Re: Debian 9.2 amd64 Xfce lock screen -> 100 %CPU by lightdm-gt+

[Curt]

On 2017-10-12, David Christensen  wrote:
>
> Checking the bugs for 'lightdm-gtk-greeter' -- nope:
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?dist=unstable;package=lightdm-gtk-greeter
>

Not debian, but, yep ...

https://bugs.launchpad.net/lightdm-gtk-greeter/+bug/1635125

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm-gtk-greeter/+bug/1448214

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm-gtk-greeter/+bug/1509780

What redundancy, what.

> David
>
>



-- 
"A simpering Bambi narcissist and a thieving, fanatical Albanian dwarf."
Christopher Hitchens, commenting shortly after the nearly concurrent deaths 
of Lady Diana and Mother Theresa.

Re: Debian 9.2 amd64 Xfce lock screen -> 100 %CPU by lightdm-gt+

[Darac Marjal]

On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:13:52PM -0700, David Christensen wrote:

On 10/11/17 21:43, davidson wrote:

On Wed, 11 Oct 2017, David Christensen wrote:

[cut]

If I lock the screen and SSH in from another machine, 'top' says:

...
 PID USER  PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM TIME+ 
COMMAND
7473 lightdm   20   0  587348  51332  25584 R  94.6  2.5   0:14.52 
lightdm-gt+

...


AFAICT, that command name is truncated. In interactive top, you can
scroll with right-arrow, to view the rest of the name. With that
information, your search results might improve.

Could be lightdm-gtk-greeter? Or something else, I guess.

...

Thanks for the tip.  Making my Xfce Terminal wider, I see more of the 
name, but it's still truncated (as are several others with long 
names). RTFM top(1) -- I can use the -b (batch mode), -n 1 (number of 
iterations), and -w (output-width-override) options and redirect the 
output to file:


2017-10-11 22:51:04 dpchrist@tinkywinky ~
$ top -b -n 1 -w
top - 22:52:43 up 15:45,  2 users,  load average: 0.98, 0.53, 0.27
Tasks: 232 total,   3 running, 229 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 13.7 us,  2.3 sy,  0.2 ni, 83.4 id,  0.4 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 
si, 0.0 st

KiB Mem :  2043196 total,   535484 free,   780640 used,   727072 buff/cache
KiB Swap:  1952764 total,  1744820 free,   207944 used.   980428 avail Mem

 PID USER  PR  NIVIRTRESSHR S  %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
9957 lightdm   20   0  587348  51196  25444 R  88.2  2.5   2:41.03 
lightdm-gtk-gre

...


According to StackOverflow[1], process names can only be 16 bytes long. 
So, while the executable may be called 'lightdm-gtk-greeter', the 
process in which that executable runs will be 'lightdm-gtk-gre'.



[1] 
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23534263/what-is-the-maximum-allowed-limit-on-the-length-of-a-process-name#23534499



--
For more information, please reread.


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Description: PGP signature

RE: AIDE defaults in debian stretch

[john]

Thanks. I will work on the config more.

-Original Message-
From: Dejan Jocic [mailto:jode...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 1:12 PM
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: AIDE defaults in debian stretch

On 10-10-17, j...@bluemarble.net wrote:
> The Debian configuration files in AIDE on Debian seem to monitor a lot 
> of files that I'm not sure need monitoring. Maybe someone could shed 
> some light.
> 
> Is there a reason I should monitor /run? What about the /var/log/ 
> files that are rotated. It often complains about that. How about systemd
journal files?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> 

I'm far from expert in this, just user of AIDE, so was hopping that someone
with more knowledge than me will shed some light on this.
Anyway, I did not like how AIDE works in Debian, looked overcomplicated to
me, so I've installed aide without recommends. If you do it like that, you
end up without aide-common package, which will make AIDE much more vanilla
like. You do not have any config file, nor cron job added automatically. So,
you need to do bit of learning that way and to include in that aide.conf
file what you want, and what you do not want.
Find some examples on net, like this one:

# define the path for creating the databases.
database=file:/var/lib/aide/aide.db
database_out=file:/var/lib/aide/aide.db.new
database_new=file:/var/lib/aide/aide.db.new
 
# define your own aide rule.
MYRULE =  p+n+u+g+s+m+c+xattrs+md5+sha1
 
# choose your directories/files you want in the database and which rule
should be used.
/ MYRULE
 
# define your exceptions.
!/proc   # ignore /proc filesystem
!/sys# ignore /sys filesystem

That one is obvious overkill, because whole system will be checked except
/proc and /sys, but is good example how you can exclude what you do not want
to. Also, that one uses /var/lib/aide for databases, which for sure is not
recommended practice. Best practice would be to put aide.conf, databases and
even aide binary on, for example, USB that would be inserted just for check.
As for should you make AIDE check /run and /var/log, not really sure. Some
think that even some things under /proc should be checked (not that AIDE can
do it anyway). But checking /var/log is annoying and bit of overkill, at
least for me.

Hope that this helps you at least a bit.

Opera/Firefox speed, was Re: flash in stretch again

[David Wright]

TL;DR perhaps try http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

On Thu 22 Jun 2017 at 13:00:35 (-0300), Wellington Terumi Uemura wrote:
> I really recommend that you switch up to Opera and forget about
> Chromium and Firefox for a number of reasons. It uses much less
> resources, native AdBlock, embedded free VPN for your privacy
> concerns, it uses chromium engine to render pages, pop up video,
> Speed Dial, etc, etc.
> http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-reasons-why-you-should-use-the-opera-browser/
> https://www.windowscentral.com/why-switch-opera-browser
> 
> Your issue is also why I've migrated it and I'm not willing to go
> back, I don't keep track of every single change that happens with
> Debian and Mozilla. Before I used to compile a kernel specific to my
> machine, now I just want to install the thing and use it.
> 
> I just have enough of this, Firefox is out of Debian, now is back
> again, now Firefox stop working with flash and you have to do some
> Voodoo magic to make it work until the next update that will brake
> flash player all over again.

As a result of this recommendation, I decided to try Opera on
this low-powered machine¹. Flash is the least of my problems
as I download those I want to see and am grateful that the rest
*don't* run: it's the rendering speed that is my main concern.
Many web pages completely overload the machine: the screen
clock and even the mouse interrupts can get several tens of
seconds behind and then have to catch up. (Unless you wait,
any mouse clicks will land in the wrong place.)

I found O's usability difficult after using F for years², but
there *were* individual web sites that were faster to render,
so I set up short-cuts to call those up. The two most significant
were the 10-day forecast and the weather radar. Some newspaper
sites too.

O's printing was no better that F (eg missing a line at page
top/bottoms) and it would sometimes produce the correct number
of empty pages. Saving web pages (whichever way) seemed only to
be able to produce a mystery monolithic file, rather than F's
tree of individual images and other scraps, which is a feature
I depend on.

The Google Images interface was far less useful too. (I only rarely
want to visit the pages that the images come from: for me, it's a
search tool, not a navigation one.)

It also appeared that when O started with a number of Tabs from
the previous session, it would attempt to restore them all
straight away, with completely negated any performance gain.
F only opens the Tab you're displaying, and defers restoring
other ones until you select them.

I was happy to see that O could import F's bookmarks, but the
way they were then implemented was poor as it alphabetised
them all. Imagine getting to w-eather: six or seven lists the
height of the page.

With a couple more devices to add to /etc/hosts, I though I'd
try adding in the list of machines at

http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

This has had a much more transforming effect on F than switching
to Opera; so much so that I have reverted my short-cuts for
weather etc. The fan has less work to do too.

(BTW. I'm happy to read comments on where I went wrong.)

¹ 1.50GHz Pentium M, 512MB memory, 1GB swap, fvwm, no DE.

² Opera was, I think, the third browser I used (mid-1990s), after
Mosaic and Netscape, in the days when it had a little orange panel
top-right where it put ads. Fvwm used to put a tiny xterm over it
(set to always-on-top) to avoid the distracting animations.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Blank screen bug

[David Wright]

On Tue 10 Oct 2017 at 21:45:29 (+0200), Tim wrote:

> I experience this bug in jessie as well. However, that bug got fixed in
> stretch. The bug I'm now facing is random (short) periods of a
> black/blank screen. Just as anxiousmac nicely summarized said before:

[…]

> I will try this, although I'm not exactly sure how this would help as
> 90% of the time the screen display works fine.
> 
> By now I also have a bit more experience with switching to a virtual
> console when this occurs, but alas, this doesn't seem to influence the
> blank screen in any way.

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

This old Dell has a semi-permanent problem resembling this. The screen
works normally for about one second on the POST, and again whenever
you press a key after the screen had blanked. So it's only usable with
a VGA monitor connected. However, the monitor doesn't display the CMOS
screen which limits options.

The rest of the time, the display is trying to work, odd flickers can
be seen as it switches modes, and once X is running it's just possible
to make out a glimmer from windows that have white backgrounds.

I can only think that it's a firmware/hardware bug. A blown capacitor
is the first thing that spring to mind.

Cheers,
David.

Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Gene Heskett]

Greetings all;

What does the word Unifying, as I see in dmesg for some, but not all, the 
the rx buttons for wireless keyboards/mice, actually mean?

I took that to mean that it could work for both their (logitech's) 
keyboards or mice, possibly at the same time so that it might be usable 
for both at the same time, thereby saving a usb2 socket.

Testing that theory got that idea squashed, so what exactly does that 
word unifying mean?

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[David Wright]

On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 11:44:29 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
> Greetings all;
> 
> What does the word Unifying, as I see in dmesg for some, but not all, the 
> the rx buttons for wireless keyboards/mice, actually mean?
> 
> I took that to mean that it could work for both their (logitech's) 
> keyboards or mice, possibly at the same time so that it might be usable 
> for both at the same time, thereby saving a usb2 socket.
> 
> Testing that theory got that idea squashed, so what exactly does that 
> word unifying mean?

AFAIK you need windows for running the Logitech application
that does the unifying. You can do it anywhere that you can
take your devices if you don't have windows. Yes, you save
a USB socket.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Jape Person]

On 10/12/2017 11:50 AM, David Wright wrote:
> On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 11:44:29 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
>> Greetings all;
>>
>> What does the word Unifying, as I see in dmesg for some, but not all, the 
>> the rx buttons for wireless keyboards/mice, actually mean?
>>
>> I took that to mean that it could work for both their (logitech's) 
>> keyboards or mice, possibly at the same time so that it might be usable 
>> for both at the same time, thereby saving a usb2 socket.
>>
>> Testing that theory got that idea squashed, so what exactly does that 
>> word unifying mean?
> 
> AFAIK you need windows for running the Logitech application
> that does the unifying. You can do it anywhere that you can
> take your devices if you don't have windows. Yes, you save
> a USB socket.
> 
> Cheers,
> David.
> 
> 

Please take a look at the solaar package in Debian main. I've
used it before. Works very well for connecting a Logitech
wireless keyboard and wireless mouse to a single usb-connected
receiver.

Re: Debian 9.2 amd64 Xfce lock screen -> 100 %CPU by lightdm-gt+

[David Christensen]

On 10/12/17 03:56, Darac Marjal wrote:

On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:13:52PM -0700, David Christensen wrote:
 PID USER  PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM TIME+ 
COMMAND
9957 lightdm   20   0  587348  51196  25444 R  88.2  2.5   2:41.03 
lightdm-gtk-gre

...


According to StackOverflow[1], process names can only be 16 bytes long. 
So, while the executable may be called 'lightdm-gtk-greeter', the 
process in which that executable runs will be 'lightdm-gtk-gre'.



[1] 
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23534263/what-is-the-maximum-allowed-limit-on-the-length-of-a-process-name#23534499 


That explains it -- just another example of violating the zero, one, 
infinity rule:


http://wiki.c2.com/?ZeroOneInfinityRule


David

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 12 October 2017 11:50:30 David Wright wrote:

> On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 11:44:29 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Greetings all;
> >
> > What does the word Unifying, as I see in dmesg for some, but not
> > all, the the rx buttons for wireless keyboards/mice, actually mean?
> >
> > I took that to mean that it could work for both their (logitech's)
> > keyboards or mice, possibly at the same time so that it might be
> > usable for both at the same time, thereby saving a usb2 socket.
> >
> > Testing that theory got that idea squashed, so what exactly does
> > that word unifying mean?
>
> AFAIK you need windows for running the Logitech application
> that does the unifying. You can do it anywhere that you can
> take your devices if you don't have windows. Yes, you save
> a USB socket.
>
> Cheers,
> David.

Thanks David. This is not a function available in one of the bluetooth 
tool kits?


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 12 October 2017 12:17:45 Jape Person wrote:

> On 10/12/2017 11:50 AM, David Wright wrote:
> > On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 11:44:29 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
> >> Greetings all;
> >>
> >> What does the word Unifying, as I see in dmesg for some, but not
> >> all, the the rx buttons for wireless keyboards/mice, actually mean?
> >>
> >> I took that to mean that it could work for both their (logitech's)
> >> keyboards or mice, possibly at the same time so that it might be
> >> usable for both at the same time, thereby saving a usb2 socket.
> >>
> >> Testing that theory got that idea squashed, so what exactly does
> >> that word unifying mean?
> >
> > AFAIK you need windows for running the Logitech application
> > that does the unifying. You can do it anywhere that you can
> > take your devices if you don't have windows. Yes, you save
> > a USB socket.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > David.
>
> Please take a look at the solaar package in Debian main. I've
> used it before. Works very well for connecting a Logitech
> wireless keyboard and wireless mouse to a single usb-connected
> receiver.

Thanks, Jape.

But doesn't appear to be available for wheezy. 

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[David Wright]

On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 12:43:26 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Thursday 12 October 2017 11:50:30 David Wright wrote:
> 
> > On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 11:44:29 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > Greetings all;
> > >
> > > What does the word Unifying, as I see in dmesg for some, but not
> > > all, the the rx buttons for wireless keyboards/mice, actually mean?
> > >
> > > I took that to mean that it could work for both their (logitech's)
> > > keyboards or mice, possibly at the same time so that it might be
> > > usable for both at the same time, thereby saving a usb2 socket.
> > >
> > > Testing that theory got that idea squashed, so what exactly does
> > > that word unifying mean?
> >
> > AFAIK you need windows for running the Logitech application
> > that does the unifying. You can do it anywhere that you can
> > take your devices if you don't have windows. Yes, you save
> > a USB socket.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > David.
> 
> Thanks David. This is not a function available in one of the bluetooth 
> tool kits?

AIUI it's not bluetooth. solaar is new since I bought these devices,
hence my ignorance. But do you not run jessie or later on *any* of
your machines? The unification resides in the dongle, not the PC,
so as I said it doesn't matter where you do it.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Debian 9.2 amd64 Xfce lock screen -> 100 %CPU by lightdm-gt+

[David Christensen]

On 10/12/17 01:00, Curt wrote:

On 2017-10-12, David Christensen  wrote:


Checking the bugs for 'lightdm-gtk-greeter' -- nope:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?dist=unstable;package=lightdm-gtk-greeter



Not debian, but, yep ...

https://bugs.launchpad.net/lightdm-gtk-greeter/+bug/1635125

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm-gtk-greeter/+bug/1448214

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm-gtk-greeter/+bug/1509780

What redundancy, what.


Might as well let Debian know:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=878313


David

Re: New stretch kernel: lilo boot fails with "EBDA is big" message

[Bill Brelsford]

On Mon Oct 09 2017 at 12:50 AM +0200, Bill Brelsford wrote:
> After the stretch 9.2 kernel upgrade to 4.9.0-4, lilo gives, at
> boot, "EBDA is big; kernel setup stack overlaps LILO second stage"
> and freezes.

Problem solved.  This is a dual-boot system, with the Win 10
bootloader passing control to lilo in the partion boot sector.
The bootloader was configured by EasyBCD (in windows), which
apparently saves its own copy of the partition boot sector, so
ignored changes to lilo.conf.  Guess I'll have to boot windows
and refresh whenever the kernel is updated.  (I originally tried
to use lilo to dual-boot, but ran into problems with windows.)

This doesn't explain why I got the EBDA message in the first place,
but all is working now..

-- 
Bill Brelsford
wbr...@k2di.net

Re: New stretch kernel: lilo boot fails with "EBDA is big" message

[deloptes]

Bill Brelsford wrote:

> This doesn't explain why I got the EBDA message in the first place,
> but all is working now..

once again the question: why not use grub?

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 12 October 2017 13:37:12 David Wright wrote:

> On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 12:43:26 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Thursday 12 October 2017 11:50:30 David Wright wrote:
> > > On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 11:44:29 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > > Greetings all;
> > > >
> > > > What does the word Unifying, as I see in dmesg for some, but not
> > > > all, the the rx buttons for wireless keyboards/mice, actually
> > > > mean?
> > > >
> > > > I took that to mean that it could work for both their
> > > > (logitech's) keyboards or mice, possibly at the same time so
> > > > that it might be usable for both at the same time, thereby
> > > > saving a usb2 socket.
> > > >
> > > > Testing that theory got that idea squashed, so what exactly does
> > > > that word unifying mean?
> > >
> > > AFAIK you need windows for running the Logitech application
> > > that does the unifying. You can do it anywhere that you can
> > > take your devices if you don't have windows. Yes, you save
> > > a USB socket.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > David.
> >
> > Thanks David. This is not a function available in one of the
> > bluetooth tool kits?
>
> AIUI it's not bluetooth. solaar is new since I bought these devices,
> hence my ignorance. But do you not run jessie or later on *any* of
> your machines? The unification resides in the dongle, not the PC,
> so as I said it doesn't matter where you do it.
>
> Cheers,
> David.

I have one, the pi3, running jessie, and a rock64 laying on the floor out 
there running stretch, everything else is running wheezy yet. But I am 
in the process of making a fully rt pre-empt kernel run on the rock64.

And one of my wheezy machines just blew the MB of its computer.  Or the 
disk is contaminated. No mouse at all, and no keyboard after a login to 
start X.

There used to be a filename you could "touch" on the root of a disk that 
would force an e2fsck on the next reboot, do you recall it?

Thanks David.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[David Wright]

On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 16:22:27 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:

> There used to be a filename you could "touch" on the root of a disk that 
> would force an e2fsck on the next reboot, do you recall it?

That's out of date. Nowadays you add the word   forcefsck
to the linux line in grub.cfg by pressing
 to get the Grub menu,
 to edit an entry,
scroll and add the word,
 to boot the ephemerally modified entry.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

On 13/10/17 09:22, Gene Heskett wrote:

There used to be a filename you could "touch" on the root of a disk that
would force an e2fsck on the next reboot, do you recall it?


"touch /forcefsck" no longer works. systemd uses the "fsck.mode=force" 
kernel command line parameter.


Kind regards,

--
Ben Caradoc-Davies 
Director
Transient Software Limited 
New Zealand

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

On 13/10/17 09:43, David Wright wrote:

On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 16:22:27 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:

There used to be a filename you could "touch" on the root of a disk that
would force an e2fsck on the next reboot, do you recall it?

That's out of date. Nowadays you add the word   forcefsck
to the linux line in grub.cfg by pressing
 to get the Grub menu,
 to edit an entry,
scroll and add the word,
 to boot the ephemerally modified entry.


Does this work with systemd? Only "fsck.mode=force" is documented.

Kind regards,

--
Ben Caradoc-Davies 
Director
Transient Software Limited 
New Zealand

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Michael Stone]

On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 10:17:39AM +1300, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:

On 13/10/17 09:43, David Wright wrote:

On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 16:22:27 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:

There used to be a filename you could "touch" on the root of a disk that
would force an e2fsck on the next reboot, do you recall it?

That's out of date. Nowadays you add the word   forcefsck
to the linux line in grub.cfg by pressing
 to get the Grub menu,
 to edit an entry,
scroll and add the word,
 to boot the ephemerally modified entry.


Does this work with systemd? Only "fsck.mode=force" is documented.


Yes, but grudgingly:

https://sources.debian.net/src/systemd/234-2/src/fsck/fsck.c/

#ifdef HAVE_SYSV_COMPAT
   else if (streq(key, "fastboot") && !value) {
   log_warning("Please pass 'fsck.mode=skip' rather than 'fastboot' on 
the kernel command line.");
   arg_skip = true;

   } else if (streq(key, "forcefsck") && !value) {
   log_warning("Please pass 'fsck.mode=force' rather than 'forcefsck' on 
the kernel command line.");
   arg_force = true;
   }
#endif

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 12 October 2017 16:43:41 David Wright wrote:

> On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 16:22:27 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
> > There used to be a filename you could "touch" on the root of a disk
> > that would force an e2fsck on the next reboot, do you recall it?
>
> That's out of date. Nowadays you add the word   forcefsck
> to the linux line in grub.cfg by pressing
>  to get the Grub menu,
>  to edit an entry,
> scroll and add the word,
>  to boot the ephemerally modified entry.
>
Sweet, and I can do that yet this evening.  Thanks David.

> Cheers,
> David.


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 12 October 2017 16:48:11 Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:

> On 13/10/17 09:22, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > There used to be a filename you could "touch" on the root of a disk
> > that would force an e2fsck on the next reboot, do you recall it?
>
> "touch /forcefsck" no longer works. systemd uses the "fsck.mode=force"
> kernel command line parameter.
>
> Kind regards,

This is a wheezy machine.  All up to date, but still wheezy... ?

Cheers Ben, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: non-free firmware not found despite unofficial CD

[Emanuel Berg]

Brian wrote:

> In line with bw's suggestion you can now
> provide some hard information to base
> theories and solutions on.
>
> We surmise your computer is connected to
> a router by an ethernet cable. Boot the
> installer in expert mode and go through the
> first two screens. Say "no" to providing
> firmware (it all seems wireless related and
> you have no desire for wireless).
> Eventually you will be asked for what
> interface to use. We want to know everything
> you see on the screen at that point.
>
> Choose an interface and move on. Is this
> where it fails? Let us know what you see.
> Stop, switch to console 2 and do 'more
> /var/log/syslog'. Anything towards the end of
> that log?

I managed to install it by unplugging the
Ethernet cable, moving the computer to another
place, and instead using a smartphone with
USB-tethering to provide Internet. Now one
wonders, what will happen when I plug in an
Ethernet cable once more and expect Internet
to work? Will it?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Matthew Moore]

On 2017-10-12 11:44:29 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:

What does the word Unifying, as I see in dmesg for some, but not all, the
the rx buttons for wireless keyboards/mice, actually mean?

I took that to mean that it could work for both their (logitech's)
keyboards or mice, possibly at the same time so that it might be usable
for both at the same time, thereby saving a usb2 socket.

Testing that theory got that idea squashed, so what exactly does that
word unifying mean?


It means what you originally thought -- you can use multiple Logitech
wireless with one receiver. Several years ago the software to configure
the receiver worked only on windows. A couple different people
reverse-engineered it, and now there are 2 packages that allow you to
manage it under linux.

I use lur-command. The other package is solaar.

Hope this helps,
MM

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 12 October 2017 19:37:02 Matthew Moore wrote:

> On 2017-10-12 11:44:29 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> >What does the word Unifying, as I see in dmesg for some, but not all,
> > the the rx buttons for wireless keyboards/mice, actually mean?
> >
> >I took that to mean that it could work for both their (logitech's)
> >keyboards or mice, possibly at the same time so that it might be
> > usable for both at the same time, thereby saving a usb2 socket.
> >
> >Testing that theory got that idea squashed, so what exactly does that
> >word unifying mean?
>
> It means what you originally thought -- you can use multiple Logitech
> wireless with one receiver. Several years ago the software to
> configure the receiver worked only on windows. A couple different
> people reverse-engineered it, and now there are 2 packages that allow
> you to manage it under linux.
>
> I use lur-command. The other package is solaar.
>
It might, if it was available for wheezy.

> Hope this helps,
> MM


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[David Wright]

On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 18:08:06 (-0400), Michael Stone wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 10:17:39AM +1300, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:
> >On 13/10/17 09:43, David Wright wrote:
> >>On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 16:22:27 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
> >>>There used to be a filename you could "touch" on the root of a disk that
> >>>would force an e2fsck on the next reboot, do you recall it?
> >>That's out of date. Nowadays you add the word   forcefsck
> >>to the linux line in grub.cfg by pressing
> >> to get the Grub menu,
> >> to edit an entry,
> >>scroll and add the word,
> >> to boot the ephemerally modified entry.
> >
> >Does this work with systemd? Only "fsck.mode=force" is documented.
> 
> Yes, but grudgingly:
> 
> https://sources.debian.net/src/systemd/234-2/src/fsck/fsck.c/
> 
> #ifdef HAVE_SYSV_COMPAT
>else if (streq(key, "fastboot") && !value) {
>log_warning("Please pass 'fsck.mode=skip' rather than 
> 'fastboot' on the kernel command line.");
>arg_skip = true;
> 
>} else if (streq(key, "forcefsck") && !value) {
>log_warning("Please pass 'fsck.mode=force' rather than 
> 'forcefsck' on the kernel command line.");
>arg_force = true;
>}
> #endif
> 

I'm trying to keep up with the changes, but I have no idea what
the input to fsck.c is, and where variable key gets it from.
OTOH if we look at initramfs-tools-core_0.130_all.deb in
CONTENTS/usr/share/initramfs-tools/init¹ we find this code fragment:

# Parse command line options
for x in $(cat /proc/cmdline); do
case $x in
[…]
fastboot|fsck.mode=skip)
fastboot=y
;;
forcefsck|fsck.mode=force)
forcefsck=y
;;

and in CONTENTS/usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/functions¹

if [ "$forcefsck" = "y" ]
then
force="-f"
else
force=""
fi
[…]
log_begin_msg "Checking $NAME file system"
logsave -a -s $FSCK_LOGFILE fsck $spinner $force $fix -T -t $TYPE $DEV
FSCKCODE=$?
log_end_msg

If forcefsck is an alias for fsck.mode=force, I can see no
reason to eliminate it. It's a lot easier to remember when
you suddenly get a chance to use it (on a server that runs
months at a time, say). This is particularly true while
Grub doesn't automatically add a menu entry for fsck, unlike
for single and (in wheezy/jessie) sysvinit.

¹ which become init and scripts/functions in the initrd.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Logitech "unifying" receiver buttons aren't?

[David Wright]

On Thu 12 Oct 2017 at 12:37:12 (-0500), David Wright wrote:

> […] The unification resides in the dongle, not the PC,
> so as I said it doesn't matter where you do it.

The above implies that you can unify a device with two dongles,
and I haven't tested that. Experimenting with my wife's kbd/
mouse could lead to divorce at the moment. I might try it out
during the vacation. I don't want to accidently unpair her kbd
from her dongle in favour of mine.

Cheers,
David.

reconstitute /boot on stretch

[Harry Putnam]

I managed to delete /boot and all contents, on a `stretch' system.

Of course it will not boot now.  So maybe work from a live cd or
install media...

How can I go about reconstituting the /boot directory and contents
that match my install?

Not sure how to create the initrd, Sysmap, grub directory and so
forth.

Really just kind of stunned and drawing blanks about how to proceed.

Re: x : keyboard not working

[David Wright]

On Fri 06 Oct 2017 at 21:16:36 (+0530), Mayuresh Kathe wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 05:02:45PM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 08:22:41PM +0530, Mayuresh Kathe wrote:
> > 
> > [X keyboard not working]
> > 
> > This depends on a couple of things. E.g. is your X using X input?
> > If yes, it's supposed to work automagically. If not, you might need
> > to put a stanza in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf which looks more or less
> > like
> > 
> >   Section "InputDevice"
> > Identifier "the-keyboard"
> > Driver "kbd"
> > Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
> >   EndSection
> > 
> > or something similar.
> > 
> > Could you post your X server's log? Where is it located?
> > (the two possibilities know to me are ~/.local/share/xorg/
> > and /var/log/Xorg.0.log, depending on whether your X server
> > runs rootless or not).
> 
> sure, your stanza for /etc/X11/xorg.conf didn't work, it just
> refused to startup the X server itself.
> actually, that file itself did not exist at that location, i
> had to create it, and when it didn't work, i deleted it, and
> the same old stuff was on again, i.e. X worked, but keyboard
> didn't.

Perhaps you should try getting X to write a configuration
file for you to modify, rather than trying to write one from
scratch yourself. The normal way if doing this is to run

# Xorg -configure

when X isn't running. That will create an xorg.conf in the
current directory which you can move to /etc/X11/ and test
it at first with no modification, to see if X still runs ok.
If so, then try modifying it.

BTW have you yet tried changing the font size in a VC instead
of changing the resolution? Are you still there?

Cheers,
David.

cannot install libsnmp-dev in stretch, wondering about reasonable next steps

[Dan Hitt]

I'm trying to install libsnmp-dev in stretch (debian 9) using the command
   sudo apt-get install libsnmp-dev

This results in an error:
--
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 udev : Breaks: systemd (< 232-20) but 232-14 is to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be
caused by held packages.
--

First, i'm not even sure of the interpretation of the error.  Does it
mean my systemd version is too large?  Does it mean my systemd version
is too small?  Note that 'systemd --version' returns 232 on my system,
without any extra info that i can see, so it's hard for me to even do
some sanity checking.

So i would like to understand what the error means, and then, what
would be a reasonable course of action to take.  (E.g., updating
systemd?  Compiling libsnmp-dev by hand and installing in /usr/local?
Filing a bug report somewhere?)

Thanks in advance for any clues.

dan

Re: cannot install libsnmp-dev in stretch, wondering about reasonable next steps

[Roberto C . Sánchez]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 08:15:21PM -0700, Dan Hitt wrote:
> I'm trying to install libsnmp-dev in stretch (debian 9) using the command
>sudo apt-get install libsnmp-dev
> 
> This results in an error:
> --
> Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
> requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
> distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
> or been moved out of Incoming.
> The following information may help to resolve the situation:
> 
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>  udev : Breaks: systemd (< 232-20) but 232-14 is to be installed
> E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be
> caused by held packages.
> --
> 
> First, i'm not even sure of the interpretation of the error.  Does it
> mean my systemd version is too large?  Does it mean my systemd version
> is too small?  Note that 'systemd --version' returns 232 on my system,
> without any extra info that i can see, so it's hard for me to even do
> some sanity checking.
> 
You can find the Debian version of installed and candidate package with
'apt-cache policy '.  The version of systemd in stretch is
232-25+deb9u1.  If your attempt to install libsnmp-dev resulted in that
error message, then it is likely that you have not upgraded your
packages since prior to the stretch release.

> So i would like to understand what the error means, and then, what
> would be a reasonable course of action to take.  (E.g., updating
> systemd?  Compiling libsnmp-dev by hand and installing in /usr/local?
> Filing a bug report somewhere?)
> 

Please supply the output of 'apt-cache policy libsnmp-dev systemd' and
the contents of your sources.list.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

Re: New stretch kernel: lilo boot fails with "EBDA is big" message

[Bill Brelsford]

On Fri Oct 13 2017 at 01:20 AM +0200, deloptes wrote:
> Bill Brelsford wrote:
> 
> > This doesn't explain why I got the EBDA message in the first place,
> > but all is working now..
> 
> once again the question: why not use grub?

Lilo has always met my needs well, so, although I've considered
grub, I've never felt the need to switch.  But it was one of the
next steps I was considering in this case -- especially if the
problem turned out to be lilo.

Re: cannot install libsnmp-dev in stretch, wondering about reasonable next steps

[Dan Hitt]

Awesome, thanks Roberto.

The output of apt-cache policy libsnmp-dev systemd is:

libsnmp-dev:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 5.7.3+dfsg-1.7
  Version table:
 5.7.3+dfsg-1.7 500
500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
500 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
systemd:
  Installed: 232-14
  Candidate: 232-25+deb9u1
  Version table:
 232-25+deb9u1 500
500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
500 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
 *** 232-14 100
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Note that i did not upgrade from a prior version of debian, but rather
installed it on a fresh, empty partition.

Thanks for your help!

dan


On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 8:29 PM, Roberto C. Sánchez  wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 08:15:21PM -0700, Dan Hitt wrote:
>> I'm trying to install libsnmp-dev in stretch (debian 9) using the command
>>sudo apt-get install libsnmp-dev
>>
>> This results in an error:
>> --
>> Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
>> requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
>> distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
>> or been moved out of Incoming.
>> The following information may help to resolve the situation:
>>
>> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>>  udev : Breaks: systemd (< 232-20) but 232-14 is to be installed
>> E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be
>> caused by held packages.
>> --
>>
>> First, i'm not even sure of the interpretation of the error.  Does it
>> mean my systemd version is too large?  Does it mean my systemd version
>> is too small?  Note that 'systemd --version' returns 232 on my system,
>> without any extra info that i can see, so it's hard for me to even do
>> some sanity checking.
>>
> You can find the Debian version of installed and candidate package with
> 'apt-cache policy '.  The version of systemd in stretch is
> 232-25+deb9u1.  If your attempt to install libsnmp-dev resulted in that
> error message, then it is likely that you have not upgraded your
> packages since prior to the stretch release.
>
>> So i would like to understand what the error means, and then, what
>> would be a reasonable course of action to take.  (E.g., updating
>> systemd?  Compiling libsnmp-dev by hand and installing in /usr/local?
>> Filing a bug report somewhere?)
>>
>
> Please supply the output of 'apt-cache policy libsnmp-dev systemd' and
> the contents of your sources.list.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Roberto
>
> --
> Roberto C. Sánchez
>

Re: cannot install libsnmp-dev in stretch, wondering about reasonable next steps

[Roberto C . Sánchez]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 09:19:49PM -0700, Dan Hitt wrote:
> Awesome, thanks Roberto.
> 
Please don't top post.  It is considered impolite here and on many other
mailing lists.

> The output of apt-cache policy libsnmp-dev systemd is:
> 
> libsnmp-dev:
>   Installed: (none)
>   Candidate: 5.7.3+dfsg-1.7
>   Version table:
>  5.7.3+dfsg-1.7 500
> 500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
> 500 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
> systemd:
>   Installed: 232-14
>   Candidate: 232-25+deb9u1
^^^
>   Version table:
>  232-25+deb9u1 500
> 500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
> 500 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
>  *** 232-14 100
> 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
> 
> Note that i did not upgrade from a prior version of debian, but rather
> installed it on a fresh, empty partition.
> 
That may be, but you likely installed from old media (e.g., pre-release,
beta, RC, etc.) and have not actually upgraded your system in some time.
The 'apt-cache policy' output is saying that you have systemd currently
installed at version 232-14, but that based on your sources you can go
up to version 232-25+deb9u1.

I recommend that you run 'apt-get update' then 'apt-get dist-upgrade' to
bring your system up to date.  After that you should have no trouble
installing libsnmp-dev.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

Re: New stretch kernel: lilo boot fails with "EBDA is big" message

[deloptes]

Bill Brelsford wrote:

> Lilo has always met my needs well, so, although I've considered
> grub, I've never felt the need to switch.  But it was one of the
> next steps I was considering in this case -- especially if the
> problem turned out to be lilo.

if there was no need grub would not exist - I don't argue for grub, feel
free to use whatever is best for you

Re: reconstitute /boot on stretch

[Andy Smith]

Hi Harry,

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 09:06:40PM -0400, Harry Putnam wrote:
> I managed to delete /boot and all contents, on a `stretch' system.
> 
> Of course it will not boot now.  So maybe work from a live cd or
> install media...

Did you reboot? If not then you should be able to fix this
relatively easily. If you did then you can use Debian install
media in rescue mode to get a shell.

> How can I go about reconstituting the /boot directory and contents
> that match my install?

I'm assuming that restoring from backup is not an option otherwise
you wouldn't be posting here. After your crisis is over you'll want
to look into improving your backup regime.

If you're running from a rescue or live environment, first get into
a chroot in your actual system.

Then reinstall your kernel and bootloader.

e.g.

# apt-get --reinstall install linux-image-amd64
# apt-get --reinstall install grub-pc

You haven't deleted your grub configuration (/etc/default/grub) so
assuming you didn't have a hand-crafted /boot/grub/grub.cfg then
reinstalling should re-configure it.

> Not sure how to create the initrd, Sysmap, grub directory and so
> forth.

initramfs should get re-created after kernel reinstall. Sysmap comes
with the kernel, and we already covered grub.

So, try the commands and see what happens. There might be some
additional forcing you need to do but it soul;d be relatively simple.

Cheers,
Andy

Re: cannot install libsnmp-dev in stretch, wondering about reasonable next steps

[Dan Hitt]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 9:27 PM, Roberto C. Sánchez  wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 09:19:49PM -0700, Dan Hitt wrote:
>> Awesome, thanks Roberto.
>>
> Please don't top post.  It is considered impolite here and on many other
> mailing lists.
>
>> The output of apt-cache policy libsnmp-dev systemd is:
>>
>> libsnmp-dev:
>>   Installed: (none)
>>   Candidate: 5.7.3+dfsg-1.7
>>   Version table:
>>  5.7.3+dfsg-1.7 500
>> 500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
>> 500 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
>> systemd:
>>   Installed: 232-14
>>   Candidate: 232-25+deb9u1
> ^^^
>>   Version table:
>>  232-25+deb9u1 500
>> 500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
>> 500 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
>>  *** 232-14 100
>> 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
>>
>> Note that i did not upgrade from a prior version of debian, but rather
>> installed it on a fresh, empty partition.
>>
> That may be, but you likely installed from old media (e.g., pre-release,
> beta, RC, etc.) and have not actually upgraded your system in some time.
> The 'apt-cache policy' output is saying that you have systemd currently
> installed at version 232-14, but that based on your sources you can go
> up to version 232-25+deb9u1.
>
> I recommend that you run 'apt-get update' then 'apt-get dist-upgrade' to
> bring your system up to date.  After that you should have no trouble
> installing libsnmp-dev.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Roberto
>
> --
> Roberto C. Sánchez
>

Thanks, your procedure worked! :)

dan