from:"Yasha Karant"

scilinux 6 install fail

2011-06-15 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-15 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-16 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-16 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-16 Thread Yasha Karant

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:

Re: scilinux 6 install fail with log

2011-06-16 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-17 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-17 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-18 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-18 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-18 Thread Yasha Karant


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)

2011-06-19 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-19 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-19 Thread Yasha Karant


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)

2011-06-19 Thread Yasha Karant

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

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:

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?

2011-06-21 Thread Yasha Karant


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?

2011-06-21 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-06-21 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-22 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-06-23 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-06-23 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-26 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-27 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-27 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-06-27 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-06-28 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-29 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-06-29 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-29 Thread Yasha Karant

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?

2011-06-29 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-06-30 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-06-30 Thread Yasha Karant

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?

2011-06-30 Thread Yasha Karant

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)

2011-06-30 Thread Yasha Karant

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.

Re: Top posting versus bottom posting

2011-06-30 Thread Yasha Karant


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?

2011-07-01 Thread Yasha Karant

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?

2011-07-01 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-01 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-01 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-05 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-05 Thread Yasha Karant

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]

2011-07-05 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-05 Thread Yasha Karant


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?

2011-07-05 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-06 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-06 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-07 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-07 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-11 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-11 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-11 Thread Yasha Karant

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]

2011-07-11 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-11 Thread Yasha Karant


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.

2011-07-12 Thread Yasha Karant


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.

2011-07-12 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-13 Thread Yasha Karant

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?

2011-07-16 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-20 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-21 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-23 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-23 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-24 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-24 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-25 Thread Yasha Karant


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)

2011-07-26 Thread Yasha Karant


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))

2011-07-26 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-26 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-26 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-26 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-26 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-27 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-27 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-27 Thread Yasha Karant

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)

2011-07-27 Thread Yasha Karant

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

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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
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-- --

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

2011-07-27 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-07-27 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-27 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-27 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-27 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-28 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-28 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-07-28 Thread Yasha Karant


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)

2011-07-28 Thread Yasha Karant

(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

2011-07-30 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-08-01 Thread Yasha Karant


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)

2011-08-01 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-08-02 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-08-08 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-08-09 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-08-09 Thread Yasha Karant


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?

2011-08-10 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-08-12 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-08-17 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-08-17 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-08-17 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-08-19 Thread Yasha Karant


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

2011-08-19 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-08-26 Thread Yasha Karant

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

2011-09-16 Thread Yasha Karant

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

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