Ask Ubuntu General Room

L. D. James

10:21

@karel. For some reason, the user in that discussion channel never types when I'm online. He usually types a message between 12 hours and a couple of days later.

L. D. James

10:34

I decided to stop trying for a while.

Ubuntu Questions on U&L

0

Q: Syntax error when i use ssh with awk over bc

I basically get the memory usage from two different nodes via ssh and store this in two different variables. I then select the host with lesser memory and return a code 0 or 1. function selectNode() { arr=("$@") mem1=$((ssh ${arr[0]} "free -m | awk 'NR==2{print \"%f\n\", \$3*100/\$2 }'")...

karel

@L.D.James At least he accepted your answer first. I had users go "thank you very much" no accept, no upvote and then two years later I got the green checkmark. I've even done some research on this and discovered that users who abandon their questions for a long time have a higher probability than average of getting any of their questions downvoted.

That result surprised me, I wasn't expecting it. I now try to reply in some form within 24 hours to answers to all questions that I ask.

L. D. James

I appreciate the accept answer. I tried and was very much involved. But I can't get over the frustration of, at the time spending 10 minutes typing steps, then without any response, he just leaves, just as he did this morning. Then I have to wait 10 hours or a few days to see the results of the commands I gave.

I believe he starts to get some insight and decide to work on his own, then get stuck, and come back to tell me where he got stuck. I believe this is the case this morning. He ignored me until, most likely he was stuck again.

It wouldn't be bad if he would message, he has to go, or any type of courtesy... he just leaves without any response. This is the first time he came back within a couple of hours, then respond to the last message.

At first, I thought he was leaving because he was having problems with his connection, or preparing his computer for the command, or something to that effect. When it always happened, I decided to get him to type while I was online by asking him if he was there. It was within five minutes of me getting the chat notice. He ignored the message and dropped out of chat. Then came back and answered my question.

@karel Yes. I never forget when I was new to AU. I used to ask questions and sometimes take a while to come back to check for answers. Most systems are not as quick and direct as AU.

But an actual chat/discussion is different. Even out of frustration, I couldn't just drop out while the user was there without excusing myself.

RobotHumans

15:23

Does anyone else wish we had "apt-get -U install"? it'ld behave like pip -U install or apk -U install, where you inline specify -U instead of apt-get update && apt-get install.

Videonauth

15:33

@RobotHumans not really, as it opens up for even more failures while updating, and in turn more questions which are dupes anyways

RobotHumans

@Videonauth A fair point. It just seemed like extra keystrokes, and I have the sysadmin virtue of laziness (spends 2 hours automating a 5 second task)

Videonauth

hehehe, why does that sound familiar? :p

cl-netbox

Hello :)

Thomas Ward

Greetings ~~mortals~~ everyone.

cl-netbox

@ThomasWard Hi Thomas - greetings to you too ! :)

RobotHumans

15:45

ohai @ThomasWard

cl-netbox

Hi @RobotHumans ! :)

RobotHumans

o/ cl

cl-netbox

Good afternoon @Videonauth ! :) All systems up and running ? :D

Videonauth

Sure, stable as hell meanwhile

cl-netbox

@Videonauth Nice ! :) Stable as hell ... that sounds good ! :D

Videonauth

15:51

yes just waiting for the 396 driver to come out of beta

cl-netbox

@Videonauth beta ??? they are stable since May, 2nd ! :)

Videonauth

well the drivers ppa does not have it yet

means they have it but there is no meta file yet (i.e. nvidia-396)

cl-netbox

@Videonauth Sorry, don't get it ... I can see them -> launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

Thomas Ward

@Videonauth uhm it's there

^ the evidence

cl-netbox

@ThomasWard Maybe @Videonauth has "tuned" his system a little bit too much ! :D :D :D

Videonauth

15:59

all i have here is this:

~ $ apt search nvidia-396
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-396/bionic 396.24.02-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1 amd64
  NVIDIA binary Xorg driver

Thomas Ward

y'all obviously don't do apt-get update and it's not called nvidia-396

it's called nvidia-graphics-drivers-396

throws salt over @Videonauth

cl-netbox

hahaha

Videonauth

@ThomasWard so why did they change the naming ?

Thomas Ward

nvidia-driver-396 is actually the package

but so is the xserver one

Videonauth

and i have run a full apt update about 2 hours ago

Thomas Ward

16:01

^ all the debs produced

@Videonauth ask the graphics driver / kernel team / NVIDIA

no idea why names changed. BUT you aren't looking hard enough to find it. I'd do a full text of 'nvidia' then grep for 396 to find the specific version(s) I'm looking for.

cl-netbox

hahaha

Thomas Ward

apt search nvidia | grep 396 <-- probably would work, I don't know I"m not on 18.04 yet :)

cl-netbox

You know what @ThomasWard ? I already told @Videonauth a few weeks ago that the stable drivers are in the repo ... no no no

Thomas Ward

explodes randomly from pings

Videonauth

nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/134859/en-us

Thomas Ward

16:03

oops? :)

Videonauth

just did a search on the nvidia site as well

Thomas Ward

@cl-netbox I think he's talking about the NVIDIA declaration of 'stable' vs. 'buggy'

not whether it's in that PPA or not

cl-netbox

@Videonauth this -> nvidia.com/object/unix.html and that -> nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/133859/en-us

Videonauth

ok now im baffled i just did the same search and all it shows me is 390 driver so i assumed still beta status

TheWanderer

C++ is so ugly

Videonauth

16:17

@TheWanderer why? :)

Thomas Ward

@TheWanderer burn the C++. All hail Python. *shot*

Videonauth

btw. the package seems to be still in customs, there was no update at all today till now

cl-netbox

@Videonauth which package ? nvidia ?

Videonauth

@cl-netbox nah real package/parcel

cl-netbox

@Videonauth ah - okay :)

Did you try to purge the old driver and then install nvidia-graphics-drivers-396 ?

Videonauth

16:21

@cl-netbox nah not yet

currently running a calculation which might need still a little while (i.e. a few hours)

not going to kill this task now

cl-netbox

@Videonauth okay :) But you are right about one thing : why the hell did they change the package name ? nvidia-<version> changed to nvidia-driver-<version> and now we have nvidia-graphics-drivers-<version> in the ppa ! Makes all older nvidia answers on AU being not working !

Videonauth

well this is what really confused me

before they had this kind of name for drivers which where still in beta

cl-netbox

Who is this new uncle on the top right ? The avatar of @GreatUncleBulgaria reminds me of a nice cute panda somehow ... :D :D :D

Thomas Ward

@Videonauth "they" being nVidia?

cl-netbox

@ThomasWard no, he means Canonical. :)

Thomas Ward

16:36

well "they" don't choose the naming scheme IIRC

not entirely

but the team to talk to doesn't share info on that :p

user136984

17:21

Hello

Thomas Ward

~~WHO GOES THERE~~ um I mean, hi! :)

Ubuntu Questions on U&L

0

Q: Allow attaching only storage devices on specific USB port?

I want to allow attaching of storage medias like flash-drive or external disk to a specific USB port and restrict any other types of devices especially Keyboard and Mouse to that particular USB port. How can I achieve this?

linux ubuntu command-line usb

user136984

:)

solsTiCe

20:26

hi. I am doing dd if=/dev/zero of=zero.bin || (sync; rm zero.bin) to clean the empty space on an encrypted partition and this is eating my cpu with 100% usage. I never saw something like this before

Fabby

20:59

@solsTiCe Why don't you do a dd if=/dev/zero of=zero.bin; sync; rm zero.bin

Thomas Ward

should also be using a bs=4M or something for a large disk with that dd

otherwise it'll take an eon to complete

Sebastian Stark

21:24

Hi. How is it possible that so many question receive quite a lot of attention (comments, answers, views), but 0 upvotes?

Fabby

Once You've seen all the questions that can be asked, you only upvote good interesting questions...

For me that means:

1. Hah, I wished I asked that!

2. They've accepted my answer.

Sebastian Stark

Isn't a question interesting by definition if you comment on it

?

(except if it's criticism)

Fabby

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! ;-) Please [edit] your question and provide the following info:

does not get an upvote from me

Sebastian Stark

of course not

Fabby

unless they accept my answer, because then the question was interesting enough

:D ;-) :D

Sebastian Stark

21:30

I just looked through the backlog of unanswered questions and found many that have extended, interesting discussions in comments. Still no upvotes

@Fabby I understand your rule

Fabby

There's just so much crap out there that I hardly answer any more (unless I'm on holiday)

Sebastian Stark

There's also downvoting :)

Fabby

I only downvote to delete

Sebastian Stark

I'm a newbiew, just trying to understand the unwritten rules of askubuntu

s/newbiew/newbie/

hm, I thought substitution works in here :)

It's really hard to earn rep on askubuntu

Fabby

Up to 2000 it's easy.

Above that, you have to do what rep-whores like @Rinzwind do: watch the new question queue like a hawk.

Isn't is rinzie???

:D :D :D

or post funny answers:

72

A: Why does apt-get not require restarts, where the update manager does?

Because apt-get (or plain simple apt) is for the pros and when the pros do a: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and see a new kernel being installed, the pros know they have to reboot to activate it... The automatic update is for everyone else out there! ;-) Alternatively, you can now install Ubu...

@SebastianStark 21000 views, 17 upvotes:

17

Q: How to efficiently partition a single Windows-Ubuntu dual boot disk?

This is not a question on how to install Ubuntu or how to use manual partitioning during installation but is a question on access rights and how not to let them bite you in the lower abdomen... ;-) This question will not help you how to make partitions on your disk, but will tell you what to do...

dual-boot partitioning windows-8 windows-10

@SebastianStark at least +20 today...

and I upvoted your [capslock] answer yesterday.

Transcript for

Ask Ubuntu General Room