848f55af-9e8c-4f46-bf62-5fd2eb577eb6 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,uhelper=udisks) ^[]2;admin@ahprc1:~^G^[]1;ahprc1^Gadmin@ahprc1:~> exit exit Script done on Wed 06 Jul 2011 04:20:20 PM PDT Although the account is called "admin", admin is just a regular user on the machine upon which the output was generated; I did not need to use any root privileges. A significant difference between the two machines is the kernel: 2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop x86_64 for OpenSUSE and 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 for SL 6 2.6.37 seems to work, 2.6.32 does not . Can I install a 2.6.37 x86_64 kernel on SL 6? If it does not boot, will grub during boot give me the usual option of selecting the kernel to boot and boot the existing 2.6.32 kernel? Yasha Karant I did a different test, and have isolated the problem to be a kernel bug. Details: We have a number of workstations that have identical motherboards, CPUs, etc. All are running X86-64 implementations, including the kernel. On one of these we are running OpenSUSE as I documented earlier, and this works fine. On mine, I am running the most recent SL 6 production kernel. On another, because we have not done an update, we are running an earlier SL 6 production kernel, 2.6.32-71.29.1.el6.x86_64, and the USB 3 device is at least recognized. To make this work with this kernel and our configuration, I needed to do a modprobe xhci_hcd
A suggestion for a MUA extension
I apologize if this appears off the direct SL topic; however, please bear with me. In a postscript comment and question to a recent email, as well as from responses to a previous discourse ("thread"), it appears that MUAs are highly inconsistent with respect to threads. Irrespective of whatever RFCs that may exist on this matter, the reality is what is in the production MUAs. Here is a suggestion. At this epoch, Mozilla Thunderbird exists for essentially all workstation (end user interface computer) platforms and environments. Thunderbird accepts plug-ins and extensions. Can an extension be written for Thunderbird that properly handles threading? Such an extension would eliminate/address issues such as: Users of badly-threaded MUAs like mine (M$ OutLook) would see a new thread because they go STRICTLY by the text of the subject line. Users of well-threaded MUAs would see the new post in the old thread, with a subject change. It's a situation where you're damned if you do, and double-damned if you don't. End quote. The only case under which my scheme could not work is when the organization/employer insists on a particular MUA (e.g., a MS product) that does not properly respect threading. The caveat is once this is done, it would need to be maintained as Thunderbird evolves. Again, I apologize for continuing this subject, but establishing a clean conforming standard avoids the sorts of discord that a well intended question caused. Yasha Karant
USB 3 not working with SL 6 rolling kernel but with Fedora 15 kernel
I have done several tests with various kernels in an attempt to get full USB 3 external hard drives to work. Here are the results. Using sl6rolling, 2.6.32-131.0.15.el6.x86_64 , USB 3 is not working. Although this kernel is that of RHEL 6.1 in which there is supposed to be full USB 3 support, no go. Following a suggestion from Connie Sieh, I installed the Fedora 15 kernel, 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 This has fully working USB 3, same as I observed in OpenSUSE , evidence below. To get the Fedora 15 kernel to work, I needed to install the Fedora 15 linux firmware RPM. Before doing so, as root, I did mv /lib/firmware /lib/firmware-SL6 . For a reason to be explained below, I have now rebooted the system into the latest production SL 6 kernel but still using the Fedora 15 firmware, and this does seem to work -- kernel 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 . The reason I switched back to no USB 3 support is that I could not build the Nvidia drivers, needed for full CUDA support, because the Fedora 15 kernel demanded a later gcc than SL 6 uses. I am loathe to change gcc because of the large number of dependencies upon the specific gcc used. Hence, has anyone built the Nvidia packages (NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-270.41.19.run or later) for Fedora 15 kernel 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 so that I could get the appropriate modules, etc., and thus have full CUDA support? Evidence that the Fedora 15 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 kernel supports USB 3: Bus 008 Device 002: ID 152d:0551 JMicron Technology Corp. / JMicron USA Technology Corp. Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 002: ID 03f0:0317 Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 1200 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:2504 Standard Microsystems Corp. USB 2.0 Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Script started on Thu 07 Jul 2011 12:40:22 PM PDT [root@jb344 ykarant]# fdisk /dev/sde WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to sectors (command 'u'). Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sde: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x706a2c16 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sde1 * 1 32 257008+ 83 Linux /dev/sde2 33 12780 102398310 83 Linux /dev/sde3 12781 25528 102398310 83 Linux /dev/sde4 25529 77825 420075652+ 5 Extended /dev/sde5 25529 38276 102398278+ 83 Linux /dev/sde6 38277 4337540957686 83 Linux /dev/sde7 43376 4847440957686 83 Linux /dev/sde8 48475 5357340957686 83 Linux /dev/sde9 53574 5867240957686 83 Linux /dev/sde10 58673 58927 2048256 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sde11 58928 6080115052873+ 83 Linux /dev/sde12 60802 77825 136745248+ 83 Linux Command (m for help): q [root@jb344 ykarant]# exit exit Script done on Thu 07 Jul 2011 12:40:43 PM PDT Yasha Karant
usb 3 issues
I have been attempting to get a working USB 3 external harddrive subsystem. Thus far, no go. Here is what I have found: 1. kernel 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 works fine for USB 3, but requires gcc 4.6 to build any kernel modules; RHEL 6 (SL 6, CentOS 6) uses gcc 4.4. Thus, neither the Nvidia nor VirtualBox modules will build on on a RHEL 6 system. 2. kernel 2.6.33.3-85.fc13.x86_64 that was built with gcc 4.4 works, but only partially -- please see point 3. 3. After installing both of the above kernels, kernel 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 now functions essentially the same as 2.6.33.3-85.fc13.x86_64 . The device is recognized and /dev/sde and the partitions thereunder /dev/sde1 ... are created. However, no automount points are created that were created with 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 . Moreover, fdisk /dev/sde fails. A reading of dmesg shows numerous exceptions and diagnostics that are documented in USB 3 linux kernel development hits during a web search and that evidently were fixed in later kernels (such as 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 ). I am not going to reproduce these here, but suffice it to say that the /dev/sde set appears, vanishes as evidenced by the output of /ls/dev/sd* and then reappears. Note that all of the hardware and systems commands, etc., work on a USB 2 port on this system. An attempt to build from source 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 using the gcc 4.4 system of SL6 is my next step, rpmbuild --rebuild kernel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.src.rpm . Yasha Karant
Re: usb 3 issues
On 07/11/2011 01:51 PM, Connie Sieh wrote: On Mon, 11 Jul 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: I have been attempting to get a working USB 3 external harddrive subsystem. Thus far, no go. Here is what I have found: 1. kernel 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 works fine for USB 3, but requires gcc 4.6 to build any kernel modules; RHEL 6 (SL 6, CentOS 6) uses gcc 4.4. Thus, neither the Nvidia nor VirtualBox modules will build on on a RHEL 6 system. 2. kernel 2.6.33.3-85.fc13.x86_64 that was built with gcc 4.4 works, but only partially -- please see point 3. 3. After installing both of the above kernels, kernel 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 now functions essentially the same as 2.6.33.3-85.fc13.x86_64 . The device is recognized and /dev/sde and the partitions thereunder /dev/sde1 ... are created. However, no automount points are created that were created with 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 . Moreover, fdisk /dev/sde fails. A reading of dmesg shows numerous exceptions and diagnostics that are documented in USB 3 linux kernel development hits during a web search and that evidently were fixed in later kernels (such as 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 ). I am not going to reproduce these here, but suffice it to say that the /dev/sde set appears, vanishes as evidenced by the output of /ls/dev/sd* and then reappears. Note that all of the hardware and systems commands, etc., work on a USB 2 port on this system. An attempt to build from source 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 using the gcc 4.4 system of SL6 is my next step, rpmbuild --rebuild kernel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.src.rpm . Yasha Karant Since usb 3 worked for your chipsets on a prior RHEL 6 kernel and does not work on the current RHEL 6 kernel . I suggest you search bugzilla.redhat.com looking for your issue. If you do not find the issue please bugzilla it. -Connie Sieh Perhaps I have been unclear. USB 3 has never fully worked on any RHEL 6 (SL 6) kernel that I have tried. USB 3 worked under OpenSUSE and worked under 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64, but 2.6.38 is a kernel presumably in the future, not past, of RHEL . Note that as a test, I have changed the specific instance of the USB 3 device I have been using with a new sample shipped from the vendor; I have not verified if the new sample uses the same firmware, etc., as the first sample, although I suspect it does. The fact that the hardware fully does work under 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64, under OpenSUSE, and on a USB 2 port under 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 leads me to believe that there is an issue between the USB 3 driver in the current SL 6 and the actual motherboard USB 3 hardware on my machine, an issue that evidently is fixed in later releases of kernel 2.6 . Yasha Karant
USB 3 issues fully solved
I am pleased to report that by taking relatively drastic measures, the USB 3 issues I have been experiencing with SL 6 have been solved. Using kernel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.src.rpm I built and installed using rpmbuild and the SL 6 gcc 4.4 environment: kernel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.el6.x86_64.rpm kernel-devel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.el6.x86_64.rpm Using these rpm files, the machine boots, the Nvidia NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-270.41.19.run file produces a kernel module for the video card works under X11 (both Quadro FX 570 for video and Tesla C2070 for computation) , VirtualBox builds its modules and runs MS Win XP Pro, a USB 2 device (a flash drive) with a MS file system is readable under MS Win XP, and the USB 3 external harddrive is seen and automounts displaying the same file system behavior seen under kernel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15 within SL 6 as well as under OpenSUSE. When the same USB 2 device is detached from VirtualBox, the filesystem automounts under SL 6 on the Linux host size. Also, the fuse-ntfs mounting of a MS NTFS filesystem works and the drive seems readable and writeable. (Aside: my machine has a 160.0 GByte HP OEM harddrive in it that had MS Win XP HP installed -- this is NOT the file/filesystem I use for VirtualBox, but is mostly used as a test to verify that I have full NTFS access if I were to need it.) My next endeavor will be to find a production (not rc) version of the above kernel and redo the process. If anyone wants/needs these RPMs, please let me know. Is there a reputable public site upon which one post such binary files for others to use? I do not want to grant FTP access to my machine. In a pinch, I should be able to post these to my personal web site at my university and one could get access by that means. Be aware that I have not yet extensively tested this kernel nor have I verified the stability of it -- if the machine crashes/panics, I will report this to the SL list. Yasha Karant Thus, I conclude that the current and rolling SL 6 x86-64 kernels do not properly support all common USB 3 external harddrives and control interfaces. I have not tested any other USB devices.
USB 3 issues fully solved [update]
On 07/11/2011 03:52 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: I am pleased to report that by taking relatively drastic measures, the USB 3 issues I have been experiencing with SL 6 have been solved. Using kernel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.src.rpm I built and installed using rpmbuild and the SL 6 gcc 4.4 environment: kernel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.el6.x86_64.rpm kernel-devel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.el6.x86_64.rpm Using these rpm files, the machine boots, the Nvidia NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-270.41.19.run file produces a kernel module for the video card works under X11 (both Quadro FX 570 for video and Tesla C2070 for computation) , VirtualBox builds its modules and runs MS Win XP Pro, a USB 2 device (a flash drive) with a MS file system is readable under MS Win XP, and the USB 3 external harddrive is seen and automounts displaying the same file system behavior seen under kernel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15 within SL 6 as well as under OpenSUSE. When the same USB 2 device is detached from VirtualBox, the filesystem automounts under SL 6 on the Linux host size. Also, the fuse-ntfs mounting of a MS NTFS filesystem works and the drive seems readable and writeable. (Aside: my machine has a 160.0 GByte HP OEM harddrive in it that had MS Win XP HP installed -- this is NOT the file/filesystem I use for VirtualBox, but is mostly used as a test to verify that I have full NTFS access if I were to need it.) My next endeavor will be to find a production (not rc) version of the above kernel and redo the process. If anyone wants/needs these RPMs, please let me know. Is there a reputable public site upon which one post such binary files for others to use? I do not want to grant FTP access to my machine. In a pinch, I should be able to post these to my personal web site at my university and one could get access by that means. Be aware that I have not yet extensively tested this kernel nor have I verified the stability of it -- if the machine crashes/panics, I will report this to the SL list. Yasha Karant Thus, I conclude that the current and rolling SL 6 x86-64 kernels do not properly support all common USB 3 external harddrives and control interfaces. I have not tested any other USB devices. I have found the production Fedora 15 kernel, posted under updates . I had forgotten that Fedora is a perpetual beta distribution, and a (more or less stable) kernel (not a rc) would be in updates. That said, I have the following RPMs available: kernel-2.6.38.8-32.el6.x86_64.rpm kernel-devel-2.6.38.8-32.el6.x86_64.rpm that seem fully to function (again, Nvidia latest NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-275.09.07.run and VirtualBox modules build and seem to work). I will report any crashes/panics or other anomalies to the SL list. Does anyone have a possible date for when the production stock SL6 (RHEL6) kernel will be updated (backported) to provide the full USB 3 support of the 2.6.38 series? Yasha Karant
Re: usb 3 issues
On 07/11/2011 01:51 PM, Connie Sieh wrote: On Mon, 11 Jul 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: I have been attempting to get a working USB 3 external harddrive subsystem. Thus far, no go. Here is what I have found: 1. kernel 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 works fine for USB 3, but requires gcc 4.6 to build any kernel modules; RHEL 6 (SL 6, CentOS 6) uses gcc 4.4. Thus, neither the Nvidia nor VirtualBox modules will build on on a RHEL 6 system. 2. kernel 2.6.33.3-85.fc13.x86_64 that was built with gcc 4.4 works, but only partially -- please see point 3. 3. After installing both of the above kernels, kernel 2.6.32-131.2.1.el6.x86_64 now functions essentially the same as 2.6.33.3-85.fc13.x86_64 . The device is recognized and /dev/sde and the partitions thereunder /dev/sde1 ... are created. However, no automount points are created that were created with 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 . Moreover, fdisk /dev/sde fails. A reading of dmesg shows numerous exceptions and diagnostics that are documented in USB 3 linux kernel development hits during a web search and that evidently were fixed in later kernels (such as 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 ). I am not going to reproduce these here, but suffice it to say that the /dev/sde set appears, vanishes as evidenced by the output of /ls/dev/sd* and then reappears. Note that all of the hardware and systems commands, etc., work on a USB 2 port on this system. An attempt to build from source 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 using the gcc 4.4 system of SL6 is my next step, rpmbuild --rebuild kernel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.src.rpm . Yasha Karant Since usb 3 worked for your chipsets on a prior RHEL 6 kernel and does not work on the current RHEL 6 kernel . I suggest you search bugzilla.redhat.com looking for your issue. If you do not find the issue please bugzilla it. -Connie Sieh From: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=683681 usb3 is still a little flaky on error recovery. That is what happened here. The endpoint (device) stalled for whatever reason and it had trouble resetting the port back to a good known state. A bit later in the thread: I've updated to 6.1beta 2.6.32-122.el6.x86_64 and now the USB3 card does not see anything connected to it. And still a bit later: What happens if you unplug the hard drive, reboot the machine, login, the plug in the harddrive? Is that more stable? later in the bugzilla thread: RHEL Product and Program Management 2011-04-03 22:49:52 EDT Since RHEL 6.1 External Beta has begun, and this bug remains unresolved, it has been rejected as it is not proposed as exception or blocker. Red Hat invites you to ask your support representative to propose this request, if appropriate and relevant, in the next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Cheers, Don End thread. Unlike RHEL 6 and perhaps CentOS 6, SL 6 has additions that solve real problems so that real hardware can be used in the real world of hard science. I think that I have come close to establishing that later releases of the Linux kernel (e.g., 2.6.38) actually solve the USB 3 problem. Is it possible for SL 6 to offer a solution as a add-on/extended but real solution, as SL 6 supports hardware beyond standard RHEL 6? Yasha Karant
Re: I have a little problem with SL 6.0 and 5.6 live CD.
On 07/12/2011 06:44 AM, Lukas Press wrote: On 07/12/2011 12:29 AM, Brad wrote: That would be great but there is a little problem there, I have no knowledge on how to do that, and on other hand would I have to rebuild the kernel each time a security update comes out? I have heard of people doing this, and I have heard a few problems form doing this to. Now don't get me wrong I would love to learn how to do it, I just don't have any idea where to start or what tools I would need to do it. I have been using Linux for a few years but I have been more of a end user and just learning what I need at that time not really digging deep into it. Thanks for any help. On 07/11/2011 05:31 PM, JR van Rensburg wrote: You do have the freedom to do some customisation if you want to use the distro, and I would presume rolling your own kernel is one of them. If you don't want to roll your own kernel, you can always customise the distro by using the fedora kernel only and SL/Centos for the rest of the software. It is surprisingly easy to build a kernel from SRPM, such as a Fedora SRPM. Check out the SL Forum howto section on how to build packages from SRPM. - http://scientificlinuxforum.org/index.php?showtopic=128 I built a F15 kernel using these methods with no problem at all after 2 minutes' reading. Chris From direct work, I agree with your statement (much easier than what I remember from kernel building in the past) with one caveat: if the building machine has sufficient processing bandwidth and/or you want to wait long enough. I did this on my workstation that has a 4 core AMD X86-64 current processor, sufficient RAM, hard drives, etc. -- not outrageously expensive nor especially high performance, but more than a typical mass merchandiser enduser consumer machine designed to run MS Office. It took about 45 minutes from issuance of the command to completion, with all four cores often peaking at 99 percent utilization. For any who are interested, I have a script copy of the operation of the process from rpmbuild forward during a kernel build (without actual machine utilization measurements). One other comment: I built a "universal" plain vanilla X86-64 SL6 kernel from Fedora 15 "production" source as posted in a different thread (to get what appears to be fully function USB 3 support). If one makes specific specializations, the resulting kernel may not behave as the builder supposed -- there are many options for kernel configuration. I personally used a slight variation from the posted recipe based on past experience (I was not aware of the reference when I was building), but the method works. A separate question: is there a "howtos" section for SL that accumulates the specific postings such as the one mentioned above http://scientificlinuxforum.org/index.php?showtopic=128 Yasha Karant
Re: I have a little problem with SL 6.0 and 5.6 live CD.
On 07/12/2011 11:44 AM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 07/12/2011 11:46 AM, Lamar Owen wrote: On Tuesday, July 12, 2011 01:23:38 PM you wrote: On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Lamar Owen wrote: These HOWTOS are maintained by Alan Bartlett and Akemi Yagi, who frequent this list too. Now that this was mentioned, we have to update them to accommodate EL6 ... :-) Indeed. And from what I've seen you write already, that's a pretty sizeable update. There is also this post (linked below) in the forum, that makes building a newer kernel as easy as cutting and pasting the instructions into the terminal: http://scientificlinuxforum.org/index.php?showtopic=153 I built (and am now running) 2.6.38.8-35.el6.x86_64 from F15 using this method, in about 75 minutes, on a Intel CoreDuo with 3 GB Ram. I have never attempted any kernel revisions or builds in the past. The method can also be used to rebuild any package from Fedora or EPEL into an el6 package. I also tried this as well as I needed to update the linux-firmware package. It's amazingly easy to follow, which reminds me I have to go there and give Thanks to the author. Regards to all A I do have a small difference of opinion with the instructions in the mentioned thread. The instructions have the switch --without debuginfo . I prefer to build both the regular and debug rpms. This way, if the regular one throws unexpected exceptions or other diagnostics, one may be able to isolate or identify the issue. In some cases, it is buggy beta code from Fedora; in other cases, it can be due to structural incompatibilities with some portion of a "stock" RHEL distribution (such as SL 6). One does not have to install the debug version and after a successful use (test) period has elapsed, one can rebuild without debug information. Yasha Karant
Re: virtual network
I need to do some further digging -- the problem may be with the LAN at my university. I used the same article as a reference. At my university, although we have a Class B IPv4 address space, we internally use CIDR and all IEEE 802.3 connections (nominally 100 BaseT and gigabit) require hard IPv4 addresses (eventually, there will be internal IPv6 support). The university also supports 802.11 with DHCP. Moreover, there is 802.3 MAC layer address monitoring; if a 802.3 connection is authorized for only one MAC layer addresses and more than one appears, the 802.3 connection is disabled. Thus, we cannot use simple 802.3 repeaters or even switches to increase the number of 802.3 NICs connected. The only exception is in our research laboratories over which we have control of the MAC address space as well as our own DNS (in /24 size blocks) and can (and do) run our own MAC and IP layer switches and routers. But our Faculty and administrative offices (such as the office with my faculty workstation) and our instructional laboratories have the restrictions I mentioned above.The only workaround that we have found, as used by one of my colleagues, is to install two NICs (in his case 802.3) in one machine -- one NIC is visible to the campus LAN, and the other provides via a relay hidden from the campus LAN (software on the dual NIC workstation) a connection for all other wired LAN units that he uses. I suspect that somehow the virtual NIC that was created by the process listed below became "visible" to the campus LAN resulting in loss of the default route gateway, although the 802.3 MAC layer was still operational. Yasha Karant On 07/13/2011 11:08 AM, Todd And Margo Chester wrote: On 07/12/2011 06:36 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: I attempted to add the virtual network interface you suggested with simply the ifcfg-eth0.5 script you provided; however, the system would not generate it. I then found a reference to a command vconfig that I used (please see below) that did work and created a eth0.5 after ifup using your script. However, this caused the machine not be visible on the physical network -- netstat -r did not find default. I tried ping, etc. A reboot with the ifcfg-eth0.5 script moved to my home directory (so that it would not be used but not lost) resulted in a working Internet connection, but no eth0.5 . Any further suggestion? Thanks, Yasha Karant [root@jb344 network-scripts]# vconfig add eth0 5 WARNING: Could not open /proc/net/vlan/config. Maybe you need to load the 8021q module, or maybe you are not using PROCFS?? Added VLAN with VID == 5 to IF -:eth0:- [root@jb344 network-scripts]# ./ifup eth0.5 [root@jb344 network-scripts]# ifconfig -a eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 6C:62:6D:B3:EB:04 inet addr:139.182.151.44 Bcast:139.182.255.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::6e62:6dff:feb3:eb04/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:7740 errors:0 dropped:15 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:7745 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:5712610 (5.4 MiB) TX bytes:1292931 (1.2 MiB) Interrupt:50 Base address:0x6000 eth0.5 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 6C:62:6D:B3:EB:04 inet addr:192.168.254.10 Bcast:192.168.254.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::6e62:6dff:feb3:eb04/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:79 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b) ifcfg-eth0.5 DEVICE=eth0.5 BOOTPROTO=none BROADCAST=192.168.254.255 IPADDR=192.168.254.10 NETMASK=255.255.255.0 NETWORK=192.168.254.0 GATEWAY=192.168.254.10 ONBOOT=yes USERCTL=yes IPV6INIT=no PEERDNS=no PROMISC=yes # TYPE=Ethernet VLAN=YES NAME=vbox-bridged Yasha, This is the article I originally used to create my VLANs: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-configure-linux-virtual-local-area-network-vlan.html I am not find anything I missed. But, it is much better written than my stuff, so it should be worth reviewing. If you find something I missed, please let me know. -T
Is RHEL 6 ready for production?
We are obtaining a new GPU cluster research compute engine, Nvidia CUDA 4 conforming. Because of the way the funding agency evaluates proposals, we effectively had to use an integrator who is well respected in the community associated with the particular funding source. Speaking with the professional staff at the integrator, it appears that the consensus is that RHEL 6 is not really ready for production, and that production engines are being kept on RHEL 5.6 (CentOS 5.6, SL 5.6). When I enquired about SUSE Enterprise current, I received similar comments from the same source. It was noted that RHEL 6 was withdrawn for a while after production release. Does anyone reading this list have any observations on the production stability of RHEL 6? This question is irrespective of new hardware support in RHEL 6 that may not be operational (e.g., USB 3, nominally in RHEL 6.1). Yasha Karant
samba printing sl 6 from virtual box MS Win XP Pro
Has anyone successfully made samba work using the vboxnet virtual internal LAN of VirtualBox to allow a MS Win client to print to the Linux CUPS printer under SL 6? If so, I greatly would appreciate a copy of your samba configuration file. With my configuration file, I get errors such as: Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.5.4-68.el6_0.2] tree connect failed: NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE using smbclient from the linux side. This failure also happens when I use 127.0.0.1 as the allowed IP address (ifconfig -a shows lo on this address), not just the IP of vboxnet0 that does not exist except when VirtualBox is running a guest OS. Also, if you have had success, how did you setup the password file for samba in terms of encryption, password program, etc.? I have attempted to use both swat and webmin, as well as manual editing, but still cannot get samba to work. Note that I do NOT want samba on any external IP address, but only on an internal network. I had gotten samba to work with VMWare a number of years ago, but my notes from that epoch are not solving the current problems. For lack of licensing funding, I cannot run VMWare workstation at this time. Yasha Karant
Re: Flash-plugin 11 rpmforge freeze full screen using metacity window manager
On 07/21/2011 08:21 AM, Dag Wieers wrote: On Thu, 21 Jul 2011, jonathan wrote: Upon upgrading from flash-plugin-10.3.162.29-0.1.el6.rf (x86_64) to flash-plugin-11.0.1.60.0.1.el6.rf (x86_64), when i switch to full screen mode when playing a video on for example youtube Xorg freezes. When using flash plugin 10 the use of "OverrideGPUValidation=true" in the /etc/adobe/mms.cfg file fixed the problem. Though it does not fix the problem on flash-plugin 11. If the compiz window manager is used fullscreen playback works. Any suggestions? Sorry Jon, Let me clarify that this Flash update was very much needed, even though we go to another Beta. The problem is that the 64bit plugin (square alpha) had lots of security issues. Undoubtedly this release will have some too, but at least anything known is fixed in a more recent release. Here's hoping Adobe will take care of 64bit platforms soon with proper security updates... I do not know if the IA-32 Linux version of this plugin is any better in terms of security, but it does work. For this reason, I run the IA-32 versions of Firefox and Thunderbird, both current (release 5), by installing whatever libraries these applications need, relying upon the polymorphic compliance for both the IA-32 and X86-64 model of the Linux (RHEL 6) loader as well as the CPU. Yasha Karant
SL vs. CentOS vs. RH EL qualification testing
A vendor professional systems person whom I know has been requested to install SL 6 on a system that is being configured for us. In a discussion with him, he gave me the opinion that his (vendor's) experience with SL is that it is "buggier" than CentOS, and CentOS often "fixes" RHEL bugs. I did not understand this in that the base distribution without extensions of both CentOS and SL is RHEL with only the artwork being changed in the sense that all RedHat logos or use of RedHat licensed-for-fee binary distribution repositories have been removed, replaced by the appropriate entities for the distribution in question. Red Hat is required to release full source from which the entire distribution can be built for personal use -- but not redistributed without removal of the RedHat copyrighted logos, etc. -- under the GPL, Linux licenses, etc. Nonetheless, he is of the opinion that CentOS does the best job of testing the distribution in pre-CentOS release -- although both start from the RHEL sources. I commented that SL is professionally supported by a joint Fermilab-CERN effort with paid professionals doing the work, not the more or less volunteer organization of CentOS, just as the Red Hat source is developed by paid professionals. Although the future is unclear for Fermilab with the imminent decommissioning of the Fermilab accelerator, this professional status currently is correct. I fully understand that individuals may disagree with the opinion, and that specific organizations may have official statements that disagree with the opinion -- I only am interested in the "facts". For anyone on this list who is familiar with the post-RH release handling and qualification/testing procedures of RHEL source by either or both organizations, or by the Princeton University distribution of RHEL, direct comments would be appreciated. Is there any factual data, including procedural differences, to support the opinion that I have been given? Yasha Karant
Re: SL vs. CentOS vs. RH EL qualification testing
On 07/23/2011 05:54 PM, Alec T. Habig wrote: Yasha Karant writes: Although the future is unclear for Fermilab with the imminent decommissioning of the Fermilab accelerator, this professional status currently is correct. Correction - one beamline (the tevatron) and associated experiments are ending. The rest of the accelerator complex and associated experiments (not to mention the non-accelerator based stuff) are humming right along, new experiments coming online, etc. I believe there is some danger of what the lists term a "flame war" from this discussion -- that is not the point nor my intention. With no disrespect (and not being a Troll -- the decision of which Linux operating environment and distribution to use is one that requires data or, lacking that, anecdotal experience), Wikipedia states the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermilab Current developments [edit] The end of the Tevatron Run On January 10, 2011 it was announced that the Tevatron Accelerator had failed to find additional funding to continue operation beyond the close of fiscal year 2011 (October 2011).[10] [edit] Financial situation The Fermilab budget has been continuously below inflation over the last several years, and Fermilab failed to attract more funding sources and this resulted in reducing staff levels (by 100 in 2005).[11] The new director of the lab and the new management are working hard to bring the International Linear Collider (ILC) to Fermilab. However, the decision by Congress to fund the ILC at only a quarter of the requested $60 million significantly reduces the chances that Fermilab or any other U.S. research facility will host the ILC. Due to Fermilab's financial situation, on December 20, 2007, director Piermaria Oddone announced the planned layoffs of 10% of Fermilab's staff. End quote. Although the experimental facilities you mention are ongoing, the issue of long term funding of fundamental physics (or fundamental science without immediate practical application -- the genetic science and engineering fields are fundamental biology and medicine, but are also have immediate practical application -- going beyond/fixing the Standard Model lacks such applications) is highly unresolved in the USA under the Republican Tea Party model -- and has been declining for a number of years. This issue is not a SL or Linux issue, but merely a comment on the longer term stability of SL as being developed by paid professionals (from Wikipedia: this resulted in reducing staff levels (by 100 in 2005)). The situation at CERN is less bleak, even given the financial problems of the EU and Euro/Eurozone, from colleagues I know in various EU nations, some of whom are in CERN collaborations. This list is not the appropriate place to attempt to convince Tea Party Republicans and Social Program Democrats to maintain public funding (investment) in fundamental physics. However, the practical ramifications of such de-funding may have implications for the Fermilab portion of SL support. I am not trying to be grim, negative, derogatory, Troll, or anything else -- merely discussing the present facts and a possible several year future. I certainly hope that Fermilab/CERN will continue to assign / allow to work with pay professionals to redistribute RHEL and to support both enhancements and bug fixes to RHEL, rebadged as SL.
Re: SL vs. CentOS vs. RH EL qualification testing
On 07/23/2011 11:35 AM, 夜神 岩男 wrote: On 07/24/2011 02:14 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: A vendor professional systems person whom I know has been requested to install SL 6 on a system that is being configured for us. In a discussion with him, he gave me the opinion that his (vendor's) experience with SL is that it is "buggier" than CentOS, and CentOS often "fixes" RHEL bugs. They both fix bugs when found and both communities are fairly good at pushing those fixes upstream. I find the documentation of bugs in SL more concise and helpful than in CentOS (seems the ones submitting bugs are less prone to freaking out at their computers or submitting SWAGs to bug trackers). There is definitely less hand-holding within the community -- and a lot fewer requests for hand-holding from what I've observed. For anyone on this list who is familiar with the post-RH release handling and qualification/testing procedures of RHEL source by either or both organizations, or by the Princeton University distribution of RHEL, direct comments would be appreciated. Is there any factual data, including procedural differences, to support the opinion that I have been given? I am not aware of any actual test data that compares the various RHEL derived distros under any stress in a meaningful way (are you volunteering?). I have deployed RHEL6, SL6 and just recently toyed with CentOS6 test deployments, and found not enough difference to warrant including CentOS in my thinking for now (for non-technical types with deadlines RHEL is worth the money, though). Anyway, CentOS 6 was just released the other day -- it hasn't been out long enough to compare or for deep, weird problems to be uncovered yet; SL6 is fairly well understood at this point. But, name recognition alone goes a long way to framing most people's interpretation of software (and other things), so bear that in mind when listening to people. From a non-technical perspective, however, there is a huge difference. The SL6 community has far fewer knotheads than the CentOS community, and accordingly less drama. It also feels easier to find things, though I'm not quite sure why (fewer meaningless articles laying about?). In fact, I've never had to ask a question on list before. SL is therefore considerably less buggy as a community. The frustration index is a lot lower with SL6 in other than social ways. The development and release process is a lot less mysterious than CentOS, for example, and this makes planning a little easier. tl;dr: No hard data to support your friend's claim. SL6 is lower on the stress & drama scale. -Iwao I certainly agree with your sentiments concerning support via the CentOS community, and even more so from some of the other Linux distributions that are not aimed for stable production but rather for either enthusiasts or casual users. The issue is that many of the CentOS (not to mention Ubuntu ... ) users are typical end-users, used to the MS Windows or MacOS environments, and some from business vendor supported systems for which source is not available and with (more or less) full paid technical support -- typically a management information systems background at best, not a rigorous computer science or engineering background (MIS: how to use an information system for the mission of an organization, typically financial gain; CS: how to develop and build the fundamentals upon which information systems can be deployed). To be clear: this is not a "friend", but a high ranking engineering person at a vendor who was presenting his personal, or his firm's internal, expert opinion. My posting was an attempt to discover any data relevant to the opinion, as well as to at least get the distribution release testing policy/methodology for SL (and perhaps CentOS if there were any CentOS organization persons on the SL list willing to comment) once there is a release of source from RH (source that RH is required to release). As to your query: I am not aware of any actual test data that compares the various RHEL derived distros under any stress in a meaningful way (are you volunteering?) -- regrettably, I lack the staff (because of funding) to undertake any such systematic comparisons, or even detailed stress testing of whatever distribution currently is being deployed (on this laptop, CentOS 5.6, whereas on my workstation and on our new research cluster GPU compute engine, SL 6.x, x being kept current production). Thus, my experience is anecdotal, and in terms of the actual process of deployment of either SL or CentOS (or RHEL for that matter), an outsider looking in and not seeing much past the "magician's robe" until the "rabbit is pulled out of the hat" -- that is, a distro is released in any form (beta or production). I was hoping that at least for SL, the curtain would be lifted as to how RHEL source is converte
Re: SL vs. CentOS vs. RH EL qualification testing
On 07/24/2011 01:24 AM, Tom H wrote: On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 3:10 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: To be clear: this is not a "friend", but a high ranking engineering person at a vendor who was presenting his personal, or his firm's internal, expert opinion. My posting was an attempt to discover any data relevant to the opinion, as well as to at least get the distribution release testing policy/methodology for SL (and perhaps CentOS if there were any CentOS organization persons on the SL list willing to comment) once there is a release of source from RH (source that RH is required to release). You should ask that "high ranking engineering person" for the proof and the bugs. I've asked two of our RHEL "reps" what they think of SL or CentOS and they've said that they're "crap." Personal and/or institutional bias isn't fact. I fully agree. I have heard similar sentiments from RH sales/marketing employees who need the licensing volume. I actually have asked the vendor, but those are internal matters to this vendor. On a separate matter, responding to a poster who indicates something akin that one gets one pays for and that the SL/CentOS deployment methodology is the same as Fedora, I have looked over the documents to which that poster refers, and based upon that reading, is one of the reasons I attempt to avoid Fedora or any other beta- or enthusiast-software unless there is no choice (right now, this machine is using a sub 1.0 NetworkManger rpm implementation as provided with the RHEL 5.6 release -- but it is working and allows a substantially simpler user interface for connection to myriad networks when one must travel). I have not been able to find equivalent documents for CentOS or SL (or RHEL for that matter). In reality, RH support for EL is defective as well -- the issue of a major defect in the USB 3 support in RHEL 6 that was not considered serious enough for a fix in actual RHEL support correspondence is an example in point. To that same poster, one should point out that Fermilab (to date), CERN, and Princeton University all are (reasonably) well funded organizations (much more so than the institution at which I am tenured), yet each has elected to support a redistribution of RHEL from RH source instead of simply licensing the executable environment RPMs with support. Yasha Karant
Re: SL vs. CentOS vs. RH EL qualification testing
On 07/25/2011 01:04 PM, John H. Outlan CPA wrote: Sent from T-Mobile G2, please excuse any typos On Jul 25, 2011 3:37 PM, "Lamar Owen" wrote: On Monday, July 25, 2011 03:17:12 PM John H. Outlan CPA wrote: Four words: Beggars Can't Be Choosy. :) While I agree with the sentiment, I must point out that the quote is 'Beggars can't be choosers' which rhymes Sorry. I'm from Hicktown in Possum Valley. "Choosy" there but thanks for the correction! Ha! One small point to be made. Unlike CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, and many other Linux distributions with executables licensed for free, that use primarily volunteer unpaid packagers/developers, some of whom are professionals, SL is free to us, but does have actual costs to taxpayers in both the USA (Fermilab) and the EU (CERN), and has paid professionals doing the work, presumably as part of their professional responsibilities. The same may be said of the Princeton University RHEL re-release, although the funding from public sources is somewhat more indirect in that Princeton is not a public university per se. Thus, the comment that RHEL is paid for and one gets one pays for, a typically for-profit adage, is not completely true with respect to SL -- it does cost money and is paid for, although there is no support per se available. On the other hand, the information provided, including that on the SL users list, is sufficient for the purposes here as far as support is concerned. Yasha Karant
Re: NTFS support (Was: xfs setup for SL6.0)
On 07/26/2011 07:10 AM, Akemi Yagi wrote: On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 6:54 AM, Andrew Z wrote: Not to hijack the topic, but the NTFS module is also seemed to be absent (I'm on x64). hmmm... This is indeed off topic here (so I changed the Subject line). :) 'No NTFS support' is upstream's decision. But it is fairly easy to implement thanks to 3rd party repos. This CentOS wiki is helpful: http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/NTFS Akemi I have a successful mount (with read and write) of a NTFS file system: /dev/sdb1 on /mnt-ntfs1 type fuseblk (rw,allow_other,blksize=4096) /dev/sdb2 on /mnt-ntfs2 type fuseblk (rw,allow_other,blksize=4096) [ykarant@jb344 ~]$ ls /mnt-ntfs1 boot.inii386 pagefile.sys system.sav COMPAQ MSOCache ProgramDataSystem Volume Information Documents and Settings Novadigm Program Files Users hiberfil.sysNTDETECT.COM RECYCLER WINDOWS hp ntldr SWSetup [ykarant@jb344 ~]$ ls /mnt-ntfs2 Autorun.inf minintSTLDR WIN51IC.B2 WIN51.RC1 Desktop.ini NTDETECT.COM System Volume Information WIN51IC.RC1 WIN51.RC2 Folder.htt NTFS Warning.bmpWIN51IC.RC2 WINBOM.INI HP_RECOVERY NTLDR WIN51 WIN51IP XGA I386 PRELOAD WIN51.B2 WIN51IP2 Info.exe protect.edWIN51IAWIN51IP.B2 ISOS RECOVERY WIN51IA.SP1WIN51IP.RC2 MASTER.LOG RECYCLER WIN51ICWIN51IP.SP1 This worked under the stock SL X86-64 kernel, as well as the kernel I had to build that also supports USB 3. From uname -a: 2.6.38.8-32.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Jul 11 16:29:12 PDT 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux If you need assistance, I can provide the NTFS fuse binaries, etc., for NTFS fuse to work. Yasha Karant
Is this thread hijacked (was: Re: NTFS support (Was: xfs setup for SL6.0))
On 07/26/2011 07:10 AM, Akemi Yagi wrote: On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 6:54 AM, Andrew Z wrote: Not to hijack the topic, but the NTFS module is also seemed to be absent (I'm on x64). hmmm... This is indeed off topic here (so I changed the Subject line). :) 'No NTFS support' is upstream's decision. But it is fairly easy to implement thanks to 3rd party repos. This CentOS wiki is helpful: http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/NTFS Akemi I have just done what Akemi claims to have done in the message below: changed the Subject line. Was the thread produced by Akemi hijacked? Is this thread hijacked? If the thread for Akemi was NOT hijacked and merely changed the subject line, but mine is hijacked when I did the same, can anyone explain why? If the thread for Akemi was hijacked, are the complainers going to post a complaint? I am not being a "troll", "ogre", "balrog", "orc" or any other mythical character -- but trying to understand the technical mechanics of posting in a change of topic based upon related email to SL. Yasha Karant
Re: SL Minor Version Upgrade Question
On 07/26/2011 12:48 PM, Troy Dawson wrote: On 07/21/2011 11:03 AM, Dormition Skete wrote: Hello. We already have a server using SL6.0. I see that 6.1 is probably going to be coming out soon. If we just keep our server updated, will it automatically "become" a 6.1 server, or do we need to download a new 6.1 DVD when it comes out, and go through the upgrade process to make the server 6.1? Any help with this will be appreciated. Hi, This is one place where Scientific Linux differs from RHEL. The default setting for Scientific Linux is for you to "sit on a release". This means that you do not automatically update to the next release, unless you want to. So if you install SL 5.4, you will stay at SL 5.4, getting security updates, until you manually update to whichever release you want. If you want the same functionality as RHEL (your machine is automatically updated to the latest release) you need to install yum-conf-sl6x. yum-conf-sl6x Troy Will yum-conf-sl6x automatically update to the latest production release (e.g., SL 6.1) but will not update to beta/testing/release candidates? I assume that one can pick and choose -- for example, if one is running a higher (later) revision kernel and kernel firmware than the production release, one may simply skip the kernel portion of the update. Yasha Karant
The Clone Wars – CentOS vs. Scientific Linux
I am posting the item below not to start any "flame wars" nor to be any mythological creature from Middle Earth or anywhere else, but rather to put forward what I have found from one "professional" analysis of the RHEL situation -- and not an analysis for which I have sufficient data to support. In the article below, the conclusion "push" seems to mean that either RHEL clone is the same. Rather than simply including a URL, I am posting the entire article for any later historical archiving -- unlike academic journals and articles that exist for posterity, much of the commentary of the computer technology areas seems very ephemeral. Nonetheless, when RHEL 7 and its clones come about, there may be interest in examining the historical commentaries, just as there is in discussing any evolving technology (e.g., HEP detectors). For my personal choice for X86-64 systems that need to support 64 bit operations, I have switched to SL 6 ; for systems that can live with IA-32 operations (e.g., my laptop and other work computers), I am staying with CentOS 5.x for now -- when these switch to RHEL 6.x, I suspect I will be switching to SL 6 simply because I do not want to support multiple environments for production. From URL: http://lostinopensource.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-clone-wars-centos-vs-scientific-linux/ The Clone Wars – CentOS vs. Scientific Linux 2011/07/13 jduncan With Linux in the Enterprise, RHEL is king. Sure there are people who love and use Debian, or Suse. I would imagine that if you looked hard enough you could likely find somebody who’s using Slackware or Gentoo in a business somewhere. But I think it can safely be said that RHEL is currently the dominant enterprise Linux distribution. Then, of course, there are the clones. If you so choose, you can forgo Shadowman’s Support team and either compile the freely available Redhat Source RPMs, or choose to use a community-supported RHEL clone. Currently, the two most popular of those clone distributions are CEntOS (Community Enterprise Operating System) and Scientific Linux (SL). So if you have decided to not utilize Redhat support, which of these downstream clones is the better choice? With the recent (much delayed) release of CentOS 6.0 in the past week, many companies are looking to move up to the RHEL 6.0 family of operating systems. But is CentOS still the right choice? Being a primarily CentOS shop, and being more than a little OCD myself, I decided to compare the two in as practical as a manner as I could. Below are the results. Maturity: When it’s running on production, you don’t have time to wait on a tiny community to figure out how to backport in some obscure cross-site scripting vulnerability in an even more obscure module in your favorite language, even if you’re part of that community. An enterprise operating system needs to have an active and robust community to support itself, paid or not. CentOS has been around for a long time and has a huge following. There have been murmurs of late about the core contributors getting tired, and the delay in CentOS 6.0 was the evidence. I don’t believe that fully, but I do believe the project could do with some fresh blood and possibly some new ideas. But I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon. Scientific Linux hasn’t been around nearly as long, at least on the scale that it is currently enjoying. The community, however, is vibrant, and is backed by several large research labs such as CERN and Fermilab. Big plusses. Advantage: Push Workflow: In Open Source software, the process is often times as important as the product. While I don’t believe there is anything massively different in how these 2 projects are doing what the do, SL is certainly better at talking about it and making the community aware of how it’s working. This presentation(PDF) is a pretty great one, even if it’s a little dated. SL Community, I’d love to see an update, for the record. Advantage: Scientific Linux RHEL Compatability: This used to be a much larger difference, as late as version 5.x. Scientific made some pretty large changes to the RHEL repository structure, and added in some packages of their own. CentOS has always been as faithful a clone as was possible at the time. This is largely cleaned up in version 6.0, with the extra SL packages moving out to external repos, but much like the workflow advantage above, perception is still a strong influence. Why is this important? Well, like lots of people, we’re a mixed RHEL/CentOS shop. It just makes life SO MUCH EASIER. Advantage: CentOS Mirror Speed and Availability: I couldn’t find any perceivable difference in this category. Both networks are robust and highly available. Advantage: Push Community Support: This is one of the most important factors when adopting a distribution, and sadly the one answer I’m not able to fully answer. I utilize CentOS support all the time, via the
Re: The Clone Wars – CentOS vs. Scientific Linux
On 07/26/2011 04:15 PM, John H. Outlan CPA wrote: On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 5:54 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: I am posting the item below not to start any "flame wars" nor to be any mythological creature from Middle Earth or anywhere else, but rather to put forward what I have found from one "professional" analysis of the RHEL situation -- and not an analysis for which I have sufficient data to support. In the article below, the conclusion "push" seems to mean that either RHEL clone is the same. Rather than simply including a URL, I am posting the entire article for any later historical archiving -- unlike academic journals and articles that exist for posterity, much of the commentary of the computer technology areas seems very ephemeral. Nonetheless, when RHEL 7 and its clones come about, there may be interest in examining the historical commentaries, just as there is in discussing any evolving technology (e.g., HEP detectors). For my personal choice for X86-64 systems that need to support 64 bit operations, I have switched to SL 6 ; for systems that can live with IA-32 operations (e.g., my laptop and other work computers), I am staying with CentOS 5.x for now -- when these switch to RHEL 6.x, I suspect I will be switching to SL 6 simply because I do not want to support multiple environments for production. From URL: http://lostinopensource.**wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-** clone-wars-centos-vs-**scientific-linux/<http://lostinopensource.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-clone-wars-centos-vs-scientific-linux/> snip The author of that blog is on our forum and we are currently discussing some points about it. There are some things about SL he wasn't aware ofnice guy, but he seems to be basically a CentOS fan so myself and others have given our opinions and mentioned what he got wrong. It's on the SLF :) I'm done with it:) I have received a separate private email off the list mention the SL fora. One small question: when the issue of the various RHEL based distributions was posted to this list, rather before this article, why was there no post to a link on the appropriate Forum? Such a response would have saved list traffic. If such a link was posted, my apologies for missing it. Yasha Karant
WD Advanced Format hard drive issues
For reasons that are irrelevant to this discussion, we have ended up with a number of new workstations with WD Advanced Format "green" 1.5 TByte drives. We have been experiencing a number of difficulties that had to do with partition boundaries, etc. After a bit of digging, I found: http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/Problem-with-WD-Advanced-Format-drive-in-LINUX-WD15EARS/td-p/6395 Is anyone using a WD Advanced Format drive with SL 6? We are not and probably will/can not use LVM, but rather standard ext 2, 3, or 4 partitions, included the extended partition model. If you are using this type of drive, information on the specifics of the formatting command(s) and syntax to use these WD drives would be appreciated. Any link to a detailed document or URL would be appreciated. Yasha Karant
Re: WD Advanced Format hard drive issues
On 07/26/2011 11:23 PM, 夜神 岩男 wrote: On 07/27/2011 01:30 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/Problem-with-WD-Advanced-Format-drive-in-LINUX-WD15EARS/td-p/6395 The answer to your question, and a detailed instructional (and links to more using both parted and fdisk) are a little further down the screen on the same page. -Iwao Obviously -- I have read the item I posted or I would not have referenced it. However, before actually doing what is suggested there -- by various persons of different backgrounds and professional qualifications and for different Linux distributions -- I was hoping to find someone who actually was using one of these drives and thus could either verify the procedures described or provide specifics for SL (RHEL) that differ from those in the item. I can experiment using the material in the item -- but I was hoping to do less experimentation and more rapid production. Yasha Karant
Re: The Clone Wars – CentOS vs. Scientifi c Linux - WHO CARES
On 07/27/2011 05:07 AM, Larry Linder wrote: If you want to talk about trash go elseware - this is just NOISE - I don't care ! - don't want to sort threw "JUNK". So the noise makers - I added your nmae to E-Mail filters -> /dev/null If you don't have something technical to contribute or need technical help - please. Larry Linder On Wednesday 27 July 2011 5:43 am, Tom H wrote: On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 3:25 AM, Andreas Petzold wrote: Can we please stop emails like this? It's getting really annoying. This is a technical support mailing list. +1 I am replying to this version of the thread -- I cannot tell from what I see (not having the full SMTP headers on display) whether or not the change in Subject has hijacked this thread -- in which case I am not the hijacker. I fully understand that is a "technical" list, and since posting the item to which there have been many comments but little data, have been informed of the existence of SL fora. I must point out that the fora to which I have been directed are not maintained at Fermilab/CERN sites. To me, "technical" includes "engineering". A significant decision of engineering is choice of instrumentality, including design, development, and testing methodologies of any particular instrumentality. Instrumentalities in computers include operating systems and their environments. I apologize that I did not understand that for this SL list, "technical" is restricted to "support" issues -- make what is part of SL (RHEL?) work, post fixes, or declare non-fixable for now. Is it appropriate to enquire on this list for a description/documentation on the actual development process of SL from RHEL source RPMs? Yasha Karant
Suggestion for a hard drive CUPS-like data base
I have found that modern CUPS printer support configuration tools under EL have a fairly complete data base of the drivers/parameters needed for vendor specific printers. To some extent, this seems to include even reverse engineered data for printers for which the vendor will not provide any detailed public specifications and only provides proprietary "drivers" to the monopoly (and sometimes, Apple). Given various comments and suggestions that have appeared concerning the proper Linux formatting/partitioning and use of some current SATA hard drives that no longer present the 512 byte standard to the operating system, could SL (or RH or something equivalent to the CUPS team or ...) provide a data base for drives similar to the CUPS one for printers? For example, during the initial installation of either a new drive or a new major release of the OS (e.g., going from EL 5 to EL 6), the drive partitioning/formatting utility would recognize the drive(s) in use and automatically set either acceptable or "optimal" parameters. If such a data base exists, relevant URLs and/or RPMs would be appreciated. Yasha Karant
Engineering issues (was: Fwd: Re: The Clone Wars – CentOS vs. Scientifi c Linux - WHO CARES)
The content of the email I received off list below should be self-explanatory. I again ask for a simple clarification: are engineering deployment issues -- design issues to the deploying engineering staff but NOT necessarily internal design issues to the vendor engineers responsible for the actual production of the entity (hardware, software, whatever) being deployed -- appropriate to this list, or only technical support questions on deployed systems? If the latter, then discussions of deploying SL N vs. SL M, M not equal N, are NOT appropriate, as these are field deployment issues, as are the deployment comparisons of RHEL K, SL K, CentOS K, and any other RHEL clones of release K. In that case, apologize to Mr. (Dr.?) Linder or anyone else whom I might have inconvenienced by attempting to get certain inappropriate engineering questions addressed. Because this is a threaded list (as has repeatedly been pointed out to those of us whose email client applications do not default to a threaded display), rather than "trashing" any individual, one can selectively filter and reject threads to which one objects or has no interest. Or is the capacity of the Fermilab email/list server not large enough to handle/store such additional traffic? Yasha Karant Original Message Return-path: Received: from proxy2.csusb.edu ([139.182.2.66]) by messenger1.csusb.edu (Sun Java(tm) System Messaging Server 6.3-8.03 (built Apr 24 2009; 32bit)) with ESMTP id <0lp000e2u3uud...@messenger1.csusb.edu> for ykar...@csusb.edu; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:44:54 -0700 (PDT) Original-recipient: rfc822;ykar...@csusb.edu Received: from mx3.csusb.edu ([139.182.2.20]) by proxy2.csusb.edu (Sun Java(tm) System Messaging Server 6.3-8.03 (built Apr 24 2009; 32bit)) with ESMTP id <0lpv53uu7...@proxy2.csusb.edu> for ykar...@csusb.edu (ORCPT ykar...@csusb.edu); Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:44:54 -0700 (PDT) X-ASG-Debug-ID: 1311785093-01b9420c6d9b5eb0001-JTgGZm Received: from showoff.nexcess.net (showoff.nexcess.net [69.39.81.200]) by mx3.csusb.edu with ESMTP id koAwJA2ypr54CEJE for ; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:44:53 -0700 (PDT) X-Barracuda-Envelope-From: larry.lin...@micro-controls.com X-Barracuda-Apparent-Source-IP: 69.39.81.200 Received: (qmail 19775 invoked by uid 108); Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:44:59 -0400 Received: from unknown (HELO engr01) (larry.lin...@micro-controls.com@76.235.37.129) by showoff.nexcess.net with ESMTPA; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:44:59 -0400 From: Larry Linder Organization: MicroControls LLC To: Yasha Karant Subject: Re: The Clone Wars – CentOS vs. Scientifi c Linux - WHO CARES Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:35:16 -0400 X-ASG-Orig-Subj: Re: The Clone Wars – CentOS vs. Scientifi c Linux - WHO CARES User-Agent: KMail/1.9.4 References: <4e2f377d.5080...@csusb.edu> <201107270807.44156.larry.lin...@micro-controls.com> <4e30305e.3000...@csusb.edu> In-reply-to: <4e30305e.3000...@csusb.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline Message-id: <201107271235.16957.larry.lin...@micro-controls.com> X-Barracuda-Connect: showoff.nexcess.net[69.39.81.200] X-Barracuda-Start-Time: 1311785093 X-Barracuda-URL: http://139.182.2.20:8000/cgi-mod/mark.cgi X-Virus-Scanned: by bsmtpd at csusb.edu X-Barracuda-Bayes: INNOCENT GLOBAL 0.4985 1. 0. X-Barracuda-Spam-Score: 0.00 X-Barracuda-Spam-Status: No, SCORE=0.00 using global scores of TAG_LEVEL=4.5 QUARANTINE_LEVEL=1000.0 KILL_LEVEL=9.0 tests= X-Barracuda-Spam-Report: Code version 3.2, rules version 3.2.2.70130 Rule breakdown below pts rule name description -- -- You obviously have a an English comprehension problem. You have been added to TRASH list. On Wednesday 27 July 2011 11:35 am, you wrote: On 07/27/2011 05:07 AM, Larry Linder wrote: > If you want to talk about trash go elseware - this is just NOISE - I > don't care ! - don't want to sort threw "JUNK". > So the noise makers - I added your nmae to E-Mail filters -> /dev/null > > If you don't have something technical to contribute or need technical > help - please. > > Larry Linder > > On Wednesday 27 July 2011 5:43 am, Tom H wrote: >> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 3:25 AM, Andreas Petzold >> >> wrote: >>> Can we please stop emails like this? It's getting really annoying. This >>> is a technical support mailing list. >> >> +1 I am replying to this version of the thread -- I cannot tell from what I see (not having the full SMTP headers on display) whether or not the change in Subject has hijacked this thread -- in which case I am not the hijacker. I fully understand that is a "technical" list, and since posting the item to which there have been many comments but
Re: WD Advanced Format hard drive issues
On 07/27/2011 11:36 AM, Tom H wrote: On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 12:30 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: For reasons that are irrelevant to this discussion, we have ended up with a number of new workstations with WD Advanced Format "green" 1.5 TByte drives. We have been experiencing a number of difficulties that had to do with partition boundaries, etc. After a bit of digging, I found: http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/Problem-with-WD-Advanced-Format-drive-in-LINUX-WD15EARS/td-p/6395 Is anyone using a WD Advanced Format drive with SL 6? We are not and probably will/can not use LVM, but rather standard ext 2, 3, or 4 partitions, included the extended partition model. If you are using this type of drive, information on the specifics of the formatting command(s) and syntax to use these WD drives would be appreciated. Any link to a detailed document or URL would be appreciated. For SSDs but relevant for "regular" disk partition alignment too: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2009/02/aligning-filesystems-ssd%E2%80%99s-erase-block-size The most relevant part of the article referenced in the above URL is: However, with SSD’s (remember SSD’s? This is a blog post about SSD’s…) you need to align partitions on at least 128k boundaries for maximum efficiency. The best way to do this that I’ve found is to use 224 (32*7) heads and 56 (8*7) sectors/track. This results in 12544 (or 256*49) sectors/cylinder, so that each cylinder is 49*128k. You can do this by doing starting fdisk with the following options when first partitioning the SSD: # fdisk -H 224 -S 56 /dev/sdb end quote. Assuming that WD is true to the semi-technical specifications it provides, 4096 byte physical sectors, what should one use for the number of heads (switch H above) and the number of sectors/track (switch S above)? Note that it appears that in terms of the IDEMA Long Data Sector Committee Advanced Format standard, the 512e (512 byte block emulation) firmware on this Western Digital drive is defective or the issue would not arise. Yasha Karant
Re: Suggestion for a hard drive CUPS-like data base
On 07/27/2011 11:46 AM, Chris Tooley wrote: On 11-07-27 10:25 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: I have found that modern CUPS printer support configuration tools under EL have a fairly complete data base of the drivers/parameters needed for vendor specific printers. To some extent, this seems to include even reverse engineered data for printers for which the vendor will not provide any detailed public specifications and only provides proprietary "drivers" to the monopoly (and sometimes, Apple). Given various comments and suggestions that have appeared concerning the proper Linux formatting/partitioning and use of some current SATA hard drives that no longer present the 512 byte standard to the operating system, could SL (or RH or something equivalent to the CUPS team or ...) provide a data base for drives similar to the CUPS one for printers? For example, during the initial installation of either a new drive or a new major release of the OS (e.g., going from EL 5 to EL 6), the drive partitioning/formatting utility would recognize the drive(s) in use and automatically set either acceptable or "optimal" parameters. If such a data base exists, relevant URLs and/or RPMs would be appreciated. Yasha Karant This may be a suggestion that would be more pertinent to the upstream vendor, as I understand it SL doesn't actually do any development to modify or add to the EL base upon which SL is built. :) If it's already been done, I haven't heard about it - that's not to say it doesn't exist though ;) -Chris My understanding is that "CUPS is the standards-based, open source printing system developed by Apple Inc. for Mac OS® X and other UNIX®-like operating systems" quoted from http://www.cups.org/ . Thus, CUPS is from a .org, not from a vendor, or even an academic/government entity such as Fermilab or CERN. Hence, although SL and even RH would not the establishing body, it is appropriate for SL, not just RH, to spearhead such an initiative for another appropriate .org entity . If Fermilab/CERN have sufficient resources, they could develop such a data base for use with gparted or other open source non-volatile storage (e.g., disk) subsystems. Yasha
Re: Suggestion for a hard drive CUPS-like data base
On 07/27/2011 12:54 PM, Phong Nguyen wrote: The smartmontools project maintains a database of drives (mostly for SMART reporting purposes); you might ask them if they'd extend their database to handle this information. On 27 Jul 2011, at 1225, Yasha Karant wrote: I have found that modern CUPS printer support configuration tools under EL have a fairly complete data base of the drivers/parameters needed for vendor specific printers. To some extent, this seems to include even reverse engineered data for printers for which the vendor will not provide any detailed public specifications and only provides proprietary "drivers" to the monopoly (and sometimes, Apple). Given various comments and suggestions that have appeared concerning the proper Linux formatting/partitioning and use of some current SATA hard drives that no longer present the 512 byte standard to the operating system, could SL (or RH or something equivalent to the CUPS team or ...) provide a data base for drives similar to the CUPS one for printers? For example, during the initial installation of either a new drive or a new major release of the OS (e.g., going from EL 5 to EL 6), the drive partitioning/formatting utility would recognize the drive(s) in use and automatically set either acceptable or "optimal" parameters. If such a data base exists, relevant URLs and/or RPMs would be appreciated. Yasha Karant Here is the Smartmontools entry relevant to the drive with which I am having issues: URL: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/browser/trunk/smartmontools/drivedb.h#L1715 1715 { "Western Digital Caviar Green (Adv. Format)", 1716"WDC WD(((64|75|80)00AA|(10|15|20)EA|(25|30)EZ)R|20EAC)S-.*", 1717"", "", "" 1718 }, 19 /* 20 * Structure used to store drive database entries: 21 * 22 * struct drive_settings { 23 * const char * modelfamily; 24 * const char * modelregexp; 25 * const char * firmwareregexp; 26 * const char * warningmsg; 27 * const char * presets; 28 * }; 29 * 30 * The elements are used in the following ways: 31 * 32 * modelfamily Informal string about the model family/series of a 33 * device. Set to "" if no info (apart from device id) 34 * known. The entry is ignored if this string starts with 35 * a dollar sign. Must not start with "USB:", see below. 36 * modelregexp POSIX extended regular expression to match the model of 37 * a device. This should never be "". 38 * firmwareregexp POSIX extended regular expression to match a devices's 39 * firmware. This is optional and should be "" if it is not 40 * to be used. If it is nonempty then it will be used to 41 * narrow the set of devices matched by modelregexp. 42 * warningmsg A message that may be displayed for matching drives. For 43 * example, to inform the user that they may need to apply a 44 * firmware patch. 45 * presets String with vendor-specific attribute ('-v') and firmware 46 * bug fix ('-F') options. Same syntax as in smartctl command 47 * line. The user's own settings override these. 48 * 49 * The regular expressions for drive model and firmware must match the full 50 * string. The effect of "^FULLSTRING$" is identical to "FULLSTRING". 51 * The form ".*SUBSTRING.*" can be used if substring match is desired. 52 * 53 * The table will be searched from the start to end or until the first match, 54 * so the order in the table is important for distinct entries that could match 55 * the same drive. 56 * End source code. It appears that there are no entries for drive formatting parameters. However, I will follow-up on your suggestion to the Smartmontools developers. Yasha Karant
Re: WD Advanced Format hard drive issues
On 07/27/2011 07:09 PM, Jeff Siddall wrote: On 07/27/2011 12:30 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: For reasons that are irrelevant to this discussion, we have ended up with a number of new workstations with WD Advanced Format "green" 1.5 TByte drives. We have been experiencing a number of difficulties that had to do with partition boundaries, etc. After a bit of digging, I found: http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/Problem-with-WD-Advanced-Format-drive-in-LINUX-WD15EARS/td-p/6395 Is anyone using a WD Advanced Format drive with SL 6? We are not and probably will/can not use LVM, but rather standard ext 2, 3, or 4 partitions, included the extended partition model. If you are using this type of drive, information on the specifics of the formatting command(s) and syntax to use these WD drives would be appreciated. Any link to a detailed document or URL would be appreciated. Yasha Karant Yes, I have a bunch of GP drives in various Fedora 13/14, CentOS 5 and SL6 systems. Although the formatting was not done on SL6, SL6 did install on the existing partitions and seems to be working fine. By "fine" I mean >70 MB/s read/write speeds. The trick seems to be having "MultiSect=16" in the hdparm output like below. People who's hdparm reported MultiSect=1 seemed to have issues. The other thing to keep an eye on with the GP drives is the load cycle count in SMART. I run the wdidle.exe utility in freedos to disable head parking altogether. Without that you can easily get beyond the rated load cycle rating of the drive in a matter of months. Jeff -- hdparm -i /dev/sdb /dev/sdb: Model=WDC, FwRev=01.00A01, SerialNo=WD-Blah Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq } RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=50 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=3907029168 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} PIO modes: pio0 pio3 pio4 DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7 * signifies the current active mode You state: Although the formatting was not done on SL6, SL6 did install on the existing partitions and seems to be working fine. On what system using what utilities did you format the WD drives? I have installed SL 6 on existing partitions on other drives with no issue -- but the SL 6 install on these WD bare drives using the default disk format/partitions/block size/... from the SL 6 installation GUI (that appears to be very, very similar to the stock RHEL 6 installation GUI) did not produce a correct partition structure. [root@ahprc2 ykarant]# fdisk /dev/sda WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to sectors (command 'u'). Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000b6b0d Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 64 512000 83 Linux Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/sda2 64 182402 1464625152 8e Linux LVM End fdisk output. Note that the hdparm output appears to conform to your suggestion: [root@ahprc2 ykarant]# hdparm -i /dev/sda /dev/sda: Model=WDC, FwRev=51.0AB51, SerialNo=WD-WCAZA4468448 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq } RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=50 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=2930277168 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} PIO modes: pio0 pio3 pio4 DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7 * signifies the current active mode End hdparm output. The fact that WD insists that one run a utility only under a MS environment (or FreeDOS, a MSDOS workalike monitor) seems a difficult way to maintain a system. Will the utility work under Wine/CrossOver? I assume that the utility will NOT work in MS Win under VirtualBox because the physical raw hardware is not easily available to the guest environment. On the note of formatting, the WD documentation calls for the use of a parted version later than what is provided with SL 6. I attempted to rpmbuild --rebuild a later version from Fedora 15, but the following dependencies appeared: error: Failed b
Re: WD Advanced Format hard drive issues
On 07/27/2011 11:23 PM, Steven J. Yellin wrote: On Wed, 27 Jul 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: ... Is it safe to do the merry chase down the dependency trail to port a later parted to SL 6 or will some of these cause SL 6 to fail/become unstable? Does anyone have a SL 6 port of either parted or gparted that is more recent than the stock SL 6 versions? You asked about SL6, but my experience with SL5 may be relevant. The stock SL5 parted wouldn't make a label on a 3TB WD USB drive (4096 byte sectors), so I compiled what was then the latest version, parted-2.4, from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/. There were no absent dependencies, installation put the result into /usr/local/sbin, leaving the stock version alone, and the compiled version was adequate. They're up to parted-3.0 now. Steven Yellin I tried your suggested approach first but did not mention this in my posting. Below is the failure from configure of parted-3.0 on SL 6 : checking for uuid_generate in -luuid... no configure: error: GNU Parted requires libuuid - a part of the util-linux-ng package (but usually distributed separately in libuuid-devel, uuid-dev or similar) This can probably be found on your distribution's CD or FTP site or at: http://userweb.kernel.org/~kzak/util-linux-ng/ Note: originally, libuuid was part of the e2fsprogs package. Later, it moved to util-linux-ng-2.16, and that package is now the preferred source. End output. I was going to start chasing down the above dependencies, but instead attempted the Fedora path -- and again faced a chase as I previously have noted. If I install / build the various parts that parted-3.0 requires, will I break SL 6? One option is to build (configure, make) all of the parts without make install and customize the configure/make paths in each component to find the parts in non-standard locations so as not to "clobber" the stock SL 6 components. Does anyone have a parted-3.0 ported to SL 6? Yasha Karant
Re: WD Advanced Format hard drive issues
On 07/28/2011 02:21 AM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 07/28/2011 12:48 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: On 07/27/2011 11:23 PM, Steven J. Yellin wrote: On Wed, 27 Jul 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: ... Is it safe to do the merry chase down the dependency trail to port a later parted to SL 6 or will some of these cause SL 6 to fail/become unstable? Does anyone have a SL 6 port of either parted or gparted that is more recent than the stock SL 6 versions? You asked about SL6, but my experience with SL5 may be relevant. The stock SL5 parted wouldn't make a label on a 3TB WD USB drive (4096 byte sectors), so I compiled what was then the latest version, parted-2.4, from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/. There were no absent dependencies, installation put the result into /usr/local/sbin, leaving the stock version alone, and the compiled version was adequate. They're up to parted-3.0 now. Steven Yellin I tried your suggested approach first but did not mention this in my posting. Below is the failure from configure of parted-3.0 on SL 6 : checking for uuid_generate in -luuid... no configure: error: GNU Parted requires libuuid - a part of the util-linux-ng package (but usually distributed separately in libuuid-devel, uuid-dev or similar) This can probably be found on your distribution's CD or FTP site or at: http://userweb.kernel.org/~kzak/util-linux-ng/ Note: originally, libuuid was part of the e2fsprogs package. Later, it moved to util-linux-ng-2.16, and that package is now the preferred source. End output. I was going to start chasing down the above dependencies, but instead attempted the Fedora path -- and again faced a chase as I previously have noted. If I install / build the various parts that parted-3.0 requires, will I break SL 6? One option is to build (configure, make) all of the parts without make install and customize the configure/make paths in each component to find the parts in non-standard locations so as not to "clobber" the stock SL 6 components. Does anyone have a parted-3.0 ported to SL 6? Yasha Karant Have you considered using a live CD of one of the fedora versions (I prefer F13 for that, but maybe it would have a problem with those drives too, so perhaps F14 or 15) to do the partitioning and then do the SL install? I've had to use that method in the past with Seagate drives. Just a thought to keep you out of dep hell. There is also the new parted magic live CD that may be better than Fedora because the tools are already in the distro. http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=partedmagic Thank you for the suggestion. I actually had, but for the moment, have rejected the idea. I shall explain my reasoning and please correct it. My machine does not have eSATA -- although I may have to get an eSATAp card that does not have a controller but merely connects to an available SATA data cable and then the necessary cable to attach any of the various form factors of SATA drives (the docking station I have will accept either a desktop workstation or a laptop form factor SATA drive). The motherboard on my workstation has ample free SATA ports and a large enough power supply (1.5 kW) to supply an eSATAp without issue. Without eSATA, and given the difficulties that I have encountered with USB 3 support in stock SL 6 (USB 2 is prohibitively slow to clone a drive in the TByte capacity range), would one of these live CDs allow ("see") an external USB 3 drive as /dev/sdX (or /dev/hdX or ... ) for some X? With eSATA, this should not be an issue. Details: I am using my faculty workstation for now to clone hard drives in that we do not have a dedicated cloning facility. Unfortunately, the drive from which I am cloning is a standard 512 byte sector drive, whereas the drive that is the target is one of the WD Advanced Format units, and thus a regular dd operation -- even with different input and output block sizes -- would not work because the input file system format would have partitions and internal file pointer contents (in an inode, for example) that would not point to the correct locations on a drive with very different internal block boundaries. If the sector sizes are the same on two disks, and other compatibility issues are met, and because the internal firmware on modern drives and controllers handles typical bad block issues, if one has two devices (say /dev/sdX and /dev/sdY, X .NE. Y), then a simple dd from sdX to sdY should copy all of the relevant partition and file system information, allowing one to mount the various top level directories of the cloned drive and make any necessary changes (such as the IP address for the target machine if, e. g., DHCP is not in use). Given the data rate of USB 3 and the existence of USB 3 SATA drive docking stations (e.g., an external USB 3 drive enclosure without the need of mechanically opening and closing an enclosure to insert or remove a drive), my plan was to use dd over USB 3. Yasha Karant
Re: Suggestion for a hard drive CUPS-like data base
On 07/28/2011 06:32 AM, Brent L. Bates wrote: One point of clarification. CUPS was NOT developed by Apple, they bought it. I used to talk to the guy who actually created it many YEARS ago as free software. He then commercialized it some, then eventually sold it off. I guess Apple owns the rights to it now. My understanding is that you are correct, and that CUPS evolved from earlier lp driver databases -- implementationally and somewhat conceptually different from predecessors, but following a path that had been forged. As a further aside, I for one do not care who is funding an open systems source-available project -- CUPS nominally is a .org , not a .com or .biz . It is obvious from the responses that Fermilab does not have the dedicated staffing to provide such a capability for hard drive parameter data -- does CERN? Does any other more-or-less public entity anywhere in the world? Would a for-profit entity step up to the plate, as Apple did with CUPS or Sun (now Oracle) did with OpenOffice (Sun bought StarOffice that became OpenOffice)? Yasha Karant
Re: WD Advanced Format hard drive issues
On 07/28/2011 04:29 PM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 07/28/2011 08:09 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: On 07/28/2011 02:21 AM, Alexander Hunt wrote: On 07/28/2011 12:48 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: On 07/27/2011 11:23 PM, Steven J. Yellin wrote: On Wed, 27 Jul 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: ... Is it safe to do the merry chase down the dependency trail to port a later parted to SL 6 or will some of these cause SL 6 to fail/become unstable? Does anyone have a SL 6 port of either parted or gparted that is more recent than the stock SL 6 versions? You asked about SL6, but my experience with SL5 may be relevant. The stock SL5 parted wouldn't make a label on a 3TB WD USB drive (4096 byte sectors), so I compiled what was then the latest version, parted-2.4, from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/. There were no absent dependencies, installation put the result into /usr/local/sbin, leaving the stock version alone, and the compiled version was adequate. They're up to parted-3.0 now. Steven Yellin I tried your suggested approach first but did not mention this in my posting. Below is the failure from configure of parted-3.0 on SL 6 : checking for uuid_generate in -luuid... no configure: error: GNU Parted requires libuuid - a part of the util-linux-ng package (but usually distributed separately in libuuid-devel, uuid-dev or similar) This can probably be found on your distribution's CD or FTP site or at: http://userweb.kernel.org/~kzak/util-linux-ng/ Note: originally, libuuid was part of the e2fsprogs package. Later, it moved to util-linux-ng-2.16, and that package is now the preferred source. End output. I was going to start chasing down the above dependencies, but instead attempted the Fedora path -- and again faced a chase as I previously have noted. If I install / build the various parts that parted-3.0 requires, will I break SL 6? One option is to build (configure, make) all of the parts without make install and customize the configure/make paths in each component to find the parts in non-standard locations so as not to "clobber" the stock SL 6 components. Does anyone have a parted-3.0 ported to SL 6? Yasha Karant Have you considered using a live CD of one of the fedora versions (I prefer F13 for that, but maybe it would have a problem with those drives too, so perhaps F14 or 15) to do the partitioning and then do the SL install? I've had to use that method in the past with Seagate drives. Just a thought to keep you out of dep hell. There is also the new parted magic live CD that may be better than Fedora because the tools are already in the distro. http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=partedmagic Thank you for the suggestion. I actually had, but for the moment, have rejected the idea. I shall explain my reasoning and please correct it. My machine does not have eSATA -- although I may have to get an eSATAp card that does not have a controller but merely connects to an available SATA data cable and then the necessary cable to attach any of the various form factors of SATA drives (the docking station I have will accept either a desktop workstation or a laptop form factor SATA drive). The motherboard on my workstation has ample free SATA ports and a large enough power supply (1.5 kW) to supply an eSATAp without issue. Without eSATA, and given the difficulties that I have encountered with USB 3 support in stock SL 6 (USB 2 is prohibitively slow to clone a drive in the TByte capacity range), would one of these live CDs allow ("see") an external USB 3 drive as /dev/sdX (or /dev/hdX or ... ) for some X? With eSATA, this should not be an issue. Details: I am using my faculty workstation for now to clone hard drives in that we do not have a dedicated cloning facility. Unfortunately, the drive from which I am cloning is a standard 512 byte sector drive, whereas the drive that is the target is one of the WD Advanced Format units, and thus a regular dd operation -- even with different input and output block sizes -- would not work because the input file system format would have partitions and internal file pointer contents (in an inode, for example) that would not point to the correct locations on a drive with very different internal block boundaries. If the sector sizes are the same on two disks, and other compatibility issues are met, and because the internal firmware on modern drives and controllers handles typical bad block issues, if one has two devices (say /dev/sdX and /dev/sdY, X .NE. Y), then a simple dd from sdX to sdY should copy all of the relevant partition and file system information, allowing one to mount the various top level directories of the cloned drive and make any necessary changes (such as the IP address for the target machine if, e. g., DHCP is not in use). Given the data rate of USB 3 and the existence of USB 3 SATA drive docking stations (e.g., an external USB 3 drive enclosure without the need of mechanically opening and closing an enclosure to insert o
gparted 0.9 (was: Re: WD Advanced Format hard drive issues)
(Hopefully, this is a new thread, not a hijacked one.) On Thu, 28 Jul 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: >>>>>>> ... > > Also, I have built parted 3.0 on SL 6.1 (I have upgraded my workstation to 6.1 now that it has gone to production status). Does anyone have a current gparted or other GUI based partitioning utility that supports the features of parted 3 on SL 6.x x86-64? > Have you tried building gparted-0.9.0? http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted/gparted-0.9.0/ says "The most significant change in this release is the ability to compile and link with libparted 3.0." Steven Yellin Yes, I have. Before this step, I built parted 3 and evidently, from the typescript of the make output, also built the current libparted 3.0 . However, a build of gparted-0.9.0 fails: Script started on Thu 28 Jul 2011 03:27:36 PM PDT ESC]0;ykarant@jb344:/oldhome/ykarant/gparted-0.9.0^GESC[?1034h[ykarant@jb344 gparted-0.9.0]$ ./configure checking for libparted >= 1.7.1... configure: error: *** Requires libparted >= 1.7.1. Perhaps development header files missing? ESC]0;ykarant@jb344:/oldhome/ykarant/gparted-0.9.0^G[ykarant@jb344 gparted-0.9.0]$ exit exit Script done on Thu 28 Jul 2011 03:28:18 PM PDT I need to make certain that the configure and then the make finds the libparted that the parted 3 build purportedly built. I am too tired right now to proceed -- but if anyone does get gparted 0.9 using parted 3 to build and function on SL 6.x (preferably X86-64), please do post your success. Yasha Karant
Re: upgrading from SL5 to SL6
I considered upgrading my workstation from CentOS 5.6 to SL 6.0, and discovered that the only practical method was a partial fresh install. As I keep many important directory trees on different partitions (for reasons I can discuss under separate cover), I basically did a complete copy of the system trees from which I would need to restore files. /home is on a different partition, and thus the install did NOT clobber it because I instructed the install process not to do so. Note that I did NOT repartition the hard drives, nor did I change to any other filesystems than those already on the partitions being clobbered by the (partial) fresh install. There was a comment as I recall from Connie Sieh as to which directory trees had to be a fresh install, and those I did. The result booted fine, and by restoring what I needed from the saved, unclobbered copies, I had everything I needed. The only glitch I had was the issue of polymorphism: I needed X86-64 as a base system, but I also needed to run a number of IA-32 applications. My Centos 5.6 was IA-32. I now seem to have solved the polymorphic issues for my the instance of my particular workstation configuration. Yasha Karant On 07/29/2011 03:25 PM, Chris Tooley wrote: Hello all, Do you still need to upgrade with media to go from SL5 to SL6, or can I do it from a CLI? thanks, -Chris
Re: upgrading from SL5 to SL6
On 08/01/2011 09:31 AM, Connie Sieh wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: I considered upgrading my workstation from CentOS 5.6 to SL 6.0, and discovered that the only practical method was a partial fresh install. As I keep many important directory trees on different partitions (for reasons I can discuss under separate cover), I basically did a complete copy of the system trees from which I would need to restore files. /home is on a different partition, and thus the install did NOT clobber it because I instructed the install process not to do so. Note that I did NOT repartition the hard drives, nor did I change to any other filesystems than those already on the partitions being clobbered by the (partial) fresh install. There was a comment as I recall from Connie Sieh as to which directory trees had to be a fresh install, and those I did. All system directories should be part of the hard drive "format". Leaving some system directories to get "clobbered" will lead to mixed results. Format all system directories during the new SLF 6.x install. > The result booted fine, and by restoring what I needed from the saved, unclobbered copies, I had everything I needed. The only glitch I had was the issue of polymorphism: I needed X86-64 as a base system, but I also needed to run a number of IA-32 applications. My Centos 5.6 was IA-32. I now seem to have solved the polymorphic issues for my the instance of my particular workstation configuration. Yasha Karant On 07/29/2011 03:25 PM, Chris Tooley wrote: Hello all, Do you still need to upgrade with media to go from SL5 to SL6, or can I do it from a CLI? thanks, -Chris -Connie Sieh To be explicit, am I correct that these system directories are: /boot /etc /usr/bin , /usr/sbin , /usr/lib /lib /var plus the MBR to point to the correct boot loader? Are there others that I have forgotten? Yasha Karant
Re: upgrading from SL5 to SL6 (update)
On 08/01/2011 09:43 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: On 08/01/2011 09:31 AM, Connie Sieh wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: I considered upgrading my workstation from CentOS 5.6 to SL 6.0, and discovered that the only practical method was a partial fresh install. As I keep many important directory trees on different partitions (for reasons I can discuss under separate cover), I basically did a complete copy of the system trees from which I would need to restore files. /home is on a different partition, and thus the install did NOT clobber it because I instructed the install process not to do so. Note that I did NOT repartition the hard drives, nor did I change to any other filesystems than those already on the partitions being clobbered by the (partial) fresh install. There was a comment as I recall from Connie Sieh as to which directory trees had to be a fresh install, and those I did. All system directories should be part of the hard drive "format". Leaving some system directories to get "clobbered" will lead to mixed results. Format all system directories during the new SLF 6.x install. > The result booted fine, and by restoring what I needed from the saved, unclobbered copies, I had everything I needed. The only glitch I had was the issue of polymorphism: I needed X86-64 as a base system, but I also needed to run a number of IA-32 applications. My Centos 5.6 was IA-32. I now seem to have solved the polymorphic issues for my the instance of my particular workstation configuration. Yasha Karant On 07/29/2011 03:25 PM, Chris Tooley wrote: Hello all, Do you still need to upgrade with media to go from SL5 to SL6, or can I do it from a CLI? thanks, -Chris -Connie Sieh To be explicit, am I correct that these system directories are: /boot /etc /usr/bin , /usr/sbin , /usr/lib , and other /usr sub-directories /lib /var /bin /sbin /dev /sys a swap area large enough (generally already so configured) plus the MBR to point to the correct boot loader? Are there others that I have forgotten? Explicitly, /local /opt /home and /usr/local can be excluded provided any scripts that load drivers from these are not used for the new kernel/systems software until scripts and/or drivers are upgraded/updated as well. Yasha Karant
USB 3 verified working with kernel 2.6.38 under SL 6.1
I have upgraded to the SL 6.1 release except for the use of a later kernel than that which is provided in 6.1 -- kernel 2.6.38 . I have now obtained Hitachi 1.5 Gbyte SATA drives (HITACHI Deskstar 7K3000 HDS723015BLA642 (0F12114) 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive) and used these in a USB 3 external SATA disk docking station (Thermaltake BlackX Duet 5G) that was displaying SUPERSPEED (i. e., USB 3 connectivity at USB 3 nominal data rates). Unlike the Western Digital drives that would not dd because the WD 512e emulation appears defective, these work fine, also establishing that the USB 3 hardware and kernel driver is (fully) functional. I am a bit disappointed in the actual USB 3 throughput: 8.5 MB/s according to dd, with much of time the cloning machine had no load (I was not using it other than for dd -- although X11 and gnome, along with a variety of daemons were present). top was showing very little memory use and a combined (over all cores) CPU fractional use for dd of about 0.2 (20 percent). Note that I only sampled with top -- it was not active during most of the cloning. I reproduce below the typescript of dd as well as terminal use of fdisk and mount to establish that USB 3 is functional. I will now use parted 3.0 to readjust the partitions on the cloned drive, and then clone again from the clone to the next target. Script started on Mon 01 Aug 2011 05:38:06 PM PDT ESC]0;ykarant@jb344:/home/ykarant^GESC[?1034h[root@jb344 ykarant]# dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sde 1250263728+0 records in 1250263728+0 records out 640135028736 bytes (640 GB) copied, 75463.5 s, 8.5 MB/s ESC]0;ykarant@jb344:/home/ykarant^G[root@jb344 ykarant]# exit exit Script done on Tue 02 Aug 2011 02:46:05 PM PDT [root@jb344 ykarant]# fdisk /dev/sde WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to sectors (command 'u'). Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sde: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x706a2c16 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sde1 * 1 32 257008+ 83 Linux /dev/sde2 33 12780 102398310 83 Linux /dev/sde3 12781 25528 102398310 83 Linux /dev/sde4 25529 77825 420075652+ 5 Extended /dev/sde5 25529 38276 102398278+ 83 Linux /dev/sde6 38277 4337540957686 83 Linux /dev/sde7 43376 4847440957686 83 Linux /dev/sde8 48475 5357340957686 83 Linux /dev/sde9 53574 5867240957686 83 Linux /dev/sde10 58673 58927 2048256 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sde11 58928 6080115052873+ 83 Linux /dev/sde12 60802 77825 136745248+ 83 Linux /dev/sde11 on /media/_usr11 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde8 on /media/_opt1 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde6 on /media/_vmware type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde7 43376 4847440957686 83 Linux /dev/sde8 48475 5357340957686 83 Linux /dev/sde9 53574 5867240957686 83 Linux /dev/sde10 58673 58927 2048256 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sde11 58928 6080115052873+ 83 Linux /dev/sde12 60802 77825 136745248+ 83 Linux /dev/sde11 on /media/_usr11 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde8 on /media/_opt1 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde6 on /media/_vmware type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde7 on /media/_usr_local type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde12 on /media/88b09855-c009-4cbd-b055-5bda1ec6d432 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde5 on /media/167ee03e-960b-4c7e-8aba-b62f49d13834 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde1 on /media/9aaab62a-50eb-4a36-a95c-02ed44d27881 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde3 on /media/_home1 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde9 on /media/68cc9e91-1115-4eeb-8e55-bf0f22f6ac26 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) /dev/sde2 on /media/848f55af-9e8c-4f46-bf62-5fd2eb577eb6 type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) Yasha Karant
Re: Toshiba L645D, and built-in webcam
I have a CKA7216 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd working under CentOS 5.6 on a HP EliteBook e.g., with application ekiga ([ykarant@localhost ~]$ ekiga --version Gnome ekiga 2.0.2) Yasha Karant On 08/08/2011 07:02 PM, Andrew Z wrote: oh, me stupid me lsusb Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 003: ID 04f2:b1d6 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:0158 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB 2.0 multicard reader Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hu don't ask why i thought it will be a pci device wonder if anyone had experience dealing with this one ( 04f2:b1d6 Chicony Electronics ) Andrew On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 9:41 PM, Andrew Z mailto:form...@gmail.com>> wrote: Hello, i have Toshiba L645D laptop. It has a built-in webcam. But lspci reveals nothing. I know it worked once it had windoz on it. HEre are the specs (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4210/toshiba-satellite-l645d-mobile-amd-3ghz). lspci : lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS880 Host Bridge 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems Device 9602 00:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0) 00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2) 00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode] 00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller 00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller 00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller 00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller 00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 41) 00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40) 00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller (rev 40) 00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge (rev 40) 00:15.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 43a0 00:16.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller 00:16.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor HyperTransport Configuration 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor Address Map 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor DRAM Controller 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor Miscellaneous Control 00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor Link Control 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M880G [Mobility Radeon HD 4200] 02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8191SEvB Wireless LAN Controller (rev 10) 08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8152 v1.1 Fast Ethernet (rev c1) At the same time there is /dev/video0 "c" file.. not sure where to go from here... Andrew
Re: Toshiba L645D, and built-in webcam
On 08/09/2011 05:32 AM, Andrew Z wrote: On 08/08/2011 07:02 PM, Andrew Z wrote: > oh, me stupid me > lsusb > Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub > Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub > Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub > Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub > Bus 002 Device 003: ID 04f2:b1d6 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd > Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:0158 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB 2.0 > multicard reader > Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub > Bus 001 Devic e 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hu > > don't ask why i thought it will be a pci device > > wonder if anyone had experience dealing with this one ( 04f2:b1d6 > Chicony Electronics ) > > Andrew > > > On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 9:41 PM, Andrew Z <mailto:form...@gmail.com>> wrote: > > Hello, >i have Toshiba L645D laptop. It has a built-in webcam. But lspci > reveals nothing. I know it worked once it had windoz on it. HEre are > the specs > (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4210/toshiba-satellite-l645d-mobile-amd-3ghz). > lspci : > lspci > 00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS880 Host Bridge > 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Toshiba America Info Syst ems Device 9602 > 00:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI > bridge (PCIE port 0) > 00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI > bridge (PCIE port 2) > 00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA > Controller [AHCI mode] > 00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > OHCI0 Controller > 00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > EHCI Controller > 00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > OHCI0 Controller > 00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > EHCI Controller > 00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 41) > 00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) > (rev 40) > 00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host > controller (rev 40) > 00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge > (rev 40) > 00:15.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 43a0 > 00:16.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > OHCI0 Controller > 00:16.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > EHCI Controller > 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h > Processor HyperTransport Configuration > 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h > Processor Address Map > 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h > Processor DRAM Controller > 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h > Processor Miscellaneous Control > 00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h > Processor Link Control > 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M880G > [Mobility Radeon HD 4200] > 02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. > RTL8191SEvB Wireless LAN Controller (rev 10) > 08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8152 v1.1 Fast > Ethernet (rev c1) > > At the same time there is /dev/video0 "c" file.. > not sure where to go from here... > > Andrew > > Yasha Karant wrote: I have a CKA7216 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd working under CentOS 5.6 on a HP EliteBook e.g., with application ekiga ([ykarant@localhost ~]$ ekiga --version Gnome ekiga 2.0.2) Yasha Karant Late last night: Installed xwtv and it worked while complaining about v4l. But no sound... another issue -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Which sound is missing: audio out (speaker) or audio in (microphone)? Does your unit have a built-in microphone? Note that when one configures audio out, the configuration utility allows one to play a test sound. system-config-soundcard is the utility under RHEL 5.6 . Yasha Karant
Re: Toshiba L645D, and built-in webcam
On 08/09/2011 08:57 AM, Andrew Z wrote: Yasha, the built in mic is not working. Based on the results from google ( at least for Ubuntu) that seems to be a constant problem. I came across 2 possible solutions ( disable quick boot in BIOS and this one http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1568213&page=2 <http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1568213&page=2> ). I"ll try it tonight. There is another problem which seemed to plague my both machines pc and laptop - during shutdown the theme "good bye" music is jerky and with echo. Not that it's important, but on those rare occasions when i do have sound on, it's annoying. Andrew On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 11:10 AM, Yasha Karant mailto:ykar...@csusb.edu>> wrote: On 08/09/2011 05:32 AM, Andrew Z wrote: On 08/08/2011 07:02 PM, Andrew Z wrote: > oh, me stupid me > lsusb > Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub > Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub > Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub > Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub > Bus 002 Device 003: ID 04f2:b1d6 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd > Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:0158 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB 2.0 > multicard reader > Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub > Bus 001 Devic e 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hu > > don't ask why i thought it will be a pci device > > wonder if anyone had experience dealing with this one ( 04f2:b1d6 > Chicony Electronics ) > > Andrew > > > On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 9:41 PM, Andrew Zmailto:form...@gmail.com> > <mailto:form...@gmail.com <mailto:form...@gmail.com>>> wrote: > > Hello, >i have Toshiba L645D laptop. It has a built-in webcam. But lspci > reveals nothing. I know it worked once it had windoz on it. HEre are > the specs > (http://www.anandtech.com/__show/4210/toshiba-satellite-__l645d-mobile-amd-3ghz <http://www.anandtech.com/show/4210/toshiba-satellite-l645d-mobile-amd-3ghz>). > lspci : > lspci > 00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS880 Host Bridge > 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Toshiba America Info Syst ems Device 9602 > 00:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI > bridge (PCIE port 0) > 00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI > bridge (PCIE port 2) > 00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA > Controller [AHCI mode] > 00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > OHCI0 Controller > 00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > EHCI Controller > 00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > OHCI0 Controller > 00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > EHCI Controller > 00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 41) > 00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) > (rev 40) > 00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host > controller (rev 40) > 00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge > (rev 40) > 00:15.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 43a0 > 00:16.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > OHCI0 Controller > 00:16.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB > EHCI Controller > 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h > Processor HyperTransport Configuration > 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h > Processor Address Map > 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h > Processor DRAM Controller > 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
What is the current ctrl-alt-backspace X win restart?
I have attempted to get a misbehaving X windows system to restart without rebooting the machine. In the past, as I recall, ctrl-alt-backspace would do this. This evidently has been disabled with the current X windows releases on Linux, including SL 6 . What is the current equivalent (perhaps a shell command), or how does one reactivate a control sequence to force the X server to exit and restart/reinitialize, with a fresh login screen? I have found some references using a web search to this issue for a number of current Linux distributions, but none of the offered "cures" seem to work with SL 6 (or presumably any RHEL 6 variant). Yasha Karant
Re: Staying with SL6.0 without updating to SL6.1
On 08/12/2011 04:14 AM, Andreas Petzold wrote: On Friday, August 12, 2011 12:50:12 carlopmart wrote: On 08/12/2011 12:22 PM, Morten Stevens wrote: On Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:58:19 +0200, carlopmart wrote: Thanks Andreas, but security updates are applied?? For example, last kernel version for SL6.0 is kernel-2.6.32-71.29.1, and for SL6.1 is 2.6.32-131.6.1. When I will launch "yum update", kernel will updated with 71.29.1 version or with 131.6.1 version?? It is only an example, but I am referrering to all packages for SL6.0 version ... Hi, After yum update the kernel will be updated to 2.6.32-131.6.1. (SL6.1) Otherwise you would have to exclude the kernel update in your yum configuration. For example: /etc/yum.conf exclude=kernel* Best regards, Morten After read your mail, Is it correct to say: "you can't stay at SL6.0 with security updates applied. Always, you will be upgraded to latest SL6.x + security patches", right?? no. Your notion of upgrade/security fix is a bit different from RH/SL. There simply is no such thing as an updated 2.6.32-71.29.1 kernel. That's what kernel 2.6.32-131.6.1 is. If you install 6.0 and only do "yum update", you will never automatically go to 6.1. You will get security fixes, but no new features like for instance some new RH tech preview stuff. As I said before, if you really need a specific version of a package, you should exclude it in the yum config. Of course, you won't get security updates, since that is a version change. Cheers, Andreas I have a suggestion for a better solution, one that may exist internally at Red Hat (it did at HP for HP-UX, a commercial SVR4 release/distribution) but that does not seem to be at the community. Some upgrades fix bugs, some upgrades fix security holes, some upgrades improve performance, some upgrades simply clean up highly patched code that is approaching "spaghetti" or "ravioli" depending upon the paradigm used, and some upgrades introduce new packages/utilities/drivers. If this were made clear in a searchable data base with fixed key words, or the equivalent matrix, then the matter could be resolved. An example may help to make this clear. Suppose package foobar contains utility foobar1 and libraries foobarlib.so and foobarlib.a . Suppose it was found, say by CERT or reports thereon, that the backwards weavil upside down needle (I am making up a name but this sort of name appears in the literature) attack exploits a memory leak in foobarlib-N.m allowing a root shell exploit. This is fixed in foobarlib-X, X > N.m . Moreover, a change in package foobar requires that packages muckup, rollover, and regurg all need to be updated as these depend upon package foobar and will not function with the newer, fixed package. Were this security issue to be made clear by searchable keyword, then a systems maintenance person could make an informed decision as to the security (or driver or ... ) fixes of any package upgrade, implementing the exclusion of the specific package as she or he requires. This is with the understanding that such an excluded update system produces a hybrid in some state between RHEL X.k and RHEL X.k+n, n>0 . Note that the upgrade issues typically are made clear by a detailed reading of the release notes or update history of package foobar, usually maintained at the upstream vendor and evidently reproduced in some form in the SL package notes. However, there does not seem to be a simple searchable keyword database. My suggestion does not address the EOL (or EOS) issues at which epoch an update may be regarded as mandatory. Yasha Karant
installation questions 6.1
I have to install SL 6.1 on a WD hard drive that uses a larger than 512 block. I plan to burn the bootable 4 Gbyte base SL 6.1 installation DVD from an ISO image. 1. On a running 6.1 system that can see the unmounted raw target hard drive (via eSATA -- but it appears to be a regular SATA drive so far as the OS is concerned as /dev/sde ) and on which I have a DVD reader/burner -- can I have anaconda from the DVD install the OS on the unmounted raw target? 2. If not, and I have multiple drives that I do not want touched, do I simply boot the SL 6.1 bootable install DVD and then have anaconda, etc., ignore all drives but the target one? If this is the case, how do I do so? 3. Must I force anaconda, etc., to use a larger block size on the target disk that is a Western Digital Advanced Format Hard Drive or will this happen automatically? Yasha Karant
Re: installation questions 6.1
On 08/17/2011 01:35 PM, Connie Sieh wrote: On Wed, 17 Aug 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: I have to install SL 6.1 on a WD hard drive that uses a larger than 512 block. I plan to burn the bootable 4 Gbyte base SL 6.1 installation DVD from an ISO image. 1. On a running 6.1 system that can see the unmounted raw target hard drive (via eSATA -- but it appears to be a regular SATA drive so far as the OS is concerned as /dev/sde ) and on which I have a DVD reader/burner -- can I have anaconda from the DVD install the OS on the Please clarify "and on which I have a DVD reader/burner" unmounted raw target? The installer does not care about mounted drives as they are not mounted when the installer runs. 2. If not, and I have multiple drives that I do not want touched, do I simply boot the SL 6.1 bootable install DVD and then have anaconda, etc., ignore all drives but the target one? If this is the case, how do I do so? There is a option to disable drives but I would not trust it. DO NOT pick autopartitioning . Pick custom and choose wisely. 3. Must I force anaconda, etc., to use a larger block size on the target disk that is a Western Digital Advanced Format Hard Drive or will this happen automatically? What does TUV documentation have on this topic? Yasha Karant -Connie Sieh Connie, My workstation is running SL 6.1 via the upgrade process from SL 6.0 except for a kernel from a later release than that used by RHEL 6.1; this was necessary to fully support USB 3. My workstation has a number of hard drives and peripherals: two harddrives with ext 2 bootable images of RHEL, one of which is SL 6.1 (one of which is EIDE and the other is SATA, but each appears as /dev/sdX under SL 6 -- no more /dev/hdX ) one SATA harddrive with NTFS and a bootable image of MS Win XP Pro that is mounted under SL 6.1 a number of other devices, including a SATA DVD reader/burner currently, a WD 1.5 Tbyte advanced format drive (with broken 512e emulation under the standard: hard drives configured with 4096-byte physical sectors with 512-byte firmware are referred to as Advanced Format 512e, or 512 emulation drives, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format#Advanced_Format_512e ) that appears as /dev/sde but physically is done through eSATA -- but this drive appears as regular SATA hardware in the motherboard hardware/boot/configuration CMOS prior to booting SL. On a running SL 6.1 system booted from /dev/sda, I would like to use the DVD reader that has a bootable DVD from SL-61-x86_64-2011-07-27-Install-DVD.iso to install, without shutting down the running SL 6.1 system, from the DVD onto the eSATA harddrive, all of which hardware is visible to SL 6.1 , as though I had booted from the DVD (anaconda, etc., running under the X11 gnome WM of the booted hard drive system if possible, not the DVD boot). If this is not possible, then I will shutdown, reboot from the DVD, and only target for installation to the eSATA drive, unless that too is impossible. However, the installation must use at least a 4096 byte physical sector (block), not a 512 byte. Yasha Karant
failure of SL 6.1 install
I booted a machine from the SL 6.1 install DVD to install upon an unformatted drive that appeared as /dev/sde. The drive is an advanced format Western Digital unit. The install failed at the partitioning format that I did as a custom format. Unfortunately, there was no way to capture the detailed message -- I tried scp but the local network security configuration prevented this from working. After the failure, I rebooted the machine and used fdisk /dev/sde to find out what I could. The result is: [root@jb344 ykarant]# fdisk /dev/sde The device presents a logical sector size that is smaller than the physical sector size. Aligning to a physical sector (or optimal I/O) size boundary is recommended, or performance may be impacted. WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to sectors (command 'u'). Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sde: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000656df Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sde1 112751024 83 Linux /dev/sde21275 103261 81920 83 Linux One may note that the 4096 bytes that the disk internally uses is observed as a physical sector size, but there is an attempt to use a 512 byte logical sector size. I need to force the formatting to use a 4096 byte logical and physical sector size. I did use a custom partitioning during the failed install. Evidently, this cannot be done using the GUI installation from the installation DVD. Can I do it from my existing OS and then proceeding to install without modifying the partitions I would layout? Yasha Karant
Re: failure of SL 6.1 install
On 08/18/2011 08:33 AM, Connie Sieh wrote: On Wed, 17 Aug 2011, Yasha Karant wrote: I booted a machine from the SL 6.1 install DVD to install upon an unformatted drive that appeared as /dev/sde. The drive is an advanced format Western Digital unit. The install failed at the partitioning format that I did as a custom format. Unfortunately, there was no way to capture the detailed message -- I tried scp but the local network security configuration prevented this from working. After the failure, I rebooted the machine and used fdisk /dev/sde to find out what I could. The result is: [root@jb344 ykarant]# fdisk /dev/sde The device presents a logical sector size that is smaller than the physical sector size. Aligning to a physical sector (or optimal I/O) size boundary is recommended, or performance may be impacted. WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to sectors (command 'u'). Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sde: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000656df Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sde1 1 1275 1024 83 Linux /dev/sde2 1275 103261 81920 83 Linux One may note that the 4096 bytes that the disk internally uses is observed as a physical sector size, but there is an attempt to use a 512 byte logical sector size. I need to force the formatting to use a 4096 byte logical and physical sector size. I did use a custom partitioning during the failed install. Evidently, this cannot be done using the GUI installation from the installation DVD. Can I do it from my existing OS and then proceeding to install without modifying the partitions I would layout? Yasha Karant Please read this http://karelzak.blogspot.com/2010/05/4096-byte-sector-hard-drives.html -connie sieh I have read this, and have tried to use the tools as provided in SL 6.1 . The partitioning fails. I also have attempted to build parted-3.0 with libparted 3.0 . Although parted-3.0 does build from source (configure, make), the library it seems to produce is not the latest library and does seem to not support beyond the 512 byte limit. Is there a flag to configure to force the larger sector/block size? Thus, at present, I am still not able to partition and format a WD advanced format drive. As a last resort, I may try an OpenSUSE current live DVD and use that to format the drive. Any other suggestions? Yasha Karant
libparted 3.0
Has anyone built parted 3.0 with libparted 3.0 and support for disks with other than 512 byte sectors on SL 6.x, and in particular, SL 6.1 X86-64? Or, the equivalent CentOS, RHEL, or PUIAS distributions? Yasha Karant
Re: Farewell from Troy
I certainly hope that you find your new position with a for profit corporation as stimulating and useful to society as the position that you are leaving -- the for-profit world is very different from the academic (except perhaps for that of the Rubbia-like worlds in nominally academic fields). One small question: is there anyone else who knows the same material with respect to SL that you do? That is, with you totally divorcing yourself from SL, have you built in programmer job security that will take a large amount of effort on the part of the remaining SL support team to re-invent? Best wishes on your new career. Yasha Karant On 08/25/2011 05:52 AM, Troy Dawson wrote: On 08/24/2011 01:54 PM, Christopher Tooley wrote: You still going to remain part of the mailing list? ;) I know you put a ;) after that, but I am still going to answer it. The answer is no. Scientific Linux has been such a part of my life for so long that I need to have a clean cut to separate myself from it. That is the only way it would be fair to my new employer. That would be true whoever my new employer is. It is possible that sometime in the future I might join the SL lists again and answer a question or two. But for now, I will not be on any SL mailing lists after September 2. Thanks to everyone Troy
Re: .xps files on SL5
I tried the binary executables of mudpf for linux on 5.7, but the glibc is not compatible. I then tried to make from source: [ykarant@localhost mupdf-0.9]$ make MKDIR build/debug CC build/debug/base_error.o CC build/debug/base_geometry.o CC build/debug/base_getopt.o CC build/debug/base_hash.o CC build/debug/base_memory.o CC build/debug/base_object.o CC build/debug/base_string.o CC build/debug/base_time.o CC build/debug/crypt_aes.o CC build/debug/crypt_arc4.o CC build/debug/crypt_md5.o CC build/debug/crypt_sha2.o CC build/debug/dev_bbox.o CC build/debug/dev_list.o CC build/debug/dev_null.o CC build/debug/dev_text.o fitz/dev_text.c:8:10: error: #include expects "FILENAME" or fitz/dev_text.c: In function ‘fz_text_extract_span’: fitz/dev_text.c:324: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘FT_Get_Advance’ make: *** [build/debug/dev_text.o] Error 1 Also, no go. What did you do differently? Yasha Karant On 09/16/2011 09:24 AM, Stephen Isard wrote: On Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:08:21 +0100, Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote: On Thu, 15 Sep 2011, Stephen Isard wrote: Can anyone suggest a way to read Microsoft's XML Paper Specification (.xps) files on SL5? ... mupdf http://mupdf.com/ works on SL6 but I haven't tried building it on SL5. Thanks for the pointer. It does build and work on SL5.5 too. Better than gxps for displaying a .xps file on the screen without needing to convert it to pdf first. But if you do want to convert the file to pdf, or print it, it's not immediately obvious whether mupdf can do that. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough. Stephen Isard