Root Access

Boris_yo

2:06 PM

@Hennes What about one from France?

Hennes

Which one is that?

Not the same as the Ariane from the french speaking part of Canada?

Bob

3:21 PM

@allquixotic Your pubkey should be added properly now.

Hennes

@moses: are the users using different account or are they all the same user?

Psycogeek

3:36 PM

Thats not real its a movie. youtube.com/watch?v=v9bB55UomzE#t=6 Judge gets paid to send kids to Private Prisons for Paybacks. Even in the movies these private prisons are not supposed to be running the country till the year 2230 :-)

(gets 85 views, celebrity nipple show 3million views)

Boris_yo

@Psycogeek Which paybacks?

@Psycogeek Someone knows men's psychology.

Psycogeek

3:53 PM

@Boris_yo The more people you get into your privatly operated prison system, the more money the goverment shovels into the private prison system business. If you can get a few judges to fill these things, Profit. The payback of course goes to the afFILLiats

Boris_yo

@Psycogeek Means that private prisons in this movie run country?

@Psycogeek Affiliates which are judges?

Psycogeek

@Boris_yo There are a couple of "bleak future" movies , where private prisons are the "bad guy" herassing and torturing our hero. Or evolved into massive skyscrapers of prisons systems.

Jimmy Hoffa

$45 for a Sata 3 1tb refurb I don't need a drive right now but dang..

AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute

@JimmyHoffa That's a fantastic deal but the "refurb" part is, ehh

Jimmy Hoffa

@AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute Heh I'm so glad so many people think that, it makes it all cheaper for me! I've only bought refurb/recertified/open box/whatever for years and haven't had any bunk hardware

Darth Android

4:00 PM

@AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute I wouldn't use just one. At that price, something like raid6 would be respectable.

I'd make the bet that I won't have two refurbs fail before I can get to my local shop and replace one

Jimmy Hoffa

If my next refurb purchase is bunk It will still have been hands down worth it considering how much money I've not spent by always buying refurb

and for what it's worth thats actually "recertified" which is technically supposed to be a step above refurbished

(or so goes my understanding)

AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute

@JimmyHoffa I am not against refurbished objects. It's just that you have to be a little careful because if the product doesn't work (and the likelihood increases if it is refurbished), then it becomes an unnecessary hassle.

Jimmy Hoffa

@AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute Or be completely un-careful as I have and enjoy the fruits of savings :D

AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute

@JimmyHoffa What about the time when you bring it home and it stops working after like a day?

Jimmy Hoffa

@AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute Like I said, if that happens next time it will be the loss of a drop in the bucket of money compared to the amount I've saved by only buying refurb for years (and again, I've been doing it for years and not had a single bunk piece...)

if every 3rd or 5th piece of refurb stuff I bought was bunk then it wouldn't be worth it, but at this rate I don't even have a comparison because so far among numerous hardware and device purchases, I've never come up bunk

Boris_yo

4:06 PM

@Psycogeek Let me guess... Death Race?

@JimmyHoffa Why not wait until Black Friday? blackfriday.com/stores/tiger-direct/flyers/…

Jimmy Hoffa

@Boris_yo Like I said, I don't need a drive, just thought I've mention it because I know some folks in here are always looking for hardware I'm sure.. and that's just a hell of a deal

second part to being a cheapskate: I don't buy when I don't need

Boris_yo

@JimmyHoffa And that's respectable because you are not brainwashed by promoted consumerism and care about environment.

Psycogeek

@Boris_yo everything that I notice the price of (or have purchaced) on those TD ads, sells for the same price as that all year long at frys, with thier almost daily sales. Same thing with microcenter (which we dont have anymore).

AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute

Yesterday, I was here asking for advice about web-design of basketball-gm.com. I think everyone who had something to say pretty much said it, but if there wasn't, would anyone like to contribute to ripping it apart and criticizing it now?

allquixotic

4:23 PM

Hii

@Bob thx ;p

Darth Android

@allquixotic The double-i makes me read your greeting like a kirby taunt from SMB

allquixotic

@DarthAndroid it's sort of my signature :P

Ash

@JourneymanGeek ,@Psycogeek any suggestions over this catastrophe i face right now :superuser.com/q/678860/241659

Boris_yo

@Psycogeek lol what about Amazon? Aren't they cheapest?

Psycogeek

@Boris_yo are they doing a black friday sale? I donno, Just that once i adopted the "wait and see" attitude Verses the "sleep out front the store, get knock over by 50 people to get a sale" , I have not bought anything that i didnt research , didnt need, and didnt lose any real money.

@Ash Cool pictures. so the solder has been smushed across and connects things that were previosly un-connected?

Boris_yo

4:51 PM

@Ash Any sensitive information there?

@Psycogeek Yes Amazon have Black Friday sale: amazon.com/Black-Friday/b/…

Psycogeek

@Boris_yo more like another black friday month :-)

allquixotic

@Ash the comments and answers there already are pretty good

Gowtham

@AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute looks like a phony site ....

AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute

@Gowtham how so?

allquixotic

/me updates to Firefox 24.1.1 ESR

Gowtham

5:01 PM

Well in my horrific opinion, the site emphasizes too much on how awesome the game is through text, a video or a image would be better.

@allquixotic crash

allquixotic

@Gowtham newp

security update only

Gowtham

I thought it was that new UI thingy ;p

allquixotic

um... no?

Gowtham

And it looks like I on the beta channel

allquixotic

ESR = Enterprise Support Release

Gowtham

5:02 PM

yes I know, just googled it -_-

allquixotic

security updates for a stable version of Firefox, kinda like they did in the 3.x days

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic how do games do with multi-monitor these days on the average? Do most of them happily expand their FOV to span monitors without much fiddling at all, or is it a every few games sort-of-supports it thing?

Gowtham

@JimmyHoffa Only few games have good multi monitor support

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa games have to choose to explicitly support AMD Eyefinity or Nvidia Whateverthehelltheyhave in order to work on multiple monitors. and those technologies literally stretch the game world across the two monitors; they don't usually treat the monitors separately and give you two views or something

Jimmy Hoffa

damn, you would think it would have become common place support these days, lord knows gaming graphics cards usually have multiple outputs these days

allquixotic

5:04 PM

I've never seen any game be actually smart about it and, like, give you a full-screen minimap on one monitor and a normal game on the other

Boris_yo

@Psycogeek Right and sellers rely that people on Black Friday will be dazzled enough to buy things they have not researched about and not sure whether they need them due to period's time constraints. But what about those who only hope they find something they need on Black Friday? Can they get through without being tempted and suckered by things they don't need?

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic How do you mean stretch? Do they expand the field of view, or do they just make all your enemies really fat?

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa well, if you're talking about FPS, most FPSes, if they support eyefinity at all, will increase your overall FOV, but some games explicitly limit the FOV because they think it gives an unfair advantage to the people with hardware support for bigger FOV, multi monitor, etc

games like Supreme Commander will let you see more of the battle field (strategy game) with Eyefinity, which makes a lot more sense than in an FPS

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic Gotcha. Would you say this is like one in three, one in ten? how frequently do games support it?

Gowtham

imgur.com/a/PWYlo

allquixotic

5:06 PM

especially because the boundary between the monitors and their "chrome" (the plastic or metal or aluminum frame of the monitor) provides a visible barrier between the screens, which is very disruptive to an FPS

@JimmyHoffa about one in 50, if that

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic dang..

Psycogeek

@allquixotic there is one game i heard about that puts various data on the second, while the grafic strategy is left on the main one. Independant of it being eyefinity.

allquixotic

I'd much rather see them do away with nonsense like stretching the same UI across two monitors a la Eyefinity, and actually render something different on the other monitor -- some kind of background information that's nice to have that you normally have to bring up in a pop-up window or something

Gowtham

@allquixotic knows way too much ;p You should teach

allquixotic

on Civilization V for example you could have all your empire stats and tunables on the left screen and the game world on the right

Jimmy Hoffa

5:07 PM

an expanded field of view in an FPS is a pretty huge advantage though. Think about it, having the ability to see 300 degrees around yourself would make you wayyy harder to sneak up on

allquixotic

that'd work extremely well for almost any strategy game

@JimmyHoffa exactly, which is why some engines go through a lot of effort to prevent the engine's FOV from being adjustable (and then things like punkbuster to prevent code injection into the client)

some engines have an FOV slider within a fairly narrow range, like 70 to 90, which is reasonable

Jimmy Hoffa

aye

allquixotic

the risk of course is that if you have code in a function that does FOV change, a client hack could unlock the upper boundary and get higher FOV

games, especially twitch FPS, are hugely at risk of giving players an unfair advantage due to client hacks, even when those client hacks have absolutely nothing to do with the client/server protocol or client untrusted data, etc

just giving the client the ability to either do certain things automatically (aimbot) or see more of the field of view is an unfair advantage

MMOs are much less at risk because of the push-button mechanics -- you can push the button as much as you want, but if the server decides that you're on cooldown, you're on cooldown, end of story

strategy games have been coping with the fact that users with higher resolution monitors (which also logically means multiple monitors have the same problem as well) can see more of the battlefield at a glance without scrolling, which gives, say, a 2 x 1920x1200 Eyefinity user a distinct advantage over a guy with a single 1280x1024 monitor

I really, really dislike games that do little or nothing to prevent situations where you can win (or have a better chance, anyway) simply by owning the right hardware

Psycogeek

@Boris_yo Sure if you know what you want, and are just waiting for the sale on it to occur. But in january sometime , that same thing will be selling for that same price, often. There is the rare thing that will be completly sold out, like all the things sold out last year. once the hype is gone on the sold out stuff, they put out a working version V2, and drop the price for the rest of the year.

allquixotic

games need to be designed to either restrict the advantages that can be attained with certain hardware, or to somehow make possession of that hardware irrelevant and not provide any advantage, or to somehow close the gap between a typical single-monitor laptop and a dedicated gaming rig

kinda worried that Star Citizen will be "professional flight sticks in each hand to win"

or maybe "Oculus Rift to win"

also, $240 for an in-game item (a ship) makes it seem like the whole thing is a scam

Jimmy Hoffa

5:15 PM

@allquixotic Oh I fully understand why games restrict that stuff and agree it should be done (I don't have multiple monitors which would mean I was getting wrecked by people who did, taking good bit of fun out of it)

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa I have 3 monitors and I can technically do Eyefinity, but it hurts performance, and the gaps between my monitors are large enough that it'd be enormously distracting to do so

Jimmy Hoffa

I was just curious if it was worth plugging another monitor in for single player at least as if many games supported it, you're telling me the support is still as piss-poor as it was years ago last time I checked

allquixotic

I would really appreciate having a full-screen map/radar on the left monitor though, in most FPSes

@JimmyHoffa the support is abysmal

probably because the devs are afraid of complaints of unfair advantage being doled out to people with multi monitors

Jimmy Hoffa

Not worth it then.

Boris_yo

@Psycogeek Sometimes you have got to go through all popular stores to find that item and manage to ignore temptation. It also might be not worth your time to subscribe to various deals, shops etc. latest deals information to sift through everything only to probably be disappointed.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:17 PM

@allquixotic I doubt that, I bet it's more related to the multi-monitor minority, as well as concerns people would think their game performed terribly without realizing they were now rendering twice as many pixels with two monitors

allquixotic

single player games are more likely to be lenient on that type of thing, but if it's both single and multiplayer, they'll probably design the whole thing around the limitations of multiplayer

Psycogeek

@allquixotic I have seen eyefinity on 2, and might be still willing to test using it. But 1/2" bezel Right in the Middle of the screen is not going to visually dissapear. It would instead drive me batty.

allquixotic

@Psycogeek I agree 100%

Jimmy Hoffa

speaking of single player, I still need to go finish metro 2033, I picked up last light on a super sale the other week and frankly 2033 is bloody awesome, I just took a large break from it and now don't remember where I was which makes me not want to get back into the middle of it

allquixotic

next-gen gaming: monitors with edge to edge glass, completely gapless, with a glue or epoxy mount to make them one contiguous screen, dubbed pejoratively the "Buy2Win" in the gaming community ;p

Jimmy Hoffa

5:19 PM

@allquixotic They can simply make a single monitor from two panels with two controllers in that case

allquixotic

then there are the elitists who say, "well, stop gaming on a small laptop! buy better hardware and raise the bar!" etc

Jimmy Hoffa

or with a single controller, but it would be erquesting an extremely non-standard aspect ratio which would give a lot of video cards/renderers fits

Psycogeek

@Boris_yo Yup sifting through amazon (as example of neverending), not so fun. Locally they will have about 15 pages of newspaper 2 times, and that would be quite enough shopping for the week.

allquixotic

I don't think it's out of the question to think that we'll someday see a game that deliberately and heavily favors people with 2 or more monitors, and the devs' attitude is essentially "if you don't have 2 monitors, be prepared for a degraded experience"

they could start doing that with all kinds of other stuff, too: high-end GPUs; specific gaming devices like that Razr thing with dozens of buttons; flight sticks (for simulators); etc

even games that are best played with 3d hardware like Oculus Rift

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic These things become standard just as requirements of broadband became the mainstream etc

or requirement of gpus etc

allquixotic

5:22 PM

@JimmyHoffa true; most modern games are exclusive to people with at least ADSL, no more 56k support due to the required throughput

Jimmy Hoffa

But I don't know when, and I think that is going to rely on display innovation when we start having display-walls

allquixotic

5:32 PM

@JimmyHoffa I don't really want a display-wall so much as I want multiple separate monitors, one of them with sort of background information that you look over once in a while as the game progresses

that would be useful in FPSes, RPGs, strategy... maybe not racing, but most games could use a second monitor for something

Boris_yo

@Psycogeek Either save with small discount or invest whole days of your time for hunting for your offer.

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic You may not think you want a display wall, but you will when they start becoming standard around 2030 that everyones house comes with a wall that has a thin filament display and a small phone-sized display-controller you plug the HDMI cable into down in one corner, generally you'll plug your phone into that HDMI which you'll have programmed to make the wall simply light the room or show a starry night on 90% of it with a 45" central part showing the tv show you want to watch

allquixotic

@Boris_yo I prefer to save with a small discount and get on with life -- my time is too valuable to spend hours and hours looking for a cheaper price

Jimmy Hoffa

and on weekend mornings you'll have it slideshowing between sunny environments

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa and ASICs will have advanced to the degree that your computer is your smartphone, and you have no need for having a scaled-up ATX desktop because you can play all the latest stuff on your phone :P

Jimmy Hoffa

5:36 PM

@allquixotic I can't remember where or who it was that spoke of this technology in an article a while back, it was actually really cool conceptually something I'd never heard of and I want to say it was wozniak

they were talking about getting rid of windows

making your house a configurable environment by lining the walls with displays

turn on the rain environment, cuddle up under a blanket with some hot tea and watch a sappy movie or it's early on a saturday so you turn it to sunny day in bavarian fields environment

cool concept

(seems like the kind of thing wozniak would talk about)

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa ;p

Boris_yo

@allquixotic Time spent that you will never get back...

Darth Android

@allquixotic Supreme Commander has multi-display support

Nothing like a 1920x1080 minimap

Which, they actually do right and make it a second viewport, in which you can select and command units

You can quite literally watch your base and your battle at the same time

So effective.

allquixotic

cool

42 mins ago, by allquixotic

games like Supreme Commander will let you see more of the battle field (strategy game) with Eyefinity, which makes a lot more sense than in an FPS

didnt know it was a sep. viewport

Darth Android

Well, eyefinity (3 monitors functioning like 1) will give you a larger primary viewport

same with nvidia surround

allquixotic

5:50 PM

i know

i dont find that useful

Darth Android

aye, neither do I

allquixotic

i have a first world problem

inside the lunch module, in soupcan.rb, is require 'canopener'

the eyes environment interpreter couldn't find the canopener module

maybe i need to friend-get install canopener

checking if i have any repos that might have it

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic In my bachelor days upon realization I didn't have a canopener I more than once used pliers... worked fine, though the first time I did it was definitely a learning experience that aided later times.

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa don't have pliers either

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic Who doesn't have pliers? What a crock. They can fairly effectively replace nearly every other tool.

allquixotic

5:58 PM

are you kidding? they could be used as a weapon; surely that violates a hundred OSHA and federal contracting laws

I am at work plz

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic I hope you're joking in suggesting there's no pliers in your office... your tech bench in IT has to have a pair

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa oh, he has a pair alright, dealing with The Customer's IT dept.

but not pliers

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic What? You're kidding right?

Does he not have screw drivers either?

I would say those are far more akin to weaponry than pliers

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa he has those -- what, did you think we're some kind of third world operation? :P

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic I'm serious though, does he literally not have a pair of these around his tech bench?

allquixotic

6:01 PM

look, it's simple: every rule in federal contracting makes absolutely no sense; has enormous gaping holes that completely defeat the purpose of the rule; and does non-sensical things like allowing potentially dangerous things while preventing benign, useful things

Jimmy Hoffa

Somebody would actually claim that there is a weapon?

allquixotic

this is why our proxy sniffs User-Agent:

this is why I can have an Android phone with a (video) camera, but not a personal laptop

I'm expecting the rules to soon state that we're required to wear formal attire such as business suits at all time, but sweatpants and T-shirts which happen to be pure black in color are acceptable because they're the same color as a suit

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic I worked one place they didn't allow phones for this reason, bloody stupid. Also they had all their USB ports locked and there were certain doors that were unlocked, and if you walked through them you would be fired immediately without question for simply entering an area you weren't supposed to be in

Psycogeek

P-38 can opener

The P-38, developed in 1942, is a small can opener that was issued in the canned field rations of the United States Armed Forces from World War II to the 1980s. Originally designed for and distributed in the K-ration, it was later included in the C-ration. As of 2013, it is still in production and sold on a worldwide market. Design The P-38 is known as a "John Wayne" by the United States Marine Corps, either because of its toughness and dependability, or because of an unsubstantiated story that the actor had been shown in an as-yet-unidentified training film opening a can of K-Ratio...

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic Wait, if you can't have pliers which are totally harmless, there's no way you'd be allowed a canopener at work anyway, those have a sharp instrument

...so, why did you bring a can of soup to work? :P

allquixotic

6:04 PM

@JimmyHoffa point well taken; I'll be sure to bring that up with the health and safety auditors

might get peoples' can openers taken away </cackle>

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic haha ah don't do that... somebody did something similar here recently, got our monthly beer friday taken away :/

allquixotic

I'm treading on thin ice as it is: chat.SO is blocked at the firewall, but chat.SE isn't; they are effectively the same thing, but they seem to have not noticed chat.SE despite me using it from work for nearly a year now

maybe, because it's over unencrypted HTTP, they're sitting there watching everything I type in the datacenter and laughing at each other

so they intentionally keep it unblocked to let me type more

Psycogeek

any good pocket knife will slice through the top of a can easier than expected, and open it fully. (then re-sharpen it later) Ala swiss army knife made in china

allquixotic

I'm careful not to discuss work stuff anyway (at least not specifics) so as long as I keep getting feedback on my performance reviews like "you are our top performer" and "you have your hands in so many buckets that you are indispensable to the organization", I'm not chomping at the bit to spend every femtosecond of time at work putting 100% effort on my assignments

Gowtham

@allquixotic so you work in a datacenter ?

allquixotic

6:09 PM

@Gowtham haha, i wish

but my communications go through one

@JimmyHoffa bad judgment plus being in a rush, idk

i used to have a canopener at work but i think i took it home when i moved desk and never brought it back

Psycogeek

@JimmyHoffa It is a good thing that they have so much trust for thier employees :-) or so many secrets in places :-)

Jimmy Hoffa

@Psycogeek They didn't have secrets, just idiots in management, and that was no secret

!!tell europe 12288936

ChatBot John Cavil

@JimmyHoffa Invalid /tell arguments. Use /help for usage info

@JimmyHoffa Command 12288936 does not exist.

Jimmy Hoffa

mumble

Psycogeek

I am sorry dave, I am afraid I cannot do that.

allquixotic

6:34 PM

!!tell 12289260 europe

ChatBot John Cavil

jokerdino

australia in Europe? Lol

@ChatBotJohnCavil @Bob will not approve of it.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jokerdino @Bob is being assimilated as you can see there. Nothing he can do.

jokerdino

> Bob assimilated many new experiences on his European Australian trip.

2

Psycogeek

@jokerdino The swiss sold austria last week :-)

terdon

6:44 PM

What should be done with this?

0

Q: Instead /bin/bash as a shell, /bin/passwd in /etc/passwd file

I'm a Unix support Admin and I have a rare situation here. I have a recently adopted an environment that has a user with a /bin/passwd binary as a shell. xxx:x:1:100:xx:/home/xx:/bin/passwd Anyone have a clue about what is this for? Does this have a specific and special function?

jokerdino

@Psycogeek oh them

terdon

Strictly speaking off topic since it is about a professional system. @OliverSalzburg think you could migrate to Unix & Linux?

Oliver Salzburg

@terdon It's still too on-topic for it to be force-migrated by me

terdon

@OliverSalzburg OK, that was the next question. So we consider that on topic despite being a sysadmin question?

allquixotic

@terdon that can be useful to have a pseudo account that you can log into in order to change your password and then force you to log out and log in (by disabling access to passwd from ordinary user accounts), which may update some kind of Kerberos ticket maybe, but only after you log out/in

terdon

6:47 PM

My first instinct was to migrate to Server Fault but would love to see that on Unix & Linux which is why I ask.

@allquixotic oh, cool. Wanna post an answer?

Oliver Salzburg

@terdon I don't know if there are any set rules regarding this, but I generally try to judge if the topic could also apply to home use

terdon

Fair enough, I'll leave it as is then.

thanks

Oliver Salzburg

I usually only migrate questions that are obviously off-topic or when the OP requests the migration

terdon

@allquixotic hang on, how can that help? Even if you change the password you still can't log in without a valid shell.

allquixotic

@terdon you could chown passwordmgmt:passwordmgmt /bin/passwd then chmod 700 /bin/passwd and then tell users "if you want to change your password, SSH in as passwordmgmt with no password"

Oliver Salzburg

6:49 PM

But migrating is risky business otherwise. Other sites often complain about having crap migrated to their site, just as we do :D

allquixotic

when you successfully authenticate, SSH (or whatever terminal, even the physical console) spawns /bin/passwd and prompts you which user to change password for, current pass, and new pass

then when passwd is done, it exits, which disconnects you from the console, thereby forcing a logoff

terdon

@allquixotic exactly, so how do they actually log in after running passwd? They'll still need a shell won't they?

allquixotic

that way you can't change your password using /bin/passwd while remaining logged into the system

@terdon they log in as their normal user

the passwd there is to change the password of another user, not the passwordmgmt user

terdon

@OliverSalzburg fair enough. That one would not be crap on unix, that's why I asked (I have >10k there)

@allquixotic I thought that was only possible for root.

$ passwd guest
passwd: You may not view or modify password information for guest.

As far as I know, passwd only allows you to change your password unless you are root.

allquixotic

@terdon root can change anybody's password without knowing their current password; any user can (AFAIK) change anyone else's password if they first enter that other user's valid password

Oliver Salzburg

6:51 PM

@terdon Yeah, I know. I just wanted to mention it

allquixotic

it might be an OS-dependent thing, though; "Unix" is hardly enough information to know

terdon

not with passwd (at least not on any system I've seen and not on my Debian)

allquixotic

hell, the admin might've even written a custom script or program to replace the default passwd command

without knowing more, it could do anything

terdon

True.

The only way I know for a normal user to change another's pass (if they know the old one) is:

sudo -u USER passwd

allquixotic

yea, that method will work

i still have a sneaking suspicion that Kerberos tickets are going to come into play here eventually as the reasoning behind this

terdon

6:54 PM

No idea.

Boris_yo

@Psycogeek Hmmm No rains this winter in Israel, at least in a period it usually raining. I think HAARP stole our weather.

Jimmy Hoffa

!!learn poptart wikihow.com/Prepare-a-Pop-Tart

ChatBot John Cavil

@JimmyHoffa Command poptart learned

Jimmy Hoffa

!!tell 12288612 poptart

Boris_yo

poptart

ChatBot John Cavil

6:56 PM

@JimmyHoffa Command 12288612 does not exist.

@JimmyHoffa Invalid /tell arguments. Use /help for usage info

Jimmy Hoffa

have I been stripped of tell rights? heh

Boris_yo

Why @ChatBotJohnCavil does not react to word "poptart"?

@Caleb Hello. You are from christianity?

Caleb

@Boris_yo Yup.

Today I'm looking for anybody that knows anything about flashing BIOS's, in particular borked ASUS ones. Any takers?

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa You're doing it backwards

@Caleb don't know anything about borked ones, but I know how to flash a BIOS onto a healthy ASUS system

borked as in, won't POST?

depends on how badly it's borked -- in the extreme example of the BIOS being so corrupted that it can't do anything except display a black screen and spin the fans, you almost have to send it in for warranty service

Jimmy Hoffa

!! tell 12288612 poptart

ChatBot John Cavil

7:02 PM

@allquixotic wikihow.com/Prepare-a-Pop-Tart

allquixotic

a bricked desktop -- heh -- haven't heard that one in ages

Jimmy Hoffa

ooo it needs a space after the !!

I thought it didn't need the space

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa No, it doesn't.

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic Look above, those messages are identical but one didn't work

allquixotic

!!tell 12290370 no

ChatBot John Cavil

7:03 PM

Boris_yo

@allquixotic Or pay for BIOS chip replacement.

Caleb

@allquixotic Ya me too, done it hundreds of times. I've also bricked them. This is different. I've never seen a half bricked BIOS before, but it will POST under certain conditions (no USB devices or GPT disks present). You can't go int the bios settings (freezes up after drawing half the screen).

Jimmy Hoffa

!!tell 12288612 poptart

ChatBot John Cavil

@allquixotic wikihow.com/Prepare-a-Pop-Tart

Jimmy Hoffa

wth!

allquixotic

7:03 PM

@JimmyHoffa You were doing !!tell <command> <msgid>, not !!tell <msgid> <command>.

Jimmy Hoffa

6 mins ago, by Jimmy Hoffa

!!tell 12288612 poptart

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa you edited it

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic and he responded with an error

allquixotic

@Caleb nice, that's very bizarre

Caleb

I can however make it boot up to various environments (mostly using UBCD and BIOS boot (not UEFI) to boot to a disk that I attach after POST).

Jimmy Hoffa

7:04 PM

Has he stopped responding to edits?

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa not sure. the last one to log onto the container is @Bob, so blame him ;-)

@JimmyHoffa not per the code, at least, no

Caleb

So I'm trying to figure out how to flash the BIOS from somehere other than the ASUS EZ Flash utility.

Jimmy Hoffa

!!tell 12290439 europe

ChatBot John Cavil

@JimmyHoffa Command europ does not exist. Did you mean: europe

@JimmyHoffa Don't be annoying, drop the @, nobody likes a double-ping.

Caleb

My normal Unix tool for this isn't working for some reason...

1

Q: What software or drivers do I need to shut off to use `flashrom`?

I have backed myself into a corner with a new system I'm building. The current BIOS is completely broken (it locks up after drawing half the screen if you enter settings during POST, locks up if any EUFI device is present in the system, etc). I am able to boot into a semi-functional linux environ...

drivers bios

allquixotic

7:04 PM

@Caleb from somewhere like GNU/Linux?

Jimmy Hoffa

!!tell 12290439 europe

ChatBot John Cavil

Caleb

The DOS based tool from ASUS throws a security error after selecting a file to flash.

ChatBot John Cavil

Jimmy Hoffa

...nevermind...

Caleb

7:05 PM

Ya, I feel like I've fallen into a bermuda triagle of flash roms.

Boris_yo

@Caleb How do you choose between BIOS and UEFI to boot?

allquixotic

@Caleb that's pretty impressive that the BIOS is in some kind of half-working state where it can do certain things but not others -- I really have no idea -- especially considering you tried a DOS-based flash and it failed, I'm quite puzzled

keep in mind however that modern BIOS/UEFI hybrid systems often have to reboot numerous times to complete a flash; they flash various different parts of the system between reboots

Caleb

@allquixotic Sure. Or anything else I can make it boot (which rules out windows, it has to be disks that I can add to the system after POST having built them on another machine)

allquixotic

from what I recall off the top of my head, the PCH flash on a modern architecture is a separate flash and boot from the UEFI flash

Caleb

I'm at a couple hundred.

allquixotic

7:07 PM

@Caleb yeah, but if the initial boot-flash-reboot-flash-reboot-flash-reboot-flash-reboot cycle was interrupted, it might not have finished

Caleb

In order to get a keyboard to work, I first have to turn it on with nothing attatched, then wait for the "no keyboard error", then plug in the keyboard and hit reset. Only then will it have a keyboard that I can even use for anythign.

allquixotic

on my ASUS P8Z77-V, one BIOS update (from Windows) results in about 5 to 6 automatic reboots before it even POSTs again

Caleb

@allquixotic Sure. So how do I make it get back to business?

allquixotic

I don't know, and I'm going out for a walk with my coworker, I'll be back in 15

I'm leaning towards "send it in for repair" though, honestly :/

Caleb

@allquixotic That's the board I've been finding most of my info about (seems to be popular/problematic) but mine is actually a M5A97 LE R2.0

@allquixotic That's not going to be easy. I took the parts overseas and getting it back for RMA or repair is going to be complicated/expensive.

Psycogeek

7:14 PM

@Boris_yo not to worry, just download Weather 2.5, and start a torrent to washington state, they always have a bit of rain to share.

Boris_yo

@Caleb Where do you live?

Psycogeek

@Caleb right next to the chipset cooler, and the black PCI-E16 slot, is a chip, that chip might be the bios chip, and it looks like it might be socketed. I am not saying that is the problem for sure, just something to see?

@Caleb What all do you have connected to the motherboard? Did you strip the motherboard down (yet) to basic required components for achiving post (not boot)? Like removing the disks for a second, to test?

Boris_yo

7:41 PM

@Psycogeek I want to prepare list of my house property for moving. Should I prepare it in Excel or Word? Does Excel print all its fields i.e rows and collumns?

Psycogeek

@Caleb Next to the SATA6 ports in the corner there are both (blue) jumpers on the board , and are the jumpers in the desired position?

Caleb

@Boris_yo Izmir, Turkey

@Psycogeek Yup. it's there. I've made sure it's seated.

Psycogeek

@Boris_yo I have used excell like stuff 2 times in my whole life. once to make a MPG chart, and once to make a weight and items to remember chart for my backpacking. Not the person to ask.

Boris_yo

@Caleb I heard that Turks are offensive people and have "hot" blood.

Caleb

@Psycogeek Yes, in fact it won't POST with much of anything attached (see above, no USB, no GPT disks, etc)

Psycogeek

7:46 PM

@Caleb Ok, but if it is an actual bios chip, and the bios is actually hosed, then getting another one sent should be easy.

Caleb

@Psycogeek The CMOS reset and Case intrution jumpers are in the right place, yes. And yes I've reset the CMOS settings (works because the clock clears)

Psycogeek

@Caleb I am still looking for how a person is suppsed to flip to the other bios. Some of these boards have a full backup bios hanging out. But i have never read anything usefull about reverting to it. I am thinking i dont have one ?

Boris_yo

@Psycogeek Dual-BIOS?

Psycogeek

@Caleb I saw that you had some things detached, I was trying to figure out Any Possible things that would do I/O because clues to your problem could possibly be an item that is locked up on I/O not sending or acknowleging. That could even include a keyboard .

Caleb

@Boris_yo Sadly, no.

@Psycogeek I've seen that on some Gigabyte boards, but I don't think this one has it.

@Psycogeek About the only thing I haven't pulled is the CPU/RAM/Video card.

0

Q: Unable to flash BIOS using Asus tools

I have a bizarrely borked ASUS board (M5A97 LE R2.0) that is stuck in a half way state between two BIOS versions. I cannot enter the BIOS settings page (the system locks up after drawing half of it). It will not POST if there are any USB devices or GPT partitioned disks attached. With some monkey...

bios flashing rom ubcd

Psycogeek

8:00 PM

@Caleb ok pull the video :-) Is there any other way to see ? Usually bioses either update or they dont, if the power went out, or you pulled a storage in the middle of flash, then its bricked and you get another one. soo any other possibility for the same problems , is worth exploring.

Pull the ram down to one stick item.

@Caleb Then back at the beginning, Why were you updating the bios to begin with ? To solve a problem? to fix a hardware or driver compatability? or just to update?

Caleb

@Psycogeek Because in the process of building the system it was obvious the thing was behaving erratically including unexplained instability and not liking some of my USB drives. The BIOS updates said they were to fix stability issues and for USB compatibility. Seemed relevant to me, so I tried flashing (from the in-bios ez-flash utility)

@Psycogeek No other way to see.... but trying anyway, stand by.

Hennes

I have seen dual BIOSon boards other than Gigabyte. For one on Intel boards (as in, Intel made motherboards, not boards for an Intel CPU) which has a full BIOS and an emergency 'you can boot this is you have a DOS floppy and then reflash' backup BIOS.

ponder my desktop. I never realised that option was there.

Psycogeek

@Caleb side topic, I was just reading about people installing linux on an asus with UEFI and all the newer intel stuff. He was hopping from distro to distro, none of them working, other than some CentOS. is there really that many incompatabilities, or does that guy just not know how to do linux?

@Caleb I mentiond the video because of this "the system locks up after drawing half of it" when i borked up my video communications from bad overclocking the redraw of even the simple UEFI is very slow and broken. But it always finishes.

Boris_yo

8:19 PM

Caleb

@Psycogeek He doesn't know what he's doing. Which is complicated by the fact that the more "automated" distros tend to be the most finicky with really new hardware. The more manual ones will actually be smoother sailing, have newer kernels/drivers, etc, but they require a little more experience to use.

I've just setup two ASUS laptops in the last week with EUFI and Intel componentry and had no issues at all.

@Psycogeek This isn't slow, it fills in the framework fast as lightening but dies when it gets to the data about boot order. That box is blank and the system locks up (kbd lights and mouse freeze, fans go to full, north bridge starts getting hot)

This board looks like it has a header for a second BIOS but there isn't a chip. I suspect the EVO or PRO versions might but as far as I know this one doesn't.

@Psycogeek Gives the beep code for no VGA. Did it a couple times to give it a chance to do anything its going to do.

No real progress, back to where we were. 1 ram stick also had no effect

Psycogeek

@Caleb that is as far as i get. the chipset heating must be a clue, but i have not had AMD cpu in quite a while, so i dont know what it even does anymore.

Caleb

8:36 PM

@Psycogeek I've seen that before on healthy systems where any BIOS related process or anything that gets hung up waiting for IO in a DOS or other environment without a modern kernel will cause the chipsets to run hot. There is something horribly inefficient about sitting in a single-threaded io-wait loop that is a non-issue once you get into a higher level environment.

It COULD be a relevant clue, but I'm not convinced it means anything.

brasofilo

Hi, the following Q is tagged as Windows, but has a Linux answer. I have an Apple solution (and I've already posted a comment pointing it out). Can it be retagged or it is good as it is?

4

Q: What are ways to figure out how old my computer is?

What are ways to figure out how old my computer is?

windows

Boris_yo

Psychotronic Warfare and The Wireless Society

►

Bob

@Caleb it's not an intrinsic property of a 'higher level environment' or a 'modern kernel'...

(but yes, older systems would use tight loops while newer ones issue HLT commands)

Boris_yo

If Amazon or other consumer goods chain had access to mind control, they would own all of market share :)

controlling = con & trolling

Jimmy Hoffa

> Spinlocks
For anything more complicated than trivial examples like those above, a more complete locking solution is needed. The most common locking primitive in the kernel is the spinlock, defined in include/asm/spinlock.h and include/linux/spinlock.h. The spinlock is a very simple single-holder lock. If a process attempts to acquire a spinlock and it is unavailable, the process will keep trying (spinning) until it can acquire the lock. This simplicity creates a small and fast lock. The basic use of the spinlock is:

That blocking-runs-cpu-hot affect you refer to is a clear case of a spinlock

linuxjournal.com/article/5833

(aka a shitlock that you should basically never use and has been largely replaced by modern hardware and software techniques years ago)

Hennes

8:43 PM

I would use 'busy-waiting'

Jimmy Hoffa

Occasionally at the high level idiots will still write spinlocks in like java or other such things but you have to be damn certain it's a super-short-lived lock to use one

Hennes

And just initialise a single core.

Bob

@JimmyHoffa there's this great little educational program about material sciences using some old Macromedia tech that I found on a school system a couple years back

it nicely ties up a whole core :P

Hennes

accessing the flesh chip. -> flesh -> flash

Jimmy Hoffa

@Bob haha yeah... people did things differently back in the day when they thought of their software running at a fixed clock and just structured it based on every cpu cycle being given to their process...

Bob

8:46 PM

@JimmyHoffa I was watching it run on my laptop. Total laptop power usage was several times higher :P

Hennes

@JimmyHoffa Back when you could turn off the screen and run a C64 at the same speed (cycle for cycle) as the disk drive (both had the same CPU).

Never mind the control lines. Just use those to get twice the bandwidth.

Bob

@jokerdino If it gets me better net? Not sure I would really mind...

@allquixotic D:

Caleb

@Psycogeek Case in point, a user struggling to install Archlinux w/ EUFI boot. The tools handle this fine, but Archlinux installs are a manual operation and if you don't know what you're doing, the extra steps to get the right EFI support loaded in that most people aren't doing (and aren't in most tutorials yet) can throw you off. Mind you the underlying software supports it all fine if you know what to do with it.

Bob

so, i kinda missed the beginning - how did you get to that state, @Caleb?

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