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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ambushsabre: Sep 1, 2009; It's...it's not shutting down!

Bob Morales posted:

I love Freenode and all, but are there any other good Linux channels on IRC networks that aren't so uptight? I'm tired of getting yelled at for accidentally saying 'drat' or 'hell' or being told every other thing is off-topic, and in some cases not even allowed. Maybe I'm dreaming of some 'underground' utopia of nerds that doesn't exist.

SynIRC is basically the goon server, and I know there are a bunch of people that know their technology stuff, but I'm not sure if there's a specific channel for it. Does anyone know of one on there?

# ? Jul 15, 2011 21:46

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# ? May 17, 2024 01:25

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

ambushsabre posted:

SynIRC is basically the goon server, and I know there are a bunch of people that know their technology stuff, but I'm not sure if there's a specific channel for it. Does anyone know of one on there?

The only two I've ever ventured into were #shsc and #cobol, though you may find help there.

# ? Jul 15, 2011 22:57

General_Failure: Apr 17, 2005

rt4 posted:

I've never heard of that. What does it do?

Referring to Brainforest. Holy poo poo I forgot I asked this. I ended up getting lovely and spending literally days trying to transplant my data back on to my Palm so I could use it. Linux has the worst Palm support. So flaky.

Anyway Brainforest is essentially a tool which at its most basic level is a list maker that works in a tree format. So it's possible to make items and sub-items, nested as deep as you like. Really handy for breaking down big / complex jobs or planning things.

IIRC it also has the ability to set task completion as a boolean or a percentage.

I just looked. It can be set in project mode for that sort of thing, has due dates etc.

I spent a lot of time downloading and trying software almost at random and found nothing comparable.

Now for my question. Why is it that Linux always seems to look less well defined visually on this computer? Not just referring to fonts. I don't know why.

Recently I had a play around with XP. When it loaded I thought "Holy poo poo! I forgot how clear this old display is. (19" Almost workstation CRT monitor). I know that 1600 x 1200 is still below overscan on it but anything higher is wasted on me, so that's how I run.
XP was running the correct nVidia nForce drivers, as is Linux.
Both I tried running at the same resolution and refresh.

Just to be sure it wasn't my imagination I ran the XP VM I have set up for VirtualBox while in linux. The guest XP fullscreen still had that fuzzy feel that Linux has so it's not just a colour scheme or whatever issue.

About the only difference, and it didn't affect the "fuzz", was when I tweaked the brightness and contrast on the monitor and the gamma on the driver to make it pretty close on some online calibration cards I found.
I'm just sick of the poorly defined eyesore.

# ? Jul 16, 2011 01:09

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

General_Failure posted:

Linux has the worst Palm support. So flaky.

Palm has the worst Linux support.

It's just the way of most things in open source-land. Companies support Windows first, Mac second and maybe, if you're lucky, they support Linux. In most cases they don't so someone has to reverse engineer the thing and write some drivers for it. This usually isn't of the same quality as the official software.

quote:

Now for my question. Why is it that Linux always seems to look less well defined visually on this computer? Not just referring to fonts. I don't know why.

You have misconfigured your video card/screen or something.

spankmeister fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Jul 16, 2011

# ? Jul 16, 2011 09:57

Underflow: Apr 4, 2008; EGOMET MIHI IGNOSCO

I get a crisp clean image from the nVidia driver. Good resolution and sync, no fuzziness whatsoever. Always does take some xorg.conf tweaking though. Important to have your monitor specs at hand for optimal settings.

# ? Jul 16, 2011 11:07

Needs More Ditka: Dec 3, 2005; We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you. When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism.

I'm trying to learn more about the Linux end of Linux (text files, commands, etc) rather than the graphical, but I'm also operating on a computer that needs to work. I already have another computer that I'm looking to make a Gentoo or Slackware install on because it won't matter if I botch it, but I'm wondering what distribution I should run for this one.

I looked over the major distributions on distrowatch but I trust this thread more. I'd like something that would hold my hand as I learn but not quite as much as Ubuntu or Mint (which I'm running right now after I cocked up my first Gentoo try). Would Debian be more suited to my needs since Ubuntu and Mint came from it, or is there a better distribution that I'm overlooking? (not Mandriva, I'm sure it's far better than it was seven years ago or whenever I used it but Mandrake made me hate Linux for years.)

# ? Jul 17, 2011 23:20

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

I go with Arch. It's slackware-based (sorta) but it's being developed very actively and it has a fairly large userbase. It's also got pretty decent package management,

# ? Jul 17, 2011 23:33

dont skimp on the shrimp: Apr 23, 2008

spankmeister posted:

I go with Arch. It's slackware-based (sorta) but it's being developed very actively and it has a fairly large userbase. It's also got pretty decent package management,

No it isn't. It's based on CRUX.

# ? Jul 17, 2011 23:57

angrytech: Jun 26, 2009

One of my major annoyances with Ubuntu is that I can't install a package just for a single user. Are there any distros that allow that?

# ? Jul 18, 2011 00:08

KidDynamite: Feb 11, 2005

Ok so I just installed Ubuntu 11.04 and I'm using unity. How do I install python and gcc? I extracted the tar.gz's into /usr/local/src and then when in the main file path I type ./configure nothing happens. So I can't go to make or whatever else it is I need to do afterwords. Not really understanding the *nix.

# ? Jul 18, 2011 00:59

ShoulderDaemon: Oct 9, 2003; support goon fund; Taco Defender

KidDynamite posted:

Ok so I just installed Ubuntu 11.04 and I'm using unity. How do I install python and gcc? I extracted the tar.gz's into /usr/local/src and then when in the main file path I type ./configure nothing happens. So I can't go to make or whatever else it is I need to do afterwords. Not really understanding the *nix.

As a general rule, you should never install anything from source on any distro that's even remotely recent. Just use the package manager to install python and gcc.

# ? Jul 18, 2011 01:14

bort: Mar 13, 2003

Synaptic Package Manager in the GUI or aptitude/apt-get: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallingSoftware

# ? Jul 18, 2011 01:18

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

KidDynamite posted:

Ok so I just installed Ubuntu 11.04 and I'm using unity. How do I install python and gcc? I extracted the tar.gz's into /usr/local/src and then when in the main file path I type ./configure nothing happens. So I can't go to make or whatever else it is I need to do afterwords. Not really understanding the *nix.

The whole point of Ubuntu, or any other distro is so you don't have to install from source. Drop to a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install python

For GCC and the rest of the stuff (which you'd need to build Python from source anyway), use this command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

That will install gcc and make and all that crap.

# ? Jul 18, 2011 02:22

BlackMK4: Aug 23, 2006; wat.; Megamarm

Weird question, but is there a program/site with a gui that will take the input of like ls -R, generate a file tree that you can move file around, and have it output a shell script with all the mv, mkdir, rm, or whatever commands?

edit: I'm talking about one that would run under OSX or web based. My linux box is headless.

BlackMK4 fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Jul 18, 2011

# ? Jul 18, 2011 05:43

Lysidas: Jul 26, 2002; John Diefenbaker is a madman who thinks he's John Diefenbaker.; Pillbug

KidDynamite posted:

Ok so I just installed Ubuntu 11.04 and I'm using unity. How do I install python and gcc? I extracted the tar.gz's into /usr/local/src and then when in the main file path I type ./configure nothing happens. So I can't go to make or whatever else it is I need to do afterwords. Not really understanding the *nix.

Others have already said that you're going about this in entirely the wrong way, but I have some additional comments:

Python 2.7 is part of the base install. You don't have to install it yourself. If you want 3.2, sudo apt-get install python3 . There are also a lot of optional Python packages in the repositories, most or all of which start with the python- prefix, e.g. python-numpy, python-networkx.
When you "type ./configure nothing happens", I seriously doubt that nothing happens. If there is any terminal output at all, pasting it into a help request is usually a good idea.

# ? Jul 18, 2011 07:32

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

Zom Aur posted:

No it isn't. It's based on CRUX.

Whoops, you're right it is.

# ? Jul 18, 2011 08:06

Modern Pragmatist: Aug 20, 2008

BlackMK4 posted:

Weird question, but is there a program/site with a gui that will take the input of like ls -R, generate a file tree that you can move file around, and have it output a shell script with all the mv, mkdir, rm, or whatever commands?

edit: I'm talking about one that would run under OSX or web based. My linux box is headless.

Can't you just copy the last relevant lines of ~/.bash_history?

# ? Jul 18, 2011 14:03

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

BlackMK4 posted:

Weird question, but is there a program/site with a gui that will take the input of like ls -R, generate a file tree that you can move file around, and have it output a shell script with all the mv, mkdir, rm, or whatever commands?

edit: I'm talking about one that would run under OSX or web based. My linux box is headless.

You want to recreate a tree but not the files in it?

# ? Jul 18, 2011 14:49

Erasmus Darwin: Mar 6, 2001

spankmeister posted:

You want to recreate a tree but not the files in it?

It sounds like he wants some sort of an offline file manager. If I understand his request, he wants to be able to do something like this:

ssh headlesslinuxbox
ls -lR / > files.txt
scp files.txt mac:
exit

offline_file_manager < files.txt > changes_in_script_form.sh
(He then makes some changes to the files via a GUI provided by the hypothetical Offline File Manager, deleting stuff, renaming it, and so on.)
scp changes_in_script_form.sh headlesslinuxbox:

ssh headlesslinuxbox
chmod 700 changes_in_script_form.sh
./changes_in_script_form.sh

...and voila! The changes are now made.

Now the important question is whether he needs the changes in script form because of some hidden constraint (such as being able to review the changes before formally applying them or wanting to apply them to a bunch of different Linux boxes) or if he's asking for them in script form because he sees that as the only way of being able to make the changes on the Linux box.

If it's the former, I don't have any suggestions. If it's the latter, he might be able to use a curses-based pseudo-GUI such as Midnight Commander (available as the "mc" package on RedHat-based distros) or he could use an X-based file manager with the display exported to his Mac (which should be a fairly well-documented process).

# ? Jul 18, 2011 15:03

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Erasmus Darwin posted:

If it's the latter, he might be able to use a curses-based pseudo-GUI such as Midnight Commander (available as the "mc" package on RedHat-based distros) or he could use an X-based file manager with the display exported to his Mac (which should be a fairly well-documented process).

sshfs (w/MacFUSE), or even SFTP?

# ? Jul 18, 2011 16:58

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Needs More Ditka posted:

I'm trying to learn more about the Linux end of Linux (text files, commands, etc) rather than the graphical, but I'm also operating on a computer that needs to work.

If you're looking to figure out how to interact with the command line and use various terminal-based programs, the distribution doesn't really matter. If the machine "needs to work", you might want to mess around in a second user account so you don't accidentally blow anything away.

If you're more interested in a command-line approach to system administration, Debian is a reasonable choice. It's not GUI-centric and completely GUI agnostic, unlike my limited experience with Ubuntu.

Do keep in mind that much of the system administration stuff one does in Debian is fairly Debian (derivative) specific, although analogues exist in Red Hat. Yes, source compiling a tarball is pretty much the same in any distribution, but then you're evading your distribution-specific mechanisms for packaging and dependency tracking and such.

# ? Jul 18, 2011 17:05

Longinus00: Dec 29, 2005; Ur-Quan

BlackMK4 posted:

Weird question, but is there a program/site with a gui that will take the input of like ls -R, generate a file tree that you can move file around, and have it output a shell script with all the mv, mkdir, rm, or whatever commands?

edit: I'm talking about one that would run under OSX or web based. My linux box is headless.

Why not use use one of the many norton commander clones? (Midnight Commander for example)

*efb

# ? Jul 18, 2011 18:02

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

I'm looking to track a couple basic stats on a server. # of users logged in, CPU usage %, network i/o, and maybe memory usage. I only want to track the one server, I don't need to be able track any SNMP device.

I just want a pretty graph to look at, and that I can put on the web.

Cacti isn't exactly over-complicating the situation but maybe I have irrational fear of it being exploited or that it's stealing my megahurtz. Is there something more basic I can use?

vnstat looks neat, but only has network stuff. Munin also looks nice but it's on the same level of complexity as Cacti. Any other suggestions?

Bob Morales fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Jul 18, 2011

# ? Jul 18, 2011 19:04

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Bob Morales posted:

Is there something more basic I can use?

If it doesn't need to be live, you can use sadc from sysstat to collect all of those metrics (and more!) in an activity file which you can dump and copy off once a day or so. From there you can use sadf to dump it out to CSV and plot it with whatever.

Otherwise if you're looking for a turn-key RRDtool + web front-end solution, Ganglia and Munin are OK.

# ? Jul 18, 2011 20:45

Longinus00: Dec 29, 2005; Ur-Quan

Bob Morales posted:

I'm looking to track a couple basic stats on a server. # of users logged in, CPU usage %, network i/o, and maybe memory usage. I only want to track the one server, I don't need to be able track any SNMP device.

I just want a pretty graph to look at, and that I can put on the web.

Cacti isn't exactly over-complicating the situation but maybe I have irrational fear of it being exploited or that it's stealing my megahurtz. Is there something more basic I can use?

vnstat looks neat, but only has network stuff. Munin also looks nice but it's on the same level of complexity as Cacti. Any other suggestions?

Munin shouldn't require much setup at all if you're using a distribution supplied package and not installing it by hand. It installs a whole bunch of plugins as a default which covers everything you mentioned and then some. It's also ridiculously easy to write your own plugins if you want to.

If you are super worried about resource consumption then you can use collectd which can run on openwrt routers.

Longinus00 fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Jul 18, 2011

# ? Jul 18, 2011 23:02

BlackMK4: Aug 23, 2006; wat.; Megamarm

Erasmus Darwin posted:

It sounds like he wants some sort of an offline file manager. If I understand his request, he wants to be able to do something like this:

ssh headlesslinuxbox
ls -lR / > files.txt
scp files.txt mac:
exit

offline_file_manager < files.txt > changes_in_script_form.sh
(He then makes some changes to the files via a GUI provided by the hypothetical Offline File Manager, deleting stuff, renaming it, and so on.)
scp changes_in_script_form.sh headlesslinuxbox:

ssh headlesslinuxbox
chmod 700 changes_in_script_form.sh
./changes_in_script_form.sh

...and voila! The changes are now made.

This is exactly what I was talking about.
I wanted to do it with a script because I am moving multiple TB across multiple HDDs, so I'd like to let it run in the background instead of messing about in MC and waiting every time I move a 15gb file to another drive.

ExcessBLarg! posted:

sshfs (w/MacFUSE), or even SFTP?

Same problem.

# ? Jul 19, 2011 02:38

nitrogen: May 21, 2004; Oh, what's a 217°C difference between friends?

how about rsync, done like this:

mount each disk on it's own directory:
/mnt/d1, /mnt/d2, /mnt/d3 etc..

then you'd want to move them to something like:
/target/d1, /target/d2, /target/d3

with something like:

rsync -avW /mnt/d1 /target/d1

Would that get yu where you needed to be?

# ? Jul 19, 2011 03:21

Longinus00: Dec 29, 2005; Ur-Quan

BlackMK4 posted:

This is exactly what I was talking about.
I wanted to do it with a script because I am moving multiple TB across multiple HDDs, so I'd like to let it run in the background instead of messing about in MC and waiting every time I move a 15gb file to another drive.

Same problem.

You can just spawn a new mc on a screen and detach and let it work.

Alternatively you can background transfer in mc itself. It will even let you pause and resume file operations that you've backgrounded.

VVVV

Just add all your moves to the background and use the background jobs list to manage it.

# ? Jul 19, 2011 03:28

BlackMK4: Aug 23, 2006; wat.; Megamarm

Will MC build a queue as I work?

# ? Jul 19, 2011 03:29

BnT: Mar 10, 2006

BlackMK4 posted:

This is exactly what I was talking about.
I wanted to do it with a script because I am moving multiple TB across multiple HDDs, so I'd like to let it run in the background instead of messing about in MC and waiting every time I move a 15gb file to another drive.

Not sure I'm following the question, but I think this might be a job for rsync in batch mode. I've never tried it, but it seems to meet your requirements.

code:

# update local mirror from linuxbox:
mac$ rsync -av --partial --delete linuxbox::bigdir/* ~/linuxmirror/
 
# make changes or GUI:
mac$ make_my_edits_here.sh

# Make your batch file:
mac$ rsync --only-write-batch=CHANGES -a ~/linuxmirror/* linuxbox::bigdir/

# lastly either run the batch over SSH 
mac$ cat CHANGES | ssh linuxbox rsync --read-batch=- -a /mnt/bigdir/

# or copy it over and run it remotely if you have multiple copies to modify?
mac$ scp CHANGES linuxbox:
mac$ ssh linuxbox
linuxbox$ rsync --read-batch=CHANGES -a /mnt/bigdir/
linuxbox$ rsync --read-batch=CHANGES -a /mnt/bigdir2/

# ? Jul 19, 2011 03:55

Lysidas: Jul 26, 2002; John Diefenbaker is a madman who thinks he's John Diefenbaker.; Pillbug

argh why the hell does CentOS, and I'm assuming RHEL too, put named pipes (FIFOs) in /etc/httpd

I just want to grep -r pattern /etc and it blocks while trying to read from the drat FIFOs

(maybe fake) EDIT: Alright, they're not actually in /etc; /etc/httpd/run is symlinked from /var/run. That doesn't make me any happier.

Lysidas fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Jul 20, 2011

# ? Jul 20, 2011 20:25

Sojourner: Jun 6, 2007; Get In

I'm looking to build a linux router appliance that will act as a layer 4 router.

For ease of explaining, let's suppose I have a linux PC with 3 nics, acting as a router. eth0 is plugged into a switch, eth1 and eth2 are plugged into seperate wan connections from two different ISP's. I would like all udp traffic on port 1337 and all tcp traffic on port 79 (any destination server) from my local network sent out eth1, and all other traffic will be sent out eth2.

Some extensive googling and RTFM'ing didn't shed any light on the problem. I'd accept the answer that what I'm trying to do is not possible.

# ? Jul 21, 2011 06:58

dont skimp on the shrimp: Apr 23, 2008

Yeah, that should be possible with iptables I think. I don't have an example at hand though.

# ? Jul 21, 2011 09:12

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

Yeah some combination of iptables and maybe route should be possible.

# ? Jul 21, 2011 11:18

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Is there a good way to block stuff like bittorrent from OpenVPN/PPTP clients? Just allow web, chat, etc? No BT or other P2P.

# ? Jul 21, 2011 13:13

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Sojourner posted:

I'm looking to build a linux router appliance that will act as a layer 4 router.

See Linux Advanced Routing mini HOWTO, the second example is basically what you want.

Basically you use netfilter/iptables to mark packets that meet a particular criteria, namely the packet type and destination port. Then you add routing rules (using advanced "ip route" command, not traditional "route") that match the marked packets and send them over the right interface/gateway.

# ? Jul 21, 2011 14:56

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Bob Morales posted:

Is there a good way to block stuff like bittorrent from OpenVPN/PPTP clients?

It's easy enough to use netfilter to block destination port ranges from the VPN subnet.

Protocol-based blocking can be done with deep packet inspection. I haven't deployed it myself, so I don't know how advanced the tools are. I'd start with OpenDPI though. Mind you, obfuscated protocols are tough, so things like encrypted BT might be out.

In general unless you rate limit/throttle to make high-bandwidth applications undesirable, possibly with whitelisted sites for things you want to allow (e.g., YouTube, Akamai, whatever), folks will be able to thwart your filtering efforts with encryption.

# ? Jul 21, 2011 15:04

JHVH-1: Jun 28, 2002

ExcessBLarg! posted:

It's easy enough to use netfilter to block destination port ranges from the VPN subnet.

Protocol-based blocking can be done with deep packet inspection. I haven't deployed it myself, so I don't know how advanced the tools are. I'd start with OpenDPI though. Mind you, obfuscated protocols are tough, so things like encrypted BT might be out.

In general unless you rate limit/throttle to make high-bandwidth applications undesirable, possibly with whitelisted sites for things you want to allow (e.g., YouTube, Akamai, whatever), folks will be able to thwart your filtering efforts with encryption.

Problem is BitTorrent can be set to a ton of different ports. It might be easier to only allow certain ports instead. Packet inspection might be a bit of a resource hog depending on how many clients and how much traffic.

# ? Jul 21, 2011 19:00

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

ExcessBLarg! posted:

It's easy enough to use netfilter to block destination port ranges from the VPN subnet.

Protocol-based blocking can be done with deep packet inspection. I haven't deployed it myself, so I don't know how advanced the tools are. I'd start with OpenDPI though. Mind you, obfuscated protocols are tough, so things like encrypted BT might be out.

In general unless you rate limit/throttle to make high-bandwidth applications undesirable, possibly with whitelisted sites for things you want to allow (e.g., YouTube, Akamai, whatever), folks will be able to thwart your filtering efforts with encryption.

The idea would be to have a server that offers VPN-type service (I hate that term in this application) where people would securely browse from un-secured wifi or work. I guess people could use IM, Skype, and that stuff as well, but I don't want anyone pulling torrents or newsgroups. Maybe throttling everything BUT web access is the best idea. If the bandwidth is available, I'd like people to be able to surf as fast as possible.

I would rather just offer ssh tunneling but it's too complicated for 99% of people to use/configure.

# ? Jul 21, 2011 19:14

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# ? May 17, 2024 01:25

Accipiter: Jan 24, 2004; SINATRA.

Sojourner posted:

I'm looking to build a linux router appliance that will act as a layer 4 router.

For ease of explaining, let's suppose I have a linux PC with 3 nics, acting as a router. eth0 is plugged into a switch, eth1 and eth2 are plugged into seperate wan connections from two different ISP's. I would like all udp traffic on port 1337 and all tcp traffic on port 79 (any destination server) from my local network sent out eth1, and all other traffic will be sent out eth2.

Some extensive googling and RTFM'ing didn't shed any light on the problem. I'd accept the answer that what I'm trying to do is not possible.

Something like this should do the trick:

iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -p tcp -s $IP_RANGE_OF_INTERNAL_NETWORK --destination-port 79 -j SNAT --to $IP_OF_ETH1

iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -p udp -s $IP_RANGE_OF_INTERNAL_NETWORK --destination-port 1337 -j SNAT --to $IP_OF_ETH1

iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -s $IP_RANGE_OF_INTERNAL_NETWORK -j SNAT --to $IP_OF_ETH2

# ? Jul 21, 2011 19:16

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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