The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

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GeneralZod: May 28, 2003; Kneel before Zod!; Grimey Drawer

Toiletbrush posted:

So my question is, can a faulty USB driver/device freeze the system?

I've managed to hard-lock my desktop merely by unplugging a USB bluetooth dongle before, so I'd say "yes"

# ? Jul 18, 2007 12:04

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# ? May 13, 2024 17:17

Combat Pretzel: Jun 23, 2004; No, seriously... what kurds?!

Luckily, that guy's getting a wireless DSL router, soon, due to the IPTV crap he ordered. Let's just hope it is the modem. It requires ugly hacking in regards to extracting firmware from a download and dropping it somewhere into a folder so that Linux can upload it into the modem on boot. Sounds awfully not like a foolproof solution.

--edit: Also, does it suffice to create a simple RC script starting bash to get a login shell? Ubuntu only seems to fire up GDM and nothing else, unless I boot in the failsafe mode.

Combat Pretzel fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Jul 18, 2007

# ? Jul 18, 2007 12:07

RoundsToZero: Dec 3, 2004; An open door is an invitation

Toiletbrush posted:

If it was a kernel panic, I'd figure that the system would drop into text mode, but it just freezes under Xorg.

Nope. When there's a panic, the machine is stuck in whatever state it is in. It can't switch into text mode or do anything else, as doing so could cause even more problems in a panic situation. With NT bluescreens, there is very careful code which handles writing a crash dump to disk (if enabled in the registry). It can't use the regular filesystem drivers to do so--imagine if the problems were in the filesystem driver itself!

On Linux, they haven't bothered to do that. The stated position of the kernel developers is that you should use a remote machine connected via a serial port to do live kernel debugging. It can be very educational, but it's a hassle for average users. Plus most laptops don't even have serial ports anymore unless you get a port replicator for them. Usually, you're out of luck unless you can reproduce the issue and switch to text mode before it happens.

Toiletbrush posted:

--edit: Also, does it suffice to create a simple RC script starting bash to get a login shell? Ubuntu only seems to fire up GDM and nothing else, unless I boot in the failsafe mode.

Try ctrl+alt+F1. ctrl+alt+F7 should switch back to X.

# ? Jul 18, 2007 14:36

Combat Pretzel: Jun 23, 2004; No, seriously... what kurds?!

Another dumb question, how do I make Gnome change the location where it shows the emblems? Top right corner is meh.

RoundsToZero posted:

Try ctrl+alt+F1. ctrl+alt+F7 should switch back to X.

I know those combos. However there aren't login shells there.

# ? Jul 18, 2007 15:15

RoundsToZero: Dec 3, 2004; An open door is an invitation

Do you have lines like the following in your inittab?

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

If not, you can add them (Ubuntu might have a different getty though) and run init q to reload inittab without rebooting. Then you should have the login consoles right away, and when you next reboot. I can't believe Ubuntu doesn't have this by default. What happens if the X server can't come up for some reason?

Also what do you mean by emblems? I'm no a Gnome user so I'm not familiar with that term but if you're talking about the system tray type applet, you should be able to move it around on a panel, or remove and re-add it on another panel.

# ? Jul 18, 2007 15:40

Combat Pretzel: Jun 23, 2004; No, seriously... what kurds?!

RoundsToZero posted:

Do you have lines like the following in your inittab?

I have to check for these tonight.

RoundsToZero posted:

Also what do you mean by emblems? I'm no a Gnome user so I'm not familiar with that term but if you're talking about the system tray type applet, you should be able to move it around on a panel, or remove and re-add it on another panel.

Nah, it's user defined overlays (mini icons) over icons. Some Nautilus feature working via GnomeVFS I think. For instance, allows you to differ visually between different directories by slapping various other icons on the folder icons.

# ? Jul 18, 2007 16:21

xarph: Jun 18, 2001

how do I make debian etch recognize a GUID partition table so I can mount the HFS+ volume that's on it? Is there a kernel module I'm missing?

# ? Jul 18, 2007 23:53

Prince John: Jun 20, 2006; Oh, poppycock! Female bandits?

RoundsToZero posted:

I can't believe Ubuntu doesn't have this by default. What happens if the X server can't come up for some reason?

It normally does, I've never had to muck around with inittab to get this to work.

Toiletbrush, what happens when you switch, do you just get a blank screen?

Edit: To be slightly more helpful, after not finding /etc/inittab on my latest Ubuntu install, it looks like they have switched to the Upstart system.

More info

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=292507

http://upstart.ubuntu.com/

Edit 2:

I think the files you need are

/etc/event.d/tty2 which should have something like:

code:

start on runlevel 2
start on runlevel 3

stop on runlevel 0
stop on runlevel 1
stop on runlevel 4
stop on runlevel 5
stop on runlevel 6

respawn
exec /sbin/getty 38400 tty2

and it looks like /etc/event.d/rc-default is the file that points you to the specific runlevel.

Hope that puts you in the right direction!

Prince John fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jul 19, 2007

# ? Jul 19, 2007 00:06

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

68k posted:

So, with that said, am I doing something wrong when trying to remove those firewire modules?

You need to update initrd after doing that -- the driver loads before the real root is mounted, so since initrd still has the old configuration, module still loads. Run:

code:

sudo update-initramfs -k all -u

# ? Jul 19, 2007 04:30

Combat Pretzel: Jun 23, 2004; No, seriously... what kurds?!

Col posted:

Toiletbrush, what happens when you switch, do you just get a blank screen?

All blank screens, apart from the first one, with remainders of the boot output. Any input is echoed on screen but has no effect.

Ah well, I'll see. We're first waiting for that wireless router. Apparently the telco wants to install it, due to IPTV and what's it, so we have to wait. No point in dicking around until we've identified what makes the system lock up. And figuring various things out without possible internet help is annoying.

# ? Jul 19, 2007 12:27

Jo: Jan 24, 2005; Soiled Meat

I need to run check disk on an NTFS partition from Linux. What are my options, other than booting into windows twice?

EDIT: To ellaborate, I'm mounting a TrueCrypt encrypted NTFS partition that's being read off an NTFS partition. I do not have access to Windows.

Jo fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Jul 20, 2007

# ? Jul 20, 2007 04:15

Kreeblah: May 17, 2004; INSERT QUACK TO CONTINUE; Taco Defender

I've been having an odd issue getting NFS set up properly and I was hoping somebody has some idea as to what's going on with it (I'm sure it's something really dumb, but I can't track it down). Essentially, what's happening is that, although I can successfully mount the filesystem and look around as root, normal users are getting permissions errors even trying to read from the directory. All the documentation I can find regarding permissions problems with NFS relate to the initial mount, rather than accessing the contents of it.

On my server, I'm running an up-to-date version of the IA32 port of Debian stable and on the client, the PPC64 port of Fedora Core 7. I've got the following in /etc/exports on my server:

code:

/var/data1/files/files 192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0(ro,sync,subtree_check,anonuid=1001,anongid=1002)

and the following in /etc/fstab on the client:

code:

serverhostname:/var/data1/files/files /var/files nfs ro,user 0 0

I've checked and I've got the right uid and gid specified for anonymous users to access the directory and the files inside, so I'm not sure what else could be the problem. Every time I try to access the share as any account but root on the client, though, I get this:

code:

[kreeblah@localhost ~]$ cd /var/files
-bash: cd: /var/files: Permission denied
[kreeblah@localhost ~]$

I've spent the last several hours trying to figure it out, but I'm drawing a blank. Does anybody have any idea what the problem might be?

Kreeblah fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Jul 20, 2007

# ? Jul 20, 2007 23:12

Z-Bo: Jul 2, 2005; more like z-butt

I'm trying to find out which file gftp uses to store login credentials. I have an old ftp account I haven't used in over a year on a box that I can only ssh into. I've misplaced my login credentials for the ftp account, but am sure it is still stored in some file on that box. How can I get at it?

# ? Jul 21, 2007 17:24

Scaevolus: Apr 16, 2007

Jo posted:

I need to run check disk on an NTFS partition from Linux. What are my options, other than booting into windows twice?

EDIT: To ellaborate, I'm mounting a TrueCrypt encrypted NTFS partition that's being read off an NTFS partition. I do not have access to Windows.

The ntfsprogs package contains the program "ntfsfix", which is probably what you're looking for, but I'm not sure how nicely it works with truecrypt. If truecrypt gives you a virtual block device, it should work.

Z-Bo posted:

I'm trying to find out which file gftp uses to store login credentials. I have an old ftp account I haven't used in over a year on a box that I can only ssh into. I've misplaced my login credentials for the ftp account, but am sure it is still stored in some file on that box. How can I get at it?

Gftp is just a graphical front-end to the ftp server. The server itself is probably running something like proftpd or vsftpd, in which case your password would be hashed and shadowed in /etc/passwd. Unless you're root, you won't even be able to read the hash, and even then you most likely won't be able to crack it.

6174 posted:

Not even close. gFTP is a FTP client, not a graphical front-end to a FTP server. Not to mention most FTP daemons keep their login credentials separate from rest of the system by default, making your comment about /etc/passwd crazy.

Yeah, I worded that badly. But most ftp daemons have their login credentials in the same file as all the other users-- which would be the shadow passwords in /etc/passwd

Scaevolus fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jul 21, 2007

# ? Jul 21, 2007 18:51

6174: Dec 4, 2004

Scaevolus posted:

Not even close. gFTP is a FTP client, not a graphical front-end to a FTP server. Not to mention most FTP daemons keep their login credentials separate from rest of the system by default, making your comment about /etc/passwd crazy.

Z-Bo, look at ~/.gftp/bookmarks. It should have your stuff there. The comment at the top of the file says the password is scrambled. I'm not sure how, but they say it is not secure so a little source diving I'm sure can reveal the answer.

# ? Jul 21, 2007 19:07

Splashy Gravy: Dec 21, 2004; I HAVE FURY!; Slippery Tilde

Here's an easy one. I'm running Ubuntu Feisty, and I grew tired of ATI's driver support. I have an Nvidia card I'm ready to put in. Are there any precautions I need to take? I've blown up linux installs far too many times to not ask about this.

# ? Jul 21, 2007 21:15

Prince John: Jun 20, 2006; Oh, poppycock! Female bandits?

Splashy Gravy posted:

Here's an easy one. I'm running Ubuntu Feisty, and I grew tired of ATI's driver support. I have an Nvidia card I'm ready to put in. Are there any precautions I need to take? I've blown up linux installs far too many times to not ask about this.

There really shouldn't be any problems, Linux has always dealt well with me changing large pieces of hardware in the past.

As a precaution, you may want to change your video driver in /etc/X11/xorg.conf to vesa before you swap the cards out - it'll look like rear end, but at least you're guaranteed to get back to the desktop when you boot up again.

Then it should just be a matter of installing nvidia-glx and the relevant linux-restricted-modules package, change your driver to 'nvidia' if needed and it should just work. On my fresh Feisty install, the new 'restricted drivers' dialogue popped up and installed it all automatically, so you may be lucky and have that happen instead

Edit: Obligatory 'back up your files' and 'its probably a good idea to put your home directory on a separate partition' comments though.

Prince John fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Jul 22, 2007

# ? Jul 21, 2007 23:47

horse_ebookmarklet: Oct 6, 2003; can I play too?

I've searched this thread and Google, really didn't find a conclusive answer...
I'm running drat Small Linux on a machine with like 30K of memory with runlevel 2, text only.... Anywho, this sound stupid but, the _ or cursor repeat rate at my bash shell, and within SSH is way too fast and it is pretty distracting. I've got this machine running off to my side, and the constant quick blinking is distracting and irritating.. I've played with exporting KEYRATE or CURSOR, but that doesn't have any change. kbdrate changes the time for the repeat if you're holding down the key, but not the little underscore on my prompt.
I think I'm going to slowly go insane

# ? Jul 22, 2007 11:36

Combat Pretzel: Jun 23, 2004; No, seriously... what kurds?!

Re: ATI

If I run Xgl without anything else, say Compiz, it still should display things like a normal X server, right?

I'm trying to get Compiz Fusion working on my friends computer, but either it whines about texture pixmap support or if I try the Xgl way, I get a garbled mess on screen. I still can make out where the windows would be.

AIGLX seems to be a no go, too. Complains about a lack of DRI. First stone in the way was that Ubuntu kept overwriting the kernel driver with its own old version every boot, thanks to that piece of poo poo idea called LRM that robbed my patience, and once I got it to load the correct version, I still didn't have DRI.

Running the latest Catalysts, on a Radeon 9550 though.

# ? Jul 22, 2007 12:22

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

NotHet posted:

I've searched this thread and Google, really didn't find a conclusive answer...
I'm running drat Small Linux on a machine with like 30K of memory with runlevel 2, text only.... Anywho, this sound stupid but, the _ or cursor repeat rate at my bash shell, and within SSH is way too fast and it is pretty distracting.

If you are using the text console, use kbdrate utility:

code:

kbdrate -r 11 -d 250

(repeat rate, delay)

If you are in X, use xset:

code:

xset r rate 500 30

(delay, repeat rate)

quote:

I've got this machine running off to my side, and the constant quick blinking is distracting and irritating.. I've played with exporting KEYRATE or CURSOR, but that doesn't have any change. kbdrate changes the time for the repeat if you're holding down the key, but not the little underscore on my prompt.
I think I'm going to slowly go insane

I have no idea what can inspire someone to expect SHELL VARIABLES to affect a terminal that shell runs in.

# ? Jul 22, 2007 13:01

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Toiletbrush posted:

Re: ATI

If I run Xgl without anything else, say Compiz, it still should display things like a normal X server, right?

I'm trying to get Compiz Fusion working on my friends computer, but either it whines about texture pixmap support or if I try the Xgl way, I get a garbled mess on screen. I still can make out where the windows would be.

AIGLX seems to be a no go, too. Complains about a lack of DRI. First stone in the way was that Ubuntu kept overwriting the kernel driver with its own old version every boot, thanks to that piece of poo poo idea called LRM that robbed my patience, and once I got it to load the correct version, I still didn't have DRI.

Running the latest Catalysts, on a Radeon 9550 though.

In some cases I have seen compiz failing until being run with fglrx's own libGL:

code:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.xlibmesa compiz --replace

# ? Jul 22, 2007 13:16

Jo: Jan 24, 2005; Soiled Meat

Scaevolus posted:

The ntfsprogs package contains the program "ntfsfix", which is probably what you're looking for, but I'm not sure how nicely it works with truecrypt. If truecrypt gives you a virtual block device, it should work.

I was under the impression that ntfsfix wasn't a checkdisk replacement. I thought it just made it easier to remount Linux mounted partitions in Windows.

EDIT: Tried it. Still getting the unclean partition warning.

Jo fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Jul 22, 2007

# ? Jul 22, 2007 16:01

Combat Pretzel: Jun 23, 2004; No, seriously... what kurds?!

teapot posted:

In some cases I have seen compiz failing until being run with fglrx's own libGL:
code:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.xlibmesa compiz --replace

Hmmm, I have to try this.

One way or another, considering XGL is supposed to work with fglrx, I'm surprised that all it manages to show is a garbled mess, and that without compiz running.

# ? Jul 22, 2007 16:19

SnatchRabbit: Feb 23, 2006; by sebmojo

What are some popular Windows applications that won't work on Linux?

# ? Jul 23, 2007 18:07

Prince John: Jun 20, 2006; Oh, poppycock! Female bandits?

SnatchRabbit posted:

What are some popular Windows applications that won't work on Linux?

Using Wine, Photoshop doesn't work flawlessly. (GIMP is alternative for most of its functions). Some winamp functions don't work (eg playlist) - use amaroK as its better.

If you're willing to pay, Crossover office will handle MS Office, iTunes etc.

Perhaps if you told us what you use we can tell you if there is an alternative?

# ? Jul 23, 2007 18:19

SnatchRabbit: Feb 23, 2006; by sebmojo

Col posted:

Using Wine, Photoshop doesn't work flawlessly. (GIMP is alternative for most of its functions). Some winamp functions don't work (eg playlist) - use amaroK as its better.

If you're willing to pay, Crossover office will handle MS Office, iTunes etc.

Perhaps if you told us what you use we can tell you if there is an alternative?

Not really trying to do anything, was just curious which other big name software apps don't support Linux, as you mentioned iTunes and Photoshop being iffy. Any others of note?

# ? Jul 23, 2007 18:35

Accipiter: Jan 24, 2004; SINATRA.

SnatchRabbit posted:

Not really trying to do anything, was just curious which other big name software apps don't support Linux, as you mentioned iTunes and Photoshop being iffy. Any others of note?

Unless explicitly stated, there are NO Windows applications that are supported on Linux.

If you can deal with the various alternatives that are available on other OSes for Windows applications, by all means use them. But for the love of god if you need to run specific Windows programs, just run Windows.

As far as Wine has come (and it has come a LONG and impressive way), new Linux users trying to get Windows applications working fully and properly on Linux almost always ends in pain and frustration and is just not worth the effort.

# ? Jul 23, 2007 18:56

DeadBird: Jan 1, 2005; Dead Bird Lives

what is the cheapest wireless G capable, Linux compatible wireless card?

# ? Jul 23, 2007 20:21

Pooky: Aug 29, 2004; I post fox news so u don't have to 💋

DeadBird posted:

what is the cheapest wireless G capable, Linux compatible wireless card?

I guess it would be a generic linksys pos with ndiswrapper. I'd go for US Robotics if you want something with native linux drivers.

# ? Jul 23, 2007 20:50

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

SnatchRabbit posted:

Not really trying to do anything, was just curious which other big name software apps don't support Linux, as you mentioned iTunes and Photoshop being iffy. Any others of note?

"Big name" companies almost never put any effort into making their Windows applications run on Linux under emulation. I can't even name anything other than picasa to be done that way. Ones that want their applications to run under Linux make a native Linux version (Google Earth, Mozilla/Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Maya, VariCAD) or don't bother at all. Many applications have Linux equivalent made by someone else (Windows apologists love to bitch and moan about those applications not being exact copies of Windows ones), some (mostly games) are well supported under emulation.

# ? Jul 23, 2007 20:53

SnatchRabbit: Feb 23, 2006; by sebmojo

How would I go about uninstalling ubuntu 7.04 from a Vista/Ubuntu dualboot? Only 1 HDD, each OS on its own partition. Not that I don't love Linux, I just have to remove ubuntu for work reasons.

# ? Jul 23, 2007 20:56

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

SnatchRabbit posted:

How would I go about uninstalling ubuntu 7.04 from a Vista/Ubuntu dualboot? Only 1 HDD, each OS on its own partition. Not that I don't love Linux, I just have to remove ubuntu for work reasons.

Use the windows rescue CD to restore the dos-style MBR and to make sure the windows partition is bootable. Boot into windows and remove any of the partitions used for ubuntu filesystems via diskmgmt.msc

# ? Jul 23, 2007 21:23

crazysim: May 23, 2004; I AM SOOOOO GAY

teapot posted:

"Big name" companies almost never put any effort into making their Windows applications run on Linux under emulation. I can't even name anything other than picasa to be done that way. Ones that want their applications to run under Linux make a native Linux version (Google Earth, Mozilla/Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Maya, VariCAD) or don't bother at all. Many applications have Linux equivalent made by someone else (Windows apologists love to bitch and moan about those applications not being exact copies of Windows ones), some (mostly games) are well supported under emulation.

Google basically had their software compiled with Wine or something. Winelib to be more exact.

# ? Jul 23, 2007 21:49

Accipiter: Jan 24, 2004; SINATRA.

DeadBird posted:

what is the cheapest wireless G capable, Linux compatible wireless card?

I picked up one of these for about $30 at Microcenter. It works perfectly with the madwifi driver and wpa_supplicant.

# ? Jul 23, 2007 22:47

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

crazysim posted:

Google basically had their software compiled with Wine or something. Winelib to be more exact.

Picasa -- yes (that is more precise than my description).
Google Earth -- no. It's native.

# ? Jul 24, 2007 03:26

Furd_Terguson: Nov 17, 2004; "sheeeeeit"

Thanks to some help earlier in this thread, I now know how to burn DVD's via a CLI, but I would like some help to automate this process a little more. I want to write a bash script that will contain this line

code:

cdrecord -v dev=6,0,0 driveropts=burnfree file.iso

But I want to replace "file.iso" with the actual filename I type in. Browsing to the directory will be done manually, so the file itself will be in the current directory. I tried googling but the guides can be quite involved and I assume this will probably be fairly simple. Thanks for any help.

# ? Jul 25, 2007 03:52

crazysim: May 23, 2004; I AM SOOOOO GAY

echo "alias dvdrecord='cdrecord -v dev=6,0,0 driveropts=burnfree'" >> ~/.bash_profile && source ~/.bash_profile

?

# ? Jul 25, 2007 03:57

JoeNotCharles: Mar 3, 2005; Yet beyond each tree there are only more trees.

Furd_Terguson posted:

code:
cdrecord -v dev=6,0,0 driveropts=burnfree file.iso
But I want to replace "file.iso" with the actual filename I type in. Browsing to the directory will be done manually, so the file itself will be in the current directory. I tried googling but the guides can be quite involved and I assume this will probably be fairly simple. Thanks for any help.

Just put "%1" in your script instead of "file.iso", and that will be replaced by the first parameter of the script. (So if your script is called "dvdrecord", use "dvdrecord somefilename.iso")

# ? Jul 25, 2007 04:48

thenameseli: Sep 6, 2006

JoeNotCharles posted:

Just put "%1" in your script instead of "file.iso", and that will be replaced by the first parameter of the script. (So if your script is called "dvdrecord", use "dvdrecord somefilename.iso")

"$1"

. %s are for Windows batch script variables(?)

Also, you're better off putting that in a shell script in ~/bin or something.

code:

#!/bin/sh
target="$1"
if [ -e "$target" ]; then
  cdrecord -blah $target
else echo "Usage: script.sh <foo.iso>
fi

thenameseli fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Jul 25, 2007

# ? Jul 25, 2007 05:48

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# ? May 13, 2024 17:17

JoeNotCharles: Mar 3, 2005; Yet beyond each tree there are only more trees.

thenameseli posted:

"$1" . %s are for Windows batch script variables(?)

How the hell did I do that? I don't even use Windows!

# ? Jul 25, 2007 05:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

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