Ask Ubuntu General Room

htorque

13:21

i'm waiting for hard drive prices to fall. i'm sure the apocalypse comes first.

Niek Bergman

Get a SSD instead. :-p

And yes, they're even more expensive, I know.

htorque

need the drives for data

my two backup disks have 10,000+ power-on hours :D

the one in my system shows multi-zone errors once in a while - i don't trust it and want to replace it :-(

jokerdino

Wrong room. :/

htorque

two to go

jokerdino

Good. Thanks.

@htorque Isn't that scary?

The whole thing is messed up.

htorque

13:27

yeah it is

jokerdino

I want to replace it too.

htorque

well, it's not a problem per se - did they show up right after you bought the disk?

jokerdino

I don't think so. I never used the disk utility until late last year.

htorque

i once bought a 1tb WD black - came with four bad sectors, the WD disk utility mapped them out and the disk worked fine for years without any additional bad sectors.

jokerdino

The 3 bad sectors stay that way for quite some time, I think.

For months IIRC.

htorque

13:29

i'd certainly keep an eye on the count of reallocated sectors

if it rises → replace

jokerdino

I am keeping an eye out on that.

htorque

backups backups backups

psusi

was just going to say, backups backups backups ;)

htorque

(as long as you don't overwrite your backup with bad data :D)

psusi

once the sector has been reallocated, you've already lost data

Niek Bergman

13:31

Not necessarily.

psusi

well... true... it could have been free space previously

jrg

Compared to what I had @jokerdino, you're A-Ok.

htorque

:D

jrg

Perspective my good friend, perspective. :D

Niek Bergman

Ouch, 50 pending sectors? D:

htorque

13:32

"a few bad sectors"

jrg

@NiekBergman Yeah, it was amazing the drive still worked.

Niek Bergman

Are you sure you didn't drop the harddrive? :D

jrg

Certain. :D

psusi

that can't be right

jrg

@psusi It was/is.

jokerdino

13:34

that stuff is scary

psusi

drives don't have multi gb spare sector pools, that has to be a firmware bug ;)

especially since the absolute value in no way agrees with the normalized value

oddly, that number is a palindrome in hex: 240024

jokerdino

Geek ^

psusi

;)

lazyPower

@jrg final count, 27 lines of code. The output: One fine PDF file

htorque

240024 != 420042 :P

but if you play it backwards, it spells 42! twice!

jokerdino

13:36

@htorque in Hex?

jrg

@lazyPower Nice!! I found out where that script I had was - on the hard drive above. :P

psusi

byte wise palindrome, not nibble wise ;)

htorque

ha :P

cprofitt

-2

Q: xscreensaver already locked?

I'm no longer able to lock my screen with Ctrl-Alt-L, and $ xscreensaver-command -lock xscreensaver-command: already locked. What is going on here? Is this functionality broken? xscreensaver-command -activate still works, but that doesn't prompt for the password when dismissing. $ uname -a L...

xscreensaver

That question seems valid ... why was that marked off topic?

Amith KK

BBL

htorque

13:39

@cprofitt probably because it should really be a bug report. don't understand the downvotes, though.

jokerdino

system auto downvotes a question if it is closed as O/T

jrg

It isn't a bug though, its no different than the dozens of "how do I get skype to work with my computer" questions - most of them end up being related to jack interferring with pulseaudio or something.

jokerdino

494	moderator attention flags
485	deemed helpful
3	declined
5	disputed

11	posts marked spam
11	deemed helpful

3	posts marked offensive
3	deemed helpful

1	comment flagged
1	deemed helpful

Something is weird.

494 =! 485 + 3 + 5

Is @AmithKK back already?

htorque

@jrg i still bet it's a bug :P

jokerdino

> Stats for: Why do I use Ubuntu? 10,870 total views

jrg

13:49

@jokerdino nice. :D

jokerdino

Didn't know people actually care why I use Ubuntu. :D

Though, most of the page views seems to come from "syndicated views".

jrg

let me put it this way: With one post, you're now at a fourth of 2buntu's all-time stats. Well done.

jokerdino

Should thank the Planet Ubuntu I guess.

@jrg Do you put it that way?

jrg

@jokerdino Indeed, the planet is wonderful. :)

Oli

Well hooray for me. I have a question with 1000 upvotes.

3

1000

Q: The *right* JSON content type?

Right I've been messing around with JSON for some time, just pushing it out as text and it hasn't hurt anybody (I know of), but I'd like to start doing things properly. I have seen so many purported "standards" for the JSON content type: application/json application/x-javascript text/javascript...

json content-type

jrg

13:52

Want to downvote that just to screw with you. :P

jokerdino

Great minds think alike. :D

cprofitt

@htorque -- yeah... though that post was a work-a-round for the bug I guess.

Greg

14:09

What's Ubuntu like with SSDs - in a nutshell?

jrg

@Greg Really, really really fast.

Oli

@Greg Like it is with other disks. Just rocket powered.

jrg

I used Ubuntu on a 16GB SSD for two days. One of the fastest machines I've ever had the chance to use.

Greg

@jrg any compatability issues? I know there used to be, but haven't really paid any attention.

htorque

with a hdd it's just really fast :P

jrg

14:11

@Greg No, unless you go nuts with RAID and stuff, then misconfigure something.

Greg

heh - RAID SSD ... sounds lightspeed.

Oli

Speaking as somebody who has gone nuts with RAID (two SSDs in RAID0), yeah that all works.

Greg

I'm gonna get myself a little SSD just for the OS - I see no real benefit of having all my stuff on a SSD. But I always have an urge to go one step further and cramming them into a RAID configurement sounds ... tasty

Bruno Pereira

Your CPU and mem speed will become bottleneck in your system with SSDs in Raid0

Greg

How many GBs do you think is a good decision?

Oli

14:14

Yeah I'm still yet to legitimately use the whole bandwidth of my SSD. Runs at 4.3Gbps... How the hell am I ever going to need to read at that speed?

htorque

@Greg depends on what you do with your system.

Bruno Pereira

If CPU and mem are not fast enough not raid will save you there.

htorque

i'm quite happy with 60gb

Oli

@Greg I've got my 120GB RAID0 in my desktop (more than enough) and a 60 in a netbook which is fine for that.

jrg

@Greg coming from a guy who lives on a 80GB partition total, you don't need a lot.

Bruno Pereira

14:15

start with a 60Gb one and move from there

Oli

But yeah, that's with spinning-rust to handle all the big data.

jrg

If you're doing video/other huge files, move them off to a USB HDD.

Greg

I think I'm going to keep my home directory on a ~~hard drive~~ ~~magnetic~~ ~~rotational~~ ~~spindle~~ old crap drive(?)

Bruno Pereira

@Greg thats the best choice

htorque

rotational drive ;)

jrg

14:16

Spindle.

htorque

old crap :P

i want 2tb ssd NOW

Bruno Pereira

lol

htorque

for 100 euro, of course

Oli

@Greg I have a weird hybrid. my main profile dir is on RAID0-SSD but lots of the data (~/Documents, ~/Music, etc) live on RAID5-HDD (mainly using symlinks). Why? Because I was finding that leaving everything on RAID5 was slowing things like Firefox down. I can live if my Firefox profile died (it's all backed up anyway).

Bruno Pereira

just the change from normal drive to SDD will blow your mind, thats for sure

Greg

14:17

I am concerned about the speed of the OS (boot times mainly), but I'm guessing that RAID is not needed - only to fuel the hacker in you?

Bruno Pereira

start with one, if you want to upgrade to 2 later on that is always a choice

htorque

during boot, ubuntu reads 100-200mb data - that's 1-2 seconds with a ssd, the rest is mostly cpu bound, so don't worry about boot speed. :P

Greg

@Oli so installing your browser and moving its profile to a separate physical SSD makes a difference to your browsing?

Oli

@Greg IMO, yeah. Firefox is a bundle of SQLite databases and they all run faster on an SSD

Bruno Pereira

I am sure that on my system changing the OS SDD from a single to RAID0 would not bring me so much improvements, it depends on what you are doing and what your system is. I went from around 15 secs boot to around 5 or 6 with a single SDD

Greg

14:21

@Oli how many SSDs do you have in your RAID setup?

lazyPower

@jrg i'm pretty bad about losing things unless i put them "in the cloud". I seem to have better organization skills when i put it somewhere other than my hdd

Oli

@Greg Well it's physically just one but it's really two in DMRAID (OCZ Revo)

Bruno Pereira

@Oli that thing is so awesome, shame it costs the price it does :/

jrg

@lazyPower Same here. Gist FTW.

htorque

@BrunoPereira you mean it's a shame you don't earn enough to not care about its price :D

Bruno Pereira

14:25

@htorque ^ that

:)

htorque

well, you're not alone :P

Oli

It's only ~£180 which isn't that much for ~120GB of SSD storage when you compare it to what you pay for 60GB SATA3 SSDs

The newer PCI-E ones which are much faster do cost a lot more but they're so fast they're not consumer level.

Bruno Pereira

^^ the price has dropped, in the beginning of December I remember seeing that at around 250 pounds.

@Oli the hybrid one they have is jaws dropping, 1TB almost as fast as the revo

(only works in Windows and Mac, driver crap issue)

htorque

first world problems. two decades ago i was happy about the speed (and sound) of floppy disks. :D

Bruno Pereira

the price really dropped in a few months: tweakers.net/pricewatch/287498/…

Oli

14:31

The newest version of mine will do 975MB/s for ~£220 but as I say, I can't even properly use 540MB/s. I'm thoroughly CPU limited.

Bruno Pereira

And if I install one of those in my system I will probably take advantage of 400MB/s max :P

think ill better buy a better system with the money I dont spend on this ;)

Luis Alvarado

14:43

Anybody know if using dd is faster than clonezilla

jrg

clonezilla uses dd i think

Luis Alvarado

a ok then clonezilla is just like a gui for dd then

the thing is I want to clone 160GB from one hdd to another 500gb hdd but looking for the fastest way

specially since the 160 is REALLY old

it has white beard growing out of it

htorque

doesn't clonezilla work on the FS level?

or was that partimage or what was it called again...

160gb are okay, but cloning 2tb with a lot of empty space takes sooo long.

Luis Alvarado

14:59

@htorque I don't know. I have only used clonezilla a little. Same goes for dd. But today I was just wondering which one is faster or at least stays near the maximum throughput

Questions Feed

Bounty offered: Minimum brightness level is brighter than the levels just above it http://askubuntu.com/questions/116574/minimum-brightness-level-is-brighter-than-the-levels-just-above-it?atw=1 #brightness

Tweeted by StackUbuntu on April 10, 2012 at 2:39 PM

cprofitt

askubuntu.com/questions/120741/… -- not sure that one should be closed. If they want to dual boot -- which it sounds like what they want from the description (not the title) then it is a valid question -- thought it has likely been asked before.

0

Q: Install XP over Ubuntu. (Flash Drive)

My girlfriend needs to install Windows XP over Ubuntu on her PC, because she need to run some software that Wine and a visual machine can't handle as well as the 'real' thing. Problem is, it seems very difficult to make a bootable flash drive with the files from a XP .iso from Ubuntu. All the g...

boot flash iso drive xp

nvr mind -- I see the last thing is he wants to make a flashdrive WinXP install

fossfreedom

... correct - that is why its off-topic

Amith KK

16:01

Hello all

Amith KK

16:40

BBT

cprofitt

16:51

0

Q: installing an application via ubuntu center or terminal?

i would like to ask a very basic question but i have never thought about it before. Well, when someone installs an app from terminal, he has to add the repository first,right?In the other side when someone installs an app from ubuntu center the repository is added automatically? I am asking thos...

application

that questions got answered quickly.

htorque

R.I.P., Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat!

Marco Ceppi

17:07

Good riddance

jrg

I still have a USB stick around here somewhere with the netbook remix on it...

lazyPower

17:31

... wait.. 1 thousand upvotes @Oli?

bows before the awesomeness

htorque

maverick was a good release imo :-)

jrg

It was, it had a crappy unity release though.

wisemonkey

morning e1

Questions Feed

17:49

Bounty offered: Email backup/archival program that saves emails as *.txt files http://askubuntu.com/questions/118811/email-backup-archival-program-that-saves-emails-as-txt-files?atw=1 #softwarerecommendation

Tweeted by StackUbuntu on April 10, 2012 at 5:39 PM

htorque

@jrg i forgot, wasn't that the crappy "tech-demo" based on mutter? i remember reporting a new crash every day :D

mutter was terrible

jrg

@htorque Yeah, mutter.

htorque

compare that to unity 2012!

George Edison

Hey, we get Wayland this time around.

3 years from now we'll be making fun of the version that shipped in Precise.

jrg

@GeorgeEdison wayland won't be 14.04.

George Edison

17:54

It won't?

jrg

as a tech preview, maybe.

George Edison

They're shipping a tech preview in 12.04.

(According to Jorge.)

jrg

it won't be ready for primetime before then. we might not even see btrfs as the default FS until then.

Well, there is no wayland in my 12.04. :P

George Edison

I'm just repeating what I heard.

And I agree with you - until Nvidia and ATI write drivers capable of working with Wayland, it won't see very widespread adoption.

Bruno Pereira

@GeorgeEdison Hey, you where the 12th user on the score table in the cleanup site 2 weeks ago, Jorge and htorque really dont want the swag pack cause they are full of stuff are you up to it or pass it down to the next guy?

George Edison

17:57

Pass it on to the next guy.

I've already got some, thank you.

Bruno Pereira

dam you!

jrg

Dangit.

htorque

LOL

jrg

We've chased down like, a lot of people

and NONE OF THEM WANT SWAGGGG

George Edison

Did I miss something...?

Bruno Pereira

17:58

I am trying to get the list of 10 since saturday :/

I have 9, only 1 missing and 3 have passed it

George Edison

Ah, I see the problem - who's next on the list?

Bruno Pereira

have to check that

htorque

it's not like we don't appreciate it, but seriously, i already have two!

George Edison

Yeah, what @htorque said.

Bruno Pereira

bah, cant stalk you 2 if you dont give me addresses!

George Edison

17:59

It's a very nice gesture, but I'm sure someone else would love to receive one.

htorque

@BrunoPereira i can give you lots of addresses! :P

Bruno Pereira

cmon, you have to play nice!

Jorge Castro

@BrunoPereira I see the official XBMC PPA has packages going all the way back to lucid

@BrunoPereira I am thinking the whole top half of your answer became out of date when Eden came out

Bruno Pereira

sec, I just checked this over the weekend.

@JorgeCastro launchpad.net/~nathan-renniewaldock/+archive/xbmc-stable is the only PPA with packages for 12.04 at the moment and its the official way of installing it via a PPA according to the XBMC wiki.

htorque

three annoying bugs have been fixed today, now i got nothing left to complain about. precise is going to be another fine release of ubuntu. :-)

Bruno Pereira

18:12

@JorgeCastro I say kill the 2nd PPA and leave both the official and the non official with 12.04 packages

Marco Ceppi

@BrunoPereira @JorgeCastro and that ppa sucks

Bruno Pereira

@MarcoCeppi did not work for you?

Marco Ceppi

It doesn't have the most up-to-date package build instructions for xbmc

jrg

@htorque Memory leak fixed yet?

htorque

yay

Jorge Castro

18:13

Eden is in 12.04 now though (see fossfreedom's answer)

Marco Ceppi

@BrunoPereira it worked, but I had to hack a few things to get the eventserver stuff to work

Bruno Pereira

@MarcoCeppi kk, I will forget 12.04 packages till its out then

htorque

@jrg plus "chromium causing stuck white window" fixed and another smaller bug in the dash

Marco Ceppi

@JorgeCastro It must have just landed, because it wasn't there last week

Jorge Castro

he just posted it like 15 minutes ago

jrg

18:14

@htorque Sweet. :D

Marco Ceppi

awesome, I can finally torch this ppa

Bruno Pereira

@JorgeCastro there is no 12.04 packages tough in the PPA (@fossfreedom)

Jorge Castro

it's in the distro dude

they wouldn't put 12.04 packages in there until the next release

Marco Ceppi

@BrunoPereira packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=xbmc

jrg

in Ask Ubuntu tag cleaners, 8 mins ago, by BlueXrider

@jrg what to do with the 10.10 tags that have 96 unanswered questions. Since Maverick is done?

@BlueXrider has a point.

Its EOL'ed, do we do anything with it?

htorque

18:24

end of official support doesn't mean those installs will self-destruct. i'm pro leaving a comment first and closing if there's no feedback (like the incomplete flag on launchpad).

jrg

we'll need to bring it up on meta, but that seems like a good idea.

Jorge Castro

I say just leave it

10.10 users won't magically go away

Ubuntu Questions on U&L

0

Q: List of available command options?

I'm currently setting up my first web server without a control panel and so far things are going pretty good! I was just wondering if anyone could direct me to somewhere that explains all of the available command options and what they do? Since I'm mostly following guides to set up specific t...

ubuntu ssh terminal apache server

fossfreedom

@BrunoPereira ... yeah - just realised that ... anyway - I hope you like your now colourful answer...!

Bruno Pereira

Noooooooooooooo, I was making it imba!

dam phone

@fossfreedom thx ;)

George Edison

18:51

Note to self: Database schema migrations aren't as easy as they sound.

Bruno Pereira

@htorque have you played with zfs and btrfs yet?

htorque

no, that's voodoo!

i'm all for breakage, just not with filesystems ;)

Bruno Pereira

I'm doing zfs native atm, tried btrfs and could not make the thing work properly no matter what documentation I read. Zfs is pretty awesome till now

wondering if people have any bad experience with it before I start adding important data to it

Luis Alvarado

19:06

Can somebody write me something so I can show my gf the notification window that appears in chrome when somebody @ me something

Bruno Pereira

@LuisAlvarado <3

Luis Alvarado

Thanks buddy

Bruno Pereira

welcome

Luis Alvarado

chrome is killing my firefox love man

help me

I can't go to the dark side

Bruno Pereira

Zfs is awesome! I just wiped one of my disks with dd and scrubed the pool, data is intact scrub restored the data and warned that one of the disks seems to have problems ^^

htorque

19:15

lol

lazyPower

19:46

@BrunoPereira hi5

Questions Feed

20:58

Bounty offered: Hulu desktop stopped working on my Dell http://askubuntu.com/questions/118250/hulu-desktop-stopped-working-on-my-dell?atw=1

Tweeted by StackUbuntu on April 10, 2012 at 8:39 PM

William

21:20

Hello

about to board plane

DoR

21:34

@GeorgeEdison Congrats!

Blog - Stack Exchange: Stack Exchange API V2.0 Contest Winners

Kevin Montrose on April 10, 2012

About six months ago we began work in earnest on the second version of the Stack Exchange API. A few months later, after a short private beta, we opened up a public beta with tantalizing prizes.

Now it’s time to announce the winners.

An Android app by Karan M, supporting all non-meta Stack Exchange sites and a view into your inbox.

Karan will be getting an iPad 2 the new iPad.

This open source app by Greg Hewgill drops your new inbox items into OS X’s menu bar.

Greg will be getting an Acer Aspire One. …

2

George Edison

21:48

Thank you!

lazyPower

22:55

@GeorgeEdison hi5 man!

George Edison

Thanks :)

Jorge Castro

bummer about that menu bar app

@GeorgeEdison did that like a year ago. :)

George Edison

Did what?

Jorge Castro

SE Notifier

George Edison

StackApplet?

Jorge Castro

22:59

yeah

congrats though, an SSD is a fine thing to have

George Edison

What about it? (Sorry, I'm just a little confused here...)

Jorge Castro

I was just saying, the 2nd place app, you had already done something like that

George Edison

I'm very excited to try out the SSD.

It's going to be a bit tricky since I need to essentially clone a full Windows installation from one disk to another.

lazyPower

Or, you could just go back to running ubuntu full time and leave your winders install on a VM (nothingtodohere)

George Edison

23:18

Oy... stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits

100 suggested edits.

@lazyPower I can't - Windows 8 won't run on a VM without hardware virtualization.

lazyPower

Oh thats right. I recall reading that.

Questions Feed

23:40

Is Ubuntu Studio dead? http://askubuntu.com/questions/120849/is-ubuntu-studio-dead?atw=1 #ubuntustudio

Tweeted by StackUbuntu on April 10, 2012 at 11:39 PM

Ubuntu Questions on U&L

23:58

1

Q: Ubuntu: Pinning GNAT to version from Ubuntu 5.10

I have one of the latest Ubuntu releases, namely Ubuntu 11.10. But I don't want the latest GNAT release, but version 3.40 that came with Ubuntu 5.10. Is it possible to have GNAT 3.40 on my Ubuntu 11.10 machine? I thought about this solution: file /etc/apt/preferences.d/gnat: Package: gnat Pi...

ubuntu package-management version

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