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4:00 PM
don't know what "install remix" means though
 
@StefanoPalazzo netbook remix, i think
 
If it is, it's on topic
but we need a magician to fix it :)
 
0
Q: Linux OS change

Johndual boot Win7 Jolicloud delete Joliclou install remix ?use same partician?

 
Oli
Ooo we got a mention on the Ubuntu Server Survey
under "What method of community support have you used? Check any that apply"
 
hope that bears fruit :) (i fear the questioner might not come back for a few hours, somehow)
 
Oli
4:07 PM
Check
 
he awesome
link to the survey?
 
Oli
There's some buggy JS on that survey... It keeps hiding sub-questions that are relevant to my interests when I check some options
 
I took the survey :D
 
yeah, it hides the support question as soon as you enter a number of servers you use (which it has asked before)
 
Oli
Ah excellent... There's a bit bit about Ubuntu Advantage and Landscape (something I had a little rant about the other day)
 
4:12 PM
I passed your blog on to the landscape team
 
@oli yeah there's even the Oli Option, "Ubuntu Advantage is too expensive" :)
 
Oli
@StefanoPalazzo It is! Well.. it's not that it's too expensive for what it is, I just don't need it. I've got all the support I'll ever need right here. Landscape on its own is a product that Canonical should be selling.
@JorgeCastro Cheers!
 
If the IP indemnification is a real product, with a straightforward cost/profit calculation behind it, then offering Ubuntu Advantage without it, for less, would be a great deal I think
that is, if the promise of legal protection is not just thrown in because it won't be needed anyway
Would be interesting to know if it's actually been of any use to anybody
 
Oli
@StefanoPalazzo Well that's it... It's insurance against something that may or may not ever happen.
But businesses buy it because they wager they can't cover that liability.
 
right, would be nice to have some figures to do a risk assessment
(I'm sure the affected businesses have them)
 
Oli
4:22 PM
Indeed it would. I doubt any Linux vendor would ever give them out though... If it's not being used, people stop buying it... If it is, businesses stop using Linux completely
 
Hi @JorgeCastro and @StefanoPalazzo
 
hello @MichealH
 
@MichealH I would argue your point of being the coolest Ubuntu User around :P
 
wow, thats a long survey :/
 
@MarcoCeppi I made a Ask Ubuntu IRC Bot \o/ :)
 
4:29 PM
My take on this new LibreOffice Ribbon-UI Mockup
 
Man, that looks so awesome
 
@JorgeCastro I know right?!
 
I'm just not enough of a user of office-software to appreciate it I suppose. But I'd like the ui to just be native, look and work like everything else; and I'd be completely happy.
 
I was talking about the Picture of the solider and the "Why"
I think the ribbon looks a little gimicky
 
oh i see (:
 
4:32 PM
I'm a ribbon fan
 
@JorgeCastro whats a "ribbon"?
 
the big button layout thing under the menu
In GUI-based application software, a ribbon is an interface where a set of toolbars are placed on tabs in a tab bar. Recent releases of some Microsoft applications have embraced this form with an intricate modular ribbon as their main interface. The Ribbon GUI provides the user interface of an application with a large toolbar filled with graphical representations of control elements which are grouped by different functionality. The Ribbon can also contain tabs to expose different sets of control elements eliminating the need for a lot of different icon-based tool bars. Some of these tabs ar...
unfortunately it is heavily patented or something
 
aah, i bet MS has it
yep
 
I'm one of those die-hards who think that every piece of software should work in exactly the same way, and share a small set of UI elements if at all possible
 
4:35 PM
@StefanoPalazzo If they all use ribbons then you would be SOL :P
 
Ribbons == Tabbed interface IMO
 
the next big innovation in browser technology you mean? Oh nooo!
:P
 
we're within 1k trafficwise of Gaming!
we've really closed the gap the past 2 weeks
 
Oli
The MS office implementation is a little bit more than just tabbing. Live previews of styles and previews. Things to try and get people using semantic styles rather than just boofing-around with the font settings each time. I liked it when I first started using it.
 
4:37 PM
yeah, I love the ribbon
 
Oli
Either way, it's good to see something happening with OO's lacklustre interface. It hasn't had a lot of love from anybody recently.
 
don't get your hopes up
that just some guy's UI mockup
 
Oli
Well I thought IBM would push development on their Lotus UI a little more but they seem to have just done the first bit and dropped it.
 
Is it just me or does it appear that SE sites which seem to be "problematic" generally have a very high proportion of answered questions, around 98-100%, whereas sites that run well only have between 85 and 92%?
 
Oli
It was a step in the right direction (despite their implementation being butt ugly)
 
4:40 PM
you mean the symphony UI?
 
Oli
@StefanoPalazzo Is that not a sign that those sites aren't getting enough questions? A good site has enough incoming to have a few slip through.
 
yeah, I liked it, but at one point they stopped updating the debs
 
Oli
@JorgeCastro That's the badger
 
@Oli that sounds reasonable, I was thinking (having my opinion coloured by the madness at atheism.se) that every questions just gets a load of bad answers; one can cause the other
 
Oli
@JorgeCastro Looking at more recent screenshots, it's actually not as ugly as I remember it being... Still, doesn't look too much more than a tabbed bar of icons
 
4:48 PM
Hello All. Anyone up to help a newbie restore data from his ext3 raid hard-drive? :)
 
Oli
0
Q: Not enough components to start the RAID array?

urigI'm trying to retrieve data from a "Western Digital MyBook World Edition (white light)" NAS device. This is basically an embedded Linux box with a 1TB HDD in it formatted in ext3. It stopped booting one day for no apparent reason. I have extracted the HDD from the NAS device and installed it in ...

@urig Researching now.
 
oh man
I had one of those white NAS things
 
Yep. That's it.
 
it was slow, etc.
 
Many thanks.
 
4:52 PM
though I never bothered to try to get the data off of it
 
I also posted this - it's a different approach to solve the same issue: askubuntu.com/questions/21989/…
I guess it is kind of slow but it managed to stream videos to my XBOX which was good enough for me :)
The annoying thing is that WD don't believe in fixing stuff - they have this policy of replacing bad units for new ones and your data be damned. In fact just by removing the drive from its enclosure I've voided my warranty :(
 
yeah that was the last myworld thing I bought
 
The thing is that Disk Utility is indicating that the drive is healthy but the mount command says it's not ext3. Is that because it's a RAID partition?
I don't even know which RAID level :(
 
oh so the data is there, you just need to mount it
 
I believe so. I'm hoping only the boot partiton is damaged.
 
4:58 PM
no idea on this one, I guess we'll just wait to see what people come up to
 
0
Q: Thunderbird is preferred mail app, messaging menu still loads evolution

user9069Hi, After installing ubuntu I setup my email in evolution, which is fine but on balance I prefer Thunderbird so I installed and set that up. Under preferred applications I have set the mail to Thunderbird, but when I click on the icon in the top right (the mail envelope) and select mail it stil...

can we close this? :-)
your vote counts
 
 
@urig mdadm is a piece of software to manage raid arrays
 
mdadm --detail /dev/sdb
mdadm: /dev/sdb does not appear to be an md device
Grrr!!
Why doesn't fdisk -l show me any MD devices?
 
I am finding some things
 
Oli
5:04 PM
@urig I posted an answer
 
but to be honest they look scary, so I'm going to just upvote you when I get new votes and hope for the best
 
@Oli I kiss you many times!
Already installed mdadm in the hope it allows me to start the raid - it didn't :(. Reading on.
So sudo mdadm --assemble --scan is risky for me?
 
Oli
It shouldn't be but I honestly have no idea how these things are set up
If it can't create it, mdadm should report a failure
 
@all g'night!
 
What's a superblock?
mdadm: /dev/md0 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md1 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md3 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md2 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
Progress! I now see 4 partitions each as a RAID-1 Array. They all have status DEGRADED. First 3 are started and the last one - the one I'm interested in is not. I get a warning when I attempt to start it:
"Are you sure you want the RAID array degraded?"
 
5:14 PM
aha!
make sure you update your question with the latest information
 
Will certainly update the question. A blog post is also planned :).
What's a degraded raid array and what's wrong with starting it?
 
yeah, take copius notes
degraded means it's messed up
like if a disk dies
it's slower, etc. but it should work
 
@urig, No idea if it makes a difference, but do you have the disks in the right order?
 
I think the disks aren't quite in the right order. The big partition which appears last (sdb4) is now md1 for some reason.
 
Not having a clue, I'm thinking you can try to permute the order until it doesn't say it's degraded anymore (check with someone else if that makes any sense at all before wasting your time)
 
5:19 PM
Ah, degraded RAID disks...good times...
 
How can I permute the numbers?
 
you'll have to plug them into different ports
 
Oli
@JorgeCastro Did you WD Whateverit'scalled have two disks in it?
 
tedious and annoying
 
Oli
aghl
 
5:19 PM
no, mine had one disk
0
Q: Thunderbird is preferred mail app, messaging menu still loads evolution

user9069Hi, After installing ubuntu I setup my email in evolution, which is fine but on balance I prefer Thunderbird so I installed and set that up. Under preferred applications I have set the mail to Thunderbird, but when I click on the icon in the top right (the mail envelope) and select mail it stil...

vote for dupe!
 
@Oli aghl?
 
Oli
@urig My last message was intended for you but it went to Jorge
 
@urig here's the big problem with my permutation idea: paste.ubuntu.com/555150
 
@Stefano Palazzo We're misunderstanding each other. It's a single physical drive with 4 partitions on it. Their numbering is mixed up between mdX and sdbX
 
I do hope the order doesn't make a differnce
Oh i see! Well never mind me then I though it was four disks
 
5:21 PM
@Oli. No. My device only has a single 1TB drive.
I did mention that in my post, didn't I?
 
Oli
Basically, running a RAID1 disk without its partner disk isn't any more risky than running a single disk outside of RAID... But if it does have a partner disk it'll become out of sync. As you don't have one, I say mount it, ignore the warning
 
Going for it :)
 
Oli
@urig Probably. I'm doing 70 things at once =)
 
@urig you did, excuse me :)
 
Hmmpf. I get an error: One or more block devices are holding /dev/sdb2
I tried starting from Disk Utility
 
Oli
5:23 PM
@urig It can be fussy. It's not mounted anywhere is it?
sudo umount /dev/sdb2 should work (doesn't always, mind you)
 
Oh wait, I'm sorry.
The partition I'm interested in is already started.
 
3
A: Adding a "lol" button.

Tom GullenPerhaps a 4 way voting arrow

 
Oli
@urig yey!?
 
I actually LOLed at that
 
Sorry :D
 
Oli
5:25 PM
@JorgeCastro horizontal should be wtf and lol
perhaps have a super-upvote button: FTW!!
 
Hoorah! I now have access to all the photos of my 2 year old daughter since when she was born. Thank you guys! Thank you oli!
 
Oli
@urig Make a backup!
 
FTW!!
 
@urig and @Oli Make it RAID 10!
 
Will copy to a new drive immediately and will backup religiously from now on.
 
Oli
5:27 PM
@MarcoCeppi I'm rather partial to RAID5/6 but RAID is not a backup. What if the computer and backup gets stolen or you accidentally shift+delete it?
 
@Oli nice work!
 
@Oli I agree, he should backup to a RAID10 array is what I was trying to hint at. :)
 
@urig make sure you update the question and answer, so the next person with one of those things doesn't get hosed!
 
I'm going to buy a separate USB drive and backup to that regularly. Wish I could use something like dropbox as cloud backup but i have too many photos and videos there.
 
Or let @Oli post an answer and accept that :D
 
5:28 PM
Will do.
 
well, you could at least backup the photos
 
It's several tens of Gigs just for the pics somehow. I just right-clicked properties on them.
Too expensive for cloud backup no?
 
Oli
@urig AmazonS3 is good for bulk stuff at $0.093 per gigabyte per month on their reduced redundancy plan... So yeah it adds up
 
5:31 PM
@Oli plus the bandwidth costs to upload
@urig have a look at thsi question:
66
Q: Comparison of backup tools

flutefluteBackup is incredibly important. Obviously there's no best backup tool, but a comparison of the options would be very interesting. (I've made this a community wiki) Graphical Interface? Command line? Incremental backups? Automatic backups? Install method: In standard repositories? PPA?

 
Oli
@MarcoCeppi Sure but that's fairly low too. It would cost just under $3 for the year to upload and host 10gigs
 
though, another drive + rsync would be good too, and doesn't have a recurring price
however it's not offsite
 
@JorgeCastro exactly - and not redundant
 
Oli
It's a problem I need to address. My stupid camera can do 16gigs in a day.
 
Ok guys. Thanks so much for your help. I've accepted your answer Oli and added a comment. Must rush out now. Thanks again!
 
Oli
5:34 PM
Seems silly but printing and albumning (new word for the win) might be a viable long-term option
 
@Oli Ink is...expensive
2 1TB drives in a RAID might work
It'll cost you about $170 bucks
 
Oli
I've got 4 1.5TBs in RAID5 now. I'm happy with its on-site life-span... But I've had some bad experiences with RAID in the past
I've started to see long-life burnable Blu Ray media coming out (100year guaranteed) which might be another option.
 
Yeah, so have we. We have these stupid MD1000s and in the last 6 months we've had 8 simultaneous disk failure (2 or more) on our arrays
 
Oli
Urgh!
 
It's just completely crappy to get that call from nagios that two disks have gone in a RAID5
 
Oli
5:38 PM
What do you do in a situation like that? I assume if you're dealing with that much guff, you have backups somewhere
 
So now we've bumped everything to RAID10 and changed disk vendor, but it's crap like that which makes you want to go home and sleep for a week
 
at past jobs there were people who bought drives from different vendors, etc. to avoid a bad batch
I dunno if that's just an ongoing urban legend though
 
Oli
Perhaps one day SSDs will be reliable enough (and more to the point: cheap for capacity) to not have to go any further than RAID5
 
Luckily this has only happened on a production machine once - the others were backup arrays (so some of our backups were corrupted). But when we lost the production we had about 8 corrupted VM containers that we had to pull from backups (which were about 15 hours old)
I can't wait for the day that we go SSD
Tired of spinning platters
 
my intel ssd is rated to like 57 years of continuous writes or something sick like that
 
Oli
5:40 PM
Sounds like you'd burn through current-gen SSDs pretty fast.
@JorgeCastro That's awesome.
 
Yeah, that's why we haven't implemented...yet. We have a long term plan to bring them in on our edge stuff after the next SSD gen comes out
 
no really, their enterprise SSDs are rated even higher
I think they're even more ridiculously expensive though
 
Oli
They still cost silly amounts compared to mechanicals though. Time should sort that.
 
They are, they do
 
Oli
5:43 PM
There's good competition though. Lots of products keep coming out and pushing the whole market price down.
 
hahaha, SICK
 
yeah, we get 1TB drives for $60
 
writes are still slow but it's nice for like a laptop without breaking the bank
 
Oli
Whoa. for 32gigs?! You can get that in DDR3 cheaper.
 
Oli
5:56 PM
Hi @RolandTaylor
 
Gus
Do I need at least 5rep to post a question?
 
@Gus you need just 1 rep to ask and answer questions
 
And it's impossible to get 0 or less reputation
 
6:00 PM
and @Gus, Welcome to the site :-)
 
The fact that you're in chat means you've got more rep than most of our new users :D
 
Gus
Thanks Stefano.
I just created an account. I have accounts with other StackExchange sites, though
 
I see, that explains that
 
Gus
I didn't know there was any "credit" rollover from other sites :-p
 
@Gus It only happens if you have 200 rep (and you were just below that when you signed up for Ask Ubuntu so I'm afraid you'll have to start from 1...)
 
6:16 PM
However @Gus If you get 5 more rep points you'll get that boost!
 
@MarcoCeppi No he won't :P (at least not automatically, but per that post I linked it can by manually unlinking/linking the accounts)
 
6:50 PM
Hmmm my Natty Guest account wants a password...
 
@fluteflute Try "narwhal" if that doesn't work try "spacecadet", lastly "sabdfl"
 
or "narwhal" even :)
 
@MarcoCeppi somehow I'm not surprised those didn't work :P
 
Opulent Owl
 
I was really wishing that would happen :P
So I'm looking for a place to stay between now and May - found this one...looks like a winner!
 
7:01 PM
O-animals: Ocelot, Octopus, Okapi (antelope), Olingo, Olm, Onager, Opossum, Orangutan, Orca, Oriole, Oropendola, Oropendula, Oryx, Osprey, Ostracod, Ostrich, Otter, Ovenbird, Owl, Ox, Oxen, Oxpecker, Oyster, Ozark big-eared bat, Otter. :)
 
He doesn't like to be in the spotlight
 
:)
Ossum Opossum!
 
1
A: Name suggestions for Ubuntu 11.10?

Marco CeppiOracular Octopus Oracular - of or relating to an oracle.

 
wasn't there one ubuntu animal that was fictional?
 
Not thus far...
 
7:08 PM
Ubiquitous Unicorn.
 
Oh yes, Jackalope
 
Jackalope is mythical
 
@fluteflute I've seen one!!!
Ubuntu, an operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux, makes two releases every year, using the year and month of the release as a version number. The first Ubuntu release, for example, was Ubuntu 4.10 and was released on 20 October 2004. Ubuntu releases are timed to be approximately one month after GNOME releases, which are in turn about one month after releases of X.Org, resulting in each Ubuntu release including a newer version of GNOME and X. To date every fourth release, in the second quarter of even-numbered years, has been designated as a Long Term Support (LTS) release, indicating...
 
Me too!
 
they've glued little reverse antlers to his face the cruel monsters :(
 
7:10 PM
 
hehehe
 
@MarcoCeppi Why has "that" post been locked?
 
It's dumb :P
 
:P
 
It was part of a temporary burst of "Fun-friday" threads which was later determined to be better suited for Forums than a Q&A site
 
7:14 PM
They can't take on a whale, can they?
:P
 
7:29 PM
0
A: Hotkey to shut down from login screen?

Stefano PalazzoIt appears to be a missing feature. :-( There is a bug filed for this issue: #505323, GDM's settings bar inaccessible with keyboard See How do I subscribe to a bug for instruction on how to follow the progress of this bug. If you are already logged in to launchpad and ready to go, click "This b...

Look at how user-friendly that is :(
(I thought gnome a11y was stellar)
 
KDE (vanilla) is the bomb.
 
Yeah I know it's used by a lot of blind people
 
-_-
 
Orating Oryx
Only Orodromeus
(and jumping to Q)
 
Quaint Quail
 
7:37 PM
Quiet Quadroclyptonychus - to steal one from my own novel :)
say it 5 times fast :P
 
Said.
Piece o' cake.
 
haha
Nonchalant Nonoclyptonychus Arborealis Nigera Afarensis
11.05
 
What's your novel called?
 
21 Islands
it's sci-fi
 
Caribbean Islands!
 
7:42 PM
the "wet your pants grandma is coming to dinner" kind of sci-fi
 
Eww!
 
where grandma = any assortment of man made beast :P
okay no more spoliers for now :P
 
W00t!
 
Is "ssh" the same as "openssh-server"?
never mind I found out :) (it is)
 
@StefanoPalazzo I'd say it isn't....
(not that I know anything about the topic)
 
7:44 PM
~$ sudo apt-get install ssh
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  openssh-server
Suggested packages:
  rssh molly-guard openssh-blacklist openssh-blacklist-extra
The following NEW packages will be installed
  openssh-server ssh
 
Just because the packages are the same doesn't mean it is "the same"
 
right you are, installing them just has the same result
 
Not quite what I mean
 
it doesn't, even. Installing openssh-server doesn't install ssh
 
kinda like "www-browser" isn't synonymous with firefox or chrome , etc
 
7:46 PM
Isn't ssh just a meta package?
 
@StefanoPalazzo Oh I thought you meant as far as ask ubuntu tagging goes. Sorry ignore me.
 
Mh. I don't know now if I should put "ssh" in my answer, the questioner can't see the screen, and openssh-server doesn't require you to press "Y", saving about three steps
 
openssh-server isn't shh as far as I know
 
ah! No It's not about tagging
0
A: How to enable ssh server in recovery mode?

Stefano PalazzoIf you know what you're typing onto, it's just one simple command, but I'll explain the complete procedure to rule out any and all errors. Boot up the machine, holding down Shift When you're sure the grub menu is up, press Down then Return* Press Down six times to select "Drop to root shell pro...

 
ssh is a metapackage.
 
7:47 PM
ssh is just a metapackage (confirmed)
 
@iamsid I win with the edit! :D
 
:'(
 
the last recovery point on my 10.10 VM already has ssh installed :(
 
@iamsid We can split the bounty :P
 
7:48 PM
Sounds great! :D
 
<—
 
------> @MarcoCeppi
 
-1, not enough unicode ↑
 
-1, not enough bold
 
7:55 PM
~$ python no_of_users.py
7839

were close to 8k btw ;-)
 
–——»
 
←↑↓→↖↗↙↘ @RolandTaylor
 
     _                _ _           _                    _              __
 ___| |_ ___  _ __   (_) |_    __ _| |_ __ ___  __ _  __| |_   _   _    \ \
/ __| __/ _ \| '_ \  | | __|  / _` | | '__/ _ \/ _` |/ _` | | | | (_)____| |
\__ \ || (_) | |_) | | | |_  | (_| | | | |  __/ (_| | (_| | |_| |  |_____| |
|___/\__\___/| .__/  |_|\__|  \__,_|_|_|  \___|\__,_|\__,_|\__, | ( )    | |
             |_|                                           |___/  |/    /_/
 
7:56 PM
Going back a ways for that one @badp :P
 
 _   _ ________      ________ _____  _
| \ | |  ____\ \    / /  ____|  __ \| |
|  \| | |__   \ \  / /| |__  | |__) | |
| . ` |  __|   \ \/ / |  __| |  _  /| |
| |\  | |____   \  /  | |____| | \ \|_|
|_| \_|______|   \/   |______|_|  \_(_)
 
@StefanoPalazzo Why is there an anchor on the end of your text?
 
♠♣♥♦
 
It may float away, because it's full of hot air
as you can see from the user-info box to the left of it
 
⌦ ⌦ ⌦ ⌦
 
7:58 PM
Looks for the troll room
 
▄██████████████▄▐█▄▄▄▄█▌
██████▌▄▌▄▐▐▌███▌▀▀██▀▀
████▄█▌▄▌▄▐▐▌▀███▄▄█▌
▄▄▄▄▄██████████████▀
 
FAIL
 

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