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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evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

Suspicious Dish posted:

Yes, the virt-manager UI is awful. Not sure how that's a tiling WM's fault.

It's not a tiling WM's fault, per-se. I used virt-manager as an example of an application which assumes it can continue opening new windows, which Pycharm does, parts of Libreoffice do, Firefox used to do, etc. You can write a lot of rules so those classes behave basically like you expect them to (and they expect to), but it's a non-trivial effort, and many of the advantages of a tiling WM can be gained simply by using a terminal multiplexer effectively.

# ? Nov 1, 2013 22:40

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# ? May 30, 2024 12:11

Delta-Wye: Sep 29, 2005

evol262 posted:

If you notice, I also posted Awesome configs. I've used Awesome.

Sorry, I didn't notice as that post showed up after I had loaded the page but before I hit reply. However, I see it now. I'm going to go digging through there and see if I see any good ideas though :cool:

evol262 posted:

Which says absolutely nothing, really. You can resize, swap, and move panes around in tmux, vim, or irssi just as readily. But when something throws an error in a popup that suddenly takes up half your screen automatically, it's an annoyance, and one that only gets worse in applications which are written with a traditional workflow in mind. Open virt-manager. Then open a VM. Go into the add hardware wizard. Create a new storage domain. Add a disk inside that domain. This sucks on a tiling WM.

Haven't ran into any of that, but I spend most of my time in terminals so my error messages don't "popup" cause gently caress that Windows-style "traditional workflow" bullshit.

evol262 posted:

Look. I'm a Python developer, and I spent years as a sysadmin. I get exactly what you mean. And if your workflow boils down to "have all my terminals visible at all times and add new terminals as easily as possible, rearranging their layouts without taking my hands of the screen", there's not much better than Xmonad or Awesome. But that's a minority of the population, even of the Linux-using population.

It sounded like the OP was pretty close to this workflow.

To be honest, it may not be the OPs cup of tea, but it's so easy to switch between window managers there isn't a good reason to give it a week or so and see if you like it. I was trying to curtail this:

DreadCthulhu posted:

Interesting explanation, thanks for taking the time there. It sounds like that'd not be extremely beneficial, and I do encounter a lot of the scenarios that you list in the "horror story" case, so what I have now feels like a better fit.

EDIT: I don't want to start a wm religous war or anything - other than the resizing of windows (and maybe I just haven't seen it yet) nothing you said struck me as wrong. So far I like it because it does what I want, and you didn't like it because it doesn't do what you want. Fair enough :unsmith:

Delta-Wye fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Nov 1, 2013

# ? Nov 1, 2013 23:51

Qtotonibudinibudet: Nov 7, 2011; Omich poluyobok, skazhi ty narkoman? ya prosto tozhe gde to tam zhivu, mogli by vmeste uyobyvat' narkotiki

I like Awesome for:
- Efficiently using space on my tiny laptop screen.
- Keeping all my terminals visible when I want to use one. Yes, you can also do this with screen and vim, but I'm more used to using Awesome for it.
- With Shifty, dynamic tag spawning/destruction is the best implementation of multiple desktops that I've found.
- Apps that don't play nice with tiling are easy, just create a floating layout workspace.

I hate it for:
- Breaking half the config with every single release

# ? Nov 2, 2013 00:43

Experto Crede: Aug 19, 2008; Keep on Truckin'

Does anyone have much experience of compiling/installing from source with yum?

Currently running fedora f19 on an ARM chromebook and it seems chromium needs building from srpms rather than directly installing, but I have little clue how. Any advice on the basic process?

# ? Nov 2, 2013 01:17

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

Don't get me wrong. I like tiling WMs. And I swap between Awesome and Xmonad on my laptop (usually using Xmonad until Awesome unfucks itself whenver it breaks). I just hate the idea that they're a "killer app" instead of a hassle for the average user.

Experto Crede posted:

Does anyone have much experience of compiling/installing from source with yum?

Currently running fedora f19 on an ARM chromebook and it seems chromium needs building from srpms rather than directly installing, but I have little clue how. Any advice on the basic process?

yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools" && yum -y install rpmbuild && rpmbuild -bb package.srpm && ls ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/${arch}

If they built it right, the srpm will have a bunch of buildrequires (libwhatever-devel) that it'll pull in, but you may have to go through some painful bits yourself to build it.

# ? Nov 2, 2013 03:06

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Experto Crede posted:

Does anyone have much experience of compiling/installing from source with yum?

Currently running fedora f19 on an ARM chromebook and it seems chromium needs building from srpms rather than directly installing, but I have little clue how. Any advice on the basic process?

If your dependacies aren't too complex and you don't want to want to pollute your system with dev packages, I would recommend mock.

It creates a chroot folder with all build tools. As long as the SRPM and spec file are sane it should be good.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Projects/Mock

Edit: Building Chromium for ARM from SRPM packages only used to build for Intel processors might be a problem because Javascript engine v8 uses a lot of x86 assembly for optimization.

waffle iron fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Nov 2, 2013

# ? Nov 2, 2013 04:09

Ninja Rope: Oct 22, 2005; Wee.

Is it permitted to modify a packet in an xtables module? If not, what's the better way to modify each outgoing packet? Do I need to write a (fake) ethernet driver?

# ? Nov 2, 2013 22:37

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

Ninja Rope posted:

Is it permitted to modify a packet in an xtables module? If not, what's the better way to modify each outgoing packet? Do I need to write a (fake) ethernet driver?

What kind of modifications? Dummynet may already do what you want...

# ? Nov 3, 2013 00:30

Ninja Rope: Oct 22, 2005; Wee.

evol262 posted:

What kind of modifications? Dummynet may already do what you want...

Dummynet won't do what I want but while reading up on that I did find the skb_make_writable() function which will was enough to get me started. Thanks.

# ? Nov 3, 2013 03:54

reading: Jul 27, 2013

I love XUbuntu's alt-left click and drag to move anything, and alt-right click anywhere to resize windows. It solve's Ubuntu's silly problem with resizing a window with those 1-pixel grab areas.

Does anyone know of a good resource where I can read lots of random tips and good ideas for using Xubuntu and linux in general? I'm at the point where I feel really comfortable with it and just want to get better at whatever (bash scripting, improving usability, and capacities I might not know about yet).

# ? Nov 3, 2013 20:30

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

reading posted:

I love XUbuntu's alt-left click and drag to move anything, and alt-right click anywhere to resize windows. It solve's Ubuntu's silly problem with resizing a window with those 1-pixel grab areas.

Does anyone know of a good resource where I can read lots of random tips and good ideas for using Xubuntu and linux in general? I'm at the point where I feel really comfortable with it and just want to get better at whatever (bash scripting, improving usability, and capacities I might not know about yet).

You can do the exact same thing in regular Ubuntu. That is a feature of the window manager or X, I'm not sure which, but it's been in every Linux windowing GUI environment I've tried.

I like it so much that I use AltDrag on Windows to emulate it.

# ? Nov 3, 2013 22:00

The Gay Bean: Apr 19, 2004

edit: Thanks.

The Gay Bean fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Nov 4, 2013

# ? Nov 4, 2013 06:15

JHVH-1: Jun 28, 2002

I don't know the specifics but that sounds like something I would check squid out for. Not sure if you could do it on demand but maybe per domain basis. Or at the least the proxy can cache content to speed things up. Have squid use the secondary connection and then anything not going through the proxy can just act normally.

# ? Nov 4, 2013 06:34

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

Transparent proxying squid is exactly the right answer. But it's going to take significant setup. Alternatively, you could harass someone in another thread about writing a browser extension which forwards through a local proxy that goes through the VPN if and only if you get a 302. But because the problem presented is somewhat difficult and there's no tool to install that handles it all for you, I'd recommend just doing everything across the VPN.

# ? Nov 4, 2013 15:39

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

I'd just use foxyproxy and tell it to proxy the blocked site

# ? Nov 4, 2013 15:42

nescience: Jan 24, 2011; h'okay

I'm trying to Google tutorials for setting up a private CA so my browser/computers will stop freaking out when I use self signed certs, I'm having trouble finding a thorough one, can anyone help?

# ? Nov 5, 2013 05:49

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

evol262 posted:

Transparent proxying squid is exactly the right answer. But it's going to take significant setup. Alternatively, you could harass someone in another thread about writing a browser extension which forwards through a local proxy that goes through the VPN if and only if you get a 302. But because the problem presented is somewhat difficult and there's no tool to install that handles it all for you, I'd recommend just doing everything across the VPN.

Just set the metrics on the adapter properly. It will use the primary connection unless it can't route to the address, them it will try to route through the VPN adapter.

# ? Nov 5, 2013 06:50

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

tallian posted:

Just set the metrics on the adapter properly. It will use the primary connection unless it can't route to the address, them it will try to route through the VPN adapter.

The address will be routable through the regular internet though.

# ? Nov 5, 2013 07:08

Illusive Fuck Man: Jul 5, 2004; RIP John McCain feel better xoxo ð ð; Taco Defender

Sometimes I feel really unqualified for my job. Here's my latest problem.

I need a way to flip a pin on a pci-e slot. Specifically, I want to toggle the reset pin (A11). Either that, or just power cycle the whole slot. Most of the stuff I've found says to echo 1 into /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:xx.x/reset however this device doesn't actually identify itself to the system (doesn't show up in lspci or /sys/devices/). I can 100% guarantee there is no driver for this thing. If I designed it, it wouldn't be a loving pci-e card but I didn't and it is.

How can I do this? Do I need to write some kind of skeleton of a driver with just the ability to power cycle? Is this even possible?

edit to add a little detail: This device draws power from the pci-e slot, but as far as I know doesn't communicate at all. According to the manufacturer, it should honor a signal on the reset pin.

Illusive Fuck Man fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Nov 5, 2013

# ? Nov 5, 2013 21:21

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

Illusive gently caress Man posted:

Sometimes I feel really unqualified for my job. Here's my latest problem.

I need a way to flip a pin on a pci-e slot. Specifically, I want to toggle the reset pin (A11). Either that, or just power cycle the whole slot. Most of the stuff I've found says to echo 1 into /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:xx.x/reset however this device doesn't actually identify itself to the system (doesn't show up in lspci or /sys/devices/). I can 100% guarantee there is no driver for this thing. If I designed it, it wouldn't be a loving pci-e card but I didn't and it is.

How can I do this? Do I need to write some kind of skeleton of a driver with just the ability to power cycle? Is this even possible?

edit to add a little detail: This device draws power from the pci-e slot, but as far as I know doesn't communicate at all. According to the manufacturer, it should honor a signal on the reset pin.

First off, you arent the unqualified idiot, this hardware device manufacturer is. Tell them to provide a kernel module. What the hell is it?
If you REALLY want to power cycle this thing, get it the gently caress out of your computer, and wire up a pegboard with a pci-express slot on it.

# ? Nov 6, 2013 01:12

pseudorandom name: May 6, 2007

I'd be surprised if there is any way to talk to a PCI slot if the card doesn't respond to the init signal. You certainly won't be able to make a driver for it if doesn't show up on the bus.

# ? Nov 6, 2013 01:25

Captain Pike: Jul 29, 2003

Is there a way to install toilet on CentOS 5?

# ? Nov 6, 2013 06:42

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

Captain Pike posted:

Is there a way to install toilet on CentOS 5?

Probably.

What have you tried and where did you get stuck?

# ? Nov 6, 2013 07:46

Captain Pike: Jul 29, 2003

spankmeister posted:

Probably.

What have you tried and where did you get stuck?

- I have been unable to find a good result through Google with "Centos 5" and "toilet".
- I have found no RPM file or mention of anyone ever installing it in CentOS 5.

- I have tried "yum install toilet". (EPEL/RPMForge)

The toilet project page has the source code available. I am only an infant when it comes to building source on Linux, but I may download it and give "make" a go. I was just curious if there was an obvious repository or RPM somewhere that I am not seeing. I wanna make sweet BBS-Banner text in my terminal!

edit: It's also fun to type "toilet".

Captain Pike fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Nov 6, 2013

# ? Nov 6, 2013 08:00

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

Yes you'll have to build it from source by the looks of it. Grab the tar.gz file, extract it and start by reading the README and/or INSTALL.

You will need to install things like make and gcc if you don't have them already, easiest way is to do yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'

Then it's usually a simple case of ./configure, make, make install depending on how toilet's build system is set up but it's possible you will need extra libraries and development headers for those libraries. Usually the configure step will point this out to you.

# ? Nov 6, 2013 08:17

Baron Bifford: May 24, 2006; Can't post for 2 years!

I just installed Fedora on my PC on a partition alongside Windows 8. The boot manager (grubs, I think it's called) automatically boots to Linux on startup after a timeout. How can I reconfigure it to auto-boot to Windows instead? Windows is still my preferred OS.

# ? Nov 6, 2013 20:20

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

Baron Bifford posted:

I just installed Fedora on my PC on a partition alongside Windows 8. The boot manager (grubs, I think it's called) automatically boots to Linux on startup after a timeout. How can I reconfigure it to auto-boot to Windows instead? Windows is still my preferred OS.

Nice troll.

# ? Nov 6, 2013 20:22

tractor fanatic: Sep 9, 2005; Pillbug

I have two hard drives on my computer, and the second is sitting there doing nothing. I want to install Linux on that drive, in such a way that I can run it in a VM in Windows 7 normally, but I'd be able to boot into it directly if I needed. Is this possible?

# ? Nov 6, 2013 20:59

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

Not easily, no.

# ? Nov 6, 2013 21:11

SYSV Fanfic: Sep 9, 2003; by Pragmatica

tractor fanatic posted:

I have two hard drives on my computer, and the second is sitting there doing nothing. I want to install Linux on that drive, in such a way that I can run it in a VM in Windows 7 normally, but I'd be able to boot into it directly if I needed. Is this possible?

Cursory google search shows it is in the manual.
Manual for VirtualBox.

# ? Nov 6, 2013 21:14

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

Baron Bifford posted:

I just installed Fedora on my PC on a partition alongside Windows 8. The boot manager (grubs, I think it's called) automatically boots to Linux on startup after a timeout. How can I reconfigure it to auto-boot to Windows instead? Windows is still my preferred OS.

Does this do the job? https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GRUB_2#Setting_default_entry

# ? Nov 6, 2013 23:54

Janitor Prime: Jan 22, 2004; PC LOAD LETTER

What da fuck does that mean; Fun Shoe

nescience posted:

I'm trying to Google tutorials for setting up a private CA so my browser/computers will stop freaking out when I use self signed certs, I'm having trouble finding a thorough one, can anyone help?

Try these out to configure your openssl.cnf
https://jamielinux.com/blog/category/CA/
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~zmiller/ca-howto/

Then to make it even easier I use this Makefile so that when I copy the .csr files I can just type

code:

make sign

and have a signed cert without having to remember all of the openssl voodoo.

# ? Nov 7, 2013 00:21

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

Hard NOP Life posted:

Try these out to configure your openssl.cnf
https://jamielinux.com/blog/category/CA/
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~zmiller/ca-howto/

Then to make it even easier I use this Makefile so that when I copy the .csr files I can just type
code:
make sign
and have a signed cert without having to remember all of the openssl voodoo.

These are good (except that Debian distros keep their keys in /usr/share/ca-certificates, I think), but do nothing to solve the browser problem.

You'll need to add the certificates to your browser one by one, or use certutils and schlep out a new cert db (which is per-profile in Firefox, annoyingly)

# ? Nov 7, 2013 14:40

Baron Bifford: May 24, 2006; Can't post for 2 years!

I have a problem with Fedora's terminal.

When I want to change to a certain directory, I always have to type out the full path, ie:

cd /home/bifford/Downloads

From the tutorials I read online, I ought to be able to get to a subdirectory within the active one without typing out the full path, ie

cd Downloads

This does not work and I get an error message. What am I doing wrong?

# ? Nov 7, 2013 16:55

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

What's the error message?

# ? Nov 7, 2013 17:04

Naked Bear: Apr 15, 2007; Boners was recorded before a studio audience that was alive!

Is GParted still the go-to live CD for utilities? I'm swapping out my laptop's SSD for a larger one. Win 7 Pro.

# ? Nov 7, 2013 17:35

JHVH-1: Jun 28, 2002

JDAMS CURE PASHTUN posted:

Is GParted still the go-to live CD for utilities? I'm swapping out my laptop's SSD for a larger one. Win 7 Pro.

Parted Magic is pretty good as well. Or if you use CLI for everything RIP Linux used to be my go-to for recovery.

# ? Nov 7, 2013 17:38

Naked Bear: Apr 15, 2007; Boners was recorded before a studio audience that was alive!

JHVH-1 posted:

Parted Magic is pretty good as well. Or if you use CLI for everything RIP Linux used to be my go-to for recovery.

Thanks, I'll check those out, too.

# ? Nov 7, 2013 17:45

Baron Bifford: May 24, 2006; Can't post for 2 years!

A few pages back in this thread I posted a problem I had with my old PC where I reported that the grubs boot manager was operating extremely slowly. It was suggested that I had a hardware fault. I think it may have been my CPU. When I took apart my old PC I noticed the fan was faulty and I think that the CPU had been overheated for quite some time. Is my hunch correct? I think 60 degrees is a bit hot.

# ? Nov 7, 2013 17:49

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# ? May 30, 2024 12:11

fletcher: Jun 27, 2003; ken park is my favorite movie; Cybernetic Crumb

Sometimes after a convergence on chef, nginx starts throwing 502 errors. ps shows the emperor and worker threads are still running. service uwsgi status returns uwsgi start/running, process 28743. One of the last things the convergence on chef does is:

code:

service "uwsgi" do
	provider Chef::Provider::Service::Upstart
	action :restart
end

And yet the 502 errors don't stop until I login to the box and do a [fixed]service uwsgi restart[/uwsgi]. Any suggestions for how to figure out why this is happening?

The error from the nginx log was:

code:

2013/11/07 23:07:34 [error] 28736#0: *5 upstream prematurely closed connection while reading response header from upstream, client: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, server: test.mycoolsite.com, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", upstream: "uwsgi://unix:///var/www/mycoolsite/virtualenv/run/uwsgi.sock:", host: "test.mycoolsite.com"

# ? Nov 8, 2013 00:14

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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