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

etcetera08 · # ? Apr 4, 2012 22:55

Computer viking posted:

Yakuake, maybe? It's a kde app, and I don't use it myself, but it's been around for a while and get updates and so on.

I just installed Guake (gnome version) and it seems to be working alright. Only bummer is that I guess I have to use two terminal emulators this way?

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ToxicFrog · # ? Apr 4, 2012 23:07

etcetera08 posted:

Anyone have suggestions for a good Quake-style drop-down terminal? The built in terminal in Ubuntu is okay for light use but I miss hotkey drop-down like I can get with iTerm in OS X. (Oh god how I miss iTerm...)

Guake is excellent. If you're a KDE guy there's also Yakuake, which has the advantage of sharing settings with konsole.

pram · pram Jun 10, 2001

I set up squid as a reverse proxy on my vps and it works fine on the domains, the problem is whenever I go to the server IP it takes an entire minute for squid to respond. I don't have any particular acl set up for it, it just heads to the squid 'Access Denied' page which is fine. I'm just wondering why it takes so long to respond?

nonathlon · # ? Apr 5, 2012 08:23

Bob Morales posted:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/541533/only-questionmarks-in-linux-dirlisting

Looks like a permissions error:

And it was - I didn't have execute privileges on the dir, and the problem was obscured by the web app attempting to write in the wrong place. Cheers.

spankmeister · # ? Apr 5, 2012 08:57

i barely GNU her! posted:

Yep. Pretty sure we arrived at that conclusion once we realized that's all that the installer did. The user will need a real shell though, they can't just be authenticatable.

Yep, just regular bash.

Thanks for the help!

Social Animal · # ? Apr 5, 2012 12:57

etcetera08 posted:

I just installed Guake (gnome version) and it seems to be working alright. Only bummer is that I guess I have to use two terminal emulators this way?

Holy poo poo I had no idea such a thing existed. This kicks rear end thanks!

some kinda jackal · # ? Apr 5, 2012 13:49

Corvettefisher posted:

People weren't kidding when they said Centos Minimal install is basic.

Yeah, but at the same time I've grown to prefer it over "basic server" or whatever the other small X11-less profile is. Really the only thing it's missing which I immediately install is system-config-network-tui because despite all my work with CentOS/RedHat/etc, I still can't remember the format of the ifcfg-ethX files to save my life.

Everything else I just install as I realize I need it. "What? No telnet command? Oh yeah minimal install."

ed: Oh and I don't remember if it installs openssh -- probably not -- that's another "immediate install."

Vulture Culture · # ? Apr 5, 2012 14:15

Martytoof posted:

Yeah, but at the same time I've grown to prefer it over "basic server" or whatever the other small X11-less profile is. Really the only thing it's missing which I immediately install is system-config-network-tui because despite all my work with CentOS/RedHat/etc, I still can't remember the format of the ifcfg-ethX files to save my life.

Everything else I just install as I realize I need it. "What? No telnet command? Oh yeah minimal install."

ed: Oh and I don't remember if it installs openssh -- probably not -- that's another "immediate install."

I'm in the same boat. Anything I actually use gets installed by Puppet anyway, so there's not much point to adding bloat and increasing the amount of time it takes to do a full update of the server.

Dilbert As FUCK · # ? Apr 5, 2012 14:26

Martytoof posted:

Yeah, but at the same time I've grown to prefer it over "basic server" or whatever the other small X11-less profile is. Really the only thing it's missing which I immediately install is system-config-network-tui because despite all my work with CentOS/RedHat/etc, I still can't remember the format of the ifcfg-ethX files to save my life.

Everything else I just install as I realize I need it. "What? No telnet command? Oh yeah minimal install."

ed: Oh and I don't remember if it installs openssh -- probably not -- that's another "immediate install."

Yeah ALOT of the basic services/features that I thought were there weren't. I understand less packages/code = less vulnerable, but it feels like I spend more time nabbing packages than I configuring the services to run. I am sticking to basic server from here on out.

Also anyone looking into learning *nix a bit more or go for the cert http://www.amazon.com/RHCSA-Linux-Certification-Study-Edition/dp/0071765654 Is amazing

some kinda jackal · # ? Apr 5, 2012 14:28

Speaking of poo poo I installed:

Is there a startup script that I can enable which will start mdadm monitor mode? I don't think it's running at the moment.

I can run mdadm --monitor --scan --test *manually* to verify that emails will be delivered to the address specified in /etc/mdadm.conf, but I don't see mdadm --monitor actually running anywhere.

edit: oh wait it's mdmonitor. I must have glossed over it the first 20 times I looked in init.d :rolleyes:

edit2: oh it's not starting because I need to specify a PROGRAM in mdadm.conf as well? What the hell. I don't want it to DO anything, I just want it to alert me via email. Does anyone know if I can just put "/bin/true" in mdadm.conf as PROGRAM or something?

edit3: I guess I'll just throw out there that I put /bin/true in mdadm.conf as PROGRAM and the service seemed to come up as expected this time. I kind of want to yank a drive to test it, even though the monitor test ran successfully, but for obvious reasons I won't.

some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Apr 5, 2012

ExcessBLarg! · # ? Apr 5, 2012 16:48

Martytoof posted:

edit2: oh it's not starting because I need to specify a PROGRAM in mdadm.conf as well?

My autoconfigured mdadm.conf in Debian doesn't have a PROGRAM line. Unfortuntaely the mdadm.conf manpage is weakly specified here but accoring to the mdadm.conf-example file that ships with the documentation (and presumably the sources):

code:

# When used in --follow (aka --monitor) mode, mdadm needs a
# mail address and/or a program.  This can be given with "mailaddr"
# and "program" lines to that monitoring can be started using
#    mdadm --follow --scan & echo $! > /var/run/mdadm
# If the lines are not found, mdadm will exit quietly
#MAILADDR root@mydomain.tld
#PROGRAM /usr/sbin/handle-mdadm-event

And yeah, I have "MAILADDR root" and no PROGRAM line.

Also, my fear is that if you specify /bin/true as a PROGRAM, that it will invoke that as an alternative to sending mail. Hmm.

Edit: Silly forum shouldn't parse email addresses in code blocks.

spankmeister · # ? Apr 5, 2012 17:06

Haskell sucks balls.

I wanted to try out git-annex and I wanted to install it on a RHEL 6.0 x64 box (because that's the standard at my workplace now)

Our linux boxes have no internet access.

Dependency hell ensued. I finally gave up and hooked a box to the internet via our DSL and installed all the depencencies I didn't have in EPEL via cabal.

Turns out the binary it produces doesn't use ANY Haskell dependencies at all, as far as I can tell. Just used for building.
I copied the binary over to a clean box that never had any haskell stuff installed and it just works. :confused:

Oh well, I'll take that.

some kinda jackal · # ? Apr 5, 2012 17:15

No, you're right ExcessBLarg -- I just commented out PROGRAM and it works fine. I wonder why the hell the service didn't come up previously then.

I'm at a loss to explain it but I can't really go into troubleshooting it right now. I'll play around with a VM later.

Thanks for the followup though. I didn't really want a /bin/true in there, but I wasn't sure whether I could get by without one.

Thanks!

JHVH-1 · JHVH-1 Jun 28, 2002

Martytoof posted:

Yeah, but at the same time I've grown to prefer it over "basic server" or whatever the other small X11-less profile is. Really the only thing it's missing which I immediately install is system-config-network-tui because despite all my work with CentOS/RedHat/etc, I still can't remember the format of the ifcfg-ethX files to save my life.

Everything else I just install as I realize I need it. "What? No telnet command? Oh yeah minimal install."

ed: Oh and I don't remember if it installs openssh -- probably not -- that's another "immediate install."

At work we use the full installer and then just deselect everything except the base group. That will get you ssh and the network config tui thing.

some kinda jackal · # ? Apr 5, 2012 18:12

Good idea. One of these days I'm going to get off my rear end and just write a custom kickstart for 6.2.

That or I should maybe just make a base VM for deployment, seeing as how I install that thing often enough.

Wonder_Bread · # ? Apr 5, 2012 23:48

Minimal CentOs 6.x will give you OpenSSH. I actually prefer the minimal 'cause I like to see exactly what gets put on the system, although sometimes it can get a bit overwhelming when trying to install certain things.

some kinda jackal · # ? Apr 5, 2012 23:56

I usually just find it's overwhelming if I need to compile something because quite frankly I don't have a good grasp of every obscure tool involved in someone's build chain.

spankmeister · # ? Apr 5, 2012 23:57

Ask me about compiling a Haskell program. :suicide:

Goon Matchmaker · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:05

Ask me about running Ubuntu 11.04 as a production server at my new gig. I got laughed at when I mentioned CentOS, RHEL, SLES, etc as being acceptable and widely supported choices for an enterprise grade OS. Apparently the kernels in enterprise level distros aren't new enough or something. :suicide:

It also explains why they refused to tell me what OS they ran in production when I asked about it. Should have caught that as a red flag.

Longinus00 · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:09

Goon Matchmaker posted:

Ask me about running Ubuntu 11.04 as a production server at my new gig. I got laughed at when I mentioned CentOS, RHEL, SLES, etc as being acceptable and widely supported choices for an enterprise grade OS. Apparently the kernels in enterprise level distros aren't new enough or something.

It also explains why they refused to tell me what OS they ran in production when I asked about it. Should have caught that as a red flag.

While getting laughed at for talking about RHEL is weird there's nothing inherently wrong with using ubuntu server in production.

Postal · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:12

Longinus00 posted:

While getting laughed at for talking about RHEL is weird there's nothing inherently wrong with using ubuntu server in production.

Yes, but wouldn't you want the LTS version? 11.04 isn't LTS and it's not even the most recent version.

fletcher · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:17

Why not just go with vanilla Debian over Ubuntu Server?

Goon Matchmaker · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:21

Postal posted:

Yes, but wouldn't you want the LTS version? 11.04 isn't LTS and it's not even the most recent version.

I made that argument too. I didn't get an actual answer, just a bunch of excuses.

Longinus00 · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:21

Postal posted:

Yes, but wouldn't you want the LTS version? 11.04 isn't LTS and it's not even the most recent version.

If you're okay with doing system upgrades more often then using the non LTS releases is okay. If anything, using a release behind the most recent version is probably smarter because it gives you a 6 month window to plan and test the upgrade for things like regressions.

fletcher posted:

Why not just go with vanilla Debian over Ubuntu Server?

You could make the same argument between RHEL and CentOS. Ubuntu also slaps on a bunch of its in house stuff like juju and landscape or whatever that might make it compelling to certain companies. I don't know much about them however.

some kinda jackal · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:22

I'm sure things aren't this bad, but I've got this vision in my head of rows upon rows of servers sitting there showing a Unity desktop :lol:

FISHMANPET · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:24

We run all the .04 releases in the labs, and on a few servers. Most of our "enterprise" servers are Solaris, but there are a few utility servers and research groups that use Linux on their srvers (when server means more than a machine to run Matlab on).

Were it not for desktop enhancements in versions of Ubuntu, we'd only do the LTS. In fact, the Linux admin is trying to make that happen.

We just use Ubuntu desktop with GDM turned off, because why move to a whole other OS for a handful of servers, when we're already doing the work to maintain the Linux desktops.

Longinus00 · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:27

FISHMANPET posted:

We run all the .04 releases in the labs, and on a few servers. Most of our "enterprise" servers are Solaris, but there are a few utility servers and research groups that use Linux on their srvers (when server means more than a machine to run Matlab on).

Were it not for desktop enhancements in versions of Ubuntu, we'd only do the LTS. In fact, the Linux admin is trying to make that happen.

We just use Ubuntu desktop with GDM turned off, because why move to a whole other OS for a handful of servers, when we're already doing the work to maintain the Linux desktops.

Why not just install the generic kernel into the server installs? Lucky for you guys from 12.04+ the desktop and server amd64 kernels are being merged so the difference is basically down to default package installation.

text editor · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:30

spankmeister posted:

Haskell sucks balls.

I wanted to try out git-annex and I wanted to install it on a RHEL 6.0 x64 box (because that's the standard at my workplace now)

Our linux boxes have no internet access.

Dependency hell ensued. I finally gave up and hooked a box to the internet via our DSL and installed all the depencencies I didn't have in EPEL via cabal.

Turns out the binary it produces doesn't use ANY Haskell dependencies at all, as far as I can tell. Just used for building.
I copied the binary over to a clean box that never had any haskell stuff installed and it just works.

Oh well, I'll take that.

This is how xmonad supposedly works, too. Install it and it drags in like 500mb in poo poo just to build xmonad, and after it's done you are free to remove them.

FISHMANPET · # ? Apr 6, 2012 02:36

Longinus00 posted:

Why not just install the generic kernel into the server installs? Lucky for you guys from 12.04+ the desktop and server amd64 kernels are being merged so the difference is basically down to default package installation.

Basically because nobody cares enough to do that, and it would require quite a bit of rebuilding of support infrastructure to make possible. We're on cusp of a huge shakeup on how we do just about everything, so stuff like this could be possible in the future (though apparently not needed either).

But really, none of them are "servers" in the sense that the one different flag in the server kernel would matter.

Goon Matchmaker · # ? Apr 6, 2012 03:04

Martytoof posted:

I'm sure things aren't this bad, but I've got this vision in my head of rows upon rows of servers sitting there showing a Unity desktop

Some of the servers are running GUIs. Not rows upon rows, but enough that I'm disgusted.

spankmeister · # ? Apr 6, 2012 08:21

Going with ubuntu for servers is perfectly acceptable but them laughing at RHEL/CentOS and dodging the question about LTS goes to show how professional they are.

I'd go with 12.04 when it hits (in a couple of months when the dust around a new release settles) and use the server edition everywhere.

e: BTW: I built a 3.2.x kernel for an Ubuntu 9.10 machine not too long ago to support new hardware. :v:

(On a totally non-critical box. I was too lazy to upgrade the OS and it's not connected on the network.)

text editor posted:

This is how xmonad supposedly works, too. Install it and it drags in like 500mb in poo poo just to build xmonad, and after it's done you are free to remove them.

I loving hate package managers that do this. Why can't I just make a local repository or something. I'm sure it's possible but I can never find any docs on how to do that. It's like they don't think about boxes behind corporate firewalls.

Same goes for ruby gem. Installing gitorious was a similar experience.

spankmeister fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Apr 6, 2012

text editor · # ? Apr 6, 2012 08:48

spankmeister posted:

Going with ubuntu for servers is perfectly acceptable but them laughing at RHEL/CentOS and dodging the question about LTS goes to show how professional they are.

I'd go with 12.04 when it hits (in a couple of months when the dust around a new release settles) and use the server edition everywhere.

e: BTW: I built a 3.2.x kernel for an Ubuntu 9.10 machine not too long ago to support new hardware. (On a totally non-critical box. I was too lazy to upgrade the OS and it's not connected on the network.)

I loving hate package managers that do this. Why can't I just make a local repository or something. I'm sure it's possible but I can never find any docs on how to do that. It's like they don't think about boxes behind corporate firewalls.

Same goes for ruby gem. Installing gitorious was a similar experience.

Local mirrors are definitely doable and are considered good manners and usually a good practice when you are managing lots of Linux systems. You can kinda roll them by hand and you pretty much only need a web or ftp server but it's going to be a lot easier to manage using your distro's package manager tools or some kind of package-caching script.

spankmeister · # ? Apr 6, 2012 08:57

text editor posted:

Local mirrors are definitely doable and are considered good manners and usually a good practice when you are managing lots of Linux systems. You can kinda roll them by hand and you pretty much only need a web or ftp server but it's going to be a lot easier to manage using your distro's package manager tools or some kind of package-caching script.

I meant a local mirror for cabal. I have a local repository for RHEL.

(And EPEL, and RPMForge etc...)

MC Hawking · # ? Apr 7, 2012 00:36

Hi guys, Pretty dumb general set of questions here.

I'm cobbling together a PC out of spare parts for my mom so she can use facebook, watch youtubes, and occasionally do spreadsheet stuff. Since cash is really short I'm installing Ubuntu. I'm wondering if I should install 11.10 or the older "long term support" 10.x release. Ideally I'm looking for pretty much everything to work out of the box and not give me a bunch of poo poo for basic tasks.

Now, I have no real experience with Ubuntu as a whole and I'm wondering if there are any good "beginners guides" out there so I, and she, can familiarize ourselves with the platform. Just going through the Ubuntu Tour seems that it's super intuitive for basic tasks which pleases me greatly but I'm wondering if there is anything specific that new users should keep in mind.

Additionally, this new PC is going to be on wireless. This is really not an option. I have an old Trendnet 54mbps USB adapter that will provide connectivity. Will I need to find any special driver sets for it, or will everything pretty much run plug n play? Am I a total gently caress for expecting poo poo to just work and should go sell blood plasma for a Win7 key just to avoid the headache of dealing with a Linux distro?

Thanks for your time.

MC Hawking fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Apr 7, 2012

Keito · # ? Apr 7, 2012 02:25

Slopehead posted:

Hi guys, Pretty dumb general set of questions here.

I'm cobbling together a PC out of spare parts for my mom so she can use facebook, watch youtubes, and occasionally do spreadsheet stuff. Since cash is really short I'm installing Ubuntu. I'm wondering if I should install 11.10 or the older "long term support" 10.x release. Ideally I'm looking for pretty much everything to work out of the box and not give me a bunch of poo poo for basic tasks.

Now, I have no real experience with Ubuntu as a whole and I'm wondering if there are any good "beginners guides" out there so I, and she, can familiarize ourselves with the platform. Just going through the Ubuntu Tour seems that it's super intuitive for basic tasks which pleases me greatly but I'm wondering if there is anything specific that new users should keep in mind.

Additionally, this new PC is going to be on wireless. This is really not an option. I have an old Trendnet 54mbps USB adapter that will provide connectivity. Will I need to find any special driver sets for it, or will everything pretty much run plug n play? Am I a total gently caress for expecting poo poo to just work and should go sell blood plasma for a Win7 key just to avoid the headache of dealing with a Linux distro?

Thanks for your time.

If I were you I'd go for the new LTS version that's being released in like a couple of weeks, even if you're setting the computer up tomorrow it should be stable enough at this point.

Beginners coming from Windows should note the different method for installing software, and start out without the expectation that Windows programs are going to run.

Regarding wifi, try googling for the card's name + Ubuntu or Linux and there should be results. Linux comes with a shitload of drivers, so most hardware should "just work", but what doesn't can be a huge pain in the rear end.

If you burn the disc it'll let you try the OS on your system before even having to install, so you get to see if it works before deciding the whole thing is a bother and buy W7.

Bob Morales · # ? Apr 7, 2012 04:21

is the atomic repo for fedora worth using? i tried installing w3af from it but it doesn't launch.

MC Hawking · # ? Apr 7, 2012 04:42

Keito posted:

To be perfectly clear I'm going to spend a couple weeks doing runtesting on this tower before I turn it over. I just want to make sure that Firefox with Adblock works, Wifi is operational, and she can have a general word processing, powerpoint, & spreadsheet suite. I just want to make sure that it will go. A full browser experience is paramount on my mind.

Thank you for the tips, I'll keep an eye on the Ubuntu thread for future developments and questions specific to that platform.

mjau · mjau Aug 8, 2008

Keito posted:

If I were you I'd go for the new LTS version that's being released in like a couple of weeks, even if you're setting the computer up tomorrow it should be stable enough at this point.

If you go with this, you should know that the Flash version in 12.04 has a bug on Nvidia cards. It flips red and blue channels for video unless you do some fiddling about to disable hardware rendering. It affects Youtube. Also, since that Flash version happens to be the final one and is now unsupported by Adobe, it won't get fixed. (Not by Adobe, anyway.. Nvidia released a workaround)

mjau fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Apr 7, 2012

Maluco Marinero · # ? Apr 7, 2012 10:53

Ran into that when I installed JoliOS on my wife's computer. Most non plussed with Adobe, who are always finding ways to screw up their defacto web standard. Glad it's becoming increasingly irrelevant for small time web designers like myself now that solid js and html are coming of age.

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spankmeister · # ? Apr 7, 2012 11:00

mjau posted:

If you go with this, you should know that the Flash version in 12.04 has a bug on Nvidia cards. It flips red and blue channels for video unless you do some fiddling about to disable hardware rendering. It affects Youtube. Also, since that Flash version happens to be the final one and is now unsupported by Adobe, it won't get fixed. (Not by Adobe, anyway.. Nvidia released a workaround)

Just enable the HTML5 beta on YouTube.