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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Homie S: Aug 6, 2001; This is what it means

Linux goons, I need help.

My friend bought a Acer Aspire One with Linpus that came pre-installed on it. She bought because of my screw up (I thought she ordered the Windows version one, I was wrong), and now she's stuck with it for the time being. The problems are as follows:

1. She's looking for a way to get pictures off of her Canon Powershot A85 camera.
2. She is completely dumbfounded at computers. Yes, I realize that this probably wasn't the best idea and that she is in for crash courses galore, but if there is a program out there that exists with a half way decent GUI, I hope it's one she can figure out how to install on her own.
3. I'm completely dumbfounded at Linux, and specifically her distro of it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? The first post seems to have decent links, but nothing that seems to match up to my exact problem.

# ? Nov 29, 2008 10:13

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# ? May 10, 2024 11:50

Scaevolus: Apr 16, 2007

Homie S posted:

Linux goons, I need help.

My friend bought a Acer Aspire One with Linpus that came pre-installed on it. She bought because of my screw up (I thought she ordered the Windows version one, I was wrong), and now she's stuck with it for the time being. The problems are as follows:

1. She's looking for a way to get pictures off of her Canon Powershot A85 camera.
2. She is completely dumbfounded at computers. Yes, I realize that this probably wasn't the best idea and that she is in for crash courses galore, but if there is a program out there that exists with a half way decent GUI, I hope it's one she can figure out how to install on her own.
3. I'm completely dumbfounded at Linux, and specifically her distro of it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? The first post seems to have decent links, but nothing that seems to match up to my exact problem.

http://picasa.google.com/linux/ is probably your best bet

# ? Nov 29, 2008 10:13

MrMoo: Sep 14, 2000

Scaevolus posted:

http://picasa.google.com/linux/ is probably your best bet

Doesn't whatever distro it uses come with gphoto or ugh, F-spot?

I like Picasa, F-spot is the F/OSS rip-off. It's a steaming pile of utter poo poo though and the developers have no loving clue. It's written in .net, using mono, and doesn't support many formats, in previous versions has problems even supporting JPEGs. The most annoying is that it doesn't detect any changes, you have to do everything through it's UI. This means it's impossible to manage downloaded photos from say flickr, picasaweb, etc.

MrMoo fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Nov 29, 2008

# ? Nov 29, 2008 10:22

Lucien: May 2, 2007; check it out i'm a samurai ^_^

BrutalGoerge posted:

I'm getting better at linux, but still have a long way to go.

This is a Centos5 x64 server.
This one is weird. I have created an account for me, and an account for my partner, the same way with the useradd command. However, while I can logon with my account in both SSH and FTP, he can only logon with SSH and not ftp.

The server is using proftpd, and I cannot find anything in the .conf file that explains anything

I have no experience with FTP but I'm guessing you have to add your partner's account to a group called "ftp"?

# ? Nov 29, 2008 11:08

dont skimp on the shrimp: Apr 23, 2008

BrutalGoerge posted:

I'm getting better at linux, but still have a long way to go.

This is a Centos5 x64 server.
This one is weird. I have created an account for me, and an account for my partner, the same way with the useradd command. However, while I can logon with my account in both SSH and FTP, he can only logon with SSH and not ftp.

The server is using proftpd, and I cannot find anything in the .conf file that explains anything

He might have to be in the 'ftp' group, but I don't have any experience with proftpd.

E: Whoops, new page.

# ? Nov 29, 2008 11:46

Mr. Eric Praline: Aug 13, 2004; I didn't like the others, they were all too flat.

BrutalGoerge posted:

I'm getting better at linux, but still have a long way to go.

This is a Centos5 x64 server.
This one is weird. I have created an account for me, and an account for my partner, the same way with the useradd command. However, while I can logon with my account in both SSH and FTP, he can only logon with SSH and not ftp.

The server is using proftpd, and I cannot find anything in the .conf file that explains anything

Look in /etc/ftpusers. It's a little stupid, because users in that file are *denied* access.

Also, do id -a <your user> && id -a <other user> and see if there's any obvious groups that you're in and he isn't, like ftp or something.

# ? Nov 29, 2008 16:33

EasyEW: Mar 8, 2006; I've got my father's great big six-shooter with me 'n' if anybody in this woods wants to start somethin' just let 'em--but they DASSN'T.

MrMoo posted:

Doesn't whatever distro it uses come with gphoto or ugh, F-spot?

Linpus (Fedora Core 8 at the base) deactivates a lot of things in a drive to simplify (like right-click menus). The only way to do package installs is to tweak it a little, but there's a caveat:

LinuxHaxor.net posted:

In theory, the sky would be the limit here. Unfortunately it�s not entirely safe to add a bunch of Fedora 8 package repositories and let fly, since the patched Linpus packages are sometimes lagging behind the Fedora 8 versions. As I mentioned in my Aspire One review, if you accidentally update to a Fedora GTK+, then Linpus XFCE breaks. Even so, yum is your friend: With appropriate care, and judicious force installing of Fedora packages that might otherwise try to make unnecessary updates to Linpus, it�s not terribly difficult to add any application you might be missing. By now, I�ve updated to Firefox 3 and Open Office 2.4, and replaced the Acer media player with VLC, as well as added all the compiler tools so that I can compile things from source if necessary. Despite all that, the machine is still running as smoothly, if not smoother, than when I first took it out of the box.

Which I'll admit is only a start, but the Acer One has a pretty good user community to help iron things out.

# ? Nov 29, 2008 23:44

Kim Jong-Chill: Nov 16, 2006; If you don't like swastikas then you DON'T DESERVE A TATTOO

Im using Ubuntu 8.04 and when I delete something it will tell me that it cant be moved to the trash so do I want to delete it immediately and I click yes and then it says that it cant be deleted at all. So Im stuck with some files that I cant remove. Any help?

# ? Nov 30, 2008 03:29

Smackbilly: Jan 3, 2001; What kind of a name is Pizza Organ! anyway?

Kim Jong-Chill posted:

Im using Ubuntu 8.04 and when I delete something it will tell me that it cant be moved to the trash so do I want to delete it immediately and I click yes and then it says that it cant be deleted at all. So Im stuck with some files that I cant remove. Any help?

Try deleting it from the command line (using rm <file>), which may work, or may at least give you a more informative error message.

# ? Nov 30, 2008 10:29

Excavation: May 18, 2004; FEED ME CRAYONS

Smackbilly posted:

Try deleting it from the command line (using rm <file>), which may work, or may at least give you a more informative error message.

He'd be best off doing it as root to be sure that there aren't any weird permissions stopping him.

# ? Nov 30, 2008 10:42

BrutalGoerge: Feb 26, 2007; FPS-Bananite ^_^

Thanks for the FTP help.

Now I am having trouble getting my crontab to work, it only seems to work on root.

When i try to save the crontab i created, it says :
crontab: installing new crontab
chown: Operation not permitted
crontab: edits left in /tmp/crontab.XXXXBqN7YJ

At first it wasn't working at all, and I googled a solution that was changing the permissions, but while i can use the command now, it still won't save.

# ? Nov 30, 2008 22:31

The Merkinman: Apr 22, 2007; I sell only quality merkins. What is a merkin you ask? Why, it's a wig for your genitals!

I'm trying to get my webcam to work in Skype under Ubuntu 8.10
The webcam is a Logitech I think communicate STX
It works in aMSN, and Cheese, but not Camorama nor of course, Skype.

If I try to test it in skype it looks like static but greenish.

# ? Dec 1, 2008 02:36

crab avatar: Mar 15, 2006; iÅ§ KÃ«3Å, cÄ§ gÃ¸Ã i- <Ecl8

The Merkinman posted:

I'm trying to get my webcam to work in Skype under Ubuntu 8.10
The webcam is a Logitech I think communicate STX
It works in aMSN, and Cheese, but not Camorama nor of course, Skype.

If I try to test it in skype it looks like static but greenish.

My lovely Genius camera does that (except I haven't tried Camorama). It would display green noisy garbage when I test it but it actually works during a conversation. Maybe the test thing is trying to request a resolution that's too low or something. Try it!

# ? Dec 1, 2008 19:03

Mr. Eric Praline: Aug 13, 2004; I didn't like the others, they were all too flat.

BrutalGoerge posted:

Thanks for the FTP help.

Now I am having trouble getting my crontab to work, it only seems to work on root.

When i try to save the crontab i created, it says :
crontab: installing new crontab
chown: Operation not permitted
crontab: edits left in /tmp/crontab.XXXXBqN7YJ

At first it wasn't working at all, and I googled a solution that was changing the permissions, but while i can use the command now, it still won't save.

Try /etc/cron.allow and /etc/cron.deny.

# ? Dec 1, 2008 19:11

afen: Sep 23, 2003; nemo saltat sobrius

I have a dual itanium1 box (hp i2000) with Debian. I also have a HP SmartArray 6400 controller. Does anyone know of a program that is able to communicate with my controller? I've found some tools from HP, but it looks like they only work with Redhat or x86.

# ? Dec 1, 2008 19:14

BrutalGoerge: Feb 26, 2007; FPS-Bananite ^_^

chryst posted:

Try /etc/cron.allow and /etc/cron.deny.

I forgot to mention that was one of the first things I tried, no luck.

# ? Dec 1, 2008 20:28

Mr. Eric Praline: Aug 13, 2004; I didn't like the others, they were all too flat.

BrutalGoerge posted:

I forgot to mention that was one of the first things I tried, no luck.

Only other thing I can think of then is to make sure that /usr/bin/crontab is suid. (It should be, but most hardening tools will remove the suid bit.)

code:

$ ls -l /usr/bin/crontab
-rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 70576 Jul 11  2005 /usr/bin/crontab

If the first permission octet isn't rws, then run "chmod 4755 /usr/bin/crontab"

# ? Dec 1, 2008 20:48

BrutalGoerge: Feb 26, 2007; FPS-Bananite ^_^

chryst posted:

Only other thing I can think of then is to make sure that /usr/bin/crontab is suid. (It should be, but most hardening tools will remove the suid bit.)
code:
$ ls -l /usr/bin/crontab
-rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 70576 Jul 11  2005 /usr/bin/crontab
If the first permission octet isn't rws, then run "chmod 4755 /usr/bin/crontab"

that was it sir, thank you very much.

I wonder why that got changed.

# ? Dec 1, 2008 22:24

The Merkinman: Apr 22, 2007; I sell only quality merkins. What is a merkin you ask? Why, it's a wig for your genitals!

jegHegy posted:

My lovely Genius camera does that (except I haven't tried Camorama). It would display green noisy garbage when I test it but it actually works during a conversation. Maybe the test thing is trying to request a resolution that's too low or something. Try it!

After more seaching I found this and tried

code:

$ sudo gedit /usr/local/bin/skype

and paste the following 2 lines:

#!/bin/bash
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

$ sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/skype

Which worked, but now it seems I can't see the other person. It just shows the same color as the window.

# ? Dec 2, 2008 00:15

crab avatar: Mar 15, 2006; iÅ§ KÃ«3Å, cÄ§ gÃ¸Ã i- <Ecl8

The Merkinman posted:

After more seaching I found this
[...]
Which worked, but now it seems I can't see the other person. It just shows the same color as the window.

I totally forgot I had to do that hack as well, and with the same results as you. Then I just hosed with maximizing and minimizing the window until the other person showed up. Or sometimes my pic wouldn't show up. Sometimes neither.

Either way, Skype hosed something up and it's been like this for a while. We'll just have to wait, I guess.

# ? Dec 2, 2008 00:19

dont skimp on the shrimp: Apr 23, 2008

Just a general warning, xorg-xserver 1.5 rolled out into stable in Arch linux today. Be careful when updating and read the instructions, it can gently caress you over pretty fast otherwise.

This affects all distros of course, but it hit stable in arch today. Other distros might be faster/slower, but here it is anyways.

# ? Dec 2, 2008 01:12

Supersonic: Mar 28, 2008; You have used 43 of 300 characters allowed.; Tortured By Flan

Yeah, I run Arch on one of my machines, and did a pacman -Syu (system update) today, and now X refuses to start.

I've been on the Arch wiki and IRC channel, and there doesn't appear to be a fix yet.

# ? Dec 3, 2008 01:18

Ashex: Jun 25, 2007; These pipes are cleeeean!!!

Supersonic posted:

Yeah, I run Arch on one of my machines, and did a pacman -Syu (system update) today, and now X refuses to start.

I've been on the Arch wiki and IRC channel, and there doesn't appear to be a fix yet.

God drat, I don't want to update now. Anyway to tell it not to update Xorg but update everything else?

# ? Dec 3, 2008 02:55

GringoGrande: Jul 27, 2001; Nah...

My update went smooth, just needed a few minor edits in xorg.conf.
But to ignore updating xorg, add "IgnorePkg = xorg-server" to /etc/pacman.conf.

# ? Dec 3, 2008 09:09

Mantrid: May 8, 2007; by angerbot

This may not be the right place to ask this, but does anyone know of any gnome themes that look very retro? As in, boxy windows, old terminal font, amber/green on black color scheme?

# ? Dec 3, 2008 10:14

Ashex: Jun 25, 2007; These pipes are cleeeean!!!

GringoGrande posted:

My update went smooth, just needed a few minor edits in xorg.conf.
But to ignore updating xorg, add "IgnorePkg = xorg-server" to /etc/pacman.conf.

Ah, I took a look at the forum to see how bad things were, and it doesn't look that bad. I may just bite the bullet and upgrade later this week.

# ? Dec 3, 2008 17:21

Catch 22: Dec 1, 2003; Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

Can you add a network alias to the same NIC and it not be on the same subnet?
I have a few subnets running in my network, 172.16.0.0, 172.16.1.0 and 192.168.0.0.

I am deploying nagios because the company we use to monitor us uses level platforms and I am about to kill this ugly pos.

Do I really need to add another NIC to do this? From what I remember Nix cannot bind more than one IP to a NIC on different sub nets. Surely this cant be true and I heard something wrong.

# ? Dec 3, 2008 19:05

dont skimp on the shrimp: Apr 23, 2008

Supersonic posted:

Yeah, I run Arch on one of my machines, and did a pacman -Syu (system update) today, and now X refuses to start.

I've been on the Arch wiki and IRC channel, and there doesn't appear to be a fix yet.

Check the logs, usually you just have to remove RgbPath or something similar.

# ? Dec 3, 2008 19:31

Mr. Eric Praline: Aug 13, 2004; I didn't like the others, they were all too flat.

Catch 22 posted:

Can you add a network alias to the same NIC and it not be on the same subnet?
I have a few subnets running in my network, 172.16.0.0, 172.16.1.0 and 192.168.0.0.

I am deploying nagios because the company we use to monitor us uses level platforms and I am about to kill this ugly pos.

Do I really need to add another NIC to do this? From what I remember Nix cannot bind more than one IP to a NIC on different sub nets. Surely this cant be true and I heard something wrong.

*should* be able to do it using iproute2. I haven't done it myself, so I can't say how much routing/iptables work you might need, but I'm pretty sure you can get the nic listening to multiple subnets with ip.

# ? Dec 3, 2008 19:47

Catch 22: Dec 1, 2003; Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

chryst posted:

*should* be able to do it using iproute2. I haven't done it myself, so I can't say how much routing/iptables work you might need, but I'm pretty sure you can get the nic listening to multiple subnets with ip.

Blah. Logged into K and yast did it for me. Thanks!

# ? Dec 3, 2008 20:13

GuyGizmo: Feb 26, 2003; stupid babies need the most attention

Can someone tell me a really fast and efficient way of counting the number of files in a folder and all of its subfolders?

I have two folders that should have an identical number of files in them that I want to compare, but the number of files in both is in excess of 4 million and the drive they're on is slow, so right clicking the folders and getting their properties in Gnome isn't an option unless I want to wait a bazillion years and run out of memory.

# ? Dec 3, 2008 23:08

crab avatar: Mar 15, 2006; iÅ§ KÃ«3Å, cÄ§ gÃ¸Ã i- <Ecl8

GuyGizmo posted:

Can someone tell me a really fast and efficient way of counting the number of files in a folder and all of its subfolders?

I have two folders that should have an identical number of files in them that I want to compare, but the number of files in both is in excess of 4 million and the drive they're on is slow, so right clicking the folders and getting their properties in Gnome isn't an option unless I want to wait a bazillion years and run out of memory.

Try this: ls -a1 | wc -l

That's ls dash a one pipe wc dash ell. Most likely not the most efficient but it's worth a go. Lose the a if you don't want hidden files/folders counted.

# ? Dec 3, 2008 23:14

crab avatar: Mar 15, 2006; iÅ§ KÃ«3Å, cÄ§ gÃ¸Ã i- <Ecl8

quote isnt edit

# ? Dec 3, 2008 23:16

GuyGizmo: Feb 26, 2003; stupid babies need the most attention

jegHegy posted:

Try this: ls -a1 | wc -l

That's ls dash a one pipe wc dash ell. Most likely not the most efficient but it's worth a go. Lose the a if you don't want hidden files/folders counted.

The reason I feel this is a bad idea is that it will pipe an enormous list of 4 million files into wc which will then feabily attempt to count every one of them. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Isn't there a way to just increment a counter each time a file is found, and return the result after the entire directory tree has been traveled?

# ? Dec 3, 2008 23:47

Supersonic: Mar 28, 2008; You have used 43 of 300 characters allowed.; Tortured By Flan

Zom Aur posted:

Check the logs, usually you just have to remove RgbPath or something similar.

I'm re-installing Arch as we speak. I've tried commenting out RgbPath, but that just caused a host of new errors. Then I tried deleting the Xorg.conf file, because that fix was suggested on the forums, and now I get stuck at a broken X screen and can't switch to a VC.

Gonna try re-installing Arch and hope that works. Good thing that this is only a playing around machine and not production. This is why I don't like running Arch on my production machines.

# ? Dec 3, 2008 23:50

Sock on a Fish: Jul 17, 2004; What if that thing I said?

GuyGizmo posted:

The reason I feel this is a bad idea is that it will pipe an enormous list of 4 million files into wc which will then feabily attempt to count every one of them. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Isn't there a way to just increment a counter each time a file is found, and return the result after the entire directory tree has been traveled?

How bout you run the ls on the dog slow machine and then pipe it over to wc in a speedy fast machine?

# ? Dec 4, 2008 00:13

dont skimp on the shrimp: Apr 23, 2008

Supersonic posted:

I'm re-installing Arch as we speak. I've tried commenting out RgbPath, but that just caused a host of new errors. Then I tried deleting the Xorg.conf file, because that fix was suggested on the forums, and now I get stuck at a broken X screen and can't switch to a VC.

Gonna try re-installing Arch and hope that works. Good thing that this is only a playing around machine and not production. This is why I don't like running Arch on my production machines.

Okay, hope you have better luck this time around.

# ? Dec 4, 2008 00:28

GuyGizmo: Feb 26, 2003; stupid babies need the most attention

Sock on a Fish posted:

How bout you run the ls on the dog slow machine and then pipe it over to wc in a speedy fast machine?

I could, but I want to avoid ls if at all possible. The size in memory of a list of the full paths of every file in this folder could be over a gigabyte. I would estimate that at least 2 million of the files have a path that's longer than 130 characters.

Short of other solutions I'll probably just hack together a python script to do it.

# ? Dec 4, 2008 01:17

Supersonic: Mar 28, 2008; You have used 43 of 300 characters allowed.; Tortured By Flan

Zom Aur posted:

Okay, hope you have better luck this time around.

Its still not working. I guess I'll just wait until a bona-fide fix comes out.

# ? Dec 4, 2008 01:25

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# ? May 10, 2024 11:50

Catch 22: Dec 1, 2003; Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

goddamnit I hate troubleshooting linux.

Another network question. I seem to be having a DNS related issue. I can ping google.com, I can ping everything internal on my network except by name. My DNS is pointed to my internal DNS servers. They are Windows DNS servers. Now, nslookup can resolve a name inside my network, even trace route resolves, but a ping always comes back with "ping: unknown host COMPUTER".

Firewalls are down. Help?

# ? Dec 4, 2008 01:35

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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