/dev/chat

deostroll

5:47 AM

Hello what happens to /dev/tty in a cron job?

Faheem Mitha

6:01 AM

@Jesse_b Work related stuff?

Kusalananda

11:31 AM

@deostroll Context please?

Jesse_b

1:28 PM

@FaheemMitha Yeah

Prabhjot Singh

4:45 PM

Hi everybody

Jesse_b

@PrabhjotSingh Hola

Prabhjot Singh

@Jesse_b Hola has potential to replace Bonjour(my standard hello word).

Hola Hola

@Jesse_b My machine is showing: pri slave s.m.a.r.t. status bad.

what should i do?

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh Provide more details for a start.

When you say showing, showing where? How many disks do you have?

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha Hi @FaheemMitha

When I start my machine, screen showing this comes.

I mean at very start.

Jesse_b

@PrabhjotSingh Yeah you should use some app to read the SMART codes, there are several different types a hard drive will throw

I definitely recommend backing up your files and possibly replacing the drive, but I have some drives that have been throwing SMART errors for 10 years now and they still work fine

Faheem Mitha

4:53 PM

@PrabhjotSingh Ok. So, how many disks do you have?

In any case, run the customary SMART check on each of them. You can post them here if you want. I don't know much about it, but there are certainly people here who do.

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha I have 2 disks.

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Personally I'd replace a disk that was throwing SMART errors.

@PrabhjotSingh Ok. What company and size? And are they SSDs or HDDs?

Prabhjot Singh

one is 500Gib. Another is 1tb

Jesse_b

I forget which errors my disks give but they are only slightly above the "allowable" threshold and when I researched them all the information said they weren't that serious

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Even so.

Jesse_b

4:55 PM

@FaheemMitha One of them is being used in a 4 disk RAID 5 so I have been waiting for it to fail before I replace it

At this point I'm just going to replace all 4 disks because it's so old

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Ok. Is this work or personal?

Jesse_b

personal

Faheem Mitha

Ah. In a 4 disk RAID 5 how many disks can fail before the RAID stops working?

Jesse_b

if two fail it will be a data loss

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha This shows Toshiba. I don't know SSD or HDD.

@FaheemMitha Screen showing this is something American Megatrends.

Jesse_b

4:58 PM

What OS are you using @PrabhjotSingh

Prabhjot Singh

Mibios

@Jesse_b Fedora 27

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh How old are they? Presumably you'd know if you had purchased SSDs, so I assume these are HDDs. Standard hard drives.

@Jesse_b Ok. So you can lose 1. Personally I'd replace it already.

Jesse_b

try:

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha 3 years old

Jesse_b

yum install smartmontools
smartctl -a /dev/DISK

Faheem Mitha

4:59 PM

@PrabhjotSingh That's not very old.

@Jesse_b He might already have it installed.

@PrabhjotSingh Try the command. If it doesn't work, you need to install.

Jesse_b

You should be able to use smartctl --scan to look for your drives if you aren't sure what they are labeled

Prabhjot Singh

@Jesse_b plus.google.com/111103301665703152770

@FaheemMitha I have posted snapshot of scrern at Google plus link.

Jesse_b

5:16 PM

odd the smart attributes don't seem to have real data

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh You could just post it here.

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha That is very long. will irritate many.

Faheem Mitha

And I see the results for sda. What about sdb?

@PrabhjotSingh No. Chat will truncate it.

Jesse_b

VALUE is the current value, WORST is the worst that has been recorded while the disk is functioning, and THRESH is the floor that you want to stay above.

so you are showing 001 as the "WORST" for your spin_retry_count which indicates you should be above 60

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh According to SMART sda has problems. I recommend a backup immediately if you don't have one. And I'd consider purchasing a replacement.

Jesse_b

5:20 PM

Yeah it says it expects failure within 24 hours

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Which isn't necessarily to be taken literally. But it's certainly time to be taking a good hard look at the backup situation.

Jesse_b

@FaheemMitha I wouldn't risk it

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh This is the computer equivalent of loud alarms going off. What is your backup situation?

@Jesse_b Wouldn't risk what?

Jesse_b

I mean if it says 24 hours I would plan for that

Faheem Mitha

Also, run a check on your filesystems. What filesystems are you using? And how many do you have on each disk?

@Jesse_b I don't disagree. But I'd first check the backups. He can't buy a new disk in 5 minutes. And it's 11 pm on Saturday, in India. Even Amazon would take a day or two to deliver.

Jesse_b

5:24 PM

In that case I would leave the PC powered off until the disk arrived

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b I'd try to get a backup if he doesn't have one.

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha < What is your backup situation?

Faheem Mitha

But 3 years is oddly short.

@PrabhjotSingh I have a primitive and old backup running rsync to a remote VPS. And also Borg Backup to a local disk, and also to the same remote VPS.

Not the best backup strategy. Better than nothing, though.

Prabhjot Singh

you mean cfdisk -l

Faheem Mitha

And I've got very chatty cron jobs sending output to my email from the borg runs.

@PrabhjotSingh Pardon?

@derobert We've got SMART warnings on a machine here. Thoughts/advice?

Prabhjot Singh

5:27 PM

@FaheemMitha Say if I don't back up at all, how long will this last?

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh You really should back up asap.

Are you saying you don't have backups?

Prabhjot Singh

Yes

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh Are you saying you don't have backups? Be explicit.

Prabhjot Singh

Yes I Don't have backup. I back this uo on flashdrive on anything?

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh That's not good. You should run a backup immediately.

Are you getting errors from both disks? Or just one?

What is your filesystem layout?

Prabhjot Singh

5:30 PM

Just one.

< filesystem layout?

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh How many filesystems on each disk?

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha My problem is that I have 20Gib on my hard drive. But i have flashdrive of 16Gib.

Faheem Mitha

Are you using RAID? It doesn't sound like it, with disks of different sizes.

@PrabhjotSingh "I have Gib on my hard drive"?

@Jesse_b Still there?

@PrabhjotSingh You don't need to back up your system. Just your personal data.

Prabhjot Singh

edited

Jesse_b

@FaheemMitha I am

Prabhjot Singh

5:33 PM

Ok

Faheem Mitha

Possibly your config stuff under /etc.

But I'd really do that now.

Jesse_b

Google drive gives you 15GB for free, you can get 100GB for $1.99/month

Prabhjot Singh

@Jesse_b You should short sell microsoft shares.

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Good point, though Google will paw through your data. Still, any port in a storm.

@PrabhjotSingh You could back your stuff up online if your data plan allows it.

@Jesse_b Indian ISPs typically throttle bandwidth after a certain amount of data. Amusingly called Fair Usage.

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha Data plan is not a problem.

Faheem Mitha

5:37 PM

@PrabhjotSingh ok

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha Could you please lend me 4000 rupees for new Harddrive?

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh Is that a serious request?

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha In a lighter vein.

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh That's a no, then?

Prabhjot Singh

My pleasure, despite all this.

Faheem Mitha

5:40 PM

You didn't give us any details about your layout. And what about your second disk? Is that also giving SMART errors?

Prabhjot Singh

Second disk is okay.

Toady i found birth date of my machine. 16 August 2007.

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh Why not copy your stuff on the first disk to the second?

What the respective size of your first and second disks?

Prabhjot Singh

@Jesse_b First disk is 500Gib, second is 1tb.

BTW What is average life od a hard disk?

@FaheemMitha Good idea.

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh Very variable. But 3 years is way on the short side. My machine has 6 disks. The oldest two are from early 2007.

Jesse_b

@PrabhjotSingh Depends on if they are garbage drives or if they are made by HGST

Faheem Mitha

5:48 PM

As far as I know they are still all working, though I'm not really using the oldest ones any more.

@Jesse_b HGST?

Jesse_b

hgst.com

Prabhjot Singh

@Jesse_b Why my hard disk fell ill?

Faheem Mitha

Oh, Hitachi, right.

Now owned by Western Digital, apparently. Ugh.

Jesse_b

@PrabhjotSingh all companies seem to cut every corner they can anymore

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b I don't think that's a correct use of "anymore".

You probably meant something like "nowadays".

Prabhjot Singh

5:51 PM

@FaheemMitha I have to go somewhere tomorrow. What if I back it up day after tomorrow?

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh I'd do it now.

It sounds like it could fail anytime.

A disk to disk transfer would be very fast.

Jesse_b

6:06 PM

@FaheemMitha American slang

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b I think that's just wrong usage. But don't take my word for it.

God, my email host provider has lousy spam filtering. I really should complain.

Jesse_b

A lot of the things I say aren't grammatically correct but are commonly used phrases =)

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Well, wrong is wrong. Again, don't take my word for it.

The English SE is a reasonable place to ask.

And far from the only one on the net.

Jesse_b

No thanks :-P. I don't care much if it's considered wrong, I certainly don't care much for people that consider themselves stewards of the language

Both oxford and merriam webster have completely lost all credibility to me

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b I don't think it's anything to do with being a steward of the language. It's about communication and comprehensibility.

Jesse_b

6:13 PM

@FaheemMitha Yes and as it is a commonly used (misused) phrase, nobody will have any trouble understanding it

Faheem Mitha

Plus, natural languages are such murky things already, I try not to muddy the waters more than necessary.

@Jesse_b That could be used as a justification for practically anything.

Jesse_b

oxford and merriam webster are doing a good enough job muddying the waters

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b I think that is unfair.

Dictionaries have a job to do.

Mostly, they try to do it.

Jesse_b

They add obnoxious slang words every month

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha what is in post truth?

Jesse_b

6:16 PM

Most obnoxiously they add phrases that have no business being defined

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh What?

@Jesse_b Example?

Jesse_b

dog whistle

unsure what a dog whistle is? Head over to d for dog, and then w for whistle

no need to crowd up the dictionary with the combination of the two

hive mind

froyo

Prabhjot Singh

Dictionaries are adding words like post truth ununnecessarily.

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Combinations of words can have a different meaning than just the combination of the two.

Jesse_b

@FaheemMitha Sometimes but not in the two examples I gave

you will know what a dog whistle is if you know what both a dog and a whistle are. Same with hive mind

and froyo is obnoxious slang that shouldn't be in a dictionary

it's frozen yogurt, if you want to call it froyo congratulations on having cargo shorts and a long board but I'm not interested

Faheem Mitha

6:21 PM

@Jesse_b They're just documenting usage.

What are they supposed to do?

Jesse_b

I disagree, things being in the dictionary also sort of make them official and accepted

They do have a "slang" dictionary as well but these things are being added to the regular dictionary

the slang dictionary gives me gray hairs every time I look at it

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha Thse days panjabi dictionaries are adding more and more hindi words, urdu dictionaries are becoming averse to hindi words and adding arabic words. Hindi dictionaries are adding Sanskrit words.

there is no need of this.

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Fair point.

Jesse_b

Sometime in 2016 or 2017 they added like 5 words based on twitter

Prabhjot Singh

yes Facebook mom is an example.

Jesse_b

6:23 PM

which fine I will agree the word "tweet" should be in the dictionary, but they added phrases like "tweet storm" and some others that I don't think were necessary

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b I suppose. But it still seems relatively harmless to me.

Jesse_b

@FaheemMitha Well back to your criticism of my improper grammar. Yes I do use improper grammar and slang words when speaking informally as this chat is, but I do my best to write as properly as possible in official correspondence.

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b It was just a comment.

Jesse_b

When the reference materials for proper spelling and grammar start adding slang and generally unprofessional things it becomes difficult to justify what is proper and not anymore

Faheem Mitha

Criticism makes it sound very serious.

Please feel free to ignore as you wish.

Jesse_b

6:28 PM

Hah, I'm not offended or anything, I love to criticize others as well (all in good fun of course).

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b There's generally a consensus about educated speakers about what is correct and incorrect. It's isn't a clique or an attempt to put people down.

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha when i point to post truth, i ask this. Is post truth really a word?

Faheem Mitha

It's mostly about communication and comprehensibility.

@Jesse_b I constantly ask people to correct me if I'm wrong. They rarely do.

Maybe I need to find some more obnoxious people who want to correct me.

Jesse_b

Well the general consensus seems to be that the oxford comma is no longer necessary so they can pound sand as well

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh You mean "post truth", as in a combination word?

derobert

6:29 PM

@FaheemMitha SMART can give two different types of warnings: old age and prefail (the "type" column from smartctl tells you which each attribute is). Old age means the drive has gotten old and is now outside its design lifetime, or something like that — you don't necessarily have to replace the drive. Pre-fail is the important one; it's supposed to mean the drive has less than 24 hours to live.

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Says who?

@derobert Lots of my drives say pre-fail, but they don't throw dire warnings on bootup.

Jesse_b

@FaheemMitha I rarely see it used and have heard many arguments from people with english/literature credentials saying it is not necessary because the reader should be able to pick up on intent

Faheem Mitha

E.g.

derobert

@FaheemMitha all(?) drives have pre-fail attributes, but are they failed?

Faheem Mitha

D# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   174   174   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       4291
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       237
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0

@derobert I don't follow.

derobert

6:31 PM

@FaheemMitha type tells you what a failure of the attribute would mean — none of those have failed. See the - under when_failed

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha yes post-truth

Jesse_b

a failure would be something like:

Prabhjot Singh

Is this really a word?

Jesse_b

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 50 051 Pre-fail Always - 0

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Oh, right. Yes, I see.

@PrabhjotSingh I don't know.

derobert

6:32 PM

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   067   067   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       21616165
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   197   185   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       1133
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       57
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   117   117   140    Pre-fail  Always   FAILING_NOW 661
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

...one that drive, attribute 5 (reallocated sector count) says FAILING NOW.

that's what it looks like when failed. (I grabbed that off a drive that was replaced with a hot spare in an array at work)

Faheem Mitha

That is:

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   117   117   140    Pre-fail  Always   FAILING_NOW 661

?

derobert

yep

Faheem Mitha

So if that column is not empty, that's serious?

Jesse_b

Yeah. threshold is 140 and the current/worst value of 117 is below it

Faheem Mitha

And the Old_age attributes are not so serious?

derobert

6:35 PM

Yeah, they're not so serious.

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Is the Oxford comma that thing that does bracketing?

Oh, no that's not it.

> a comma used after the penultimate item in a list of three or more items, before ‘and’ or ‘or’ (e.g. an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect ).

I admit, I think that's unnecessary too. I wouldn't use it, personally. And it looks wrong to me.

Jesse_b

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Hmm.

derobert

nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/oxford-comma-maine.html

Faheem Mitha

I think you've got to look at context a bit.

Prabhjot Singh

6:39 PM

@FaheemMitha They found hard to digest Trump's victory and Brexit. Instead of findind why this happened(Nafta in american case and Jeremy Corbyn's reluctance to participate fie remain camp), they coined a new word Post-truth.

Faheem Mitha

@PrabhjotSingh Who is "they"?

@Jesse_b Actually, maybe I use it after all. Honestly, I'm not sure.

Prabhjot Singh

People in Oxford.

derobert

@FaheemMitha smartctl -H /dev/sdX should tell you which type of failure it is, and which attribute.

Faheem Mitha

I would have to look at my past writing.

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha Oxford coined this word.

Faheem Mitha

6:41 PM

@derobert ok

Jesse_b

I agree that in almost all writings it could be unnecessary but in that case so are all the commas when making a list

"I need eggs milk cheese bread and a tomato"

I don't think anyone would misunderstand that statement but the lack of commas is merely out of laziness and shouldn't be tolerated in official correspondence

Prabhjot Singh

@Jesse_b I don't know how many here understand Are you baked?

derobert

@Jesse_b No, though you might wind up with cheese bread as opposed to cheese and bread. At least if you were being sabotaged on Cutthroat Kitchen.

Jesse_b

@derobert Nice. Illustrates the need to be as clear as possible in all writing by always including the oxford comma

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b It looks like I reflexively include the Oxford comma.

From my past writing. Though often I seem to forget to include the "and".

I.e. I write foo, bar, baz. Instead of foo, bar, and baz.

Actually, I don't think the "and" is strictly necessary, anyway.

If it is good enough for computer languages, it's good enough for natural languages.

Jesse_b

6:49 PM

I guess it depends because the and could also be or

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b If omitted, it's implicitly "and".

In my opinion, anyway.

Jesse_b

Yeah and you can't confuse the end of a list. If it physically ends it ends

Faheem Mitha

Agreed.

derobert

I think I always include the Oxford comma, and thankfully Perl hasn't rubbed off on me enough to include an Oxford comma + 1, yet.

Prabhjot Singh

@Jesse_b in for loop what sort of comma we use. for(; ;)

Jesse_b

6:53 PM

@PrabhjotSingh <3 bash

for n in {start..finish}

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Oxford comma + 1?

derobert

@Jesse_b that's an odd response from Bash to that weird for loop.

Faheem Mitha

Do you include the "and"? I see I don't, at least some of the time.

Jesse_b

@derobert loled

derobert

@FaheemMitha an extra trailing comma, like a sane programming languages let you add: (1, 2, 3,)

Faheem Mitha

6:55 PM

@derobert I see.

derobert

@FaheemMitha I think so, when writing in sentence form. List form, sometimes, but often not.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert I see I have constructions like this:

This is a list of things: xx, yy, zz.

derobert

I'd probably put the and in that. But if it were instead, here are some things:
- a
- b
- c
then I often leave it out

An alternative is, here are some things:
- a;
- b; and
- c

Which you often see in contexts where a, b, and c are long, possibly multiple sentences, and that and vs. or matters a lot. Example: law.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert "if it were"?

derobert

yeah, if it were

Faheem Mitha

7:01 PM

@derobert Precise language matters in law. Though I've seen lots of really badly written legal stuff. Laws in particularly seem to be really badly written. E.g. immigration and taxation stuff.

Some of it make me think the writers should go back to school and learn how to construct a comprehensible English sentence.

derobert

@FaheemMitha Sometimes the legislature is in a hurry. Or incompetent. Or they've made a mess of it by amending it repeatedly.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Or all of the above.

I was reading some Indian laws recently. It was pretty dreadful.

derobert

Yeah. Or even worse, write something incomprehensible was a form of compromise.

"Did our side win or lose on that point? Did the other side get what it wants?" "Who knows, it's a matter for the courts."

Faheem Mitha

They could have made it infinitely better by (a) expanding it (b) adding clarifying language - as in, to be clear, we mean this, not this (c) adding some example usage.

@derobert It's always a good idea to make extra work for the courts.

derobert

@FaheemMitha Legislatures are well-known for only doing things which are good ideas. :-P

Faheem Mitha

7:05 PM

@derobert :-)

I have horrible memories of reading US immigration legal stuff. Almost impossible to understand.

derobert

You could try the tax code, that might give it some competition.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert That's really terrible too. You mean the IRS, right?

derobert

@FaheemMitha Or the law behind it.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Right, whoever drafted that. Presumably not the IRS.

derobert

Congress, in theory. Probably a bunch of lobbyists in practice.

Faheem Mitha

7:10 PM

Mildly interesting thread from HNQ - academia.stackexchange.com/q/111498/285

@derobert That's an unpleasant job.

I've read that the US tax code is designed to help rich people dodge taxes by scattering convenient but obscure loopholes throughout.

So the rich people can then hire expensive tax advisors who will point out those loopholes for them.

Prabhjot Singh

@FaheemMitha interpretation is worse as here, you mean.

Faheem Mitha

E.g.

amazon.com/dp/B000OCXHJA

Faheem Mitha

7:43 PM

@derobert So, do you touch type? We were having a discussion the other day.

Jesse_b

He probably uses voice to text dictation

Faheem Mitha

9:12 PM

@Jesse_b Unlikely.

Jesse_b

@FaheemMitha :)

Jeff Schaller

11:22 PM

@FaheemMitha my 3 favorite things are eating my family and the Oxford comma.

6

@FaheemMitha there was a recent podcast regarding the US's 2nd amendment that went into the language aspect; ah, here it is: wnycstudios.org/story/radiolab-presents-more-perfect-gun-show

Faheem Mitha

@JeffSchaller Good one.

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