/dev/chat - 2014-04-23

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12:00 AM

So why don't you run for a mod?

How many times have you googled for something and either not found the A or found conflicting or wrong ones buried in a 500 page deep forum thread

no interest, we have enough mods, we need more ppl participating in the solving of A's and caring for the site by being active.

All long help threads should have a sticky globally-editable post at the top saying 'DEAR PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE: Here's what we've figured out so far ...'

@Gilles I have that in my office

I am willing to take my time to ask questions for them.

@Tim - where do you live?

12:07 AM

I believe not very far from where you live.

@Tim - you said that before, where abouts?

I don't have a fixed location. Will be gone soon

I came to Ithaca for some sad reason

@Tim - what line of work do you do then, is that why you're on the move?

I am not working

Yes, Ithaca is only 1-2 hours

12:08 AM

very sad.

You're out of work or not in Ithaca for work reasons

I live near Rochester

Even colder, huh

You get used to it

What was very sad?

I believe something unfair happened to me which forced me to leave Baltimore

I wasn't able to complain. So i haen't get over with it.

Well things hapened for some reason. I wish I could have been stronger.

Do you live in Ithaca then?

12:16 AM

yes

You're not working there though?

are you in school then?

Not working. Does that leave me only one option :)

There may be other options but I can only think of those

Yes, I am at Cornell.

@Gilles - do you care if I just add the code from shutdown for this Q?

2

Q: How does `shutdown -k` disable logins?

This is the -k option's documentation in man shutdown (at least on Ubuntu): -k Only send out the warning messages and disable logins, do not actually bring the system down. I initially assumed that this will use pam_nologin to lock out logins. However, I tested it out and do not se...

shutdown pam upstart

@Tim makes sense, being in Ithaca 8-). I kinda figured that if you weren't working. Did you attend a school in Balt.MD then?

12:19 AM

yes

JH or something else?

hehe. Given I asked so many stupid questions, will I make my schools lose their faces?

I never said you asked stupid Q's, far from it, the range is what I found off

If one can't find many to ask questions to in real, what will that mean then?

How many ppl would ask a Q about lstopo, binarizing a colored image and then okular and pdf

12:23 AM

That doesn't mean good to people around.

I trust gilles judgment on these things implicitly so when he suggested you were just generally inquisitive I chalked it up to just that

@Tim how do you mean?

If people around me find I asked all those questions, will they feel good?

@slm why would I care? yeah, it would improve your answer I suppose

@Tim If i understand you, you mean that if they knew you asked so many Q's they'd think you didn't know much?

@Gilles I ask only b/c the OP asked you to write up an A and I wanted to check first

@slm he did?

12:27 AM

@Gilles yeah about an hour ago wrt the link about the source

Ah, I see, he asked Giles, not me

I don't really see the value in adding that but wanted to ask you first

@Gilles I think Giles means you. :)

@Gilles - that makes sense why you hadn't responded, missed that

% wc -l TODO
1128 TODO

12:28 AM

it won't ping him if they don't type the right name

ha

that's the file containing a list of questions that I want to answer when I have time

I'll do it then

I figured you didn't care but I like to ask

@slm Not just that. :)

I'll let him know that we chatted about it too

I've thought of setting up a fake @sim account just to get the pings

You are a genius.

12:31 AM

I thought of renaming my account to Gil, and decided that the hard-to-read name was idiot-proofing: if you don't use completion to ping me, I probably don't care that much for your input

2

I know one at Math.SE, who changed his id from Didier Piau to Did

:)

@Tim So long as the Q's are not for the sake of asking, Q's are the first step to getting an A to a problem.

thanks

12:45 AM

I am not very worried about letting others around me know I don't know much. What I am more worried, if I let them know my existence at SE, is: some people don't have patience but are not happy that I turn to the internet. Some people don't like me to know more than them. Some don't like to know that I think what they told me is wrong.

Some don't understand why I have questions of so much variety and different levels, and worried if I am insane.

@slm ok; if you have time

@Tim We have standards for insanity on Stack Exchange. This guy qualifies. You wouldn't even register on the scale.

thanks. Gilles.

Sometimes, I find help and warm-heartedness on the internet that is rare in life, and sometimes though less often, vice versa.

1:17 AM

@Gilles please do!

1:48 AM

Grrr. I want to close 2 as a duplicate of 1 because the answer on 2 is unhelpful. But the answer on 2 has an upvote, the answer on 1 doesn't.

@Gilles there upvoted

@slm ah, thanks, but too late, I've just posted a near dupe of that answer with s/Ubuntu/CentOS/

@Gilles - yeah just saw that, should've waited, I was coming back, reading a bed time story

@slm oh man, bed time, I should really do this

yeah, I should have waited, but it's LATE

UV'd the dup A too

oh well

1:52 AM

thanks

2:51 AM

I'm feeling stupid reading this A.

3:18 AM

@Braiam d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net/photos/large/…

@Gilles You have a list of 1128 questions you want to answer when you find time... Wow. I think you may have crossed way past 'genius', through 'eccentric', right on by 'crazy', and headed deeply into 'lunatic'.

@Braiam wow...

There are two ways to feel stupid reading an answer... That is the bad way :-(

2 hours later…

5:09 AM

btw, in case you missed it, OpenSSL has officially been forked.

libressl.org

also: tedunangst.com/flak/post/origins-of-libressl

5:38 AM

@Gilles That's a good one. I've posted it here before.

6:13 AM

do someone see something egregiously wrong with these? askubuntu.com/a/453233/169736 askubuntu.com/a/451765/169736

o/ @StephaneChazelas long time not to see

6:38 AM

I'm inclined to vote to close? Anyone else?

0

Q: Do I compile Ubuntu Source code on Red Hat System?

If we install the Red Hat Syatem then do we able to compile the other distros of linux on the Red Hat server system, If yes then please provide the tutorials and links.

linux ubuntu rhel compiling

7 hours later…

1:53 PM

1

Q: NFSv4 permissions on AIX

I am attempting to use an NFSv4 mount across two systems that do not share UID/GIDs. This is for a system migration where the old environment used whatever UID/GIDs were available, and they now conflict on the new environment. I've given all the users new non-conflicting IDs on the new environm...

permissions nfs aix

we're going to give this question at least a few hours to a day to see if anyone on SU can answer it; if not, we're thinking of possibly migrating it to unix.SE. any objections from this side of the fence on the potential for migration?

@allquixotic That's fine with me, makes sense.

@slm thanks!

5 hours later…

7:25 PM

Is there a way to notify the user regarding continuous vandalism on his posts?

This is the user. unix.stackexchange.com/users/9178/symcbean

@Ramesh you mean suggested edits? he's already getting the notifications

@Giles, this is at least the 5th time, his post is targeted with some rayban sunglasses advertisement as the suggested edit.

@Ramesh yes, for some reason suggested edit spammers tend to focus on one post and keep spamming it

there's a rate limiting system in place, after some time their IP address gets throttled into oblivion, but then they move on

@Gilles, is there no way to reject suggested edits from anonymous users?

@Ramesh yes: click Reject, same as from registered users

7:37 PM

@Gilles, I mean system rejecting automatically.

@Ramesh it is already doing that behind the scenes. You only see the ones that make it through

@Gilles, oh ok. Must be a pro spammer I guess.

22

Q: What can I do when a post I've written receives a lot of spam edits?

I wrote an answer to a question that was a paragraph and a half long, and it's been receiving a lot of edits from anonymous users that do nothing but introduce spam. This has been going on for a couple of weeks now, I'm sick of seeing this junk in my global inbox, is there some way I can get it t...

support suggested-edits spam faq-proposed

25

A: Automatically reject suggested edits where edit summary is an email address

As Shog said, you're pretty spot on with your observations. In fact, we had not fully realized just how much of a problem anon spam suggested edits actually were until we got the new system in place. The good news is it's working, and it's working very well. Behold, 1800 things that didn't ann...

note that it's important to reject spam suggested edits as vandalism (that's how the spam filter learns)

@Giles, sure I will do it. I will probably make a note of the address next time when the suggested edit comes through.

7:54 PM

Wow, I actually learned something on SuperUser today...

66

A: Why are laptop screens sized the way they are?

Display sizes are determined primarily by how many displays will fit on one mother glass slab at the manufacturing plant. The manufacturing plant starts off with a single slab of glass, onto which the displays will be manufactured. Mother glass sizes are mostly standardized in the industry, and...

Normally, I expect to come away from Superuser stupider than when I went.

2

@Ramesh This is much of what I'm rejecting throughout the night. It comes in waves. There had been a lull of a few 1-2 weeks, but it's been trickling in now again. Just keep rejecting them, they'll stop.

@slm, sure. I will do it.

@derobert cool, yeah there are diamonds there, but you have to work to find them 8-)

superuser.com/questions/745220/… <--- we need to swipe that question. Its 7 because 1-6 were already used, but I have no idea why 6.

8:14 PM

@derobert my guess is that because the SLS author or the Slackware author picked 6

@Gilles That'd be a good guess. Definitely possible someone just liked the number 6. It could also be that earlier kernels only supported 6.

(Which would, I guess, mean Linus liked the number 6)

@derobert I don't think there was ever a limit at 7. It wouldn't have been 6: it's all powers of 2

Depends on where your limit comes from. E.g., struct vty *vtys[6]

given that people might dial in to a modem farm, I suspect the limit was significantly higher from the start

But early Linux surely didn't run on modem farms.

8:17 PM

mhh, no, they'd end up on ttyS on Linux

Yeah, that too :-P

Well, I can't find why 6 was chosen, but man, this is a long flamewar

git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/history/history.git/commit/…

... seems they were new in 0.12

So if there were 6, it might be Peter MacDonald

@derobert bingo! I think you have the answer

6 text + 2 left for X

> - Virtual terminals by Peter MacDonald (who was to do the SLS distribution).
>
> Before having X, this was a _big_ deal. The fact that Linux had virtual terminals with a good vt100 emulation actually made Linux stand out even among some of the big commercial unixes. The Linux console was just _so_ much more pleasant to use that it isn't even funny.

... so maybe X wasn't available yet

8:27 PM

@derobert yes, it wasn't there yet, I was thinking limit to 8 for backward compatibility + leave room for X

when did the max number of tty increase though?

at that time nobody worried about backward compatibility

video_memory = video_mem_term - video_mem_base;
NR_CONSOLES = video_memory / (video_num_lines * video_size_row);
if (NR_CONSOLES > MAX_CONSOLES)
NR_CONSOLES = MAX_CONSOLES;
if (!NR_CONSOLES)
NR_CONSOLES = 1;
video_memory /= NR_CONSOLES;

... need to find out where MAX_CONSOLES was defined.

Trying desperately to avoid cloning that repository, as its no doubt hug.

+#define MAX_CONSOLES 8

So there were a maximum of 8 consoles supported in Linux, at least if you had enough video memory.

+++ b/include/linux/tty.h
@@ -9,6 +9,12 @@
#ifndef _TTY_H
#define _TTY_H
+#define MAX_CONSOLES 8
+#define NR_SERIALS 2
+#define NR_PTYS 4
+
+extern int NR_CONSOLES;
+
#include <termios.h>

@derobert oh, I don't know, there were fewer drivers then

... doesn't look like any modem farms on that :-P

@Gilles That history repository has everything from 0.10 through 2.6.something

ah, I thought it stopped earlier. Ok, that must be huge.

The actual 0.12 tree is tiny. I feel as if I could spend a weeknight and read it...

8:33 PM

... and he was never seen again ...

@Gilles ?

It's pretty small!

that's what she said!

sorry, wrong room

I meant: famous last words

LOL

That history tree goes from 0.10, which is apparently the oldest anyone had, through 2.6.33-rc5.

@derobert what, Linus's backups failed?

I guess there weren't many FTP servers then

Yeah :-P

And, btw, the max of 8 doesn't appear to come from anything fundamentally a binary power. Rather:

static struct {
...
} vc_cons [MAX_CONSOLES];

so it's only 8 because the guy who wrote it likes 8

8:39 PM

what were the device minor numbers then?

Now ttyN is on 4, N

which should make the limit 2^N-1, not 2^N

Yeah. But they're numbered starting from 1, so the max is 2^N

though there is the control device on 0

no, they start at 0. tty0 is “the current tty” (also called console)

yeah, I wonder if that was one of the MAX_CONSOLES

@derobert you know about dpkg?

in which case, there were 8 total, 1 used by "current"... Which means you could have tty1 .. tty7.

So then X took one, leaving tty1 .. tty6

Would be a nice story, if it turns out to be true.

8:42 PM

@derobert no, “current” wouldn't be in that array

@Braiam Yes. It lacks super cow powers.

@derobert oh well, I'm not sure how to make Radu listen reason here, could you give me a hand?

@Gilles But then it's probably not the device number problem, as you'd have tty1 .. tty8, as there are 8 members of that array.

I don't know, I haven't spent the evening. And possibly shouldn't, considering your warning.

Dire warning, even.

@Braiam I'd try upgrading the other package first, instead of removing it. At least if there is an upgrade in the new Ubuntu (as opposed to it being removed). If that's circular, then I guess remove would be fine, as would --force-overwrite

@Braiam packages.u.com tells me its in trusty, so I'd see if I couldn't upgrade it first. But --remove is mostly harmless, provided it doesn't get you into another dependency hellhole. Which it may well.

As for mixed packages, you can always clean that up after getting out of the dependency war. And, hopefully, the trusty packages have higher version numbers.

@derobert yeah, that's why I suggest remove -> downgrade -> reinstall in that order

I wouldn't try downgrade. That's usually the least-tested path.

8:51 PM

but, users don't remove ppa's when they upgrade their system

doesn't Ubuntu have a script that does upgrades, instead of telling users to use apt-get/aptitude/etc. directly?

if so, the obvious fix is for that script to check for enabled PPAs and yell

@derobert it deactivates PPA's but won't remove the packages installed :(

Well, I can understand that. That might seriously break the system.

Seems like whoever made the gnome backport PPA needs to figure out how to get upgrades to work.

All I know about Ubuntu upgrades is from my brother, who reports they don't work. Compared to Debian upgrades, which are mostly painless.

I've done an LTS -> LTS server upgrade with Ubuntu before, and it wasn't that bad.

upgrades aren't bad, the real evil are PPA's managers and their stupid way to package the applications

academia seems to have done something weird to their site

9:03 PM

@FaheemMitha academia graduated. It happens to everyone. Even Mike.

@Gilles You mean it stopped becoming a beta site? And who is Mike?

The font seems to have become paler/lighter. Weird.

@FaheemMitha yes, and phdcomics.com

@FaheemMitha That's just your eyesight going.

(honestly, I have no idea, I don't visit that site.)

@derobert Now, now. That's not nice.

@FaheemMitha It's going around the channel tonight. Gilles got in a blow earlier. Can't say I didn't leave myself open for it, though.

9:09 PM

@derobert What is?

If you missed it, I'm not pointing it out :-P

@derobert yes, I guessed I missed it. Some kind of electronically transmitted virus?

Well, I wouldn't call it a virus. But maybe we can start a joke feud that'll last centuries?

@derobert Maybe.

I wonder how LCD displays last so long. My left hand screen was purchased in 2004.

Of course, now that I said that, it will probably blow out tonight.

I forget when my pair is from, they're pretty old too. But there aren't any moving parts in them.

9:16 PM

wow, you're on a roll tonight

@Gilles #@!*@#(*, I'd better go home before I say anything else silly.

@Gilles who is?

@derobert shouldn't they burn out eventually? light bulbs only last a few months

@FaheemMitha LCDs have fluorescent (older ones) or LED (newer ones) backlights. Those last a fair bit longer than a few months.

@derobert Apparently so.

It's a pretty nice Sony screen. I'll miss it when it's gone.

I'll probably wind up upgrading higher-pixel-count displays before they die. Hopefully.

May the curse of Full HD be broken.

9:21 PM

@derobert or you can buy the cheapest in the corner shop after they die ;)

@derobert What curse?

@FaheemMitha Try to find a monitor in a size other than "Full HD" (1920 x 1080)

Back in the early 2000s, 1600x1200 LCDs were becoming cheap. Then HDTV happened, and we've been stuck on 1920x1080 forever.

My tablet has a smaller screen with far more pixels than any monitor I can buy for a reasonable price....

I still have a 15"

@derobert My other monitor was bought in 2008. So, no recent shopping for me.

@derobert and that is a bad thing?

Yes. More pixels would be great.

9:24 PM

@derobert ok.

problem is the price

i notice those people who build computers seem to go out of business a lot. maybe not a good business to be in.

Yeah. But it seems that once everything was "Full HD", no one competed on bringing out higher resolution displays....

a decent monitor costs you 8 to 10 times the minimum wage

@Braiam monthly wage?

9:28 PM

Hourly, here at least. But it'll be 1920x1080...

@FaheemMitha yup

@Braiam Ugh

@derobert 10 times minimum US hourly wage is like $100.

Well, a little less, depending on which state you're in. But that's what cheap (but still reasonable) monitors cost. As long as you don't want a pixel more than 1920x1080.

> 6,320 Dominican pesos ($167) per month in the FTZs and between 6,880 pesos and 11,292 pesos outside the FTZs, depending upon the size of the company; 5,117 pesos ($130) per month for the public sector; 234 pesos a day for farm workers who are covered by minimum wage regulations based on a 10-hour day, with the exception of sugarcane workers who received 129 pesos ($3.19) based on an eight-hour workday.

wikipedia

9:49 PM

@Braiam Sounds like India. Nasty.

@derobert how would you like to live on $167 per month?

10:15 PM

@FaheemMitha Sounds pretty shitty.

@derobert It is. Life in the third world.

Yep. Easiest solution is to let more of them move here (and Western Europe, etc.)

You get almost an order of magnitude more doing unskilled labor here.

@derobert I'm sure they'd like to. But there are these things called immigration restrictions.

Actually, countries like the US have remarkably hostile restrictions. Even Western Europe is better.

Yep. But you're complaining to the wrong person about that. I agree with Bryan Caplan :-P

@derobert just to be clear, Caplan is against immigration restrictions, right? So, why am I complaining to the wrong person?

Actually, I'm not complaining. Just observing.

10:26 PM

Yep. The few-word summary of Caplan's position is "open borders".

@derobert ok

There are definitely two sides to that debate.

sorry, i meant to say that imo both sides have valid points

More than two sides, and yes, open borders is a pretty extreme position. One which even he isn't entirely sure of.

But there is a middle ground where we let in a lot more people. Or do all kinds of things to alleviate some of the downsides.

@derobert Agreed, there are lots of different positions, not just two sides

@derobert right now, the immigration restrictions in the US are pretty strange as far as I can tell. On the one hand, illegal immigration from the south is pretty easy.

on the other hand, highly qualified people can't get in easily.

the former presumably because they want cheap labor

"Strange" is a kind way of putting it.

the latter because it would threaten professional jobs

@derobert I'm surprised you know about it. Since it presumably does not affect you.

directly, at least

10:34 PM

Not directly, no.

Not sure when I first became interested in it, a while ago. And you run into it all the time if you follow any economics stuff (actual economics, not just the current Dow), as I suspect if you asked any economist their list of our 10 stupidest (or, at least, wealth-reducing) policies, immigration wouldn't be #1, but it'd be on there.

@derobert right. well, it is a politically fraught issue. though I've not personally run into anybody who has a problem with easing up on immigration.

I don't really follow economics stuff

11:31 PM

The policy maker is not stupid, but evil

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