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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covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

GeneralZod posted:

I'm clearly misunderstanding how permissions work under UNIX, but I'm not sure why. As far as I can tell, /usr/bin/fusermount should be runnable by me, but it is not - it does not even show up during bash auto-completion.
code:
[simon@simon-desktop][10:48:01]
[~]>whoami
simon
[simon@simon-desktop][10:53:43]
[~]>groups `whoami`
simon : simon adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev scanner netdev lpadmin powerdev [b]fuse[/b] admin kqemu
[simon@simon-desktop][10:53:51]
[~]>ls -l /usr/bin/fusermount
-rwsr-xr-- 1 root [b]fuse[/b] 19456 2007-03-12 22:34 /usr/bin/fusermount
[simon@simon-desktop][10:54:05]
[~]>/usr/bin/fusermount
[b]bash: /usr/bin/fusermount: Permission denied[/b]
[simon@simon-desktop][10:54:14]
[~]>ls -l /dev/fuse
crw-rw---- 1 root fuse 10, 229 2007-10-21 08:38 /dev/fuse
If I chmod o+x /usr/bin/fusermount then it will at least start (although I can't do anything with it as I don't have write access to /dev/fuse), but I don't see why I need to, or why I don't have permission to write to /dev/fuse. What am I missing? Google throws up lots of pages about the ssh fuse system not working, but I am not using ssh.

Have you started a new login shell since you came to have fuse as an addl secondary group? I don't see anyting wrong with your expectations.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2007 13:25

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 02:02

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

> http://tastethegoonage.com/shsc/.bashrc.txt
> http://tastethegoonage.com/shsc/.bashrc_profile.txt
404 on latter

>- Logging in via a virtual terminal does not seem to set any of the exported >variables (KDE4DAILY_UPDATER_DIR, KDE4INSTALL, PS1, etc), although this did work
> when I had most of the "export" junk in my .bash_profile.

a VT is a login shell, which automatically reads .bash_profile

see INVOCATION in the bash manpage

>- Starting up a GUI terminal e.g. Konsole does seem to source all this >stuff correctly but,

by default not a login shell, so it reads .bashrc

quote:

annoyingly, prints out every line in an orgy of "declare -x" statements - sometimes including lines that are presumably in /etc/bashrc or some other place, which I have not touched. I really don't what this to happen and would like some way of switching it off. Sometimes it doesn't print all this crap out, though, and I can't put my finger on the conditions under which it does and does not occur.

you have an errant bash -x or set -x; try grep -r -- -x ~

quote:

[I moved all the exports out of .bash_profile and into .bashrc as someone said
that .bashrc is "the silent one" of the two, but it still seems to keep running its gums].

sounds like a bogus suggestion

> Any suggestions on how to correctly structure
> my ash files would be appreciated

if these are settings you want to run for every imagineable shell, source your bashrc from bash_profile and stuff all your content into bashrc.b

# ¿ Nov 9, 2007 13:01

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

hooah posted:

Any help on my desktop background disappearing on startup?

On non-gnome systems, you might end up w/ gnome-settings-daemon being launched as a result of opening gnome-control-center.

Any persistent change in your process list between before/after you see the background change? If there's nothing persistent, how about something like strace -e trace=process -o /tmp/strace.txt gnome-control-center?

# ¿ Nov 9, 2007 14:39

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Kobayashi posted:

I want to run a few VMs, so I upgraded to 4Gb of RAM. Ubuntu, however, is only showing 3Gb. I'm getting conflicting information from Google: I need to recompile my kernel, its a known bug, it doesn't matter, etc. Can someone tell me what the story is? Will Ubuntu use all 4Gb? Do I need to recompile the kernel?

Debian ships separate kernel packages for kernels built with large (4gb+) memory support, maybe ubuntu does the same; the packages are suffixed with -bigmem in debian.

Not all kernels are configured this way because there is a performance hit for the additional indirection.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2007 01:23

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Kobayashi posted:

Hmm. The linux-server meta package installs a large memory kernel; however, there is a bug with that configuration. The linux-restricted-modules-2.6.22-14-server package is missing (See bug #153011 on Launchpad). I need the restricted modules manager for my Nvidia graphics card, or else I'm stuck with 800x600. When I try to follow the workaround provided in the comments, I get compile errors. Plus, I don't think I want to re-compile kernel modules every time there is an update. If I'm going to do that, I'd rather compile whatever I need for high memory support instead. Do I have any other options here?

if you took the .config from your current kernel and flipped on highmem you'd still be in the same boat where that other kernel module package wouldn't work; you'd need to build that package as well.

default non-bigmem kernel on debian unstable:

$ grep HIGHMEM /boot/config-`uname -r`
# CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM is not set
CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y
# CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G is not set
CONFIG_HIGHMEM=y
# CONFIG_DEBUG_HIGHMEM is not set

# ¿ Nov 13, 2007 12:44

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Vanadium posted:

If you use cp on /dev files, it is going to do pretty much the same as dd, except less configurable and less robust.

cp -a (as OP offered) copies device nodes, not their contents.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2007 03:51

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

m3jsh posted:

I am currently running debian on my fileserver. I want to install tranmission for use with torrentflux. However, the default debian repositories have a dated build of it. I haven't been able to find a repository with the latest version (0.9.3).

I would like to compile and install it myself. I used this guide. However this didn't seem to work as I get a whole slew of errors trying to run transmission (not to mention autogen.sh does not exist in the latest source.)

I have two quesitons, how can I cleanly get rid of the screwed up install I just made and how can I properly compile/install this and any other source package I want?

'apt-get build-dep transmisstion' might help for the build

# ¿ Nov 16, 2007 03:26

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Silvyn posted:

On Xorg desktops I've noticed that in general, quickly scrolling text (in a gnome-terminal window) will cause Xorg to hit the CPU pretty hard. The system that I'm currently seeing this on is a FreeBSD 7.0-PRERELEASE system running GNOME, but I've seen it on Debian/Ubuntu as well. Is there a workaround for this (other than minimizing the window in question and using screen), or is it just something that I'll have to put up with?

maybe fontconfig using unacclerated XRENDER? Can probably test with xterm -fn fixed vs xterm -fa fixed

# ¿ Nov 16, 2007 19:48

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

jdonz posted:

code:
chmod -R o+r /path/to/dir
You should probably ask yourself why you want to do this, it isn't good practice.

If the premise is that these files are already _not_ readable by everyone, you should definitely be doing a+r (what if their primary group matches yours?) and ensure every path down to 'dir' has a+rx.

(namei -m might help)

edit: ignoring this particular unexpected fsck conclusion of course

# ¿ Nov 21, 2007 16:44

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Scaevolus posted:

Yeah, I didn't bother actually testing that.

And doesn't awk have regular expressions? Wouldn't something like (not precise) s/^$.*$\.[^.]*$/\1/ do it?

That would be unnatural for awk; you'd split the fields on . and just print $1 "." $2

That might be more reasonable for perl or sed.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2007 16:14

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

derdewey posted:

So I've used gnome and seen that the process manager gui shows network stats like total data in and out. How can I see those goodies from the terminal on my server? It's an ubuntu server.

last line (per-interface) in /sbin/ifconfig -a

# ¿ Nov 24, 2007 21:26

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

DEAD MAN'S SHOE posted:

I really should have permission.. what happened?

code:

root@Blah~$ ethstats
bash: /usr/bin/ethstats: Permission denied
root@Blah~$ ls -all /usr/bin/ethstats
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3501 2004-07-28 03:51 /usr/bin/ethstats

It's not executable.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2007 14:27

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Z-Bo posted:

what would be a use case for:

run-parts --reverse /some/directory

You've rigged the dependencies w/ explicit ordering per-script, when you're recalling each script on some kind of shutdown you want to do it LIFO to respect the dependencies.

think sysvinit w/o separate symlinks (separate ordering) for S/K, LIFO is the most natural way to want things to run w/o the complication.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2007 01:04

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Ericcorp posted:

One question, my home PBX is doing pretty well, I've managed to install Asterisk, and get it configured, I'm now making calls inside my own little phone system, but I have one general linux question.

I keep getting stuck in prompts. Some times I don't have the answer the prompt wants, how do I return to the root prompt? Exit or quit, or CTRL something?

control-Z and the shell built-in 'fg' are the simplest way to suspend a prompt from an interactive shell script.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2007 02:19

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Casual Racist posted:

Can anyone tell me how I can set up sshd to only allow people from my local network to access it, ie 192.168.2.xxx? I know I need to add some lines to the hosts.allow and hosts.deny, but I'm not sure how to add IP ranges.

man 5 hosts_access

# ¿ Dec 5, 2007 01:26

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

do it posted:

I'm really not understanding permissions. I'm trying to make a folder (Docs) and all folders under it readable/writable/deletable by the user "blake," but the folder is owned by "data" - The user "data" also needs read/write access to the folder. Shouldn't I just be able to "chmod u+rwx Docs"?

That helps the owner, but you have two users to worry about IIRC.

You can create a new group that contains both users, change the group ownership recursively, and set existing folders to setgid (g+s) (this means new files will be owned by the shared secondary group instead of blake or data's primary group.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2007 22:09

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Hey! posted:

code:

sed -i 's/([^\.])Name\.Space/$1New.Name.Space/g' File.txt

you have to escape parens in sed to make them capture; backreferences are in the \1 form.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2007 00:42

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Tap posted:

I'm a linux noob, and I need some advice.

I'm getting into web development, and I'd like to set up a web server on a linux platform, but I'd also like to learn how to use the linux evironment as well. Which is the best distro to get the best of both worlds? I hear Debian is pretty standard as the backend platform for a lot of websites, or is this inquiry skewed?

debian and ubuntu packaging of Apache is pretty awful...

# ¿ Dec 14, 2007 14:12

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

bitprophet posted:

Mind backing up this assertion?

You wouldn't believe the number of people who can't follow simple tried-and-true instructions because of the config file hierarchy/cruft used in the debian packaging.

This is conventional wisdom in #apache on freenode

code:

<arreyder> karma debian
<fajita> debian has karma of -446

I do recognize that this largely to help differentiate files that can be safely modified by dpkg. The a2* junk also keeps people in the dark about how to actually configure the webserver natively.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2007 18:43

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

bitprophet posted:

I don't really see how either of those are "bad", though. As someone who does know how to configure Apache fairly well

The layout (and other packaging issues) creates a support bubble, and there's evidence of it every day in user support forums. Adding a layer between the user and the configuration seems to hurt too (especially when they're often not traditional sysadmins, like a lot of people who consume/configure Apache)

For context, I make a living developing and supporting Apache for $bigco. I'm an Apache committer and I donate personal time to the user support forums (users@httpd and IRC).

I've also been a Debian user for 7 years, so I don't have an axe to grind on that side either.

To summarize, cutting your teeth on apache via debian could fill your head with a considerable number of debian-isms instead of apache-isms.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2007 01:20

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

bitprophet posted:

So is your only real beef with the Debian /etc/apache2 layout that it differs so markedly from the Apache norm as to create support headaches (which I can understand)? Or is there something else too that makes it less than ideal? I guess that's what I've been trying to drive at.

When you wrap this stuff too much, users think checking "ports.conf" shows them what ports apache will listen on, and a module is being used when they've run the proper commands in /usr/sbin.

Sure, it's trivial for you and I to recognize there are only so many contexts these files get Include'ed into then you're back to basics, but not your typical user seeking help on #apache (believe it or not)

I do appreciate that the beef is mostly a nitpick, but recall the context of getting ones feet wet with Apache; similiar to how people recommend against ubuntu/gnome when you're trying to get a feel for linux

# ¿ Dec 15, 2007 02:36

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

citizenh8 posted:

I wanted to know if there is a way, short of installing Cygwin, that I can execute remote batch script on a Windows 2003 Server from my RHEL 4 shell? I would rather not install Cygwin just for this, but the other alternative is to install X, install the oracle client and turn the batch script into a bash script.

If the only way is Cygwin then I really don't have a problem (hopefully the client won't either!) installing it and using it, but it would be nice if I didn't have to.

not sure what windows facilities need to be running on the host for sysinternals 'psexec' to work, but it might be something to look into.

edit: durf, of course that's a solution only for windows on both ends.

Bad choices: services for unix probably provides telnetd, or a native windows/commercial SSH server

# ¿ Dec 20, 2007 01:08

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Marinmo posted:

Is aMSN or Mercury-messenger still the only alternatives for full speed file transfers on linux? Is Pidgin going to wait until 2010 before it gets this? The fact that this is a low priority (Patches wanted? WHAT?!) for the Pidgin devs boggles the mind.

It's about as high a priority as a chat system would be in a fileserver.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2007 01:35

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

citizenh8 posted:

I am pretty sure the xx in "bcm43xx" should be a number, specifically your model.

the module is literally bcm43xx for a number of broadcomm-based cards.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2007 03:11

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

TheChipmunk posted:

code:
ssh: connect to host servername port 22: Connection refused
I believe the error has to do something with the user/login.
How do I connect with a particular username and password?

Your error implies no ssh listening on the other end, not a userid problem

# ¿ Dec 22, 2007 03:14

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

J Crewl posted:

I'm trying to get Snort installed on my FC6 machine but have gotten stuck on one particular error for far too long. When I do ./configure, it'll finish without error, but when I do
./configure --with-mysql-includes=/root/<path to mysql.h file>
I get the following error, which I've yet to find a solution for on several snort and linux forums..

checking for mysql... yes
checking for compress in -lz... no
checking for dlsym in -ldl... no
checking for dlsym in -lc... no

ERROR! programmatic interface to dynamic link loader
not found. Cannot use dynamic plugin libraries.

Can anyone make sense of this error?

config.log should show you how the extremely simple test program checking for the availability of 'dlsym' was compiled/linked/run unsuccessfuly

--with-mysql-includes should be a directory, not a file (unclear which you provided). It's odd that you wouldn't get an earlier failure ("compiler can't create executables") if a bad value were somehow able to break finding something as ubiquitous as dlsym

dlsym in -ldl is supremely old and ubiquitous, so failing to find it is extremely likelt

# ¿ Dec 30, 2007 16:23

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

hooah posted:

How can I change the color depth on Ubuntu?

Generally, DefaultDepth in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

# ¿ Jan 4, 2008 14:00

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

hooah posted:

Worked, although it screwed up a lot of my display settings. Now I'm getting an error from Amarok saying
"There was an error setting up inter-process communications for KDE. The message returned by the system was:

These look more like "some problem just waiting for your X server to restart" as opposed to something that actually cares about your color depth.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2008 15:22

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Boody posted:

I have an old shuttle box (nForce 2 based) with AMD XP 2400+ which has been running Gentoo (currently 2.6.23) for years with 512 megs of RAM. After some recent upgrades I found myself with 2 gigs of free RAM which I've installed but linux just doesn't fully detect.

Any suggestions, is it a hardware issue or software?

Most distros default to this and SMP now:

code:

$ grep CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y /boot/config-`uname -r`
CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y

# ¿ Jan 4, 2008 16:54

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

chryst posted:

NTFS will have trouble when you're booted in Linux, VFAT has no security but is easily cross-compatible.

r/w ntfs should be fine on a modern linux system.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2008 21:46

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Ozean posted:

It sounds simple enough, but I don't know how to fix it. Any help would be appreciated.

mlabel in the mtools package would let you set a new VFAT partition label.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2008 23:06

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Kaluza-Klein posted:

So I did df -h before deleting 88gb of files, and the same after. It is only reporting 35gb more free space? I have never noticed anything like this before. I recently switched from an XFS format to ext3. Is it doesn't something weird I don't know about?

no clue on FS differenes, hard links in other directories to the files you deleted?

# ¿ Jan 24, 2008 23:44

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Ozean posted:

Cool. How do I do that?

You need more then the name of the command and the package that provides it?

# ¿ Jan 25, 2008 13:27

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

toadee posted:

I moved on to another project, installed Squid and set up web SSH tunneling so I can browse unsnooped from work, and now I can magically start jackd in realtime mode as myself. I don't get it either, but I'm also not complaining.

these things are only sourced when you do a new login, a new "login shell" isn't enough. If you're in an X session, you need a new X session.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2008 13:14

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

rugbert posted:

So apache has completely used up all my inodes on one of my partitions. Looking at it shows that the mod_disk_cache folder is the culprit. Can I delete everything in there or would that not be good for the server?

Looks like its just a a bunch of empty folders with FEW contents. Ive already made a copy of the directory and was about to empty it and see if the server goes down but I figured Id ask first...

htcacheclean is the tool for maintaining mod_disk_cache.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2008 19:45

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

rugbert posted:

Man this tool blows. Im running it for about an hour while counting files in that directory in another terminal every few minutes and yea the file number is just increasing.

does htcacheclean just delete these files? I could just have cron clean out that directory once a day or something.

Did you tell it to daemonize or something? There's not a lot of code there.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2008 04:19

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Toiletbrush posted:

Is there a way I can use GRUB in the MBR and still boot Windows XP, for instance if it's installed on the second primary partition? Every site I go to keeps telling me to keep the Windows MBR. Is there a specific reason for that? I thought the boot sector on the install partition should suffice, which I guess would chainload?

That's pretty much the most basic boot-windows-with-grub, what's complaining?

DOS-style MBR does the same, but only selects the 'active/bootable' partition.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2008 21:13

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

Mr. DNA posted:

Is this a limitation? I'm running Gnome (ubuntu) and Amarok, and there are no problems whatsoever. I guess I had to install some KDE libs, but that's certainly not a hassle if you use Synaptic or something equivalent.

You must have one of those newfangled 540MB hard drives that can hold gnome AND kde libraries.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2008 15:50

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

stubblyhead posted:

Same result. I have used regular expressions with standard grep many times, but I've never had to match that particular character. This is under HPUX w/ ksh if it makes a difference; no bash available on that server. Fake edit: Which I guess makes this not really a linux question, sorry about that. Close enough for standard tools?

It's your shell, not grep, that's getting upset. Protect the apostrophe and backslash from the shell.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2008 22:01

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 02:02

covener: Jan 10, 2004; You know, for kids!

stubblyhead posted:

Ok, getting somewhere. Great. I'm a little confused by what you mean though, the backslash isn't going to protect the apostrophe? For instance say I want to match foo', I can't use "grep 'foo\\'' *" to find it?

I misread as ending in a double quote; the backslash isn't an escape character inside single quotes, because the single quotes have already zapped all the special meaning of anything inside.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2008 22:24

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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