Root Access

Journeyman Geek

12:06 AM

@GrahamWager windows store apps

superuser.com/questions/545329/… thats a pretty fun question

Oliver Salzburg

12:51 AM

@JourneymanGeek What the vote?

Tom Wijsman

1:32 AM

Hmm...

Does the new duplicate vote system allow one to close a question as a dupe of a question by the same user?

Not sure if anyone brought that up as an argument / bug yet, but I'd assume that might be an unintended side effect of introducing the "at least an upvoted / accepted answer" rule.

Bob

@TomWijsman ...new system?

o.O

Tom Wijsman

Yes, go check it out!

Bob

Huh. 0 questions on SU. Something broke.

Tom Wijsman

@Bob Status: WORKSFORME

Journeyman Geek

1:50 AM

@OliverSalzburg: o0

@OliverSalzburg: I wonder if it got linked somewhere big

Oliver Salzburg

@JourneymanGeek Well... SO :D

Journeyman Geek

lol

SU just went blank foir me too @Bob @TomWijsman

0

Q: SU questions page appears to be oddly empty

I think the picture says it all. Either there are no longer any questions to be asked about computers (nooooooooooooo!) or the front page is totally empty. Running the current release version of firefox (18.0.1) on Windows 8 professional.

bug

Hennes

@ShadowHero If you want 6 monitors then you probably end up with multiple cards or an AMD card designed for eyefinity and 6 display port monitors (or 6 displayport to DVI converters).

@ShadowHero I guess you can game on those, but they are not just gaming cards

Oliver Salzburg

@JourneymanGeek WorksForMe

Journeyman Geek

@OliverSalzburg: seems to be an intermittant issue

Oliver Salzburg

1:59 AM

Lots of updates today

Must be related ;D

Bob

@JourneymanGeek yea, fine on the last refresh

o.O

> VT-x features locked or unavailable in MSR.

Journeyman Geek

MSR?

Bob

dunno

but I don't remember disabling VT-x

it's been a while since I ran any VMs on this computer though

sigh gotta restart now

longest uptime yet? :P

let's see.. almost a full month up. nice. that was after power issues were solved :P

Journeyman Geek

hm

the main desktop goes to sleep when I'm not using it

this is good, other than it being my torrent rig

Bob

@JourneymanGeek uTorrent prevents sleep :\

Journeyman Geek

2:22 AM

yeah

Its a good excuse to set up torrent on something a lot more power efficient

and I need to move off utorrent

they are annoying me with how they are losing the whole point of utorrent ;p

Journeyman Geek

2:43 AM

tested.com/tech/pcs/… I do keep raving about these guys (a tech and geekery site run by the mythbusters), but if anyone EVER asks about cases, I'm going to cite these guys ;p

Bob

3:06 AM

@JourneymanGeek use an older version?

3.x sucks

I'm staying away from Vuze - Java.

@JourneymanGeek O.O

they.. do that?

Hennes

Actually, vuze is not bad because of Java. It is just resource hungry

Now java in browsers and click on everything users.....*shudder*

Bob

@Hennes I just avoid Java-based programs in general. Still haven't installed it on my laptop.

Hennes

I need it for some things (Such as DRAC access)

Bob

I'm not too impressed with how Oracle has handled security flaws recently...

Hennes

But I got it disabled in firefox. Ditto for acrobat reader and its weekly bugs

Journeyman Geek

3:12 AM

@Bob: most of the writing is by their minions but yeah, they occationally do write articles

Ariane

3:25 AM

Hello there! I've somehow destroyed my Modern UI apps and ability to install them, and I'd like some help in troubleshooting. I think it's related to moving and symlinking my ProgramData folder, but I'm not sure and I don't know how to fix it.

Bob

@Ariane ...at this point, maybe just give up, back up your data and reinstall?

:S

Ariane

Why?

Journeyman Geek

XD

that's worth a question on the main site, methinks

Ariane

Windows fixed Adobe programs by itself when I opened Word and it fixed the Adobe Acrobat plugin for it, fixing the entire suite by itself. Sounds like a good clue. They had the same problem, for some reason.

It did "Please wait while Windows configures Adobe Acrobat X..."

I wish I knew what it did.

Bob

@Ariane repair installation?

Ariane

3:30 AM

Weren't you afraid of that yesterday?

Besides, I'm a bit fearful it would destroy my effort-made symlinks :c

Ah, also, Windows Store says it's unable to install apps.

0x80070005 is the error code

Bob

@Ariane I meant, I think the 'configure' thing was a repair installation of Acrobat

(not 'refresh' or 'repair' of Windows itself)

Ariane

Ah yes. Sounded like this

Bob

I'll be back in a couple of hours

Ariane

But strangge how Windows fixed that whilst reinstalling Creative Suite entirely didn't. :p

An, uhm, all right. Bye!

Bob

5:17 AM

@Ariane back :P

Ariane

Hi.

Bob

@Ariane Which CS is this? IIRC, CS5.5 was the first to include Acrobat

ah, wait. never mind.

I was thinking about Audition

Ariane

CS6. o:

Uhm, as far as I know, Master Collection's been integrating Audition for a while.

Bob

Nah, only since 5.5...

Ariane

Really?

Strange.

Bob

5:19 AM

The previous one was Soundbooth

> Adobe also has a more powerful program called Adobe Audition, which replaced Soundbooth as of Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium.

Soundbooth

Adobe Soundbooth was a digital audio editor by Adobe Systems Incorporated for Windows XP, Windows Vista, 7 and Mac OS X. Adobe has described it as being "in the spirit of SoundEdit 16 and Cool Edit 2000". Adobe also has a more powerful program called Adobe Audition, which replaced Soundbooth as of Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium. Soundbooth, discontinued in 2011, was aimed at creative professionals who do not specialize in audio or people who need a simple editing program and do not require the full features of Adobe Audition. Due to Intel-specific code, Adobe stated that the...

Journeyman Geek

audition's in CS2 ;p

Ariane

No idea. The first I installed was CS5.5, and the only old versions of CS I saw are CS3 at school, and at school, they only buy Web Premium.

Journeyman Geek

XD

You didn't peek at the leaked CS2?

Ariane

I didn't.

Journeyman Geek

and ugh. I need to train my sister in law, very politely, in the way we use computers around here

/me had to clean up 3-4 toolbars ><

HackToHell

5:22 AM

lol

I revoked Admin permissions to my dad's account after he started installing crapware :P

Ariane

Around here? "Like conscious people"?

Journeyman Geek

@HackToHell: very simple rule here. They ask me to install stuff

they tell me if anything is off ;p

Ariane

gosh, are they all so awful? Even my mother can manage her PC in a basic manner without making it spew out smoke.

Oh wait. My mother is a secretary.

Bob

@JourneymanGeek That's Audition 3.0

Ariane

Audition 3.0? Ouch.

Journeyman Geek

5:27 AM

@Ariane: took a few.. minor virus attacks to get folk to listen

by which I mean the entire system was hosed ;p

Ariane

Lol

Bob

@HackToHell Admin permissions are not necessary to nuke the user profile...

Ariane

Curiously, the only one in my family who managed to destroy a computer is my aunt, who only ever does Facebook and email.

I fixed my Windows Store problem, but only partly

Bob

HackToHell

@Bob I do not care about him installing crappy tollbars in his profile, there are some crapware that installs shit to all users and runs background services

Bob

5:28 AM

@JourneymanGeek Did it look something like this?

@Ariane o.O

always take a stable system image :P

Ariane

I'm planning to do so once I get my system running stably to begin with. :p

Bob

I'm strongly considering Creative Cloud

unfortunately, there are some things I really need Adobe products for... GIMP is failing me :\

Ariane

It's a very advantageous option IMO, compared to the more-expensive-than-the-PC-running-it software purchase package.

Siiigh.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: not yet. I didn't consider this ;p

I'm too used to everything running perfectly. Maybe some chaos is good

Ariane

Hey uhm. I accidentally created a workgroup when installing Windows 8, and have since deleted it, but "Workgroups" still shows up to the left in Explorer. Is there a way to make it go away?

Journeyman Geek

5:45 AM

workgroup or homegroup?

Ariane

uhm

Homegroup. Sorry. Live translation service in my head is imperfect at late hours.

Mmmh.

Come to think of it, maybe the fact I changed my license key has something to do with this windows store issue.

Journeyman Geek

6:02 AM

hmm

could you try creating a new account and seeing if that works?

Ariane

Well uhm

I could, but I'm not sure how it would deal with the issue in the long term, since there's the Microsoft account portion too.

Journeyman Geek

well it would rule out that its an issue with the OS?

Ariane

Mmmh. I guess!

It works on the dummy account.

I'll try to symlink that user folder as well, so I'll see if that's the problem.

This file name is too long for the destination. Possible cause?

@Journey

Journeyman Geek

6:20 AM

well. its too long ;p

windows has a limit

Ariane

Windows obviously created this file itself. And why is it too long for D: if it's not too long for C:?

You're busy @Journey ?

Journeyman Geek

not really ;p

Ariane

Then uhm. Help would be much appreciated.

Journeyman Geek

its just a really common and easy to look up error ;p

and I don't really know much about symlinks

Ariane

Hence why I've been looking for 5 minutes without results?

Journeyman Geek

6:26 AM

hmm

are you copying files?

with explorer?

6

Q: How to prevent long file name error copying from an external drive?

I have an external hard drive with many files (800 GB). I want to copy the entire contents of the external hard drive to my local drive. get many errors about long file name or long file path. Renaming is also not possible because of number of errors. What can I do about this issue?

windows-7 file windows-server-2008 copy long-filenames

Ariane

Moving.

Thanks a lot.

By the way, don't underestimate my non-ability to search. :p

Journeyman Geek

lol

give a woman a fish.... ;p

also I remember this cause for some ****ing reason, spammers LOVE this sorta question

Ariane

?

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: oh that specific question attracts a certain type of spam answer. When you start flagging, you'll notice these ;p

Ariane

"RTFM"?

Anyway, @Journey both good and bad news. Bad: Robocopy or not, it doesn't work. Good: This has made me identify that symlinking the user folder is the issue

Journeyman Geek

6:36 AM

^^

not really RTFM

its learning 'how' to find answers ;p

Ariane

But it's much more fun for everyone to ask. o: I personally always love to be asked a question to which I know the answer and have the opportunity to help. And I hate and am bad at searching.

Reminds me of my father in a bad way. "Dad, what does this mean?" - "Look in the dictionary when we get home." - "Just tell me if you know it, you &&$%."

Sathya

close as dupe has got a makeover & a bad hindrance.

2

Q: Stupid changes to “close as duplicate”

What in blazes is going on here? Now one can only VTC as duplicate of questions that have accepted answers? What if there have been a rash of Qs that are duplicates, with people possibly being driven to post the same thing repeatedly precisely because there has been no accepted solution yet? Als...

discussion ranting

Bob

6:51 AM

@JourneymanGeek at some point, Long Path Tool's website was hacked (malware downloads, browser exploits) and links were spammed everywhere

Journeyman Geek

yeah that

Bob

@Ariane it's possible to rename a folder higher up the path, which can make the total path length of some deeper files too long...

@JourneymanGeek even now, their website looks.. bad..

I'll stick with Unlocker

Ariane

Hey uhm

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: yeah, but using the site helps as a starting point. If its worth asking there, someone else can find it too ;p

Ariane

Would something like robocopy "source" "destination" /copyall make SURE the same permission settings are passed over to the new folder?

I guess.

Journeyman Geek

6:59 AM

hmm

I wonder if steam mover might work for this

traynier.com/software/steammover

Bob

heh. I've given up on command line copying

cp/copy/xcopy/robocopy/etc..

Journeyman Geek

lol

Bob

I just use LINQPad now :\

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: part of my semi-recent time of being entirely on linux ;p

Bob

same for file renaming

Journeyman Geek

7:00 AM

I am a lot more comfortable on a nice command line

Bob

shell scripts are just.. too complicated at times

LINQPad + C# = there, done!

Journeyman Geek

lol

rigghht

Bob

no need to worry about weird characters and escaping in file names

that always trips me up :\

Journeyman Geek

eheh

you do code right?

(cause I suspect I'm the only one here who just can't ;p)

Ariane

Wait

You handle PC hardware and complicated stuff

Bob

7:03 AM

@JourneymanGeek yes -_-

Ariane

But not any code?

Journeyman Geek

nope ;p

Well, a little

Bob

yea, our resident geek does everything but programming

Journeyman Geek

;p

well, very basic python these days ;p

Ariane

That sounds like saying you can drive 5 types of military and civilian planes but can,t drive a car. xD

Bob

7:04 AM

eh, file copying/renaming in Python is good too :P

I've used Python for all my scraping needs, mostly cause I never bothered to learn how in .NET, and Windows doesn't have wget/curl (also, I don't know bash)

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: oh, I can tell someone how to handle a problem

Ariane

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310316
Would this affect cmd, @Bob ? I need to use robocopy, not Explorer, to copy my files, because of the super long file names.

Journeyman Geek

but usually I end up throwing together something with bash ;p

@Bob: dude, get GOW

@Bob: after a while, bash feels a LOT like throwing together bat scripts

just saner

also the whole idea of stringing together tools

@Ariane: superuser.com/questions/485800/… is a perfect example

Ariane

Perfect example of confusing stuff? I agree.

Journeyman Geek

lol

I picked a set of tools to do the job

it worked perfectly, but actually coding it would be faster

Ariane

7:09 AM

?

Bob

@JourneymanGeek I never got over the loop-with-square-brackets-and-arguments :P

@JourneymanGeek eh. you can string together tools while passing around strings (and worrying about escaping, etc.) or use a full-fledged programming library

Journeyman Geek

so I can tell you "Oh, to solve the problem all you need to do is 'select the letters you want to count, then put them in order, then use a duplicate counting tool to count them. A more elegant way would be to have a counter for each letter you're counting, then check if each letter is the one you want, add it to the matching counter, then output the totals'

Bob

matter of preference, really

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: thing is though, in both cases, there's always things that need escaping ;p

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Hmm?

Journeyman Geek

7:11 AM

backslashes in code for example

I can't remember what i've had to escape in the past. I have done some PRETTY gnarly stuff

Bob

@JourneymanGeek uh, no? :P

Journeyman Geek

;p

Bob

except in string literals

Journeyman Geek

I also think a good part of the issue is I've never really needed to code yet

Bob

but then, a lot of languages have some way of specifying 'don't escape anything in this literal'

Journeyman Geek

7:12 AM

hardware I have a passion for. A lot of the skills I picked up from stuff I've done in the past.

Coding, hasn't been needed yet ;p

Bob

for example, C#: normally, "C:\\Program Files\\etc"

or, @"C:\Program Files\etc"

the @ symbol

Journeyman Geek

I do, however, know how to use tar to an extent

Bob

Python does the same with r

11

A: In Python, what does preceding a string literal with "r" mean?

The r means that the string is to be treated as a raw string, which means all escape codes will be ignored. For an example: '\n' will be treated as a newline character, while r'\n' will be treated as the characters \ followed by n. When an 'r' or 'R' prefix is present, a character followi...

Journeyman Geek

I don't know what's worse--the fact that after 15 years of using tar I still can't keep the flags straight, or that after 15 years of technological advancement I'm still mucking with tar flags that were 15 years old when I started.

Bob

@JourneymanGeek tar -xzf filename? I think

for extracting gzipped or something

Ariane

7:13 AM

...

Journeyman Geek

-xf would do

Ariane

cmd tells me I need audit management rights.

Journeyman Geek

o0

Bob

o.O

Ariane

I go and add myself total control in the audit tab and I get a ton of error messages

Journeyman Geek

7:15 AM

I think that's window's way of saying 'you're going too far down the rabbit hole'

Bob

...remind me what you're doing?

Ariane

robocopy c:\Users\Dummyadmin d:\Users\Dummyadmin /e /copyall

Bob

uh.

how about you grab psexec and elevate a command prompt to SYSTEM?

just to be sure, y'know

psexec -s -i cmd.exe

technet.microsoft.com/en-au/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx

Ariane

So uhm

1. Install that thingie
2. Run cmd as administrator
3. type in this command

?

Bob

yes

that should open a new command prompt

running as the SYSTEM user

Journeyman Geek

7:19 AM

system > administator

Bob

...then try robocopy from there?

@JourneymanGeek SYSTEM == root

well, as close as possible

Journeyman Geek

kinda

Ariane

psexec is not recognised.

Should I have installed all of the .exe things in that thing?

Bob

@Ariane you just navigate to the directory it's sitting in

Ariane

Oh.

Bob

7:23 AM

and run the psexec.exe program (from the command prompt)

there's no installation

though there is a ELUA acceptance dialog (I think it saves that in the registry, so you only get asked once)

Ariane

It's working.

uhm

The file's name cannot be resolved by the system.

Technical problem.

There's an infinite loop in that thing.

Bob

LOL

it's following the symlink

add the /sl flag

Ariane

There... Is still no symlink on this folder.

Bob

(copies links instead of the target)

Application Data is symlinked to AppData for backwards compatibility

Ariane

Ah.

Technical problem.

I try to delete the partially finished folder

Bob

7:27 AM

Hm.. it's actually a Junction

Ariane

Can't delete, and the reason is: the folder is not empty.

Bob

not a symlink

Ariane

ah

Bob

how are you trying to delete?

Ariane

now it says I need an authorisation from System to delete it

Delete key.

Bob

7:27 AM

oh

wait what

ah yea

Ariane

If I need authorisation from System to delete this, haven't I made the permission problem worse?

Bob

those special junctions are supposed to be owned by system

Ariane

Okay. o:

Bob

though they normally inherit full control permissions for other users from the user profile folder

you would need to apply permissions to the parent folder

but yea

Ariane

The user profile folder is what I'm copying.

Bob

7:29 AM

you can remove it with rmdir /s from the system command prompt

(warning: that removes all subfolders/files too)

Ariane

Eeeeh. Okay.

....

It follows the junction TOO.

This is a freaking nightmae

I am NOT having fun. T_T

2 in the morning and I'm fighting against f'cking black window.

Ariane

7:47 AM

@Bob when you're here, please tell me why this doesn't work and gives me syntax errors and can't be found errors.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverGP/thread/bb54e51e-4a3a-40d7-8007-69df53520535

`takeown /R /A /F C:\Users\%1 /D Y > C:\%1.txt
icacls C:\Users\%1\*.* /T /C /inheritance:e > C:\%1.txt
icacls C:\Users\%1 /setowner %1 /T /C > C:\%1.txt`

@Bob and also how to delete that invincible folder, since cmd, run with SYSTEM or not, searches for an infinite loop folder path with rmdir /s as well.

I'll be goimg to bed

Bob

@Ariane uhh.. WUT

ok. try Unlocker?

(run as system)

heck, boot live linux and delete from there

though, don't try copying with it - IIRC, linux ignores ntfs permissions (not sure if it'll copy them)

@Ariane % refers to the first parameter passed into a batch script

also, don't forget the quotes around paths with spaces

@Ariane rmdir should not follow junctions

likely, Robocopy created a massive number of application data subfolders

that now have to be deleted

HackToHell

9:42 AM

Sathya

10:07 AM

wut the wut

213

Q: My kids yell too much

My kids (4 and 5) yell a lot when playing games on computer. I found an effective cure for this. I ssh into game computer and do: chvt 3; sleep 15; chvt 7 when I hear loud noises. This will turn off screen for 15 seconds on linux. I've told them that computer don't like loud noises. They to...

linux audio shell c++ c

Tom Wijsman

Spotted that yesterday too, a typical SO migration. :D

> It was migrated to SuperUser. Not sure how sysadmins and audio are related.

Uh oh, he calls us sysadmins.

Ah, Journey pointed him at that.

Sathya

yep

slhck

@JourneymanGeek Appreciate your flags for the link only posts, but in the first instance we can't do anything more than post the boilerplate comment asking for more explanation.

Ivo Flipse

darn forgot the referrer link on HN AGAIN

3

Sathya

10:36 AM

@IvoFlipse lol

Ivo Flipse

Also, I wish I had a solution like that for my cousins

Perhaps I could make a RPi solution for it

I bet it would be a huge success

if (noise_children > acceptable_threshold):
    switch_tv_input_channel(timer=15)

Bob

@IvoFlipse attach a relay to the antenna cable and GPIO?

you could even attach it at a point where there is some reception, but it's crappy, then tell them loud noises disrupt the signal :P

slhck

@Sathya Although I have to say, the title now sounds really like your everyday SU question :P

Bob

the only problem is, it appears that you can't directly attach coil relays to the GPIO

Sathya

@slhck yeah, well I got like 50+ votes after coming to Super User - that ought to be enough ;P

Bob

10:50 AM

a low drive current solid state relay should work

slhck

@Sathya I'm still a little concerned it even got here although it was tagged with C++.

Sathya

@slhck yeah.

Bob

@slhck I get the feeling a lot of SO questions get random/unnecessary programming language tags

slhck

@Bob Well, the OP asked how to do it in C++

Bob

> Ideally the implementation would be a shell script or C/C++.

that's rather broad. "I want to do this. ideally in a shell script or C++"

at least he had a starting point

eh. small note at the end never really works well

slhck

10:55 AM

:D

Journeyman Geek

11:05 AM

I wonder if this is an xy problem ;p
Kids are kids

Bob

slhck

Ah, gotta love it when they fix something and break it when they improve it.

Oliver Salzburg

12:01 PM

@Sathya That's pretty much exactly how I reacted :D

Sathya

12:19 PM

@Sathya - why did you changed my language preference in the question? This is different question now. I needed info on something that I will understand and can maintain. — Leonid Volnitsky 14 mins ago

lol. Just edited the title & he says it's a different question

user88311

12:42 PM

@Hennes I should have a psu to test with tomorrow or monday, if this works, hooray our computers will work right again

@Bob that picture sums up so much in such a simple action

Oliver Salzburg

12:58 PM

This is what my browser looks like after trying to solve an AngularJS problem :P

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