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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waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Hrolf Pyjama posted:

Is there any advantage in using cedega over wine that makes it worth forking out ?

Try Wine and if it doesn't work, consider Cedega if it's on their official support list.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2007 03:01

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 19:26

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Smegmatron posted:

Can someone please explain the licensing of RedHat enterprise to me?

I'm at a loss here. Do you actually need to be licensed for the OS itself, or can it be freely distributed?

My understanding is that you can run and distribute the stuff all you like, but not for profit, and all you actually pay them for is support. They also don't offer the OS for download to anyone who doesn't subscribe.

Am I close or way off?

The fact that the only place other than redhat offering downloads of RHEL are type places leads me to believe I may not be getting the full picture here.

When you buy a license of RHEL, you get support through Redhat for a set number of computers, the right to use their binaries and the source (in source RPM format) to all the system packages. The source packages are freely redistributable under the various open source licenses with the exception of things that have Redhat's trademarked name and logos.

So an organization like CentOS takes the source RPMs, builds their own binaries and replaces the Redhat stuff with their name and logo and are free to distribute it. Redhat actually encourages this more or less because it means more people to QA their software and increases the number of people with RHEL skills in the market. A lot of medium sized businesses will have RHEL licenses for their core systems and CentOS for all their other servers.

# ¿ May 28, 2007 05:47

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

TheCobraEffect posted:

Okay, I ran it in the terminal and got an error about gksu and kdesu, googled and found out they're programs that let you type in a password. So I downloaded the source for gksu and libgksu and compiled it, but now it gives me a dependency error,
code:
gksu: error while loading shared libraries: libgksu2.so.0: cannont open shared object file: No such file or directory
So I'm missing a dependency, how do I fix it? I'd apt-get update if I was in ubuntu, but alas, slackware doesn't have package management like that.

I used a Slackware package manager when I had it installed.

One option:
http://slackpkg.sourceforge.net/

I also remember using
http://swaret.sourceforge.net/

waffle iron fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Sep 6, 2007

# ¿ Sep 6, 2007 01:30

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Crush posted:

Movie DVDs, however I just tried again with an older data CD and it worked fine. My only guess is some sort of encryption on the DVDs?

Oh lord I haven't laughed so hard in a while.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2007 05:26

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

dorkface posted:

I just built a new personal server, using Ubuntu 7.10, and I'm having trouble ssh-ing to it. Even if I connect two pc's directly with a crossover cable, I cannot get an ssh session going, so I know it isn't the router.
I also checked to see if iptables was an issue, but all test to see if it was running, failed.

Ultimately, I assumed that I needed to generate a key, which I did, but it is still refusing the connection. Any suggestions?

Is ssh running? Are you trying to ssh in as root? (some installs disable this). Can you ssh loopback? i.e. "ssh localhost"

# ¿ Dec 31, 2007 00:56

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

The Gay Bean posted:

I've run into a problem though. If I want Firefox windows in more than one X display, the second/third display will complain that Firefox is running but not responding and won't launch. Is there a Firefox or OS setting that can work around this?

You could trying running Firefox with the -no-remote option, but even if that works you run a high risk of corrupting your profile.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2008 07:37

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Slow is Fast posted:

I go to a college that uses Cisco Clean Access to log in to the schools network. Windows they force you to download CCA Agent to make sure you have no viruses and that your up to date. With linux and (OSX) they make you log in through a web page. If I have a headless rig set up that only is CLI, how would I sign into the network to verify my user credentials if I don't have a graphical web browser?

If links doesn't work, there are two methods:
1. Use ssh -D PORTNUMBER to set that port as a socks4/5 tunnel and then set it up as a proxy on your desktops browser.
2. Install firefox on the server and ssh over with X forwarding enabled with a X server on your desktop.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2008 06:07

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

The correct way to do this is to install bash-completion. It can pick up previously used hosts from your $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts file. Also you can your $HOME/.ssh/config file to include named ssh servers/aliases.

code:

Host example.com
User my_username

That would allow you to do ssh example.com and it would automatically send a username. bash-completion will scan the file and be able to tab complete it.

You can also use aliases

code:

Host what
User my_username
HostName example.com

So then you can do ssh what and it will connect you to example.com. This can also be tab completed.

These are very simple examples of .ssh/config, but you can do more complex stuff like set a non-standard port or enable/disable X forwarding. Check the man pages for ssh_config.
http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl5_ssh_config.htm

# ¿ Feb 12, 2008 21:35

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

DEAD MAN'S SHOE posted:

whats the simplest way of finding an mp3 files bitrate on the commandline?

I'm willing to guess that `file` should be able to tell you.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2008 06:03

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Mr. DNA posted:

Is it possible to have wget login to the SA forums so that it can download a page that you must be registered in order to see? I tried following a few guides I found through Google but nothing seemed to work. Thanks for any help.

Run wget and use the argument --load-cookies FILE where FILE is your cookies.txt (probably from your Mozilla or Firefox profile).

This is just a technical answer, if you plan to run a bot or grab more than a couple pages or someshit, ask as admin for permission first.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2008 05:52

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

covener posted:

Most flexible method is to run it inside of 'screen'.

see also: nohup

Bash also has disown, which removes a background process from the jobs table.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2008 23:37

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Kaluza-Klein posted:

Recently when I insert my fancy pants Sandisk EXTREME III SDHC card I am getting ugly errors like this:
code:
[...]
It appears mounted but there is nothing in the directory. If I unmount and remount it starts working normally and I can see all the files and read/write etc.

I don't normally use this card in any other computer but I just plugged it into a macbook (with the same card reader, I only have one that does sdhc) a few times and it mounted fine each time.

Is this some ominous sign that my card is about to fail? Please say no and don't be lying.

I would copy all the data off of the drive and use fsck on it or badblocks.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2008 05:03

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Hughmoris posted:

Ok, I installed Ubuntu a few days ago and am trying to find my way around some basic terminal commands. I'm making some progress, but I'm stuck on something that is almost too embarrassing to ask... How in the hell do you handle spaces in folders and file names?

Ex. I have a music folder, with a Jack Johnson folder inside that, and several albums inside that. I've tried cd /music/Jack Johnson and it won't recognize the command. I've tried seemingly ever combination of odd characters to fill the space and can't figure it out.

What simple step am I missing?

You would type cd /music/Jack\ Johnson/

Most people would just hit tab and try to use tab completion.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2008 00:26

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

You're probably looking for something like sshfs that is used with FUSE. Most distros have it packaged for easy install.

http://fuse.sourceforge.net/
http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html

# ¿ Apr 1, 2008 22:28

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Sounds like Windows doesn't lik the partition table somehow.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2008 04:15

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

tehk posted:

I am lost when it comes to php, but.. I think PEAR is packaged separately on most distros so even if php was compiled with the --without-pear flag you should be able to install the php-pear package. At least that is how it worked at home.

You should be able to do an install of PEAR in your home directory and set the directory to be included before everything else.

# ¿ May 6, 2008 20:05

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

midnite posted:

Is it possible to put the harddrive from the old machine into the new one (or 'dd' it to the new one, and if so - how?) and run some magic command on it and things 'just work'?

You should only have to rerun the netconfig script (or equivalent) from a local terminal. I would make sure you have the most recent kernel as well. Image the drive first if you want to be thorough. To save time, boot a LiveCD on the new machine and write down what driver it autoloads.

# ¿ May 14, 2008 00:53

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

bootleg robot posted:

Is there a linux equivalent to windirstat for Windows?

I'm pretty sure that windirstat was a wholesale clone of KDirStat. Under GNOME there is an implementation called "Disk Usage Analyzer".

# ¿ May 29, 2008 05:21

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

sund posted:

What shows up when you plug it in and run 'lsusb'? Find a program that can capture from a V4L device and give it a shot to see if it's detected.

Also useful is the output of dmesg|tail

# ¿ Aug 14, 2008 17:54

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

You can try to use xkill or equivalent to force the X server to stop accepting output from that process. That might get Firefox to start exiting. Otherwise it sounds like you might have a browser plugin run amok, Flash maybe?

# ¿ Aug 16, 2008 13:57

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

The Remote Viewer posted:

What's SSH good for? I can't think of too many times I've wanted remote command-line access to my home PC. I know you can run some X apps, but can you do a full desktop?

You could invoke a desktop environment like know by running gnome-session and it would load the full gnome complete with panels, although that seems like overkill in most situations.

Hell you can even edit SSHD config files, restart the SSHD service and your current session shouldn't be stopped.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2008 03:26

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

joe944 posted:

I've had a little experience, and the best way I learn is to just force myself to do things. I'd rather not have an easy mode option to tempt me.

So you'd rather have something that is harder to use? There are a lot of standard tools that are in 90% of distros that make it so you rarely have to mess with all that poo poo. I don't understand the fascination with "someone told me linux is hard to use and now I am upset it's easier than carving a router out of rock."

And source distros like Arch or Gentoo will teach you a thick wrapper around ./configure; make; make install that has nothing to do with the config file fuckery you want to do and can do on 100% of distros.

waffle iron fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Aug 23, 2008

# ¿ Aug 23, 2008 02:08

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Ashex posted:

I wasn't able to since it was the root partition, ended up booting off a live disc and removing the option. Was rather strange since I couldn't even unmount it in recovery console. This is an ubuntu desktop system, but I don't know why that would matter.

You can remount something with a single mount command.

Something like
mount -o rw,remount /

# ¿ Sep 21, 2008 03:27

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

You might consider using CentOS instead. It's a recompiled current release of Red Hat Enterprise without Red Hat trademarks (name and graphics). More or less.

http://www.centos.org/

# ¿ Nov 10, 2008 06:59

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

moros posted:

I don't beleive that, I just have a box that endlessly reboots when I turn it on and I'm not sure what to do.

You need to tell us if the computer reboots before or after it POSTs. If it's after, you should be fine.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2008 00:47

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Sock on a Fish posted:

Since it coincided with dad trying to install XP I'm betting it's just BSODing and then rebooting because that's the default behavior for STOP errors.

Then burn a linux install DVD and go nuts.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2008 01:16

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

You don't need a different computer to install Linux or any bullshit you for some reason think in necessary. Just an install CD/DVD and for the CD/DVD drive to be the first boot device.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2008 00:50

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Wallin posted:

What's the best way to install a library on a system you don't have root access to? In particular, I'm trying to build erlang on a system for some experiments, and it turns out the systems doesn't have any curses library.

I downloaded, compiled, and installed ncurses to my ~/custom directory, set
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/custom/lib
and
C_INCLUDE_PATH=$HOME/custom/include

Unfortunately, the configure for erlang still isn't detecting any curses library. I'm pretty sure I've done something similar to this in the past that worked, but perhaps I have the environment variables wrong? Is there some other way to go about doing this?

The ./configure script should take the form --with-curses=PATH_TO_CURSES

# ¿ Feb 11, 2009 00:00

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Check the output of lsof as root. It should tell you every file descriptor/memory map open.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2009 22:22

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Install yum-fastestmirror so yum chooses the fastest available mirror,

# ¿ Mar 3, 2009 02:43

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

You'll probably get some improved responsiveness by disabling IPv6 lookups. But your best bet to troubleshoot might be to try a livecd of another distro to see if it's linux support of your hardware.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2009 03:15

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

NZAmoeba posted:

well I got something else to make this even more confusing.

I took a DSL connection that's separate from my main network, and that works at full speed on my linux box (makes me wish I tried that hours ago, finally got yum update to finish!). So there's something wrong with my main network that's causing this drama, be it proxy server or something else. There was a command I've since forgotten that I needed to enter to make the system accept my proxy servers IP address

How do I check duplex settings at the client side? (it plugs into a tiny switch). And how do I disable ipv6 lookups? When I was googling this problem I saw a number of people say to disable ipv6 dns lookups in firefox but that wouldn't propagate to the rest of the system would it? (they described a problem where firefox would be slow, but downloads were normal, different from my issue)

Firefox is one of the few apps requests AAA records (IPv6 aliases). You can disable it system wide by putting ipv6 in the modprobe blacklist in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and restarting. As far as duplex modes go if would be useful to know what module it uses. For that the output of lsmod is useful.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2009 03:30

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

NZAmoeba posted:

This has been strangely difficult to google, I have a remote ssh connection into my box that's been there since december 2008, I want to kill it. How? (preferably not killing the other connections coming in)

/sbin/service sshd restart doesn't close any connections so you're going to have to identify the exact process for the connection and do a kill on it.

"ps aux | grep ssh" should give you a list of processes. I forget if sshd sets the username of connecting user.

Edit: Maybe the output of "who" might list it.

waffle iron fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Mar 15, 2009

# ¿ Mar 15, 2009 21:46

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

fletcher posted:

How do I update my time zone data in zoneinfo? I'm running Fedora Core 7. I tried yum update tzdata (which found an update and installed it, still in MST instead of MDT though).

Your best bet is to download a tzdata rpm from the oldest supported Fedora updates and install that. Fedora 9 should do the trick. tzdata is noarch anyway.

http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/11518506/com/tzdata-2009a-1.fc10.noarch.rpm.html

waffle iron fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Mar 16, 2009

# ¿ Mar 16, 2009 04:42

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

fletcher posted:

Ok, got that installed. What do I do to update the time after that?
code:
[fletch@ip-12-345-678-90 ~]$ date
Sun Mar 15 20:54:30 MST 2009

Either copy or symlink the right tzdata file to /etc/localtime to make sure it's the right thing.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2009 04:58

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

ShoulderDaemon posted:

Uh... just run export LANG=C by itself, on its own line. It changes the locale for your current session.

Then run whatever uniq command you were trying to run.

Alternatively you can run

LANG=C uniq

That format sets a environment variable, but only for the executable program on the line.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2009 00:31

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

If it were a smaller fileset I would say to tar/gzip it up and do a sha1sum on both.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2009 06:49

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Zom Aur posted:

Also, ext3 is backwards compatible with ext2, so can't you just format the drive as ext3 and mount it as ext2 in OSX?

I'm pretty sure as long as the ext3 filesystem is unmounted clean and the journal is in an inode, not a file (which is 99.9% of all ext3 filesystems).

# ¿ Apr 25, 2009 03:11

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

In modern versions of Linux you can have a swap file that has almost no performance hit versus a swap partition.

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/custom-guide/s1-swap-adding.html

# ¿ May 27, 2009 00:45

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 19:26

waffle iron: Jan 16, 2004

Keito posted:

That's really smart and easy, thanks for the tip. Maybe I'll get working suspend now.

If you need swap for suspend to disk, I would favor a partition because the large sequential reads and writes will be faster. As opposed to swapping a single program or mapped memory.

# ¿ May 28, 2009 00:16

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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