Root Access

8:00 PM

@Bob Thanks for the recommendations! How much more expensive do you think Skylake will be?? This would involve having to upgrade to DDR4 as well and I presume that will not be cheap.

Bob

@QuestionAsker Probably the same ballpark as current Intel CPUs.

i.e. you'd be looking at maybe $350

Question Asker

Really? Hmm okay!

DragonLord

Question about photography and photo contests.

Bob

It'll take a bit longer for the discounts to roll in.

Question Asker

That's not too bad. Still concerned about RAM though

DragonLord

8:01 PM

The nature calenders from the likes of The Nature Conservancy feature photographs from contest entries.

Should I try my hand at this sort of contest?

Bob

@QuestionAsker Looks like approx $230 for 32 GB (4x 8GB) of DDR4.

DragonLord

Or is it a waste of time and money?

(I realize that most winning entries come from professionals. Amateurs with limited funds and time have essentially no shot at winning.)

How much time and money should I be prepared to expend to reach this level of photography mastery?

Bob

@QuestionAsker Overall you'd be looking at spending maybe $150 more (CPU + mobo + RAM). But IMO that's worth it - you can spend the extra few months saving up.

DragonLord

Years and tens of thousands of dollars?

...or months and $2k or so at most?

Question Asker

That is true. Thanks for the advice @Bob!

Bob

8:04 PM

Going Skylake would future-proof you for at least 3 years. Haswell might feel a little outdated in 1-2 years. (add another 3 to those numbers if you don't feel the need to have the newest stuff)

DragonLord

(Note that I do have some experience behind me, but it's less than five years' worth.)

allquixotic

@Bob -_- I just used virsh

DragonLord

Anyone? I know this is off-topic.

Question Asker

I see.

DragonLord

I just need some input.

Question Asker

8:04 PM

Where is a good place to buy parts?

DragonLord

@allquixotic?

Bob

@QuestionAsker Amazon, Newegg (assuming you're in the US), local shops...

Depends on where you are. pcpartpicker will suggest locations for maximum discount.

DragonLord

@QuestionAsker Try Newegg

Bob

@allquixotic ... :\

allquixotic

@QuestionAsker Personally I only trust Amazon and Newegg and Best Buy, but the latter has the worst offerings in terms of variety

DragonLord

8:05 PM

If not, Amazon is a good place to shop.

Question Asker

Yes I am in the US. And any cheaper places?

Newegg can be okay bestbuy is expensive

Bob

@QuestionAsker Follow the pcpartpicker suggestions if you want cheapest, but you mgiht find the after sales support lacking.

DragonLord

@allquixotic: is it worth trying to compete with pros in these kinds of photo contests?

Question Asker

@Bob Good point I'll keep that in mind

DragonLord

3 mins ago, by DragonLord

(I realize that most winning entries come from professionals. Amateurs with limited funds and time have essentially no shot at winning.)

allquixotic

8:06 PM

@DragonLord I have no experience with that kind of thing. What do you think?

DragonLord

Probably foolish, but still want to try it

Bob

@allquixotic I need 1.28.6-1+. Testing is 1.28.12-1. Stable is 1.28.1-1. No backports for this package.

So... I'm going to need to import the package from testing -_-

allquixotic

@Bob or ~~compile from source~~ do the thing that you hate doing

Bob

@DragonLord Do what you enjoy, but don't push yourself for money/recognition/etc..

DragonLord

I know these pros have likely spent decades perfecting their craft, as well as tens of thousands (perhaps even $100k+) on photo equipment

Bob

8:07 PM

@allquixotic ...I think testing is probably safer :P

DragonLord

In order for me to get there, I'd have to abandon my current computer science and technology path because of the amount of time required

Bob

@DragonLord Don't worry too much about the equipment.

DragonLord

I'd have to drop out of grad school

The amount of time these pros spend every day to get the perfect shot is simply incredible

Bob

In photography, you need (a) a good subject and (b) reasonably good skills. You can take excellent shots with a point-and-shoot. At least, that's my opinion :P

bertieb

What @Bob said

DragonLord

8:09 PM

True, but skill takes years, and likely decades, to build

Bob

If you don't have a subject, it really doesn't matter how good your equipment is.

DragonLord

I have decent equipment, but I can't find the time to practice shooting.

Let alone make extended excursions the pros routinely make.

bertieb

I have no context, but skill can come relatively quickly

Bob

@DragonLord I think you're overestimating your typical 'pro'.

DragonLord

2 mins ago, by DragonLord

In order for me to get there, I'd have to abandon my current computer science and technology path because of the amount of time required

bertieb

8:11 PM

Need to know where 'there' is @DragonLord, I already read that :P

Also unrelatedly, any idea how I can stop HDMI audio output from clipping horribly (Linux, fglrx, Kodi) ? alsamixer only shows a mute/unmute option for that card

Bob

Ohhhhhh boy audio on Linux (cc @allquixotic)

*runs away*

bertieb

The cracking is keeeeling me

DragonLord

@bertieb Professional-level photography, salable photographs (for hundreds, even thousands a pop in a typical edition of 10 to 20 prints), consistent contest wins, and a name for myself

bertieb

@DragonLord Right (ta), you definitely don't need 6 fig equipment for that

allquixotic

@Bob s/Linux/ALSA/

bertieb

8:13 PM

But it's a full time untertaking fo sho

DragonLord

@bertieb No, but how much time would I need?

Anonymous

@DragonLord hey

Anonymous

Photography Chat

All-things photography related discussion.

allquixotic

@bertieb What "Linux"? Distro and version?

DragonLord

@PatoSáinz Not very active, sadly.

bertieb

8:13 PM

@allquixotic Debian Jessie

Anonymous

I am not professional (though I try) but I too seek to perfect my craft

DragonLord

Would I need to abandon my current path to make way for this?

Anonymous

@DragonLord yea, but it's still full of very knowledgeable people

allquixotic

@bertieb I can't help you much with fglrx; it's really a terrible driver that receives precious little attention from AMD. But don't try alsamixer. It's almost guaranteed that (unless you've customized things) you're running PulseAudio, and the "clipping" may be coming from there.

bertieb

@DragonLord To make $000s/photo? Yea, or be lucky :P

allquixotic

8:15 PM

Other than making sure you're running the latest fglrx driver, and maybe peeling back the onion to see if it's a PA-specific problem...

Anonymous

@DragonLord oh I cannot answer that for you, since I am in High School I still have enough free time to do this as a side project

bertieb

@allquixotic No desktop stuff installed and I don't see any pa-related utils

allquixotic

@bertieb ps -ef | grep pulseaudio

DragonLord

I think I'm being way too ambitious. As a computer/tech person, I don't have the talent or drive to go this far in an artistic pursuit.

bertieb

@allquixotic Yea, nada

DragonLord

8:16 PM

I'd just get nowhere.

Anonymous

DragonLord

I'm only making myself look like a fool.

allquixotic

@bertieb well, keep in mind that ALSA has no latency compensation, so it literally just writes to the DMA buffer in a loop -- if something else is taking up a lot of CPU, to the extent that it can't meet the write deadline, you get no audio.

Anonymous

@DragonLord no way: as a techie it'll be easier for you to grasp all the basics in optics and then it's just a matter of taste and training for composition and "photo spidey sense"

allquixotic

My intuition would tell me that your HDMI audio will probably work better with the open source graphics driver, but then your graphics functionality would not be as good :/

bertieb

8:17 PM

@allquixotic I've got audio and plenty of CPU, just lots and lots and lots of clipping

DragonLord

@PatoSáinz I'm good with the technical aspects of photography. It's the artistic part I have trouble with.

allquixotic

did you try AMDGPU? it's still pretty experimental and requires advanced knowledge to compile a kernel using it, but I hear it's going to be better than fglrx

@bertieb what version of fglrx?

Anonymous

@DragonLord maybe don't drop everything just yet but dedicate every bit of free time you have to it

bertieb

@allquixotic Don't need great 3d, functionality; this is just HTPC stuff

DragonLord

@PatoSáinz Okay, then.

allquixotic

8:18 PM

@bertieb why not try the open source graphics driver, then? what GPU is it?

bertieb

@allquixotic Will check, whatever fglrx-driver installed

DragonLord

To the community: Please be advised that my time on Stack Exchange will be very limited as I will be dedicating large amounts of time to photography. I may not be able to respond quickly to inquiries and may be away for extended periods of time.

Sorry, everyone.

bertieb

@allquixotic Yeah, good point. Can't remember why I went down the fglrx route as opposed to radeon. It's an R7 260X IIRC

Bob

o.O

Anonymous

@dragonlord maybe a little moonlighting: I partnered with some friends who happen to be DJs so now I shoot at some small to medium-small-ish gigs, so I get "professional" experience and money to finance my more personal and artistic photography

Bob

8:19 PM

that was a quick decision

Anonymous

@Bob yea lol

DragonLord

Alright, gotta go. It'll be a while.

Bob

@DragonLord Good luck!

Anonymous

@DragonLord also, at first, working as a photographer for other people is really fucking stressful, because it's up to you to correctly record your client's memories

Anonymous

godo lucku~

allquixotic

8:21 PM

@bertieb GCN 1.1? that should be fairly well supported by radeonsi

Anonymous

in other news, I just set up Iodine (an IP-over-DNS tunnel) to bypass a captive portal and it's really satisfying

bertieb

@allquixotic Uhhhh it's one I pulled out of another machine to diagnose a non-working 6970

DragonLord

Okay, what the heck am I doing?

bertieb

Any way to quickly switch back to radeon from fglrx?

DragonLord

Can a mod delete the "To the community" message?

Anonymous

8:23 PM

but my top speed is of 7 kilobytes per second... which is almost the theoretical top speed

Anonymous

of course web sites load as slow as they can but everything that uses a mostly-text API like WhatsApp works fine and latency is not high actually

Anonymous

Really recommended if you want to bypass most captive portals: code.kryo.se/iodine

bertieb

Is it just Driver "radeon" instead of Driver "fglrx" ?

allquixotic

@bertieb Not really - you need to remove fglrx and hope to heck that it actually removes everything and sets it back to the default

DragonLord

I guess I lost my temper. I'm trying to do way too much here.

bertieb

8:24 PM

@allquixotic Ah, bummer

Anonymous

runs on Free/OpenBSD, Linux, Android and Windows

allquixotic

@bertieb no; fglrx cannot be loaded, and radeon must be loaded early in boot, to enable Kernel Mode Setting

Anonymous

@DragonLord why too much

allquixotic

(kernel modules)

Bob

@allquixotic sounds like my typical experience with uninstalling just about anything

DragonLord

8:25 PM

It would represent a massive change in my entire schedule

bertieb

Seems like quite a lot to do to speculate on audio output :-s

But will give it a shot

@DragonLord Start with small steps

DragonLord

I'd have to abandon most of what I'm currently doing.

allquixotic

@bertieb when fglrx is installed, it also installs a file that prevents the kernel from starting you in kernel modesetting, so the debian removal scripts for fglrx hopefully take care of that

Anonymous

@Bob is it me or this room's most discussed topic is usually problems with AMD drivers?

allquixotic

if you notice your boot becoming "graphical" (not console based) early in boot before X starts, then you know that it's the open source driver

Anonymous

8:26 PM

@DragonLord you could try to fit it

allquixotic

and once you get to X, run glxinfo to verify

Anonymous

for example, if you live in a city, street photography at night would be fun

bertieb

@allquixotic I don't run X really, just start it for Kodi using xinit (IIRC)

DragonLord

@PatoSáinz That's a possibility, but I don't have a good tripod

I'll see what I can do.

Anonymous

@DragonLord only if you plan on doing really long-exposures

Anonymous

8:27 PM

but get a lens with a good enough aperture and raise your ISO a little and you'll be fine with steady hands at night @DragonLord

bertieb

Wow, removing fglrx-driver installed a lot of packages

DragonLord

@PatoSáinz Not sure if that would work

I do have a 50/1.8 and a camera body with good low-light performance, but experience shows that I'll need more than that

bertieb

@DragonLord Experiment!

Bob

@PatoSáinz ...I think it's just you :P

Most discussed is probably headphones

[   6.0] Resizing (using virt-resize) to expand the disk to 20.0G
[  31.0] Opening the new disk

:D

root@debian:~# virt-builder debian-8 -o /dev/tank/vm/terraria --firstboot-command 'dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server'
[   0.0] Downloading: libguestfs.org/download/builder/debian-8.xz
[   1.0] Planning how to build this image
[   1.0] Uncompressing
[   6.0] Resizing (using virt-resize) to expand the disk to 20.0G
[  31.0] Opening the new disk
[  35.0] Setting a random seed
[  35.0] Installing firstboot command: dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server
[  35.0] Setting passwords
virt-builder: Setting random password of root to !!no

Anonymous

@DragonLord work within those constraints... it could be fun (if you hold the camera firmly you can get really nice long-ish exposures)

Anonymous

8:30 PM

and try to be in a well-lit street... surely there'll be lots of people there, too

Anonymous

@Bob I'm sure it's bsods caused by AMD and linux+amd

bertieb

Googles 'generate xorg.conf'

No way I'm going back to doing that by hand

Anonymous

putty looks nicer with W10's design

Bob

@allquixotic it's up and running :D

now I just need to sort out the network config

Loading Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 ...
Loading initial ramdisk ...

Hmm... maybe not running.

Odd.

bertieb

8:39 PM

Argh, the pain

Segfaults, complaints, no display

X, Y U NO WORK?

2

DragonLord

29 mins ago, by DragonLord

@bertieb Professional-level photography, salable photographs (for hundreds, even thousands a pop in a typical edition of 10 to 20 prints), consistent contest wins, and a name for myself

Why?

It would take a highly talented photographer to do this.

Very unrealistic.

I'll see what I can do about it, but I'm just not that talented.

Anonymous

@DragonLord photography is hard work

Anonymous

not much natural or born talent

Anonymous

maybe just "taste"

bertieb

@DragonLord Talent takes time

DragonLord

8:43 PM

The problem is whether I can invest the time to put hundreds of good-quality shots through my camera every single day.

Anonymous

@DragonLord start small

bertieb

@DragonLord Depends if you see it as being a binary choice: 1) either be top level (1% ) photog 2) or don't bother at all

DragonLord

I can certainly make the occasional great photo, and I've printed several shots that were pretty impressive.

flickr.com/photos/57993471@N06/20056900256

I often ask for too much from myself

Bob

I really really hate grub

bertieb

@Bob I'll trade you for a segfaulting Xorg

(I have lost count of the number of times grub has vexed me around Xen guests, for example)

Anonymous

8:50 PM

@DragonLord you're not the only one. maybe this could help youtube.com/… ?

Bob

@bertieb I'm trying to start a kvm guest

something is stuffing up

bertieb

@Bob That's usually about all the clues grub is willing to give all right

Bob

ha

bertieb

@allquixotic your suggestion nearly has me in tears :P

Bob

$!$@@!$@$#@$@

systemd strikes again

bertieb

9:00 PM

fglrx may be the problem he says, install the OS drivers he says...

Bob

0

A: Debian 8 KVM Guest - Loading initial ramdisk

Thanks to the link @Someone posted in the comments to the question, I was able to pull this content which fixed the issue for me: on the boot screen (below) press the "e" key to edit the configuration. You will be shown a screen like follows. Scroll down using the keyboard down arrow. You wan...

bertieb

@Bob Oh the joys of systemd. Is there anything it can't mess up?

Bob

:O it worked!

virt-builder debian-8 -o /dev/tank/vm/terraria --firstboot-command 'systemctl enable getty@ttyS0' --firstboot-command 'dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server' --firstboot-command 'reboot' --hostname terraria

:D

bertieb

@Bob Huzzah!

...a whole VM for Terraria? Or is that just a catchy name?

Bob

@bertieb I've wasted a lot of time fighting it recently :\

@bertieb Yes, a whole VM for Terraria :P

bertieb

9:08 PM

@Bob Amen

@Bob Sweet :)

Bob

I'm in the process of migrating my server from one host to another. Been procrastinating a lot, but my friend wants to play terraria and has been bugging me about it

so it gets to be the first VM migrated :P

I prefer to keep everything in VMs. Easier to manage.

bertieb

@Bob Sounds like a plan

And you could do much worse than Terraria too

Bob

heh... not my primary game, though, if you're judging me by game :P

bertieb

(I am shouting at my mac keyboard for not having an easy way of entering # under terminal/screen/byobu)

Bob

o.O

bertieb

9:11 PM

No judgement implied! I do enjoy a bit of Terraria myself

Okay, Xorg badness over

Now to see how the sound... sounds

Bob

argh, now I need to do network setup

bertieb

And I have sound working, but no mouse/keyboard (which worked under fglrx)

I'm calling that a... partial victory?

Anonymous

@bertieb seems like you've been having fun this day

bertieb

@PatoSáinz s/this day/every gorram day/

Bob

@allquixotic you there?

bertieb

9:30 PM

Disabling hotplugging in xorg.conf seems to have done the trick re: kb and mouse for some reason (?!)

allquixotic

9:43 PM

@Bob ish

Bob

@allquixotic do you happen to know if ovh runs a dhcp server?

I have everything working with a static IP, but going DHCP would be nicer

allquixotic

@Bob I'm pretty sure dhclient em1 (em1 is the name of my ethernet adapter, for some reason) gives me an IP

Bob

@allquixotic ...interesting

I had the mac address assigned to the virtual mac, and had eth0 set up as dhcp

no valid route, no ip

shrug

allquixotic

huh

Bob

might have to investigate further some other time

still, got my first VM up and running :D

DragonLord

10:02 PM

2 hours ago, by DragonLord

@bertieb Professional-level photography, salable photographs (for hundreds, even thousands a pop in a typical edition of 10 to 20 prints), consistent contest wins, and a name for myself

Still a viable project.

I'll try to allocate as much time as is available for photography.

This could still mean that I'll be offline for long periods every day.

I'm on the fence.

Journeyman Geek

10:57 PM

Morning

@NateKerkhofs Its a good assumption that If I'm not chatting, I'm not actually here ;p

Anonymous

morning @JourneymanGeek

Journeyman Geek

morning

Photography Chat

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