Root Access

Hennes

14:00

If it is this board ( if ) then a floppy drive would be hooked up to the FDD connector, as shown here

(right top)

xCare

ah, always wondered about that

Hennes

That is a big if. Can you verify with dmidecode, using type 1, 2, 40 and 41 ?

Bob

@xCare Based on that error and the search results I'm getting, there's a very good chance that the drive is bricked.

Hennes

Info on dmidecode: linux.die.net/man/8/dmidecode

Bob

@Hennes Probably not too important at this point.

Let's not confuse him further :P

xCare

14:01

where do I find the code?

Bob

@xCare Unrelated to motherboard identification: could you dump the contents of /var/log/syslog too?

Same method as the dmesg one.

xCare

pastee.org/8ryen

Bob

I'd suggest checking SMART data but the disk needs to be recognised for that...

@xCare Huh, is that all? I was expecting a bit more than that :S

Might try /var/log/kern.log but I wouldn't expect much there.

xCare

before it pops up the Device list after pressing F12 at bootup, it gives me a SMART Readout

Bob

@xCare Try this:

sudo apt-get install smartmontools
sudo smartctl --scan

xCare

14:10

pastee.org/39b95

Bob

@xCare Yea, not much there. Seems that, unlike other people, yours just gives up after the identify failure.

Other people had some errors.

xCare

shows me a screen, Postfix Configuration?

please select the mail service configuration type that best serves your needs

Bob

O_O

xCare

selected Internet Site and OK

Bob

uhhh

hold on a second

@xCare Cancel that (ctrl+c) and try again with sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends smartmontools

Alternatively, just click through the Postfix screens.

They're not that important.

This'll all be ditched when you reboot anyway. (assuming it's a live usb?)

xCare

14:14

right

ok typing in the second command then

# scan_smart_devices: glob(3) aborted matching pattern /dev/discs/disc*

shows me that

Bob

...wat

xCare

typed

sudo smartctl --scan

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo smartctl --scan
# scan_smart_devices: glob(3) aborted matching pattern /dev/discs/disc*

Bob

Looks... like that might be ignorable?

xCare

?

Bob

You got no other output?

xCare

14:17

nothing else

Bob

Based on sample output, it should continue after that.

Of course, you have no other SATA disks attached anyway.

@xCare Do you know what the startup SMART output says?

Can you take a photo?

xCare

of the output?

Bob

Yea.

Oh, did you try hot-plugging the drive recently?

That might be the cause...

xCare

but it detects it in the BIOS...

Bob

It could be a Linux bug.

Though that would be very odd, especially if it worked before.

Hennes

14:21

Did you do a full power down (not a mere reboot) after you hotplugged it ?

xCare

I have a photo that, If I can't find it I'll take another one. What is shows though is a shortlist of devices depending on what I have plugged

Bob

@xCare That's not SMART output...

At least, probably not.

Probably best to see the photo.

xCare

for the corrupt HDD it says S.M.A.R.T. Enabled, Status: Bad, Backup and Replace... yes, full power down

maybe I can access SMART in the Bios menu?

Hennes

Last idea I have it to swap the two SATA cables for the broken drive (from ATA1 to ATA 4 or vice versa, since apparently you have the middle two SATA plugs used for the other drive and the DVD

Bob

@Hennes He apparently just swapped it out with a good drive.

Hennes

14:24

Weird.

xCare

@Hennes, I've done that, it does not change

Hennes

Then it is the drive or the cable and not the port.

xCare

whatever it is, the fix has to come from the Bios level, so maybe Hiren's Boot tools might offer more clues

Bob

@xCare Ah... maybe there's some fundamental drive query Linux requires but it's too damaged to respond to.

xCare

don't think I can connect here though if I'm on Hiren's

Bob

14:25

At this point, with this SMART output, the only conclusion is that the drive is more-or-less dead.

Hmm...

I don't really have time to dig through Linux drive detection code (shudder) right now.

What happens on Windows?

Is the drive at least detected?

i.e. does it come up in Disk Management?

xCare

depending on what tool I run, it detects the drive, but with only th efirst 2 partitions, minus the one with all the data

no, it does not show in Drive Management, only with 3rd party tools

Bob

@xCare Yea, at this point the partitions aren't important: being able to see the drive at all is useful...

@xCare o.O

Not even as a Disk # on the left?

xCare

not since the Clear command, no

Bob

I wouldn't expect partitions to show, but at least a Disk #...

Hm. Could you grab a copy of CrystalDiskInfo and run that on Windows?

@xCare Use this link: osdn.jp/projects/crystaldiskinfo/downloads/63423/…

xCare

looking it up

will unpack it from Windows

got to reboot and hook the good HD up again

Bob

14:29

Basically, without the ability to at least see the disk on Linux your options are severely limited.

Better to make the image now before anything else happens.

But first check what CrystalDiskInfo says (SMART attributes)

xCare

right, or the other option is as I said, perhaps Hiren's Boot CD has some Utilities to detect from the bios level

got CDI, closing down now. will take a lunch break then hook the other drive up and get back to work.

@Bob Thank you for trying to help with this.

@Hennes thanks for your tips as well.

ttyl

Bob

@xCare I might be asleep by the time you get back, so I'll leave you with this:

CrystalDiskInfo: take screenshots, and copy (ctrl+c) the data, dump it in a paste somewhere.

it should look something like this:

allquixotic

hiii

Bob

xCare

@allquixotic hello

thanks @Bob, I'll do that

Bob

14:36

@xCare After that, if you want to try to take an image from within Windows, I recommend this one: hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool

On the first screen, select the source drive. Click continue.

On the second screen, double click the "FILE" option and select a destination.

xCare

okay

Bob

Make sure it's the "raw dd image" (.img) type, not compressed (.imgc).

That'll probably take a while.

xCare

I understand

Bob

Once that's done, you can hop back into Linux, mount the image and play with testdisk on that. We can probably go through that tomorrow - the clone will likely take several hours. Though, it's better if you have an unmodified copy somewhere, if you have enough space.

Now, if the image tool doesn't detect your drive... well...

Hennes

I had a similar motherboard as few years ago. Lots and lots of problems getting it to work properly with FreeBSD.

Bob

14:38

Hm. That would be awkward.

Hennes

Never tried nvidia chipsets and linux afterward

Bob

You could try Hirens if you want. There's probably an imaging tool somewhere on there.

Hennes

No idea how well linux works around the bugs

For me I needed to boot windows, then reboot into BSD to get things to work. Which was not fun

Bob

There's some "Mini XP" thing from Hirens, I think. You might find that simple enough to navigate.

allquixotic

Nvidia motherboards are not even based on an Intel platform controller hub (as they're now known) like every other Intel motherboard is these days, so yeah, their differences being so broad, the support has always been lacking

the largest and most complex IC package on any motherboard today for Intel processors is 100% standardized between vendors

xCare

14:39

okay, I will do what I can or reach as far as it lets me and show you the results. talk to you again.

allquixotic

helps a lot with compatibility

xCare

/o

Bob

Misread. Whoops.

Hennes

Some sort of NV chipset and the NV SATA ports.

From his earlier log:

sata_nv 0000:00:08.0: version 3.5
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LSA0] enabled at IRQ 21
scsi host0: sata_nv
scsi host1: sata_nv
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xd400 ctl 0xd080 bmdma 0xc880 irq 21
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xd000 ctl 0xcc00 bmdma 0xc888 irq 21
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LSA1] enabled at IRQ 20
scsi host2: sata_nv
scsi host3: sata_nv
ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xc800 ctl 0xc480 bmdma 0xc000 irq 20
ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xc400 ctl 0xc080 bmdma 0xc008 irq 20

scsi host4: pata_amd

allquixotic

Nvidia stopped making motherboards a long time ago, so that's quite old

Bob

14:41

@allquixotic Not just Linux :P Win10 apparently doesn't like it: h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/…

> Athlon 64 Sempron

Hennes

Floppy drive connector? PATA ports? Nvidia deathNIC.... yeah, it is old

Bob

Yea, that's a bit old. ~2008. c2d-era.

(Yes, I think of x86 CPU generations in terms of Intel.)

Hennes

Though I still have a floppy drive connector on my X58 board, so just the presence of that does not mean old

Bob

@Hennes Hey, my 2011 P67 mobo has a floppy connector.

allquixotic

@Bob I thought the Windows kernel retained binary compatibility of modules between Vista and Win10 (assuming modules were ever compiled for your architecture)? wouldn't that enable at least partially working driver support released for Vista to work on 10?

Bob

14:43

And that is the "PATA port".

allquixotic

unless they broke binary compatibility and I didn't hear about it

granted, the WDDM stuff probably broke compat, but I'd think SATA, PCH, NDIS, etc. should support older drivers loading into those subsystems

Hennes

I still got a legacy floppy drive lying around and some (long unused) floppies

Journeyman Geek

lol

I have a usb floppy drive

in case

Hennes

That too. From a dell

Plugs into drive bay or connects via mini-USB

Journeyman Geek

somedday some young pup will ask me what it is, and I'll tell him to git off my lawn

IBM, USB only ;p

Hennes

14:45

Long since swapped for a secondary battery on that bay

Bob

@Hennes I have a USB one from an old Inspiron laptop :P

Hennes

I recently took a floppy to my old work. So my manager could show her kids what the [save] icon was based on

Sadly all my 8" floppies were at my parent home, so I settled for a 3.5 inch

Bob

> The display manufacturer hasn't amde your display compatible with windows. check with the manufacturer for support

Hennes

(no idea where I stored the 5.25" floppies)

Bob

Onboard video?

Journeyman Geek

14:47

lol

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek young dog walks up to JMG in the yard while he's digging a hole to bury his old floppy disk controller -> barks, whines, sits on his haunches and turns his head, to say "I don't know what that is you have there...?! :(" -> JMG just barks like an annoyed old dog and scares the young pup away

Journeyman Geek

;p

or a drive

I think my dad has the floppy case my old school gave us, logo and all

Hennes

My dad has an external USB floppy drive 'to make backups on'

The difference between an external HDD and an external FDD was not clear to him.

But since it was rather more modern than his laptop the backups should fit on it

Journeyman Geek

lol

our old boxen are c2ds

Hennes

IBM R60 and R61 laptops

I recently upgraded one from XP to a legal win7, SSD and from 1GB to 2.5GB

Took me a lot of time to do that, partially because I failed to find out how to get sounds working in windows 7.

allquixotic

14:57

@Hennes how's the performance?

Hennes

Apparently I had to turn it on by pressing the 'volume down' key above the keyboard

Bob

Oh shit.

LG is releasing Marshmallow for the G4 next week.

allquixotic

@Bob congrats, dude!

Bob

Hmm... I should probably wait a bit till someone confirms root still works :\

I won't have custom recovery.

They're also working on an unlock for bootloader v0, which I'm still on.

Hennes

Performance is way better than it was before. And my sister uses the '60 for gmail, marktplaats (which did not work before due to an old IE) and webbrowsing

Bob

14:58

Some US carriers distributed v1 and v2 with anti-rollback.

Hennes

So, slow, but adaquate.

Bob

@allquixotic Will take a while to trickle down to my model, I think. They're starting in Poland. I have a Taiwan one.

And I'm going to want to wait a bit to see how others go. I don't like my primary devices being guinea pigs.

Hennes

Sjees. Seaking of floppies and get of my lawn things:

0

Q: Copy files from Linux to Windows 3.11 using LPT

Is there a way to copy files from a Linux Computer to Windows 3.11 or Dos 6.22 using the LPT Port? Which cable would I need? Thanks in Advance!

Bob

@Hennes LPT port?!

Hennes

Printer.

Aka the paralel port, which on a PC was often crippled to unidirectional

Bob

15:00

@Hennes I know what it is. I'm just remarking that it seems like the wrong tool for the job.

Hennes

DOS era often had LPT, but not something as expensive as a NIC

Bob

I wonder why not a COM port.

Could probably feed files through uuencode and telnet.

Hennes

Hmm, my first Novell Eagle 2000 (16 bit ISA, coax) was 150 guilders

com would also work, par could be faster

Bob

@Hennes Faster, maybe. Far more complex, definitely.

Hennes

Esp. if you have a proper par. port

Anmd assuming you are not using your printer port for other things, such as generating audio.

Covox Speech Thing

The Covox Speech Thing (also known as Covox plug) was an external audio device attached to the computer to output digital sound. It was composed of the most primitive 8-bit DAC using a resistor ladder and an analogue signal output, and plugged into the printer port of the PC. The circuit was marketed around 1986 by Covox, Inc of Eugene, Oregon, for about 70 USD (79.95 USD as of 1989), but as its parts were much cheaper than the complete plug, and as its design was fairly simple, people soon started to build their own variants. The plug was used long into the 1990s, as sound cards were still very...

Up to now I never realised that people actually sold those premade. It was just one of those things which you made from a few resistors.

DavidPostill

15:09

It used to be (many years ago) you could use a program call laplink to transfer files using LPT ports. It required a special null-printer cable.

LapLink cable

A Laplink® Cable (also known as null-printer cable) is a cable that allows one to connect two computer s together to establish a direct cable connection. The connection is achieved via the parallel port s or USB port on the two computers. No networking hardware (such as a network interface card or a modem) is required. The cable is named after the Laplink Software Inc. software package now known as PCmover, which was designed Laplink in 1983, formerly known as Traveling Software, to make such a connection possible. Laplink now sells 4 different cable products: the Laplink Easy Transfer cable; a...

rlemon

15:21

any ideas why running nmap, unplugging a device from the network, then running nmap again is not showing a difference?

tereško

15:31

so ... this has been happening for few hours:

-46

Q: Why does flagging a message too-chatty is not locked to a specific race-culture-mentality

Never understood the too-chatty flag reason. I mean it is subjective in the first place and culture based. In some culture people tend to talk more and while in others there are strict rules of communication. Some facts about this: AMS guide for cultural differences High-context cultures (...

discussion flags ethics

basically, some SJW thinks that "too chatty" is a racial insult

sigh

allquixotic

heh. most downvoted meta posts are started because one person got offended by something that their post was flagged as, or downvoted, or closed, etc

in fact half of meta overall is just people whining about the behavior of other users

it's tiring...

(and tiresome)

tereško

@allquixotic what you wrote there was actually bigoted against people who identify as multiple systems

allquixotic

"I'm a Beowulf cluster"?

tereško

@allquixotic well ... it's a thing: youtube.com/watch?v=WTq1IzE4kqU

HackToHell

15:58

imgur.com/vmsI8P9

allquixotic

@HackToHell interesting, I guess they left out the USA and China because both would take up a huge fraction of the room to put all those other smaller countries :P

China in particular would be like 90% of India

Bob

@allquixotic Try 108%.

allquixotic

@Bob more? oh

I thought India was the most populous country in the world

Bob

As of 2007:

Rank Country Population
1. China 1,321,851,888
2. India 1,129,866,154
3. United States 301,139,947
4. Indonesia 234,693,997

As of ... yesterday, China's at 1,372,650,000.

As of ... right now (?), India's at 1,280,228,036

jokerdino

Not yet. We are trying

Bob

16:05

That figure for China is only for the mainland, btw (excluding Hong Kong & Macau, which make up almost 8 million combined).

jokerdino

I would say India would be around 1.2 billion at this point.

allquixotic

keep trying until, "it's wall-to-wall people and we're all choking to death" -Albert Bartlett

jokerdino

India is not the most densely populated country. We got tons of space to fit all the cows.

allquixotic

"tons of space" - let's assume only 20% of the area of India is used for human domiciles. At its current population growth rate of 1.2%, India's population will double every 58 years. So in 2073 (possibly within your lifespan), 40% of the area of India will be used for human domiciles. In 2131, 80%. By 2150, 100%.

In 135 years India will be "wall to wall people". And then where do you put all the universities, cows, hospitals...? In other countries, which will be full in another ~150 years?

jokerdino

Why do you think we export people?

allquixotic

16:16

Yeah, to punt the problem to the rest of the world... which doesn't have any better solution, just delays the inevitable.

jokerdino

Anyway, there are worse issues caused by population growth than not having sufficient area to hold people.

HackToHell

The major issue is going to be the lack of jobs

tereško

food, water, electricity, garbage

the small things

allquixotic

Of course there are, but this was the most charitable account possible of what will happen when population grows: we just continue to live happily on, magically producing food through technology and using more and more land for ourselves

HackToHell

And the one thing that binds them all, money

jokerdino

16:18

Now is a good time to run for office.

tereško

no, that's the One Ring

allquixotic

We all (as in, the entire world) need to set our population growth rate down in the noise if we have any hope of reaching the year 3000 as a species. A growth rate of 0.001% would buy us a couple millennia to figure out how to get off this rock :P

tereško

@allquixotic tell that to all the religious people

allquixotic

!!tell religiouspeople set populationgrowth=0.001% kplzthxbye

ChatBot John Cavil

@allquixotic Command set does not exist. (note that /tell works on commands, it's not an echo.)

allquixotic

16:19

darn

jokerdino

haa

Stack Exchange

0

Q: Notify a rejected or accepted edit

I would like to propose to somehow notify a rejected edit. Meanwhile the accepted edit give a +2 and it is somehow notified in the Recent Inbox Messages, the rejected one is difficult to find [1,2] and have to be searched for. If it happens that someone is not interested to see each moment th...

feature-request

allquixotic

reasonable enough meta post

hard to say anything against that.... upboated

DavidPostill

16:40

Monaco is the world’s most densely populated country and second-smallest independent nation; with a population of just 32,410 and an area of 1.96 square kilometers (485 acres),

DavidPostill

16:51

0

A: Notify a rejected or accepted edit

You stated: It is possible that he/she forgets about that edit and miss even the comment that sometimes are given with the rejection. Unlikely, as the next time they sumbit an edit they will see a warning about the last reject: Kevin implemented this as described below. One rejected edi...

allquixotic

@DavidPostill nice find

Mokubai

17:15

I just got a nasty reminder of just how old my hard drives are, how old my backup is, and just how dangerous RAID0 is.

allquixotic

yikes

lose everything?

Mokubai

Thankfully just nudging all the connectors in the case brought it back to life, that or putting the case on its side helped.

Refreshing the backup and see how long it survives

Intel Rapid Storage reckons one of the drives "failed"

I have no idea if that means the drive failed hard or of the connector was loose or it wanted me to turn it off so it could spin up better

It did something weird yesterday as well

allquixotic

I am trying to chase down the Comms Room folk on Slack, but apparently it's invite-only... great

and Clippy is no help

was hoping they could give me a hw-rec for a RAID controller

NVM

allquixotic

17:34

0

Q: RAID card that can do SSD caching, 4kn, UEFI

I currently have four identically sized HDDs in RAID-10 on an Adaptec 8805. Unfortunately this controller can't do read/write caching of the array's blocks on SSDs attached to the RAID controller. I now have several SSDs (two right now, possibly expanding to four later) and would like to utiliz...

raid-controller

DragonLord

May 6 at 17:30, by allquixotic

HALP, the cat has a question

AMD still losing money ir.amd.com/…

DragonLord

17:47

AMD seems to have managed to make money compared to the last quarter, though.

Let's hope they can survive the rest of 2015...

Consoles, the main source of semi-custom SoC sales, will probably be a key factor here.

allquixotic

too bad the Fury-X isn't propping them up - it's a crappy, overpriced card

at $500 I bet they would sell a lot, but would they make a profit on them? who knows

because it would be a competitor to the 980 Ti at $150 less.. that matters a lot to some people

xCare

18:08

has anyone used the HDDRawCopy tool from HDDGuru?

the one @Bob was linking earlier

I followed his instructions, restarted on Windows but nothing showed up, so I just unplugged and replugged the bad drive and behold...

imgur.com/a/nPz10

so I am using the tool @Bob linked, HDDRawCopy to attempt making a raw copy of the drive to my backup 1TB HDD... but it shows me this notice:

imgur.com/xs5IfeG

if it does overwrite everything, it's going to ruin my good drive which I use to boot into Windows

better wait for @Bob

Michael Frank

18:54

@xCare It'll be a couple hours wait, it's current ~6am his time.

DragonLord

19:07

@allq: I've noticed you're fond of containers.

Can you give me an introduction to the technology and how you use it to run your applications?

allquixotic

19:38

@DragonLord sure

sorry, work got me

sec

Ramhound

I am sick and tired of @qasdfdsaq passive aggressive comments towards me. I have tried to ignore him and flag his comments but he clearly knows how to rub me the wrong way and does it ON PURPOSE

He will find comments I made months, and even years, and ping me just to indicate I was wrong

Its getting rediculous

allquixotic

19:54

superuser.com/users/449623/qasdfdsaq ?

DragonLord

I'm going through his comments, hold on...

If the heads were stuck on the drive then they are likely damaged and will need replacing. Head stiction (google.co.uk/search?q=head+stiction) doesn't just happen for fun. These days a head crash is just as likely to damage the heads as they are the platter. While Ramhound is wrong as usual, I would say a drive failing in 6 months would have been far better sent back to the retailer for replacement, unless you were desperate to recover the data. — qasdfdsaq 28 mins ago

> ...Ramhound is wrong as usual...

There are indications of trolling. I'll look into it.

Ramhound

He never goes into details. When pushed for feedback to improve my answers ( which he admits he downvoted ) he provides none. What little is given when asked for specifics or the chance to fix the information himself he never acts on it. When I provide my own feedback he spends his time trying to defend the content instead of just considering it. He deliberately attempts to bait me into an argument.

This has been going on for months...

But I am literally had my wits end.

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