Re: [SLUG] USB TV Systems
Gerald wrote: Hello to one and all, Can anyone suggest a good Linux compatible usb TV system??? Preferably working on both the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, but certainly on the 2.6 kernel. Again, preferably out of the working. I would like to purchase one in the next coup;e of weeks. Checkout the hardware section of this page: http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html If it works with Myth, then it should be a pretty safe bet. The Plextor ConvertX PVR devices are around $100 here (in the US), and seem pretty common, so I guess they should be too expensive in AU either. Mikal -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] RE: slug Digest, Vol 5, Issue 36
Hi Peter From: Peter Hardy [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: slug@slug.org.au Subject: Re: [SLUG] How to build a kernel on debian (with modules enabled) Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:47:44 +1000 Heya. On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 12:23 +, Paul Davies wrote: INITIAL CONDITIONS: I downloaded Debian from the web. It installed a kernel on my behalf. I got the config from which this kernel was built from /boot to build my kernel. Just out of interest, why are you compiling a kernel? I work for Gelato (I assume you are the former sys admin guy from NICTA). I work on page tables (I have Adam Wiggins GPT running under 2.6.17-rc5) on a clean page table interface (fed to linux-mm on May 30). At the moment I just get the default page table to be chosen at compile time from a config. But, one day (far off in time) it might be a nice idea to be able to put a page table into a module. Probably fantasy but there you go. At present I am just mucking around trying to build a kernel with modules manually on my home machine. 1) I have compiled 2.6.15-1 with modules enabled. COMPILES FINE. Copied bzImage to /boot as vmlinuz-2.6.15-1. Rather than doing all of these steps manually, it may be worth looking in to installing and using the kernel-package package. Once you've got your kernel config good to go, you can use the make-kpkg command in kernel-package to automate away all the boring bits, and hand you a .dpkg file you can just install. I installed the package and I know I can do that. But I wanted to do it manually. I need to understand the steps involved. 4) I ran a script mkinitrdramfs to create the image for the ram disk (WORKED) and copied it to /boot. Woah. What's this mkinitrdramfs script? Do you mean /usr/sbin/mkinitramfs, which is shipped in the initramfs-tools package? Is it a custom script? It is the custom script (not yaird or anything). It is the equivalent of mkinitrd that ships with red hat. Also, how are you calling this script? Are you sure it's building an initrd using the modules for your new kernel, and not grabbing the ones for the kernel you're currently running? I just execute it as root. It is grabbing the ones for the kernel I am running. Very early in boot. It claims it can't find modules.dep in the directory that it ought to be in. FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.15.1/modules.dep: No such file or directory. This is the correct file and directory, its just that initrd never mounted properly (I THINK). What did you call the initrd image? ramdisk.img When I try to boot the kernel, the kernel insists that hda5 does not exist. No reason why it should either. I simply copied the original grub entry (theoretically an identical kernel) and hoped for the best. What changes have you made to grub? What's the exact error you get? Grub ORI title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.15-1-486 root (hd0,4) kernel/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1-486 root =/dev/hda5 ro initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-1-486 savedefault boot New Entry title Test Kernel root (hd0,4) kernel/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1 root =/dev/hda5 ro initrd /boot/ramdisk.img savedefault boot EXACT ERROR message: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.15.1/modules.dep: No such file or directory. FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.15.1/modules.dep: No such file or directory. ALERT! /dev/hda5 does not exist. Dropping to shell! BusyBox v1.01 (Debian 1:1.01-4) Built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built in commands. /bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off /#_ Thanks for any help... Paul Davies _ realestate.com.au: the biggest address in property http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] RE: slug Digest, Vol 5, Issue 36
On Mon, 2006-06-12 at 06:38 +, Paul Davies wrote: I work on page tables (I have Adam Wiggins GPT running under 2.6.17-rc5) on a clean page table interface (fed to linux-mm on May 30). At the moment I just get the default page table to be chosen at compile time from a config. But, one day (far off in time) it might be a nice idea to be able to put a page table into a module. Probably fantasy but there you go. Oh, cool. 4) I ran a script mkinitrdramfs to create the image for the ram disk (WORKED) and copied it to /boot. Woah. What's this mkinitrdramfs script? Do you mean /usr/sbin/mkinitramfs, which is shipped in the initramfs-tools package? Is it a custom script? It is the custom script (not yaird or anything). It is the equivalent of mkinitrd that ships with red hat. erm. That could be a problem. It's entirely possible it's doing something that either the kernel or the debian boot process isn't grokking. But I have no idea what. Also, how are you calling this script? Are you sure it's building an initrd using the modules for your new kernel, and not grabbing the ones for the kernel you're currently running? I just execute it as root. It is grabbing the ones for the kernel I am running. Very early in boot. It claims it can't find modules.dep in the directory that it ought to be in. FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.15.1/modules.dep: No such file or directory. That FATAL message is what you get when you try to boot the new kernel? In that case, your new kernel thinks it's version 2.6.15.1. I'm guessing the old kernel that boots successfully is a different version, and your mkinitrd tool is defaulting to creating an image containing modules for the old kernel, 'cause that's what is running when it's doing its thing. Your script should have an option to specify the kernel version that it needs to build an image for. This is the correct file and directory, its just that initrd never mounted properly (I THINK). Again, if the FATAL message is happening when the new kernel is booting, then the initrd is being read, it just doesn't contain what the kernel is looking for. What changes have you made to grub? What's the exact error you get? Grub ORI title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.15-1-486 root (hd0,4) kernel/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1-486 root =/dev/hda5 ro initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-1-486 savedefault boot New Entry title Test Kernel root (hd0,4) kernel/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1 root =/dev/hda5 ro initrd /boot/ramdisk.img savedefault boot EXACT ERROR message: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.15.1/modules.dep: No such file or directory. FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.15.1/modules.dep: No such file or directory. ALERT! /dev/hda5 does not exist. Dropping to shell! *nod* That all looks fine. grub's seems to be doing its thing. The kernel boots, and you'd get an entirely different message if it can't find its initrd at all. I'm definitely willing to put money on the wrong kernel modules being in the image now. Hope that helps. -- Pete -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] How to build a kernel on debian (with modules enabled)
On Sun, Jun 11, 2006 at 12:23:28PM +, Paul Davies wrote: Problem: I can't boot the kernel (2.6.15-1) with modules enabled (using DEBIAN) Reason: My ram disk boot image is not being recognised (not attached to an existing device). Paul, My suggestion is ditch the RAM disk; if you don't need it (and I doubt you do) it's just another thing to go wrong. Just make sure you build the important drivers into the kernel (IDE, file system, etc). You should be able to do $ make $ sudo make modules_install $ sudo make install $ sudo update-grub and it should just work -i signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: Automatic wireless profiles
On 2006-06-09, Peter Hardy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I found that NetworkManager only did its thing on interfaces that *weren'* otherwise defined in /etc/network/interfaces . Have you commented out the eth0 and eth1 stanzas from there? That was the key: I discovered it via the aside in James Gregory's earlier post and didn't update the list due to feeling foolish :/ (I have since shifted blame onto the funky error message and very quiet logging!) Thanks for your help. -Mary -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: Automatic wireless profiles
On 2006-06-09, Jeff Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: NM works on interfaces that aren't listed as well as interfaces that have a complete auto/dhcp listing, like: auto eth1 iface eth1 inet dhcp I had several listings along the lines of eth1-home, eth1-uni and such too :( Now, to figure out a way to get it to do my university's please submit an HTTP request to use our wireless hoop-jumping (I have a script that does this, it would just be nice to run it as soon as I select the network!) -Mary -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: ubuntu gop tools
Hi James, Thanks for the info. Very interesting. I'm going to have a look at this myself (just getting into vid editing at the moment). Regards, Patrick James wrote: Hi on my ubuntu test machine I want to use the gop tools (gopchop, gopedit, gopdit). I *think* that I have universe, multiverse, non-free and easyubuntu repositries enabled. I can find NO gop-anythings. Is this me-stupida, or ubuntu does not have and I need to build from source? Thanks James -- Registered Linux User 368634 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] hald error on boot (Ubuntu Dapper)
Hi, recently upgrading to dapper, I'm having issues with 'hald' on boot.. (i think its hardware application layer? device or similar)... It stalls on boot, I need to comment out smbfs entries in /etc/fstab for it not to be causing issues. But this isnt great as I need those mounts for normal operation. Has anyone had issues with this? Any help would be greatly appreciated... Thanks... Charles. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] GPL discovery on Netgear FVS338
Hi All, Seems the Netgear FVS338 firewall (http://kbserver.netgear.com/products/fvs338.asp) is actually Linux under the hood (specifically a customised 2.4.18 kernel): ftp://downloads.netgear.com/files/GPL/fvs338_v1_6_29_src_tar.bz2 (22.4MB) Having recently purchased one of these little units, it made me happy. Now it's got me thinking - why couldn't I run up my own 2.4 kernel so I can reuse my tried and true iptables scripts. The VPN functions don't interest me particularly. However, my iptables scripts do some pretty funky NAT stuff and port redirection which doesn't seem to be supported on Netgear's firmware. Anyone got any pointers on where a budding hardware h4x0r should start?? Cheers, James -- Perhaps they will have to outlaw sending random lists of words. fee fie foe foo [sic] -- Larry Wall in [EMAIL PROTECTED] pgpSqUaUHcCPU.pgp Description: PGP signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] GPL discovery on Netgear FVS338
On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:11 am, James Gray wrote: Hi All, Seems the Netgear FVS338 firewall (http://kbserver.netgear.com/products/fvs338.asp) is actually Linux under the hood (specifically a customised 2.4.18 kernel): ftp://downloads.netgear.com/files/GPL/fvs338_v1_6_29_src_tar.bz2 (22.4MB) Seems to have the following (according to Netgear: http://kbserver.netgear.com/datasheets/FVX538_ds_17Dec04_v3.pdf) Hardware Specifications: - Processor: 533 MHz Intel XScale IXP425 - Memory: 16MB Flash, 32MB DRAM - Encryption Accelerator: Cavium CN501 with 60+ Mbps (3DES+SHA-1) encryption So I might be in luck - anyone know if I need a cross-compiler or SDK for the XScale CPU? Or is it IA32 compatible?? What the hell is this Cavium CN501?! I know how these encryption accelerators work and what they are, just never seen them well supported under Linux. Cheers, James -- A bachelor is an unaltared male. pgpKEZvmdE4g1.pgp Description: PGP signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] GPL discovery on Netgear FVS338
On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 10:16:02 +1000, James Gray wrote: So I might be in luck - anyone know if I need a cross-compiler or SDK for the XScale CPU? Or is it IA32 compatible?? What the hell is this Cavium xscale is an arm core, so you need an arm cross compiler. Cheers, John -- Fanta _looks_ orange, but tastes of the bastard child of a sugar cane plantation and a Dow plant. -- Richard Bos -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Printer problems
I'm having serious diffculties with my printer, a parallel port LaserJet-6L. I upgrade to Ubuntu Dapper recently and the printer no longer works. The strange thing is that it worked a couple of weeks ago, using the old set up. Then not locally, but through samba, and now not at all, except of course when we hook up the printer to one of the windows machines. But I can't use it through the network in ubuntu. I've looked in the errors_log and it said that local authorisation could not be found. I looked this up on Google and came up with a launch pad reference which said it this problem was related to samba. The reference was in April and hopefully this was fixed before dapper was officially released. I got a working conf file from a friend and adapted it to my setup. No luck. I uninstalled samba and cupsys and reinstalled it all again. Worse, now apparently I can't install a printer at all. I'm going slightly mad! In the Readme.debian it said that some .cert file could be found in /var/spool/cups/ssl(sic) and symlinks in /etc/cups/ but these files do not exist. Should they or is this only for some special setups? Maybe, in the short term I should downgrade back to breezy. Is it advisable to do this with just the print and samba system? Shelagh *I kiss this e-mail farewell and wish it luck* -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Google Earth available for Linux
You can download it from here http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html -- Regards, Graham Smith -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Egress traffic shaping
On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:29 am, Howard Lowndes wrote: If I have a bridged DSL connection such that there is an ethernet interface to the DSL modem and then a PPP interface is established on connection, should I be applying egress traffic shaping on the ethernet interface or on the ppp interface? An explanation would assist. I'm assuming the PPP is actually PPPoE?? In that case the traffic shaping needs to be on the PPP interface. All the Ethernet traffic is just PPP data (ie, encapsulated) so the only way to do any sort of QoS/rate-limiting based on content is to grok the traffic inside the PPP link. Make sense? My explanation might be off, but I've got a new born, and another under 2yrs old, at home and didn't sleep last nightwhat's your excuse?! ;) Cheers, James -- Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. -- Albert Einstein pgpL9sALB4yhU.pgp Description: PGP signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Google Earth available for Linux
On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 12:36 +1000, Graham Smith wrote: You can download it from here http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html Totally borked. Segfaults immediately for me on Dapper. Only the crashdump functionality works - and even that's half broken: it can't actually *send* any of them (crashes too soon). -- Regards Peter Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] /\/\*http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~millerp/ PGP public key ID: 1024D/D0EDB64D fingerprint = AD0A C5DF C426 4F03 5D53 2BDB 18D8 A4E2 D0ED B64D See http://www.keyserver.net or any PGP keyserver for public key. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Google Earth available for Linux
On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 13:02 +1000, Peter Miller wrote: On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 12:36 +1000, Graham Smith wrote: You can download it from here http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html Totally borked. Segfaults immediately for me on Dapper. Only the crashdump functionality works - and even that's half broken: it can't actually *send* any of them (crashes too soon). Hmmm, got it working fine here, Dapper and all -- James Purser Producer/Presenter - Linux Australia Update http://james.k-sit.com - My Blog http://k-sit.com - My IT Consultancy http://localfoss.org - LA Update Podcast, LUG Roundup and more Skype: purserj1977 SIP: [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Google Earth available for Linux
Howard Lowndes wrote: Works for me on FC5 on a Toshiba lappy, but the screen is a bit messed up around the edges, esp the top and right sides Works Ok on my FC5, 800MHZ, Compaq Desktop and 512MB mem. O Plameras -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
AFAIK, no Linux distro is considered quite safe to upgrade from one release to the next (e.g. from SuSE 9.2 to SuSE 10.0, or FC 4 to FC 5). Wise people still routinely advise Install the new system on a spare partition, and switch over when it's properly installed and configured. The problem with this is that if you've tweaked things so that sendmail is running nicely, and you have all the RealPlayer and Flash 7 and innumerable video codecs installed, and your soundcard working well and the DVD burner (and TV card?) etc. etc. all working well - then you have to do all this work afresh on the new system, and that can take days. So: does anyone know of a Linux distro that is so easily managed and so well structured, that not only can you easily update all your packages (via apt or yum or whatever), but you can even upgrade the whole distro, 99.99% reliably? (And no, I don't really want to install BSD which can do this, I believe, because AFAIK Linux still has far greater hardware support and much faster development.) I suppose a halfway decent approach might be to mirror your old working system onto a spare partition, and *then* try running the upgrade on *that*. If it doesn't work, then you're no worse off, having only spent an hour or so installing/upgrading. I must be one of the few people on the planet still running RH 7.2. (I do it because I begrudge spending the days or weeks getting all the extra packages installed that I like.) But it's now too old, and really should be replaced. luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
On 13 Jun, luke wrote: AFAIK, no Linux distro is considered quite safe to upgrade from one release to the next (e.g. from SuSE 9.2 to SuSE 10.0, or FC 4 to FC 5). I turned up this discussion about this very topic: http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/14/152237 in which numerous respondents say that Debian and Gentoo and Mandrake (and Arch Linux) can all have the distro itself upgraded. So, a question for the Debian, Gentoo etc. users: have any of you have had a problem when you tried to get the system to upgrade itself from an older release (e.g. Debian 3.0 to 3.1)? Or does it always work perfectly smoothly? luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
Although it does still have it's flaws, Gentoo is an easily upgraded distro. See http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml to see how gentoo upgrading works... On 6/13/06, Luke Kendall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: AFAIK, no Linux distro is considered quite safe to upgrade from one release to the next (e.g. from SuSE 9.2 to SuSE 10.0, or FC 4 to FC 5). Wise people still routinely advise Install the new system on a spare partition, and switch over when it's properly installed and configured. The problem with this is that if you've tweaked things so that sendmail is running nicely, and you have all the RealPlayer and Flash 7 and innumerable video codecs installed, and your soundcard working well and the DVD burner (and TV card?) etc. etc. all working well - then you have to do all this work afresh on the new system, and that can take days. So: does anyone know of a Linux distro that is so easily managed and so well structured, that not only can you easily update all your packages (via apt or yum or whatever), but you can even upgrade the whole distro, 99.99% reliably? (And no, I don't really want to install BSD which can do this, I believe, because AFAIK Linux still has far greater hardware support and much faster development.) I suppose a halfway decent approach might be to mirror your old working system onto a spare partition, and *then* try running the upgrade on *that*. If it doesn't work, then you're no worse off, having only spent an hour or so installing/upgrading. I must be one of the few people on the planet still running RH 7.2. (I do it because I begrudge spending the days or weeks getting all the extra packages installed that I like.) But it's now too old, and really should be replaced. luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- Menno Schaaf aka ginji irc.austnet.org #gentoo #linux-help -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
[Anyone who plans on crying about my recommendation of a specific distro can feel free to provide an alternative -- a question was asked, I'm giving an answer] On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 01:33:47PM +1000, Luke Kendall wrote: AFAIK, no Linux distro is considered quite safe to upgrade from one release to the next (e.g. from SuSE 9.2 to SuSE 10.0, or FC 4 to FC 5). Wise people still routinely advise Install the new system on a spare partition, and switch over when it's properly installed and configured. I've never had to do that with my Debian/Ubuntu boxes -- I've upgraded one machine from Woody (Debian 3.0), to Sarge (Debian 3.1), to Hoary (Ubuntu 5.04), and I'm about to upgrade it to Dapper (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS) via Breezy (Ubuntu 5.10) sometime. I've already done one workstation (with some fairly customised GNOME config) from Sarge to Dapper via Hoary and Breezy, so I know it can be done. There was effectively zero breakage on that whole upgrade path (I had to tweak the Eclipse config to use Real Java, and readjust the sound volume to a reasonable default -- about 5 minutes work all told). The problem with this is that if you've tweaked things so that sendmail is running nicely, and you have all the RealPlayer and Flash 7 and innumerable video codecs installed, and your soundcard working well and the DVD burner (and TV card?) etc. etc. all working well - then you have to do all this work afresh on the new system, and that can take days. Which is why you use a distro which actually respects your configuration files, or else use a configuration management system to apply all of your settings whenever they go away (which, for a single home workstation, is what we call Massive Overkill). So: does anyone know of a Linux distro that is so easily managed and so well structured, that not only can you easily update all your packages (via apt or yum or whatever), but you can even upgrade the whole distro, 99.99% reliably? Debian and Ubuntu both have this capability. I know people who have gone through 3 or 4 releases of Debian without a reinstall. I've got one machine under my nominal control which is now 3 releases behind the latest Ubuntu, and I have no intention of reinstalling it from scratch when I get around to upgrading it -- I intend to simply upgrade to each successive release to bring it up to date. - Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
So, a question for the Debian, Gentoo etc. users: have any of you have had a problem when you tried to get the system to upgrade itself from an older release (e.g. Debian 3.0 to 3.1)? Or does it always work perfectly smoothly? With Debian, it depends on the packages you have installed. Often times there will be old packages that would prevent a smmooth dist-upgrade, but they can be resolved quite easily (remove the old offending package first). Normally apt or dpkg would tell you how to resolve such problem if it exists. At the end of an upgrade, yes, Debian/Ubuntu is very usable, unlike some other distros. -- -BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK- Version: 3.12 GCS d+ s: a- C++ UL P- L+++ E--- W++ N* o-- K-- w--- O-- M V- PS PE Y PGP++ t 5 X++ R tv b++ DI+ D++ G e++ h! r y? --END GEEK CODE BLOCK-- signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
On 6/13/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, a question for the Debian, Gentoo etc. users: have any of you have had a problem when you tried to get the system to upgrade itself from an older release (e.g. Debian 3.0 to 3.1)? Or does it always work perfectly smoothly? It's not always smotth, but its certainly possible. Ubuntu can also do the samething. ie. Friend had Ubuintu Breezy installed and recently did a apt-get dist-upgrade to Ubuntu Dapper. Of course he had some odd problems, but managed to work through them and get the machine upgraded without the need for a reinstall. So it's certainly possible. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
My Debian boxes have always been smooth upgrading, never a problem, and my gentoo ones as well. Gentoo won't change the configuration straight away (you update and then run etc-update to go through the config changes) As long as you don't hit -5 as the option for etc update you'll be in for a smooth update. I think the point is that with debian and gentoo you get a rolling update (updates to apps as they come, not all at once), so any problems you might have with a package are dealt with then, and you don't get any compounding problems because of it (generally, not always) On 6/13/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 13 Jun, luke wrote: AFAIK, no Linux distro is considered quite safe to upgrade from one release to the next (e.g. from SuSE 9.2 to SuSE 10.0, or FC 4 to FC 5). I turned up this discussion about this very topic: http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/14/152237 in which numerous respondents say that Debian and Gentoo and Mandrake (and Arch Linux) can all have the distro itself upgraded. So, a question for the Debian, Gentoo etc. users: have any of you have had a problem when you tried to get the system to upgrade itself from an older release (e.g. Debian 3.0 to 3.1)? Or does it always work perfectly smoothly? luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- Menno Schaaf aka ginji irc.austnet.org #gentoo #linux-help -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
Michael Fox wrote: On 6/13/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, a question for the Debian, Gentoo etc. users: have any of you have had a problem when you tried to get the system to upgrade itself from an older release (e.g. Debian 3.0 to 3.1)? Or does it always work perfectly smoothly? It's not always smotth, but its certainly possible. Ubuntu can also do the samething. ie. Friend had Ubuintu Breezy installed and recently did a apt-get dist-upgrade to Ubuntu Dapper. Of course he had some odd problems, but managed to work through them and get the machine upgraded without the need for a reinstall. So it's certainly possible. Certainly worked OK here - dist-upgrade from Breezy to Dapper - all OK apart from a bug introduced by Dapper where the default sound card setting is not saved properly between reboots. Fil -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
Luke Kendall wrote: AFAIK, no Linux distro is considered quite safe to upgrade from one release to the next (e.g. from SuSE 9.2 to SuSE 10.0, or FC 4 to FC 5). My current laptop was installed from an Ubuntu Warty CD because its all I had on hand at the time. I then immediately dist-upgraded it to the Breezy release (5.10) without even having a CD, just distupgrade over the net. Then, about 3-4 weeks ago I dist-upgraded the machine to Dapper, again no cdrom, just the net. The Warty to Breezy upgrade was completely painless. Some stuff that didn't work in Warty started working in Breezy. The Breezy to Dapper upgrade was marginally more painful but an order of magnitude less painful than installing from scratch and then reapplying tweaks. Debian is similarly easily upgradable, but all my machines run testing and therefore never need anything like a full upgrade. Erik -- +---+ Erik de Castro Lopo +---+ I have a cat, so I know that when she digs her very sharp claws into my chest or stomach it's really a sign of affection, but I don't see any reason for programming languages to show affection with pain. -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 01:45:42PM +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 13 Jun, luke wrote: AFAIK, no Linux distro is considered quite safe to upgrade from one release to the next (e.g. from SuSE 9.2 to SuSE 10.0, or FC 4 to FC 5). I turned up this discussion about this very topic: http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/14/152237 in which numerous respondents say that Debian and Gentoo and Mandrake (and Arch Linux) can all have the distro itself upgraded. So, a question for the Debian, Gentoo etc. users: have any of you have had a problem when you tried to get the system to upgrade itself from an older release (e.g. Debian 3.0 to 3.1)? Or does it always work perfectly smoothly? I wouldn't say that it can't fail, but I can't think of too many upgrades of Debian or Ubuntu boxes where it's completely done itself in, and I've done some pretty crazy stuff over the years -- custom packages, mixing releases, that sort of thing. On the other hand, I have seen some people who've managed to make a complete dog's breakfast of their systems such that the system won't upgrade, but I think that's more PEBKAC than PEID. - Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
Luke Kendall wrote: AFAIK, no Linux distro is considered quite safe to upgrade from one release to the next (e.g. from SuSE 9.2 to SuSE 10.0, or FC 4 to FC 5). Wise people still routinely advise Install the new system on a spare partition, and switch over when it's properly installed and configured. I've managed to upgrade my server at home from RH9 to FC1 then all the way up to FC4. Slightly painful but it probably would have been better if I used apt instead of yum with the earlier upgrades (there was some reason I used yum instead at the time, just can't remember exactly what that reason was). I should point out that the RH9 to FCx box is a fairly simple server (bind, sendmail, apache, samba, squid). I had openldap running on it as well, but that broke for me back at FC3 and I haven't bothered fixing it (wasn't critical). And like lots of other people here, I've gone from ubuntu warty to breezy to dapper (the same hard drive has been upgraded in 3 different machines as well in one case). Debian-based distros are definitely alot *less* painful than trying to get FC/RH based distros upgraded between releases though. -- dave. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 02:24:17PM +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: Debian is similarly easily upgradable, but all my machines run testing and therefore never need anything like a full upgrade. Instead you just get to dist-upgrade every couple of weeks. What fun! I have a cat, so I know that when she digs her very sharp claws into my chest or stomach it's really a sign of affection, but I don't see any reason for programming languages to show affection with pain. -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp Hahahaha -- That's going straight to the pool room! - Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Live QA Anti-circumvention session with Rusty Russell - This Friday night!
Hi all, I've sent this to linux-aus and to OSIA and I thought I'd pass it on here :) Rusty Russell is going to have a live QA session about anti-circumvention issues in Australia, and how it impacts the Australian FOSS community. James Purser will be running the show, interviewing Rusty and taking questions from you, the live audience real-time via IRC. This will be live on Friday night 8:30pm Sydney time and the web streaming location will be posted in the #linux-aus IRC channel on irc.freenode.net from earlier that day. Please post your questions there too during the session for James to ask Rusty and have your questions answered. The stream will also be posted on the LA site after the event for others to catch it, however make sure you come to the live session to get your questions in and find out how anti-circumvention issues in Australia affect YOU. The event will include a short presentation by Rusty followed by questions from you received on the IRC channel above. Rusty has been working very hard to educate our politicians, our policy makers, our community and our businesses about anti-circumvention, patents, and other IP issues. He is always a fantastic speaker and will no doubt be excellent to listen to and speak with. I strongly urge the entire community to take advantage of this opportunity to find out about this important issue. Rusty can be a hard person to catch :) On a related note, Linux Australia has a petition up for LUGs to take along to meetings to get signatures. We need to draw Government awareness to anti-circumvention issues and how they can impact freedom of competition, and the freedom of consumers to use their own legally purchased products. Read up on this issue and others at http://www.linux.org.au/law/ Print out the petition and take it along to your FOSS usergroups, to your SIGs, to your IT orgs, your work, your family and friends. This issue affects everyone, not just geeks, so lets show a great community effort and get as many signatures as we can. We literally need thousands to be taken even vaguely seriously by the Government, so if we all put in an effort, we will make a difference, and avoid the further monopolisation of the market which hurts consumers, and hurts Free Software. Cheers, Pia -- Linux Australia http://linux.org.au/ If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. - J. R. R. Tolkien -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Google Earth available for Linux
On Tuesday 13 June 2006 11:49, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can download it from here http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html Cute, much hype, has anybody seen the actual download? It not on this page which lists linux requirements, xorg etc James -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] hald error on boot (Ubuntu Dapper)
* On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 09:54:27PM +1000, Charles Myers wrote: Hi, recently upgrading to dapper, I'm having issues with 'hald' on boot.. (i think its hardware application layer? device or similar)... It stalls on boot, I need to comment out smbfs entries in /etc/fstab for it not to be causing issues. But this isnt great as I need those mounts for normal operation. Has anyone had issues with this? Any help would be greatly appreciated... Thanks... I don't know about hald, but the usual solution for mounts causing hangs on boot is to use the automounter (vi /etc/auto*). Of course, this might just postphone the hang till when you try to access smbfs :-) -- Sonia Hamilton. GPG key A8B77238. . Complaining that Linux doesn't work well with Windows is like ... oh, say, evaluating an early automobile and complaining that there's no place to hitch up a horse. (Daniel Dvorkin) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Live QA Anti-circumvention session with Rusty Russell - This Friday night!
On 13 Jun, Pia Waugh wrote: Read up on this issue and others at http://www.linux.org.au/law/ Print All too true. Have others noted how Viiv technology is being promoted as a great plus for consumers who want to use their PCs for music and video? It's supposed to protect the user by making the use of their multimedia content controllable by the vendor instead of the user, e.g. only being playable on one machine, or limited to three plays, or expiring after N days, or ... I'm told it's the principle of the Big Lie in advertising - claim your greatest weakness as your biggest strength, and people will believe you (perhaps because they think They must have proof if they claim something that's that outrageous. Me, I'm just planning to boycott Viiv - I encourage others to enquire about it before they buy a new PC or media device. luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
Matthew Palmer wrote: I have a cat, so I know that when she digs her very sharp claws into my chest or stomach it's really a sign of affection, but I don't see any reason for programming languages to show affection with pain. -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp Erik Naggum is a genious. For proof see this collection of quotes (and flames) from him: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ErikNaggumQuotes His thoughts on XML and C++ (links on that page) are enlightening. Erik -- +---+ Erik de Castro Lopo +---+ Do I do everything in C++ and teach a course in advanced swearing? -- David Beazley at IPC8, on choosing a language for teaching -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
On 13 Jun, Matthew Palmer wrote: I wouldn't say that it can't fail, but I can't think of too many upgrades of Debian or Ubuntu boxes where it's completely done itself in, and I've done some pretty crazy stuff over the years -- custom packages, mixing releases, that sort of thing. On the other hand, I have seen some people who've managed to make a complete dog's breakfast of their systems such that the system won't upgrade, but I think that's more PEBKAC than PEID. That seems to be the consensus. (No one has volunteered any serious problems in upgrading a Debian system.) Though Billy Kwong noted that it depended a bit on how many packages you have installed: With Debian, it depends on the packages you have installed. Often times there will be old packages that would prevent a smmooth dist-upgrade, but they can be resolved quite easily (remove the old offending package first). Normally apt or dpkg would tell you how to resolve such problem if it exists. That's a worry, actually. I seem to have a knack for finding good, usable software that then gets abandoned. Because I like the usability of the older package I don't want to remove it; but it stands in the way of newer versions needed by other software. I suspect this problem will continue to exist as long as we continue to use shared objects instead of static linking. On the subject of Gentoo, I confess I had a bad experience with it two years ago because it would happily try to install packages with conflicting dependencies - e.g. I requested Jack in the USE options and the system couldn't install due to conflicts between OSS and Alsa or something. This seemed a bit of a design flaw. (For those interested, Menno Schaaf pointed me at how gentoo upgrading works: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml) Consensus on RH seems to be that the upgrade problem strongly exists for that. So I think I'll try Ubuntu - last time I tried to install a plain Debian (nine months ago), I gave up after I realised I still had another 200 hundred questions to answer about configuring the kernel, and if I changed my mind about an earlier question I'd suffer. BTW, what approach do these upgradable distros take to installing new kernels? I.e. keeping the right modules available and matched to the kernel that's booting, and allowing older kernels to stay in the boot config? Does Ubuntu allow the use of Lilo instead of Grub? Thanks for all the replies, on and off the list, BTW. luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 13:55 +1000, Billy Kwong wrote: So, a question for the Debian, Gentoo etc. users: have any of you have had a problem when you tried to get the system to upgrade itself from an older release (e.g. Debian 3.0 to 3.1)? Or does it always work perfectly smoothly? With Debian, it depends on the packages you have installed. Often times there will be old packages that would prevent a smmooth dist-upgrade, but they can be resolved quite easily (remove the old offending package first). Normally apt or dpkg would tell you how to resolve such problem if it exists. At the end of an upgrade, yes, Debian/Ubuntu is very usable, unlike some other distros. hmmm well for me the upgrade from breezy to dapper turned my laptop into a paper weight (dapper has issues with ati video cards) I blew everything away and went back to breezy. So warned I tried the dapper desktop cd before upgrading my desktop. Result, hard drives, what hard drives? Apparently dapper amd64 doesn't like adaptec scsi cards. So for me the upgrade breezy to dapper was a complete impossibility. For either laptop or desktop. Regards, Ashley -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] virtual domain mailing list manager
I've just spent several days getting mailman working. Only to find it doesn't like the same name for a mailing list in a virtual domain environment. so you can't have: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] So is there a good mailing list manager for such an environment using postfix or exim as the back end mta? Or have I missed something in mailman? Regards, Ashley -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Is there a truly upgradable Linux distro?
* On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 01:33:47PM +1000, Luke Kendall wrote: AFAIK, no Linux distro is considered quite safe to upgrade from one release to the next (e.g. from SuSE 9.2 to SuSE 10.0, or FC 4 to FC 5). Uhhh, how about Debian (and variants like Ubuntu)? Upgrading is very safe, and if you have doubts about a particular package, you can always pin it and do the upgrade at a later stage. Any problems I've had have usually been caused by software that was installed manually rather than thru a package. I must be one of the few people on the planet still running RH 7.2. (I do it because I begrudge spending the days or weeks getting all the extra packages installed that I like.) But it's now too old, and really should be replaced. I think all Linuxes (even Debian) would have issues when doing such a large version increase; in Debian would be solveable but take a fair bit of work. If you've got different partions (eg /home, /var) it can be easier to reinstall and keep your existing data on these separate partions. -- Sonia Hamilton. GPG key A8B77238. . Complaining that Linux doesn't work well with Windows is like ... oh, say, evaluating an early automobile and complaining that there's no place to hitch up a horse. (Daniel Dvorkin) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Google Earth available for Linux
hmmm. works fine for me on dapper at home, and FC 5 and 3 at work. Totally borked. Segfaults immediately for me on Dapper. Only the crashdump functionality works - and even that's half broken: it can't actually *send* any of them (crashes too soon). -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
