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

twofish · # ? Jan 3, 2009 06:44

I'm looking for a good textual file manager in the vein of Total Commander / Midnight Commander, but I'd like it to have drag and drop and mouse highlighting capabilities. Anything out there like this? I'm running Arch with Openbox and I'm trying to do a "minimalist" thing.

Adbot · # ? May 10, 2024 17:57

crab avatar · # ? Jan 3, 2009 15:48

Paging ShadowHawk.

Running the latest Wine from your repos on Ubuntu 8.10, and I saw the entry in release notes about subpixel font antialiasing. Where do I enable it? Checked winecfg but I found nothing.

I Hate Admin !! · # ? Jan 3, 2009 20:00

Is there any NAS solution (hard drive) that will work with Ubuntu? I don't want to use an entire computer just to spin a 1TB hard drive.

crab avatar · # ? Jan 3, 2009 20:42

I Hate Admin !! posted:

Is there any NAS solution (hard drive) that will work with Ubuntu? I don't want to use an entire computer just to spin a 1TB hard drive.

Ubuntu supports both SMB and NFS out of the box so mounting a NAS drive either through /etc/fstab or GNOME's "Connect to server" dialog won't be a problem.

Houston Rockets · # ? Jan 3, 2009 22:06

SELinux sucks, and I challenge anyone to prove me otherwise.

Sock on a Fish · # ? Jan 3, 2009 22:08

Houston Rockets posted:

SELinux sucks, and I challenge anyone to prove me otherwise.

I'm still not sure what it does that DEP doesn't already do, aside from waste my time.

Eyecannon · # ? Jan 4, 2009 03:15

Houston Rockets posted:

SELinux sucks, and I challenge anyone to prove me otherwise.

Get used to it, because it will probably start to be used in all distros. It is annoying in some ways, but it definitely provides an extra layer of security.

Onken · # ? Jan 4, 2009 10:55

Hey is there any way I can use the command line "zip" program to batch-zip a folder worth of files into seperate zip files? Or do I need another program for that? Cheers.

Pardot · Pardot Jul 25, 2001

Onken posted:

Hey is there any way I can use the command line "zip" program to batch-zip a folder worth of files into seperate zip files? Or do I need another program for that? Cheers.

Have you tried doing something like ls thatdir | xargs zip? That won't work straight out, I can never remember the exact way to use xargs and have to look it up everytime, but the idea is that you'd pipe each file from ls into zip. Read the man page for xargs to get ideas.

StrikerJ · StrikerJ Oct 8, 2001

To get my Corsair Voyager USB stick to mount in Debian and Ubuntu I have to change the following value from the default 5 seconds to something like 8 with this command:

echo 8 > /sys/module/scsi_mod/parameters/inq_timeout

What I wonder is how to make this value stick between reboots and not reset?

Smackbilly · # ? Jan 4, 2009 15:31

Onken posted:

Hey is there any way I can use the command line "zip" program to batch-zip a folder worth of files into seperate zip files? Or do I need another program for that? Cheers.

You could use a simple loop

code:

for i in * ; do zip "$i" "$i" ; done

execute in the directory in question. For each file it will create a corresponding zip file with the same name and the .zip extension. It will not remove existing files. You can add options to the zip command to get the behavior you want, if different (man zip).

Sock on a Fish · # ? Jan 4, 2009 19:50

I thought I was about finished with migrating a physical linux box into my ESX environment, but after using dd to copy things over it's now hanging at boot. I've even copied over /boot from a known working VM running the same version of CentOS, but I get the same behavior.

I'm not very familiar with initrd. I'm betting that there's some misconfiguration there, but how can I tell? Is there a log that gets written to somewhere?

mawrucre · mawrucre Feb 8, 2004

Sock on a Fish posted:

I thought I was about finished with migrating a physical linux box into my ESX environment, but after using dd to copy things over it's now hanging at boot. I've even copied over /boot from a known working VM running the same version of CentOS, but I get the same behavior.

I'm not very familiar with initrd. I'm betting that there's some misconfiguration there, but how can I tell? Is there a log that gets written to somewhere?

Exactly where does it fail when it boots? What's the error message? Does it get past GRUB?

Sock on a Fish · # ? Jan 5, 2009 04:20

mawrucre posted:

Exactly where does it fail when it boots? What's the error message? Does it get past GRUB?

I managed to get around this by doing a file-level instead of a block-level copy, I think I just had my math wrong somewhere.

Everything appears to be working as it did on the physical box, with one craaazy exception. I've got an nfs share defined in fstab that fails to mount on boot, and fails to mount with mount -a. The error reported is:

code:

mount: fs type nfs not supported by kernel
Error: cannot mount filesystem: Protocol error

I can't mount nfs anything, it always returns the same error.

I've already updated the kernel using yum to see if that'd take care of things, but no good. I'm pretty sure that nfs has been part of the linux kernel for a long-rear end time. I'm on 2.6.9-67.

juggalol · # ? Jan 5, 2009 05:08

Sock on a Fish posted:

I've already updated the kernel using yum to see if that'd take care of things, but no good. I'm pretty sure that nfs has been part of the linux kernel for a long-rear end time. I'm on 2.6.9-67.

Can you look at your kernel config file? It should be named 'config' and should exist somewhere within /usr/src. The 'older' standard was to keep the kernel sources in /usr/src/linux - but a lot of distributions have started doing it their own way, you may need to do some digging.

If you can find that file, try 'grep -i nfs config' - it ought to tell you if NFS support is compiled statically, as a module or not at all.

If it's not compiled at all, it may be that it was being handled by the initram disk. You mentioned that you aren't familiar with how it ticks (neither am I) - but maybe the NFS support was originally built into the initram image that the original working box was using?

Edit:

The Remote Viewer posted:

Linux is in the stone age as far as torrent clients go, which I found surprising.

I know I'm really late to the party on this one, but you should check out rTorrent. I didn't see it mentioned in any of the replies following your post, and it's the best torrent client I've seen under Linux. It runs in the console (I run it inside of a screen session and it works out very nicely). If you prefer, there's a web front-end project called wTorrent, but I've never used it.

crab avatar · # ? Jan 5, 2009 10:46

jegHegy posted:

Paging ShadowHawk.

Running the latest Wine from your repos on Ubuntu 8.10, and I saw the entry in release notes about subpixel font antialiasing. Where do I enable it? Checked winecfg but I found nothing.

Adding the registry entries as described in Wine bug #16729's comments did the trick.

Sock on a Fish · # ? Jan 5, 2009 17:03

juggalol posted:

Can you look at your kernel config file? It should be named 'config' and should exist somewhere within /usr/src. The 'older' standard was to keep the kernel sources in /usr/src/linux - but a lot of distributions have started doing it their own way, you may need to do some digging.

If you can find that file, try 'grep -i nfs config' - it ought to tell you if NFS support is compiled statically, as a module or not at all.

Okay, I think I may have a lead.

On this p2v I copied over everything except the boot partition. That is, sda2 but not sda1. The boot partition that's being used on the machine right now came from a CentOS 4.6 template VM, same version as the system that was copied over. I deployed the template, then expanded sda2 to accommodate the data I needed to transfer over, blowing away the old linux install in the process.

The template doesn't have a kernel source directory, I'm guessing it's just bone stock kernel copied from install media as a binary (if that's possible).

That still doesn't tell me why NFS isn't working, since both the kernel and initrd on the boot partition support NFS on all the machines I've deployed from that template. However, that seems like the only relevant difference between the VM and the physical box.

Sock on a Fish · # ? Jan 5, 2009 18:19

juggalol posted:

Can you look at your kernel config file? It should be named 'config' and should exist somewhere within /usr/src. The 'older' standard was to keep the kernel sources in /usr/src/linux - but a lot of distributions have started doing it their own way, you may need to do some digging.

If you can find that file, try 'grep -i nfs config' - it ought to tell you if NFS support is compiled statically, as a module or not at all.

If it's not compiled at all, it may be that it was being handled by the initram disk. You mentioned that you aren't familiar with how it ticks (neither am I) - but maybe the NFS support was originally built into the initram image that the original working box was using?

It turns out you were on the right track. The running kernel needed an nfs module, but /lib/modules/2.6.9-67.EL/ was drat near empty. Copied over the modules directory from a machine with the same kernel, problem solved. :c00l:

juggalol · # ? Jan 5, 2009 19:05

Sock on a Fish posted:

It turns out you were on the right track. The running kernel needed an nfs module, but /lib/modules/2.6.9-67.EL/ was drat near empty. Copied over the modules directory from a machine with the same kernel, problem solved.

That sounds like the sort of problem that you fix once, you're not 100% sure why it broke in the first place - and once you get it working again, you walk away very slowly, never showing your back to the system.

Jo · # ? Jan 6, 2009 03:59

Running Ubuntu 8.10 AMD64.

After 2 minutes and 33 seconds of wall time, one of my programs terminates and the console prints KILLED. Is Ubuntu killing processes that use inordinate amounts of time? How can I disable this? If the application is breaking, I should get a bus error or segv, but all I get is 'TERMINATED'.

JawnV6 · # ? Jan 6, 2009 04:25

I have my 8.04 Ubuntu computer hooked up to my 50" DLP tv with a DMI-to-HDMI cable. The edges of the screen are cut off, I can't see the taskbar or the upper bar, and there's some cutoff on the sides as well. The TV has an 'overscan' option, but it only has 3 settings and the +1 and +2 just make the problem worse. Changing the resolution from 1900x1080 (what it defaulted to) to 1280x720 just gave me a very small screen with the same stuff cut off.

I just plugged it in and it got 90% of the way there, any ideas how to fix the rest?

ShoulderDaemon · # ? Jan 6, 2009 04:55

Jo posted:

Running Ubuntu 8.10 AMD64.

After 2 minutes and 33 seconds of wall time, one of my programs terminates and the console prints KILLED. Is Ubuntu killing processes that use inordinate amounts of time? How can I disable this? If the application is breaking, I should get a bus error or segv, but all I get is 'TERMINATED'.

That's probably the out-of-memory killer terminating the largest-footprint process because the system no longer has any memory available. If you check the last few lines of the output of dmesg, there may be more information.

Sock on a Fish · # ? Jan 6, 2009 04:57

juggalol posted:

That sounds like the sort of problem that you fix once, you're not 100% sure why it broke in the first place - and once you get it working again, you walk away very slowly, never showing your back to the system.

My guess is that the dude that setup the physical machine decided that he'd compile everything into the kernel instead of as modules? If that's possible, that is. That guy is long gone, so there's no way to know. It's possible that he did it to try to boost performance, since this machine is always taxed to the max compiling poo poo with our Java-powered build manager.

juggalol · # ? Jan 6, 2009 04:58

JawnV6 posted:

I just plugged it in and it got 90% of the way there, any ideas how to fix the rest?

I think your problem has to do with the X configuration on your Ubuntu system. If you're using an NVidia video card (and driver), run

$ nvidia-xconfig --advanced-help

Within all of that output, there's a section for TV output:

code:

--tv-standard=TV-STANDARD, --no-tv-standard
Enable or disable the "TVStandard" X configuration option. Valid values for "TVStandard" are: "PAL-B", "PAL-D", "PAL-G",
 "PAL-H", "PAL-I", "PAL-K1", "PAL-M", "PAL-N", "PAL-NC", "NTSC-J", "NTSC-M", "HD480i", "HD480p", 
"HD720p", "HD1080i", "HD1080p", "HD576i", "HD576p".

(gently caress, sorry - that broke tables - should be fixed now)

So I guess the next step would be to make a backup of your current working X config and then try running

$ nvidia-xconfig --tv-standard=HD1080p

(Or whatever TV standard you're trying to work with - I don't know which resolution corresponds to which HDTV mode)

Not sure if ATI's aticonfig has a handy-dandy way to do this ... if not I can try to screw around with a test server at work tomorrow and see if I can post the relevant changes.

Edit:

Sock on a Fish posted:

My guess is that the dude that setup the physical machine decided that he'd compile everything into the kernel instead of as modules? If that's possible, that is. That guy is long gone, so there's no way to know. It's possible that he did it to try to boost performance, since this machine is always taxed to the max compiling poo poo with our Java-powered build manager.

Chalk it up to him being a silly goose, I guess.

juggalol fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jan 6, 2009

Pardot · Pardot Jul 25, 2001

juggalol posted:

Not sure if ATI's aticonfig has a handy-dandy way to do this ... if not I can try to screw around with a test server at work tomorrow and see if I can post the relevant changes.

I'd be interested in seeing the stuff for ATI. I just have my xbmc user auto start xmbc and don't use gnome or kde or whatever, and xbmc can scale to whatever when you adjust it. So it ends up fine, but having the resolution right the whole time would probably be nicer.

JawnV6 · # ? Jan 6, 2009 05:42

juggalol posted:

$ nvidia-xconfig --tv-standard=HD1080p

(Or whatever TV standard you're trying to work with - I don't know which resolution corresponds to which HDTV mode)

Thanks for the quick reply!

Tried this, no dice. I am running on nVidia, with what I think are the latest drivers. It's still cutting off the same amount (cutting through the d in "edit" on this firefox window to give a horizontal estimate). Any other solution ideas?

yippee cahier · # ? Jan 6, 2009 08:08

JawnV6 posted:

Thanks for the quick reply!

Tried this, no dice. I am running on nVidia, with what I think are the latest drivers. It's still cutting off the same amount (cutting through the d in "edit" on this firefox window to give a horizontal estimate). Any other solution ideas?

Run nvidia-settings and check "X Server Display Configuration" section and the GPU scaling options for the screen under the GPU0 section. I've had this utility mess up my X configuration, so backup the original xorg.conf if you get it working and decide to save the config.

Jo · # ? Jan 6, 2009 17:05

ShoulderDaemon posted:

That's probably the out-of-memory killer terminating the largest-footprint process because the system no longer has any memory available. If you check the last few lines of the output of dmesg, there may be more information.

I'll be damned. Thank you.

JawnV6 · # ? Jan 6, 2009 19:23

sund posted:

Run nvidia-settings and check "X Server Display Configuration" section and the GPU scaling options for the screen under the GPU0 section. I've had this utility mess up my X configuration, so backup the original xorg.conf if you get it working and decide to save the config.

nvidia-settings never brought up the GUI, it just ran from the console and quit. Broke X, whatever it did, and the system came back up in reduced graphics mode which ironically showed the full screen at 640x480. I restored my old xorg and it booted fine, I'm thinking this isn't worth the effort anymore. I'll screw around with it a little longer when I get home tonight, but I'm probably going to end up going back to my monitor. Thanks for the help!

juggalol · # ? Jan 6, 2009 19:51

JawnV6 posted:

nvidia-settings never brought up the GUI, it just ran from the console and quit. Broke X, whatever it did, and the system came back up in reduced graphics mode which ironically showed the full screen at 640x480. I restored my old xorg and it booted fine, I'm thinking this isn't worth the effort anymore. I'll screw around with it a little longer when I get home tonight, but I'm probably going to end up going back to my monitor. Thanks for the help!

I googled around a bit more, and I think the problem you're describing is HDTV overscan. I've never screwed around with HDTV output before, but it sounds like this is a pretty common problem, and tweaking the X config is the proper way to go about it. I've found a bunch of threads about people reporting that they have a problem ... but none of them seem to have a solution

Dunno if that helps you on your hunting or not.

JawnV6 · # ? Jan 6, 2009 20:35

juggalol posted:

Dunno if that helps you on your hunting or not.

Sort of, I'm googling around now and seeing some people who are very close to my problem. I'm guessing I need to add a 'modeline' to the xorg.conf, but getting the specs for it seems tough. This guy got the closest (same model TV I think), my guess is he figured it out and didn't post.

As a bonus, there's this last post:

quote:

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but this is the DRM world we live in, and Sony is one of its biggest champions. That's why I never buy anything with Sony written on it. The rootkit fiasco was what really highlighted for me how evil they really are.

Awesome. Very helpful and relevant to the problem at hand.

juggalol · # ? Jan 6, 2009 21:16

JawnV6 posted:

Awesome. Very helpful and relevant to the problem at hand.

I can just picture his supple bosom jiggling while he typed that sentence out, his pock-marked & sweaty face twisted in rage.

Edit: I know the 'gtf' tool can be used to generate modelines that can be put into xorg.conf, but you'll need to know specific parameters to put into gtf for it to work.

code:

usage: gtf x y refresh [-v|--verbose] [-f|--fbmode] [-x|--xorgmode]

The x and y inputs are obviously whatever resolution you want the display put out at, but the refresh is the piece that would give you more trouble (I think). I doubt you can find the refresh rate for the TV on Sony documentation ... but you might have some luck if you call their tech support. It won't cost anything but some of your time, and it might actually get the answer.

juggalol fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jan 6, 2009

Catch 22 · # ? Jan 7, 2009 02:03

Any Nagios users out there know about these WMI plugins?
"http://www.nagiosexchange.org/cgi-bin/page.cgi?g=Detailed%2F1704.html;d=1"

If I am reading this right they say to be "agentless" but from reading the install PDF they call for NRPE-NT to be installed on the host monitored system. Im I missing something or wouldn't this still be an "Agent"?

Also, if the above is true is there a native way for Nagios to pull WMI information right from the WMI service built into Windows?

JawnV6 · # ? Jan 7, 2009 04:45

juggalol posted:

I can just picture his supple bosom jiggling while he typed that sentence out, his pock-marked & sweaty face twisted in rage.

Edit: I know the 'gtf' tool can be used to generate modelines that can be put into xorg.conf, but you'll need to know specific parameters to put into gtf for it to work.
code:
usage: gtf x y refresh [-v|--verbose] [-f|--fbmode] [-x|--xorgmode]
The x and y inputs are obviously whatever resolution you want the display put out at, but the refresh is the piece that would give you more trouble (I think). I doubt you can find the refresh rate for the TV on Sony documentation ... but you might have some luck if you call their tech support. It won't cost anything but some of your time, and it might actually get the answer.

I tried a couple suggested refresh rates from googling, every attempt at putting a modeline into xorg.conf ended in 'safe graphics mode'. I'm throwing in the towel, too frustrated to figure it out.

fake edit: I think the TV's just being retarded. nvidia-settings even decided to play nice and open up, it can pull the EDID, knows it's a Sony TV and all the relevant specs, it's just the TV overscanning and not giving any useful options to pull it back. The system looks like it's generating the perfect signal.

Thanks for trying.

juggalol · # ? Jan 7, 2009 16:41

JawnV6 posted:

I tried a couple suggested refresh rates from googling, every attempt at putting a modeline into xorg.conf ended in 'safe graphics mode'. I'm throwing in the towel, too frustrated to figure it out.

Thanks for trying.

No problem. I'll keep this in mind - I had hoped to use my current 32" HDTV as a desktop display once I get around to upgrading my TV (within the next year or two) but maybe that won't work out so well after all. I'd rather know now than spend hours banging my head against a wall.

a mysterious cloak · # ? Jan 7, 2009 17:29

Hey guys, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 a few days ago on a whim and have really been enjoying getting to know it.

Any suggestions for a buck-rear end newbie, like tweaks, apps, anything like that? Right now it's just being used for net surfing, email, and very basic things like that. I'm working through Ubuntu Unleashed that I snagged at the bookstore, and that's been helpful so far, too.

Farmer Crack-Ass · # ? Jan 7, 2009 17:41

I want to configure OpenSUSE to autologin to a Windows domain user account, but the built-in helpful GUI tool appears to only support local users for the autologin function. My Google searches ("autologin OpenSUSE windows domain", "linux auto login windows domain") are coming up fruitless. Does anyone have suggestions, or a link to some reading I can do?

("but why?" My boss wants to be able to hand students these laptops, who will then open them up and press a button and not have to change or enter any login information whatsoever. I want to be able to please my boss.)

CrazyLittle · # ? Jan 7, 2009 20:54

I've got a Nagios server and a cacti server, and I would like to use them to monitor the status of a Centos machine that I have running. Do any of you guys have a link or two handy for some Nagios/Cacti templates and net-snmp config examples?

Ashex · # ? Jan 7, 2009 21:52

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

I want to configure OpenSUSE to autologin to a Windows domain user account, but the built-in helpful GUI tool appears to only support local users for the autologin function. My Google searches ("autologin OpenSUSE windows domain", "linux auto login windows domain") are coming up fruitless. Does anyone have suggestions, or a link to some reading I can do?

("but why?" My boss wants to be able to hand students these laptops, who will then open them up and press a button and not have to change or enter any login information whatsoever. I want to be able to please my boss.)

Do you have LDAP authentication setup already? Autologin depends on which environment you are using (gdm, kdm, etc)

Adbot · # ? May 10, 2024 17:57

Saukkis · # ? Jan 8, 2009 23:11

JawnV6 posted:

fake edit: I think the TV's just being retarded. nvidia-settings even decided to play nice and open up, it can pull the EDID, knows it's a Sony TV and all the relevant specs, it's just the TV overscanning and not giving any useful options to pull it back. The system looks like it's generating the perfect signal.

Yes, I don't think there is much the computer can do if the TV doesn't support disabling overscan. The way Nvidia drivers do it on the Windows side is by actually sending out a picture with black borders. That way the TV overscan only cuts off the borders leaving the real picture intact.

juggalol posted:

No problem. I'll keep this in mind - I had hoped to use my current 32" HDTV as a desktop display once I get around to upgrading my TV (within the next year or two) but maybe that won't work out so well after all. I'd rather know now than spend hours banging my head against a wall.

Try to figure out if overscan can be disabled on your TV. It may be called 1:1 mapping for example. Searching from AVSforum may be helpful.