/dev/chat

@FaheemMitha yep

@FaheemMitha ye[

@FaheemMitha nope

@FaheemMitha yep

@Braiam How do you know?

Hmm, talked 7 hrs ago. Maybe at an anime-con.

@FaheemMitha today, derobert isn't around at these hours

@Braiam Oh? On a regular basis?

12:33 AM

@Braiam You should be a data scientist. Unless you already are.

@FaheemMitha nah, the profile page in chat has that funtion

@Braiam Ok

grub2 uses sh to interpret their scripts right?

12:58 AM

@Braiam grub-install for example has #! /bin/sh at the top, so yes.

Tyler Maginnis

R

Can someone reccomend a Linux VPS?

Q: RAIDing with LVM vs MDRAID - pros and cons?

1:15 AM

@TylerMaginnis You'll have to be more specific. Are you talking about a hosting services, or do you what suggestions/opinions about what kind of VPS to use?

Why does mime-types exist and not mime?

That should have been "you what" -> "you want"

@derobert you never did answer this:

3

In his answer to the question "mixed raid types", HBruijn suggests using LVM to implement RAID vs the more standard MDRAID. After a little investigation, it seems LVM also supports RAID functionality. In the past, I have used LVM on top of MDRAID, and was not aware till now that LVM also suppor...

@FaheemMitha mime of what?

@Braiam just MIME

MIME

MIME (Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions) is an extension of the original Internet e-mail protocol that lets people use the protocol to exchange different kinds of data file on the Internet: audio, video, images, application programs, and other kinds, as well as the ASCII text handled in the original protocol, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). In 1991, Nathan Borenstein of Bellcore proposed to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that the format of email messages be extended so that email programs could recognize and handle kinds of data other than ASCII text. As a result,...

@FaheemMitha why do we need a tag for a mail (extension) protocol?

Well, there is already a mime-type. Am I missing something?

Oh, i see, the term mime is being overloaded here. yuck

Internet media type

An Internet media type is a standard identifier used on the Internet to indicate the type of data that a file contains. Common uses include the following: email clients use them to identify attachment files, web browsers use them to determine how to display or output files that are not in HTML format, search engines use them to classify data files on the web. A media type is composed of a type, a subtype, and zero or more optional parameters. As an example, an HTML file might be designated text/html; charset=UTF-8. In this example text is the type, html is the subtype, and charset=UTF-8 is ...

content-types seems like a better name, really. mime-types is a bit misleading

1:36 AM

@FaheemMitha exactly, why another tag for the same thing? what mime-types doesn't cover that mime does?

@Braiam Naming confusion on my part.

Never mind.

3:08 AM

md5 : active raid5 sda1[4] sdb1[1] sdc1[2] sdd1[3]
      5860147200 blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/3] [_UUU]
      [>....................]  recovery =  0.5% (9876160/1953382400) finish=260.5min speed=124306K/sec
      bitmap: 15/15 pages [60KB], 65536KB chunk

finally....

Lucio

3:18 AM

hi guys!

@casey nice output

If a script has apt-get install <package-list> would it be awesome to run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade before or are there drawbacks which would make user don't like that?

@Lucio I would consider it bad form for a script to update and (especially for) upgrade

assuming we are considering third party scripts that are installing / setting up packages

Seth

3:36 AM

yeah, don't run upgrade, that isn't a good idea.

Depending on what you're installing you might have to run update, but otherwise it's probably best to not do anything you don't have to.

What casy and Seth said.

3:59 AM

it would be best to just try and install what you need. Running an update might sound good, but it isn't guaranteed to do what you need. Its best to handle the error from the upgrade and prompt the user to update his apt-sources, and potentially to add new ones if needed.

Automated updates are usually fairly harmless. Automated installs are a really bad idea.

@FaheemMitha that depends. automated installs in a curated environment by a sysadmin are good things, but others tend not to be

4:19 AM

@casey In special cases, if you know exactly what you know what is going to happen, it's Ok, but that is not the common case.

Lucio

4:31 AM

@casey yep, that was the case

@casey that sounds like the right way

it is very late here

if I stay awake, I'll finish running dist-upgrade. better to sleep. ciao

and thanks!

6:30 AM

If I resize a logical volume which is being used for swap space, can i just go ahead and use it for swap right away? Does it need to be prepared specially? I assume it is marked some way to be used for swap. Does this marking persisit?

Hmm, wonder if this question is suitable for the site.

Ok, i see mkswap. Probably too trivial for the site.

Indrajith Indraprastham

7:09 AM

hey any one read this book? The Linux Command Line

7:25 AM

The Shotts book?

Pandya

12:03 PM

ls vs dir

recently I used ls with xargs and not successfull

And found ls outputs white-space as it is

Example:

$ ls
unix and linux

so I used dir which prints white-space as \

Example:

$ dir
unix\ and\ linux

how output of ls differs from dir command?

12:28 PM

dir is just an alias to ls

$ ls -l /usr/bin/dir
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 120232 Jan 20  2014 /usr/bin/dir
$ ls -l /usr/bin/ls
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 120232 Jan 20  2014 /usr/bin/ls

File: coreutils.info,  Node: dir invocation,  Next: vdir invocation,  Prev: ls invocation,  Up: Directory listing

10.2 'dir': Briefly list directory contents
===========================================

'dir' is equivalent to 'ls -C -b'; that is, by default files are listed
in columns, sorted vertically, and special characters are represented by
backslash escape sequences.

   *Note 'ls': ls invocation.

2:52 PM

@Pandya don't parse ls output, if you need to use a directory listing passed to xargs, use find, not ls

Shhhh! What if mike hears you?

:P

3:07 PM

@terdon ?

3:28 PM

73

Q: Why *not* parse `ls`?

I consistently see answers quoting this link stating definitively "Don't parse ls!" This bothers me for a couple of reasons: It seems the information in that link has been accepted wholesale with little question, though I can pick out at least a few errors in casual reading. It also seems as if...

shell ls

@terdon Oh, right. Mike seems to have disappeared.

The number of people idling here seems to have dropped by half. When did this stop being the place to be? Did people get better offers elsewhere?

Soon @Braiam will desert us. Then we'll really be in trouble.

Maybe we should send out party invites.

4:00 PM

We are still here. But ppl have lives too and have to do other things besides here.

Also the Q's are starting to drop off, at least the quality of them, I'm not looking to explain everything over and over, we have 50k+ Q's + A's where a simple search will give you solutions. I noticed Jen, Kwiwy, and others are gone, but they've been busy w/ job + lives. Assuming Mike's taking a break.

I know I'm much more busy w/ work now, not sure about everyone else, but assuming that's the case.

@slm The quality of questions here has never been exactly good. Whether it is going down, dunno.

And there are large categories of things that basically never get asked here, for reasons that are not clear to me. Perhaps those areas are already adequately supported elsewhere.

Also, unlike SO, I think this site is far from saturation in terms of useful questions to be asked. SO does seem to have an impressive amount of stuff there. More often than not, I can get an answer just by doing a search.

4:19 PM

svn stat
!     C openvpn/maginot
      >   local delete, incoming delete upon update

seriously svn?

Hey @derobert

Lots of people still use svn.

Because subversion is an idiotic version control system. — Nick Hristov Aug 22 '13 at 18:47

... from someone asking why on SO.

@FaheemMitha Indeed. But I'm migrating stuff to git here.

@derobert Try mercurial instead.

@derobert Well, yes, svn is crap.

By that logic, nobody should be using Windows.

It's better than CVS. That was its goal originally, and I think it succeeded there.

@derobert True. Incrementally better.

svn was the first version control system I used. I came to that party late.

4:26 PM

Yes. It had its heyday as everyone replaced CVS. But then a short while later, the DVCS model became popular (not sure when it was invented, it may not have even existed when SVN started)

@derobert DVCS has been around for a while. But it was not really mainstream for a while

First I used was some proprietary thing under MPW, I think. Then probably RCS.

Eric Raymond has a reasonably good essay on version control. It is sort of semi-complete. I think he lost interest.

I don't think there were any free DVCS's before Tom Lords arch

Checking, Wikipedia doesn't think so either.

catb.org/~esr/writings/version-control/version-control.html

4:28 PM

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_revision_control#History that section could really use some help from someone who either knows (or has the time to research) that history.

@FaheemMitha how does Mercurial handle large binary files? By large, I mean several hundred MB?

"This is a draft under intensive development." Translation: I lost interest after 5 minutes, and wandered off in search of something new and shiny.

@derobert It has something similar to git-annex. One sec.

There is an extension called largefiles.

"inspired BitKeeper (1998), one of the first open systems."

The author is apparently using an extremely non-standard definition of "open".

Yeah...

It would be interesting to investigate why DVCS's were slow to take off. Probably cultural factors

Actually, I don't recall, maybe BitKeeper had open file formats. Don't recall if the client might have been shipped as source code (though certainly not open source) as well.

Arch was started in 2001. DVCSs were technically possible ever since the arrival of the internet. They don't require any more infrastructure than CVS does, and CVS has been in use since the 80s.

Well, the DVCS paradigm doesn't need the Net, but it is rather less useful without a network.

@derobert I don't think the BK source was ever open. The protocol is also proprietary.

Not sure what you mean by open file formats.

Hi @Ramesh

4:36 PM

Hello @FaheemMitha, how are you?

@Ramesh Doing Ok. Was just remarking the pop of the chat room had significantly dropped off.

@FaheemMitha I mean the history files stored on disk, maybe they were documented. No idea.

McVoy freaked out when Tridgell tried to reverse engineer BK. That's how the big meltdown of April 2005 happened. Hmm, that' going to have its 10 yr anniversary soon.

@derobert You mean like log files? Or the binary format files?

@FaheemMitha They require less infrastructure than CVS. You could do DVCS by mailing floppy disks. CVS requires a server and a network (at least for collaboration).

@FaheemMitha The binary files that store the history.

@derobert The CVS server could be on the same disk, I suppose.

@derobert Ah, ok, so the version control storage format, then. Yes, I don't know either.

4:39 PM

@FaheemMitha CVS requires a central repository. You could mail that around... but then only the person with the disk would be able to do work.

@derobert True. But you could make copies of the central repo. Of course, then the changes could not be shared. Anyway, point taken.

You see what I mean about slow to take off, right?

Arch could have been very successful. It has no competition at the time. Unfortunately TL had eccentric design ideas.

His idea of a design was basically a hairball.

Arch was also slow, if I remember correctly.

That's one thing that git (and I'd presume Mercurial) do correctly, they're fast.

Is there even a grain of truth to this?

> This assumes that the sh link is pointed to a valid shell, most likely BASH. ./ is a built in alias to sh that only runs in your current shell, therefore the command doesn't exist as a real file in your ${PATH}

0

A: running ./install as root

Try: Mounting the ISO. cd to Mount Point sudo sh install.sh This assumes that the sh link is pointed to a valid shell, most likely BASH. ./ is a built in alias to sh that only runs in your current shell, therefore the command doesn't exist as a real file in your ${PATH}

@derobert I never used arch, so I don't know.

@terdon No, I think not.

4:47 PM

From Bryan O'Sullivan's prescient blog post, dated 25th June 2005 (at that point mercurial was like 2/2.5 months old):

./ has nothing to do with sh as far as I know, no more than /etc does.

"I have seen the future of free distributed revision control systems"

@terdon - I don't even know what he's talking about in that last bit

"GNU Arch is popular with the raving lunatic set. It’s impossibly slow and space-hungry, has a horrible UI, drops prominent file turds in every directory, forces bizarre working practices on its users, and it smells bad."

One of the weirder things about Arch is that it completely ignored the existence of a little thing called the Unix Shell.

And 30 years of culture around it. No wonder it didn't catch on. Neither Git or Mercurial make that mistake.

He concludes with "Nevertheless, Mercurial is off to an excellent start."

@slm huh?

Oh I see what he's thinking. The dot in ./ is the . when you do ls -la. This tells the system to run the program that's in the current directory, i.e. .. — slm ♦ 33 secs ago

4:53 PM

@derobert did you see my alpine question?

@terdon - he's thinking that ./ is a alias on the ./install

I read that 3x and was like WTF?

@slm How? Like source is an alias to .?

Oh, you mean he thinks that ./ itself is an alias? Something like alias ./='command'? That's not even possible!

yeah

he thinks that ./ is an alias to sh

wow

way off

@FaheemMitha No. But have you considered mutt? :-)

Ah! To sh! Now I see. Wow, that's some misconception.

4:57 PM

@derobert I've thought about it, off and on, for years.

I use mutt

i also use TB

take a look at this user

@slm Good for you.

@slm TB?

thunderbird

Ah

4:58 PM

@Ramesh - yeah I've seen em

@slm not sure if a genuine user or spammer. Within 6 hours 3 downvoted questions.

@Ramesh What about him?

@FaheemMitha see my above comment.

@Ramesh Being downvoted doesn't make one a spammer. I don't think he is a spammer.

@FaheemMitha The scary thing is I've been tempted to write my own MUA...

Most recently the last time I wanted to tag (select) messages based on date. Mutt accepts only one date format. And it's not the sane one.

5:02 PM

@FaheemMitha yeah. But I have seen a similar user continously asking questions and then at the end showing his true colors.

@derobert Fight that urge.

~d DD/MM/YY-DD/MM-YY ... WTF.

@Ramesh Anything is possible. Particularly on the net.

I am not saying that is this user. But just saying we need to be careful. That's all.

@Ramesh - I just took him as not understanding things enough to formalize a coherent Q yet.

5:02 PM

Why it won't take YYYY-MM-DD is anyone's guess...

@Ramesh If he posts spam, I think people will notice.

One thing the SE model handles very well is spam.

I wonder how long it'd take to write a text-mode MUA in perl...

Or if you want a yearly archives folder:

save-hook ~r01/01/2013-31/12/2013 =INBOX.Archives.2013
save-hook ~r01/01/2014-31/12/2014 =INBOX.Archives.2014
save-hook ~r01/01/2015-31/12/2015 =INBOX.Archives.2015
save-hook ~r01/01/2016-31/12/2016 =INBOX.Archives.2016
save-hook ~r01/01/2017-31/12/2017 =INBOX.Archives.2017
save-hook ~r01/01/2018-31/12/2018 =INBOX.Archives.2018
save-hook ~r01/01/2019-31/12/2019 =INBOX.Archives.2019
save-hook ~r01/01/2020-31/12/2020 =INBOX.Archives.2020

... remember to update that! I couldn't find a way to not write out one per year.

@derobert OK, now you're worrying me. This is how software projects get started.

@FaheemMitha Indeed. It worries me, too.

@derobert Bug reporting is an option

My alpine question is not really about Apline, it is about mime types.

5:13 PM

Or it'd be nice to have some basic HTML support because other people keep sending me HTML mail. Or better searching, with indexing... I mean, Thunderbird does a lot of these things, and I use it too... But text-mode is nice sometimes...

@FaheemMitha Where is your alpine question?

@derobert unix.stackexchange.com/q/164902

@FaheemMitha Added an answer presuming its just a mime types issue.

@derobert Ok, thanks.

6:41 PM

@derobert - you're a vim user, right?

@slm Be nice. Come on, you're a mod now, there's no call to go insulting users like that!

ha

I have a Q is why

when I write my files out, how can I force the expansion of tabs all the time

to spaces

No idea. I know how to do it in emacs if that helps.

And yes, derobert uses vim:

Feb 26 at 18:13, by derobert

(I don't use emacs)

Q: vi / vim - how to automatically strip trailing spaces on save?

6

Is there a .vimrc setting to automatically remove trailing whitespace when saving a file? Ideally (to be safe) I would like to only have this functionality for certain files, e.g. *.rb

vim vi editors vimrc whitespace

is 1 way

7:39 PM

awk doesn't support replacement of strings inside the file?

The only way I could see is,

`awk '{gsub("hello", "bye")}1' test.dat > test.dat_tmp &&
mv test.dat_tmp test.dat`

@Ramesh Newer versions of GNU awk (gawk) do.

Let me see if I can find the syntax.

@terdon ok. I posted this but then realized it is not actually replacing inside the file.

@Ramesh Found it, it's gawk -i inplace '{script}'

Documented here: gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/…

It's both new and GNU specific though so not portable. Unlike sed and perl's -i.

@terdon ok. cool. Thanks. I will have it for future references. :)

Q: How can I replace a string in a file(s)?

8:04 PM

Could someone close this:

0

Q: Changing text in text file

Is there a command line way to change text in the file? Like say I would like to change all strings "lukuunottamatta" to the form "lukuun ottamatta" and "Lukuunottamatta" to the form "Lukuun ottamatta".

text-processing

As a dupe of

15

Replacing strings in files based on certain search criteria is a very common task. How can I replace string foo with bar in all files in the current directory? do the same recursively for sub directories? replace only if the file name matches another string? replace only if the string is found...

files text-processing sed awk perl

So I don't get accused of closing things in favor of my own questions again? That is, assuming others also feel it's a valid dupe.

@terdon vtc

Thanks

8:22 PM

VtCd

8:34 PM

@slm ummm.... you could probably use an autocommand on BufWrite or BufWritePre.

Or, to avoid putting tabs in, in the first place you could always set expandtab

8:53 PM

@derobert how much experience do you have with autotools?

On the dev end of things, I mean.

@FaheemMitha Not much. I used them once. Long ago...

@derobert Oh. So you don't use them as a build system?

I've been working mostly with Perl for a while...

@derobert

autocmd FileType ruby setlocal ts=2 sw=2 expandtab autoindent
autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile,BufWrite,BufWritePre *.rb if &modifiable | retab | endif
" \ setlocal ts=2 sw=2 tw=70 wrap expandtab

@derobert Oh

9:01 PM

@slm Maybe. Haven't played with that myself. You probably don't need both BufWrite and BufWritePre. Also you could use a buffer-local autocmd in your FileType one instead of having to match *.rb, probably.

yeah that's me using a bomb to put a nail in

yeah was gonna try the ft method 100%, but never used those before

Does Gentoo not allow one to run multiple versions of gcc in parallel?

This one is an interesting read -> lwn.net/Articles/617140

Quote: "He has received email from around two dozen companies asking for a schedule for the 3.16-rt release because they need to make product plans. He has responded by telling them that there is no budget and asking if they want to help. He got different types of responses, he said. Some didn't reply at all, which he called "honest". Others said they had no money. It is "crazy" to build a product around a technology and to have no budget to work on it, he said."

"Others said they would be building their products around the 3.12-rt kernel."

I guess free software is just free labor to some people.

11:04 PM

if (cock != 'null') cock.split(';'); dear god — OGHaza Nov 14 '13 at 10:00

@FaheemMitha ???

@Braiam It could happen.

11:38 PM

@Braiam so bad